WEU Readers Force WE Editor Out of Closet

Group posting power by the learned readership of WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored (WEU) following an investigative article by WEU's own Shaolin_Monk has pushed the shadowy forces behind the anti-Andrew Cohen blog "What Enlightenment" (WE) out of the closet and into the light.

On November 26, 2005 we continued our ground-breaking investigative expose of the real agenda of ailing anti-Cohen blog, "What Enlightenment". We revealed that WE blog was likely to be the demon-seed creation of Hal Blacker, one-time editor of an early in-house, pre-glossy version of Cohen's now mainstream What is Enlightenment magazine (WIE), before being fired. Ouch!

Shaolin's article presented evidence that the shadowy agency behind WE blog was blocking questions about the identity of WE blog's founding editor, Helene. Blacker, who it is believed started WE blog, hid behind the female name, Helene. Later, Blacker's revealed partially revealed his association with WE blog in a desperate bid to attract a bored, but inquisitive, readership.

However, posts still came from both "Helene" and "Hal Blacker" who appeared to being playing some kind of male-female tag match. Fact being stranger than fiction - it now seems that Mr Blacker was playing with himself!

Just 7 sweet days after Monk's published Hal Blacker Probe Blocked by WE Blog, Hal Blacker angrily responded on his own blog, WE, with an invective spewing rant - an irrational and unnecessary non sequitur of a lead-in to an ancient article about Andrew Cohen which he was trying to revive.

Monk's WEU post attracted an all-time high published comment average, currently clocking 34 comments with about 125 unpublished comments (deleted for libel and abuse). The actual comment total, 150, is three times higher than the most irrelevant comment chain total appearing on WE blog.

Small wonder then that Blacker would be seething mad! Blacker's WE blog has only been able to attract a few Adi Da posters and philosophical speculators.

It seems that Blacker is unable to find credible backers since anyone connected to Cohen, including current and ex-, have finally figured out Blacker's dark agenda. An agenda which has nothing to do with the "reconciliation" which Blacker once falsely claimed.

In his latest post, Blacker, ever the cunning lawyer, lathers on the negative adjectives and virtually accuses Cohen of breaking the law - well, not quite, but er ... sort of ... almost. If you don't believe that is possible then just read this piece of classic Blacker Double-Speak (BDS):

"In addition to the direct difficulties Cohen often creates for close students who wish to leave him, including threats and acts perhaps just this (or the other?) side of false imprisonment (see my previous article Karma Will (Literally) Cost You And Leaving Isn't Easy), there are psychological reasons why leaving a group like Cohen's can be very difficult."

Gasp! Blacker, master of the switch, wasn't hired and then ignominiously fired by WIE for no good reason.

Just in case we-the-reader don't get the "bitch" of the message, then Hal shows himself to be a witch-hunt general as he artfully crafts psychological and pejorative terms to create a damning pseudo-diagnosis of the Cohen condition:

• "threats"


• "abusive"


• "Prison Experiment"


• "fearful, depressed, neurotic, suicidal shadows"


• "psychological coercion"


• "abusive groups"


• "psychological trauma"


• "disempowering students"


• "abusive spiritual communities"


• "emotional violence and psychological abuse" "betrayal
  of trust"


• "spiritual rape"


• "trauma"


• "emotional trauma/shocks, humiliation and degradation"


• "inescapable trauma"

Tragically for Blacker, he has ostracized himself from those who gave him some love and respect. He has miscalculated the genuine kindness and spiritual values of those he once knew, believing their sympathy to be acceptance.

They would not accept the hemlock.

Blacker's supreme over-confidence was also evinced by the insensitive and unethical handling of the WIE magazine subscriber list, whose members (like Don Beck), were outraged to find themselves the recipients of unsolicited WE spam.

We leave it to our learned readers to further investigate this case and vote with your comments - as you have already done.

(And for our Denial of Service spammer out there: If you feel that this just a case of those on pot calling the kettle Blacker then you are welcome to comment but please no more unfair hack attacks.)

Stop Press: Blacker's blog no longer lists Blacker or Helene as the blog editors. We invite you to draw your own conclusions.

