WASHINGTON — Esquire magazine published an error-laden piece by Phil Bronstein Monday, and the magazine’s editors are scrambling to excuse glaring factual errors in the 15,000-word profile of the bin Laden shooter — errors exposed by Megan McCloskey of the military publication Stars and Stripes. Esquire has understated medical benefits available to the shooter, and is using ad hominem attacks and appeals to emotion to distract readers from inadequate reporting. Mr. Bronstein is the chair of the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The Esquire piece, “The Shooter,” falsely says that the retiring member of the elite counterterrorism unit will receive “no health care, and no protection for himself.”
This morning, the editors contradicted themselves in this selection responding to Stars and Stripes’ corrections:
There are benefits available to combat veterans via the VA . . . so what does Bronstein mean when he writes, “Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family…”? Well, he means precisely that. Because while the Shooter may be eligible for some direct benefits from the VA, his wife and two children are eligible for nothing.
The Esquire editors’ disjointed apologies for a writer surely a powerful, well-connected force in the publishing world — he used to be married to Sharon Stone — would have some coherence had Mr. Bronstein only asked (fair, compassionate) questions about the fate of the shooter’s family, instead of plainly writing about what “he [the shooter] gets from his employer and a grateful nation.” Additionally, “The Shooter” claims that there will be “no protection for himself or his family” [emphasis added].
Having been called out for sloppy reporting, the editors sidestep their readers’ ability to reason, and stoop to sleight-of-hand emotional appeals. Monday morning they wrote: “What good does it do the man if he can go to a government chiropractor for his neck when (heaven forbid) his child could get sick and wipe out the family?” Tacit in this appeal to sympathy with the bin Laden shooter’s family is a mea culpa: Indeed the shooter could go seek out care on the government dime. But pride has overcome the editors’ responsibility to issue accurate, timely corrections. Instead they resort to ad hominem attacks on Megan McCloskey, baselessly insinuating that she had not read the piece. Esquire’s editors condescend: “Now granted, ‘The Shooter’ is a long story, lots of words to sort through.”
The Esquire editors identified this morning Ms. McCloskey’s second “mistake:”
In the Stars & [sic] Stripes piece, she further writes:
“Like every combat veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the former SEAL…is automatically eligible for five years of free healthcare through the Department of Veterans Affairs. But the story doesn’t mention that.”
[ . . . ] McCloskey is wrong here. We refer her to this paragraph deeper in the piece: “There is a Transition Assistance Program in the military, but it’s largely remedial level, rote advice of marginal value: Wear a tie to interviews, not your Corfam (black shiny service) shoes. Try not to sneeze in anyone’s coffee. There is also a program at MacDill Air Force Base designed to help Special Ops vets navigate various bureaucracies. And the VA does offer five years of benefits for specific service-related claims—but it’s not comprehensive and it offers nothing for the Shooter’s family.”
Esquire throws out some red herring about the Transition Assistance Program, a point that, once again, seeks to sidestep the much more substantive free medical attention available. Stars and Stripes’ second correction is also wrong, they say, not because it points out that medical benefits are available but because veterans have to take the initiative to enroll once they leave.
The editors close with a second type of appeal to readers’ emotions — all the while sporting like a medal their own desire to co-opt the patriotic image of the bin Laden shooter:
So if there are people out there, journalists included, who think that the status quo is hunky dory [Stars and Stripes never said it was -- a strawman], the government’s approach to these extraordinary veterans is just right or even adequate [Another strawman], and who are too quick to incorrectly call another journalist’s work “wrong” [as Esquire has this morning] rather than doing their own work on the profound problems of returning veterans, then, as the cover of the magazine says, the man who killed Osama bin Laden truly is screwed.
John Tiessen repeatedly accused my favorite literary character, Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout, of child molestation. Mr. Tiessen also made overt threats of physical violence and nuisance litigation (accompanied by veiled threats of violence in the courthouse) towards this fictional character, whom I love, so I made this video with Mr. Tiessen’s “greatest hits.”
In one of these threat-laden pedo-accusation videos targeting Kilgore Trout, Mr. Tiessen received news of his uncle’s death. His telephone ringer was a police siren, and after a short eulogy, he returned to the overt threats and Kilgore Trout pedophilia-talk.
John Tiessen worshipped Barrett Brown and emulated his bathtub Tinychat wine session, substituting a glass of orange juice for Brown’s red wine. Immediately following the arrest of Barrett Brown, Tiessen threatened the CIA, FBI and DHS in a sweeping rebuke of authorities who are all afraid of the “big ol’ surprise [he] got waitin’ for ye.” Brown was arrested for threatening an FBI agent’s children on September 11.
The Anti-Leader’s handbook is a satirical work of fiction I authored parodying the type of people who like to preach to Anonymous.
