Hey? :mad:
Okay, I've been silently following the "events" of the past few days & weeks on this forum with some selfish concern regarding which direction this absolutely brilliant forum would end up taking. Let me be blunt - though I rarely participate in forums myself nowadays, I've been round the online forums block for almost 20 years now, and this forum is without doubt the "best", most informative and populated by intelligent, rational & reasonable people (of all sides of all arguments) I have ever come across and been privileged to be a member of.
I have to be be honest, though not a "debunker" or materialist, I personally was a little concerned at Linda's "banning" several years ago. I personally think this forum only benefited from the sceptical positions & arguments she took (which I entirely disagreed with, btw!). Though I don't really know what caused the "banning" or the deeper context, I thought that a little worrying.....I abhor censorship of any sort, on a personal level (though I can understand how it can potentially cause issues in a wider, social context). Anyways, more recently, the banning trend seems to have got much worse, several long time and respected members banned for who knows what! Very worrying! :(
But, for goodness sake, Sciborg_S_Patel has also been "prevented from posting"?
:mad::(
Might as well shut the lights out, I cannot even begin to comprehend who would ever want to post here again if someone like SSP has been banned! It could be absolutely anyone else next!
Re. the removing of sub-forums? Wow. Just, Wow. I don't recall if I personally ever posted stuff there, but I know for sure there are dozens of posters who have contributed hours and hours, tons upon tons of exceptionally interesting, informative & relevant posts, comments & links which I thought would be there for the foreseeable future. To just delete them without consultation, warning or even notification?
Wow.
Anyways, I just wanted to say a very big thank you to all those who did spend hours contributing to those threads. I, for one, really appreciated & enjoyed a lot of the resources there.
But what has gone wrong?
I think the title of the latest podcast - Pizzagate - may be a good indicator of the "mental space" these kind of actions are coming from. Ahh, let's talk "conspiracies", a seeming favourite of many on this forum.....
Pizzagate? I saw all the pieces of art, the "coded emails" several months ago now - something that is collectively and imo humorously called "evidence" by some. This is an example par excellance of pareidolia imo, the reflection of one's own inner mindset upon external reality, a Roscharch test. The art is completely innocuous, imo, strain as I might to project "paedophilia" into it, I just couldn't. The "coded" messages - as at least one other person on this forum has said - can mean absolutely anything and is nothing at all unusual for a group of friends to communicate like that, and my own emails & text messages to friends over the past 25 years could just as easily be interpreted in the same way - despite neither children or sexuality of any sort being the subject of those texts & emails. Yes, people create their own - often very odd - language, phrases & terms within very small social groups that nobody else can recognise or understand.
Btw, before any clichéd responses are made; I am not afraid to look these subjects, I do believe in SOME "conspiracies", I believe it's obvious there are SOME "paedophile rings" (for eg. the most & indeed ONLY shocking thing - for me - about any and ALL of the claims of historic paedophile abuse by Jimmy Saville, pop stars, TV stars & politicians in the UK was just how seemingly surprised and shocked some people were by it!! I thought it was obvious, myself, that these things would be going on. That whole thing was a "cleanse" from society of these terrible historically acceptable - and no doubt widely known - events, not some new revelation....). My point is merely that, in this case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest it's happened here! (PS, as someone who has studied in tremendous depth and practiced occult & tantric practices throughout history and from all across the world for some 30 years - I'd be surprised if there's much if anything in this domain I'm not aware of - I can only smile at the attempted connections between the occult and paedophilia as it's such an uniformed & clichéd perspective with little to zero evidence to support it, Crowley's attempts at bombast aside!)
9/11? Ahh, here's my own conspiracy theory for you - one that rarely, if ever, is mentioned! On 9/11, 19 Saudi Arabian nationals flew several planes into several US landmark sites killing thousands of innocent people. These Saudi nationals were radicalised by a particularly virulent form of Islam called Wahhabism, extremely popular in Saudi Arabia due to the West's, specifically USA's, unqualified support of an obscenely rich monarchy which does not distribute it's nation's wealth or jobs "fairly", leaving large amount of the population in relative poverty making them far more prone to be "mindwashed" by today's modern, ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabism. Of course, every single aspect of these facts, including bin Laden's involvement, is heavily documented and supported by huge amounts of data.
However, despite this terrorist attack by 19 Saudi nationals, Saudi Arabia is, almost from the very first realisation this was an almost exclusively Saudi attack - bin Laden was also Saudi, of course - not mentioned in context of the attacks ever again. Instead, war is launched on Afghanistan & Iraq (which had no connection to 9/11 whatsoever).
It is a strange "conspiracy theory" that 9/11 wasn't committed by these 19 Saudis or bin Laden & Al Qaeda - because one really has to ask what was the purpose of "pretending" it was a Saudi attack? Bad planning? A typo on the "conspiracy instructions" where 19 Iraqis was replaced with 19 Saudis?
And here's the conspiracy kicker! 16 years later after pretending (by the world's governments, media & "conspiracy theorists") Saudis were not involved in that terrorist attack, along comes a champion of many of those who believed Osama & 19 other Saudis did not commit 9/11 - Donald Trump! And, what is one of the first things he does after becoming president? He goes over to Saudi Arabia making multi-billion (110 billion?!) dollar deals with Saudi Royalty and making exceptionally ironic & absurd inferences about "state sponsored terrorism" in Qatar:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...jared-kushner-uae-rex-tillerson-a7824701.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/07/saudi-arabia-donald-trump-qatar-conflict
Etc etc. As I've always said, conspiracies abound in reality. But very rarely are the ones labelled "conspiracy theories" the REAL ones.......
And, that is one of my points I guess. Imo Alex has killed the value, even historic, of his podcast and certainly the forum, by associating him & itself with, I'm sorry, but what can only be called absurd and ridiculous theories with absolutely no substantiating evidence whatsoever like "pizzagate".
So, what's the point of this post? I dunno. Guess it's my way of saying what the f@#k happened to this podcast and forum!?!?!? And, Goodbye All - with all the recent forum deletions and member bannings, I think it's time for me to move on I guess, I can't even see me checking out the list without posting like I usually do.......it really does seem to have lost it's appeal....so sad.
To all the many great, upstanding posters on this forum who I've learnt so much from over the years - there's many of you on many sides of the debate, and many of you I never even talked to or "liked" or whatever.......I salute you All!!
Cheers, Manjit