More Lies from "Cosmos"

Updated 9/15/2010

Cosmos spent the week before the 9/11/10 anniversary flooding the internet with this attack on me: http://911truthnews.com/a-response-to-kevin-barretts-attacks/

I wrote a response, but decided not to post it (thanks to Carol Brouillet for the good advice) until after the anniversary. Here it is:

More lies from "Cosmos"
A Response to the Latest Cosmos Hit Piece
by Kevin Barrett

Cosmos has been posting vicious lies about me, under various fake names, at his TruthAction blog since 2007. Yet he writes: "I personally had never spoken out against Barrett until very recently..."  I guess if you maintain a "Barrett promoting disinfo" thread at your website for three years, and post vast amounts of defamatory material under fake names, you're not saying anything "personally."

Cosmos claims that I "bizarrely" accused him of being "a 'wrecker' getting him (Barrett) kicked off conference lineups..."  In fact, I never said that Cosmos or anyone else had ever succeeded in getting me kicked off any conference lineup. I simply reported what Ken O'Keefe told me: That some lunatic calling himself "Cosmos" had -- completely out of the blue -- emailed Ken a long series of false and/or misleading attacks on me in an attempt to wreck the Debunking 9/11 conference in London this past July.   Instead of clearly confirming or denying this, Cosmos invents a straw-man distortion of what I actually said, and calls this charge "bizarre" and "venomous."  Yet he has never specifically denied sending the attack email to Ken O'Keefe. Bizarre, venomous...but true!

Cosmos, if you didn't send that (bizarre, venomous) email to Ken O'Keefe, just say so! Then we'll figure out whether you're lying once again, or whether there are two lunatics named "Cosmos" out there stalking me.

Along with his lame attempt to blow smoke over his email to O'Keefe attempting to wreck the London symposium, Cosmos invents another straw-man lie about the issue of his not-so-uncle Mickey. According to Cosmos, I charged him with "hiding the fact that it was only a family friend who was murdered on that day" (not his actual uncle). In fact, I never charged him with HIDING anything. I just pointed out that he has, on several occasions, claimed that he lost his uncle on 9/11, while failing to disclose that the person in question was not his uncle. His repeated references to "Uncle Mickey" have led many of the people who have heard of Cosmos to believe that he is a 9/11 family member.  Within the 9/11 truth community, and in American society in general, "9/11 family member" is a very privileged category. So while Cosmos sometimes does mention that "Uncle Mickey" was not really his uncle, and sometimes doesn't, the upshot is that he has deceptively created the impression that he is a 9/11 family member when in fact he is not.

Here are three recordings of Cosmos referring to "Uncle Mickey" without mentioning that Mickey was not his uncle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV5KBwfmv04 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d7uGdaSM7o
http://www.truthnews.com.au/radio/wordpress/?p=668

Regarding the latter: "In an interview with Hereward Fenton on Truth News Radio Australia last November 11th, 2009, Cosmos repeats the lie that his 'uncle' was murdered. When the interviewer follows up and asks him about his uncle, Cosmos does nothing to disabuse him from being under the impression that it was his blood uncle."    -http://wtcdemolition.com/blog/node/2963

Here is Cosmos's original bio at 9/11 Truth News: "Cosmos is an artist and musician whose uncle was murdered in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001." 

After spewing doubletalk non-denial denials about the "Uncle Mickey" issue, Cosmos finally confesses: "And quite frankly,  if I choose to refer to Mickey in the way that I remember him,  then I will damn well do so. For me to call Mark Rothenberg my 'uncle Mickey' is 100% accurate – that’s who he was. And history will not look kindly on individuals who have attacked those who lost loved ones on 9/11." In other words, by falsely claiming that he lost an uncle on 9/11, Cosmos thinks he can get away with slandering other people and wrecking 9/11 truth events without anybody saying boo. In Cosmos's world, family members -- especially fake ones -- are off-limits to criticism, no matter what they do. 


* * *


Original post:


re: "Is Cosmos Living Out a Double Identity,  as an OCT Supporter As Well As A Truther?"

Some self-styled 9/11 truth activist who hides behind the pseudonym "Cosmos" apparently has enough time on his hands to devote himself to sabotaging my speaking events. A few years back, I was on the short list for a speaking tour of Australia, but got passed over because John Bursill of 911truthOz, who says he's a friend of "Cosmos," believed "Cosmos"'s lies about me.

Others who have invited me to speak in New York, California, and elsewhere have also been inundated with scurrilous emails from "Cosmos" and his friends. For example, Sander Hicks, organizer of last year's We Demand Transparency conference, told me last year that he had been deluged by emails from the usual suspects. Sander added that Cosmos buddy Jon Gold had ranted, raved, and threatened him, saying "If he (Kevin Barrett) attends your little shindig, then I will never trust you again. It's really that simple."

This summer, Ken O'Keefe told me that "Cosmos," Brian Good, and the rest of the tribe had deluged him with emails about what a terrible guy I was and how Ken shouldn't share a stage with me in London. Fortunately, Ken was willing to devote several hours to looking into their allegations, which, he concluded, were false and/or misleading. "Why are these people harassing you, Kevin?" he asked me over Thai food at a West London restaurant not far from his home. I told him the truth: I really don't know.

I added that if I were a paranoid conspiracy theorist, I would suspect that the whole wrecking crew--"Arabesque," "Col. Sparks," "Cosmos," Brian Good, Jon Gold, Michael Woolsey, and Victoria Ashley -- were agents of influence. That's basically what Webster Tarpley said at the 9/11 truth conference in New York in 2007.  Barrie Zwicker, who like Tarpley (and unlike the members of the wrecking crew) is a brilliant, accomplished voice of 9/11 truth, also suspects foul play. According to Barrie Zwicker "(the 9/11) perpetrators have assigned disinformation specialists to attack the honest citizen detectives of CIT." The suspected "disinformation specialists" he is referring to are essentially the same people and anonymous entities listed above...the same people who devote enormous amounts of time to sabotaging my speaking events, asking bookstores not to carry my books, and in some cases physically stalking my wife and me.

Now, Adam Syed has discovered evidence to back these suspicions.  In his new article "Is Cosmos Living Out a Double Identity,  as an OCT Supporter As Well As A Truther?" Syed shows that "Cosmos" repeatedly claimed to be the nephew of 9/11 victim Mickey Rothenberg, before changing his story and saying that Rothenberg was just a family friend. Is "Cosmos" really Andrew Bernstein, an OCT supporter who also claims to be a nephew of Rothenberg? Maybe, maybe not. But any way you slice it, "Cosmos" has hidden his true identity and lied about being a family member, while devoting his time to sabotaging other 9/11 truth activists and events.

Why anyone would trust this character an inch is beyond me.

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