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Post by B on Jan 17, 2009 0:16:00 GMT -5
An anonymous poster at Tafultong's blog posted the following message, which I understand is posted here in the visitor's section, but it deserves to be preserved on this board in a more prominent location, imo, so I have posted it here. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily my own.
This post has been edited slightly by the admin at this site.
"Anonymous said... posted at NIR and Maccafunhouse
The time has come to come clean, and I figured where better to do it than here? The offer was made, and since you guys have gone to the trouble of defending Paul, I felt you guys deserved to know the truth. This is an expanded version of a post made in the NIR Guest Forum, and it was TheBug who invited me here, so if fault is found from what I say, talk to him.
WHY I DECIDED TO CONFESS
I decided it was time to clear the air after an old friend at the TKIN! Forum informed me of the lies and slander being spread over time about "OpenMind," as they referred to me. Every time something preposterous in the evidence bin that they didn’t want to admit came from their lips was brought up, it was blamed on "OpenMind." Soon, everyone who was skeptical or preferring to remain, well, open-minded on the subject until someone produced definitive evidence, such as the corpse of Paul McCartney, was being dubbed "OpenMind" or an interloper working for said person. I've been called everything under the sun by these people...the one that made me laugh the most was being dubbed an active agent of the S.O.E. sent to disrupt the forum. No disrespect to any actual S.O.E. that may or may not exist, but I haven't the foggiest idea who the hell they are, nor do I give a damn.
I was banned from the TKIN! Forum because I didn't believe I could carry on with what I considered to be a breach of common ethics in many respects. Everything had gone completely out of hand. To be fair, they had every right to boot me, because they were afraid I might tell the tale. Bits and bobs have sneaked out over time, to be frank, but the full story has never been told. The way they've dragged my name through the mud is what I consider absolutely reprehensible, so I've decided to clear the decks and tell the real story en toto. My conscience is clear, and I don't feel guilty for posting this. Those bastards should have known it was coming any day now, especially after the ban.
DO I BEAR ILL WILL TOWARD ANYONE?
This confession is hardly motivated by a grudge against anybody. I got close to a few of the original members, starting relationships that have lasted to this day, both friendships and other enduring involvements (including one investment in a business of mine...it eventually went bust, but the money was returned in good faith and I'm still friends with the investor in question). For obvious reasons, I can't state their names, but a lot of them are people who appear by their posts to be hardcore PID'ers, and are merely going along with this because it's easier to go along with these "children in their silly seasons" until they tire of it than to complain and call them nuts.
WHAT I EXPECT
I don;t expect any sort of reaction from this, except of course for some form of retaliation for making this information public. Anyone who has spoken against the TKIN! Forum has been the victim of various and sundry character assassinations, along with all sorts of ludicrous accusations, such as being accused of being a "plant" or "operative," being acquainted with Paul or Yoko, of personally knowing the Beatles and thusly having an agenda, of being paid/intimidated/threatened to say what they've said or do what they've done. Well, let me lay that to rest now by saying none of that is true of me. I did this because I was sick of being lied about and because I regret lying to people.
HOW I FOUND IT
Quite simply, I was a Beatles fan surfing the Internet. I happened to be looking into the "Paul is Dead" phenomenon, as I was intending to purchase the Batman comic No. 222 for a relative who was madly in love with Bat-orabilia and had as yet been unable to find it offline. I was surprised to find that the Internet was full of many repositories for "clues" to something that I felt had been effectively dismissed as a hoax well over 30 years ago. That's when I found the 60IF document via Google. At first, I laughed it off; surely they didn't think people were gullible enough to buy this again...or did they? Ultimately, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt-- I'm sure we've all been involved with a lot of things other people would consider strange in our lifetime, and I am no different (for example, I once made and maintained a website for a psychic couple who claim to channel new music from the spirits of John Lennon and George Harrison), so I decided to give it a good look.
That was when I started lurking at the original onecenter forum. I wanted to post there, but I was unable to complete registration at that time and therefore considered myself very lucky when what is now known as the TKIN! Forum first started. I immediately registered as BeatlestoBattle and took the attitude of a skeptic publicly. Privately, however, I decided to pull a practice con to gain the confidence of the admin. If these people were actually trying to fool someone, I had to see how easy it was to gain their confidence. As it turned out, it would have been no harder taking candy from a baby. I told the forum's then-manager number9 that I was a secret agent with access to the files in connection to the death and replacement of Paul McCartney, and that my cover was that I had to appear skeptical on the forums and poke holes in the theories, and the gullible kid bought it.
