The Education Forum

[GuestGuest]

First topic message reminder :

As you guys have been aware I've been a bit quiet over the last few weeks.  One reason was to recharge my batteries and a second reason was to grab my posts from the Education Forum.  So far I have managed to get about 20% of them but today I saw that John Simkin has posted this:

"The Education Forum is currently unavailable:
On 9th June I started a thread on the Future of the JFK Forum. I explained the reasons why I established the JFK Forum in March, 2003 and why I was so concerned about the way it had deteriorated into a Forum of bullying and personal abuse. I said I would make one last effort to make it work. However, it soon became clear that I did not have the full support of my moderators. One of them, Gary Loughran, actually used the thread to carry out an attack on me. In real life, I have surrounded myself with kind, supportive family and friends. My life is really good. Yet on the Forum I have to take this abuse. I can no longer endure the stress this creates. I have therefore decided to close it down and you can all go away and create a Forum that is more to your liking. "

Now that the knob head has closed access to multiple thousands of incredibly important posts that have been placed there by other people how the fuck do we get them back?

Who needs the CIA, the NSA and lapdog multinationals when the Internet has the likes of John Simkin?

[dwdunn(akaDan)]

Yes, sorry all. Now that I've had some sleep I realize that without the link I might have needed to reintroduce myself as the castaway from the EF known as Daniel Wayne Dunn. I didn't want to register here using that name as I've been stuck with everybody calling me by my full name because I originally registered at Lancer using my full name because I was naive and thought "let 'em come get me if they want" and registered at the EF because Simkin's approval email asked for "my real name," which I took to mean my FULL name and didn't realize in both cases that I'd be stuck with that as a user name for the past 7 years.

I have no problem with the new member restrictions on posting links; aside from spamming I suppose it also gives administrators enough time to check out anyone trying to link to sites with viruses (a la Trejo), offensive material, etc.

So in any event, if anyone wants to check you would have to do as I did and search for "Daniel Wayne Dunn" on the EF's member search. And no, Greg, the deletion of ALL my posts is Simkin's doing -- that's what happens when you run your mouth about "calling his bluff" and "closing someone's account but getting to keep their money." Now John can say that of course he wasn't trying to get back at me or anything petty and vindictive like that, and in no way has he kept my "money." Over 500 posts from 7 years all gone, probably a couple of them even worth reading.

If I weren't an interested party I could almost admire the cold-blooded efficiency of that kind of thing.

So for the time being I'm going to remain in denial about the impact of having 7 years of attempts at "contribution" to have gone down the old memory hole, and go out and alter my perception.

[Martin Hay]

If it makes you feel any better, Daniel, you are not alone.

Honest John, man of old-fashioned principles that he is, has deleted all my posts too.

[dwdunn(akaDan)]

It doesn't make me feel better, brother Martin, but only more of the same. But that was my immediate reason for joining & posting, to alert all of you that he can move rapidly when motivated, sending things off to Never-Was World, and without people being told openly about it they might just assume that disgruntled members WANTED their posts deleted. Such a fine historian, full of principles and respect for the legacy of fellow humans.

[GuestGuest]

Greetings, friends! And a special thank you to Martin Hay and Daniel Wayne Dunn for
defending what I thought was obvious but seemed to only be recognized as such by a very few members and former members of the Education Forum. 

Daniel, I have recovered an image of your now disappeared post on the "Future of the JFK Forum" thread, the post you seem to have been made to pay a steep price for. Martin, I have images of your first few posts from that thread, also.

The Ed Forum is archived so far, up until May. Many of the functions work as if they were live, on the web. You can still access
some of your now deleted posts.:
(Link modified due to restrictions on new members by this Reopenkennedy forum)
web.archive DOT org /web/20130512004108/ h tee tee pee front slash front slash colon educationforum.ipbhost DOT com/index.php

Lee, I am sorry you have been unable to locate your important Ed Forum threads. Before I received your email, I had been in an open conflict with John Simkin since last December. It went on in the moderation discussion thread where reported posts are responded to and in emails addressed to all forum admins and moderators.