I’ve received a lot of strange responses to this work, some more horrifying than others, but John Tiessen’s psychosis was definitely the most chilling. I made an agreement with John to end these kinds of activities, and months later he posted a defamatory comment to this glorious and infallible publication attacking the ethical hacking professor Sam Bowne — recently interviewed by my co-editor-in-chief Tyler Bass — with pedophilia accusations, simply because he disagreed with Bowne’s logical, cool-headed critique of Anonymous.
John Tiessen rose to fame within Anonymous by slandering the conservative “ex-military” hacker th3j35t3r, a “patriot” who temporarily shuts down violent Jihadist forums.
Wednesday Boy Scouts of America decided to hold off until May a decision on whether to allow gay scouts or scout masters. The May vote, to take place in Grapevine, Texas among 1,400 national council members, will decide a potential religious and ethical turn for the federally funded youth organization. For decades the Boy Scouts have been encumbered by debates about the meaning of their public support in relationship to values that critics see as springing exclusively from the domain of religion.
Six years ago this reporter interviewed the unsuccessful plaintiff in a suit regarding the religiosity of the Scouts’ oath, which calls on members to be “morally straight” as well as theistic, in relationship to the organization’s federal funding. Scout leadership has decided that that oath prohibits homosexuality among the ranks. The report was filed in relationship to a Virginia beat.
At least someone among the federal authorities funding the Boy Scouts long ago began to imagine that they could pin God down like a frog under academic dissection – any confounding or appealing mystery to the whole matter officially sliced into ribbons by the magistrate. Though it has left the womb of the state, religion has hung onto the establishment by a seemingly indestructible umbilical cord.
The cord’s transfusion flows strongest at times like the beginnings of legislative or city council meetings, wherein a preacher or other religious authority is called in by custom to ceremonially unite representatives through their faith in a mortality-transcending god or gods.
In 2007 Rajan Zed, a Hindu cleric from the Reno-based Indian Association of Northern Nevada, appeared as Senate guest Chaplain, to jeering:
That same year, 2007, Attorney General Bob McDonnell — now the governor of the purple Commonwealth of Virginia — sent an advisory brief to an Illinois Federal District Court, his public relations efforts chalking up his intended influence as defending “traditional understanding of religious freedom” and halting “the possible loss of the direct and substantial impacts [a military base Boy Scout event] has on the Commonwealth.” Mr. McDonnell’s intended consequence was to defend the the Defense Department’s monetary and logistical support for the National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill, near Bowling Green, Virginia. By email, he expressed his pleasure to the press that a Chicago decision indicting the Defense Department had been overturned.
Then Governor Tim Kaine, now a senator, voiced his understanding that the case was a federal, as opposed to a commonwealth, funding matter. “It’s not one that I have really focused on at all,” he said. Though, he alluded to having supported the Boy Scouts in one way or another while Richmond mayor.
Mr. McDonnell’s press secretary, Justin Tucker Martin, explained the governor’s advisory brief to me as this: “The Boy Scouts of America are a theistic organization, not a religious one.” Mr. Martin advised me that the Boy Scout Jamboree’s standing congressional support did not constitute a violation of the establishment clause, which prohibits the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
Soon after the federal trial had wound down in early April, I conversed with Eugene Winkler, the primary plaintiff on the suit against the defense secretary. Winkler was at the time the head of Gary United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. We spoke on the phone for a few minutes.
Tyler Bass: What was your personal stake in preventing the federal funding from going to the Jamboree?
Eugene Winkler: The Boy Scouts discriminate. I am not only a religious man, a pastor. I was an Eagle Scout, and have served on regional Boy Scout councils. So all of those are in my favor in terms of the Boy Scouts, OK? I am not antagonistic toward the Boy Scouts, but the Boy Scouts have a very limited understanding of what it means to believe in God. On their authority, if you don’t believe in their concept of God, you can’t be a Scout. Their concept of god is — it is my concept of god, certainly — a Judeo-Christian concept of God, but if you don’t accept that concept of God, you can’t get into the Scouts. And they’re a discriminatory organization and federal funding is being spent on the Jamboree to further that kind of discrimination. That’s why the suit was filed.
TB: Why exactly did they decide that you didn’t have standing? Because it’s not like they weren’t acknowledging many of the facts that you’re presenting to me right now; for example, that they recognize a monotheistic, Judeo-Christian, Islamic-even concept of God. Why is it that they rule that you don’t have standing to make this suit as a taxpayer?
EW: Two words: beats me. If you read there right on the first page, second page of the brief, they admit that they are ignoring the other issues, and that they are just simply saying that I don’t have standing, which is a chicken way out of it.
TB: They said –
EW: Let me just say one other thing. These are three old Republican guys.
TB: The judges?
EW: These judges. They just didn’t want to deal with the issue.
TB: When you were a Boy Scout, did you ever question this when you were younger? Did you have atheist colleagues or associates or people who were polytheistic? Did you raise the question in your own youth?
EW: No, of course not. I wasn’t aware of those kinds of issues when I was in the Boy Scouts. I mean, I was 12 years old!
