Weirdness

(Update II: It's pretty clear now that Buzzfeed fucked me over royally. Buzzfeed poses as a hip, vaguely left-friendly site that appeals to the young. But as my follow-up story proves, Buzzfeed is really part of the Breitbart propaganda machine.)

(Update: Some people are coming here from Rosie Gray's piece on Buzzfeed. Alas, Gray didn't quite understand my point. Twice now, I've tried to submit a (polite) correction, but Buzzfeed either won't or can't publish it. If anyone's interested, I can display it in this space tomorrow.)

I didn't want to write about the latest Big Meme sweeping across rightwingerland, but a few words are necessary. Maybe more than a few.

In a couple of previous posts, I made fairly oblique reference to a weird subculture of bloggers -- on both the right and the left, though most of them are hyper-conservatives -- which arose out of Weinergate. Their obsession with that scandal soon went way beyond Weiner, and perhaps even beyond conventional left-right politics. A very personal twilight war broke out.

Frankly, I never could understand what this war was all about. But a few facts became clear:

1. These twilight warriors are obsessed with hacking and related matters. Some of them claim to have worked with Anonymous and LulzSec and allied organizations.

2. They use obvious sockpuppets. If you visit their microblogs, the self-astroturfing is evident.

3. They are forever claiming that the FBI and/or the cops are going to arrest their opponents very soon. (On what charge? God knows.) Both the left-wingers and the right-wingers make this claim.

4. The rage level runs white hot. This war goes beyond politics. It's personal.

5. Most of the right-wingers inhabit BreitbartWorld, where everyone reveres the underhanded tactics of James O'Keefe.

6. The most prominent of the left-wingers is a bizarre IT specialist named Neal Rauhauser, whom I believe to be the latest online incarnation of a fellow named John Dean, a.k.a. SluggoJD and a few other things. (Assumed identities play a huge role in these realms. In an earlier post, I discussed the reasons why I think the two are one and the same.) Dean, who claims to be a cyber-detective, is a fairly well-known -- though rarely well-liked -- figure throughout blogistan left. He used to be an occasional presence on this blog, although I always kept him at arm's length. Whatever the name or nick, he is not a man I trust. Or they are not men I trust. Whatever.

7. The twilight warriors often lose the ability to write comprehensibly. For example: I tried very hard to get a straight story out of Rauhauser, but he kept presuming that I was familiar with people and events about which I knew nothing.

It was best, I decided, to let these unhappy personages fight among themselves. Still, their rage-games threatened, one day, to take a more serious turn.

One of the Breitbarters calls himself "Patterico." His real name is no secret: He's John Frey, a prosecutor for the L.A. D.A.'s office. Frey initiated a multi-blog day of fury when he published a post alleging that he was set up by a phone hacker. If I understand the story correctly, the hacker called the police from what seemed to be Frey's number and claimed to be a man who had just shot his wife.

Serious business, that. Frey, quoting the late Breitbart, insists that this is a common left-wing tactic called "SWATting." (If it's a left-wing tactic, then why don't any lefties mention it?)

Although proof is lacking, Frey seems to think that the hacker is someone named Brett Kimberlin.

If you just now said "Brett who?" -- you are probably a liberal. Kimberlin is a huge effing deal on the right. After Barack Obama, he's the man conservatives love to hate -- so much so, they even have an entire blog devoted to Brett. Pretty soon, they'll be selling Brett merchandise.

The Breitbarters claim that Kimberlin is funded by Evil Soros and the Even More Evil Barbra Streisand. They also claim that Brett Kimberlin started Raw Story. (I doubt that.) Word has it that Glenn Beck is going to be on the Kimberlin case.

If you look at Memeorandum right now, it's all Kimberlin, all the time. (Update: It is no longer Kimberlin Day on Memeorandum, a news aggregation site which updates feed continually.)

Basically, Kimberlin is the new Saul Alinski: In right-wing mythology, liberals consider him il capo di tutti capi. Kimberlin is the alpha dog, the leader of the pack, the bomb-tossing Messiah of the Progs.

Or so the Breitbarters would have people believe.

Meanwhile, actual liberals have little or no idea as to who the guy is.

I first got a whiff of the right's Brett-mania maybe four or five years ago, when I received a flurry of crankish emails accusing me of being involved in some sort of conspiracy with That Bastard Brett. (Why were these accusations directed at me? I had, and have, no idea.)

The name "Kimberlin" was puzzling, but it did ring a very distant bell. Then I recalled that, back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, a prisoner named Kimberlin made weird claims about Dan Quayle which became the basis for a series of Doonesbury comics. Something about selling pot. It was all very droll.

If you want a fuller story on Kimberlin, convicted for several bombings back in the '70s, you may want to go here. Author David Weigel seems to think that the conservative pile-up on Kimberlin is a manufactured mania, and I must agree that Kimberlin Hate Day does seem rather ginned-up and astroturfy.

Today, the right side of the blogosphere is trying out a fascinating crowd-source experiment. For months, a few conservative writers -- most of them using pen names -- have been in a pitched battle with a convicted felon-turned-activist named Brett Kimberlin. By any reasonable definition, Kimberlin is a public figure. Mark Singer, who was snookered by Kimberlin into writing a bogus New Yorker story, eventually turned on his source and made him the subject of a book. When Kimberlin resurfaced in the world of "black box voting" activism, conservative bloggers started to ask questions about him. Skip to May 2012. Blogger Patterico says he was the victim of a hoax that brought armed police officers to his home. The blogger "Aaron Worthing," identity exposed by a frivolous lawsuit, is counter-suing.

The goal of "Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day," as far as I can see it, is to make Kimberlin famous again.

Weigel was soon contacted by one Ron Brynaert, of whom we must now speak, although I had hoped not to. Brynaert also figures heavily in Frey's conspiracy theory. Although "Patterico" is not the clearest of writers, he seems to think that Evil Brett and Evil Ron are working together on some evil scheme funded by Evil Soros.

Before proceeding, please understand this: I don't know exactly what happened to Frey, and right now I have bigger fish to fry than to scrutinize every jot and tittle of his claims. (A couple of those fishes are downright Moby-sized.) In fact, I would have preferred to ignore this whole business.

But a couple of weeks ago, I had my own unsettling run-in with this Ron Brynaert character, who fancies himself to be the expert on Weinergate. He also loves to make wild, paranoid claims about everyone who ever had more than ten words to say about the matter. Brynaert has gone beyond left and right; he's off the map and zooming through the fourth dimension.

When Brynaert contacted me, I had forgotten that he had been an editor at Raw Story. He seemed miffed that I had temporarily misfiled his name in my memory.

He wanted to know why I thought Neal Rauhauser and "John Dean" were one and the same. I told him. Then he asked me again. I told him again. Then he asked me again, implying that I was hiding something...

Ron was defining himself as a truly strange person.

He sent me long, snarling, venom filled letters that didn't make much sense. (His surreal missive to Weigel gives a flavor of what to expect when Ron Brynaert puts you on his pen pal list.) I tried to be uncharacteristically nice, even when he insinuated that I was up to no good.

Brynaert's obvious psychological pain helped me to keep my composure. I politely told him that I couldn't really follow what he was going on about, but that he might do better if he stepped back and took some time off. The message was simple: "Time to chill, dude." Sweartagod, that was all.

That was enough.

Ron Brynaert became convinced that I was part of the Great Conspiracy Against Ron Brynaert. This, despite the fact that he originally wrote me; I had wanted nothing to do with the guy or with any of the "twilight warriors." According to Brynaert, other members of the Great Conspiracy Against Ron include the Breitbart crew, Neal Rauhauser, blogger Brad Friedman, Brett Kimberlin, maybe Glinda the Good Witch -- and, oh, hell, just everyone.

I normally keep private emails private, but that privacy policy goes bye-bye when a correspondent starts tossing threats. Here's Brynaert to yours truly:

You're definitely going to be contacted by NYPD detectives and lawyers from one of my sources who is prosecuting Rauhauser for harassment.

I am a crime victim.  I was extorted for $20,000.

Do not write me again unless you want to help me.

I do not need to be menaced anymore.  Because of your bullshit blog post I have JDSluggo sending me nasty emails and smearing me just like he did years ago.

This is for real.  Not a blog war.  Not an ARG.

You should be ashamed of your self for the letters you sent me.

I'm so tired of you cowardly conspiracy theorists spreading fake news, smearing people and pretending you are sane.

You are a horrible man.  Like I need this when right wing smearers are threatening me and accusing me of crimes?

I warn you that this is not a joke...and you better never email me anything menacing or nasty again....nor allude to me on your blogs.

I'll be reporting the blackmail threat to the NYPD in the next few weeks and I will make sure detectives contact you...because this is a really shameful thing to write a scared crime victim.

