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FactNET threads except Continued 2 deleted
Topic Started: Dec 29 2014, 12:00 PM (711 Views)
man114
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Went there this morning to see if anyone was still around and everything except continued 2 is toast. I went and created a new topic with the link to this forum but I don't know if they will leave it up. If anyone knows the email addresses of anyone who regularly posted there please drop them an email so we can round everyone up!
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man114
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Just checked and all the info in 2 has been removed as well. My link was still up though.
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Kell
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I emailed Dennis King, Molly Kronberg, xlcr and Snardbafulator about the new forum.
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man114
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I sent ones to xlcr and Snard before I saw you did too, I asked them to forward it along to anyone they might have had contact with that couldn't post on FactNET any longer.
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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Woah, that's a really malicious hit on the part of FACTnet to shut the forum down before the end of the year. Just another one of Lawrence's lies. I'm just praying that Wiser was more diligent than I was and got the rest of LaRouche 7 archived, including those final discussions with Steamer and borisbad which were really good ...

Alright, so now that we're off FACTnet, I'll leave this here in a semi-restricted area. I had a long PM exchange with Adminx after I complained about formatting and he told me about Lawrence's "new passion" Universe Spirit.

Check this out, guys. Tell me if it reeks as much like a New Age transhumanist cult to you as it does to me.

And if it does ... wouldn't that just put Lawrence's desire to shed himself as quickly as possible from FACTnet's legacy as a host for cultbusters into an interesting light ...

Bob
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El Ron
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Snardbafulator,Dec 31 2014
04:26 PM
Woah, that's a really malicious hit on the part of FACTnet to shut the forum down before the end of the year.  Just another one of Lawrence's lies.  I'm just praying that Wiser was more diligent than I was and got the rest of LaRouche 7 archived, including those final discussions with Steamer and borisbad which were really good ...

Alright, so now that we're off FACTnet, I'll leave this here in a semi-restricted area.  I had a long PM exchange with Adminx after I complained about formatting and he told me about Lawrence's "new passion" Universe Spirit.

Check this out, guys.  Tell me if it reeks as much like a New Age transhumanist cult to you as it does to me.

And if it does ... wouldn't that just put Lawrence's desire to shed himself as quickly as possible from FACTnet's legacy as a host for cultbusters into an interesting light ...

Bob

It would take a larger investigation and evaluation than I have time for to say for sure, but a cursory look at their website does make me suspicious. The easiest way to tell would be to subscribe to their email alerts and see what kind of responses or alerts or solicitations you get. However, I won't do that and won't encourage anyone else to, in the interest of responsibility.

It certainly does seem odd that Adminx would choose to even tell you about it. Did it just "come up" or was it a pitch? Especially after what happened to the Cult Awareness Network, it's not unheard of that a forum for cult discussion would become a recruiting device. Again, these are generalities and I'm not making that accusation.
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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"El Ron"
 
It certainly does seem odd that Adminx would choose to even tell you about it. Did it just "come up" or was it a pitch?

Being new to the LaR community since mid-October and only having read what was left on FACTnet, my honest impression is that Adminx is a good egg (I can't say as much for Cap'n Frank, but that's a whole different story). We just got into a PM discussion about our interests and about how he thinks LaRouche is irrelevant and my counter arguments for why I think studying the cult is useful.

I think he brought up Universe Spirit in a very clever way to warn us about Lawrence's priorities without doing so in a way that would seem to counter or go against Lawrence. That's why he described it as Lawrence's "new passion" and then let me judge for myself.

Well ... I haven't done a thorough investigation, but I shared my view with Adminx that this was a bunch of pseudoscientific jargon ("Evolution 2.0" -- gimme a break) aimed at people concerned with global warming and promising that Universe Spirit has the answer to humanity's dilemma about it. Which I thought is very cultish.

Adminx didn't polemicize about it one way or another, but he told me he agreed.

So I'd read that as a sincere warning from the only guy on FACTnet who expressed the slightest regret about how bad the forum has been for the LaR community.

Bob
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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"El Ron"
 
Especially after what happened to the Cult Awareness Network, it's not unheard of that a forum for cult discussion would become a recruiting device. Again, these are generalities and I'm not making that accusation.

