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Ashton Gray

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Virtually every week someone emails threatening to resign from the forum because of the antics of a fellow member. Usually they name Tim Gratz but recently John Bevilaqua has become a figure they want removed. Despite these threats they rarely do leave. The reason being is that people join this forum for purely selfish reasons. They use the forum to promote their views, their website or their latest book. This forum, unlike a lot on the web, gets a large number of page impressions. This forum provides you with a significant audience. People are keen to read what we have to say. They are even interested in our arguments. Some people treat this forum as a kind of soap opera. Sure, members sometimes go off in a sulk and stop posting for a couple of weeks. In reality, they are addicted to this forum and cannot give it up. When Ashton's next book is out I am sure he will back on the forum promoting it.

Hello, John.

The insufferably insulting and denigrating post of yours regarding me, above, was brought to my attention and I let it go.

It seems you couldn't let it go, though, because now you've had the lapse of judgment to post this:

My point was that Ashton gets a great deal from this forum and so he will contine to post when it is in his interest to do so.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am neither schooled nor sophisticated in the British brands of guile and artifice, so I don't know whether you actually believe such gaseous rot, or whether your rhetorical slaps to my face after I announced my departure from your forums are merely efforts to goad me into responding. If the latter, congratulations, because I'll be damned if I'll sit idly by while you use your self-described public information juggernaut forum as a bully pulpit to besmirch my honor and to attribute the basest venal personal motives to me in a complete reversal of the facts.

Therefore, in keeping with the theme of an "Education Forum," I will school you now in the way that slaps in the face are handled where I come from. You'll have to determine for yourself whether your blind-side score was a Pyrrhic victory.

Although there are many things extraordinary in your first message quoted above, what I find most extraordinary about it is that you raised the issue of my book when I specifically asked you back in August, in private e-mail, not to make it public in the forums—a request that I never have rescinded.

Your remark about "Ashton's next book" can't possibly be referring to any other book, because there is one and only one book of mine that is relevant to any of these forums that I ever have posted in, and right up until my announcement that I was disassociating myself from these forums, you were the one and only person who posts or reads in any of these forums who had the unique specific knowledge I privately sent you about that particular book back in August, with the express request that you not make it public in the forums.

The one other member here who knew anything about the book before I announced my disassociation with these forums also had been asked not to make it public in your forums.

That stands in direct contradiction to your faithless attempted smear of me above. And why would that be?

The reason—and the truth you don't bother mentioning—is that in these forums I never once have given even the title of that book—or of any other book I've written or am writing, for that matter. I never once have supplied in these forums a link to the publisher's web pages promoting or discussing that book—or any other book I've written or am writing, for that matter.

But you didn't mention that when you were busy trying to ascribe personal-gain motives to me for the work I've labored over here in these fields, did you? And why would that be, John? Would it be because if you'd told the truth about that, you wouldn't have been able to gratuitously belittle me and call my motives into question?

Even the dullest dumbbell can see in an instant that all the foregoing directly contradicts your disgraceful insult to my integrity. Even the most besotted, insensate dimwit can understand that if my motivation for my work in these forums ever had even the most gossamer connection to a desire to promote my own works, the single stupidest thing I possibly could have done is precisely what I did: to take a stand on principle and disassociate myself from the vast promotional value you impute to your forums, without even once having taken advantage of your giant public relations juggernaut by posting the title of my book and a link to it.

But even that's not the worst of it: something you've never bothered to find out about concerning the book you brought up (against my express wishes) is that the major reason I finally reluctantly agreed to writing it at all—when I already had three other unrelated books in progress—was the inclusion of a plan for a trust fund to be set up where a significant portion of the proceeds will be irrevocably dedicated to funding a massive chronology project covering the JFK assassination, Watergate, and other relevant history going directly to much that is being addressed in the "Controversial" sections of your forums, something I have wanted to see accomplished long before I ever even heard of your forums, but have never had the wherewithal or resources to bring into being. So that, and the people associated with it, is what you're also slapping across the face with your unconscionable and unfounded insults to my integrity.

Of course this entire discussion of the book couldn't be taking place at all if you hadn't unethically used your unique private knowledge of the book as a gauntlet, not for merely throwing down, but for slapping me across the face.

The simple truth is that my time invested in researching for and posting in these forums has been a net liability to me on a personal basis, and not an insignificant one. It's the exact measure of your mendacity in claiming otherwise.

As for the other parts of your first message quoted above that are extraordinary, I can't make the case that you were attributing such base traits specifically to me because, as is so often the case, you mask such statements behind generality and obliquity, and allow the possible association just to hang in uncertain suspension by tacking my name onto the end.

Still, even in your broadstroked smear-by-association, there certainly are extraordinary statements deserving of attention:

Virtually every week someone emails threatening to resign from the forum because of the antics of a fellow member. Usually they name Tim Gratz but recently John Bevilaqua has become a figure they want removed. Despite these threats they rarely do leave.

I don't know who these "someones" are, but I never once have "threatened to resign." I abruptly resigned. Period. I'm only posting here in this thread because of your gratuitous attempt to impugn my honor and my integrity by attributing completely false motives to my participation in these forums. So count me among the "rarely."