Let me stress again: I had had absolutely no desire hear from this guy. Arguably, he harassed me. Maybe "harassed" is too strong a verb; "pester" gets closer to the mark. At any rate, readers know that my attention had switched ages ago from Weiner to very different matters; although I gave the twilight warriors the occasional wary glance, I wasn't really keeping track of their antics. (By the way, can anyone tell me what an ARG is?)

Of course, no detectives or lawyers have ever contacted me. Won't happen.

Still, this man's bizarre outburst was unnerving. So I asked around: Who IS Ron Brynaert?

The response was quick and clear: Ron Brynaert was once a promising writer and investigator, but he became completely unglued after he lost his job at Raw Story.

It is a sad but simple fact of life that one out of ten people go stark raving bonkers. After reading the letter above, you may come to your own conclusion as to whether Ron Brynaert is Dude #10.

Let's get back to Patterico/Frey. He rather scurrilously tries to tie Brynaert in with Brad Friedman. (I used to be on good terms with Brad, but I got peeved at him back in 2008. That was a bad year for a lot of people.) It's true that Brad allowed Brynaert to write one (1) post on his blog -- at a time before the man's psychological state had become clear. I'm sure Brad now regrets the whole thing.

Frey accuses Brynaert of working with Kimberlin, and so do many of the other twilight warriors. (He's called a Kimberlin "sycophant" here. I would apply only the first syllable of that word to Brynaert.) Oddly, in his ranting letters to me, Brynaert seemed to agree with the Breitbarters that Brett Kimberlin was the font of all evil.

Bottom line: It's ridiculous for Frey to scry conspiracy in the ravings of an individual who has so thoroughly lost sight of reality that he alienates everyone he bumps into.

Frey has accused Brad of stalking him, although Frey presents no evidence.

(It is true that Brad used to work with Kimberlin on something called the Velvet Revolution. I never pressed Brad about that business back when he and I were talking. In more general terms, I've let Brad know that some of his associates were very iffy, particularly the "controlled demolition" whackadoodles who would occasionally contribute to his otherwise fine blog. Also speaking in general terms, I should note that Kimberlin has been portrayed as a very persuasive con artist.)

Frey/Patterico's blog post includes a recording of the call that inaugurated the right's Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day. I don't recognize the voice of the guy who called the police, but it's definitely not Rauhauser. (Yes, I've spoken with Neal/John/whomever on the phone, although I now regret doing so.)

Clearly, though, the impersonator is a very troubled individual. To my mind, the "schizy" quality of the guy's voice narrows down the list of chief suspects. You may be able to hazard a guess as to whom I consider a likely candidate.

There's one other possibility, of course.

This whole business -- the phone call, the SWAT meme, the inauguration of Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day -- might be an O'Keefe-esque deception operation. Everyone knows that the Breitbarters love to pull crap like that. Who knows? Perhaps the fellow who called the cops on that night is the same guy who engineered the "Betty and Veronica" mind-screw directed against Tommy Christopher of Mediaite.

(As noted above, I'll be moderating comments very heavily, as per the posted rules. Go ahead and accuse me of censorship. I giveth not a rodent's buttocks.)

Notable news items

Official propaganda. Yeah, I know that we're surrounded by propaganda these days. This blog has been fighting the NDAA for a while -- and the fight just became more significant than ever, now that we learn of a new provision which allows the DoD to foist lies on the American public.

The NDAA amendment lifts bans on propaganda that have been around since the 1940s, neutralizing laws put in place to protect the American people from its government’s own “misinformation” campaigns.

“It removes the protection for Americans,” a Pentagon official told Buzzfeed, who broke the story. "There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

The amendment would remove all distinction between a hostile foreign audience and American one, turning the massive information operation apparatus within the federal government against its own people.

Click on the link to learn what you can do.

Speaking of propaganda... New York City just played into the hands of conservative propagandists who want to portray "blue state" governments as intrusive and controlling. In order to combat obesity, New York just banned restaurants and movie theaters from selling sugary sodas in sizes over 16 ounces.

In the first place, this kind of regulation really is intrusive and controlling. Government has no business telling citizens which foods they may or may not consume, as long the public is not misled into buying spoiled or poisonous foodstuff. In the second place, the plan is foolish and unworkable, since most fast food joints (and some movie theaters) offer free refills. In the third place -- what about diet drinks? 

The divine gaffe. Normally, I dislike our media's focus on the Great Gaffe Game, since these inane "gotcha" moments never amount to anything significant. But I do love this one; it comes from Mitt Romney's new phone app.

In fact, I consider "AmerCIA" to be the finest blunder that any politician has given us since Ronald Reagan's sublime "Facts are stupid things."

Bravo, Mitt! May "AmerCIA" enter the lexicon!

The SEC is useless. You already knew that, of course. But just in case you didn't, check out Matt Taibbi's latest: "SEC: Taking on Big Firms is 'Tempting,' But We Prefer Whaling on Little Guys."

The S.E.C. in recent years has failed in almost every possible way a regulator can fail to police powerful criminals. Failure #1 was that it repeatedly fell down on the job even when alerted to problems at big companies well ahead of time by insiders.

The S.E.C.’s attitude toward whistleblowers at powerhouse companies has not just been aloof or indifferent, it’s been downright hostile at times. Whistleblowers commonly report being treated as though they're the criminal.

In the last year or so I’ve heard from several attorneys who represent smaller clients who tell me they’re flabbergasted, watching the S.E.C. give the Chases, Goldmans, and Citigroups free ride after free ride while their pockmarked little clients at fledgling public companies get served the whole regulatory meal for minor disclosure violations – even cases that simply involve bad paperwork, where money isn’t even stolen. If you’re a little tech startup and there’s a $100,000 problem in your books, you can expect the full Princess Bride torture machine treatment, with multiple agents assigned to your case, serious criminal penalties, asset seizures, etc.

Have we been told the truth about the Syrian massacre? This is a huge damned story -- one which I have been rather too cowardly to deal with, since the initial questioning of the official version appeared on some rather "iffy" sites, including one run by the dreaded Alex Jones. But now the BBC is lending credence to the theory that the massacre was committed not by the Syrian government but by the America-supported rebels.

Yes, him again. I don't want to pay much more attention to the Brett Kimberlin meme, since no-one outside of the right seems interested. To the denizens of Glenn Beckistan, Evil Kimberlin is the most insidious liberal mastermind since the manufactured menace of Saul Alinsky. But to everyone else, he's still "Brett who...?"

That said, I must make note of the latest news, since it is rather astounding. The backstory: Kimberlin got into a tiff with a blogger named Aaron Walker, a conservative who hates him -- really, really hates him, with that special kind of hyper-hate known only to jilted lovers and far rightists in the throes of rage-gasm. I don't know the details, but apparently Kimberlin, claiming harassment, asked for a restraining order (or something similar, as provided by Maryland law) against this Walker fellow. Walker, of course, complained that Kimberlin was harassing him.

Frankly, I expected this courtroom row to go against Kimberlin, if only because the guy's rep is lower than an ant's ankles. We're talking about an ex-con who had been jailed for a very serious crime, and who was later portrayed as a con artist in a book by a New Yorker writer. One would not expect a judge to show Brett Kimberlin any favor.

I still don't know exactly what happened in that Maryland courtroom, but whatever it was -- not only was Kimberlin exonerated, Walker has gone to jail.

Judge ruled that case was built upon FALSE NARRATIVE that Aaron Walker created as revenge plot against Mr. Kimberlin.

Judge ruled that Aaron Walker did in fact ASSAULT Mr. Kimberlin.

Judge ruled that Medical Records that Mr. Kimberlin had produced at a prior trial were in fact legitimate medical records pertaining to the assault – and not forged documents as Mr. Walker had claimed in a number of articles.

Judge ruled that Mr. Walker had a clear purpose/motive in inciting people to attack Mr. Kimberlin.

Video that Aaron Walker used to claim exoneration did not in fact exonerate him of an assault.

It is difficult or impossible to feel much sympathy for a man with Brett Kimberlin's record, so one can only imagine how Walker behaved in that courtroom if he evinced such a reaction from a judge. As noted above, I do not yet know the details of this case. But I do know this: A restraining order is a restraining order, assault is assault, the law is the law, and even people we do not like have rights. Kimberlin paid for his crimes, and now Walker must do likewise.

Can your computer be used to frame you? I have a tech question about RATs

This post may not make much sense unless you've read the preceding one. Basically, just about every conservative blogger right now is focused on one Brett Kimberlin -- an ex-con who is almost totally unknown on the left, even though he has been associated with some liberal-ish causes. Kimberlin is a big damn deal to the Breitbarters. They accuse him of spoofing Caller ID to sic the cops on right-wing bloggers to investigate non-existent crimes. The technique, we are told, is called SWATting.

For reasons given in the previous post, I think that this whole thing is bogus. The cops may have come, but I see no evidence pointing to Kimberlin. (He's hardly my idea of a great guy, but that's beside the present point.) Besides, he could not possibly gain anything from such an absurd stunt.

Cui bono? Who benefits? 

