Wake-up call (updated)

Someone at the Spiritualist Chat Room directed my attention to this posting by Victor Zammit. Why, I do believe he's talking about moi.

MICHAEL PISSPOT – He's not an empiricist, not a scientist, not qualified, knows nothing about scientific method, knows nothing about evidence - but he's negatively prejudicial against materializastions [sic]. He shows he's full of hatred, jealousy and green with envy, exudes sewer-level information – someone who tries to attack me. Michael Pisspot - a closed minded loser defeatist is too silly to rebut the afterlife evidence, too dumb and negatively prejudicial to understand objective, repeatable evidence, too much of an imbecile to understand intellectual afterlife substance. This Pisspot who tries to attack me shows he experiences too much frustration in not being able to rebut my hard core evidence for the afterlife – so he does the next thing he knows: he throws mud at the source of his frustration and LIES and cheats to mislead the unthinking readers. Wake up loser!

He seems just a tad, um, disgruntled, wouldn't you say?

In other Zammit-related news, a commenter named Veritas on the same thread (which is titled "Victor Zammit/DT" and is found in the Physical Mediumship Newsgroup; free registration required) casts some doubt on Victor's career as a lawyer. Veritas writes:

Five minutes research locates that his claim to be a 'solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court' is bogus. A solicitor is defined by possessing a practising certificate from the Law Society, and being admitted as a solicitor by the NSW Legal Practicioners Board. Only a Barrister is admitted to the "bar of the court" which is what the term Barrister means.

Zammit is making a misleading claim to inflate his legal qualifications (his scientific qualifications being nonexistent)....

Zammit says he is a "Retired Lawyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and the High Court of Australia." Is he trying to fraudulently represent that he was (is) a BARRISTER? It says on his bio details that he was a SOLICITOR, in which case he's not actually admitted to the Bar of any court (i.e. can't make representations to the court). 

Solicitors must instruct the Barrister to address the bench of the court, the Solicitor can't do this themselves (at least in the higher courts, as he listed). I'm no legal expert, but perhaps someone who is can look closely at the rule governing the way a Solicitor can represent themselves.

I know zilch about the legal system in Australia, so I can't comment on this statement. Anyone out there better informed than I am about this whole barrister/solicitor thing? Not that it really matters at this point; I'm just curious. (NOTE: see "Update" below.)

I'll admit that it always seemed odd to me that a high-profile attorney would write and reason (and even spell) as poorly as Victor does.

P.S. Further searching turned up two posts identical to the two published by Veritas, but appearing much earlier on a different site and attributed to someone named Scot. Is Scott the same person as Veritas, or did Veritas copy Scot's posts?

Anyway, the site includes this anecdote from hard-line skeptic Andrew Skolnick:

About a half year ago, I found myself being vilified and defamed by Victor Zammit on his crackpot web site. Rather than reply to him, which would have accomplished nothing, I created a spoof "Victor Dammit" web site, that is almost as funny as the original. He went ballistic. At first, he demanded that I immediately stop "defacing" his web site. He threatened both legal action and implied physical threats from his friends "on the East Coast." "If you knew who they are," he said in an email, "you would shit in your pants." So far, I haven't received any legal notices or any visits from da boys from New Jersey. As you can see, my spoof site is still getting almost as many laughs as his.

Sounds like Victor has been channeling The Sopranos ...

As I wrote on the Spiritualist Chat Room thread, I'm beginning to think Mr. Zammit is a few hops short of a kangaroo.

UPDATE (12-22-07): A contributor to the Spiritualist Chat Room thread named Mickey_D has this to say about Victor's legal background:

"Solicitor to the Supreme Court of NSW" is the full title of a NSW solicitor. This is what would appear on his practise certificate. He's not, therefore, claiming to be a barrister. Solicitors can (and usually do) represent clients at the pre trial stage in any court. By using the full title he's trying, possibly, to aggrandize himself but he's not lying about his legal qualifications.

Comments

[Cyrus]

I think there is no "truth" about the afterlife and that statement belongs in the mouth of the fervent believer.

The reason is because of the subjective power of the mind and where *you* decide you want to be. I think when Richard Dawkins dies, for all intents and purposes he is going to be non-existent. In some black abyss that he believes will await him after the chunk of meat in his skull deactivates. It's only doubt that could save him from this.

Osama Bin Laden is going to be praised in some dark world, surrounded by his hijackers and seventy two virgins who will never sleep with him lest they lose their virginity. Ouch.

And if all goes well, I'll be somewhere thinking "Wow, I spent so much time wondering about this on Michael Prescott's blog, I should have chilled out. Maybe I'll play a prank on him and make his typewriter spell out REDRUM a thousand times, hee hee hee"

[Cyrus]

Although hopefully, I'll outlive MP. I am like half his age after all.

[Markus Hesse]

I've just read thru his online book called A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife - Irrefutable Objective Evidence and I must say I don't think all it's contents constitute "irrefutable objective evidence," there are only a handful I'd consider solid enough to stand up to proper scientific scrutiny e.g. NDEs, reincarnation.

I mean, the guy cites very iffy examples like Dave Thompson, Helen Duncan ("a most magnificent materialization medium"), EVP, ITC, he appeals to authority by invoking long-dead scientists who were believers, ectoplasm ("There is ample proof that experimental materialization [ectoplasmic] should take definite rank as a scientific fact"), the Scole Experiment (experimenters agreed to NOT use infrared cameras or night-vision goggles), Ouija boards....hardly "irrefutable" by any means.

VZ makes the grave error of not properly and objectively examining BOTH sides of an issue before drawing a definitve conclusion, he sees what he wants and then runs with it, oblivious to the fact that he might be setting himself up for a fall e.g. endorsing Helen Duncan, DT, ITC, ect.

[lucyjane D]

I had a woman who promised me that when she died, she had parkinson's that she would come and visit me. The next time I went to see her she became slightly agitated when I again asked her If she would really infact come and visit me when she died..can,t remember the exact phrase I used died or passed on, she seemed oblivious what I was even talking about or offended I sensed? The whole thing was about her dying soon because of her illness is why she sprung this odd promise to begin with(her idea) she valued my friendship because of my ability to paint and do art, which she was quite accomplished herself, having painted religious saints etc around her living room. I think of her often and still wear her beautiful garnet ring she wanted me to have,last year I lost it somewhere while in church in the winter and looked in our car and parking lot when I couldn,t fnd it anywhere in the pew..a weeks later my husband found it in the trunk of our car laying easily where he spotted it...I looked thoroughly in the trunk too at the time it became lost? supernatural how it turned up? I am still waiting for her visit from the otherside or even a dream. We both beleived in a heaven. probably not in the same after revelation.

LucyJane D.

[Winston]

If you guys have lost faith in Zammit, then perhaps you'll find my treatise "Debunking Pseudo Skeptical Arguments Against Paranormal Phenomena" interesting.

http://www.happierabroad.com/Debunking_Skeptical_Arguments.htm

By the way, Dr. Zammit has some interesting videos out on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG3bGqFr9uc