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Weird online TOS article

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Dupin

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This article recently appeared on the website of The Objective Standard (you might need to use your mouse wheel to scroll below the photograph):
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2019/07/regarding-carl-barney-and-scientology/
The whole business is weird.  From a purely propaganda point of view maybe they should have just ignored the attack instead of throwing petrol on the fire.

 

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The metaphor should be clear:
Fire <==> disagreement between TOS and the attackers.
Petrol throwing <==> publicizing it.
I doubt if many of TOS's readers had heard of the attack before the article, now they all have.  From a “pragmatic” perspective TOS should have ignored the attack and let it die a natural death.  Instead they infuse more life into it, that is, they unwittingly advertise the attack even as they fight it.  It’s a tar baby.

 

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44 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Where's the fire?

Dollars to donuts Dupin is Mark from ARI Watch.  Trying to drum up interest in his piece attacking Carl Barney.  There was some discussion of it recently on OL:

https://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/topic/17234-barney-tells-his-story/

My comment from over there:

In earlier discussions I came out as a Barney defender, since I felt Mark's attacks had a lot of unfairness in them.  But I don't have the time or energy for a rehash.  It's out there on older threads, and it looks like Biddle is covering the rebuttals well enough.  A sample:

First, to criticize a private college for accepting students’ funds that come from government loans and grants is almost as absurd as criticizing a private supermarket for accepting customers’ funds that come from government welfare programs.

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2016/05/the-times-smiles-and-sneers-at-carl-barney-ayn-rand-and-private-colleges/

Note to any ARIan readers: think of this as payback for James Valliant.   Think you've got the high ground?  Review The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.

 

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53 minutes ago, Dupin said:

The metaphor should be clear:
Fire <==> disagreement between TOS and the attackers.
Petrol throwing <==> publicizing it.
I doubt if many of TOS's readers had heard of the attack before the article, now they all have.  From a “pragmatic” perspective TOS should have ignored the attack and let it die a natural death.  Instead they infuse more life into it, that is, they unwittingly advertise the attack even as they fight it.  It’s a tar baby.

 

Fire is disagreement? That strikes me as weirder than anything in the TOS link. If it has "life" insofar as a disagreement exists, why shouldn't they publicize their disagreement? People disagree all the time. Are you not supposed to publish disagreements as if they should be hidden "for propaganda purposes"? Why? That's just weird. I don't read TOS or even care about Barney one way or the other. But your post is weird.

Edit: Also, ARI watch are white nationalists, so you probably should disagree with them.

Edited by 2046
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I thought “fire” was appropriate given the intensity of the debaters on both sides.

The attack Biddle refers to may have been by Richard Ruggiero rather than ARI Watch.  He had posted something about Barney on TOS’s Facebook page and Biddle (I guess it was) quickly deleted it.  Now he attacks from his own Facebook page.  You can find it by searching Facebook for Richard Ruggiero – he’s the first one listed – and scrolling down the timeline.

 

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40 minutes ago, Dupin said:

I thought “fire” was appropriate given the intensity of the debaters on both sides.

The attack Biddle refers to may have been by Richard Ruggiero rather than ARI Watch.  He had posted something about Barney on TOS’s Facebook page and Biddle (I guess it was) quickly deleted it.  Now he attacks from his own Facebook page.  You can find it by searching Facebook for Richard Ruggiero – he’s the first one listed – and scrolling down the timeline.

 

I don't see any debaters. I see an article on TOS telling you Biddle's intention to do what he wants, and your intention to complain about it.

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  • 2 months later...
3 hours ago, Dupin said:

Craig Biddle has added two new parts to his TOS article, the original article is now Part One.  Part Three is by Carl Barney except for a one sentence introduction by Biddle.

Part Two is like Part One but there are new details in Part Three.

 

 

Hey Mark, here’s an analogy for you: Carl Barney is the Werner von Braun of Objectivism.  This likens Scientology to Nazism and Objectivism to the NASA of the moon landing.  See the American flag here:

s110780573-1.JPG

You have to thank this guy:

VB-TIME.jpg

Sure, you have strongly negative feelings towards ARI, so you’ll object, but, there’s icing on the cake: this makes you the Tom Lehrer of Objectivism. 

Not so bad, eh?

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  • 3 weeks later...

