Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: [Repost] Tom Moran: A Chronicle of Lies 
Summary: Marty Kelley chronicles a sampling of Tom Moran's
         lies and misrepresentations
Reply-To: mkelley@U.Arizona.EDU

As Mr. Moran seems to have difficulty substantiating his
claims, it is clearly important to remind him of those which
remain unproven. This file is maintained by the author, Marty
Kelley, and will be published monthly to the net on an
automated basis. The file will be updated by the author as
often as Mr. Moran makes claims he cannot, or will not,
substantiate.

Archive/File: pub/people/m/moran.tom/morans-lies
First-Published: 1996/01/15
Author: Marty Kelley 
Original Subject: To Err is Moran (Was: Tom Moran Recognizes his Errs!)

Recently, Tom Moran has been asking participants in alt.revisionism to give
him evidence that he he has ever lied.  He professes to be shocked--SHOCKED!
--that anyone might think that he is anything less that scrupulously truthful
in his posts to this forum.
 
To help Mr Moran out, I would like to re-post just a few of Mr. Moran's more
notable departures from the truth.  I post this list with three disclaimers:
1) It is not comprehensive.  There is a high degree of probability that Mr.
Moran has made other incorrect statements.  I invite other participants in
alt.revisionism to submit other examples of Mr. Moran's errs. 2)  It is
possible that Mr. Moran posted some of these incorrect statements out of
simple ignorance, stupidity, or ineptitude in reading--i.e., without
deliberate intent to mislead.  While all of the Moranic statements listed
here are indeed untrue, some of them may not therefore be "lies" in the
strictest sense. 3) These summaries of Mr. Moran's inaccuracies are rather
brief. If requested, I will happily re-post the entire articles in which his
inaccuracies are discussed.
 
Let us begin with a recap of the immortal Moranism that inspired the 
title of this thread:
 
On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, tom moran wrote:
 
> kmcvay@nizkor.almanac.bc.ca (Ken McVay OBC) wrote:
 
[snip] 
 
> >Which article on Nizkor claims there were 3.1 million German
> >Jews, Mr. Moran?
> 
>    Okay, sorry. I take note of "Government general". 
> Tom Moran is capable of recognizing his errs. Any others?
                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
I replied:
 
Happy to oblige you, Mr. Moran.  Here are a few:
 
1) "Errs" is a verb; "errors" is the noun you may have meant.
 
2) You mistakenly thought that the U.S. Supreme Court, in _Lynch v. 
Donelley_, called a nativity scene a "secular symbol." The Court did not.
 
3) You mistakenly claimed that Justice Harry Blackmun, in his decision on 
_Allegheny County v. ACLU_, implied that the menorah was a "secular symbol."
Justice Blackmun did not.
 
4) You mistakenly claimed that the Supreme Court, in _Capitol Square v. 
Pinette_, held that the menorah was a "secular symbol."  It did not.
 
5) You mistakenly claimed that, again in _Capitol Square v. Pinette_, the 
Court ruled that the menorah had "cultural significance beyond religion," 
when in fact, this assertion was made by the *losing* party in the case, 
the State of Ohio.  The Court *rejected* that argument in its ruling 
in the case.
 
6) You have some decidedly odd ideas about how many trees can fit inside 
the territory of Israel.
 
And that's just the first list.  The following additional "errs" come from
subsequent posts in the thread, and from posts Mr. Moran has made elsewhere.
 
7) In the post "Debby's specifications; her own words,"  Mr. Moran quoted a
Nov. 8, 1993 letter to the _New York Times_ by Deborah Lipstadt badly out of
context.  Mr. Moran stated that Lipstadt's standard of proof was that "the
tears of the survivors should be sufficient proof."
     However, while these words do appear in Lipstadt's letter, they do NOT,
as Mr. Moran asserst, constitute Lipstadt's sole criterion for judging the
historical facts of the Holocaust.  In fact, the line Mr. Moran cited is a
position to which Lipstadt objects: She introduces that line by attributing
it to _critics_ of Jean Claude Pressac's book on Auschwitz, and she follows
it with the following paragraphs:
 
          In the best of all possible worlds they would be right.  The
     testimony of those who suffered as well as the corroboration of the
     perpetrators themselves would be the ultimate proof.  But eventually the
     survivors will pass on and future generations will seek this
     documentation.  Moreover, we live in a world where a small group of
     people, many of whom have an anti-Semitic and neo-fascist agenda, labor
     assiduously to convince future generations that the Holocaust was a
     hoax.  Irrespective of their motives, their claims are utter nonsense.
     	But as recent polls have shown, some people have been confused by 
     them.  They see the deniers as the "other side" of a debate.  Mr.
     Pressac's book adds to the pre-existing mound of documentary evidence
     and testimony which describes how such a horror happened.  
 
