A reply to "Euripide Sneed" on the Anticultist blog.

After Earth 2.0 issued their blog post attempting to explain why they had parted ways with the Venus Project, the Anti-cultist blog put their article up on his own blog as some evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the Venus Project. Shortly afterward a user calling himself Euripide Sneed commented on the blog. You can see his comments here:

http://anticultist.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/earth-2-movie-venus-proect-fails-and-reators-cut-fresco-loose/

In any case, this is the reply from Roxanne I got in regards to this mans accusations. Whomever he is.

Reply from Jacque and Roxanne:

This is from a false name and is a false article. This only means that Jacque is getting more known these false accusations and lies, as Jacque always stated, will start to surface when people become more well know. This person sounds bitter and angry but also is grossly misinformed about the situations he is trying to discuss. There were many people who came to Jacque’s lectures in Miami in the 1970’s they came and when mostly depending upon how relevant the information was to their lives.

In fact we are now achieving some of these past lectures and we felt the information would be of great interest to many people. These are the lectures from the Miami area during the 1970,s. We now have just compiled 15 of these lectures on three 5 CD sets and on almost all of them you can hear Jacque at the end say it is $3.00 for non-members and $2.00 for members of Sociocyberneering not the $10 -$20 this person claims Jacque charged. This helps to show you what this person says below is utterly false in regards to what Jacque used to charge and also in many other areas as we will try and explain.

Many of Jacque’s friends he had even in childhood are still his friends (those that are still alive) alone with many that went to his lectures in 160’ and 70’s.

Many people who attended the lectures that Jacque held in his home wanted to get together and purchase land and build something. Jacque was going to supply all of the designs. Jacque offered drawing lesson so people could participate in some way but it really boiled down to three people do did most of the work the others were mostly verbal.

They did put up enough money to get a down payment for about 40 acres of land in Naples, Florida for about $600. an acre, but they did not continue the payments except for 3 people but those 3 could not make the land payments alone so a lawyer friend of Jacque’s, Cleave Herring, came forth and continued the payments until we could sell the land. Nothing was made on that venture.

It was strange because if the group did follow through with the payment and kept the land if they ever wanted to sell it would have been worth millions because that area became a very exclusive wealthy area to live. The land value rocketed in Naples. But Jacque was not going into it as a business venture.

I imagine people pulled out for different reasons but some said the zoning board would never let Fresco build what they wanted to build. After everyone pulled out. Jacque, with drawings, went to the zoning board out of curiosity and asked for a half hour to speak with the person in charge. They spoke for an hour and a half the gentleman asked if he could join the organization and said he would do whatever he could to help the project develop. Unfortunately by that time there was no organization after the members stopped paying on the land.

There was no profit from the sale of the land in Naples in fact money was lost after paying back Herring, the real estate agent and the rest of the mortgage. We were just glad to get it sold so there was no more debt piled up. That whole episode was disappointing to Jacque and the other two people who continued to work with him. After all he put out a lot of effort with people for over a decade to teach them things in all areas.

As I said some of these lectures are now available to the public and can be found on our website. We are working on getting more available but it is a long process to do this.

The money to buy the land in Venus came from the sale of a home in Miami Jacque sold. He lived there for about a year of more. This house was in the black section of Miami so you know the land value was not high.

This person states:

The property near Miami was purchased for approximately $16,000,which was a lot of money in the 70’s, when people were trying to live on minimum wage. I don’t know how much it was sold for, since it was still undeveloped. Probably approximately the same price. The property in Venus was approximately $40K, because it was more acreage. I believe that the property in Venus is under his own name so that there is no distribution requirement if he sells the property. When he sold enough money to pay for the Venus property, with the help of the Sociocyberneering funds. So, he did put up a few buildings on the Venus property which would serve as his new home. But, the value of all the buildings “combined” would be under $100K because they are sort of made of metal and gunnite, as opposed to more expensive materials like bricks or lumber. So, the asking price of the land is a

little high compared to values of the surrounding acreage.


This person who wrote this nasty article knows nothing about the prices he is remarking on. He is lying about all of this. The first parcel we purchased in Venus was 10 acres for a little over $1,600 an acre. Then over the years we purchase two other contiguous parcels that adds up to a little over 21+ acres. He knows very little about building processes either because building out of concrete and steal is far more expensive and durable than brick and timber. All of the other numbers are grossly incorrect as well.

We never changed the name to The Venus Project to cover up any deals regarding the sale of the land in Naples. We changed the name long after the purchase of the land in Venus because Sociocyberneering was too difficult to pronounce for people or even to remember. This was before the word cyber was even used. The Venus Project was simple and easy.

We don’t want to spend much more time on this nonsense as most of what he is saying are lies, projections and out of some other misunderstanding. He never checked his statements with us and does not even use his real name. If you listen to the Fresco’s Classic Lecture Series you will see that he took that name after hearing it from Jacque, which is ironic, but we mainly wanted to make a statement as to what happened in regards to the Naples property.

Jacque and Roxanne

A look inside the mind of a troll...

So I have been monitoring when of our more notorious trolls for the purpose of getting inside the strategies they employ. I am sure many of you are familiar with him. But who he is is not as important as what he is doing. And why.

I know many of you have read my post “When will we have no rules?” about the issue of when the ZM will be without rules and moderators who enforce them. I pointed out in this blog post that the intention of many of the people who want to remove these fail-safes want them removed so that they can be the new authority. Some of the trolls claimed that even some of the moderation team thought my show on this subject was BS. Then recently on another forum one of our star trolls revealed why it is he behaves the way he does.