Obviously, the right benefits. If you want proof, take a look at what Michelle Malkin is doing with this brouhaha. (Mahablog, incidentally, has a good precis of both the events and the reaction.) It's pretty clear to me that the ultimate goal of this exercise is to justify spying on lefties during a Romney administration.

Caller ID spoofing is real. You can find various sites which explain how to do it. But one Cannonfire reader, "Propertius," used to work for the telephone company, and he has raised some interesting points...

911 doesn't rely on CNID (the proper term for "caller id"). It uses ANI, just like WATS services do. ANI is not susceptible to "caller id spoofing".

I asked for follow-up info.

I should point out that my comment about ANI really only applies to traditional phones - VOIP services, for example, are pretty readily hackable.

Ah. Now things get interesting. So this spoofing thing works only if you use VOIP -- that is, if you make the call using your computer, via Skype or a similar service. A call of that sort can be traced to a specific computer, although doing so may take time, since the ISP needs to cooperate with the investigation.

As noted in the previous installment (which you really ought to read), I've learned a few things about the Breitbarters. First and foremost, they're spooks. They do covert ops. In the earlier post, I proved the point by publishing a "liberated" internal document from James O'Keefe's spook shop. These guys make Donald Segretti look like St. Francis.

Second, they don't begin a major ratfuck operation unless they already know the endgame.

I find it awfully damned suspicious that just about every conservative blogger on the net fingered Kimberlin for this stunt, even though there is, at this writing, no evidence against him. (Update: The man who started it all -- Patterico, a.k.a. John Patrick Frey of the L.A. D.A.'s office -- now says he has reason to point the finger at someone else. More on that below.)

The firmness of the accusation coupled with the absence of evidence is the reason why I smell a rat. (An appropriate metaphor, as we shall see.) Fear of lawsuits would normally cause even the most reactionary of writers to weigh their words a little more carefully. But no: These guys are convinced that Evil Brett did it, even though he gained no discernible benefit.

I now think that proof against him does exist and will soon come out. Well, let's use quotation marks: "Proof."

I will go on the record and predict that when that false call to the cops is traced, it will be traced back to a computer belonging to Brett Kimberlin or an associate.

But that doesn't mean Brett (or an associate) made the call.

It is very possible to control someone else's computer remotely. I've seen the phenomenon in action: An employer working from his home took over my work station at his place of business. It was downright eerie to watch the cursor suddenly take on a life of its own.

Here's a piece of software which makes the job easy. Of course, anyone using that software must knowingly allow remote access.

Certain trojans called Remote Access Trojans -- or RATs -- can allow miscreants to control your computer remotely. While you sleep, your computer can be doing all sorts of things -- things that might incriminate you, like downloading kiddie porn or sending an incriminating email. See here and here.

According to Wikipedia, a RAT can be used for these purposes:

Randomly move and click mouse
Record sound with a connected microphone
Record video with a connected webcam
Shutdown, restart, log-off, shutdown monitor
Steal passwords
View screen
View, kill, and start tasks in task manager

So it is very possible for an outsider living many miles away to take control of your computer and make it dial a number using Skype or some other VOIP service.

A problem arises. Once the call is placed, how can the remote administrator talk to the cops (by way of the remotely controlled computer)?

Simple: Three-way conference calling. Several VOIP providers offer this service. Example. Another example.

How does the RAT get on the target computer in the first place? The usual tactics: Email attachments and malware-laden downloads. (Personally, I get an email with a suspect payload at least once a month. I don't open any packages of that sort, I do nightly malware checks, and I wipe my drive very often.)

I'd love some feedback from any readers who know more about this stuff than I do. Is there any flaw in my proposed scenario? More importantly: If a RAT is involved, how can an investigator uncover the truth?

I must admit, framing someone like Kimberlin would be a rather clever move. He has a terrible history; a well-known New Yorker writer devoted an entire book to exposing him as a rotter. If a VOIP call is traced to Kimberlin's address, no-one will want to come to his defense.

And conservatives will then be able to claim that liberals are extremists and terrorists.

About Frey's latest claim: "Patterico" now believes that the voice on his SWAT call matches that of a call-in to a radio show. He further believes that Ron Brynaert -- discussed in a previous post -- may be responsible for both. I know that Brynaert is a psychologically troubled individual; for that reason, my first reaction was to place him atop my own list of suspects. However, Frey adds this:

For more details, read my original post on the harassment other Kimberlin critics and I have suffered at the hands of Brynaert, Neal Rauhauser, and Brett Kimberlin.

Bullshit. Those three are not working together. Ron Brynaert can't get along with anyone in his present state of mind. (The same can be said of Rauhauser. I don't know anyone who likes him.) If Frey thinks that those three are involved in a conspiracy, he's as far gone as Ron. And frankly, you can't build a conspiracy theory around one guy who needs a doctor.

"Left-wing terrorism": A bogus conspiracy theory gains momentum

Yes, there's more Evil Brett crap going around, and all of the right-wing blogs are doing their best to create hysteria. Michelle Malkin is in high dudgeon mode, caterwauling about "the crucial battle between truth-telling bloggers versus convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin and his band of malicious online thugs."

What band of online thugs?

If this band exists, why won't Memeorandum link to their writings or websites -- y'know, just to give us curious folks an idea of how thuggish these thugs can get? Memeorandum links to pretty much everyone -- to Malkin, to all of the Breitbarters, and even to my humble self. Alas, we see no links providing a single example of Kimberlin-loving online thuggery in action.

Nevertheless, Malkin assures us that those thugs are out there somewhere, scuttling about in the criminal night. They must exist. Michelle Malkin wouldn't lie to us, would she?

In their crazed zeal to push this meme, the Breitbarters have brought in some fairly heavy hitters: Hermann Cain, Glenn Beck, the National Review, and now Congressman Kenny Marchant and Senator Saxby Chambliss. All of them are screaming about a conspiracy that, as far as I can determine, does not exist.

Everything started when a couple of right-wing bloggers asserted (without presenting objective evidence) that they were SWATted -- that is, targeted by fake 911 calls to the cops. (The timing of those incidents was pretty suspicious, as discussed in previous posts.) Even if we stipulate that these SWATs took place as described, so far I've seen no evidence linking Brett Kimberlin -- an unlikable Charlie Nobody with a serious rap sheet -- to the events. Nevertheless, the rightwingers keep shouting that he is the mastermind of a left-wing terror conspiracy. When a claim receives endless repetition, it begins to seem true.

The ancient question Cui Bono? tells you who really did the deed. Nobody on the left could possibly benefit from such an inane and otiose stunt. The benefit to the right is obvious: They get to play "martyrella" (as one of my former ladyfriends might have put it). James O'Keefe, Breitbart's private spook, is on record as favoring "false flag" attacks.

More recently, a little-known blogger named Aaron Walker, who had relentlessly promoted this nonsense about The Great Kimberlin Conspiracy, was punished by a Maryland court for violating a restraining order. To the right-wing nutcases, the judge's decision proves that the Great Kimberlin Conspiracy is so immensely powerful that it controls the justice system.

The best summary of this nonsense is on The Moderate Voice.

Earlier, I told you about the manufactured scheiss-sturm about somebody nobody has ever heard of by … THE ENTIRE RIGHTIE BLOGOSMEAR. (“The Ghouls of May“)

And now, we find the interesting spectacle of no major media having picked up the kerfluffing of a self-manufactured kerfuffle, so the Breitbarts, the Malkins and the rest of the flying monkey corps have pressed two members of congress into service...

Behind the scenes, a couple of other liberal-ish bloggers -- better known and more influential than I -- have kept an eye on the Breitbarters and their surreal theatricals. They are unsure as to when, if ever, would be the right time to speak. Although these "bigger" bloggers agree that, right now, it would be best not to give Malkin and co. further publicity, there is a general sense that the rightists are up to something sinister.

Their actions are simply too coordinated. There must be a plan.

(For all of their caterwauling about the dangers of "collectivism," the Breitbarters know the value of concerted action. Have you ever heard anyone other than a conservative say "There's no I in Team?")

So what's the endgame? In the words of the Moderate Voice writer: "The teapot grows ever more tempesty. But WHY this. And WHY now?"

In part, this bizarre campaign seems designed to create the impression that Kimberlin-allied terrorists killed Andrew Breitbart. And they call me a conspiracy theorist! 

But I will posit an even darker scenario.

(Before I do, this warning: What follows is speculative. We all know the double standard at work in our society: Breitbarters and Fox Newsers are allowed to spew conspiracy theories relentlessly, while liberals may never do likewise. Therefore, if you wish to be considered a serious personage, you are well-advised to offer a pro-forma denunciation of that bastard Cannon and his irresponsible, paranoid ways.)

Suppose -- just suppose -- that tomorrow you wake up and the headlines tell you that a Big Bad went down. We're talking about a big Big Bad: Falling airplanes. Toppling buildings. The electric grid goes kablooey. Whatever.

