I'm a bit disapointed. It seems everyone here just wants to kick John Lear when he cant even defend himself. I've heard Skeptic Overlord say he has an open invitation to post here, only his title has changed, but in this he says hes banned for life. Maybe I am the one missing something, and thats fine if I am, God knows it wont be the first time, but As much as people are sick of John Lear, I'm sick of people putting down a guy for whatever reason. I mean, after reading this all I can say is "Is this the community with which I associate myself?"

For the record, since i know it'll come up, I'm not a "Learologist". I like some of what he had to say, and didn't like others, much like anyone else. But seriously, could we do something productive with this information other than just trample it because it says something negative about ATS?

Rise above it.

Springer...

That must really hurt deep down...

I'm not being sarcastic - it hurts when someone you thought was a friend dumps on you...

drink the green label and keep it real bro...

MSP

Like Springer, et al, I spent some time sitting and talking with John Lear in person last year at the San Jose conference. As a fellow pilot and ATS enthusiast we dove into a few interesting sub-topics.

There is no doubt in my mind that he is an intelligent, entertaining, engaging, personable, gregarious and very knowledgeable individual.

He's also dead wrong on several key points (IMHO). Unfortunately, Mr. Lear has convinced himself he is more right about things for which he has only marginal or anecdotal evidence than those that may disagree with said 'evidence'. This is what got him into trouble.

Like others in this esteemed forum who have difficulty expressing themselves and their positions with diplomacy and perhaps a bit of savoir-faire, Mr. Lear became frustrated and instead resorted to condescension and ridicule.

The sad thing is that he clearly is a walking encyclopedia of fascinating first-hand experiences and he is now no longer in a position to share some of those directly with us.

As an esteemed admiral once screamed to a Navy pilot we all know: "...you're mind is writing checks your body (ego) can't cash." It seems that John Lear's ego got the best of him.

I watched John's new Camelot interview. Yes, there's a lot of the same stuff we've been reading about here, as well as a fair amount of unfair ATS-bashing and mostly conjectured 'theory' - some of which is so far out there I can only dream that it could not be possible.

One parting thought: If just a tiny fraction of what Lear says is true we're all in for a few big surprises...

I hope one day we'll get the rest of the story...

...or maybe I should hope we don't...

Good luck all - and keep looking up!

[edit on 5/4/2008 by Outrageo]

Gee Mark,
I am SO SORRY your being put through this ringer.
I am shocked at John's behavior here as I am SURE you are.....you know him pretty dang good and I bet you did not see this coming. Those who took him to be a very knowledgeable person did not see this coming either....sheesh.

I am sad for all the DRAMATICS........I am sorry that ATS lost an interesting conspiracy master...but at the same time if he is willing to go around saying things that are so BLATANTLY untrue it makes everything he was saying on this site suspect, and THATS what I am sorry about..........puts it all in a questionable light.

Dangit John you let us all down and made your self look bad while doing it....

Originally posted by theRiverGoddess

I am sad for all the DRAMATICS........I am sorry that ATS lost an interesting conspiracy master...but at the same time if he is willing to go around saying things that are so BLATANTLY untrue it makes everything he was saying on this site suspect, and THATS what I am sorry about..........puts it all in a questionable light.

Dangit John you let us all down and made your self look bad while doing it....

In my opinion, John Lear had to say the things he did in order to cover his own behind. Lets face it, he went so far out on a limb he had to be called on it and he couldn't put up or shut up.

Either ATS was right for giving him the boot or ATS was out to get him. Those were his only two options.

If he admitted ATS was right to boot him, it would make him look like he was wrong, so it had to be our fault.

In order to maintain the world he lives in, He had to say we're the bad guys and were out to get him.

It's sad. He should of had more control of himself and the situation.

He has only himself to blame, but he won't do that. Instead he blames us.

I wish him peace in whatever or wherever his path takes him.

I like John Lear and will listen to what he has to say till the end. As for being a follower of those who put him down, not me. I read somewhere this Simon Gray guy is cloaked in suspicion beginning with his ATS founding days back in the 90s.

Hear Ye!, I draw my sword and demand John Lear be reinstated without sanction or further restriction.

Ya know, it seems famous people always have someone standing by to tear them down.

I'm sorry but I must say that I have read a lot of stuff on this site that is pretty damaging to 3 letter organization's credibility, and if it was being run to "sway public opinion" they are doing a horrible job.

I have never been censored in any way, and have posted things and replied to threads that would have "disappeared" if it was in fact being manipulated by COINTELPRO or any other black op.

I have never seen a thread "disappear" which says a lot in and of itself. John Lear has some theories that I know to be true. He also has some outlandish claims without a breath of evidence to back it up. He also seems to be a seriously high strung individual.

I am really glad I found this site, and have learned much important info. About 95% of the members here really are attempting to deny ignorance, about 5% have some serious issues, or are disinfo agents.