Hal Blacker Probe Blocked by WE Blog

Our last post WE Blog Re-Opens Commenting (and Censorship?) attracted some interesting comments (along with the usual ton of attack jibes by one pro- What-Enlightenment blog supporter which we spared you the injustice of scrolling through screen loads of.)

The comment came from Vince The Prince who said on November 09, 2005 that What-Enlightenment blog had posted his comment and then deleted it. This tends to confirm our prediction that WE blog would be reinstating their harsh censorship policy upon WE commentators. In fact, it took just 7 days for the true nature of WE's faceless editors to be revealed after our editorial post on November 02, 2005.

We have always maintained that WE blog's claim to be interested in dialogue with Cohen and his followers is faux. Furthermore, we suspect that WE blog exists only to heap extreme negativity upon the Cohen community as a prelude to a potentially lucrative legal class act ($$$).

It is entirely relevant that Vince noted the legal language of Helene, WE blog's editor, who supported and "parsed" a poster who made little sense of an earlier poster who made even less sense. We know that Helene does not normally post "her" own comments. So it is entirely reasonable to ask why she would rescue the previous convoluted poster?

We suspect that Helene is actually Hal Blacker, the second listed WE editor.

However, Hal has never admitted this even though it costs him nothing to reveal it. Indeed, Hal stands to lose more by keeping quiet about it. The only reason why Hal would keep it hidden is to appear to have a additional supporter, instead of it being generally known that Hal Blacker is the sole-architect of WE blog.

So, what was so shocking about Vince's posts that WE blog, which claims to be "uncensored", had to censor? Well nothing really unless you are a WE editor and/or Hal Blacker with something to hide.

OK, over to Vince and let us see what got him booted off of WE blog:

The last three comments appear to come from three different posters but
look deeper - look beyond the veils...

"Caution Cult Members On The Track" - better argued then the other angry anonymous posters

"Anonymous said..."- argues like a real lawyer. Who else could keep up with all the twists and turns of Daniel and Brian's discussion? (well, ok, Daniel failed to return to the debate even though Brian was quite provocative).

Helene - Only Helene could follow - ' "anonymous" does a really great job parsing stillanego's presumptions'

Hmmm... me thinks are the last 3 posters the same person? Hal Blacker, this blogs editor is a lawyer. "Helene" seems to be Hal's posting name.
And more - me wonders why start posting about Adi Da anyway? No news on Cohen?
Trying to attract new readers?

Or was Hal fomerly with Adi Da and trying to kill two birds with one stone?

WE Blog Re-Opens Commenting (and Censorship?)

WHAT enlightenment??! blog (WE) the self-titled and supposedly "uncensored look at self-styled "guru" Andrew Cohen" re-opened it's commenting on 22 October, 2005 with this great comment

Anonymous said...
Hey, great article, and thanks for opening back up for anonymous comments.

It remains to be seen how long commenting will stay open. There had been a complete shut down at WE blog for many months - no posts - no comments - no explanations nada. We thought maybe the editor had had a nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile we at WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ have kept commenting open all of the time.

But we had to put many abusive comments in the Uncensored Bin $$$ - which is publicly viewable because we don't want to censor anything.

We hope that WE blog's newly revived "anonymous commenting" policy is not a cynical PR stunt to reviving flagging readership numbers.

We would therefore expect that they will be lenient on posters who are perceived and pre-judged as critical. Many WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ posters have so far found that they could not air their valid points on WE blog.

Such censorship is antithetical to blog culture and we ask WE to honor their promise of offering "an uncensored look at self-styled "guru" Andrew Cohen"


Trash_Admin of
WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$

WE Blog Censors Own Supporters

by Shaolin Monk

What a month it has been! Following a wave of unseemly spam attacks on a our little blog of freedom, which we suspected came from only one individual, we restricted commenting to registered bloggers only. This reduced the number of named posters down to just three. It then became clear that the source of many posters came from one deranged person, who misguidedly believed that he could scare traffic away from WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$.

However, our move was a nothing compared to "WHAT Enlightenment" blog's more draconian methods since they stopped all posting completely and requested comments to be sent by email. Very few posts arrived except the regular ones from some self-appointed therapist who posts love on WE blog and hatred on our WEU blog. Talk about schizo-bozo-mundo!

