Jim Fetzer on National Geographic documentary

[William Kelly]

Why do you insist on calling Fetzer a disinformation agent, when he isn't an agent at all.

Isn't an agent someone who represents someone else?

So we agree he doesn't represent anyone else, so why insist he be called a disinformation agent when he is really a totally different animal, other than to dilute the meaning of the term, and thus put misguided professors like Fetzer into the same category as real DISINFORMATION agents like Epstein, Russo, Holland, et al.?

But even if you expand this definition to include anyone with the intention of misleading others - regardless of their support or motivation, that still doesn't include Fetzer, who I do not believe intends to mislead, because he believes what he says.

Bill in an earlier post you accused me of being confused but that was a rather obvious case of projection. I never said Fetzer was a “disinfo agent” in fact I never used the word ‘agent’ on this thread (until now of course). I didn’t even say he pronouncements were pure ‘disinfo’ but rather that they fell between ‘disinfo’ and ‘misinfo’ because he repeated the same errors despite having been corrected on several occasions.

So, if you forget the misleading, liberal generalists and Wicki, Websters and Oxford, and accept the classical definition of disinformation as that info dispensed by a government or intelligence agency to promote their policies and actions, then we can begin to discuss who is really forming and shaping policies and actions rather than being sidetracked by misguided professors, who you apparently find a more easy target.

On what basis did you determine that your definition of the word was "the classical" one? I cited 7 dictionaries, 5 (3 American, 2 British) agree with me but only one agrees with you and one gives a definition different from both of ours (indicating that it only refers to military info.)

You can't say disinformation without attaching it to agent because they are connected and have been connected since the word was first coined.

Oh, but you can call Fetz a part time disspensor of disinfo without being an agent?

And all the definitions say it is intentionally wrong information, and we both agree that Fetzer isn't intentionally wrong, so that doesn't apply either.

And if you use the general definition that does not apply to the promotion of a government policy or action, then how do we discuss those issues that I want to discuss?

You want to badmouth Fetzer, go ahead.

You want to say he sometimes puts out disinformation, but don't cite the cases, go ahead.

I'm just telling you that when the word was first coined it referred to governments and agency use of information, and not professors like Fetzer.

Now you want to change the use of the word, go ahead.

BK

[Guest]

'There's a special place in hell', if I can misquote the honourable Fetzer, reserved for those who argue interminably about semantics

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/...structural.html

[Len Colby]

You can't say disinformation without attaching it to agent because they are connected and have been connected since the word was first coined.

Oh, but you can call Fetz a part time disspensor of disinfo without being an agent?

And all the definitions say it is intentionally wrong information, and we both agree that Fetzer isn't intentionally wrong, so that doesn't apply either.

And if you use the general definition that does not apply to the promotion of a government policy or action, then how do we discuss those issues that I want to discuss?

You want to badmouth Fetzer, go ahead.

You want to say he sometimes puts out disinformation, but don't cite the cases, go ahead.

I'm just telling you that when the word was first coined it referred to governments and agency use of information, and not professors like Fetzer.

Now you want to change the use of the word, go ahead.

BK

Bill,

The words "disinformation" and "agent" aren't joined at the hip like linguistic Siamese twins. I cited all the uses of the former from the 1st page of Google hits and none used the latter perhaps YOU can't use one without the other but I and others can. I'm not "chang[ing] the use of the word"

Fetzer frequently repeats the same errors despite repeated correction. For example he claims that the head pilot of the Wellstone crash had 5200 flight hour but has repeatedly been told

-Even according to the charter company’s records he only had 5116 hours

-That total was based on a declaration he gave the FAA in which he claimed to have lost his logbooks

-Under subpoena his widow found the “lost” logbooks and his total hours were 1460 less than he had informed the FAA

-Even that total might well be exaggerated, he had duplicate log books for the same period one with forged signatures from a flight instructor one had repeated entries for repetitive flights that his wife (widow) could not explain. He repeatedly exaggerated about his flight experience including under oath during his civil and criminal trials for fraud.

I previously gave examples of Fetzer being intentionally careless with the truth in the thread and post linked below and elsewhere.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7340

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ost&p=40521

Edited September 12, 2009 by Len Colby

[Pamela Brown]

Based on my experience with Fetzer re the limo myth of the 'spiral nebulae' that he was pushing, there seemed to be some sort of agenda in his refusal to even acknowledge the possibility of another position.

If I remember correctly, the last straw prior to his worst tirade and rant on this subject was when I suggested that it was the absence of damage to the limo, not a high degree of damage, that is proof of conspiracy.

[David G. Healy]

...