TB: Do you know of Boy Scouts who are atheist or polytheistic who are just like you – you’re a monotheist? When did it first start to occur to you that it was perhaps discriminatory to have this sort of oath?
EW: Well, I guess when I became an adult and was a scout master and was working in regional Scout councils, it became apparent to me that there was a very limited understanding in the Scouts of what it means to be — what the Scout motto means for them.
TB: Do you guys plan to appeal the decision?
EW: I’m not sure yet because our ACLU lawyer is traveling and we won’t be talking this week. You know, I’m confident, from my point of view, that I want to appeal certainly. Because I think it’s a vital issue that has to be faced.
TB: Would you still raise the issue even if the feds or the Congress weren’t funding the Boy Scouts, and the Boy Scouts were simply discriminatory?
EW: Oh, we’ve already raised it in a number of other venues, with the Chicago Board of Education. We’ve already won other suits on this same matter.
TB: I noticed. I mean, if the Boy Scouts were a private organization, and you clearly have –
EW: They are a private organization!
TB: But they receive funding from the Congress, do they not?
EW: Well, that’s why they shouldn’t receive funding from the Congress, and, certainly, they shouldn’t receive that kind of blessing because it’s an issue of church and state really.
TB: So you would rather see the Boy Scouts as a separate organization that still kept their [religious] motto?
EW: Oh, sure!
TB: I was trying to see if you were opposed to the motto itself.
EW: Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. They can do whatever they want with the motto, or they can discriminate against whomever they want as long as they don’t get federal funding for it.
INTERNET — Well under 9.000 files (a paltry 4,000) representing the IP addresses, logins, and personal home addresses of small-time employees at local banks were allegedly released on Monday by “Anonymous” hackers. This information was posted on alabama.gov, along with a message claiming the data was obtained from the Federal Reserve. Some early reporting claims this information was posted on Pastebin.com. However, the only Pastebin link traded publicly by members of #OpLastResort contains only the insane rants of Aaron Bale. Anonymous also repeated the claim that they have long-term footholds in government computer systems. This release was coordinated with cooperation from advocacy journalist ”Violet Blue,” perhaps to beat more skeptical coverage to the punch.
We support your narrative because it is ours. Now that is quality reporting!
“The hacktivist entity dropped enough technical details to make it clear that its tracks were covered and that Anonymous still had access to .gov websites,” said Violet Blue’s article published on ZDNET. Exemplary of what not to do when covering statements issued by hacking groups, the mere mention of “technical details” has reinforced an extraordinary narrative. Certainly these profoundly extraordinary claims from Anonymous require extraordinary evidence. However, this evidence is not mentioned or cited in any depth beyond this short sentence, dangling on its own mere absurd assertion. Even more, it is a dangerous and apparently unfounded endorsement of a terroristic threat designed to drain the government of resources.
This action has drawn strong comparisons to a past Anonymous operation manufactured by federal agents. “Anonymous,” led by FBI agent Sabu, hacked the open-source intelligence publication Stratfor, mischaracterizing it as a “Shadow CIA.” Using this information on Christmas eve, Sabu led “Anonymous” to target low-level journalists, raiding their bank accounts to make donations that would later be returned to the journalists after the charities were penalized.
Investigators at Chronicle.SU have been unable to find any proof that the information on 4,000 bank employees exists, as the alabama.gov website on which it was allegedly posted has since been taken offline. However, Violet Blue has reported on it (citing broken hyperlinks to alabama.gov), so therefore it must be true. Aaron Bale, spokesperson for the operation, refused to provide a link to the information for Chronicle.SU, accusing the glorious and infallible publication of cooperation with the US government, “[N]o one knows what [yo]ur talking about. At least sabu was lulzy and relevant. Fed money doesn’t buy what it used to.”
Chronicle.SU is wholly owned and operated by Lebal Drocer, Inc., a subsidiary of the United Soviet Socialist Democratic Republic of Cuthbert, Georgia, a sovereign entity and economic powerhouse leading the South to Rise Again in the name of its Dear Islamic Leader, the Loyal and Moral Raghubir Goyal.
Two weeks until you’re either drinking wine, snuggling (or worse) with your loved one; or cowering in fear as the NullCrew‘s latest SQL injection information is dropped for all the world to see . . . or at least a couple of hundred people.
As the “Doomsday File” craze hits the Web with fury, following in the footsteps of the great Anonymous leader Aaron Bale, NullCrew raises the bar once again with levied threats against the Pentagon, they say in a recent interview at E Hacking News. They elaborate:
Our next big release will be on Febuary 14th, yes, yes; VALENTINES DAY! It’ll be the official release of #FuckTheSystem valentines day, and one target I will tell you is the pentagon.
But our next single release will be a multipul target release, on United States government servers; retaliating against #OperationFastAndFurious. How many more need to die, from weapons the government is putting into criminal’s hands?”