WE have reopened their commenting facility but only after ensuring that controversial posts (anything that contradicts their line that 'Andrew and IEF have no spiritual value') can be removed within seconds.

We heard from one distinguished and respectable poster, Mr Graham Blenk, who found that all his posts had been removed from WE blog simply for questioning the tone and mood there.

Below we print Mr Blenk's post which was removed and re-posted over 20 times (by persons interested in truth and free expression). If you feel that WE blog is cutting your tongue and discouraging free-thinking then post on our blog, and like Craig Tindale says keep posting on their blog. Your message will be heard.

Graham Blenk:


Censorship is truly back in full swing here at WE blog. My post from May 21 is constantly being deleted by the faceless censors.

Taking a tip from Craig Tindale I am taking the liberty to repost it, so you can see what is really happening here.

The thread sequence is slightly off-beat but the relevancy is still preserved.

To the last anonymous poster:

I don't see how your quoting another anonymous poster's unsubstantiated claims that WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ was created by a Brad Roth does anything but spread error. Nor does the fact that there hasn't been any further posts at WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ give any much needed validity to your remarks.

If the same logic was applied then presumably Hal Blacker is Helene since he has stopped posting, WE deleted swathes of posts and stop all commenting for weeks.

The posting continued unabated over at WEU blog clocking up 65 comments until posters had to register. See http://what-enlightenment-uncensored.blogspot.com/2005/03/been-censored-look-in-uncensored-bin.html

Craig Tindale then posted WEU that WE should allow open posting once more, and WE then complied. This would validate WEU's existence as a necessary voice in this censored debate.

As for deleted posts they can probably be found in the WEU Uncensored-Bin.

Considering the ridiculous spam/flames by opponents of WEU, though, I would not be surprised if they were just not deleted.

Interestingly, you say nothing about the gay blog that came and went. Possibly the same author as the "That Enlightenment" blog of which you refer?

Since WE blog re-opened its commenting the posts have become quite nasty towards Andrew. Or am I just too sensitive?

Graham Blenk

Intelligent Readers "BoyCott" Hal Blacker's WE Blog

Ex- and current Cohen students have been staying away from "WHAT enlightenment??! " blog in their droves over the last few weeks as two non-students Freebird and Craig T. battle it out for blog comment supremacy.

Meanwhile, WE blog's heavy-handed Stalinist revisionism has been revealed for what it is by a poster to our exposé blog. The poster found a copied-and-pasted WE blog page dated April 18 which was posted on April 26 to a yahoo group by Sam Vaknin before it was censored!

You can compare the censored and uncensored pages by following these two links:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/message/3688

http://whatenlightenment.blogspot.com/2005/04/through-mirror-darklycontinuing-to-try.html#comments

You will immediately notice that the WE blog editors have been indiscriminate in the censorship and have permanently erased important on-topic Cohen-related issues.

Hence it follows that WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ is the only safe, secure place for your IEF and Andrew Cohen related posts.

Whilst non-students of Cohen battle it out at WE blog (passing disparaging remarks at WEU for not rising to their time-wasting off-topic taunts), the WE blog editors have hit back with a vindictive, dictatorial wave of reader's comment cullings and a statement of supremacy.

Today, the typically silent Helene (or is that Hal Blacker?) was aroused enough to post a curt "Note From The Administrator" in which she (or he) took the time and space to lambast our WEU blog. In effect, Hal/Helene was telling their readers not to read out blog. The micro-managers hands always revealed!

Writing in the plural form, Hal/Helene stated "we feel that further discussion of the WEU "counter-blog" is unwarranted and unnecessary here ... We feel it should not be taken seriously." He/she further warned of more censorship (as if it was not already a common activity) "we also will be periodically removing comments that do not further the discussion here."

Hal/Helene then promised the non-existent audience, "we hope to have a more substantive headline posting in the near future, and appreciate your patience."

Note that WE blog does not actually have a "substantive headline". The last two ultra-vile WE blog posts have been roundly criticized by all concerned for their violent language, namely "Missing THE POINT " and "Of Cohen, Koresh And Authoritarianism."