Al Qaeda doesn't cut it as a bogeyman anymore. Everyone knows that the group has been rendered nearly impotent.

Moreover, everyone knows that people like Michelle Malkin want to live in a world where left-wing writers are suspected, interrogated, rounded-up, spied upon, imprisoned. Ann Coulter once said that conservatives need "...to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

Malkin and the Breitbarters are creating the foundation for that kind of concerted anti-left action. "The Kimberlin conspiracy" is a scarecrow designed to frighten the gullible. But in the hysteria following a major terrorist incident, that scarecrow will look more animated than Ray Bolger ever did, and it will seem a lot more threatening.

If that's the intended outcome, then the better-known liberal scribblers have to find some way to talk about this bizarre -- but brilliantly coordinated -- operation.

The Breitbart spooks

In right-wingerland, it's Let's-Make-Brett-Kimberlin-Famous day, part 2. (A couple of posts down, we discussed the first Kimberlin Day.) Although this business may strike you as silly or overblown, comedies may become tragedies. And the most tragic outcome of all would be to give a Romney administration an excuse to spy on the left.

So attention, attention must be paid.

Basically, a lot of Breitbart-linked right-wing bloggers are claiming that they have been attacked by a conspiracy of left-wing terrorists. Supposedly, these Obama-loving bounders use Caller ID spoofing (a real thing) to bring the cops charging to the homes of innocent right-wing bloggers.

The Breitbarters are also claiming -- without offering any proof, so far -- that this conspiracy is led by one Brett Kimberlin.

As we noted in earlier posts, this Kimberlin fellow has become a right-wing bete noire. In the rightist imagination, this former con (and con artist) is a Leader of the Left -- even though actual left-wingers never heard of him. I'm not sure why the right has focused on this guy, although there does appear to be some sort of personal contretemps between Kimberlin and a right-wing lawyer. I haven't really followed the details of that.

Let's look at the timing. Then let's ask ourselves that famous question: Cui bono? Who benefits?

A few days ago, right-wing blogger Patterico -- a.k.a. Los Angeles prosecutor John Frey -- revealed that he had been victimized by a similar caller ID spoofing gambit at some point last year. Frey's column sent dozens and dozens of rightist bloggers into high dudgeon. En masse, and without evidence, they all insisted that this was the dastardly doing of Evil Kimberlin, funded by Evil Soros and Evil Streisand.

We're all familiar with the way right-wing writers all suddenly start saying the exact same thing at the exact same time, like robots. And that's how May 25 became Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day.

Frey further said that the caller ID spoofing gambit is a common left-wing tactic called "SWATting." Where does that term come from? From the late Andrew Breitbart, supposedly. We're supposed to believe that Breitbart knew the terminology, sources and methods of the great left-wing terror conspiracy.

Then, just as the brouhaha over Kimberlin Day 1 died down, the cops showed up at the home of a Red State writer euphoniously named Erick Erickson. This attack followed just a little too closely after the great Day of manufactured frenzy. Which leads us to that famous question:

Cui bono? Cui freakin' bono, dudes?

How could anyone on the left possibly benefit from such nonsense?

The benefit to the right, by contrast, should be clear even to a child.

Now, maybe Evil Kimberlin (who is hardly my idea of gentleman) really did do it. Maybe he's Just That Crazy. Maybe he decided that he had nothing better to do than to give the right a propaganda triumph.

Or maybe -- just maybe -- the rightists decided to give themselves a propaganda triumph. Gee. Ya think?

Let's put it this way: Suppose a lefty blogger were "SWATted." What theory of the event would become immediately popular in BreitbartWorld?

Caller ID can be spoofed by pretty much anyone. That part's easy. Framing someone else takes more skill. I have reason to suspect that something of the sort is in the offing (see below), so right now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Spooked up. Many of you may not understand what we are dealing with. The Breitbart group is not just a propaganda network: They're spooks -- private spooks. They're in the business of covert ops.

Does that statement sound paranoid? Allow me to offer you some hard, irrefutable proof in the form of a document which comes from the team of Breitbart's dirty trickster James O'Keefe. (Also see here.)

As you may recall, O'Keefe has pulled a lot of shady stunts, including a Watergate-ish attempt to eavesdrop electronically on a senator. Andrew Breitbart claimed that O'Keefe was not an employee, even though he (Breitbart) paid him (O'Keefe) regularly. Hidden financing and plausible deniability are standard tactics for covert operatives.

You will have a very thorough understanding of the caller ID spoofing brouhaha once you've read how O'Keefe planned to fake out CNN. Here is his plan to "spoof CNN and get them to report on a topic that is entirely false."

Spoofing CNN

We should entice them with some video that they want to believe. The media has been in a frenzy for the past few years on a relatively small number of topics and subjects.

1. Tea party racism
2. Arizona racism
3. Sarah Palin
4. GOP leadership scandals

If we were to offer CNN evidence of racism, playing on these currently relevant issues, and produced enough supporting evidence to prove the claim we make, have them write a story and then prepare our allies to pounce, it could be a good way to undercut their credibility.

Things we could do to entice them:

1. False video evidence
2. False textual evidence and documents
3. False interviews

The false video evidence, for one, could be focused on the incident with Congressman John Lewis where he said he was called a "nigger" by tea party protestors, even though the video evidence disproved his claim.

Spoofing video evidence proving Lewis' claim, along with a good story that the tea party had suppressed such evidence, might be enough for CNN to report on the story.

The document goes on to describe exactly how the video evidence could be ginned up.

The danger is, of course, that the lie becomes the official truth, and so it would be necessary to immediately deconstruct this story on friendly networks and media outlets. The goal isn't to draw out the scandal after all, rather just to embarrass CNN by having them report a false story. So immediately reporting on the falseness of the story would be key...

Uproariously, O'Keefe calls his operation Project Veritas.

Obviously, what he is up to is not "investigative journalism." This is spook stuff, pure and simple. And I really must congratulate him: This document is a fairly professional job -- not up to CIA standards, but still rather better than his clumsy maunderings in the senator's office.

Again, read the whole document. Then look back at the Erickson/Frey claims of caller ID spoofing. Then ask yourself: Cui bono?

Get real: There is no left-wing terror organization, and any attempt to create that impression is straight out of the Frank Kitson playbook. There are no private left-wing intelligence operatives of any kind in the United States. If liberals had their own version of Project Veritas, I would have heard of it by now. You would have heard of it too. O'Keefe freely plays his games without any fear of being countered by an opposite force.

Some attention -- not enough -- has been paid to a related O'Keefe scheme in which he planned to "seduce" a CNN correspondent named Abbie Boudreau. But the conspiracy outlined above is more germane to our present discussion.

A long time ago, a reader wrote to me and said that Breitbart used the word "BIG" on all of his sites because the word is actually an acronym: Breitbart Intelligence Group. I didn't (and still don't) take that claim seriously. Nevertheless, I find the nomenclature amusing and will henceforth employ it. All in good fun.

Dragging me into this. The post you are reading right now is one that the Breitbart Intelligence Group probably wanted me to write. Earlier today, I got a comment which had a very familiar ring:

What a strange, hilarious spin you are putting on this Kimberlin thing! The people who have teamed up to defend the first amendment rights of a blogger by exercising their rights, *those* people are crazy. Uh-huh. If the shoe was on the other foot, you'd call them heroes. Hell, you're a blogger too, you should be joining them.

After being on the wrong side with Weinergate, you'd think you'd be a bit more careful. Now that there has been another "SWATing" incident, meaning another sheriff department can corroborate that it happened, are you still going to act confident that they're making it up? What if the police investigation concludes that it's real, what then?

After Weinergate, you should be more careful. They were right before.

This text reminds me of certain comments I got during the Weinergate affair -- specifically, of the time I was flooded with messages directing me to the work of the Mighty Seixon, a long-time GOP operative (posing as a "liberal," a la Lee Stranahan) who created an entire damned blog just to counter what I was saying. Roughly ten seconds after that blog was conjured into existence, I received comments informing me of Seixon's work. Throughout the scandal, I received other missives which, in essence, held out hoops that I was meant to jump through.

Basically, the comment reprinted above was meant to bait me into writing the very post you are reading now. In all likelihood, the BIG bloggers want to have some fun at my expense. It's not a major thing for them, just a sideline amusement.

C'est la vie. They can't harm me in any way. They simply refuse to understand that my motives are not their motives. I have no ambition, I write only to write, I don't ally myself with any cause or group, and I'm not playing the kind of games that they love to play. This blog will continue as always.

So why does this post exist? To give the Project Veritas memo wider publicity.

Something wicked this way comes. The comment contains one line which we may consider a slip-up: "...are you still going to act confident that they're making it up?" Until just now, I never expressed any confidence that the caller ID spoofing scandal was concocted. Indeed, in my previous post, I stipulated that the spoofed phone call was real.