The premise that must be understood is that these people engage in hostile behavior to assert control over other users in a chat room, forum or voice chat. Some of them are better at this then others. But it is still very real. I pointed out how they will become the real despotic authoritarians but they do it without moderator powers or rules. (Which is why they claim we don't need them.) They do it by directly insulting and therefore mentally assaulting users who do not tow the line and respect their authority.

So the quote I am about to bring up exposes this in great detail. Before I quote it though I will give you a little background on the conversation that lead to this troll exposing himself. Recently on an anti-ZM forum the users there began to go after him because of his belief in 911 conspiracy theories. Because this forum is not moderated the inevitable free-for-all of insult slinging went back and forth. They started to attack him for what is rather obvious mental delusions and derangement. After a user who obviously knows who he is exposed information about him and linked a couple of recordings of his previous maniac rants on various ZM voice chat mediums he defended his behavior of attacking a user by stating he was trying to re-program the brain of his victim. The following quotes are about this:

“I definitely was acting like a drill sergeant, I was reprogramming his mind, and it was successful. Now he feels a twinge of anxiety any time he contemplates threatening people, and it curbs his behaviour somewhat.”

“I know how to change minds, the technique is called repeated, rhythmic insult, and it's virtually infallible. The marines use it to turn librarians into paid killers. “

Here is a link to the recording in question. Some of the parts of this recording are not really relevant, but if you get through it you will eventually get to the lunacy that ensued when this individual took it upon himself to try and modify the behavior of another person.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3746210/gritsban.mp3

Here you have someone who is actively engaging in what amounts to psychological warfare. Ironically after stating that we are failing because we are using all the same failed methods of control that the “state” does. So his solution? Turn to the far more insidious methods of the “state” that are used to brainwash our soldiers. An interesting grasp on morality to be sure.

I understand the big scare people have of moderators and authority figures getting out of control. The funny thing is we are actually creating these problems within the moderation team when we constantly hound them and allow them to be hounded. There may have been one or two examples of abuse of authority by members of the moderation team. But there is also a large number of trolls who cry “WOLF!” whenever a moderator acts against them at all. And this brings to bear our inherent fear of the abuse of authority.

Then we find ourselves turning on the mods who are here to protect us. And more importantly protect the quality of conversation. And then the call of abuse of authority is itself abused. People start calling abuse of authority even when they are in the wrong. The hysteria created leads to a situation where a tiny minority continues to project itself as a majority. This minority being people who actually have problems with the moderation team. They project over and over again that “a lot of people” or “many people” or “more and more people” have a problem with the moderators.

Just a little while ago on my Facebook someone went so far as to say “This behavior is pushing out the majority of the movement! All that is left on the forums now are moderators and people in positions of authority within the movement!” which is obviously absurd. But like Hitler said

“Repeat a lie often enough and it will become truth.”

I tried to explain in detail in my previous post about authority what exactly was taking place. About how these trolls ask us to eliminate all authority and that if we do this we will all be free to talk and express ourselves.

The part they leave out is that they actually want to do this so that they will be free to control the minds of the people in the chat rooms through bullying, intimidation and repeated rhythmic insults so that they can be ones who effectively “ban” or “mute” people through their destructive language.

We can have free speech. But free speech was meant to be the free exchange of constructive criticisms and exchanges of ideas.

You cannot have either in a situation where the only people actually free to do this are the ones who are more creative and diligent in their insults and bully tactics then other users.

I realized that the best person to explain it was the worst troll in the history of Wikipedia. Codie Eugene Vickers. A.K.A Hominy Grits, A.K.A. Plautus Satire, A.K.A. Kyle Troy. And this is how he explained it:

“I know how to change minds, the technique is called repeated, rhythmic insult, and it's virtually infallible. The marines use it to turn librarians into paid killers.”

Let me ask you to consider this. Is it free speech if someone has the ability to destroy conversation anytime they want by employing these tactics?

Allowing the absolute freedom of speech in situations like this is like saying that the right to own a handgun also gives you the right to shoot people with it if you feel like it. In allowing people to shoot each other with impunity in the name of freedom we just hand the reins of tyranny over to whomever is willing to do the shooting.

The whole time that this person is whining that we are supposedly using all the despotic tactics of the system that we oppose, he is using something far more insidious then laws or people to enforce them. He is willfully and intentionally engaging in psychological warfare.

The biggest threat to freedom of speech is also people abusing it. They blame the system but the reason even the best intentioned systems eventually have to put restrictions on things is not because of peaceful people speaking their minds. It's because of people acting like this. And some of them even revel in that.

“I've induced them to put harsh restrictions and an even harsher face on this movement.”

So despite all of his self-glorified delusions of being some sort of freedom fighter it is people like him that are the text book examples of the downside of freedom of speech. Along with the racists, bigots, etc.

It's important that if you want your forum to be free of pollution of this kind that you speak out against it. And if you really want to see less out of the moderators there needs to be a paradigm shift in how people address this sort of thing. The notion that it's going to happen by just throwing a lever and eliminating all authority when we are still living in the value system that makes that infeasible is absurd. The fact that people even value or think this sort of behavior is productive in any way proves that we are not ready for that. And people acting like it, enabling it or justifying it keep us further and further away from the days when we actually will have no mods or rules.

Author's note: Here is another episode of Codie Vickers the troll.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/752942/MumbleGrits.22.12.09.ogg