It looks like WE blog is failing in its agenda to spread rumour and terror among Cohen's spiritual community. Anyone inside the community know that Hal Blacker repeated assertion that there is a "Code of Silence" is a malicious load of old crock!

Many readers have been hurt by the insensitive politics of WE blog's hidden micro-mangers. We hope that our blog WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ can provide them with a space for honest refelction and healing.

Insanity Rules WE Blog Editor's Hidden Agenda Exposed by Recent Posts

WE Blog Should Apologise for Hate-Mongering Posts

The carefully hidden insanity which drives the secret chiefs behind the anti-Cohen blog "WHAT enlightenment??!" has been bursting out in the last few days.

In series of prominent front-page posts, which can only be labelled as "kamikaze" the editors have given their tacit approval to a plan to turn Foxhollow into a Waco-style killing field!

Whereas before WE blog's ultra-aggressive posting style was carefully crafted to avoid libel the latest posts have thrown caution to the wind and made some wild accusations. In war it seems that truth is always the first casualty!

Trying to create linkage between Andrew Cohen and to vilified cult-leaders David Koresh and Jim Jones the posts goes as far as to suggest that Cohen is poisoning people. This type of inflammatory post reveals WE blog's real agenda which is nothing less then to provoke an all-out attack on Cohen aimed to decimate his religious group. The libellous post on the front-page of WE blog stated ?Why don't we just condemn Cohen, as a David Koresh and Jim Jones type, poisoning and misguiding people, report him to the authorities..."

I want to make it clear that we at WEU blog abhor WE blogs hate-mongering posts and ask them to print an apology and retraction.

However, we seriously doubt that they will. We at WEU have long warned about the nameless faceless micro-managers at WE blog. We could be congratulated for exposing their motives.

The stink at WE blog has been clearly rising through the floor-boards for sometime. Before the latest call-to- arms post (something which we predicted), the WE editors mysteriously posted a delirious off-topic rant that outraged even their staunchest supporters. The post which trivially started with "I think, therefore I am not" ended abruptly and obscenely with "OK, mind-fuckers, bring on the hair-splitting philosophizing."

Suspicious has been the fact that the post's title was changed after a WEU blog supporter asked where the post had come from, since had not appeared in WE blog's recent comment section. It is therefore suspected that the post came directly from the desk of WE blog editors.

It might seem a small thing but changing the posts title also changed the post's URL.

Thus the post previously was:
"Missing THE POINT by Anonymous"
http://whatenlightenment.blogspot.com/2005/04/missing-point-by-anonymous.html

became the new, slightly modified:
"Missing THE POINT"
http://whatenlightenment.blogspot.com/2005/04/missing-point.html

Why did the WE Blog make such a small change?

Two reasons:

1. Realizing that WEU would catch wind of their unaccountable post they sought create distance by assigning the now typical signature "By Anonymous". However, the post does not come from their comments page nor does it say that it was received by email. Of course, WE may choose to claim that they omitted this piece of information, though it should be noted that they have been scrupulous about including it all previous occasions.
2. By changing the title they changed the URL - a definite no-no in the blog-sphere unless you want to confuse researchers and lose readers. In this case, the WE blog would have been happy to throw everyone off the scent.

Several WE and WEU blog supporters have raised similar issues only to be met by a wall of silence from WE blog, who clearly are scared to duplicitous account for their actions. More cynical is that they feel unaccountable to their loyal but naive readership who they have taken for a ride in service of their commercial anti-cult agenda (hence the "$$$" that we pin at the end our expose blog title "WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$").

Unsurprisingly, WE blog's response includes not only silence but the indiscriminate mass culling of dozens of comments - something which it seems to do routinely, even to those from loyal WE blog supporters, just to remove one irritating comment.

If you want the full inside story then you will only get it at one place - here at
WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$

WE's Masterminds Cynically Play Roberta - WEU Reply

Roberta,

Your recent reading of "WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored" blog is likely to have been confusing because of an on-going spam attack by opponents of our blog. Whether these spammers be pro-Andrew, anti-Cohen or just pranksters - who knows?