 
(Source: _NY Times_, Nov 8, 1993, p. A-18)
 
8) [Submitted by Josh Klein  on Sat Dec 16]: He
claimed that Hilary Ostrov had written articles for both the _L_A_ Times and
_The_New_York_Times_.
 
9) He claimed, in one of his earliest posts to alt.revisionism, that the 
movie _Schindler's List_ had "bombed" at the box office, when in fact it 
did very well in theaters and as a video release, in addition to winning 
Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director.  
     Mr. Moran e-mailed me to insist again that _Schindler_ had in
fact "bombed," and that despite the awards, very few people had actually gone
to see the movie.  He claimed that it had actually opened and closed in just
a couple of weeks, then quietly disappeared.  To follow up on his claims, I
asked about _Schindler_ in rec.arts.cinema.past-films. I received several
messages pointing out that _Schindler_ grossed over $110 million in 1994
alone (it was released in late 1993 in several cities); in the film business,
any picture with sales over $100 million is usually considered a
"blockbuster."  Further, another person, citing _Variety_ magazine, wrote to
say that _Schindler_ had the 13th-biggest box-office revenues of 1994.  Those
statistics are hardly consistent with Mr. Moran's assertion that the film was
a "bomb."
 
10)  Mr. Moran has falsely claimed that the Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives
(at the University of Arizona) is dedicated to proving that Jews are superior
to Catholics.  Needless to say, no statement of the sort appears in the Bloom
Archives' web pages; Mr. Moran just made that up.  The website (whose URL I
don't have handy at the moment) _does_ include an article about the
Southwest's crypto-Jews, which Mr. Moran selectively and misleadingly quoted
to give the impression that the Bloom Archives pursued an anti-Catholic
agenda.  He ignored several followup posts which pointed out that the Bloom
Archives' website includes statements about the rich cultural diversity and
commitment to religious freedom of the many peoples who settled the
Southwest.
 
11)  Mr. Moran has frequently misattributed postings from one writer to
another.  Most commonly, he has mistaken Danny Mittleman for me.  In the most
recent case of this "err" (Sat, 16 Dec 1995, in the thread "Zioexaggeration
= 200,000,000"), Mr. Moran also falsely accused Danny of lying:
 
Mr Moran wrote:
 
> dmittleman@bpavms.bpa.arizona.edu (Daniel Mittleman) wrote:
> >    And, I have a great grandmother who was Jewish and Wintered in Tucson
> >    in the 1940s.  Tom, thanks for showing me this archive.  It may 
> >    help me track down some information about where she lived and 
> >    what she did in Tucson.
 
>    At one time you claimed to be Catholic and then you claimed to be a
> Unitarian, and all the time I knew you were lying. I could see in your
> writing.
 
I replied that *I'm* the ex-Catholic Unitarian, and Danny pointed out that
although he had a great-grandmother who was Jewish, he is himself an 
atheist. Mr. Moran did not reply to these corrections.
 
12) Mr. Moran has falsely accused his opponents of holding beliefs which they
do not.  In the past, he has falsely claimed that I wish to restrict all
discussion of "Holocaust revisionism" to alt.revisionism. I do not believe
that, and have never stated that I seek any such restriction. (Mr. Moran's
assertion is doubly ridiculous in that it assumes that I have any power to
enforce such a restriction!)
     Most recently, Mr. Moran has falsely claimed that Keith Morrison
supports the criminal prosecution of Holocaust deniers for their beliefs. 
Despite repeated calls to produce evidence of this claim or to apologize for
insulting Mr. Morrison, Mr. Moran has not responded.
 
This is, I believe, only a partial list.  I invite other alt.revisionism
participants to post (and/or e-mail to me) other examples of Mr. Moran's many
"errs".
 
>>>Posted and E-mailed to Tom Moran and to the Nizkor webmasters.
Followups to alt.revisionism, please.  E-mailed 
replies to this message will be posted to Usenet unless otherwise 
requested by sender<<<


----------------------
Marty Kelley  (mkelley@U.Arizona.EDU)

"I loathe people who keep dogs.  They are cowards who haven't 
got the guts to bite people themselves" --August Strindberg

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