I never once have asked or even suggested that you remove anyone. I have said that you should cut lines of abuse of the forums. There are many ways to accomplish that, some of which I've suggested to you and you rebuffed—including setting up a separate forum for threads that were started as ad hominem personal attacks on members, and funneling all such garbage into it. I suggested that to you last year when Speer and Caddy, et al., had mounted a personal smear campaign on me, going so far as to put my name in the subject titles of several threads (members can see my sig for some examples of their endearing smear campaign) and I asked you to do something about it. You categorically refused and said you thought it entirely appropriate for such off-topic garbage threads to be in your "Educational Forums" on Watergate and JFK.

And that's the way you've kept it. You even contribute to such buffoonery, starting threads in the JFK forum on forum members. It's one part of why I finally had enough and elected to disassociate myself from it.

The reason being is that people join this forum for purely selfish reasons. They use the forum to promote their views, their website or their latest book.

It's a shame you don't know people of principle. Maybe you move in the wrong circles. Then again, you backed Speer and Caddy in their dirty smear-campaign propaganda ops against me, so I guess this shouldn't come as a complete surprise.

I suppose it also might explain why you apparently can't even come close to understanding that I elected to stop participating here as a matter of principle and my own integrity.

This forum, unlike a lot on the web, gets a large number of page impressions. This forum provides you with a significant audience. People are keen to read what we have to say.

And as it currently stands, this forum is supplying that "significant audience" with a fine education of bald-faced lies, torturously constructed fictions parading as "fact," and irrelevant garbage, which is the primary reason why I have elected to end my association with it. I don't want my works associated with it as it currently stands.

That has everything to do with principle and nothing whatsoever to do with "purely selfish reasons"—though if your statements herein are any yardstick, you don't have the haziest idea what I mean when I use the word "principle," so this sentence likely will be a blank spot in your memory.

You not only protect but nurture liars, you absolutely forbid honest researchers from giving proven liars the label they deserve, and so you become a party to peddling an education of lies. I don't want to be a party to it, which is why I've made a decision not to continue contributing to it as long as you maintain such destructive policies.

You allow liars and fablemakers free rein to post their garbage around the clock, and to present their fictions as "fact" under a big broad banner saying: "The Education Forum." I don't want my works lumped in with those fictions and lies.

An education of lies is worse than no education at all.

Tim Gratz posted two barefaced material lies in Bill Kelly's thread on Black Propaganda Ops recently, on 8 October and 17 October: one about the whereabouts of E. Howard Hunt at importantly relevant times (a whole-cloth fabrication by Gratz that he posted as though it were "fact"), the other about something Gratz claimed that Carlos Bringuier had said, which of course was proved to be nothing but another complete bare-faced lie fabricated out of thin air by Gratz.

Of course you didn't call him on his lies, John, and neither did any of your so-called moderators. You know who invested his own time to document the fact that Gratz's lies were lies, so others wouldn't be snared by them, John? I did—to my own detriment on a purely personal basis.

These lies by Gratz aren't innocent little "white lies" to get out of a lunch date. Un-unh. These are material lies that cloud and pervert the record and add layer upon layer of confusion and chaos to a record already made more confused and chaotic than an F5 tornado by the CIA scum (but I repeat myself) who created it—which is what some of us are (or were) here trying to put into order so there would be some chance to winnow the truth from the swirling debris of lies.

But Gratz merrily sits at his keyboard—apparently 24/7—and idly, glibly makes up as many lies as he likes and posts them in your forum, John, without an ounce of responsibility, without the slightest consequence, pouring rivers of incendiary lies on a consummate conflagration of lies that responsible researchers are here trying to put out. And Gratz is by no means the only cog in the Lie Factory here masquerading as an "Education Forum."

You have backed Pat Speer while he sits in these forums and regularly manufactures and spreads all over these pages the most jaw-dropping fictions, the most scandalous perversions of fact, utter fabrications that have no more truth or foundation in them than Henny Penny.

Speer infested the thread I started called "The Purloined Projectile" and told the infamous, blatant lie that by the time Admiral Burkley got to Parkland Hospital, "Carrico had already administered the steroids for Kennedy's adrenal deficiency." Of course he didn't post a single word of evidence or testimony to support his damnable seditious lie, because he's not held to any such standard in this "Education Forum": he's allowed to blithely type any fiction he chooses and post it here as "fact." It's then up to honest and responsible researchers to spend their time going around behind him cleaning up the dung piles he's allowed to leave all over the house.

No wonder Speer doesn't try to back up his fiction with fact: he can't. The record screams that Burkley was there at the outset. Burkley supplied 300 mg. of Solucortef; Kennedy was given 300 mg. of Solucortef. The Solucortef was administered "At the beginning of the resuscitation attempt" according to Carrico himself. Burkley was there at the beginning of the resuscitation attempt. The 300 mg. of Solucortef had already been administered when Perry did the tracheostomy, according to Perry himself.

There could not be a more damaging lie about the sequence of events at Parkland Hospital than the one Speer spins—tag-teaming with his fellow febrile fabricator, Thomas Purvis. It goes directly to Burkley's complicity in covering up the facts about the throat wound during the autopsy. Yet here, in this "Education Forum," Pat Speer is propped up and empowered to sit and tippy-tap at his keyboard dumping just as much such garbage into this "Educational Forum" as he pleases.

