I am not Irish. However, I like the way they speak what is called, for no good reason I have been able to discover, "English," and hence I feel that even if what I have to say fails to make the kind of sense I have in mind at least I will have the satisfaction of having said it in a way I like. I did not do so well with Greek (see "9/11 Aletheia"), having learned thataletheia does not rhyme with panacea but is pronounced "uh LAY thee uh," with the stress on the second syllable. It does mean troot, so I got the meaning right, and it did get me kicked out of three "truth" organizations (cf. "The Truth Wars"), which was not my intention but it's just as well. I'm troo wit troot, or more precisely, trooters.
No sooner had I come to the defense of Jim Fetzer, the founder, owner, chair, and perhaps sole remaining member (I am exaggerating somewhat) of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, of which I was also "co-chair" for a few days, than I discovered that we have differences after all that have nothing to do with "no planes," video fakery, or directed energy weapons but are nonetheless serious. As a result, Jim thinks I have gone "haywire," and I have resigned my membership in his organization.
It is a little embarrassing, because what has caused our disagreement is exactly what I defended him for: freedom of speech. I think there are limits. This is not a contradiction. As I wrote in my article, guilt by association is despicable and I still condemn the tactics used by Hoffman, Ashley and Green to ostracize and demonize anyone (like Jim) who talks about video fakery and DEW. But as I also said, I was not talking about murder, rape, warmongering, terrorism, cannibalism, child pornography, male chauvinist pigism, anti-Semitism, or racism. There is a difference. I do draw the line at "associating" with people who have views that are morally reprehensible.
I realize this is touchy ground, and in a perfectly rational world no limits would be necessary because all the irrational ideas would die quick deaths and humankind (as well as animal and plantkind) would be spared all the trouble that they cause. Unfortunately, though, the world is not particularly rational, and I thought the forum that I started (when the Google group glitched I changed it to 911aletheia.ning.com) imposed on me a certain amount of responsibility. I decided not to allow one particular person to join, or even allow discussion of his work, because a quick Google search, after I heard that he planned to submit his article to American Free Press and The Barnes Review, revealed that he had also written the following on a website whose very name gives it away:
This site is an eye-opener for me and I was not aware that it existed. I have been blined from the Truth for all of my life due to extreme censorship of school textbooks, publishers, video documentaries, movies, newpapers, magazines, etc…. I am extremely angry about this censorship. I see it all very clearly now, starting only a few years ago, starting when I read the book “Jewish Supremicism”. I have a lot more reading to do on this site, and learning to add to my disgust about be lifelong duped and deceived.
The American Free Press web site also has a lot of current and good related information for the discerning researcher.
Endless thanks to the originator of this website for exposing this otherwise extraordinarily censored history and current events. Keep up the incredible work, but you need, somehow, to get it to all of the people of the USA and the World….
How could I have been deceived, fooled, duped, defrauded for so, so, so long??? [Chuck Boldwyn, 19.11.2008, comment on "9/11’s Cover-Up Man: Zionist Zelikow," by Brother Nathanael Kapner, Real Jew News]
The author of Jewish Supremacism is David Duke, a well-known racist and anti-Semite. I also objected to Jim linking to a version of his own article "9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda" published by America First Books, whereupon Jim informed me that he had also published a joint statement with William Fox and Eric May. Fox is the founder of amfirstbooks.com, which also hosts such (un)worthies as Michael Collins Piper.
All of this I found very distressful, especially since one of the reasons I came to Jim's defense on the issue of 9/11 is that back in 2006 he was the only person in the old Scholars forum (when Steven Jones was running it), except for one other member named "Diane," who supported me when I complained about a discussion of Holocaust denial that was taking place on that forum. Now Jim accuses me of an "excess of anti-anti-Semitism."
We also clashed on a less sensitive, though not minor, point: understandability. I have spent most of my life in academia, so I am used to people pretending to know a lot more than they actually do, but since this was (and still is) my forum, I decided that I had the right to insist on understanding what was discussed there. I made a rule that everything should be understandable to ordinary speakers of English -- radical, but it made sense to me. To bring the point home I posted an article in German as an example of an unacceptable post. Similarly, I would not accept posts in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Hindustani, or any of several thousand other languages I do not understand. One of these languages is higher mathematics, and another one is physics. I don't speak much chemistry or mechanical engineering, either. At least, I added, if we were going to discuss things in these languages, there should be at least one person in the discussion who is able and willing to translate everything into plain English.
Another problem I have on the forum, though it does not concern Jim Fetzer, is anonymity. Real life is my model, and my mistake, I suppose. Would I be a neo-Luddite if I objected to talking to someone dressed in a white sheet who refused to tell me anything about what was under the sheet? Sure, you might argue, in the old days, when we were real, we needed stuff like that, but this is the Computer Age. Now we can say whatever we want to whenever and however we want to and never have to take any responsibility for it -- unless of course the FBI or some other Authority decides our little game is up. Until then we'll just play and play, ducking and hiding from each other but knowing all the while that Big Brother has our ass in a sling from the get-go. Everything is cool.
Given my peculiarities, the membership on my forum is likely to go from 32 to one in short order. But maybe that's the way to go: a forum of one. I could have long conversations with myself, as one anti-anti-Semite to another, and talk and talk, not fretting much about who might be listening. Sort of like right now, troot to tell.