We set up "WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored" blog because we felt that "WHAT Enlightenment" blog was strongly blocking valuable and valid areas of debate about Andrew and the anti-Cohen camp. It was felt that WE blog would stifle real communication. I have already posted about how I feel Hal Blacker, the only clearly named editor of WE blog, was disingenuous in his invite to AC to come and talk on WE blog given WE's sometimes vicious posts against AC.

I also feel that WE's agenda is being shaped by nameless, faceless individuals who are interested in cashing in by spreading misery and disaffectation among ex-IEF students and then offering counselling and legal services. These anonymous capitalists have no interest in the welfare of the students or spirituality.

While I appreciate that you can only speak for yourself and your words. I have, nonetheless, taken the liberty to direct attention to the outer usage of your thoughts and ideas on WE blog. I noticed, perhaps cynically, that your first article was promoted on the frontpage of WE Blog as "A Letter Of Appreciation For Andrew Cohen By Roberta Anderson". However, a simple reading of your article reveals that your words were both for and against Andrew and not as the editor's subtitle wants us to believe wholly in favor of Andrew.

You write that "these evil WE blog editors" are "all of us are very old and
dear friends". If that in fact reveals that you know who are the nameless, faceless editors then it also shows that they know you. They would also know that you would, in the interests of fairness, seek to present a balanced article. But they did not present you in that light. Instead they put you in the spot light as a Cohen-supporter and then waited for the critics to tear into you. When you later replied and pointed out even more explicitly than before your doubts about Andrew's community, they then posted your doubts. It all looks like some kind of political confession staged (mastered by the communist regimes) for the waiting world media (or just little old WE Blog). I must say that Hal is a genius mastermind!

I am pretty sure that you will not easily become the prey of an exit-counsellor but the bait on a hook you may have naively become.

Shaolin Monk

Roberta Anderson's Reply to WEU Blog

Imagine my surprise in finding my post to the WE blog appearing here on this site. It's probably my own dim-wittedness, but having read through the posts on this blog I can't figure out what you guys are up to or why you are spending so much energy on what appears at least to my reading to be pretty silly stuff. It's certainly okay to be concerned over "unfair censorship", but to make a whole blog devoted to this boggles my mind just a bit. Despite the fact that you apparently have several bones to pick with the WE blog, the truth is that at least as I see it, there are actually a number of sincere people posting there who are genuinely struggling together to sort out and come to a deeper understanding of their own experience. And they really want to do this because they are actually interested not only in their own evolution, but in trying to learn more about what works and what doesn't work in this arena for everyone who finds themselves drawn into wanting to grow and evolve. They want to do this because they actually do care about these rather delicate and profound matters of the human heart! I can't seem to find anything like this "heart" on this blog.. And furthermore (!), my own experience does not to me resemble anything like my "psyche caving in"after being played and being manipulated by some kind of insidious "good cop-bad cop routine"! Wow! I am merely continuing to see more and more deeply into this pretty confused situation because I am continuing to look..and look?and look?because of my own genuine interest in wanted to come to terms with it all. I definitely agree that I "still have some way to go to sort out my reality"!?and I frankly hope that this will always be true. One of the many valuable things I learned from Andrew is that the best we can to is to find tentative hypotheses about the truth of anything, and to keep our eyes open and continue to try to keep examining whatever it is. This matter of "Truth" I think is a pretty subtle matter, and whenever we think that we "have it down" we have lost it. This is part what I tried to express in my last post about the difficulty of holding All Of It simultaneously.

And as for "being casually dropped" by these evil WE blog editors in a week or so ?I can't even wrap my mind about what this could mean. Despite what may appear to be differences between us in trying to come to terms with our own experience, the fact is that all of us are very old and dear friends. Even if we may appear to have different ideas, we actually respect what each other have to say and know that we can all learn from each other--there is something far deeper going on than one face or another appearing and disappearing every week on one blog or another.

And re your last point about the "manipulative exit counselors fighting over my spare dollars"! I don't unfortunately seem to have too many spare dollars, and if I did, I am pretty sure I would find quite a few other things to do with them than using them to get "deprogrammed" or whatever!