I have no idea what happened to the CAN, but my personal theory is that it was sort of the opposite. Lawrence, after recouping from his Scientology experiences and then proving himself incompetent in managing a highly controversial forum that was subject to cyber-attacks just lost interest and somehow gravitated towards starting up this new "healthy spiritual practices" thang (what the hell are "healthy spiritual practices" and according to whom?). This whole global warming / healthy spiritual practices kick is where he's taking "FACTnet 2.0" as a blog, not a forum.

So imagine this from his POV. Would he really want to host a bunch of freelance cult busters who might go and, you know, challenge his "new passion?"

But, you know ... he has no problem at all using the latest newsletter to fundraise on FACTnet's past cultbusting glories without mentioning one word about the forum shutdown.

IMHO, this guy is a complete, self-centered creep.

Bob
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man114
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I did get an email from FactNET at one point saying the forums would be shut down but it was already after it was leaked on the forum and they still asked for donations in it.
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El Ron
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The CAN's intellectual rights and logo were infamously purchased by the Church of Scientology, after they basically sued CAN out of existence. Imagine calling their help line out of concern for a loved one, only to find yourself being recruited to the Church.
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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man114
 
I did get an email from FactNET at one point saying the forums would be shut down but it was already after it was leaked on the forum and they still asked for donations in it.

That was the so-called Holiday fundraiser. That's the one where he admitted that he was shutting down the forum and spoke of all his horrible frustrations in dealing with hackers who are always ahead of the curve.

And then he invited us all to comment on his "FACTnet 2.0" blog.

You'll note he didn't admit any operator incompetence at any time, like the loss of LaRouche 6 by a supposed admin mishap and which was IMHO the real thing that soured FACTnet on the LaRouche community.

He was, though, gracious enough to warn us that he might not be able to archive. Apologize for it, not so much.

I was talking about the guilt blast I think I got on Monday before Christmas. This was the one begging donies not to fight the evil hackers, but in full celebration of "FACTnet 2.0" and its mission to "our shared planet" and "healthy spiritual practices."

And then he bragged about how he's still giving names of cult abusers to law enforcement.

And he bragged about how the FACTnet forums had over 350,000 postings "at one time."

And he said not a single word about the forum closing.

Bastard.

Bob
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man114
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I find it odd that while most of the other stuff is up it is as though all references of LaRouche have seemingly been scrubbed.
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Wiser
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Interesting posts here. I will just add I got a fundraising email from FACTnet too and you might want to check out this link from a Forbes article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2...-church-status/

Apparently Wollersheim was seeking non-profit status, particularly as a religious organization for his group Universal whatsit. Was turned down by the IRS.

Also, I noticed for months the old FACTnet site was shifting to discussing global warming and spirituality, etc. while some of us were trying to get the admins to restore access for some posters and fix LaR Continued 6. Seems they had other priorities I guess.

Very strange in my view.

<_<
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man114
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What is interesting about the global warming part of the Universe Spirit is that out of the many groups represented on the FactNET forum, not many have much of a standpoint in global warming, or at least ones being actively discussed at this point due to the forum problems.

LaRouche has been vocal about it. LaRouche's "the green policy is the policy of genocide" and global warming does not exist standpoints conflict with this. Though our discussion was critical it still gave publicity to LaRouche and the opposing standpoint to what the Universe Spirit is trying to present. LaRouche isn't generally spiritual in material generated. He will occasionally quote the bible in an essay but the primary focus is more philosophical in nature.

Why has only the LaRouche section vanished?

I find it all kind of strange.
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Snardbafulator
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
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Happy New Year from a very sober Snardbafulator in the wee hours of 2015. (It's okay; it makes up for all the days I spent Christmas week massively stoned on top-grade medical marijuana from my relation who supplies it.)

I dunno, guys, but "strange" isn't how I'd describe this story. I think it's kinda sad and shabby and also completely human, but from what I can surmise from what little I know of the details, the motives seem pretty apparent, especially after reading the Forbes story of how Lawrence tried to hook up with the IRS to do precisely what his nemesis Scientology did. I'm glad they turned him down, else every blog run by somebody who decides to call themselves "spiritual" could get the gold standard of exempt tax statuses. The Forbes writer was that typical mixture of libertarian tax nihilist and social conservative you only get on places like Forbes; he applauds all attempts to deprive the IRS of revenue but at the end of the day is more comfortable with the Unitarian Universalists as a tax-exempt flakey ultra-liberal church more concerned with spirituality than God, because they have, you know, real brick-and-mortar churches and clergy 'n' stuff. Which kind of completely undercuts his libertarian anti-tax argument, but whatevs.