Lee, when you began deleting your posts I regarded it similarly to the way I am reacting to the deletion of the posts in the "Future of the JFK Forum" thread, that it is a form of vandalism. What is happening currently goes well beyond that, it is censorship to bury truth and attempt to rehab one man's image.

I did not yet know if you planned to delete all of your posts, so I tried to preserve on the forum your most important threads, making them temporarily invisible and posting a list of the invisible threads for all admins and moderators.

The bus 1213 thread is available here, again.:
educationforum.ipbhost DOT com /index.php?showtopic=17269&hl=1213

All moderators who offered an opinion agreed that posts should not be deleted en masse, except John Simkin. He had no problem with it, and now I understand why. Mr. Simkin does not seem to value the contributions of forum members all that much.

I am sorry, Lee. I was distracted and assumed that an administrator restored the list of threads I had posted after Simkin's surprising
support for the mass deletion of posts by any member. If nothing else, doing this wrecks the continuity of a thread, especially if
the member doing it authored the majority of posts in a thread.

In the interest of balance, an opinion from the other side.:

jfkassassinationforum DOT com /index.php/topic,8571.msg248661.html#msg248661
Kathy Becket Posted June 20, 2013
................
(The statement that I had Tom and Gary L. pegged as misogynists has upset Gary L.and he has asked me to retract and apologize.Gary and Tom both were always talking down to Barb and me, and so, in my eyes, I believed it was because he had a problem dealing with women.  He calls this a lie, and I call it a perception. I could have been wrong.  For the record-->He says he's not a misogynist.<----- There you go.with no apology.).....

Translation; "Gary Mack" is wonderful. Why are you and Gary Loughran criticizing him for reporting fully one third of all posts reported to moderators and for exploiting his Ed Forum membership for the purpose of extending his influence and reputation invisibly and
with no accountability. "Gary Mack never asks anyone to post for him, he has done nothing wrong, leave him alone!}

thirdworldtraveler DOT com /Fascism/Good_German_Syndrome.html
The "Good German" syndrome
.....people in positions of high authority convinced me that whatever they were doing was for the best

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Hello Tom,

I don't want this to turn into a meeting place for disgruntled ex ed forum members. That said, anyone is welcome here and I share most of the concerns that various people have expressed. I also have my own.

The bottom line for me is that what has happened is a direct result of the forum handling individual problems very poorly. Some of those situations not only could have been salvaged - they could have been turned into positives. 

Let's work out how to rescue what's considered the best threads from there and get on with what we're here for.

The link you provided btw, doesn't work - possibly because you haven't been a member here a week yet.

edit: okay. I see you modified the link.

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Here is the link that Tom pointed to:
http://web.archive.org/web/20130510083653/http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?act=idx

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

For the Cab 36 thread, try:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17183&hl=whaley&page=1

Looking for it by title didn't work for me, but "Whaley" registered.

[GuestGuest]

Thank you, Greg. I do not want to be a grumbling or negative influence in your forum.

I do not think I need to reply to your criticism about Ed Forum moderation further because I hope the "snapshot" I edited into my last post will illustrate the differences of opinion that prevented a problem solving consensus. The question I posted to you recenlty about your avatar was directed at the moderators. I am sorry I used you as an example. 

....Let's work out how to rescue what's considered the best threads from there and get on with what we're here for...

Yes, let's!

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Tom, I don't mind everyone venting frustrations. It's only a problem if that is the majority of what happens here. 

It is all a bit disturbing - but I quit there partly to stop my own exercises in futility, so vent away but then let's deal with what we can actually deal with, pick up the pieces and move on. 

While John seemed at times to be overly concerned with google rankings and protection of authors (which I believe is related to the rankings issue), I am not. That stuff needs to take care of itself.

