On The Trail Of The Forgers

[The Good Michael]

PS: I have no desire to discuss anything on the "Obama" thread.

John,

That may be the wisest statement I've ever seen on any thread.

Mike

[Maria]

Michael the Good:

John the wisest with words !

Maria

[caz]

Hi Maria,

Okay then. Since John has not corrected anything in your post I suppose I must scrap pretty much everything he told me about the McCrone fiasco at the time and start over.

So John didn’t resign for ‘personal’ reasons and suggest that someone more qualified than him take over the role of investigating what McCrone might be able to offer in the way of new tests; he was, as you claim, ‘looking for a partner’ to help out.

John’s preferred partner, Peter, phoned McCrone out of curiosity and ‘had no trouble at all in getting all the information’ on ‘all the tests that were available’.

But the reason this information was squirreled away and has been kept secret ever since is because the diary owner hurt Peter’s feelings by suggesting he might not be the best man for the job. In short, Peter didn’t feel that Robert Smith deserved the information he would have needed in order to commission McCrone.

Interesting. In my book, that makes Robert 100% correct in his judgement. How motivated could Peter really have been to help John with the testing process, if he could so easily let a personal fit of pique thwart his partner’s initiative? How pathetic is that for a piece of shameless blame shifting?

I’ll leave you and John to sort out between you how you choose to respond to this, but I think the readers deserve to know why Peter refused to pass on to John the relevant details, for onward presentation to Robert, considering that relations between John and Robert were perfectly amicable at the time.

If Peter’s excuse for letting the information fester was hurt pride, what was John’s excuse for not talking his ‘partner’ round and getting this essential information to the one person who needed it? Again, I'm at a loss to know how John could moan at Robert for these tests never getting underway if it was Peter who kept the details from him, or if two or more of you conspired to keep them secret.

John,

You’re damned right that the ‘games never end’.

Nobody could make any attempts to rewrite the past that would come close to your blatant attempt to rewrite what you wrote here very recently indeed.

You claimed you had answered Keith’s incidental question about ‘how much’ you were ‘personally prepared to invest financially’ in the McCrone tests. It was perfectly obvious that he was not talking about any subsequent testing proposals offered by anyone else.

If you have answered Keith directly via email, stop messing about and just say so. If not, you have certainly not answered him here, since you have now clarified that your willingness to cover 100% of the costs was not related to McCrone at all, but to some other proposal entirely.

So now your readers are left with two more secret squirrels of your own: what happened to Peter’s information about the McCrone tests, which has been assiduously (I think that’s the term for it) kept away from the diary owner for the most pathetic reason I think I have ever heard in my life; and whose testing proposal you were prepared to fund, and what your $500 would have paid for, if only you hadn’t failed, for a second time, to present any of the salient details to the diary owner.

I’m sorry you have no desire to set the historical record straight on the Obama thread. But I’m not really surprised. At least you have confirmed that Maria was completely wrong about you being too busy to do so. That will have to do for now.

Love,

Caz
X

[Omlor]

I hope everyone is reading this exchange.

I hope everyone reads Caroline's post above.

I hope everyone pays attention to precisely what is happening here -- the diversionary dancing, the desire to focus on irrelevant questions and ancient history, Caroline's amusingly self-righteous and smarmy tone with its stench of bitter sarcasm but without substance -- and that everyone sees what questions are truly not being answered, indeed are not even being addressed (the original direct and simple questions asked of Keith about the alleged secret squirrel evidence).

This, right here, is a perfect illustration of precisely what is so tired and so sick and so useless and so perverse about Diary World.

For the record, I personally have no idea what information Peter or anyone else on their own might or might not have ever gotten from McCrone nor what they might or might not have done with that information.

And I'm certainly not going to rehash any of that ancient and currently irrelevant history here.

As for the testing proposal that did eventually get to the pricing stage, I certainly did inform all the involved parties of the "salient details" all along the way. If anyone has any doubts about that, they can write and I'll be happy to send them the complete and unedited record of every message sent and received concerning those tests, and yes I did happily agree to pay for 100% of the costs, and certainly would have even if they had cost twice as much as the initial estimate suggested.

But of course, you all know what happened.

And no one was surprised.