Whenever the BIG righties pull a stunt like this, they always have one of those moments. You know -- like when Tony Perkins gets all jumpy as he starts talking to Janet Leigh about his mother.

I'm troubled by this bit of Noman Bates-y bean spillage: "What if the police investigation concludes that it's real, what then?"

Dude! You're talking too much. Learn to be more subtle.

It seems very likely that the Veritas gang wouldn't have initiated a stunt like this unless they have already concocted a plan to mislead the cops and make the charge against Kimberlin stick. How could they accomplish that trick? Right now, I can't guess. But the whole business is clearly engineered. (Remember, Breitbart had obtained all of the incriminating photos well before the Weiner scandal even broke; they knew the endgame before the opening moves.)

Maybe Project Veritas has confederates among the constabulary. That sort of thing has happened before: I used to live in L.A., and I well recall the Ramparts scandal. (There have long been rumors that the cops who showed up at the Watergate were somehow "in on it." I don't recall the details, and I don't know how credible those rumors were. Another post, perhaps.)

Keep in mind what Frey does for a living. He must have contacts. Just sayin'.

How to use malware to frame people you don't like...and TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Kaspersky labs has determined that the widespread Flame and Stuxnet viruses share code and therefore must have had similar origins.

Most people believe that these cyber weapons resulted from a joint US/Israel effort targeting Iran. It is known that Stuxnet was supposed to have a "kill switch" which would deactivate it after at certain date. Apparently, the Israelis killed the kill switch and spread the malware around the world.

Now, Israel is bragging that Stuxnet was theirs, theirs alone, and how dare That Bastard Obama claim to have anything to do with it. The story appears on Breitbart, natch.

(Actually, I don't recall seeing Obama crow about Stuxnet. It's not the sort of thing a president crows about.)

I, for one, am perfectly fine with giving Israel sole credit. For what it is worth, however, there are others who claim that these cyber attacks were indeed a joint venture which began during the Bush administration. Kaspersky thinks Flame has been out there for perhaps five years.

Flame is widespread and allegedly undetectable. The virus gives an outsider complete control over a target's computer.

And who might be targeted? Hmmm. Pinky...are you pondering what I'm pondering...?

On a completely unrelated note: Eighty-seven congressional representatives are calling for an investigation of the alleged SWATs pulled on two conservative bloggers, as discussed in earlier posts. A barrage of right-wing bloggers have blamed the attacks on one Brett Kimberlin, against whom there is, as of this writing, no evidence. (But he does have a bad rap sheet.) The right-wingers have acted with such sheer, robotic coordination as to make it obvious that there a Master Plan controlling their efforts.

Obviously, this "SWAT" business is a propaganda effort designed to create the impression that left-wingers are terrorists.

By way of comparison: Nobody in Congress called for an investigation into the links between far-right, fanatically pro-Israel libertarians like Pam Geller and mad killer Anders Breivik, who opened fire on a youth camp in Norway. Geller -- frequently seen on Fox News -- was Breivik's acknowledged inspiration. And the admiration was mutual:

Geller justifies Breivik’s attack on the Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp because she says the camp is part of an anti-Israel “indoctrination training center.” She says the victims would have grown up to become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”

After the shooting, Geller engaged in some very telling self-censorship:

Tellingly, Pamela Geller attempted to wash her hands of any pre knowledge of Breivik’s plans by excising a paragraph from one of his long rants which she posted in 2007. The portion cut out:  “We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.”

There are no leftwingers "stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment." There are no liberals ominously declaring that "This is going to happen fast."

That's a right-wing thing.

Obviously, the Tea Partiers are the ones who have genuine links to terror. Yet Congress will not investigate Geller -- in fact, congressmen are happy to pose for pictures with her.

Instead, the Republicans are going along with this ominous attempt to gin up evidence against an alleged leftist "leader" whom almost nobody on the actual left knew about or cared about until the Breitbarters started caterwauling about him.

And just how easy would it be to gin up evidence against Kimberlin...?

Send your eyeballs north. Re-read the section about Flame and Stuxnet.

Remember: Flame gives an outsider complete control over your computer. Your computer can be used to make phone calls, as outlined here. The evidence indicates that the SWAT calls are made from targeted computers, using VOIP.

Could Flame (or some similar trojan) have found its way onto Kimberlin's computer? Dude, that shit is everywhere.

Flame or worse could be on your system right now. While you're out of the house, someone could commandeer your computer to threaten the President. Behind your back, your system could be sending out an email to your boss confessing that extraterrestrials have told you to burn buildings. While you sleep, your computer could fire up IRC to download kiddie porn.

That's the power of Flame.

I would not be even slightly surprised if an investigation traces the SWAT calls to Brett Kimberlin's IP address. But even if that happens, should we go along with the presumption that he actually did it?

Hell no.

Cui bono? Who has benefited from SWAT hysteria?

They're at it again...

I swear, I don't know whether to pay attention to this story or not.

A couple of readers have chided me for writing about the Breitbart-linked right-wingers who have mounted a bizarre media campaign against relative nonentity Brett Kimberlin. In their feverish scenario, Kimberlin is the kingpin of a massive conspiracy to stifle free speech by SWATting conservative writers.

("SWATting" refers to the quaint practice of making a false distress call to the cops, who are told to show up at the address of someone the caller does not like. The goal is to insure that a twitchy, loaded-for-bear police response team storms your enemy's home.)

Let it slide, some readers have advised me. Don't feed the trolls.

That's usually good advice. But.

The meme has found its way into Congress. And now Fox News is making a big deal out of it: "Conservative bloggers taking precautions over ‘SWAT-ing’ attacks."

The Fox piece does not mention Kimberlin by name, but it does portray right-wing bloggers as the victims of an evil lefty conspiracy:

The growing trend, which some say could one day prove deadly, had conservatives on edge at the annual RightOnline conference of right-wing bloggers and activists in Las Vegas this weekend.

"What they're clearly trying to do is dampen down free speech, but it goes beyond that -- it's putting people's physical safety in jeopardy," said Ali Akbar, who heads a group called the National Bloggers Club made up of conservative online writers.

"Growing trend." "Some say." There you have it -- the whole Fox act in a nutshell.

SWATting is hardly a "growing trend." Yes, the tactic is real; people have harassed enemies in this fashion for some years. Parmy Olson refers to SWATting in her remarkable new book We Are Anonymous -- about which, I hope to say more soon.

Basically, this form of attack was born in the obnoxious prankster subculture permeating the 4chan site, which also gave birth to the underground hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec. After reading Olson's book, I began to suspect that the "underground war" that grew out of Weinergate is, to a large degree, a war between the left and right wings of the 4chan community.

How do we know that Kimberlin had any connection to the SWAT calls? We don't have any evidence pointing in that direction. The fact that there was a coordinated media campaign designed to convince us that Kimberlin is guilty leads me to consider the possibility that someone on the right SWATted his compatriots.

Note that "Patterico," the first alleged victim, made no noteworthy reference to his 2011 SWAT experience for months and months. He spoke up only after the right had decided to mount a coordinated attack on Kimberlin on May 25 of this year. Just a few days later, the next SWAT occurred; this time, the target was right-wing radio host/CNN contributor Erick Erickson. The timing of the Erickson event was just too damned convenient; it occurred at exactly the right time to keep the Frey furor from dying. The benefit to anyone on the left was nil; the benefit to the right was enormous. (There have been other claimed SWATs, but the Frey and Erickson incidents have received the most publicity.)

I don't agree with everything said by Hart Williams at The Moderate Voice, but this run-on sentence may bear quotation...

I suppose that it’s inevitable now that this “story” will now appear in the MSM, fully developed, its language honed to a fine “victimology” sheen — complete with Luntzian focus-grouped slogans and terms — and that we will now see sober talking heads discussing how three prank phone calls are a clear and present danger, and NOT about how this phony story has been being worked (now with Bloviating Congressional Action®!) since Memorial Day Weekend, now, to prove the phony assertion that “liberals” and ‘leftists”  and “the fringe left” are the CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to freedom of speech, and NOT the Right Wing Echo Machine, which is clearly coordinating this between congress and the bloggers (who appeared in Las Vegas this weekend, along with slanderer-for-hire Sarah Palin, paid for by Americans for (Koch) Prosperity at Sheldon Adelson’s pointedly NON-UNION casino/resort.

An anti-Breitbart site called Breitbart Unmasked has come to my notice. Memeorandum never links to it. Most people on the left ignore it. Yet in the rightist imagination, B.U. is terribly important -- in fact, it is the nefarious hub of the Great Left Wing Conspiracy Against All That is Good and Holy. The grandmaster, in their view, must be none other than Evil Kimberlin himself.

I doubt that he actually runs the site, although I don't know who does.

B.U. publishes a lot of petty crap about Breitbart-linked bloggers. For example, B.U. has revealed that one right-wing writer has used hookers. My response: Big deal. Inane, small-minded personal attacks are reprehensible when right-wingers launch them, and such attacks are no less reprehensible when a putative enemy of the right descends into the same morass of insipidity.

