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Natalee Holloway 4a

Dirty Cyber Games

So as June turns into July, while we still wait for the New York court ruling on the Holloway filing, behind the digital wainscot there is a stirring of rodents, some of them gnawing at the wiring.

Updated: 28/07/06

A quick review

Scrux departs

One of the blogs that has maintained a high level of civilised debate, Scrux, has closed for new posts just over one year after Natalee Holloway vanished on Aruba, although its excellent compliation of records and transcripts will remain searchable for the time being.

Love it or hate it, Scrux represents a valuable resource and archive for anyone truly interested in this case, and a great credit to “fairness advocate” Roger who has made an outstanding contribution and is moving on.

Blog wars and Trolls

For some time now a number of posters with different on-line nic-names but strikingly similar writing styles, spelling mistakes and posting patterns have been busy de-railing discussion and formenting petty arguments and flame wars in the more reasonable forums.

The primary tactic is bald assertion of Joran's guilt.

A secondary tactic is endless questioning. The same questions based in the same falacies are repeated endlessly in different forms. Rebuttal is simply ignored and the questioner changes tack with even more questions.

Another stunt is clogging message threads with huge quote-stacks surrounding some petty off-topic dispute or discussion that quickly makes the original thread topic unfollowable.

Scanning a number of blog message threads exposes an apparent pattern of co-ordinated and orchestrated attacks on many of those threads. These are not discuss-ers but propagandists with a clear script to be asserted, and any deviance from that script by others to be attacked and discredited by any means. In a word, fanatics.

Even so, these fillibustering techniques are of limited effectiveness in an on-line blog.

Paradox rules. The more often the same misrepresentations are shot down by factual reference and clear logical argument the weaker the HMI case actually becomes. Some blogs are claimed to, and apparently do, censor posts that deviate from the HMI line. In general, the more extremist the pro-Natalee blog, the more heavily the posts are “moderated”.

The most extreme sites simply don't post anything even slightly critical or questioning of their view. Less extreme blogs such as Scared Monkeys are heavily interventionist.

By contrast there are a group of free-thinking blogs where only certain rules apply, and which are mainly only lightly moderated for really disruptive pests. There have been pests and bannings in all directions, but the worst and most persistant offenders by far have been pro-HMI fanatics.

The normal problem is an unwillingness to actually engage in a discussion of a particular topic but simply repeat dubious and perjorative assertions. Their efforts seem to be fairly counter-productive to their apparent ends.

Trolls

Addendum: 28/7/06

Following this case I have read thousands of posts on dozens of blogs. The vast majority are simply drivel. Of those that are worth reading, most are still not particularly noteworthy.

But this is one of those thoughtful post-in-a-thousand that deserves to be given wider circulation, and comes from Freedom of Blog. (it is verbatum, but the layout and highlighting are mine)

http://freedomofblog.com/view_topic.php?id=1819&forum_id=29
“MoonShadow”
Posted: Thu Jul 27th, 2006 08:57 am

“JR-Dutch Attorney in USA”- wrote:
I do have a curious interest in the individuals involved in the slander/drama games since it is all somehow connected to the NH case. I have no problem with seeing your opinions about that here.

The depth of slander/drama that is connected to the NH case IS a very curious thing to me too.

I cannot conceive of where the need to slander the VDS family, Julia Renfro, Charles Croes and the entire Island of Aruba comes from, especially to the extent as seen on Scared Monkeys and Blogs for Natalee. A few members from those two boards post at RWV and to a lesser extent, Refs...

Even if the face of a total lack of evidence (That we are aware of, anyway) OR..in the face of absolute evidence that some of those who are slandering have produced fraudulent, or manipulated evidence, like the recent Julia Renfro police statement...somehow...the motivation to continue the slander persists. It's like the lack of evidence, or outted false evidence is irrelevant...and is given no thought.

And these are the people who proclaim the loudest that they want answers and the truth for the family, yet...how can you discover the truth without considering evidence, a lack or evidence, or the motivation to create false evidence?

I don't get that. And none of those who are slandering seem to want to try to explain it. The only possible explaination I can think of, is that this case has attacted more zealots than other missing persons case for some reason. Are there political motivations in both countries (US and Aruba) working behind the scenes to draw this type of person to this case? Just a guess, but I say yes.