Just as no one is surprised that Keith still refuses to answer the simple and direct questions put to him about the secret evidence but instead responds only by dragging up ancient histories and personal animosities and using those as an excuse to avoid answering the questions.

I repeat my initial suggestion -- the one I made when I first received Keith's non-responsive response. Perhaps we might find someone who has not pissed him off to ask him the very same questions that I did in my first short and simple e-mail. Then, without the excuse of irrelevant history and personal pique that he offered to me, he would have no choice but to provide a clear and direct answer.

I doubt it would be forthcoming, but one can always live in hope.

Never surprised, but thankful that right here, right now, the illustration of just how things work here is so vivid,

--John

[caz]

Hi John,

Ah, but why are you still expecting me to answer here any of the ‘original direct and simple questions’ you finally asked of Keith by email?

If anyone is doing any diversionary dancing here and now, sunshine, it’s not me and it’s certainly not Keith.

It is indeed, as you say, ‘a perfect illustration of precisely what is so tired and so sick and so useless and so perverse about Diary World’:

“For the record, I personally have no idea what information Peter or anyone else on their own might or might not have ever gotten from McCrone nor what they might or might not have done with that information.”

So now we know.

If you truly never knew that Peter was able to obtain, with no trouble at all, the information about tests offered by the McCrone Group, which the diary owner would very obviously have required before any tests could have been commissioned, then you know it now, courtesy of Maria.

But it doesn’t say much for your communication skills or common sense, does it? What on earth possessed you to accuse the diary owner of not asking McCrone to test the diary, if you had no idea until now whether Peter or anyone else was ever able or willing to obtain the necessary information and pass it on to him, and you never even thought to ask Peter?

You should be appalled to think of Peter just sitting there, keeping you in the dark and allowing you to think the worst of Robert and to make an utter fool of yourself in the process, when all the time the essential McCrone information was being kept away from him by the very person who was meant to be helping you get the diary tested again.

If this later testing proposal you keep referring to (which Keith did not ask you about in his email) is the one I assume it must be, you know very well that you did your level best not to keep the diary owner informed of any of the salient details ‘all along the way’. You insisted that all he should need was the thumbs up from the third party you appointed, and you flew into a rage when this person - a modern hoax believer like yourself - gave you the thumbs down instead.

And yes, we do know what happened on this occasion, and I doubt anyone was surprised in the end. This testing proposal required a certain formula of Diamine ink which was not available from any source, and even if its maker had been willing or able to make some up (he wasn’t) you would have had no idea how much he may have needed to charge.

In short, whether the tests were going to cost you nothing, or ‘twice as much as the initial estimate suggested’, they were never going to happen without Diamine. The diary owner (ironically on your own insistence) had nothing to do with it.

How can anyone trust you to send them the ‘complete and unedited record’ of anything, given your public performances here? You lied flat out about answering Keith’s McCrone related question, which you now admit you had no way of answering, since you never did get any details from anyone - not even from Peter apparently - about what tests were available or how much they might have cost you if you had honoured your original promise to help fund them. It’s a joke.

Why should you expect Keith to come and find you and keep you fully informed, when you quite obviously didn't expect Peter to do the same regarding his progress with McCrone?

Love,

Caz
X

[Omlor]

Ah, I knew the "but I'm not Keith" dance was coming.

And here it is.

Of course, no one on these boards is so naive as to believe that Keith is not being kept aware of what is written here.

Remember, when Keith sent me his non-responsive response concerning his alleged secret squirrel evidence, he only copied one other person on the e-mail.

And we all know who that was.

And now, after another bit of trying to rewrite ancient history -- an attempt that gets so many things wrong that it is not even worth addressing -- Caroline finally runs out of dance steps and just collapses into shouting "liar" at me.

It's sad really.

For the record, I have already sent the complete and unedited exchanges concerning the previous testing efforts to a great many people, including the other principal player in the process upon her request. And even she admitted that I did indeed include every word written from both sides. Caroline, I suspect, knows this but is simply trying to play a silly little rhetorical game. And, of course, not a word I have ever written on this thread or any other has ever been a lie. Caroline knows that, too.

But it's the very last question in Caroline's post that I especially love, because it is such a completly twisted and irrational and illogical question that it demonstrates perfectly why a conversation with her here is so pointless.

