MIHOP, Karl Schwarz, and the BFEE

Every so often, a question comes to me while I'm reading here at DU.

How many posters are observers / participants hired by Rove et al, FBI, CIA, NSA and that whole unsavory lot?

Even better:

What might they try to accomplish?

The thing is, DU is almost certainly in the Top 10 of political dissent websites in the US. Just the Plame threads had to have put it there if it wasn't already. Nobody is gullible enough to believe DU isn't watched 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Watched by an incredible variety of interests, from Kerry campaign headquarters to Karl Rove's office to NSA spooks.

Well, if they're watching, eventually they gotta try something, it's just human nature. Rove's ego requires it if nothing else. So how many "tinfoil hat" accusations are efforts to change the subject? I don't mean the regular ranters who explode over certain keywords (although that is a possibility) I mean regular posters who quietly toss a wrench in the works when something good comes out.

Personally, there is one photo that I downloaded from the Pentagon website that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that 9/11 was MIHOP. Mention that though, and the thread goes down in flames in moments. (That's just an example. I really believe the BFEE story whole cloth. I don't want to argue with you, okay?)

Karl Schwarz is already being outed as a troll even though numerous points he's made are well known on DU. If the guy's schilling a book, he'll fade in a week and that's that. Why all the research effort to impugn his creds? Remember the old saw about shit-house-walls and the internet? Buyer beware, otherwise, relax a little, unless of course, your next raise depends on it.

Maybe Karl Schwarz is a Rove troll trying to pull a fast one to divert DU. Maybe Matcom is really posting from some basement outside the beltway. Maybe I'm trying to divert you from the Schwartz thread.

Whatta ya think, DU??

are probably plants IMO, given their monomaniacal debunking behaviour. I don't know about the political side of DU, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find disinformation agents or agents provocateurs at work here.

Not to hijack the thread, but could you post or email either the photo you referred to or a link to it?

The photo I found googling "pentagon crash" won't load here. There are any number of sites that display and analyze the photo I mentioned.

Images of the pre-collapse facade and the state of the surroundings were what convinced me too. It's a creepy feeling when you realize the implications of a few photos, isn't it?

crashing into the WTC to brain wash everybody.

Isn't the Pentagon under 24 hour survelliance? Aren't there videos of the plane smashing into the Pentagon? How come we haven't seen it yet?

The Pentagon strike was an alibi strike. I'll never believe a 747 0r 757 crashed into the Pentagon.

any non-cter that disagrees with you is a rove/cia plant?? :eyes:

And I also keep wondering -- why are you a fan of Woodrow Wilson? He was still well-regarded back when I was in high school, but his stock has gone down a lot lately, and he doesn't seem to have many fans these days. What is your point of identification with him?

CTers-conspiracy "theorist"

As for Wilson, I'm a professional historian and he's my area of speciality. I admire his attempt to start a League of Nations to prevent another war. His stock among historians is still pretty high, he usually ranks as a "near great" with Teddy Roosevelt.


and no, I DON'T ADMIRE his racism. I also don't admire Jefferson's slave owning or M.L. King's or FDR's or Clinton's womanizing but overall I still admire them.

did you get that out of my post??

Weird.

the government's version of the 9-11 Pentagon attack isn't the truth,
a slew of posters who have been members for over three years and who have posted well over 1,000 post will immediately flame the posts in vehement terms. It happens almost every time. One of these guys had over 16,000 posts. By my calculations someone would have to be a full poster to put in that many in 3 years.

They invariably claim (1) the the poster isn't an expert in this or that field and that (2) we are hurting our cause be making wild eyed
accusations.

As nearly as I can tell, the points of doubt are these:

1) Schwartz comes out of a school of right-wing conspiracy theory that tends to pin everything on the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, an approach which is shared by many of the more racist elements on the right. He also quotes with approval Larry McDonald, who was head of the John Birch Society at the time of his death in 1983.

This to me looks like guilt by association, and I'm willing to give him a pass on it. Anybody who steps outside the dominant paradigm needs some sort of alternative organizing principle, and the Rockefeller/Rothschild approach is shared by a wide range of people who are not fascists or anti-Semites.

2) His statements about himself have proved difficult to verify on line and some of what has been found seems discrediting.

Many people who work outside the dominant paradigm are social misfits of one sort or another, so even if true, this in itself doesn't discredit his message. However, further clarifications would be desirable.

3) Most of what he is saying involves parroting back to us things we already know, combined with wild claims of even greater revelations to come. If he really had something to add to the discussion, he would come on more modestly and would focus on a few points where he had special knowledge. Instead, it feels like he is trying to co-opt what has already been accomplished and send it off on a tangent for his own purposes. He seems to be more interested in drum-beating and bandwagon-steering than in reasoned argument.

This third point is probably the source of most of the discomfort with him -- a vague sense that he just doesn't pass the smell test. I have to admit to some misgivings in this area on my own part -- not enough to reject what he is saying out of hand, but enough to be wary of it. In particular, I'd like to see him offer a few specific points that haven't previously been raised on DU but that could be independently verified.


(Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters. -- Bob Dylan)