Thanks to that practice con, I gained an access to the inner circle of the forum administration that no one has had, not even Chris, googoo, or the creators of the "All the Truth" website (the latter listed in their capacity as undercover investigators, so to speak). Eventually, however, I befriended Mrs. Redford (anybody out there remember her?) and she convinced me to show that I did not believe them. Thus began my first spree of responding to every post on every forum, and my first time being banned.
For a week, life fell back into the eventual swing of things, but I still checked the forum daily. You all have to admit that at one point 60IF possessed a huge amount (if not all) of your attention at the time when you believed in it. I was no different--the site had an undeniable inexorable pull from which I could not draw away. It seems almost like a cult in many ways (and more on that a few paragraphs down). Finally, I registered again with a new e-mail address and kept incognito for a while, remaining somewhat neutral--I believe that something resembling Imbackinblack was the user name this time. Not too subtle in retrospect, but the fact that I remained neutral the second time around probably kept me safer anyway. Then I told Mrs. Redford I had managed to sneak back in. The conversation was along the lines of "What the fudge do you think you're doing?" I told her how I felt; that I didn't know why, but I thought 60IF was gaining a hold over me. It would have been impossible to use any other line of reasoning at that point. It took a lot of cajoling and coaxing, I didn't really want to do it, but I was finally persuaded. Thus came my second posting spree, and my second ban, but finally I came to a conclusion. There was no question of my joining again, because I knew I would (the pull was too strong for me not to at that point), but this time my purpose would be closer to my initial intent--namely, to spy, and find out whether or not 60IF itself was fact or fallacy.
So I re-registered for a third time, and I am now notorious at the forums as a result of what happened under the Third and Final Fascination and Eventual Decline, as I like to call it. This one lasted longer than my other two excursions, and I wound up feeling more used than a $10 hooker. Yes...I was the bugger they affectionately refer to by only part of his user name, Imgonnaopenmymind. I registered for the third and final full time with a third e-mail address and immediately began setting the stage for a third "attack," an attack no doubt leading to a ban that I promised myself would be permanent, before I got any more sucked in by this phony baloney PID business. This time, I'd have to act more slowly, maybe even provide evidence myself. It seemed the guy known as Sun King was rapidly accepting just about anything that didn't contradict 60IF (as it was at the time) too directly. Some of my evidence is still in use today, ironically, if you look at threads such as the one that lists which imitator sang which Paul song and the legendary "Botox on parade" thread. All of that was a bunch of crap, constructed out of previously posted evidence by SK and some quick thinking on my part. You’re welcome, guys, lol.
That was when I was immediately cornered and forced into a form of submission. Well, actually, I wouldn't put it quite that way. An allegedly mutually beneficial arrangement was come to, that sounds better. I was confronted by one of the 60IF admin (I won't name which for their own sake), who informed me that they knew by IP comparison that I was both BeatlestoBattle and Imbackinblack. Obviously this put me in a bit of a quandary--my number was up if this admin decided to take the information to the others. Surprisingly, they were the one to tell me it wouldn't go that way. Instead, they'd allow me to stay on as long as I toed the party line and, so to speak, kept the sheep in check. I could stay as logical within reason as I wanted, but I would not come out directly against the theory or risk being exposed to the other administrators.
At the time, I viewed it as a jumping off point for a writing career (and I wasn't the only one, keep reading if you want to know more). I figured this would be an opportunity to exercise my creative writing skills, and exercise them I did. (At one point, I don't know if it's still on TKIN or not, I wrote a tremendous scenario based partly on the 60IF document as it stood at the time that I believe, if I do say so myself, would have actually made an excellent outline for an action movie if you took out the element of naming an actual famous person. I went all out, with the kidnapper attackers jumping on the hood of the car and shooting the driver in true "Mission: Impossible: style. I had fun writing it, actually.) Also, keep in mind that I had no clue any deeper stuff was going on, and I saw no harm in it.
INSIDE THE ACTORS' STUDIO (IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE)
During my time attempting to launch my writing career, I learned a lot about the inner workings of the team as I helped construct the further progress of the 60IF spin. (When I refer to members of the administration team from now on, it will be patently obvious by some descriptions which person I am referring to based on knowledge of the forums. I do not directly name them, user name, real name, or otherwise, for their own sake. Other people knowing the truth about them would embarrass them enough.)