In the thread you started yourself called "Masters of Deceit: Propaganda, Disinformation and Corruption," Speer demonstrated just what a master of such deceit he is when he kept cawing the bald-faced CIA/Mockingbird-generated lie that Schlesinger created the CIA's "family jewels," and that it was done for Nixon's benefit. What did you do about Speer using your thread to spread lies in your "Education Forum," John? It's a rhetorical question, because I know very well that you didn't do anything at all about it. The reason I know so very well is because of the number of hours of my time that I had to invest in order to document just what a noxious river of lies it was in this message I wrote that dammed and damned it.

But it wasn't good enough for you just to sit by and do nothing: oh, no. I've lost count of the number of times since I posted the facts proving conclusively that it was Colby, not Schlesinger, who was the source for the CIA limited-hangout op called "Family Jewels" that you, John, have dumped cut-and-paste garbage into this "Education Forum" forwarding the exact same CIA/Mockingbird disinformation that Speer was here peddling, without your ever having once mentioned the truth as a counterbalance or linking to my facts that prove the truth. So you don't just condone the propagation of lies and fiction and the dumping of garbage in these forums: you are an active contributor.

Do you have any concept, John, of the scope of damage of that one vicious lie propagated by CIA, Mockingbird, Speer, and you? Do you even give a damn? Because it only stands as a giant, insurmountable, impassable barrier to any student of Watergate and the aftermath ever having any hope of getting to the truth. It completely hides the fact that Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb had only just completed shredding and burning every scrap of information that the CIA never wanted found out when Colby, with that green light, proposed the ridiculously whitewashed "confessions" of the so-called "Family Jewels." Of course they had the temporary paper doll, Schlesinger, sign off on it, precisely so they could point to him as a "Nixon loyalist" and float the fraud that it was for "Nixon's benefit," when Nixon never once even saw the fraud of the "Family Jewels".

Yet you—that's you, John—continue to propagate the same old tired CIA fraud and fiction under the banner of "Education Forum," even after I apprised you of the inarguable facts.

And you have the brazen arrogance to question my integrity?

It doesn't take more than a minute for Speer and Gratz and those like them to dream up and post a lie, or copy and paste the boilerplate lies of CIA and Mockingbird already in the record, and state it just as though it's "fact." But how long does it then take an honest researcher to document the fact that it is a lie? Do you have any idea, John? Do you give a damn?

It takes hours of digging and comparison of testimony and evidence. I know. I've done it too many times, bloody-eyed at 4:00 in the morning, with work deadlines and personal obligations staring me in the teeth, but determined to keep some damned lie from being further propagated—not so I could one day garner some fleeting lash-batting glance from that cheapest of whores, Fame, and not from any debased money-motivation—since I should have been doing my actual remunerative work anyway instead of chasing down lies—and not for any of your claimed "selfish motivations" <SPIT!>, but out of a sense of duty to the truth and what is right.

Of course, given the kind of people you seem to fraternize with—at least from what you say about the nebulous "they"—perhaps that's a concept you can't grasp. That, I don't know.

What I do know is that you protect and nurture and empower liars in these forums. You provide them a wide open pipeline for their lies, without any governance of those lies, and you call it an "Education Forum." You won't even allow anyone to bell the cat so the unwary aren't snared by the infamous lies of the liars.

What does this do to honest and responsible researchers trying to get at the truth?

If it takes one minute for the liars to dream up and post a lie, and two hours of hard work to research and document the fact that it is a lie (though it almost always takes far more time), then even with one xxxx busily at work, you've just handed the liars a 120-to-1 advantage.

But how many people ever even bother to take the time to try and document the fact of the lies created daily by the liars you empower here? Who has time, especially when the liars—curiously—somehow seem to be able to create their malicious irresponsible fictions on a full-time basis with no apparent means of support?

So the real advantage you hand them is probably more realistically in the 120,000-to-1 range.

What chance is there for truth or reason to prevail in such an environment?

What do you do about it, John? What do any one of your so-called "moderators" do about it?

Nothing. Not a damn thing but stand there on Potty-Mouth Watch while the lies flow like a river of gasoline poured on a raging inferno of lies.

You certainly don't seem to care one whit how many people wander this way believing they are in an "Educational Forum" when in fact they are wandering around wide-eyed in a Lie Factory that you manage.

Oh, but thank God and Simkin that nobody publically labels Gratz or Speer for what they are. No, we want everyone to go on trusting and relying on their lies and perversions of facts—just as long as there is no name calling!

Don Jeffries has commented in this thread on what a wonderful job Robert Charles-Dunne does dealing with Gratz, and I had to laugh out loud. Of course, Robert Charles-Dunne has every right to spend his time any way he wants, and there's no arguing with the fact that he does do a masterful job of dealing with Gratz's nonsense.

But why the hell does someone of the stature and intellect of Robert Charles-Dunne need to to deal with an endless firehosing of such fetid sewage from Gratz? How much time does Robert Charles-Dunne end up having to spend at it? How much have all of us lost of Robert Charles-Dunne's unique knowledge of and insight into the record, and of his remarkable capabilities at analysis, as a direct result of his feeling a sense of responsibility to deal with Gratz's endless flow of crap? How much more ground could have been gained without Robert Charles-Dunne feeling the need to invest his time endlessly climbing that hopelessly slippery slope of firehosed sewage. Why is he relegated to trying to dig us all out of the infinite avalanche of lies from the liars who are busy filling the forum daily with more lies—liars that you bring here and support?