[Frankie Vegas]

Here is a link to software that is free and will download an entire website.
I guess you would need a lot of space on your hard drive. 

http://www.httrack.com/page/2/en/index.html

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Here is a link to software that is free and will download an entire website.
I guess you would need a lot of space on your hard drive. 

http://www.httrack.com/page/2/en/index.html

I think we need to check the legality of it first. 

In fact, if the legal situation could be determined vis a vis making posts of former members disappear - it may negate the need to do anything else. I'm not suggesting what John has done is a breach of any laws - I simply don't know - but it just seems like it should be...

[Frankie Vegas]

I agree. It does seem like it should be. I asked my law student but he is unsure of the laws. He said that the person who owns the forum can do as he wants with it he supposes.
I personally have a hard time following some laws that I find stupid and in this case would download it and not tell anyone.
And then sort it out later.
I was reading the posts of someone else who had been kicked of the forum quite a while back and had his work deleted maliciously. I don't mean to gossip and only pass this on purely for informations sake. 
It seems that there is a history of banning people from the forum and deleting their posts out of spite.

(I was assuming that when a member is banned their work might be automatically deleted along with their membership).

[Hasan Yusuf]

I agree. It does seem like it should be. I asked my law student but he is unsure of the laws. He said that the person who owns the forum can do as he wants with it he supposes.
I personally have a hard time following some laws that I find stupid and in this case would download it and not tell anyone.
And then sort it out later.
I was reading the posts of someone else who had been kicked of the forum quite a while back and had his work deleted maliciously. I don't mean to gossip and only pass this on purely for informations sake. 
It seems that there is a history of banning people from the forum and deleting their posts out of spite.

(I was assuming that when a member is banned their work might be automatically deleted along with their membership).

 
I think it's absolutely pathetic for a forum owner to delete someone's posts like that (like I really needed to point that out). All that hard work just flushed down the toilet. Sorry, but Simkin is an asshole for doing it. He should be ashamed of himself.

[GuestGuest]

Looks like the entire Ed Forum is down.  Account suspended.
Spartacus is still online.

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Richard, that was already a common end of month occurrence with it - and one I had assumed had to do with billing. John may leave it down this time, although some seem to be suggesting he may have a change of heart. 

There's no doubt it has been a stress for him, and to that extent, I feel for him. But he made the decisions that led to it. He placed a higher premium on style over substance.  He placed a higher premium on google rankings and his stable of authors over new research. He refused to host balanced biographies of those he perceived as friends or enemies. He ignored the fact that two of his moderators were consistently biased in their moderation and moreover, indulged in baiting some members. 

And I wholeheartedly agree that his analogy to it being his "home" or "living room" where people had asked to come in only to start abusing his guests was way over the top. I was one his original "invitees". I always tried to help John when asked and I produced more new material for the forum than any other individual. Lee Farley also produced a hell of a lot in a much shorter space of time.

[GuestGuest]

Greg,  the last post i viewed at the Ed Forum was from a moderator saying John was on vacation for a few weeks.  So you may be right about the cause for the account suspension.

As for the future, I can't see the JFK forum returning as we knew it. Just my opinion.

At heart, John is an educator and historian.  I believe that will influence him to make most of the JFK material available as an archive.  That is my best-case scenario and hope.
If that does happen, I would expect there will be some purging of posts that spurred John's decision.

BTW, Congratulations on your site.

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Greg,  the last post i viewed at the Ed Forum was from a moderator saying John was on vacation for a few weeks.  So you may be right about the cause for the account suspension.

As for the future, I can't see the JFK forum returning as we knew it. Just my opinion.

At heart, John is an educator and historian.  I believe that will influence him to make most of the JFK material available as an archive.  That is my best-case scenario and hope.
If that does happen, I would expect there will be some purging of posts that spurred John's decision.

I'm sure most will hope you're right. A lot of work by a lot of people gone to waste otherwise.

BTW, Congratulations on your site.