One admin in particular, widely known and believed to be foreign, was in fact an American college student who wrote his responses to posts in English, translated them into the language of that foreign nationality via BabelFish, and then translated that back into English to provide the appropriate degree of broken English. I have no doubt that he probably still does this, or maybe he's even got a fellow student doing the posting for him. Needless to say at this point with all the NEW crazy theories emanating from the TKIN! Forum, I have my doubts that it's just the one student minding the store any longer.
There have been many stories of how the 60IF document was created, and many conflicting reports have emerged as to where they drew ideas from. With this in mind, I believe it's time that I actually added something new to the table and told you all the story of how this snowball began rolling and growing beyond anyone's control. So here goes: 60IF began as part of a college thesis paper. This particular admin was going for a degree in Theology, specializing in comparative religion, and was intrigued by the thought of the Beatles as a modern-day type of quasi-religious mythology (they made great music and great strides in audio technology, but really they're quite overrated almost to the point of worship, which emphasized his point further). What made it tick? What was it that caused this? What kind of mystique surrounded the band? Among many things that he pinpointed and eliminated, he came to realize that nearly all of those same things came into play as supporting evidence for one myth in particular--Paul McCartney's death, and his replacement with a look- and sound-alike. He began to wonder if this mystique surrounding a 30 year old myth could be repeated. And 60IF was born; the student decided that he would attempt to run an Internet portal claiming that the death of Paul McCartney had actually occurred, and would use quasi-scientific evidence as proof to see if it would draw people in (if the picture doesn't match, and the site is the only source telling you this is this and that is that when defining "full legal proofs," and it sounds vaguely official and smart, people will tend to buy it on impulse).
(Side note: Ironically enough, if anyone reads the Fred LaBour review of Abbey Road where most of the common aspects of PID began, he drew some very similar conclusions about the quasi-religious angle. Add to that the nuts now writing some stuff on the TKIN! Forum that I'm told is reportedly about ancient Egyptian deities and it just goes to show that there's one in every family, I guess.)
Was the document the student's own creation? No. Talk to Isaac Phaire some time (not his real name, and I’d prefer not to divulge his identity, but if you really want to find out who he is, look for a person who worked for all of the businesses he has cards for in the pictures on the Tripod site). The fact of the matter is, Zak (as he prefers to be called) did write the basis of it. Zak's original motive, something he actually would never post about on his website calling others' attention to his authorship, although part of it slipped out in his post on 60IF, was to create mystique about himself as a "mysterious insider" to jazz up an otherwise dull profile on Yahoo! Personals. Is everything else Zak claims to have done in editing and the world of media true? Based on my subsequent ongoing research, yes, and it's my opinion he underestimated the mystique of that. Women like men with stability, Zak! The admin behind all this found your personal ad while looking for the site with the best rendition of the PID story. Yours fit his needs, with a few adjustments added (such as the IBS [has anyone ever died from it?], Brian Epstein being replaced [which I find rather unnecessary, personally], and other such trappings).
It's not like Zak's original story wasn't without flaws, for example John screaming that he was the walrus and not Paul at the policeman who made the insensitive comment about the look of Paul's decaying corpse, or that Yoko was a spy for MI5 responsible for John's death (a throwback to old Beatles fans who never got over the image of the weird controlling figure she cut to them), or that the Rolling Stones were suspected to be involved (as if they'd seriously risk their careers over a rivalry that was severely overblown by the press), or even that the KKK was the actual responsible party (did the "Jesus" comment tick them off so much that they'd go to England for the sole purpose of kidnapping Paul and Brian?). I believe, though, that this was the point, that these types of inconsistencies were things Zak could point out later as logical fallacies, to show that this was just a send-up of the whole thing rather than a serious take on the PID theory.
What I believe to be the most unnecessary twist on the editor's part was changing the setting from a deathbed confession, which I would find more likely (George getting it off his chest before he passed away), to an interview given in 1992 that never saw release, which I believe to be more than a little improbable. Any reporter sitting on this kind of info would probably be laughed at if they released it as if they believed it, sure, but they could get a lot of career mileage with it if they presented the story from the right angle, namely painting George as "the mad Beatle grown crazy with age who now believes old fan-made myths, isn't that tragic," a tearjerker of a current events story that would no doubt win a prize in today's ongoing media obsession with the misfortune of others, especially celebrities.
...OR SHOULD I SAY SAINT PAUL?