With elite hacker friends like these, who needs Anonymous? These folks will hack the Pentagon and get away with it, scot- free . . . or so they think. Field reporter, ethical researcher and all-around swell guy doxbin has accrued enough information to note that the majority of the members is located within the friendly confines of Canada, a well known bastion for hackers/freedom fighters everywhere.
Or is it really?
In a previous exposé, Internet Chronicle resident Anonymous expert Kilgoar reported PLF (Peoples Liberation Front) leader and Anonymous figurehead Commander X is in fact a Homeland Security Department plant who resides in Canada after “escaping” the clutches of the “Fids.” So why Canada? We spoke with Aaron Bale about this and he believes it to be a psy-op, perpetuated by Cyber Command in conjunction with the CIA, which cannot operate on domestic soil. Essentially, NullCrew is trying to kill Mr. Bale.
It’s the only plausible answer.
Technology reporter and reigning King of the Ring™ Champion, Danny, had a chance to catch up with ShaggyTheAngel, Anonymous co-leader, voxanon ircop and owner of freeanons.info to ask him about the NullCrew’s latest threats and how Anonymous might be able to one-up them:
(5:19:17 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: you want the keys?
(5:19:22 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: not rly
(5:19:42 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: because those are real warheads man
(5:19:45 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: idc
(5:20:00 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: you know where theay are aimed?
(5:20:04 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: idc
(5:20:05 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: Which one is going where?
(5:20:07 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: idc
(5:20:15 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: NYC
(5:20:17 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: DC
(5:20:18 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: cool story
(5:20:23 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: and nevada
(5:20:26 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: rofl
(5:20:29 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: nevada
(5:20:34 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: navada
(5:20:47 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: I can code java but spelling is off
(5:20:52 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: go figure huh?
(5:21:12 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: im reporting you for
terroristic threats
(5:21:25 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: oh so now you are scared
(5:21:30 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: not rly idc”
It’s clear to this intrepid reporter that there is a civil war amongst rival hacker gangs a’brewin’, and we may all pay the price. Soon.
All that really needs to be said about this group of the worlds greatest hackers/Psy-op commandos, NullCrew, can be summed up by a quote from them at the beginning of the E Hacking News interview:
These servers are a part of the system, a system which is ran by
corrupt rich assholes. They mostly use their money for themself,
No donations to the people who need the money, and if they do; it’s just
so people look at them in a kinder way, only for publicity.
NullCrew added:
wisc.edu Became a target when they commited [sic] Animal Cruelty.
You may be asking yourself: What does the Caturday at University of Wisconsin have to do with taking down “rich assholes?” The answer lies in an obscure yet poignant quote from current Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Michael Vick, as years ago he was being dragged out of the Mississippi Bulldogs locker-room (later being charged with disorderly conduct): “I’d do it all again if it wasn’t for that meddling NullCrew!”
Much ado has been made persecuting compassionate and considerate member of the online family Andrew Auernheimer, a playful jokester who has brought delight to the faces of millions of Internet users. Monocultural chauvinists in federal law enforcement have run wild with accusations of “computer fraud,” while confused fellow “leftists” like Raw Story Editor Emeritus Ron Brynaert have smeared Andrew with vile accusations of sexism and near-genocidal racism. All of these accusations are the exact opposite of all of Andrew Auernheimer’s opinions.
I have worked throughout my life not only for the cause of LGBTQIA rights (or QLIBTGA — there need not be any order!) but for the welfare of individuals on barest public subsistence. To me, the Stonewall Riots seem like they were only yesterday, even though my parents birthed me right as the New Deal gave hope for the first time to masses of retired individuals. I can tell you with complete certainty that the loveable Mr. Auernheimer has no predilections against people of color, against sex workers, or anyone in the greater Semitic family. By citing with pseudo-pride his European heritage, Andrew is only ironically referring us to that continent’s relatively generous and effective social safety nets.
With a wink and a smile, Andrew’s latest blog post is letting us all know that he is with us in the Great Fight against Ignorance, and that by pretending to be some sort of brown-eyed, ginger Nazi he is with us on the picket lines for the long haul. He starts off with his usual tongue-in-cheek smirk:
Several people asked if I’d go see “The Hobbit” with them. I declined in a rather cruel fashion.
See? There he goes again, letting us know explicitly that his tone is cruel. While normally I’d decline to agree with the heartless, hard-nosed associates of Forbes magazine, their take on Andrew’s humor as being intentional and sarcastic in its offensiveness is right on.
Calm down, Time’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Old Andrew knows the score. He’ll be with us — next to our engineer sisters with signs — the next time former Harvard President Lawrence Summers tries to tell women they’re stupid, obsequious domestic playthings.
Andrew has done as much to promote multiculturalism as Auburn University’s own Alan Gribben, when the latter published the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn NewSouth Edition, effectively cleansing the book of its pro-white, pro-death code words.
Before taking us into his snarky, actually anti-Nazi diatribe against Hollywood’s latest money-grubbing snatch into theatergoers’ pockets, Andrew claims to be for some sort of unrealistically self-sufficient Nordic life ethic. Then — and this is the really brilliant part — the satirist comes out against barest government provision for working families. To this end, he cites the original end to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King.