Thanks Richard. I look forward to anything you may wish to contribute here.

[dwdunn(akaDan)]

Greetings, friends! And a special thank you to Martin Hay and Daniel Wayne Dunn for
defending what I thought was obvious but seemed to only be recognized as such by a very few members and former members of the Education Forum. 

Daniel, I have recovered an image of your now disappeared post on the "Future of the JFK Forum" thread, the post you seem to have been made to pay a steep price for. Martin, I have images of your first few posts from that thread, also.

The Ed Forum is archived so far, up until May. Many of the functions work as if they were live, on the web. You can still access
some of your now deleted posts.:
(Link modified due to restrictions on new members by this Reopenkennedy forum)
web.archive DOT org /web/20130512004108/ h tee tee pee front slash front slash colon educationforum.ipbhost DOT com/index.php

Lee, I am sorry you have been unable to locate your important Ed Forum threads. Before I received your email, I had been in an open conflict with John Simkin since last December. It went on in the moderation discussion thread where reported posts are responded to and in emails addressed to all forum admins and moderators.

Lee, when you began deleting your posts I regarded it similarly to the way I am reacting to the deletion of the posts in the "Future of the JFK Forum" thread, that it is a form of vandalism. What is happening currently goes well beyond that, it is censorship to bury truth and attempt to rehab one man's image.

I did not yet know if you planned to delete all of your posts, so I tried to preserve on the forum your most important threads, making them temporarily invisible and posting a list of the invisible threads for all admins and moderators.

The bus 1213 thread is available here, again.:
educationforum.ipbhost DOT com /index.php?showtopic=17269&hl=1213

All moderators who offered an opinion agreed that posts should not be deleted en masse, except John Simkin. He had no problem with it, and now I understand why. Mr. Simkin does not seem to value the contributions of forum members all that much.

I am sorry, Lee. I was distracted and assumed that an administrator restored the list of threads I had posted after Simkin's surprising
support for the mass deletion of posts by any member. If nothing else, doing this wrecks the continuity of a thread, especially if
the member doing it authored the majority of posts in a thread.

In the interest of balance, an opinion from the other side.:

jfkassassinationforum DOT com /index.php/topic,8571.msg248661.html#msg248661
Kathy Becket Posted June 20, 2013
................
(The statement that I had Tom and Gary L. pegged as misogynists has upset Gary L.and he has asked me to retract and apologize.Gary and Tom both were always talking down to Barb and me, and so, in my eyes, I believed it was because he had a problem dealing with women.  He calls this a lie, and I call it a perception. I could have been wrong.  For the record-->He says he's not a misogynist.<----- There you go.with no apology.).....

Translation; "Gary Mack" is wonderful. Why are you and Gary Loughran criticizing him for reporting fully one third of all posts reported to moderators and for exploiting his Ed Forum membership for the purpose of extending his influence and reputation invisibly and
with no accountability. "Gary Mack never asks anyone to post for him, he has done nothing wrong, leave him alone!}

thirdworldtraveler DOT com /Fascism/Good_German_Syndrome.html
The "Good German" syndrome
.....people in positions of high authority convinced me that whatever they were doing was for the best

 
Hi Tom. I'm glad to be able to hear from you again. And I appreciate the special thank you, but it really was only the right thing to do. As for any price paid, there are much worse things that can and do happen in this world, and as far as actual research files are concerned I've only been set back about a year. My elderly memory kicked in a couple of Sundays ago (after my first posts here) and I remembered that I'd had reason to put all those files on 2 cds back in 2009. If I can find them I'll someday be able to post the material I'd been posting for the past year. So the world will just have to do without my "Hitler Had Some Balls" thread, among a few other things.
 
At this point I'm not at all interested in publicly venting or even talking about the thing. We're in the position of not knowing what the hell it's all about, who and what we're really up against, and so on. So the only things I can think to do are either to regroup and continue the attack, or to walk the hell away from all this madness once and for all. Being conspiracy-minded, I suspect the latter is what some would like to see happen to many of us.
 