I'll tell you why: because the lying scum prey on and suck off of the very responsibility of responsible researchers. They know that by flinging their irresponsible garbage all over the forum, the people who are most intelligent and informed and educated and responsible will be the ones caught up in the teeth of the Lie Factory trying to stop it, and will be ground into ineffectiveness in the attempt.

Who has the time, then, ever to get to the real lies that need to be analyzed and exposed? Who has time to get to the relevant lies in the record when you empower liars to spend infinite time here creating more new lies in any given day than possibly can be dealt with?

That's why I had to laugh out loud when I read the comment about Robert Charles-Dunne's ongoing battles trying to build sand levees around Gratz's infinitely overflowing cesspool. It was a humorless laugh.

Because I'll bet money that next week Robert Charles-Dunne will have more gallons of overflow from the infinite Gratz cesspool than his sand levees will hold back, and then the week after that Robert Charles-Dunne will have double more gallons of overflow from the infinite Gratz cesspool than his sand levees will hold back, and so it will go while you stand by and watch this pointless exercise in futility eating away at the time and efforts and resources of honest researchers, all under the banner of an "Education Forum."

Of course the tools of disinformation and deceit aren't limited by any means just to conscienceless bare-faced lies. The disinformation moguls that you have made these forums a breeding ground for have much more subtle and inisidious methods of poisoning the ground water of research and investigation.

In fact they mainly operate covertly, like all systemic parasites do.

In just the few days since I announced my departure, you and every so-called moderator here stood by idly and watched while Thomas Purvis went into Charles Drago's thread on the chest tubes and posted esoteric hearsay just as though it were "fact." Purvis didn't give one cite, he didn't quote one document, he didn't do anything to verify his claims about what Perry supposedly told Humes over a telephone. He's held to no such standard in these forums.

When Charles Drago had the good sense to call him on it, Purvis finally had to post the cite to the ridiculous hearsay "evidence" in the autopsy report, a cite to a statement that in addition to being nothing but hearsay is so far out on the extremes of the bell curve of evidence about the chest tubes that you'd need a dog sled to get to it. It is so entirely overwhelmed by the enormous weight of evidence to the contrary that any researcher with a pennyweight of probity would shoot it from guns. Not Purvis. Oh, no. Purvis has this platform you provide him to maliciously delude readers into believing that his risible hearsay is the be-all and end-all of dispositive "proof" that the lying Parkland doctors who claimed to have put chest tubes in place in the chest cavity when they direly should have, but who in fact did not really ever put in chest tubes, were God's own angels of mercy, and have just been so badly misunderstood and maligned. <SPIT!>

Now, even after Drago slammed the door on his wormy fingers by posting the irarguable truth, Purvis has slinked back into that thread—in tandem with his fellow thread sabotager, Gratz—and now they are doing nothing but adding stinking off-topic dung smeared all over the end of the thread to do anything they can to distract from the facts, and to demean and discredit Drago, Evica, and me—the only honest researchers who have made substantive and factual contributions to that thread. And what the hell are you and your so-called "moderators" <SPIT!> doing about their wholesale vandalism, John?

NOTHING! You back, support, and empower it, and parade it around the world as an "Education Forum."

And you have the brazen arrogance to question my integrity?

This same disinformation magpie, Purvis, has utterly drowned this forum with a neverending deluge of the his repetative, monotonous, categorically nutty threads where he carries on long drawn-out conversations with himself that boil down to this: the wound in John F. Kennedy's throat was made with a piece of bullet fragment that doesn't exist.

Anybody coming along here right now and reading what I just said will think I'm the one who's making things up—until they actually tiptoe through his miles-wide mine field of barking mad lunacy bombs that you give him a place to plant—as I have had to do—and then they'll find out I'm telling the exact truth, and have proved it conclusively.

I've asked Purvis repeatedly about his training in CIA-developed techniques of coercive interrogation and propaganda. Of course he evades the question like a ring around the rosy. He has to. He can't answer the question. I know damned well that Purvis can't answer the question because I've been sitting here with a sworn, notarized affidavit concerning such training just waiting for him to demonstrate the bad judgment to deny such training of Special Forces in coercive interrogation techniques. He's been cagey enough not to deny it—which is all part of the training.

But despite such training in the blackest of black arts directly related to this forum and what he uses this forum for, Purvis is protected and nurtured here, smirking in his green beret to lend the force and authority of the uniform of the armed forces of the United States to his seditious fictions and the dung he smears all over any thread getting close to the truth.

And who do we find leaping to Purvis's defense? Well, here's a shock: it's Pat Speer—the same dear friend of yours who tag-teams with Purvis to keep the fictions afloat about Burkley and to sanctify the Parkland medical personnel. One of Speer's other favorite tools for making a mockery of the forum, besides posting whole-cloth lies, is malicious obstructionism.

Who was it, John, who recently jumped in front of me and pretended to "answer" my question for Purvis in the most revolting display of obstructionism possible? Well, here's a shock: it was your buddy Pat Speer, starting an entire separate thread in your forums, John, and claiming the existence of some anonymous, unnamed "friend" from the Special Forces to speak on Purvis's behalf. That of course supplied Purvis the opportunity to chime in with another wormy evasion to make everyone think the matter has been settled, when he still hasn't done anything but further evade the question—now with Speer's accomodating, meddling, obstructionist help.

And you, John, provide them with a wide-open dumping ground for just such endless garbage.