Nevertheless, some interesting nuggets of information do appear on B.U. from time to time. For example, this post offers some further details on the initial SWAT attack on John Frey, the Assistant D.A. in Los Angeles who blogs under the name of Patterico. Although parts of the picture remain unclear, it appears that -- directly after the initial SWAT -- Frey told another right-wing blogger "that he has not reported the matter to his local PD because “They’re not interested in this.”

Say what? How can the cops not be interested?

SWATting is, in essence, the filing of a false police report. The cops should want to learn every detail, especially when the victim belongs to the Los Angeles D.A.'s office. I can't imagine a scenario in which the authorities make no attempt to determine who did what.

At any rate, it seems clear that whatever the hell happened on that night was of no great importance to Frey until someone decided to use SWAT claims as the foundation for a propaganda barrage.

A final note: The right-wing blogs give the impression that Brad Friedman (a writer/radio personality they don't like) is the conspiratorial partner of Neal Rauhauser (another person the righties don't like.) For examples, see here and here.

I had a brief, semi-acrimonious email exchange with Brad earlier today. Turns out he doesn't even know who Rauhauser is -- couldn't place the guy politically, and couldn't even spell his name. Yet the conservatives have hallucinations in which Brad and Neal get together for secret meetings at Conspiracy Central -- where, after sacrificing a goat or two to Baal, they get their orders from Evil Soros himself.

Do the Breitbarters actually believe the crap they're writing?

Whatever happened to Saul Alinski?

What with everything going on today, it may strike you as strange that I'm thinking about Saul Alinski.

Remember Alinski-mania? It was all over the web about a year ago, and the madness lasted well into the summer. Satanic Saul was all that the right-wingers could talk about. As I said back in March:

What a bizarre situation! I've been chatting with lefties since the Carter administration, yet I've never run across anyone who said: "You've gotta read Rules For Radicals! Saul Alinksy is a friggin' genius!" The guy simply hasn't been on my radar, and my radar takes in a rather large amount of territory.

Yet if you wander into RightWingerLand, you'll soon see that the folks there believe that guys like me have spent the past forty years eating, drinking and breathing Alinksy. The right thinks that Alinkyism controls our every action and every utterance.

Oddly enough, if you type the name "Saul Alinsky" into Google, you'll see that only right-wing political sites make the front page. Very few people on the left care about Alinsky -- even though the reactionaries love to hallucinate otherwise.

If you repeat that experiment now, you'll find that most of the Google hits take you to material printed six or more months ago. Alinski-mania is over. The moment is gone. The blog devoted to combating the Alinski threat has not published a new story since August.

What I'm wondering is this: Was Alinski madness a real thing? I mean, the people who spread the fever -- were they sincerely worried about the murderous menace of Saul Alinski? Or did they know full well that they were playing the rubes for suckers? When right-wing bloggers worked together -- worked collectively, if you will -- to transform Saul Alinski into a scarecrow to frighten the gullible, did they do so disingenuously? Or did they really believe the shit they said?

Whenever the right fixates on a meme of this sort, I always wonder if their howlings express their legitimate feelings, or if they are simply engaging in political theater. Some of you may remember when we woke up one day last year to discover that every Breitbart-linked blogger was talking about the murderous menace of Brett Kimberlin, a former jailbird who allegedly did something bad. We were told that Brett was a leader of the left, that all liberals everywhere hung on his every word, that Brett was the boss, that we were all Crusaders for Kimberlin. And every actual liberal responded by saying: "Brett who?"

Does the right have a central planning office where they come up with these ersatz scandals? If so, the hysteria machine seems to have broken down...

Buzzfeed = Breitbart (Or: Cannon gets screwed!)

Earlier today, I confessed to my ladyfriend that I got screwed by a woman named Rosie Gray. Deeply ashamed, I promised that it would never happen again.

Rosie works for a hip new site called Buzzfeed which caters to a younger crowd. Politically, it has a rep -- unearned, methinks -- for skewing liberal-ish. Rosie works for Ben Smith, recently wooed away from Politico.

And who is Smith working for? This story posted by the St. Louis Activist Hub (a site previously unknown to me) uncovers a series of tweets that explain what Rosie was up to. The tweets prove that Ben Smith and Rosie Gray are working on behalf of a Breitbart-linked conservative blogger network.

To set the scene, let's note the obvious: The Republicans are starting to worry about their reputation for nuttiness. The birthers will never stop birthering. Two nominees for the GOP nomination have spoken in favor of seccession (at least theoretically). Rush Limbaugh screeched that Sandra Fluke was part of a conspiracy. Fox News has become the "All conspiracy all the time" network. Jon Huntsman has said that the party has become so extreme that even Ronald Reagan could no longer attain the nomination. Breitbart's sites brim with paranoia and vitriol. And then there's Glenn Beck, the King of Kooks.

The right knows that these wackos frighten middle-of-the-road Americans. But the GOP can't bridle the extremists; the beasts will accept neither tether nor cage.

Time for an attack based on that familiar "false equivalence" gambit. You know what I'm talking about: "Well, sure a few people have made a few extreme statements, but it happens on both sides. On the right, you have Glenn Beck. And on the left, you have..."

Well, who do we have?

It must have been pretty difficult for them to come up with any liberal-ish equivalent to Beck. This being the one-year anniversary of the Weiner scandal, they decided to target little old me.

Yeah. Me. A guy in an attic in Baltimore who runs a third tier (if that) blog. A guy who can't stand Obama (for reasons best explained in a recent Bill Maher riff). A guy who, if he does vote Dem this year, will do so with the faint taste of upchuck in the back of his throat. A guy who says all isms are prisons. A guy who disdains groups. A guy who defines himself politically with the phrase "I like Ike."

I want no allies and represent no constituency. My words -- whether wise or foolish -- are mine alone. That stance brings the only true freedom a writer can have.

You must be asking: "What proof is there that Cannon was targeted? And where's the proof that the right was manipulating Buzzfeed?"

The evidence comes in series of tweets to Ben Smith from a Breitbart-linked blogger called Ace of Spades. Ace's blog played a key role in the Anthony Weiner scandal. As the aforementioned St. Louis Activist notes...

However, what I want to focus on is not so much which side is wackier, but rather how BuzzFeed came to report this story.  As can be seen quite clearly, it directly followed a script provided to them by right-wing blogger Ace of Spades, who has a vested interest in the story, since he spent weeks bullying Gennette Cordova online and later claimed to have been threatened via anonymous email.  In other words, he's not just someone reporting on the story; he's someone in the story.

Ace started tweeting BuzzFeed about his great story idea several days ago:

The tweets speak for themselves. Please note the reference to "Drudge." Apparently, the possibility of getting a link from Magical Matt was enough to cajole Ben Smith into joining forces with the Breitbarters.

Now I'll reveal the part that the St Louis Activist could not have known.

Roughly 24 hours after that last tweet -- while Ben Smith was probably doing the bbq thing -- I got an inquiry from his employee, Rosie Gray.

I'm a reporter for BuzzFeed Politics. Not sure if you'll know anything about this, but someone tipped me off that there are people who still believe that Anthony Weiner was hacked. I know you were all over this story a year ago, but do you know anything about the continued existence of this belief?

I told her that, as far as I knew, the only person who held to that unfathomable belief was an odd fellow named Joseph Cannon. Of course, I stopped writing (or caring) about the matter ages ago. I went on to say...

Considering the sheer paranoid weirdness of the Glenn Beckified right these days, I'm not going to apologize, even if you do find my take on that matter eccentric.

I know something of the weirdos who remain obsessed with Weinergate and I don't want to get dragged into their madness.

I then went on to describe what I knew of the "twilight war" that arose out of Weinergate. As discussed in the previous post, there is a strange subculture (composed of both right- and left-wingers) who remain fixated on that event. Or rather: They are now fixated on battling each other, having left Weiner himself far, far behind. Although I've occasionally kept an eye on those twilight warriors (whose antics are well-described by the St. Louis Activist), my own interests have moved elsewhere.

So who was the "someone" who tipped off Rosie about me? Obviously, it was Ace of Spades.

Ah, they remember me on the right...!

I still think fondly of the army of sockpuppets they sicced on this blog during Weinergate. I especially liked the heartfelt messages that pretended to be from longtime fans, even though these "fans" had no clue as to what I had written in the past. Last year's scandal was a lot of work for no pay -- but it was great fun, nonetheless.

I still giggle when I think of the writer for the National Review Online who got on the highest of his high horses and excoriated me as a typical representative of those wild, wacky liberals. Folks, you simply haven't lived until you've been labeled an extremist by the son of Lucianne Goldberg.

(Jonah Goldberg thinks Mussolini invented liberalism. And Jonah is a regular talking head on teevee.)

Well, enough of the fond memories. Back to our story...