In Tolkien’s version, the hobbits of the fellowship return to the Shire only to see it taken over by a snide old wizard controlling a horde of half-orcs. The hobbits do the only sensible thing that one would do when finding ones hometown infested by section 8 housing full of parasitic thugs, rapists and murderers: start a pogrom.
Did you see that? By playing on pop culture stereotypes of African-Americans as mindless killing, force-copulating machines, Andrew has held the Stormfront set slime up to the disinfectant of sunshine. Usually those Christian Identity losers are just able to keep to reinforcing each other somewhere in flyover country, or via their teledildonic message board activity.
Let me give you another example: The Tortoise and the Hare. I’m sure you were read it as a child. It always seemed to me to be an idiotic story to encourage people to slave away endlessly for a statistically impossible hope that they are somehow getting ahead.
When I finally read the real story, I knew hundreds of millions of children were being robbed.
Europe rose to power with children being read the Brothers Grimm classic, “The Hare and the Hedgehog.”
If my decades-long “Mirror Has Two Faces” marriage to acclaimed fellow feminist Andrea Dworkin taught me anything, it was how to use literary analysis to determine within seconds which males of white, Protestant descent were bigots. Through his brilliant satire — daresay his innumerable contributions to the computing community, for which he has been endlessly persecuted by our government — blessed Andrew is his generation’s Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer, all rolled into one!
The Tortoise and the Hare actually outdates the 19th century Grimm brothers tale by thousands of years. The former tale’s place in the foundation of Old Europe, which And-and calls “the most precious thing that I hold within me,” is actually far deeper. Andrew knows well that the Tortoise story’s Greek origins place it at the crossroads of democracy’s very founding. While the Grimm tale is meant to encourage young men to put women in “their place” and to marry women who look as much like them as possible, modern anthropological biologists and Andrew understand that intelligence quotients tend to be higher in the offspring of interracial couplings. This neo-Puck has extended his hand across from the hilltops of Appalachia straight to his brothers, sisters and intersex individuals at the tippitiest-top of the ivory tower.
His wink comes when he cites the story of Prometheus, who like Aesop’s tortoise is of Greek origin. Therein Andrew’s mission to open our eyes and hearts to the plights of LGBTQIA individuals and those of color blossoms into full view. “Promethian flame is being replaced with politically corrected filth,” he writes.
So it’s with a palm to my chin, and a high-cheeked grin that I call off the misguided, if well-meaning, attack dogs at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Campaign and Anti-Defamation League who have unfairly maligned Andrew Auernheimer. My friends, you owe him an apology. Were my lifelong friend Andrea alive, I’m sure she would wholeheartedly agree. God bless.
Massachusetts District U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz (Courtesy: Wikipedia)
WASHINGTON — In a not-so-stirring defense of academic conglomerate JSTOR, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said of Aaron Swartz‘s offenses, “Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away.” While common sense and lore would tend to at least lend more sympathy to Robin Hood- or Jean Valjean-type characters, who might be at least functioning out of some concern for others, Ms. Ortiz remained steadfast in her pursuit of recent “an Hero” Mr. Swartz, trying to see him put in jail for potentially the rest of his life.
Over at WhoWhatWhy Christian Stork does a nice little breakdown of this U.S. attorney’s wading into murky waters of civil asset forfeiture, one particular case in which she agreed to help confiscate a rundown, mom-and-pop Massachusetts motel because because “from 2001 to 2008, .05 [percent of at least 125,000 visitors] were arrested for drug crimes on the property.” This was a theft just like Aaron Swartz’s. Except not it was not a theft in the high-minded name of educating the world’s downtrodden, but in that of fattening the pockets of law enforcement agencies, treating poor drug abusers as criminals, alongside those who might dare house them.
Mr. Stork paints a disturbing picture of a civil asset forfeiture system in which being in debt vis-a-vis a mortgage — meaning that a bank, and its lawyers, has some has some skin in the game — means that the owners of this motel would have been in an even better position to disavow their affiliation with three handfuls of guest drug offenses. But alas they ran out of lawyer money, and the government all at once took five decades of family property worth $1.5 million.
Mr. Stork also outlines a direct financial, not an external ethical, motive for law enforcement to take on these kinds of civil asset forfeitures. He cites the testimony of a DEA agent claiming that federal attorneys never go after anything with less than $50,000 in equity. Additionally, local law enforcement, for cooperating with the feds, can look to take home up to 80 percent of what was seized. That’s a major incentive to turn a blind eye to a violation of property rights. In fact it’s more of an incentive to turn a blind eye to property-rights violations than the Pirate Party ever had: It’s money straight to the bank!