Eventually, the founder realized he couldn't do this alone; or rather he didn't want to do this alone. He had power now, he was the source, and he didn't have to pull his own weight. So he decided to (as I've dubbed it, appropriately enough for a case involving a similarly famous Paul) “pull a St. Paul.” As the Apostle to the Nations said of his mission to spread the Word, and being all things to all people, "To the Jews I was a Jew that I might win the Jews," etc., to convert, so was the founder of TKIN. He slowly roped them in the way any good ringleader would, adapting his story of discovery now here, now there, to suit those he needed to rope in. One thing I'll say for him, he sure is slick.
To one, he was channeling the spirit of George Harrison. To another, it was done by the power of the Holy Spirit, and anything this other was led to add could be done under the influence of the Spirit as well. If someone questions the photo comparisons, he's in engineering, so in his expert opinion they have full legal value. If someone says, "But logically there's not much difference, it's a continuing expansion of Paul's musical skills, and his voice doesn't sound different at all," he's been a musician for 30 years (pfft, as if he was that old) and he can tell you otherwise. If someone paints and writes as a hobby, so does he, and if someone says the whole thing fails under their scrutiny because they're teachers and they think they're smart enough to know when they're being fooled, suddenly he's a teacher too. A man of all seasons, a jack of all trades. Everyone's playing the game, but nobody's rules are the same.
ALL PLAY THE GAME EXISTENCE TO THE END
I believe it was Lord Acton who famously said that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nowhere was that more true than at TKIN. Eventually, 60IF turned into a cottage industry. The paper was never handed in. In fact, the founding admin dropped out of college to focus on 60IF full-time. It became an addiction just as much for him as it was for us. He fed on the attention of the gullible people, and absolute power did its job. If interest appeared to be waning and the tide was turning in favor of Paul being alive, suddenly he was threatened, or there had been a new break in the case that would be announced soon (and sometimes either was something small, boring or trite, or never surfaced). And all the fawning would begin anew, and his craving would be satisfied. Not a bad way to get attention, but with no thought for anyone else?
Eventually, his all-inclusive obsession turned into a money-making opportunity when he began shopping around a book proposal, the one called My Dear, in which Jane Asher basically discovers the existence of 60IF and tearfully confesses everything to a debonair Italian who is investigating the case amid many threats on his life and people calling him bat poo insane (sound familiar?). He asked many to write it, even though he had the basic outline himself which wasn't too bad and leads me to believe he could have done it himself if he weren’t lazy to a fault. He was probably planning to walk off with the finished work and publish it as his own; a pity that he didn't do it, because then someone (especially a ghostwriter residing in the U.S.) could have sued him for conversion of property, which is a tort offense, and gotten everything laid out in the open in court.
Everyone knows about the book proposal because of what LongJohn had to say at "All the Truth" about being coaxed into writing it and politely refusing, but if anyone else knew he was actually cutting checks to people to get the work done, people would have been champing at the bit to do it, believer or not. The love of money is the root of all evil, but if the object of your affection is paying your bills and putting food on the table, you're willing to take the root of all evil at its own word. I like to think that he was able to spend such time on 60IF because he comes from a well-off family of some sort who are willing to indulge his whims. Otherwise, what follows makes no sense, and raises more questions than answers. It would come as no surprise to anybody after all my "great research" and the stuff I was turning out on the forums that he would ask me to write "the book" on the subject. I had some better stuff out there than half the theorists, and couldn't believe some of the other potential author choices (for example, anything TotalInformation wrote would immediately lose any market potential once people read the first page and a half, because the guy is barely comprehensible even when his posts are near perfectly spelled and feature fairly readable grammar). I told him I might do it again and again, but then he tried to sweeten the pot. He told me he was prepared to offer me well over $4,000 to ghost-write it. At the time, it was tempting, because I'd never been paid for my writing before, and such a huge sum was being offered, but I turned it down--I may tell white lies, or toe a line to keep my own secrets, but I'd like to think I'm above lying for money.
THE AWFUL DISCOVERY
Now, as you can see from above, I was beginning to be very disillusioned with lying to people. First it was all in good fun, the guy wanted his paper to look good and my work might merit a mention. Then it was all about exercising my creative writing skills, and the chance to make some money out of the deal. Finally I couldn't reconcile it with any reason: I was lying to people, and I didn’t even have a very good reason for doing it. It produced a moral conflict within me. The song "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash became a favorite at this time, with good reason (it explained my plight damn near perfectly--let it never be said that music doesn't have any real meaning for people if they believe it has a meaning).