Bill,

The words "disinformation" and "agent" aren't joined at the hip like linguistic Siamese twins.

rewriting WEBSTER'S eh? Hey Len you've been nailed, acceptance is the key.... carry on.... Where's Wild Bill Millah when you need him!

[Evan Burton]

How about we say that if Unca Fetz were advocating the government report, it'd be disinformation?

[William Kelly]

Funny. Although you may be incapable of being otherwise, being so bossy doesn't seem to help your cause much, Mr. K. Because someone could point out that you yourself don't seem nearly so meticulous about how you use other terms -- like for instance the term assassination ..... It's often confusing that you seem to use this term to represent any murder, or homicide, or even just an untimely death:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...14165&st=15

Post #29; March 29, 2009

"More governments change hands by political assassination than by democratic means, and since being assassinated is President Obama's most serious threat today, political assassination is the most serious threat to the national security of the United States, and that is the case because the assassination of President Kennedy remains unresolved."

At first glance this (these?) categorical statement(s) seemed unusually questionable since I had a very definite idea of what "political assassination" means -- for instance, the murder of a head of state, leader of government, or a political leader in general; and this occurring outside the given legal framework of a society; and this occurring in societies that have moved beyond hunter-gatherer tribal forms. So for instance I wouldn't have thought to include the murders of tribal chiefs among Neanderthals as "political assassinations." And I wouldn't have thought to include the executions of John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth, King Charles I or King Louis XVI as "political assassinations," since in each case the person in question was subjected to capital punishment by the existing state authority. I admit this gets a little murky, since Julius Caesar was assassinated by a number of Roman senators (arguably constituting "state authority").

What was more difficult to figure out was this:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14516

Post #4; July 2, 2009

"It seems like when the foreign interest in Iran declined (with Michael Jackson's assassination), the Iranians got harsher on dissent, but while the world was watching they backed off."

At the time you wrote this, it was assumed by some unsentimental folks (me) that Michael died because he'd had no nose left with which to breathe. But in any event, the investigation eventually ruled it as a case of homicide, and yet prior to all that you called it an "assassination." This is very puzzling, since Michael Jackson can hardly be considered any kind of "political leader." At most, more sentimental people than myself might speak of such stars having "political influence" of some kind ("moral influence" maybe), but that seems fairly nebulous in terms of real political power and I don't think Bono or Sting or Bob Geldof or Diana Spencer or even John Lennon represented any "political threat" in the sense that we think of Martin Luther King, Jr. representing such ...... So in terms of your insistence on clarity and precise definitions and getting rid of confusion, it might be helpful to not include so many deaths under the general blanket term assassination.

On another point, it may also be unhelpful to your cause that you've jumped in with your biceps unfurled, throwing around your typically categorical statements -- this time about things we can be sure of in the case of Jim Fetzer. This only lends credence to the research of Tim and Jim Imbecile, as they've noted the phenomenon of Respectable Researchers taking up for Extremist Researchers in the Conspiracy Research Community, as if some sort of game would fall apart if the Extremists were ever exposed as a real detriment to the whole research effort ......... This was exactly the sort of thing that caused Prince Philip to lose support among the youth, when he'd previously scored so many point with all the drug-running .........

First off, you have yet to see my biceps.

Second, there is no such thing as the "research coummunity," and while I've never been called bossy before, I'm just sticking to my guns.

And I'm not defending Fetzer, I'm just saying he's not a disinformaiton agent.

As for the wanton use of political assassination, point well taken. I won't do it again.

And thanks for pointing out that Michael Jackson statement. I don't remember writing about "Michael Jackson's assassination," and I'm glad you cited the link because I wouldn't have believed I wrote it myself, but there it is, and in rereading it, I must have just read a reference to that - and was just kidding. Like Peter referred to Ted Kennedy' assassination.

Exaggerating the death of Michael Jackson certainly did take the Iranian elections off the front page, and I guess I thought it was funny, so I'm not all that stiff and stuffy.

But I most certainly won't use the term that way again, even trying to be funny.

As it turns out, as you point out, we learn after I wrote that, that MJ was murdered.

And I think we should distinguish the difference between murder and assassination.

Since there are different types of murder - homicide, first degree, spree, manslaughter, there should be different types of assassination, and the differences should be made clear, that is if anyone wants to discuss them seriously.

BK

If we're going to be more civil and less hostile in our responses, I'm afraid people will think we're starting to have feelings for each other. But I'll risk it and say I often agree with your opinions and your perspective and I've admired your articles a great deal. It just gets a little scary when you get bossy and your biceps (guns) seem threatening.

