These are good points. One point, to expand on the ones that Mr.
Jones makes, is that the "forger" must have (a) known about Paul
Truong's itinerary and (b) possessed the means to (1) fake a message
from that location, or (2) go there him or herself.
Now what is the likelihood of that? The Great Puppet does not, to my
knowledge, post his itinerary on the net. While it would not surprise
me if he has such an inflated notion of his importance that he would
in fact do so, I don't see that he has. All of which leads to the
conclusion that the "Perp" is either someone who knows the Great
Puppet him or herself, or the Great Puppet himself.
A final note: much is made of Sam's low reputation, as if smearing the
accuser somehow reduces the legitimacy of his complaint. While it's a
familiar story ("The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!'"), one has to ask the
question of whether the Perp's actions have in any way contributed to
this distortion.
We already know for a fact that the incessant drumbeats of La Popessa
and The Great Puppet against Mr. Sloan did nothing to reduce his
profile while he was a member of the EB, and may well have contributed
to the perception that Mr. Sloan was part of the problem with the
USCF. (Can we now FINALLY conclude that this was not in fact the
case? Or will the uptight crtitics of Mr. Sloan still insist on their
field day?)
This is all becoming, rather deliciously, a case of the chickens
coming home to roost where they should have all along. Whether or not
Mother Hen and/or the Little Rooster are found to have perpetrated
this massive campaign against Mr. Sloan, they have now accumulated
enough mud on their own faces from their stroll through the barnyard
to cast doubt on any enterprise they may undertake in the future.


On Oct 10, 4:11 pm, wrote:
As an attorney, I frequently am involved in cases in which the
opposing sides have radically different views of the facts. It
becomes important to determine who is and is not telling the truth.

Anyone who says that they can look someone in the eye and tell if they
are lying is simply wrong. It cannot be done that way. The only way
in which I have had any success is trying to put myself into the shoes
of the party and ask, "OK, believing what they say, what would I do if
I were in that situation?" If the party did not do what I think would
have been the natural thing to do in those circumstances, perhaps the
party is not telling the truth about what actually happened.

Put yourselves in the shoes of someone who has been accused of posting
under false names. And suppose that someone else has discovered that
the IP addresses of the posts were those of your computer. And that
those IP addresses had been following your international travels. And
suppose that you really did not do it.

If it were me, my immediate reaction should be that someone must have
been plotting at great lengths to get me for years. Someone has been
cleverly posting these false posts using my IP address knowing that,
sooner or later, someone else would discover the truth and place the
blame on me. Someone out there has been maniacally working overtime
to ruin me. And they're still loose.

If I were in those shoes, I would consider Hal and Brian merely to be
dupes who fell into the true villain's trap. They innocently became a
part of his devious plot. If it had not been them, sooner or later it
would have been someone else. I would turn over heaven and earth to
find the true villain and put a stop to any more devious plots.

In my mind that would be the natural reaction of anyone. Now, is that
the reaction we are observing?

Stephen Jones