Speer and Raymond Carroll tag-teamed on the exact same kind obstructionist operation when I attempted to get Douglas Caddy to answer perfectly on-topic, valid questions going to material fact, culminating in the thread in the Watergate forum called Who Was Douglas Caddy Representing and When? At every opportunity Speer and Carrol jumped in when I posed questions to Caddy, pretending to "answer" questions that they had absolutely no standing to answer and no possible knowledge with which to answer, simultaneously attacking and criticizing me, attacking and criticizing the questions, doing every thing they possibly could do except run into the forum with a Chinese parade dragon to distract, disrupt, and obstruct.

And you stood by silently and watched their disgusting obstructionist tactics, John. You call such rampant, barbaric anarchy "free speech" and "debate." <SPIT!>

Even if someone does do enough honest research to make any small gain here, it's almost the kiss of death.

Last year I proved dispositively by actual experiment that Alfred Baldwin lied through his teeth when he sat before Congress and before the world, under oath and bright lights, and claimed that he typed "almost verbatim" logs of conversations from puported "bugs" (that never existed in DNC headquarters to begin with). It's one of the vital keys to the entire CIA hoax of Watergate.

When I called him on the lie and he ran away with his tail tucked between his legs, who was the Black Hat, who was the bad guy here in your holy "Education Forum"? Was it Baldwin, who helped squander untold tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of tax dollars as a co-conspirator in a complete fraud and CIA hoax? Oh hell no! It was me, for having had the gall to prove and point out the lies and vicious fraud he and his fellow co-conspirators had perpetrated on the entire world.

But he can't be given the name he so richly deserves, not in this forum. Heaven and Simkin forbid! That would be "name-calling," and here in kindergarten, lies and liars are protected and nurtured and empowered and mollycoddled and lionized, and their lies are sent out in neverending waves to pollute the groundwater of the world—but by God and Simkin, there's no name-calling! Harrumph!

What was the supposedly "selfish" reward I reaped for all my work related to the provable lies of Douglas Caddy and Alfred Baldwin, John?

Lets see if you remember this Hallmark moment:

Pat Speer, who had also been questioning Alfred [baldwin] and Doug [Caddy], understandably became upset by Ashton's behaviour. He tried to defend Doug and Alfred from your [Ashton's] strident accusations and he then became a victim of your [Ashton's] attacks. Once again, I defended you [sic] right to make these comments. In doing so, I risked losing Pat’s friendship. Luckily, Pat is a reasonable man and has forgiven me for my actions.

Well, I'm so deeply touched, and am inexpressibly happy that you and Pat Speer have such a wonderful friendship. I think you deserve each other. And just think of the opportunity you have now that I've left: you can get Caddy and Baldwin back now! Now you and Speer can hold hands with them, too, and Speer can go back to doing some more patty-cake "questioning" of them to help them cement their seditious lies here in your "Education Forum" without the inconvenience of me asking real questions that expose their lies for the lies they are! You and your buddy Pat should be rejoicing!

Not only that: you now have so-called moderators now to monitor "behavior" and prevent "name calling"—while valiantly protecting the proven liars and obstructionists and wholesale garbage dumpers. Of course it's like patting down toddlers, a few of whom are running around waving loaded guns, to make sure the others aren't smuggling candy in their Huggies pull-ups.

Your so-called moderators are barely-glorified nannies who stand by and watch, ever vigilant, for name-calling, while a tsunami of Bevilaqua's cut-and-paste off-topic sewage drowns the forum and flows through this giant pipeline you've built and out into the world as "education."

Your so-called moderators don't even do the irreducible minimum of keeping topics on topic. They sit there like stumps letting topic after topic be hijacked and sabotaged and ruined by the same inveterate handful of vandals that you insist on protecting and allowing to ride roughshod all over the forums, no matter how blatant their lies, floods of garbage, or obstructionism.

The so-called moderators aren't moderating in any functional sense of the word as it applies to moderated forums. They are set up as Potty-Mouth Watch Nannies—not forum moderators who get the job done of keeping forum topics on-topic, and insisting that people post responsibly instead of the chit-chatty useless nonsense that Gratz and Bevilaqua and their ilk work around the clock junking the place up with.

Just last week, Paul Rigby made an embarrassing attempt to hijack the thread I'd started on the throat wound, so he could convert it to a vehicle for propagation of his own hopeless fable of a mythological "entrance wound to the head," which he keeps moving from the front to the left side and back to the front and back to the left side and back to the front, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, using completely discreditable third-hand "evidence" based on nothing at all.

I don't put Rigby in the same class as the knowing, witting forum vandals like Speer, Bevilaqua, Gratz, and Purvis, because I think he actually believes in myths that he's bought into and is desperately trying to proselytize his religion, but I asked for a moderator to please move his petulant, childish hijacking attempt into his own existing thread on the Fabulous Fable of the Moving Head-Hole where it would be on-topic. I even did half of their job for them and supplied the link to the correct thread. They did nothing. You did nothing. Rigby's off-topic post is still sitting right there as a large pile of steaming irrelevant dung in the thread on the throat wound.

Then there's Miller, who you also endorse and support, who has made an entire life—if anyone could call it that—out of doing nothing but finding hopelessly ambiguous details in photos, films, and testimony, then grinding out thousands of forum messages telling lie after lie about what he claims he "sees," keeping a travesty of "discussion" <SPIT!> going on subjects he absolutely knows cannot resolve, and when anybody does manage to prove one drop from his eternal fountain of lies as the nonsense it is, as I did earlier this year, he simply moves the goal posts and generates another hundred pages of worthless junk.