The same prosecutor, Carmen Ortiz, who sought to lock up Aaron Swartz for his failure to respect property rights of the proprietors of academic information also sought to seize a family’s business because an extreme minority of their clientele used drugs. Mr. Stork’s article makes clear that this was ultimately the DEA’s initiative, with Ms. Ortiz simply acting as its lawyer. But that doesn’t change that this U.S. attorney lacks any consistency in her modus operandi. It’s pretty obvious that the low rates for staying at this establishment, Motel Caswell, made it an even more tempting target.
Ms. Ortiz’s office released a statement about the seizure, saying: “The government believed that this was an important case . . . because of the deterrent message it sends to others who may turn a blind eye to crime occurring at their place of business.” But Mr. Stork shows this is shmoax because local crime rates dictate that there would have been just as much of a rationale for seizing nearby Walmart, Home Depot, Applebees, Motel 6 and IHOP. But those are large businesses, and no matter how many people shoot up or each other inside, they’ll have the lawyers to keep the whomever or the DEA at bay.
RICHMOND, VA. — “We just seen the opportunity, and I couldn’t pass it up. I had to own a slave,” said Internet Chronicle Publisher Frank Mason, speaking to clerical staff and press called to a conference at 1000 Monument Ave. With Jeff Schapiro from the Times-Dispatch busily taking notes, Mr. Mason continued, lamenting that he could only purchase a worker’s mortal flesh, “his gametes but never his soul.” He emphasized every syllable with a bang on the marble table top.
“God ain’t legalized that yet,” said Mr. Mason with a dry, wheezing laugh, before ejecting a runny stream of “baccy” from between tarred lips into a spittoon two meters away, carved apparently from a human skull.
“See that spitoon over there?” he said, gesticulating for reporters and Richmond business leaders. “That there’s a Czech. You can tell by the shape of the unity lobe.”
Editor of Chronicle.su — and lifelong friend of Mr. Mason’s — Kilgoar Trout complained that he was given no say in the matter. “Frank wanted to own a human being, he said. He said it’d make him feel powerful. It does.”
Lebal Drocer is a limited liability corporation. In God’s new America NAFTA and GATT have railroaded the communist unions that used to effectively clip and snip job creators. Those days are over. 1999 and Seattle came and went.
And they lost.
In addition to having assembled Virginia business leaders and various Saudi investors to show off what he called “his new Chinese,” Frank Mason told Internet Chronicle enthusiasts present that he was encouraging staff to obtain concealed-carry permits as soon as possible, and to fasten as many rails as possible to any “tricked-out rifles” staff might have hoarded in secret rooms in their basements. “That one’s putting a clampdown on on everything holy. Like my grandpappy used to say, Jesus won’t tolerate no clip with less capacity than days in his months,” adding, “And I ain’t talking about February!”
It was at this point that Raymond H. Boone of the Richmond Free-Press left the conference.
Editor Kilgoar Trout shared his concern that the company was moving too quickly away from the model of documenting the most frightening developments in cybersecurity and the out-of-control, privately bought-out surveillance state. “With this new venture into human trafficking,” said Mr. Trout to the publisher of Southside’s Community Weekly, “Frank’s really hijacking my religion of peace.”
Thursday a Conscious Life News report went viral, claiming to relay the point of view of a “pro-Israeli” shill, who claimed to have worked out of a mysterious, transient San Francisco office for a company that shills for corporate and political donors. Being apolitical, in addition to desperate, said guilty feeling alleged shill, was key to doing a good job fighting ideological opponents.
The San Francisco Office of Shill Central Floats Away to Safer Harbors: FILE
The mission of the poster was simple: Go on message boards and claim that critics of Israeli policy were necessarily racists or Nazis. This (probably) man was probably an expert in all of the facets of Godwin’s Law, especially as relentlessly accusing strangers of being Nazi sympathizers elicits some pretty serious outrage. The guilty-feeling shill says that, although he is still “pro-Israel” to this day, the dishonesty of the methods bothered him. Surely legions of Israel’s critics have already forwarded this to Max Blumenthal and Philip Weiss, and they’re probably spilling some ink on these sort of thing, as I write this message. Anyway, says the supposedly confessing shill . . .
If a poster wrote something close to “X,” we were supposed to respond with something close to “Y.” “You have to mix it up a bit, though,” said my trainer. “Otherwise it gets too obvious. Learn to use a thesaurus.”
Talented Internet social engineers know that changing up phrasing is the best way to avoid seeming like a singular personality. If supposed shill was even halfway serious, he had probably flooded the message boards on which he posted with numerous sockpuppet accounts. If this stuff is true I wish he would elaborate on how he hid his IP address, as moderators would surely watch for that sort of thing
[His trainer also discussed] a number of hints for de-railing conversations that went too far away from what we were attempting. These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with sexual innuendo, links to pornography, or other such things. “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,” or trainer told us. “Our opponents don’t hesitate to, so we can’t either.”