Instead of venting, I wanted to address the general issue raised by Greg in his response to you. It hadn't really occurred to me, (since I had other things on my mind) but it would be unfair and disrespectful to Greg and those who were members here before if there were an influx of uninvited castoffs. Especially if, like me, the plan is to post research files that hopefully others (now & in the
future) will find useful and informative in their own researching and attempts to understand. Even after having posted some files at EF and Lancer, I still have over 80 MBs of Robert F. Kennedy files and nearly as much on the American Far Right; so it wouldn't be right to come in here and sort of "take over" the RFK section, for example.
 
On the other hand, I don't see any reason why Greg should have to apologize for being someone who's considered as a person of integrity, someone one can trust, and so naturally people would gravitate to his website and forum. Martin mentioned in his first posts that he found the DPF not the best place for him; and I was a member at Lancer before I was anywhere else, but it didn't occur to me to go to Lancer to break any news. I came here because Greg Parker was here, and because Lee Farley was here, and because Robert Charles-Dunne was here -- all people I'd come to respect and admire a great deal, even though I don't believe I've ever so much as even communicated with Robert or Lee. And I liked what Lee had to say to Martin in welcoming him here: "Greg has kept his
forum ticking over with a handful of very like minded people. The small group who are here want to really research things and not argue the toss and go around in circles. You are someone who, like us, is searching for the truth so believe you will find your stay here enjoyable. Hopefully, we can encourage some of the more constructive and balanced EF refugees to join and really get the cogs turning."
 
I think I can probably try to be constructive, but "balanced" is a lot to ask for at this stage. In any event, what I've decided to do is to post my stuff on a blog and if I find anything relevant to existing threads here I'll post on those threads. This will cut down on any appearance of "takeover" as well as helping cut down on possible "outside pressures" that might come as a result of posting things that some would rather not see come out in the open.
 
And if anyone finds me doing any unproductive venting, or if Greg at any time has any reason to want to end my membership here, I will thank him and all of you for your hospitality and the chance to recover, and I'll be on my way. Consequently, I'll shelve the idea of selling the sew-on patches for armbands and sleeves (3 for a nickel), but I'm not going to change my mind about the Christmas card, because I have to try to maintain some dignity somehow.

 

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Dan, one thing I never did, now or any time in the past, was ask anyone to join this forum.

The person I am most indebted to (and I hope not to embarrass him by saying so) is Richard Gilbride. There were times here that if not for Richard, I'd have been chatting merrily to myself.

Lee and Robert have since become valued regulars, later to be joined by others. But there is still a relatively low number of active members, and I have seen no evidence of any Ed Forum members joining en masse. The ones that have joined, by luck or something else, are probably among the same ones I would have head-hunted anyway, had I been inclined to do so. 

Please let me know your blog address. I have been intending to update my links page and would be happy to link to your site.

[dwdunn(akaDan)]

Understood, Greg, and thank you again. My blog is http://xefdisposable.blogspot.com/

If you check it out I suppose you might think I'm one to hold grudges or something.

 

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Understood, Greg, and thank you again. My blog is http://xefdisposable.blogspot.com/

Now on my links page at 
http://www.reopenkennedycase.net/links.html

If you check it out I suppose you might think I'm one to hold grudges or something.

I don't recall reading any posts of yours that broke forum rules, so you, maybe more than most, have a right to feel aggrieved. I'm no Ghandi, myself. But in the end, I don't believe John is worthy of my enduring contempt. I bitterly disagree with him on some matters regarding JFK and I believe he made some awful mistakes with his forum, and compounded that when the pushing came to shoving, with bias in favor of certain individuals, and ill-advised/contemptible treatment of people such as yourself.  But bottom line is that none of this makes him Hitler exactly. In other circumstances, you may have found John good company. Or at least not have intensely disliked him!