Lawrence apparently settled for a pretty large dime and then decided to start FACTnet. You'd figure with millions in damages (even after taxes) the costs associated with running and staffing FACTnet would be trivial. But somehow after the first round of hacker attacks, they became a major fundraising appeal. I also noticed how inept they were on LaRouche 6 in switching over to a paywall to post (it took them about two weeks to implement it) which then came down a few months later when some up-and-coming rocket scientist clued them into Google ads. The question really needs to come up: What does Lawrence do with his money? He blew through his settlement, he invested (so he tells us) in several different commercial software packages and even hired an outside security consultant -- and still, according to Lawrence, the hackers kept getting in.

Or so he has told us .... I'm frankly not inclined to buy Lawrence's story, which serves to paint him as a martyr to the holy cause of exposing cults. Comparing it to the behavior we've seen evidence of, it just sounds like so much PR bull pucky. I'm not saying that FACTnet wasn't hacked; I'm sure it was. I'm just getting almost as sure that the actual attacks were exaggerated to be used as a fundraising tool.

Because the real shit that hit the fan was when one of Lawrence's hapless volunteer admins managed to somehow lose a massive thread and then admin lied to us and led us on for months about LaRouche 6 being all set to go in new software, just needed the webmaster to come by and put the finishing touches on it. And then former members couldn't log in and apparently there was an enormous stink about it to the point where Adminx had to shut down two threads (because we were angry; we had been misled by admin and could get no straight answers) and delete a fairly large chunk of "uncivil" posts between LaRouche 6 and LaRouche 7.

I think this is also when Dennis King really soured on FACTnet admin and the feeling became mutual. Why? Dennis has his own narrative he could share, I'm sure. My best guess is that embarrassment factored in; Lawrence continued to use the "help, we're being attacked!" guilt trip even in the letter that announced the forum's closing -- and here are a bunch of angry LaRouche hornets complaining not so much about incompetence and major mistakes no matter how stupid, but really about admin dissembling and bullshit happy talk. What's FACTnet about if it doesn't value truth, no matter how inconvenient? The LaRouche people, with our story of an admittedly incompetent admin losing thousands of posts, could really begin to rain on Lawrence's fundraising parade. Why donate to an incompetent?

Still, it's hard to account for the pure malice and spite of not merely shutting down, but deleting the remaining LaRouche threads (they probably left the one because they couldn't figure out how to delete it) the weekend before New Year's. It's as if Lawrence feels he has no further bridges to burn with the LaRouche community.

If you factor this into Lawrence's behavior, of his growing interest in Universe Spirit at precisely the same time he's losing all interest in fixing or in helping the forum, if you consider that we have documentation that he just tried to pull a Scientology with his "new passion," we have the picture of a guy who never really created FACTnet out of the lofty ideals he put in the FACTnet Mission Statement. He created it, I suspect, out of a moment's thrill of celebrity (and a stuffed bank account) after he beat Scientology in the courts but then quickly discovered that Scientology and other cults play cyber-hardball which was utterly beyond his ken to cope with. Bright guy verbally, no doubt, but very poor problem solving and analytical skills -- which is sort of the profile for Scientology recruits, when you get right down to it. But instead of owning up to his weaknesses, he cultivated a false image of himself for fundraising purposes. So the final denouement -- Lawrence as would-be Universe Spirit cult leader -- is only grotesquely ironic, but not unbelievably so, sadly enough.

Why not kick out your last group of cultbusters and delete their posts if your purpose now is to try to start a cult?

As for global warming, I don't think it factors into this at all. First of all, we're all LaRouche critics and even of those on the reasonable right like fightapathy and eaglebeak, none appear to be climate change skeptics, let alone denialists. It's actually brutally ironic that Lawrence would have alienated a group so potentially susceptible to an anti-global warming message. I personally would be more than happy to donate to an organization that was doing real work on climate change.

I just don't think that reading about "Evolution 2.0" or contributing to Universe Spirit is somehow going to alter my carbon footprint.

Bob
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