(Edited for drunkenness)

[edit on 4-5-2008 by downtown436]

Thanks for posting these videos here! I have my own ideas and such. However what I feel is for me alone, and only me.
We all have our own thoughts and feelings about this Earth that we are all a part of. Some of us are bigger players than others.
While words can go a long ways, I would like to remain silent on my feelings here. ATS has been a great release for me and my ideas.
John Lear has always been extreamly helpful to me personally, and have spend many times on the phone with him.
If I can say anything, John Lear is out here to open your minds. True or not, its expanding ones thought process. And he has taken the time to answer all your questions, spent countless hours on these forums, for you the members. Dont be so quick to judge the man, he has good intentions.
And thats all I wish to say..
Thanks.

Originally posted by Springer
I would imagine John Lear has a mouthful of sour grapes is all there is to this...

Not just Lear, but Bill and Kerry too.

Personally, to me it seemed like B&K had more of an axe to grind than John did (still sour over SERPO, maybe?). They're the ones injecting the C.I.A. accusations into the discussion. Sure Lear mentioned the "collection point" concept, but there's quite a few members who wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that agencies monitor ATS. Many here believe that all internet traffic is monitored (to some extent or another); so the idea wouldn't necessarily be a shocker. It's also Bill reading the "insider e-mail" (claiming mod sock puppet activity) while John's more concerned with how zany it was that Zorg lived down the street.

Honestly, Lear didn't seem to insult ATS as much as some would make it out to be. He merely seems miffed that the Upper Staff wanted to keep the "CM drama pageant" private. That part had me a bit puzzled though...

John is no stranger to personal attacks and forum drama (they generally roll off him like water on a duck); yet this instance really got under his skin. Why the big concern over airing the "dirty laundry" in public? Between finding the offending posts, and the offending CM fessing up to such behavior, John had basically been "vindicated" already. This leads me to believe that his concern with making things public has more to do with taking Ritz down a notch or two, than with being mad at ATS as a whole.

It would have been nice if John could have been the bigger man when SO received the confession, but I think the chance to publically stick it to Ritz blinded him from that option. It all just seems really unfortunate and silly now that things are all public anyways (even though they've been so for quite awhile). While I don't agree with all of John's theories; he always made for interesting reading.

Hey this is Kthulu. I'm not sure why, but I couldnt log in with my normal account. Odd. I'd like to chalk it up to an accident, but now I see my last 2 posts here were ommitted. Why? they contained no foul language, or broke any rules. Did they? I would expect if they did someone would follow protocol and send me details about it.

I'm a bit curious as to whats truly going on here...

Yeah it must have been a hiccup. I got a mail giving me a new password, but I didn't ask for it. I'm back now.
My missing posts still worry me. Maybe the system had a problem. Its fixed now. I'll repost my comments tomorrow.

Gnight!

I rarely post on ATS, although I have been a regular visitor since it popped into existence (When it was a "normal cheap" website, using a free hosting service - about a zillion times better now though :p), sometimes I just post for fun or the one time I actually found some information out before anyone else said anything . But i do feel the need to comment on this...

The way I see it is that John Lear was being picked on by a few people, normally on ATS someone just posting something negative in a thread for the sake of being insulting results in one of those "courtesy edits" with the nice little signs, or before that it was a mod snip telling them to behave etc etc. But that hardly ever happened on a Lear thread...

He probably got sick and tired of it, and with this being a conspiracy site and him being a conspiracy nut decided that "the powers that be" had it in for him.. fair enough ive seen crazier ideas here on ATS.

Then when he decides to bring the fact hes being harassed and nouts being done about it - hes quickly silenced and then forced to apologise.. for being the victim!

Wouldnt it have been better to delete all the offending comments etc, and put in a little mod edit " Weve deleted these, they werent of an acceptable standard, appologies for any inconveniance caused - lets move on" rather than delete them, leave John thinking he was imagining things then demand an appology from HIM whilst telling the rest of us " yeah we deleted them but didnt really say anything, buts its all Lears fault! Because hes crazy and nobody likes John Lear anyway so who cares!?!"

And to be quite frank, it did seem like someone was out to get John Lear from the start. Ive seen stranger threads on this forum being treated with more respect!

" Someones drawing pictures and sticking them to my fridge! " - Real example, absoloutely no proof but the person wasnt hounded the way Lear was.

I wouldnt be surprised if someone comes around telling us his head blew up, grew back 3 times in a row ... and gets better treatment than John Lear.

Originally posted by redmage
It would have been nice if John could have been the bigger man when SO received the confession, but I think the chance to publically stick it to Ritz blinded him from that option.

Lets make one thing real clear.

I did NOT edit any posts. I did NOT lie about editing any posts. There was nothing to "confess" to. I made the statements, I never edited them.

However, someone did.

I thought it odd that SO emailed me to ask me if I said those things. I said of course, but wondered why he didn't just go look for himself.

Looking at the other thread, my comments as far as I can tell are exactly as I made them last time I looked. So, if I edited them to cover my a$$, why would I have edited them back. Thats ridiculous.

So, why they were supposedly edited, and who did it, I don't know. I can swear to any of you on everything you or I hold holy I did not edit out anything I said. I didn't lie to anyone about them either.

What went on I don't know, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be the pawn in this game.

So, make no mistakes about it, nothing was edited by me, and there was nothing to "confess" or "lie" about. I am FAR beyond pissed off to think someone edited posts in my name.