Then I was accidentally CC'ed (meaning I received copies) on some correspondence related to what I've dubbed the Past Lives Club, and everything began to unravel. Googoo believed she was Brian Epstein; number9 was toying with the thought of being Tara Browne, though I think that was more to fit in with something than anything else (the impression I get is that he's never fit in with much of anything in his life); and at the time I believed that Spanky thought she was possessed by John Lennon, only to find out later what she was really up to. And then came the chance of real trouble as a result of this.
An independent interviewer/reporter with a substantial resume named Gia Milinovich who worked for a television concern was registered at the forum as OceanChild. The case intrigued her and she was planning to make a documentary for TV on the PID case with the 60IF website at the center of it. She left the forum for some time, and I’m pretty sure she made it clear it was for personal reasons that had nothing to do with the forum, and the founder decided to use this momentary absence to bolster his credibility with his willing followers. "Look at the user name!" he cried. "She's a spy for Yoko, and she’s not even trying to hide it!" When "Dig It" didn't appear on the release of Let it Be...Naked, the rumor began to spread that Yoko and Paul had learned the 60IF forum were studying the clues in the lyrics and had decided to get rid of it. Who better to have reported it than the still-absent-and-unable-to-defend-herself Gia? And then Gia came back, everyone welcoming her with open arms as if nothing was wrong. Little did they know, she knew everything they'd been up to. She'd stopped posting, but she'd never stopped reading.
She hadn't helped her case when she did post on the forum because she stuck up for Yoko when people asked openly if anyone on the forum thought Yoko was responsible for John's murder. I sent some sympathetic PMs to her at the time she rejoined the forum, hoping to avoid the past drama, and she showed me the link for the documentary proposal. It had some tantalizing lines in it about how she could prove why Paul looked different, and it wasn't because he had been replaced, implying that she might actually have some sort of contact with higher-ups. She also made it clear that she was more than aware of some other things that were going on, making some vague allusions to people who thought they were channeling spirits. More importantly, somehow she knew about my situation. The founder admin has always had a soft spot for pretty women, one that would eventually be his ruin when the "All the Truth" website was published, and Gia’s not too bad-looking. My guess is that he hooked her up with some info because he thought there would be money and recognition from this documentary. Some of the Past Lives Club had begun fighting over whose segment would receive prominence in the program. Lies, deceit and drama queens were vying for center stage, and I was not about to go down with it.
Morally, I'd been done with this for a long time. But now, for my own sake, I couldn't stay involved any longer, unless I wanted to look like a complete fool, or worse a liar, and on such a widespread medium as television no less. I could not carry on with this complete breach of ethics, and I told that admin to take his money and shove it. He was leading on innocent people, and this wasn't even for a short-term goal anymore. This was for kicks. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if he was actually beginning to buy into the stuff he was selling. At this point, the whole game was beginning to spiral out of control, as any new evidence that was being introduced was slowly being spun into 60IF without further investigation, but now the Past Lives Club was taking this completely out of hand. I wanted to be out of it completely. I would have no part in this.
I searched the Beatles newsgroups, looking for anything that could poke a huge hole in the 60IF theory, because nobody was buying the PIA photo comparisons with their fearless leader telling them photos were being doctored. Finally, I found an old post on rec.music.beatles pointing them to the "truth" about Paul McCartney, and the link, while it didn't work, did work at the Internet Archive, and what I saw was 60IF, sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, with some obvious non-inclusions of course--total and utter plagiarism. So I did the only thing I could do, look up "Zak Phaire" and inform him about the legal definition of copyright infringement. He registered at TKIN! immediately, and we saw to it that the word was put out about the site's outright theft of his material to serve their own ends. Not that it ultimately mattered, because Zak only wanted money if they were to continue this charade, and this yahoo who was evidently well-off was only too happy to pay him to go away (and I never got severance pay, boohoo). Of course, now the original "document" has been edited over and over again to suit any popular theory at any given time to the point that it barely resembles Zak's original, and they now claim that "Zak Phaire’s website was a reverse-engineering project, and he was a government agent sent to cause confusion through disinfo." Oh well, he didn't leave without a check being cut, and it did clear, so he's really in no place to complain. But I am.
A fuller version of this bearing more details may soon appear in POD book form. It'll be worth a read, I promise you all that. I hope that this brief (lol, yeah right) taste has served its purpose, and that people will be warned away from the madness that is TKIN. Now members are beginning to openly post that TKIN looks like what it is, an epic joke, and I only hope this becomes the prevailing attitude that stands the test of time.
January 16, 2009 12:24 AM"
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