And while this circus of anarchy goes on under your aegis, under your banner of "Education Forum," you have the brazen arrogance to question my integrity.

The day I posted the first message in this thread announcing my disassociation with these forums, an associate who has been reading here for quite some time wrote me to express her personal sense of loss, but she said she completely understood, and wanted to send me an excerpt from an article called "An Essay on Management" that she felt described precisely the things I've cited as my reasons for leaving. Here is the first half of the excerpt she sent, listing the ways that communication lines are severed:

Communication lines are severed in this fashion: ( a ) by permitting so much [false information and choppy communication] to flow on them that the group will close them or avoid them; ( b ) pervert the communication and so invalidate the line that afterwards none will pay attention to the line; ( c ) by glutting the line with too much volume of traffic (too much material too little meaning); and ( d ) chopping the line through carelessness or malice or to gain authority (the principle reason why lines get tampered with).

I was astonished at the accuracy of its description of what is taking place in these forums—with your blessing.

There couldn't be a more accurate description of precisely what you are condoning, promoting, and even endorsing with the off-topic, irrelevant garbage being dumped into these forums by the truckload, with the patent material destructive lies whose purveyors you protect and defend, with the trashy, malicious and malignant kind of ad hominem that I have memorialized in my sig and that right now is being flung at Charles Drago by Gratz and Purvis in the chest tubes thread.

And then one of your so-called moderators, Kathy Beckett, bristles in your defense in this thread, in wide-eyed wonder why I would refer to this place now as having become a garbage dump—even while she stands by idly and waves the next truckload of garbage on in!

The probative value of the convoy of garbage isn't just zero. That would be a promotion. It's probative value in the JFK assassination is a massive negative. It drowns out the decent, honest, intelligent research and analysis with a giant and rising tidal wave of sensationalistic and barely intelligible irrelevant jabberwocky, a vapid soap opera of off-topic garbage-flinging and falsehoods.

Some people treat this forum as a kind of soap opera.

Don't they, though. And you sponsor them and endorse them.

Some people also treat it as a garbage dump. And you sponsor them and endorse them.

Some people also treat it as a pipeline for disinformation and lies. And you sponsor them and endorse them.

Well, it's your forum.

I just don't have to contribute to it, and I won't any longer in the state it's currently in. I won't go on lending my good works to support and help draw people into this anarchistic Lie Factory while you and your so-called moderators stand by and do nothing about the lies newly created daily that you're pumping out into the world 'round the clock under the banner of "Education Forum," leaving it to responsible researchers to try to clean up the mess you let the vandals make of the place.

It makes cleaning the Augean Stables look like flicking a fly speck. I didn't apply for the job.

The day I announced that I was ending my association here, I e-mailed you—after the fact—that I regretted having had to make a decision to leave the forums, but that my decision to sever my association with the Education Forums was based on my own code of honor and integrity.

Apparently you have no acquaintance with what "code of honor and integrity" mean, or you couldn't possibly have posted this tripe:

Sure, members sometimes go off in a sulk and stop posting for a couple of weeks. In reality, they are addicted to this forum and cannot give it up. When Ashton's next book is out I am sure he will back on the forum promoting it.

Take whatever comfort you and Myra Bronstein find in that belief.

I also said in that e-mail: "I wish you all the best, and my hope that you will come to grips with the realities of sane and reasonable forum management is genuine and sincere. Absent it, you are allowing one of the most treasured storehouses of truth on the planet to be defiled, and it will continue to be so defiled until it becomes a memory."

That stands exactly as stated.

Maybe some reading this can understand that I have no vindictive agenda toward you or this forum in my decision to leave it, or even in my most voluable criticisms. Maybe you can understand that, and maybe you can't.

Nothing I've said anywhere in this thread arises from malice or ill will toward you or the forum itself or the moderators. On the contrary, it arises from the bitter, deep disappointment of seeing what has been made and is being made of this forum, and my own infinite frustration at your lack of action in the matters I've raised here in this thread, and have raised with you directly and indirectly over my time here.

Some may see all this as nothing but criticism. Others can see the underlying causes, and can see this as pointers to actual effective steps that could be taken to improve your forums and invite more effective participation by responsible researchers who care deeply about the truth, and aren't required to waste their own precious time fending off the attacks of the disinformation scum you empower or cleaning up the lies of the daily liars.

If you can't manage to figure out from the above what actual steps you could take for effective reform, I'll be glad to list them for you in detail.

Until such time as an expressed interest by you in implementing such direly needed reforms, I leave you with this thought, which is the second half of the excerpt I posted above that was sent to me by my colleague about how communication lines are severed:

He who holds the power of an organization is that person who holds its communication lines and who is a crossroad of the communications.

Therefore, in a true group, communications and communication lines should be and are sacred. They have been considered so instinctively since the oldest ages of man. Messengers, heralds and riders have been the object of the greatest care even between combatants... . Priesthoods hold their power through posing or being communication relay points between gods and men. ...Communication lines are sacred and who would interrupt or pervert a communication line within a group is entitled to group death—exile. And that usually happens as a natural course of events. Communication lines are sacred and must not be used as channels of viciousness and [lies]. They must not be twisted or perverted. They must not be glutted with many words and little meaning. They must not be severed.

You hold just such power, John.

What are you going to do with it?