It’s interesting that this shadow advocacy firm did not seek to simply bring off-topic conversations back online. Anyone who has browsed the Internet enough — or especially commented on YouTube videos — knows that people often never hesitate to engage in character assassination, even with people whose backgrounds are totally obscured. It is really a shame that we cannot see these low-blow tactics in action, as they are surely really instructive. How would linking to pornography really smear anyone? That’s one of the more dubious claims made in this confessional. Surely there are many saying that this confessional is just an attempt to smear pro-Israel activists. I do not even need to wade into the waters of Stormfront to know that a bunch of evil racial supremacists, actual Jew haters, are congratulating each other on the reality of this confessional, as well as far actually more understandably frustrated Palestinian rights activists.
[The shill's trainer offered] some notes on how to “push the psychological buttons” of different posters. Although I didn’t work for [Above Top Secret], I did see they had a lot of info on your so-called “WATS” posters here (the ones with gold borders around their edges). “Focus on the popular posters,” my trainer told me. “These are the influential ones. Each of these is worth 50 to 100 of the lesser known names.”
Fascinatingly, the inevitable Above Top Secret post of the original message was pulled, only a handful of comments on it available via a Google cache. It remains unclear whether this was the result of a lack of credulity offered to the article, or whether the moderators there are simply ashamed at not having been able to ID said shill.
As the Web crowd is ever larger and of diverse age groups, many news sources have actually been paying people to filter comments. How strenuous the filters are varies. The Huffington Post hires people who read the equivalent of Moby Dick in a matter of days. Reddit only edits “obvious nonsense.”
Supposed shill mentions that his trainers talked about playing hardball. Unlike in the famed art of politics, supposed shill firm were not seriously seeking to convince people in a conversation, but rather apparent bystanders who might stumble upon the article and be convinced either way.
“If you can convert one of the hostile posters from the enemy side to our side, you get a nice bonus. But this doesn’t happen too often, sadly. So mostly you’ll be attacking them and trying to smear them.”
If this person is as pro-Israel as he or she claims, it’s fascinating that he or she does not bother to offer any defense of the seriously held beliefs. The not-converting thing seems like a veiled crack at the actual Jewish religion here, and so that makes me skeptical. After all, the author himself claims to be a great liar one way or the other.
What is so cynical about the “pro-Israel” shill was his willingness to call anyone racist to score political points for an unpopular foreign policy regime, as well as his unironic lack of consciousness that Semitism can refers to Arabs as well. What has happened to Chuck Hagel this week has kind of put me on edge about this, as The Weekly Standard and Hagel “friend” John McCain have been gloating that the defense secretary nominee has set Iranian leaders into a tizzy of joy. The Internet Chronicle will discuss that a bit more tomorrow.
A lot of my job was de-railing and spamming threads that didn’t go our way, or making accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. Sometimes I had to simply lie and claim a poster said something or did something “in another thread” they really hadn’t said or done I felt bad about this[...]but in the end I felt worse about the possibility of losing the first job I’d been able to get since losing my “real” job.
Another aspect of this article that made me skeptical of its source was that the supposed shill does not discuss his “real” job. While his habits were dubious they were not illegal. How rare and identifiable could his “real job” have been that he could not tell us how desperate he was? The self-described meme patrol would generate a lot more sympathy if we understood him to be dirt poor or accustomed to some humble lifestyle. All of this is suspect, especially since he calls himself such an awesome writer.
As “pro-Israel” shill came to know the issue, as though a Thesaurus-armed fundraiser or marketing specialist, he started to get farther into debate. Again, no policy details here, no information on what he was writing that was so compelling about drawing attention away from Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The supposed shill became an expert in Internet pop art, which has long included the cat, due to the Internet user’s typically sedentary nature it mirrors.
There were a lot of details to this more advanced [complex debate] stage of the job – everything from how to select the right avatar to how to use “demotivationals” [link added] (humorous images with black borders that one finds floating around the web). Even the proper use of images of cats was discussed. Sometimes we used faked or photo-shopped images or doctored news reports (something else that bothered me).
It is only toward the end of his essay that the self-described shill gets into his pangs of conscience about what he was doing. There is little sense from him earlier in the essay that his smearing might actually be making the pro-Israel side of the debate look uninvolved. Whether this confessional is real, people have grabbed onto this story in the United States because they view defense of Israel as something that is more of the brain, a path that can be made with less of a bleeding heart for a disenfranchised, more recently, anyway, indigenous population. It reminds me of Pamela Geller’s now famous “support the civilized man/ defeat jihad” “pro-Israel” public transit ads.
This supposed shill has written a lot about his methods but very little about why Israel has a great foreign policy, treats Palestinians well (or why they would not deserve such treatment); or why Zionism is promulgating apartheid. The only obvious reason the poster would not do this is to cover his tracks, and we would think he was just more imaginative than that, given how he says he got the job.
If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks?
It is believable that an ardently self-considered American “pro-Israel” activist would see that country’s enemies as being mainly neo-Nazis. However that just doesn’t jive with the vast majority of the people all over the world who remain critical of the way Israel treats Palestinians. If so desperate and able to operate more or less autonomously from the secret office, why does the shill care who was writing the checks? Is he insinuating worry that he was inadvertently being paid off by anti-Israel trolls, goy supremacists?