I wrote and sent Keith, upon Caroline's own recommendation, a few simple and direct questions concerning his public claim to have secret evidence about the diary's origins.

Now Caroline offers, as an excuse for Keith's refusal to answer the questions that she suggested I ask him, a bit of ancient history that has nothing to do with the questions, nothing to do with the issue, and of which I was not even aware.

Only here, only in Diary World, only in her own bizarre and twisted mind, could such a thing be considered even remotely relevant or in any way a reasonable explanation for Keith's refusal to address directly the issue of his public claim or even to explain why he won't. She has become so desperate to think up excuses for Keith's public comments and his subsequent behavior in his non-responsive response to my simple and direct questions that she has fallen to this -- a bit of irrelevant nonsense that serves only to demonstrate why meaningful conversation with her about this topic has for so long been impossible.

The useful illustrations just keep piling up here. At least that's one good thing.

Thanks for reading along,

--John

[Omlor]

One final thought in passing, before I head out to a place called “Busch Gardens” to spend a day looking at wild animals in a simulated Africa and drinking free beer and keeping watch over a pack of thirteen to fifteen year old girls and boys, two of whom are related to me…

If either Keith or Caroline or the diary’s owner are truly interested in what the McCrone labs could do (then or now) concerning thoroughly testing the diary and how much it would cost, there is absolutley nothing stopping them (Keith or Caroline or Robert) from simply picking up the telephone, calling the number on the website, and finding out for themselves directly.

Of course, that’s probably not going to happen.

And of course, that doesn’t explain the real mystery here. What the hell does McCrone have to do with the public claim made by Keith Skinner concerning his alleged secret squirrel evidence of the diary’s origins and his subsequent refusal to produce such evidence or even explain why he won’t?

Unless the whole McCrone thing is just another pointless rhetorical diversion…

Ya think?

--John

[Ally]

But it's the very last question in Caroline's post that I especially love, because it is such a completly twisted and irrational and illogical question that it demonstrates perfectly why a conversation with her here is so pointless.

If discussing this with Caroline is as pointless as you claim, why in the world do you waste so much time, effort and paragraphs doing it?

Obviously, you don't feel it is pointless, because intelligent people who feel a particular endeavor is pointless tend not to do it.

So either you aren't so bright, or you don't really feel it's pointless and said that just for rhetorical effect?

[Omlor]

Ally,

You are right and so am I. It is pointless and I'm not that bright.

Thanks,

--John

[caz]

Hi John,

Unfortunately, events in the past cannot be wished away and have an awkward tendency to impact on the present, whether they concern what tests McCrone could have offered, and Peter Birchwood’s efforts to obtain that information, or where the diary came from, and Keith Skinner’s efforts to obtain this information.

If only you had spent a fraction of the effort on Peter that you are now spending on Keith, you might have persuaded the former to give you his progress reports on McCrone for forwarding on to Robert, and then you would have been in a rock solid position to hurl your accusations if he had failed to commission any viable tests that you had offered to help finance. What a missed opportunity on your part.

It would also have left you in a stronger position today to claim a genuine interest in obtaining new information. If you had no interest then, in learning from Peter what tests McCrone could try, how much they would cost, or whether Robert was ever going to hear about them, your continued show of interest in learning anything at all from Keith strikes a very false note indeed.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

And, of course, not a word I have ever written on this thread or any other has ever been a lie. Caroline knows that, too.

A word, on its own, can't be a lie, so you have me there. It's when you put 'em together and form complete sentences that you start losing control of the truth.

You either know it was a lie to claim you had answered Keith's question about how much the mythical McCrone tests were going to cost, and what proportion you were prepared to pay, or you are becoming seriously deluded and you really ought to see someone about it for your own good.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Of course, no one on these boards is so naive as to believe that Keith is not being kept aware of what is written here.

Remember, when Keith sent me his non-responsive response concerning his alleged secret squirrel evidence, he only copied one other person on the e-mail.

And we all know who that was.

John,

If it's any business of yours, and contrary to your sad delusions of grandeur, the last time I heard from Keith was on July 24 about a totally unrelated matter, and the last time Keith heard from me was about ten days before that. If you want Keith to be kept aware of what is written here, you already know the drill. I don't care whether he is aware or not, since I have no questions to put to him, and if and when I do I will put them to him and no one else.