Ashton Gray

Edited by Ashton Gray
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I'm sorry to see it come to this.

Evidently, Ashton believes he has special insight, and has trouble seeing how anyone could ever disagree with him, and takes all disagreements personally. The irony is that, among his list of perceived sins against him by myself, there were a number of incidents where I was trying to help him. He kept asking Tom Purvis whether or not he'd had special training in Special Forces. I have a friend in SF. I asked my friend if he'd received such training. I told Ashton that SF didn't regularly receive that training but that the CIA would frequently sheep-dip officers into SF, and it's possible Tom received the training from CIA. That's it. A horrible sin in Ashton's eyes.

I suspect John Simkin has better things to do than read rants like this. While I am with John and his defense of freedom of speech, Ashton's rant is self-serving at the expense of the forum as a whole. If the moderators like they can take all the parts where he talks about how evil I am and keep them online. But I think this thread, particularly the parts where Ashton attacks John and the forum as a whole, should be removed, as they serve no educational purposes, and appeal only to those looking at the forum as a "soap opera."

Edited by Pat Speer
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Gray wrote:

Tim Gratz posted two barefaced material lies in Bill Kelly's thread on Black Propaganda Ops recently, on 8 October and 17 October: one about the whereabouts of E. Howard Hunt at importantly relevant times (a whole-cloth fabrication by Gratz that he posted as though it were "fact"), the other about something Gratz claimed that Carlos Bringuier had said, which of course was proved to be nothing but another complete bare-faced lie fabricated out of thin air by Gratz.

How dare this gentleman brand me a xxxx!

It remians my recollection that Hunt traveled to Cuba in July of 1960 and reported back to the CIA that Castro was so popular that he could not be overthrown in a coup but could only be assassinated. I remember when I read that in a book that it occured to me that the Hunt report ca,e so shortly before Bissell, in August of 1960, enlisted Sheffield Edwards to recruit the Mafia to whack Castro that there might very well be a relationship between the events. In other words, did Hunt's report prompt the CIA/Mafia plots?

Now in response to that post, Gray stated that Hunt's mission to Cuba was in the summer of 1959 not the summer of 1960. The only support he cited was John's page on Hunt. Now with all due respect to John, he has made mistakes before and his page is at best a tertiary source. In other words, he got it no doubt from a book but the book is not referenced.

Gray cites no primary source for whether the Hunt fact-finding trip to Cuba was in 1959 or 1960. Neither does John's page. And for the life of me I cammot find the source which my memory told me that the fact-finding trip was in 1960. So there really is no "proof" who is right and who is wrong.

And even books can be wrong. Remember the early reports that said that Desmond Fitzgerald was meeting with Cubela in Paris on November 22nd.

So what are the possibilties? First, John and I got the information about Hunt's trip to Cuba from the same book and one of us got it wrong. Without the primary or secondary source, one cannot state with certainty whether the trip was in the summer of 1959 or the summer of 1960. Another possibility of course is that Hunt made TWO summer trips to Cuba and John saw one report and I saw another.

But there is no way that makes me a barefaced xxxx. Gray himself fails to cite either a primary or secondary source re the Hunt trip.

But an even bigger question is what the heck difference does it really make whether the trip occured in 1959 or in 1960? Hunt's report back was the same regardless of when it was made. I could not figure out why Gray got so excited about this. I could not see what the fuss was all about.

Perhaps John S can clarify this by checking where he got his info re the 1959 trip.

But how dare Gray call me a xxxx? My recollection MIGHT be wrong but what possible motive would I have for deliberately moving the date? Like I said, I could not then and I cannot now see what the fuss was all about,

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I'm sorry to see it come to this.

Evidently, Ashton believes he has special insight, and has trouble seeing how anyone could ever disagree with him, and takes all disagreements personally. The irony is that, among his list of perceived sins against him by myself, there were a number of incidents where I was trying to help him. He kept asking Tom Purvis whether or not he'd had special training in Special Forces. I have a friend in SF. I asked my friend if he'd received such training. I told Ashton that SF didn't regularly receive that training but that the CIA would frequently sheep-dip officers into SF, and it's possible Tom received the training from CIA. That's it. A horrible sin in Ashton's eyes.

I suspect John Simkin has better things to do than read rants like this. While I am with John and his defense of freedom of speech, Ashton's rant is self-serving at the expense of the forum as a whole. If the moderators like they can take all the parts where he talks about how evil I am and keep them online. But I think this thread, particularly the parts where Ashton attacks John and the forum as a whole, should be removed, as they serve no educational purposes, and appeal only to those looking at the forum as a "soap opera."

I hope that this none of this thread is removed.

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Re what year Hunt went to Cuba, he stated in an interview in the magazine Cigar Aficionado (December 2000) that there were people in the CIA who felt the Cuban people would rise up against Castro when forces were landed at the Bay of Pigs. "So I went to Cuba a couple months before the Bay of Pigs and talked to people in all walks of life. And I came back and concluded that any invasion force could not expect any assistance from the Cuban people until it was all clear."

So it looks like Hunt went to Cuba in 1961.

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I'm sorry to see it come to this.

Evidently, Ashton believes he has special insight, and has trouble seeing how anyone could ever disagree with him, and takes all disagreements personally. The irony is that, among his list of perceived sins against him by myself, there were a number of incidents where I was trying to help him. He kept asking Tom Purvis whether or not he'd had special training in Special Forces. I have a friend in SF. I asked my friend if he'd received such training. I told Ashton that SF didn't regularly receive that training but that the CIA would frequently sheep-dip officers into SF, and it's possible Tom received the training from CIA. That's it. A horrible sin in Ashton's eyes.