I (think I) understand where you're coming from on the standard use of the specific technical term "disinformation," as false information coming from governments/intelligence organizations with the intent to mislead and to impact policy. But the problem is that so-called private organizations do this same thing all the time, and I'm not sure there should be so great a distinction between the Nazi Party/Third Reich using disinformation from 1933-1945 and Nazi Party propaganda prior to 1933. As it applies in these venues, I think it's important to recognize and emphasize that it wouldn't only be an intelligence agency that would spread false information (for instance, about Pres. Kennedy), but that political/ideological organizations with their agendas would also spread false information with the intent to mislead and impact opinion, policy, etc (appealing to "conspiracy researchers" or "the public at large"). This seems part of the problem in that there's so much focus on the CIA to the exclusion of almost everything else, people may often be misled by "private" interests about any number of issues.

I agree completely with your attitude re the Iranian elections issues and the pathetic switch-over to 24-hour coverage of the death of Michael Jackson. I think it's evidence that the mainstream media is less co-opted by the CIA than it serves as a reflection of how odd our priorities are in terms of what we think is "important." The main thing for the TV media is ratings, and protest demonstrations against the regimes in Iran or China just aren't real big ratings-grabbers.

On your last points, I agree that it might be helpful to distinguish between different types of murder or even different types of assassination. (But then I tend to refer to Pres. Kennedy's assassination as murder because "assassination" is thrown around so often that the term seems stale, and it seems important to emphasize the murder aspect as opposed to any "political aspect.") But if we want to talk seriously about things and clear out some of the b*llsh*t, maybe the issue has less to do with terminology and semantics than with how we evaluate power and possibilities, and whether we're being honest and realistic in doing this.

So for instance, on a different subject, the power of Saddam Hussein and the threat he represented wasn't really comparable to that of Adolf Hitler; and the "War On Terror" isn't really comparable to World War II (if it were, we should have 12 million Americans serving in the armed forces instead of recycling the same troops over and over). Instead of asking whether the Bush Administration's equating Hussein with Hitler and a War On Terror with WW II was disinformation or a different technical term, we're only focusing on whether or not such parallels are really accurate -- and then if they're not, whether the drawing of the parallels was a case of dishonesty or a case of stupidity.

To use another example, the generic term "Military-Industrial Complex" is thrown around a lot in these venues, sort of representing "The System That Is Evil" or something, but people ought to be made aware that what President Eisenhower was talking about in his farewell address was more than anything else a warning about the unusual concentration of power invested in the US Air Force, the aerospace industry, and their host congressional districts. Eisenhower had reason and experience to understand and be worried about the USAF's monopoly of our nuclear arsenal (bombers and missiles), which when combined with the extremely capital-intensive nature of the aerospace industry (lots and lots of big money invested in high-tech engineering projects) points to an amazing, almost unfathomable amount of power that was difficult to regulate and could truly be a threat in a number of ways ........ That sort of detail and background is much more interesting than "military-industrial complex" without any content.

I could unfortunately go on and on along these lines, so I'll cut it short except for a few other points. When I was actively involved in researching the Far Right, I explored Michael and Judy Newton's Klan Encyclopedia and found that it was Bill Turner's Power on the Right which was the source for an enormous amount of entries. That obviously says a helluva lot about Bill and the amazing work he's done, but also points to the lack of work done by others in that specific area. This was one of the reasons I was inclined to defend John Bevilaqua in what he had to say in the forum, despite his abrasive tendencies. In my own research I had eventually run across the name of Gen. Pedro Del Valle in his associations with Far Right people and organizations; I did an archive search on him at Lancer and found nothing; I did an archive search here and found a single mention of him, appearing in the midst of a list of names in a post by James Richards. This seemed odd in light of the interesting details of the general's life and career and ideology and associations; he would in other words be just the sort of fellow many of us might regard as suspicious in terms of how he might've felt about the Kennedy Administration.

So I guess my general point would be that some areas seem greatly underexplored and the Far Right is one of the main ones. (But then you know that much the same could be said for the Office of Naval Intelligence and Army Intelligence and maybe especially Air Force Intelligence.) For some of us, John Kennedy's murder seems to be a case where the chief executive might've been thought to be too "threatening to the national interest" in a number of ways -- more a coup d'etat than a (simple) assassination. It would be a shame if it turns out that for half a century the Far Right had successfully gotten most everyone to focus almost exclusively on the CIA, whether their false information is called disinformation or some other term.

Good luck to the Eagles, btw; at least they have a chance every year, which can't be said for my Redskins.

That explains a lot. A Redskins fan.

Thanks for reading my stuff, thinking about it, and commenting on it.

Will get back to you later on specifics,

BK