The drama that I've seen recently at Refs, IMO, has NOTHING to do with NH. I think it may be a combination of boredom due to a lack of news...building anxiety of why the Judge is taking so long to rule on the forum matter in the NY case and then add to that recipe a few (what I call) professional trolls. These people couldn't care less about the truth or justice...it's about THEM.

In Scandinavian folk tales, a troll is a scary thing that lives under a bridge, and dedicates its life to preventing the bridge from being used for the purpose for which it was built.

In internet lingo, a “troll” is a participant whose participation is counterproductive to the purpose of the forum he/she intrudes on. Trolls may be classified by motivation: the psychopathological troll and the missionary troll.

The Psychopathological Troll

The psychopathological troll is motivated to participate in an internet forum by psychotic delusions or compulsions, or by a neurotic seeking of false self-esteem. The postings of a psychotic troll are unlikely to make any recognizable sense at all. The neurotic troll either seeks to obtain false self-esteem by manipulating the reactions of others, or by demonstrating his/her “power” to destroy what others enjoy.

The neurotic troll is often manipulative enough to make it past initial moderation. However, the neurotic troll's primacy of consciousness soon becomes evident: rather than respond substantively to the actual claims and arguments in the articles, links, and posts attacks, the neurotic troll twists and spins whatever he/she responds to, into whatever he/she has “the perfect answer” to. The original poster points out the manipulation and the neurotic troll is exposed. After two or three incidents of this type the neurotic troll usually gives up or if not, is ultimately banned.

The Missionary Troll

The missionary troll is motivated to participate in an internet forum by a desire to win others to his/her favorite belief system, or at least to convince others that his belief system is worthy of consideration and respect because of an implied superiority. Thus, missionary troll's primary focus is on how his/her participation in the forum affects the consciousness of group-while in contrast the truly selfish participant's primary focus is to improve the correspondence to reality of his/her own knowledge.

If an error of fact or logic is pointed out to a rational man/woman, he/she will change his mind. If an error of fact or logic is pointed out to a missionary troll, the troll will either (1) ignore the correction, and proceed without regard to it, (2) misrepresent the correction and proceed regardless, (3) divert the argument in another direction to hide and ignore the substantive import of the error that was just identified.

Indeed, the surest sign that one is dealing with a missionary troll is that he/she is totally evidence-proof and never changes his/her mind. The substantive litmus test of rationality versus trolldom is, when he/she does one celebrate a success? Most celebrate success when they bring their mind to a more accurate identification of reality. A troll considers himself/herself successful only if he/she changes the minds of someone else. A troll never changes his/her own mind.

Anyway...JR, you asked for opinions...those are mine

Aruban boycott

If we are not witnessing the actual collapse of HMI activity on the Internet, then at least a contraction and redirection of effort to more underhand anti-Aruban activity. It is clear that some HMI fanatics at least have seen the writing on the wall, know they have lost the initiative and public attention, and are shifting to try and breathe some life back into the Aruban boycott.

From Beth Holloway's point-of-view the Aruban boycott was always an unwise idea and it has only managed to set back the search for Natlaee by alienating Arubans and getting Beth's Equuisearch team banned from Aruba. Very helpful.

Which leaves us wondering who gains from a revitalised boycott (which was always a silly and misdirected idea that deserved to be buried) and has now even demonstrated its counter-productive ineffectiveness? They must be blind or mad. Or this boycott isn't really about Natalee Holloway.

What changed my mind?

On a personal note; after reading the Jan 2006 Vanity Fair article on the case (so despised by HMI) I came away with a general impression of Joran van de Sloot's guilt in the rape and murder of Natalee Holloway, and the participation or at least complicity of the Kalpoe brothers. That was my first contact with the case and the impression left was essentially Beth's script.

By chance, three months ago while I was Googling something quite else, up popped “Fuck Natalee Holloway” on 'k9-something'. I should have ignored it, because what started as a really casual name recognition from the VF article became a personal project, and eventually this site.

Today, thanks to HMI fanatics, I am personally sure that the Kalpoes are totally innocent, and strongly feel the evidence points away from Joran.

My opinion changed not because I was attracted to “Natalee hater” blogs, but because I was confronted and repelled by fanatical and hysterical pro-Natalee sites that insulted my intelligence and treated the reader as a mindless idiot with no memory. This is emerging as a common story.

HMI goes underground

Lately some of the more extreme so-called pro-Natalee sites have apparently folded up their tents, erased their archives, and vanished. For all their aggressive bluster and assertions of never giving up the fight for justice for Natalee (read lynching Joran), various clear warnings seem to have struck home that they are at serious risk of defamation law suits.