I suspect John Simkin has better things to do than read rants like this. While I am with John and his defense of freedom of speech, Ashton's rant is self-serving at the expense of the forum as a whole. If the moderators like they can take all the parts where he talks about how evil I am and keep them online. But I think this thread, particularly the parts where Ashton attacks John and the forum as a whole, should be removed, as they serve no educational purposes, and appeal only to those looking at the forum as a "soap opera."

Is Ashton still posting ... I thought he said he left this forum.

Bill Miller

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Ashton Gray wrote:

Well, I'm so deeply touched, and am inexpressibly happy that you [John Simkin] and Pat Speer have such a wonderful friendship. I think you deserve each other

Simkin:

Spartacus Educational - Home Page

Provides an extensive list of National Curriculum linked resources as well as a History Website Directory.

Speer:

http://www.patspeer.com

Need anything more be said?

Edited by Tim Gratz
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I'm sorry to see it come to this.

Evidently, Ashton believes he has special insight, and has trouble seeing how anyone could ever disagree with him, and takes all disagreements personally. The irony is that, among his list of perceived sins against him by myself, there were a number of incidents where I was trying to help him. He kept asking Tom Purvis whether or not he'd had special training in Special Forces. I have a friend in SF. I asked my friend if he'd received such training. I told Ashton that SF didn't regularly receive that training but that the CIA would frequently sheep-dip officers into SF, and it's possible Tom received the training from CIA. That's it. A horrible sin in Ashton's eyes.

I suspect John Simkin has better things to do than read rants like this. While I am with John and his defense of freedom of speech, Ashton's rant is self-serving at the expense of the forum as a whole. If the moderators like they can take all the parts where he talks about how evil I am and keep them online. But I think this thread, particularly the parts where Ashton attacks John and the forum as a whole, should be removed, as they serve no educational purposes, and appeal only to those looking at the forum as a "soap opera."

I hope that this none of this thread is removed.

I am in favour of the whole thread remaining on view. It might not be accurate but it is a detailed analysis of the forum and deserves to be read.

I do not understand why my comment about selfishness led to Ashton believing that I attacked his honour and integrity. I added that I also use this forum for selfish reasons. For example, I use it to promote my website and my political views. That is the way the capitalist system works. That is the way society evolves. Everybody doing what suits them. Even love is a selfish emotion.

Although there are many things extraordinary in your first message quoted above, what I find most extraordinary about it is that you raised the issue of my book when I specifically asked you back in August, in private e-mail, not to make it public in the forums—a request that I never have rescinded.

Your remark about "Ashton's next book" can't possibly be referring to any other book, because there is one and only one book of mine that is relevant to any of these forums that I ever have posted in, and right up until my announcement that I was disassociating myself from these forums, you were the one and only person who posts or reads in any of these forums who had the unique specific knowledge I privately sent you about that particular book back in August, with the express request that you not make it public in the forums.

I gave no information about your next book. All I know is that you are a declared writer (see your biography below) and that logic tells me that it is only a matter of time before the next book is out and like other members, when it is out, you would post details of the book on the forum.

I am a writer and editor, and my keen interest in later years is investigative writing. My career in the field began long ago with the Kansas City Free Press and I went on to write in various capacities for, e.g., Random House, Universal Studios, and PBS. Recently I have ghosted a published non-fiction book for a gentleman who for many years was a principal of elementary and high schools, and went on to be a superintendent of schools.

My wife and I ran a small private school in Los Angeles for a short time, and we home-schooled all of our four children.

I am vitally interested in Watergate; I believe that no truthful rationale for, or explanation of, what actually took place ever has emerged, although I believe one to exist. I greatly value the discussions that have taken place at the education forum and respect the minds that pursue the truth, and believe I can contribute to the forum in some small ways.

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Pat is certainly correct. Anyone who disagrees with Gray's opinions or interpretation of facts he blithely labels a xxxx (as noted above he called me a "bare-faced xxxx and he is wrong on two counts: not only am I not a xxxx but I also wear a moustach) or worse.

Here is one of the things he wrote about Pat Speer:

So just who are these "ALL involved" you're spreading your toxic fictions about, son?

Now, Gray does not look old enough to have fathered Pat and if there is a blood relationship neither party is suggesting it. Therefore, his calling Pat "son" is merely an attempt to belittle him.

In the very next sentence he goes on:

So just who are these "ALL involved" you're spreading your toxic fictions about, son? You and the voices in your head?

So he goes on to question Pat's sanity!

And that is probably one of his less vitriolic attacks on Pat, who he accuses of being a CIA lackey. Who would have guessed?

Pat has probably put more time in researching the case than just about any member of this Forum and he has put together an excellent web-site with fresh insights on the medical evidence. He does not deserve to be insulted in this way.

It is hard to figure Mr. Gray out. He is clearly intelligent and his writings are in some semse articulate. But surely he does not think his insults are going to cause any reader, member or not, to evaluate Pat's contributions on anything but their merits.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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FWIW a few anagrams of Ashton Gray:

has got yarn

thorny saga

angry oaths

hoary angst

hasty groan

snag thy oar

rag any host

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