My answer to Rosie apparently did not supply her with sufficient red meat. Her job was to please Ace, and my words would not suffice.

So instead of attacking me (with one small exception), all of the right-wing blogs spent much of that day attacking a couple of strange, little-known individuals named Brett Kimberlin and Ron Brynaert. For some reason, these two fellows have become fixation points for the Weinergate obsessives. Kimberlin, a smooth-talking scoundrel, has no discernible link to the Weiner affair. Brynaert is (allegedly) writing a book about the scandal; alas, he seems to be under a lot of psychological stress and his actions have become quite bizarre.

The Breitbart brigade tried to present Kimberlin and Brynaert as liberal icons and the leaders of a left wing terror squad. So I wrote a post (which you can scroll down to read, if so inclined) which pointed out one simple fact: Most liberals never heard of those two. They're not leaders. They're unimportant. The former Weiner obsessives were now obsessing over a couple of "lefties" that nobody on the left cares about. (Sort of like the Saul Alinski propaganda meme.)

That, in brief, is what I wrote. Guess what happened next?

Rosie published a story called "Meet the Weiner Truthers."

("Weiner Trutherism" is Ace of Spade's neologism. Rosie picked it up like a good little typist.)

This story allegedly details how those wacky, wacky liberals remain determined to prove Weiner's innocence. Rosie quotes at length from my own post -- the one about Kimberlin and Brynaert.

Here's the problem. My story didn't talk about "the Weiner truthers." I never once focused on Anthony Weiner per se. In that post, I never addressed the question of whether he was hacked.

Instead, I talked about Kimberlin and Brynaert, a couple of Charlie Nobodies whom the Breitbarters have transformed into scarecrows to frighten the gullible.

Most of Rosie’s piece consists of yanked-out-of-context quotes from yours truly. She makes it seem as though I'm talking about an issue I never intended to address! The quotes are cleverly arranged to convey the impression that I'm either exposing or speaking on behalf of a group of liberal conspiracy buffs.

At first, I thought that Rosie had simply misunderstood. So I (twice) tried to post a comment to the Buzzfeed site offering a polite correction. They refused to publish my words.

That’s when I found out about the tweets which prove that Rosie was working for Ace of Spades -- that is to say, for the Breitbart network. Her initial letter to me was a set-up.

Now, I'm not here to talk about Weinergate per se. Maybe I will do so at another time -- when the "twilight warriors" have calmed down. (Similarly, I won't talk about 9/11 until the "controlled demolition" freaks have learned how to behave.) If you never liked what I had to say on that subject, fine.

As Don LaFontaine might have put it:

In a world where Fox Nation can accuse OSHA of being party to a communist plot (because the agency advised outdoor laborers to drink plenty of water!) ...

In a country where Glenn Beck earns $80 million a year selling ancient and long-exposed fascist lies about Woodrow Wilson (of all people)...

In a society where millions believe the president to be an atheist Muslim socialist (a contradiction in terms)...

In a blogosphere where conservatives continually declare that global warming is a socialist plot, that the Illuminati is real and that the apocalypse is nigh...

ONE BLOGGER who is not a conservative stands up for his right to say a few things that others might consider unpopular, eccentric and even outlandish! But he does so only occasionally. And in a polite tone of voice. Unless you piss him off.

The important aspect of this post has nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with Weinergate. All of that is a distraction.

Focus on the tweets.

What do they tell you about Buzzfeed? What do they tell you about Ben Smith?  Who is in charge of whom?

Think about it: Fox News and Rush Limbaugh speak only to the like-minded. To get a new propaganda meme out to a mixed audience, the rightwingers need to use an allegedly "liberal" site, preferably one that is popular with the kids. They need, in short, a front group.

Focus on those tweets. And don't trust anyone who works for Buzzfeed.

The proven liars who can't understand why people mistrust them

Babbling Bibi. I'm always amused by liars who can't comprehend why people have ceased to accept their claims. For an excellent example, take a look at the image re-posted above. Do we need any further reason to discount everything said by Benjamin Netanyahu in his most recent address? No, we do not -- although we should also note that Mossad contradicted Bibi's 2012 claims (delivered before the UN) that Iran poses a grave nuclear menace.

Bibi-watchers know that this man has compiled a long history of prevarication.

His recent speech was just one small part of a massive media effort to convince Americans that Iran poses a serious threat. Look at Iran's history: When was the last time that nation ever started a war? Iran is far less militaristic than are the United States and Israel, two of the most barbarous and dangerous countries on earth.

Silly Stevie. For another example of a liar whose bullshit can no longer find buyers, consider Steve Emerson. You know how people write LOL even when they have not actually laughed out loud? Emerson's missive to Talking Points Memo literally made me LOL. In fact, it almost brought me to the ROFLMAO point.

How is it that TPM has never called me or my organization for more than 15 years about all the news we disclosed on major stories concerning radical Islamic terrorism?

Has TPM secretly taken materials from CAIR as part of a explicit agreement to advance CAIR’s agenda? (Don’t worry, perjury can only be invoked when you are under oath)

You will recall, of course, that Emerson was the lunatic who said that Birmingham, England had become a Muslim-only zone. Actually, he had discredited himself long before that.

Back in the early 1990s, in a major piece assailing the "October Surprise" story, Emerson claimed to have uncovered Secret Service documents which provided George H.W. Bush with an alibi for a key date. This "evidence" was imaginary, as Emerson later admitted.

Mendacious Mark. The right-wing staged one of its patented blogswarms the other day -- and this one, surprisingly enough, had nothing to do with Brett Kimberlin. It was all about an alleged "Reuters" story by one Mark Langfan, who claimed that Obama threatened to shoot down the Israeli Air force if it attacked Iran.

Maybe Obama did and maybe Obama didn't. I don't know. But I do know this: Only a drooling idiot would go to a guy like Mark Langfan for the straight skinny on that topic -- or any other topic.

The piece in which Markie-poo makes that claim is filled with howlers. For example, he claims that Obama's alleged shoot-down policy came at the instigation of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, we are told, hates Israel.

(What does Mark Langfan have against Zbig? Isn't Zbig a neocon? Well, yes, he is -- but not the right kind of neocon. Zbig is more concerned with hating Russia than with hating whoever the Israelis tell him to hate.)

Langfan's reportage derives from a few dubious stories published in a handful of tiny Middle Eastern newspapers. Come on: Do you really think that "a Bethlehem paper you’ve never heard of" would know the American President's innermost secrets?

Turns out this Langfan fellow doesn't work for Reuters at all, and isn't even a journalist. He's a lawyer who has transformed himself into an online annoyance. I get the impression that Langfan has hopes of becoming the new Michael Savage; right now, he's the Sub-Savage. 

That last link includes a particularly amusing example of Langfanian "logic"...

... today, Israel is surrounded by millions of people who are religiously inspired by the genocidal hate of Adolf Hitler.

Take Iran. Why did Persia change its name to Iran? In 1935, Reza Shah, the head of Persia changed the name of "Persia" to "Iran" because Reza Shah was a rabid Nazi-Hitler lover and wanted to show common cause with Hitler.

"Iran," in Farsi, means "Land of the Aryans." Therefore, today, the "Islamic Republic of Iran" really means the "Islamic Republic of Hitler."

It is, in fact, true that the Shah of Iran used "Light of the Aryans" as one of his titles. And when the Shah was in power, just who was his closest Middle Eastern ally?

That's right: Israel.

That fact used to be common knowledge. I recall attending a dinner party in the 1980s in which an Israeli guest described his happy experiences in the Shah's Iran. Alas, most of today's young people know nothing about the alliance between Israel and "Hitlerland East," and professional liars like Langfan don't want the current generation to learn anything about what really happened.

(By the way: Although it has fallen out of favor, the term "Aryan" continues to be used by some linguists and enthnographers. Nazi usage of that word was pure pseudoscience; neither the Germans nor any other European group had a right to call themselves "Aryans." The Iranians may be the only modern people we can call "Aryan" with any degree of accuracy, although most scholars would use the term "Indo-European." We may safely presume that all academics would scoff at Langfan's claim that "Aryan" may be considered a synonym for "Hitler.") 

Hilarious Hounshell and ignorable Ignatius. A particularly bizarre exercise in absurdity began when Politico editor Blake Hounshell tweeted a non-story claiming that Ed Snowden's lawyer was trying to negotiate Snowden's return to the United States. In fact, absolutely nothing had changed on the Snowden front. Hounshell had taken a story that should have read "The snow was white and cold today, as always" and turned it into "Oh my God! Today's snowfall was purple! And HOT! Everything in the world has CHANGED!"

The teevee pundits followed Hounshell's lead. David Ignatius hopped onto the CNN airwaves and bleated the following...

It must be very difficult to be Edward Snowden, living in the Moscow of Vladimir Putin, at a time when Putin’s opposition is being murdered in the streets, so I can’t help but think that Snowden wants out, and the fact that he’s willing to negotiate, which he said before he wouldn’t do, is interesting.