No matter. These folk are about to discover that everything posted on the Internet is archived somewhere.

But just because they have vanished from view doesn't mean HMI have abandoned the field of battle.

Dirty Cyber Games

This week (9/7/06) a Google blog search on “Aruba” by date-order produced a whole slew of new blogs created since the beginning of June, around 60 in only a few days.

Somebody has been busy cloning a mass of blogs with Aruba in the name. These phony blogs with near-identical structure have their sole content apparently automatically derived from a site that streams news and press-releases. It's a form of Spam known as “name-squatting” or “cyber-squatting” to blackmail the legitimate name owner.

At first glance most of the names chosen seem fairly innocent, but a number of them give the activity a clear slant - they represent a political and economic attack on Aruba, some companies that deal with or in Aruba, and the government of Aruba. One subset give a clue to their origin and intent featuring names that relate directly to elements of the Natalee Holloway case.

It is effectively the internet version of a poisonous whispering campaign aimed at nothing less than the overthrow of the Aruban government, an aim once called for by Natalee's mother Beth Holloway.

Typical of the first type is this one;

http://aruba-prostitutes.blogspot.com/
The aruba prostitutes blog
This is where you can find much information on aruba prostitutes. I hope you like the content of aruba prostitutes blog. Please bookmark aruba prostitutes blog for future reference.

There are support sites out there for sex workers, but his isn't one of them. It's part of a pattern of creating blog sites with name that generally give a negative association and impression of Aruba. Taken together the names form a revealing pattern of word association.

These can be formed into groupings of ideas;

  1. creating simple unsavory associations with Aruba
  2. pretending to be related to businesses in Aruba
  3. pretending to be related to travel to Aruba
  4. pretending to be official Aruban information sites
  5. mentioning or alluding to elements of the Natalee Holloway case
  6. targeting Aruban touristism with negative images
  7. targeting Aruban investment with negative images
  8. other

Some even manage to combine more than one element into one title.

1. creating simple unsavory associations with Aruba

2. pretending to be related to businesses in Aruba

3. pretending to be related to travel to Aruba

4. pretending to be official Aruban information sites

5. mentioning or alluding to elements of the Natalee Holloway case

6. targeting Aruban touristism with negative images

7. targeting Aruban investment with negative images

8. other

All of the above 57 blogs seem to derive their entire content from keyword matches to this press release and news feed;

http://www.prweb.com/news/20060316/index.htm

This means that they are all updated frequently and will therefore dominate the first few pages of Google, particularly in a date-ordered search when looking for the latest.

Since they show the headlines of news feeds (and since no news is good news, and good news is no news) they will tend to disproportionately show sensational and unfavorable views of Aruba. Effectively a secret anti-marketing campaign obviously in support of the crazy Boycott Aruba concept.

The Renfro Statement

Added: 21/07/06
Corrected: 28/7/06

Last week a graphic appeared on “pro-Natalee” blog Scared Monkeys Blogs For Natalee (BFN), which was alledged to be a translation of a statement made to police by Julia Renfro, editor of Aruba Today concerning an incident that occured between her and Jug Twitty.

The incident is detailed in VF p143, but can be summed up in the quote “Jug acknowledges losing his temper and cursing at Renfro, but denies pushing her” [with sleeping babe in arms]

As a result Renfro made a complaint against Jug to the police, and made a statement.

This is the alledged statement as it appeared on Scared Monkeys Blogs For Natalee (BFN), offered as proof that Renfro accepted money from the Aruban police to made a statement against Jug Twitty;

This obscure document has generally been seen as lacking credibility, and a transparent and illiterate attempt to smear Renfro. The reason for this is still obscure, but some feel it may date from the early weeks when Beth Twitty and Julia Renfro were working very closely in the search for Natalee.

VF recounts several incidents where Jug lost his temper, three times in the van de Sloot drive, again later at the Holiday Inn meeting, the Renfro incident, an incident with restaurant owner Angela Munzenhofer, and another with Charles Croes, these three having initially been close to the Twitty's. It has also been rumoured that he lost his temper more than once at police headquarters, once turning over a table.

Now here is an obvious attempt to discredit Renfro, the only one to make a formal complaint about Jug Twitty's actions. This is all the more surprising in that Jug Twitty only denys the pushing, not the abuse and yelling which was witnessed by hotel staff.

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