I suspect the only reason Keith copied me in on his response to you was to give you fair warning that if you failed to post his words in full, just as he suggested, but left the readers with the kind of distorted summary you posted initially, I would soon set that particular record straight. Of course, no one on these boards is so naive as to believe that it was boredom and a lack of anything better to do that suddenly compelled you to heed that warning.

Love,

Caz
X

[Omlor]

Wow.

Three posts in a row.

All to me.

And all of them say...

Nothing.

Once again, what the hell does the McCrone nonsense from years ago have to do with Keith Skinner making a public pronouncement about having super secret evidence about the diary's origin and telling everyone what that evidence allows him to conclude and then refusing both to produce that evidence when asked and refusing even to explain why he won't produce it (and refusing even to explain that decision as well)?

The whole discussion Caroline is trying to start here remains completely irrelevant to the questions I asked Keith, upon Caroline's recommendation, and his non-responsive response.

I don't know what Caroline is talking about concerning Peter, so I can't address any of her nonsense in that regard. But I do know that I have never lied about anything on these boards. Of course, by this time, I suspect no one reading this understands what it is I am supposed to have lied about (I certainly don't), so all the accusation flinging (which is no doubt designed also to distract readers from the original simple and direct questions about the secret squirrel evidence that still remain unanswered) is, I think, fairly harmless.

Caroline, I'll make you a deal. You can call me a liar wherever and whenever you want and I won't bother to argue with you about such silliness if you'll agree to help someone else, someone who has not pissed off Keith long ago and thereby given him a convenient if irrelevant excuse not to answer, to ask the same simple and straightforward and direct questions that I asked in my short initial e-mail.

Maybe they'll have better luck getting an actual, informative response.

Then again, maybe not.

Your turn,

--John

[Ally]

I will say that I have emailed Keith as of a few hours ago and asked him some questions. However, it should be stated here, that I told Keith, that if he were to tell me what the information is, I wouldn't reveal it.

The fact of the matter is, that if the information is up for publication, there is absolutely no reason why Keith would tell anyone who would put it out there on the boards and frankly I don't know why John or anyone else would expect him to. Keith said in the email exchange to John that he can't reveal the identity of who he is contracted by and that the information is subject to publication.

What John expects of someone else contacting Keith is questionable. Does John seriously expect Keith to put this information out, breaking his contract and his professional credibility in the process (more so than has already been done?). I have said it before, and I'll say it again: Keith screwed up by letting this info slip, but he should not be expected to compound the error and betray confidentiality because some whiny little snots are demanding it and will stomp their feet and yell til they turn blue because by god they want to know. I said it when it was Caroline doing it to Melvin and I'll say it now when it's John doing it to Keith.

If Keith does choose to tell me what the information is, something highly doubt will happen, but if he should, I will put up here only whether I find the information at all interesting or credible.

I have also asked him for a time frame we can expect the information to be published.

[Omlor]

Ally,

Let me be clear about this. I said a long time ago that if Keith simply told us that the information he had was about to be published and he was sitting on it until then, I would find that a perfectly reasonable explanation (although in that case I don't think he should have announced not only the existence of that alleged evidence but also its alleged conclusions in a public forum while all the time being unwilling to back up his claim with the actual evidence itself).

But Keith did not say that.

Also, I said some time ago that if Keith explained to everyone exactly why he could not present the evidence to back up his public claim, I would understand that, too.

He did not.

Also, I said that if Keith simply said that the information would be made available at a specific time in the future and told us when that would be, I would understand that as well.

He did not.

I hope you get answers. Honestly. I hope you find out what the secret squirrel evidence really is. I hope you at least get an explanation for why it is being kept secret despite everyone already being told about it and what conclusions it allegedly affords. I hope you at the very least get a precise and clear explanation as to why we haven't even been given an explanation for why it must be kept secret. I hope you get something.

Best of luck. Honestly. I appreciate your attempts here.

--John

PS: As to why I wrote to Keith and asked him about all of this -- Caroline Morris suggested that I do it and it seemed like a good idea. I posted Keith's response to my short e-mail in full here, as he asked me to.