Hilarious. Glenn Greenwald's response is worth quoting...

For more than 60 years, U.S. elites have been eager to tell Americans that anyone living in Russia is inherently miserable. That’s particularly true of Western dissidents: the apocryphal stories of British defector Kim Philby being destroyed by a dark, lonely, miserable existence that culminated in his drinking himself to death are often invoked to suggest that a similar fate awaits Snowden (who doesn’t drink, who lives with his longtime girlfriend, who is regarded as a hero by millions and millions of people around the world, who receives awards and prestigious appointments, and who is incredibly gratified and fulfilled both by what he did and his current life).

That’s all Ignatius is up to with these claims, all based on the obvious media-created fiction that Snowden has suddenly realized how desperate he is to leave Russia. Again, this entire conversation — like the whole media blitz yesterday about this story — is all based on utter fiction.

This “everyone-in-Russia-is-miserable” line has been a staple of U.S propaganda since the end of World War II, and remarkably, nothing has changed.

The bottom line. People wonder how we can separate truth from fiction. Simple: Check resumes. Folks who have lied to you in the past may well be lying to you now.

HBGary: Now run by a "former" CIA guy

The HBGary/Anonymous scandal -- a bizarre tale of cyberspying and counterspying -- became public early last year. Remember? HBGary, a tony computer security company run by a guy named Aaron Barr, used underhanded means to gather info on left-wing critics of the Chamber of Commerce. In response, hackers from Anonymous broke into the firm's systems, filched a whole bunch of emails and unleashed unholy hell. The company has since been sold -- to a very interesting firm, as we shall see.

Although that brouhaha broke out two Februarys ago, the past (as they say) is never truly past. In recent days, a number of stories have refocused attention on the great HBGary cyber-intrusion -- which, though not the world's most important hack, was certainly the wittiest. One could only smile at the spectacle of a high-priced computer security firm being invaded, undermined and kicked into the corner by a gaggle of goofball anarchists.

You simply must read this excerpt from Parmy Olsen's new book on Anonymous. Even if you're a technophobe, you'll be hooked.

Lately, the Breitbarters have been writing about the affair, always defending the honor and integrity of HBGary's Aaron Barr. In the conservative blogosphere, these defenses tend to intertwine with diatribes against Evil Brett Kimberlin, the right-wing bogeyman du jour. Why have the two topics have become conflated in the right-wing mind? I dunno. Read this and this; maybe you can explain it to me.

This much is certain: Olsen's version of events establishes that "security guru" Barr was hacked and hacked easily. Yet HBGary charges a very hefty fee for their services.

If you go to the HBGary website now, you'll see their malware-fighting products but not their prices. When I first visited the place in 2011, prices were posted -- and they were steep. (Five figures, if I recall correctly.) At the time, I asked myself: "What's the difference between HBGary's expensive security suite and the free stuff you get from a vendor like AVG or Avira? How good can anti-malware really be?"

And now here comes the punchline....

HBGary uses AVG !

Yes it's true I've been ploughing through some of the released emails and that's what they use. Make what you will of that, but i'm more than surprised, to say the least

Hmmm.

Theoretically speaking -- just theoretically, mind you -- is it possible for a company to repackage already-extant computer security software and sell it to corporate/government clients for oodles of cash? There are well-heeled people out there who simply don't feel comfortable purchasing anything unless they've paid top dollar.

And while you ponder that, ponder this...

Personas non grata. The right claims that HBGary was viciously maltreated by Anonymous, the famous/infamous hacker collective. Yet HBGary itself was (is?) in the business of malware and hacking -- and they targeted the left. In February of 2011, I posted an article on the company's dirty dealings which offered some juicy quotes (from here):

Indeed, malware hacking appears to be a key service sold by HBGary Federal. Describing a “spear phishing” strategy (an illegal form of hacking), Barr advised his colleague Greg Hoglund that “We should have a capability to do this to our adversaries.” In another e-mail chain, HBGary Federal executives discuss using a fake “patriotic video of our soldiers overseas” to induce military officials to open malicious data extraction viruses. In September, HBGary Federal executives again contemplate their success of a dummy “evite” e-mail used to maliciously hack target computers.

Nothing Anonymous has ever done (that we know of) rises to that level of malevolence.

HBGary wanted two million bucks a month to spy on the enemies of the Chamber of Commerce. One of the targets was Brad Friedman, who responded thus:

In addition to Barr's email offering personal information on me and my family, the H&W scheme by Team Themis, created for the U.S. Chamber, also included a Power Point presentation in which I am personally highlighted, with photograph, along with my wife "Martha" and "2 boys, James and John Friedman" at our "home at 1055 Raywood Ln, Silver Springs, MD".

Of course, I'm not married and have no children and don't live in MD...

As noted in a previous post, no-one named Brad Friedman lives at that address -- in fact, the address doesn't exist. As I said last year: "Looks like HBGary just made shit up. Then they said: 'Two million dollars, please.' Nice work if you can get it!"

More ominously, they also mounted a dirty tricks campaign against Glenn Greenwald.

Even more ominous is this tidbit from Wikipedia:

HBGary had made numerous threats of cyber-attacks against Wikileaks. The dossier of recently exposed emails revealed HBGary Inc. was working on the development of a new type of Windows rootkit, code named Magenta, that would be "undetectable" and "almost impossible to remove."

In October 2010, Greg Hoglund proposed to Barr creating "a large set of unlicensed Windows 7 themes for video games and movies appropriate for middle east & asia" (sic) which "would contain back doors" as part of an ongoing campaign to attack support for Wikileaks.

For more on Magenta, go here and here. Let's not minimize the dangers: The Stuxnet scandal -- about which we may soon have much to say -- tells us that malware attacks have a bad habit of getting out of hand.

(Side note: A theme can contain malware? News to me! I was under the impression that a theme is little more than a jpg image for your desktop and a few icons.)

Perhaps the most important revelation to come out of the HBGary scandal concerned the creation of "personas" to flood blogs with manufactured opinion. One manipulator in one location can create the appearance of a mass movement.

Revealed: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people

Though many questions remain about how the military would apply such technology, the reasonable fear should be perfectly clear. "Persona management software" can be used to manipulate public opinion on key information, such as news reports. An unlimited number of virtual "people" could be marshaled by only a few real individuals, empowering them to create the illusion of consensus.

I remain convinced that Obama got into office via a similar tactic.

A year ago, HBGary unconvincingly tried to deny the importance of these revelations. Today, the right-wing bloggers still pooh-pooh the significance of the Air Force contract, since it was never fulfilled. Rest easy, folks: The AF didn't actually do it -- they simply tried to do it. I'm reminded of that episode of The Simpsons in which Sideshow Bob decries the unfairness of being jailed for attempted murder: "Do they give Nobel Prizes for attempted chemistry?"

Some of you may be wondering why the Air Force would want to manipulate public opinion in this way. There's a long tradition, going back to the '50s, of the Air Force functioning as a cut-out for the CIA -- which is barred by statute from operating domestically. On the other hand, see here.

ManTech and the spook connection. Barr is out, and HBGary has been purchased by a firm called ManTech. We have mentioned this company in connection with the Cunningham bribery scandal, and in connection with a now-forgotten scandal involving an Arizona congressman named Rick Renzi. Basically, ManTech provides technical services to the government, to law enforcement, and to the intelligence community.

How does the disgraced former congressman Duke Cunningham figure into this? He wrote a remarkable letter from prison in which he admitted that he particularly regretted taking money from a spooky guy named Mitchell Wade. (Remember him?) Wade had a very close relationship with a defense contractor named Gray Hawk Systems, which pretty much is ManTech.

Congressman Renzi got into trouble when he pushed legislation favorable to Man Tech, the employer of the congressman's father.

At about the same time ManTech purchased HBGary, the company made an interesting hire...

ManTech International Corp. has hired Dean May, Ph.D., as vice president of intelligence solutions for its Mission, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions (MCIS) group.

He spent most of his career in CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, leading research and development efforts across directorates in an effort to enhance our nation’s intelligence capabilities.

In other words, May is sorta like "Q" in the James Bond movies. There are those who say that one never really leaves the Agency...

Lo and behold, we find that HBGary is now under the aegis of MCIS. Now pay attention, 007: This means that CIA guy Dean May runs HBGary. Yes, "Q" now controls the very same HBGary which masterminded attacks on left-wing writers, and which is now staunchly defended by the Breitbart crew.

And so we are left with two conundrums...

Conundrum 1: With ManTech running HBGary, do you think that they're no longer spying on progs or using "personas" to manipulate opinion? Do you think that Magenta is non-operational?

Conundrum 2: Just what is the link between last year's HBGary scandal and this year's ginned-up Kimberlin affair? Why do the Breitbarters conflate the two? What the hell is going on there? 

(Bonus conundrum: Why would a high-priced security firm like HBGary rely on AVG, a free antivirus system?)