With warm regards,
Roberta Anderson

WE Blog Spin Roberta Anderson's Story

Ex- but pro- Cohenite supporter apparently had a sudden conversion experience on "WHAT Enlightenment" blog. In just under 4 days, Roberta's psyche caved in to an alternate "good cop -bad cop" routine played out in front of an assembled audience of self-appointed exit-counsellors, anti-cultists and fundamentalist Christians.

The WE blog editors wary of recent criticisms over bias, bigotry and distortion decided to throw their critics a bone. A carefully pared down one when they posted Roberta Anderson's balanced but shaky testimony on the front-page of their blog. Boldly tagging it as "A Letter Of Appreciation For Andrew Cohen By Roberta Anderson" they insulted their readers intelligence in assuming that they would not see through their ruse. Roberta clearly was an ex-Cohenite who had her doubts but this fact apparently went unnoticed by the canny WE blog editors.

How could the WE blog editors have missed the fact that Roberta wrote in her first sentence that she wanted to "damn" Cohen?

None the less, WE's more dumb posters started to attack Roberta - perceiving her, on the implication of their editors, as a Cohen supporter.

Until, at least, Roberta mentions her doubts about Cohen, then suddenly WE blog is full of hugs, kisses and back-slapping. Hallelujah! Roberta has been brought back to her senses and saved from Satan! If only. The reality is that Roberta was cynically played. She still has some way to go to sort out her reality.

WE blog went as far as to frontpage post a second piece by Roberta in under a week. This is unheard of at WE blog whose productivity is slower than a camel's fart and half as generous to real critics i.e. the unstaged, non-stooge variety. A sort of recantation "Through a Mirror Darkly?continuing to try to see clearly! Further Reflections from Roberta Anderson" has appeared today.


So what will happen to Roberta? After a week she will be casually dropped. But don't worry manipulative "exit-counsellors" will fight for a share of her spare dollar$ if they can convince her that she needs their "help". But more about these anonymous anti-cultists and deprogrammers in WE blog later including "Freebird" later ...

Persecuters Will Not Be Prosecuted Say WEU Founders

By Shao-lin Monk

We have been overwhelmed by the generous posts in support of our new blog WHAT Enlightenment Uncensored $$$ !

Less praise-worthy however, has been the flooding of our baby blog with unsolicited spam from the heavily censored "WHAT enlightenment??!" blog which can only be seen as a Denial of Service attack.

Is it not enough that "WHAT enlightenment??!" Blog supporters

• delete our incisive posts within seconds of publication?


• retrospectively deletes all our old, previously accepted, posts?


• engage in identity theft - posting at myself and Binman on WEU?


• libel both Binman's wife and another frequent poster , Gordon?


• send their angry "anony-mouses" like an army of Agent Smiths to post misinformation and drivel?

It would seem that the "WHAT enlightenment??!" camp cannot accept viewpoints contrary to their own. It was for that reason that a huge number of "WHAT enlightenment??!" readers called for an alternative blog. They simply did not trust the integrity of the so-called "WHAT enlightenment??! Blog Administrators". How tragic!

Worse, is WE Blog's conspicuous silence in denying, reprimanding or criticising those behind the DoS spam attack on WEU. Instead, their supporters seem to be rejoicing in it. This is far below any normal standards of common decency especially on the Net where spam is universally abhorred.

However, we want to make it clear that we will not trace, prosecute or embarrass the perpetrators and fellow-conspirers of this foul strike against our right to free speech and freedom of press. We will not even suggest, as WE Blog sanctioned posters do, that they need cult exit-counseling - because that perpetuates the victim mentality business which WE Blog heavily promotes and endorses.

Instead, we send Metta (compassion) to all.

And when we say "May all beings be happy!" you can be sure that we mean it unlike Hal Blacker, whose reactionary comments to my (retrospectively deleted) post, in the thread hypocritically labelled post "To Heal One is To Heal All", were sarcastic and ungenerous.

Soon I will publish the posts which "WHAT enlightenment??!" Blog removed especially my questions to Hal/Helene. Clearly, there is a place for blog judging by the stir that it has already caused - and we still refuse to advertise it or spam any mailing list (unlike WE blog)!