[T]he shill way of life . . . is a deceptive way of life, and no matter how noble the goals (I remain pro-Israel, by the way), these sleazy means cannot be justified by the end.
Make no mistake, though: Even if this letter is fake, or even written by genuine Jew haters, the shill way of life will remain profitable for anyone willing to get his or her hands dirty. Private conglomerates, I was aware, had the resources and interest in pushing their products. If you have ever read the obsequious reviews over at Amazon, you know of that industry. What is changing is that the shill is now a nihilist, a mercenary of states (certainly not just Israeli ultra-nationalism), instead of the famous, self-interested 419 scammer.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — This afternoon federal agents killed Alex Jones and 52 Genesis Communications Network associates, each with two gunshot wounds to the back of the head. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, now investigating the incident, describes these wounds as “self-inflicted.” Before the standoff reached its bloody conclusion, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney clarified at the daily briefing that Mr. Jones faced charges of pedophilia, illicit gun alteration and roughly two decades of back income taxes. Photographers captured ATF agents placing the bodies of the 52 employees into plastic coffins. The compound collapsed in place after suffering damage from armored Caterpillar bulldozers specially deployed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Thursday morning undercover Waco Child Protective Service agents showed up at the door of the GCN compound and asked to speak to Mr. Jones. They presented themselves as wandering members of the milita movement, sympathetic following what Mr. Jones had termed his “explosive” appearance on “Piers Morgan Tonight.” When surrogates showed Mr. Jones to the door, they presented him with a Remington 870 shotgun. CPS asked if Mr. Jones could help them shorten the barrel below 22 inches. Mr. Jones, standing in his doorway, they say, happily agreed, took the American-made 12-gauge shotgun into a back lot and shortened it. When child protective services asked to take Mr. Jones’s children, the radio host disclosed that he was a sovereign citizen tax protester, having avoided the income tax due to its “unconstitutionality” since 1913.
Mr. Jones was 38 and is survived by millions of followers, having hosted the 10th most popular radio show in the United States. Mr. Jones was most famous for his December 31, 1999 broadcast, during which he was the only media source to break a taboo on reporting on the Russian missile attack that occurred that evening. During Y2K numerous power plants imploded due to computer error, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command failed to intercept Russian missiles, which killed millions of Americans in secret.
The radio host attracted international attention, including from the British royal family, after having made statements referring to his owning more than 50 “guns” and those “firearms” having increased in value two, three or four times. “It was at that point,” said FBI consultant Kenneth Lanning, previously responsible for helping cover up the Boystown fiasco with Larry King, “that we felt comfortable assuming that firearms referred to child spouses, and so we moved in.”
Friday morning ATF bulldozers, shipped to Houston 12 years ago from the West Bank, made their way slowly toward the South Wall of the Genesis Communications Network Compound. Upon mowing down solar panels and finally the outer wall of the compound, the six bulldozers reached a sudden halt. Their path, said one of the drivers, was impeded by cache of bullion six feet high just inside the inner wall. Representatives of the Dallas FBI Bureau, speaking by phone, said they feared the worst. “We were worried that the Prison Planet crew might be able to hold out for years on end.” Regardless, soon after having breached the flaming outer wall, the building collapsed.
A defector from the followers, whom Mr. Jones refers to as “listeners,” former Infowars.com contributor Mark Dice, informed authorities that GCN’s contract with eFoodsDirect would mean that freedom-loving audiovisual technicians and website contributors might be able to hold out for up to seven decades.
Citing the deaths of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut last month, Bilderberg President and ATF chief David Rockefeller said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.”
At a Friday morning press conference in Washington, FBI Director David Mueller described subsequent events. He said Israeli Armored D9s, “teddy bears,” caused the walls of the compound to collapse. Mr. Mueller said, “Once the ‘doobis’ breached the outer wall, the mosquito-netting-like structure of the compound was compromised, causing the building to collapse, first starting with the penthouse, and then the children’s bedrooms.” Producer Aaron Dykes escaped, but his son, whom authorities believe to actually be Mr. Jones’s, was found in the remains of the compound.
As bulldozers approached initially, federal marshals demanded that Mr. Jones exit the building. After he did so, he ignored their calls that he continue walking toward waiting SUVs, instead re-entering his doorway. Returning from the doorway, facing away from authorities, he brandished what appeared to them be an M-16, but what was actually a Bushmaster he purchased at Wamart in early December. Officials say it was then, walking backwards, that Waco sheriff’s deputies opened fire. All of their bullets missed, but Mr. Jones, deputies said in sworn statements, placed the Bushmaster to the back of his head and pulled the trigger twice.
The fire spread faster due to hundreds of kilograms of uncured cannabis, which Mr. Jones’ one surviving child claimed no one was imbibing as a psychoactive but rather that Mr. Jones was encouraging his children to eat raw for anti-carcinogenic properties.
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