Please don't take the above as me lecturing, though. Just giving my point of view. Liked your piece at the blog, btw. 

[dwdunn(akaDan)]

Not to worry, Greg; I was mainly referring to the blog's logo design & the first design, the "sew-on patch." Might give the impression I'm obsessed with some kind of grudge.



The truth is that John and I have had too much background over the 7 years, & I doubt he's ever felt positively towards me since my fights with Sid Walker. John liked to go on about how this or that was meant to "discredit" him (a campaign undertaken by the CIA naturally) and I fairly relentlessly tried to point out to him that he was playing into "their" hands by his friendly attitude toward Sid when Sid was so obviously promoting a Holocaust Denial agenda, among other high-minded antisemitic goals. (It didn't help that I was so deeply involved in researching the Far Right at the time.) But among other things I told John that he was a vain man and that his vanity made him vulnerable to flatterers and apple-polishers with their own agendas, and that he didn't know who his real friends were. And he doesn't take honest criticism well; he's fine with criticism coming from a Tim Gratz, Mel Ayton or Don Bohning, because it's largely loudmouth ignorant blather coming from supposed CIA assets, but I was playing with fire by pointing to things like double standards, hypocrisy, dishonesty and "being bourgeois." I could go on, but I thought I was going to shut up and not say anything further on this issue ..... you're a crafty one, Greg.



The bottom line is that there are so many (unstated) ironies in all this that it really is mostly tragic to me, and I actually don't want to add any further to any burdens of a man who's my parents' age. John just finally got tired of my "mouth" and did something about it. But given that I do have a somewhat volatile background with him, what he did to Martin pisses me off quite a bit since all Martin did (aside from the honest criticism) was to tell John to feel free to delete his membership. As I recall, Martin didn't join Team Silhouette (remove his avatar photo) and I don't know of any previous controversies that Martin had with John. So that was just petty and mean.



As for me breaking forum rules, I did most of that early on ("attack" threads on Ashton Gray, Sid Walker & Mark Stapleton -- Mark provided the inspiration for "Hitler Had Some Balls" by mentioning that George W. Bush got out of combat duty whereas Hitler served courageously and earned the Iron Cross; the thread was mainly one of many attempts to expose Sid's antisemitic agenda). And in the Spring of 2010 I did directly call Team Colby a "dumbass" and concluded by telling him that I plan to shit on his face if I ever see him in real life. That was the last thing I had to say at the EF until Larry Hancock drew me back in with an early 2012 email about how his and Stu's book on Martin Luther King, Jr. was published and wondering whether I'd want to take part in forum discussions since I'd somehow been involved in the research for it. (Listed in the credits, so I'm told.)



Anyway, this is way too long as usual. I'm going to try to give a fairly complete background for my research and forum involvement(s) as an intro to posting my RFK stuff on the blog. But in closing I did want to say that the excerpts from Deborah Shapley's biography of Robert McNamara that I'm posting first on the blog came out of (I think Lancer) forum discussions Stephen Turner and I had on a thread Stephen started, where we were exploring what we both felt was an extremely important area of JFK assassination research, the potential involvements of high-level military brass like Curtis LeMay. Since Stephen had the misfortune of being the EF moderator who had to edit my telling Colby my intentions, and since Stephen, myself and Andy Walker all dropped out about that same time, with Stephen not being heard from since, it seemed only fitting to start there.

[Martin Hay]

And in the Spring of 2010 I did directly call Team Colby a "dumbass" and concluded by telling him that I plan to shit on his face if I ever see him in real life.

ROFLMAO

Dan, I told you before that I'd pay good money to see that. And I meant it.

I reckon a good number of people would chip in too.

[dwdunn(akaDan)]

I know , Martin, but like I said, he's only a patsy. He has a job to do and so do we.

What I wonder is if DSL will start calling this the Sydney Forum, maybe even the Orange Forum.

Take care of yourself,
Dan

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