Gawker.com outs Wall St genius "conspiracy" theorist

[km artlu]

Gorton did bring with him some relatively rare attributes when he disseminated the already-known info:
- successful and rich
- Stanford, Harvard, and I believe Yale in his CV
So, for some people, greater than average credibility.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

I followed this thread way back, but not the guy in general, so have not noted anything new. I have to say though that high-frequency trading is a scourge on our society just like The Market in general. It represents everything that is wrong with us as human beings. Well, almost everything.

[yathrib]

The disappearing of Oliver Stone and his work is an instructive example.

[JackRiddler]

Uh, Oliver Stone is in theaters right this minute with a project that's getting huge attention.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Uh, Oliver Stone is in theaters right this minute with a project that's getting huge attention.

Just to play devil's advocate, it is a project about a guy whose stated positions still today are essentially pro-USA national security and pro spying.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Uh, Oliver Stone is in theaters right this minute with a project that's getting huge attention.

Just to play devil's advocate, it is a project about a guy whose stated positions still today are essentially pro-USA national security and pro spying.

I think you're both intimating the same thing: the primary architect of the disappearing of Oliver Stone's early work is probably Oliver Stone. Salvador was good and all, but you know, people change.

[stickdog99]

Some information seems to persist on the internet indefinitely, while other information mutates, decays, formats poorly, hides from google, or forgets to pay its bills. Our Winston Smiths are part google algorithm, part information overload, part paid astroturf flacks, and part monthly renewable online reputation management services.

Usenet newsgroup postings and discussions, for example, were once archived in a convenient, searchable, and highly readable form seemingly for perpetuity by Dejanews. Every posting ever made could be easily accessed by author, title, date, or text pattern. But now google owns the archive and has rendered it unusable.

But I agree that nobody puts his or her life in danger simply by publicly and primitively concluding that "they" control everything as Mr. Gorton did. The only time I have received threats in a lifetime of rabble rousing was when I sounded the alarm against Gardasil. If you want to validate your paranoia, focus your online activism directly against a specific large corporation's bottom line.

[FourthBase]

Certain corporations have taken over the majority of click behavior, but so far they haven't blocked anyone form clicking elsewhere.

Actually, won't control of the internet soon be largely ceded to European social democrats, Chinese Communists, and Islamists? What will they be likely to censor? What do they censor now?

There wouldn't be danger for him if he put out 100,000 free books of this compilation, or bought some hours of TV time to promote it. He'd have to achieve a reach at least 100 times that, and sustain it for years, and actually move people to make trouble, to come even within sniffing range of generating danger for himself via the route of simply repeating stuff that's already out there (and never mind the quality or some of the dubious choices made in the compilation, that's only my opinion, etc. etc.)

Baffling post from an RI mainstay. Mere compilers aren't at risk, only discoverers? Only an audience of millions sustained over years puts one at risk? You're neglecting the obvious trouble that anyone with that much credibility and success as a "sharp" can pose just by repeating available but "disreputable" facts and perspectives. You're forgetting numerous obscurities in the Accidents/Suicides thread, e.g., Lombardi.

Does your take on this have anything to do with having been what some of us might reasonably/unreasonably define as a troublemaker of enough significance to invite trouble from a PTB, but after all this time encountering next to nothing of the sort, and extrapolating from that?

[tapitsbo]

Oh yes, JackRiddler's extant 9/11 site is pregnant with an enjoyably tangy, incisive bite.

Dream's End jumps out as an RI mainstay of yore who experienced serious threats from TPTB.

Our moderator has attested to receiving warnings himself.

[OP ED]

I can attest to the latter. Wells' name is a magic word that got me a tongue bath by the usually rather indifferent canadian border slaves. Telling them the truth is not a mistake I will ever make again.

(His gathering also appeared to be under observation from Americans other than myself but I can't prove this, they may well have been following me or something else entirely)

Being threatened is a great indicator that you're doing it properly.

[mentalgongfu2]

Being threatened is a great indicator that you're doing it properly

And a reminder of the difference between power in the abstract and it's many manifestations.

[psynapz]

Wells' name is a magic word that got me a tongue bath by the usually rather indifferent canadian border slaves.

What did they say/do upon utterance of His Name? Do tell!

[OP ED]

I received an, um, somewhat invasive searching of my person and vehicle. And I was held at the border for quite some time and asked a number of strange questions about terrorism. This isn't normal. I have crossed into Canada many many times, it being about twenty minutes from here and quite common for American tourists or young club goers to cross. The bridge here is probably one of the most active international borders on the planet.

Coming back was about as predictably annoying as always. I'm on at least one list so I have come to expect irritations from fatherland security, but that was the only time the canadians have ever paid the least attention to me.

[JackRiddler]

My pre-2006 work on 9/11 is still mostly online, although I distanced myself altogether from what by then had become the "truther" cult and Alex Jones Fan Club, or at best a bet that a politically decontextualized belief in the provability of "demolition" was worthwhile. Sort of like Mr. Wells, by the way.

I didn't say people don't pay a price or get threats or get placed on watch lists or get subjected to (enhanced as opposed to general) surveillance for the mere expression of various kinds of non-conformist or non-normative opinions, such as beliefs that JFK was murdered in a coup d'etat or that 9/11 was orchestrated or facilitated by elements within the US government.

I was responding specifically to the paranoid idea, expressed reflexively above, that Gorton (who has exceptional life-security thanks to his wealth and particular business model, which is predatory/parasitic and not dependent on good relations with either other businesses or a consuming public, although of course he is still mortal) put his life as such in a special danger by sending that particular e-mail circular to his employees. I'm certain the chances are incomparably higher of his making enemies and being endangered due to his "genius" business, of extracting 0.1% or whatever of the profit out of real time equity market transactions.

.

[brekin]

Wells' name is a magic word that got me a tongue bath by the usually rather indifferent canadian border slaves.

What did they say/do upon utterance of His Name? Do tell!

I received an, um, somewhat invasive searching of my person and vehicle. And I was held at the border for quite some time and asked a number of strange questions about terrorism. This isn't normal. I have crossed into Canada many many times, it being about twenty minutes from here and quite common for American tourists or young club goers to cross. The bridge here is probably one of the most active international borders on the planet.

Coming back was about as predictably annoying as always. I'm on at least one list so I have come to expect irritations from fatherland security, but that was the only time the canadians have ever paid the least attention to me.

I'm just curious why his name came up at all? Did they ask where are you going, what business you have? And then wanted you to be explicit? (The Jeff Wells Gathering)

I could see them doing a quick google of Jeff Wells and all kinds of material coming up, which for the fast reader would be troubling, so not completely surprising.

One nasty border guard asked me where I was going at the check point and I said, "Surrey".
He then asked, "Where in Surrey?"
So I told him.
And then he asked, "Where in Surrey?"
So I told him in more detail.
And then he asked, "Where in Surrey?"
So I told him in even more detail.
And then he asked, "Where in Surrey?"
I looked at him, confused. And then he said again, "Where in Surrey?"

I then realized he was inflected "Where" so it sounded just like "Where" when what he was saying was "We are", so he was making the statement "We are in Surrey." (implying you are there already) instead of the question "Where in Surrey?". He was bending the pronunciation and delivery each time so he was saying both in effect. Bastard.