The first sentence of Craig Biddle’s article is:

Quote

I recently posted a tribute to Carl Barney by Richard Minns and the Ayn Rand Center Israel, which honored Carl for his enormous, decades-long contributions to the advancement of Objectivism, free minds, free markets, and capitalism.

I’d never heard of Richard Minns.  Searching on him you get a lot of newspaper articles and court records about his time in Houston, assuming it’s the same guy – which would be really, really weird if it is.


Anyone here have firsthand knowledge of him?

 

Edited by Dupin
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This British article reviews and event in London 2016 that featured Yaron Brook and Richard Minns.  
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/xd5k5k/dawn-foster-ayn-rand-yaron-brook-388
It’s the usual hatchet job on Rand – Wikipeidia says the author is an avowed Leftist – but this part made me perk up:

Quote

In a biography passed around on the evening, Minns is described as a former boxer, doctor, journalism professor, athlete and health spa owner. One detail that is notably omitted is that Minns, who has a notable Texan drawl, fled the US in the 1980s when his ex-lover Barbra Piotrowski was shot by hired men who failed to kill her but inflicted wounds that left her wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life. At one point, Piotrowski – who has since changed her name to Janni Smith – maintained that the men who were jailed were  assassins hired by Minns. He was eventually arrested for multiple accounts of passport fraud and deported, though the damages claim was overturned on appeal.

Weirder and Weirder.

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dream_weaver,

I don’t know why you speak in a riddle. In the Yukon you pan for gold nuggets in the mud of rivers.  If you found a gold nugget – something that might be one – you would examine it very closely.

Maybe you intend a metaphor something like this:  If you pan for interesting facts surrounding the TOS article and find something bizarre, you should examine it very closely.

Well, someone has.  If you search on “richard minns”  you can find the article “Who Is Richard Minns?” and it is a pretty thorough look at the case.

 

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dream_weaver,

Carl Biddle wrote an article about a tribute to Carl Barney, saying it was wonderful.  The article featured a photo of Barney and Richard Minns being quite chummy:
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2019/06/a-wonderful-tribute-to-carl-barney/
Yet Richard Minns is a truly awful man.  If morality means anything no decent person would want to be associated with him.  Biddle and Barney, and others in Objectivist circles, are making a big mistake.  On the other hand it may not be a mistake; it's hard to believe they don't know about him from the Internet.

 

 

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I find the cases against Barney and Minns to be compelling with solid evidence. The defenders of Barney sound ridiculous. I'm not surprised that our better intellectuals have not attempted to defend him. Their goodwill cannot be purchased. I don't know of anyone defending Minns yet.

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On 11/1/2019 at 5:48 AM, Dupin said:

The article featured a photo of Barney and Richard Minns being quite chummy:

That's sculptor Richard L. Minns in the photo, not Richard Minns.

EDIT: Nevermind. https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/tenth-court-of-appeals/1995/667.html

 

Edited by Eiuol
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Eiuol,

It is the sculptor Richard Minns whose middle initial is L, good grief.

The reason he ultimately won the lawsuit is that he fled the country when it was brought and stayed out.  His claim that he couldn’t attend court because of a medical condition is ridiculous.  

Barbara, the victim, was not rich.  I doubt she could afford to continue fighting.  Both the criminal and civil aspect was a travesty of justice.

This was a cold blooded  murder-for-hire  and Minns got away with it.  Read more about it than the link you posted.

ADDED: Search on

richard minns ayn rand

and read him saying at an exhibition of his "Atlas Shrugged" sculptures in London that he is an Ayn Rand hero.   It is beyond disgusting. 

Edited by Dupin
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It is allegedly a cold-blooded murder-for-hire.

Richard Minns has never been charged with her Barbra Piotowski's attempted murder.

Former health spa tycoon wins appeal

Dudley Bell of Houston and Robert Jess Anderson of Spring were convicted of hiring the men who shot Piotrowski and sentenced to 38 years in prison. Two California men -- Nathaniel Ivery and Patrick Tony Steen -- were convicted of carrying out the plot and received 35-year sentences.

 

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dream_weaver,

It’s true that Ivery (the trigger man) and Steen (the get away driver) were convicted and sent to prison.  As was Robert Anderson who hired them.  As was Dudley Bell who hired HIM.  

And Richard Minns hired Bell.  He was the “prime mover,” the man who pulled the trigger on the process that ended with four bullets in Barbara’s back.

See
http://www.leagle.com/decision/19891558768sw2d79011469
and
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-5th-circuit/1120575.html

 

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