Hehehehehe

Oops.

UPDATE (2:02pm) – Hahaha! And an ‘oops’ from me, too. It was foolish to assume that Staines would include all pertinent information in any given post.








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Climb every mole-hill

Johnny Void began by making a common enough mistake; thinking that the enemy of his enemy was his friend (or, perhaps, some form of zip-gun). Been there myself.

But I think he went of the rails a bit when he started buying into the must-stop-fascist-regime fantasy. In that post, he used some text from me that fitted the seductive but counter-productive ‘Tim wants to take over Teh Internets’ invention, without providing a direct link to the full post (i.e. robbing this partial quote of context).

Soon after, he was here at Bloggerheads, knickers in a twist and spoiling for a fight.

From here on in, I think I can let this comment exchange and his post about the edits in that exchange speak for themselves and leave Johnny to his void.

But not before thanking him for doing me an enormous favour:

Guido 2.0 – The man hears what he wants to hear (and disregards the rest)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s snowing out and I have some playtime coming to me.

Cheers all.








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Chalk up one for the little guy

The Register – B3ta man victorious over Coca-Cola in music dispute: Coca-Cola has agreed to settle with an unsigned London band over a dispute that the soft drink’s Argentinian subsidiary ripped off one of their songs and animated videos.

BBC – Ninja kitten band win Coke battle: The band, 7 Seconds of Love, argued that Coke used their song Ninja and its distinctive kitten-filled video without permission in a South American advert. After talks, Coke agreed to an out of court settlement of an undisclosed sum.








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Frank Field: useful idiot

Frank Field (MP) – Fiddling while London burns: A successful terrorist attack on London could make part of the capital uninhabitable for decades and make Britain permanently poorer. Yet, while London awaits its fate, Scotland Yard is fiddling away on an enquiry into the alleged sale of honours. How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend this enquiry as the best use of scarce police resources?

Beg pardon? You what?!

OK, if we’re going to start playing this fucking game…

Why is the London Met wasting resources pestering Brian Haw and/or saving Tony Blair from embarrassment?

(Oh, do forgive me… I haven’t engaged my fear chip or employed full doublethink! SOCPA is there to protect our right to free speech… and, of course, to stop terrorists from hiding behind our placards.)

[Note – If you wish, you can contact Frank Field MP via this web page. Don’t expect him to listen, though… the man is well and truly compromised.]

(Link via tygerland.net)

UPDATE – Read more about other clever-clogs MPs who take your security seriously here.

UPDATE – Not entirely unrelated; Chicken Yoghurt: All but one ‘Respect Zone’ (Hastings Borough Council) are having local elections this year. Just saying, is all.

Looks to me like there’s more than one ‘surge’ going on at the moment…

UPDATE (24 Jan) – All hail, Sir Ken Macdonald!








Posted in The War on Stupid | 5 Comments

This will seem awfully familiar to a lot of you (part two)…

A little something for you from the New York Times, courtesy of AfterDowningStreet.org

Lying Like It’s 2003: This White House gang is so practiced in lying with a straight face that it never thinks twice about recycling its greatest hits. Hours after Mr. Cheney’s Fox interview, President Bush was on “60 Minutes,” claiming that before the war “everybody was wrong on weapons of mass destruction” and that “the minute we found out” the W.M.D. didn’t exist he “was the first to say so.” Everybody, of course, was not wrong on W.M.D., starting with the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq. Nor was Mr. Bush the first to come clean once the truth became apparent after the invasion. On May 29, 2003 – two days after a secret Defense Intelligence Agency-sponsored mission found no biological weapons in trailers captured by American forces – Mr. Bush declared: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” But that’s all W.M.D under the bridge. The most important lies to watch for now are the new ones being reiterated daily by the administration’s top brass, from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney on down. You know fiasco awaits America when everyone in the White House is reading in unison from the same fictional script, as they did back in the day when “mushroom clouds” and “uranium from Africa” were the daily drumbeat.

Watch the WMD-denial continue even today in the mind of Ann Coulter (right at the tail):

Baghdad is just like L.A. (via)

Not only is that whopper on the end something to gawp in wonder at (“That’s false!”) but so is Coulter’s suggestion that all of the fighting in Iraq is the result of foreign terrorist activity within a single breath of her acknowledging the sectarian violence in that country by comparing it to gang warfare! She also shovels forth one of Bush’s favourite doublethink deceptions:

Bloggerheads: Also, Bush and Blair are equally guilty of repeated claims that they must stand firm in Iraq to protect the Iraqis from the threat of terrorism… that they themselves brought to that country! Bush is the worst offender on this front; in one breath he will repeat the lie that Iraq was invaded to protect the Iraqi people and in the next he will proudly proclaim that Iraq has become the central front of the ‘war’ on terror (thus keeping it away from U.S. shores). So what’s it to be, George? Did you seek to save the Iraqis or did you seek to put them in harm’s way in order to keep Al Qaeda out of the shopping malls of America?

To close, I bring you one of the quotes of 2006 (also featuring Ann Coulter, as it happens): Stephen Colbert’s comment on Bush at the White House correspondents dinner: “The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”

UPDATE – Oh well, at least there’s a slim hope that people will see through these childish deceptions.








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This will seem awfully familiar to a lot of you…

The Register – Bloggers unite to save astroturfing for Mankind: In an all-too-familiar scene, bloggers, Slashdot readers and several news outlets were taken in by the hype surrounding a provision in the Senate ethics reform bill that would have required grassroots lobbying firms to register with the US Congress. Conservative direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie whipped the blogging community into a frenzied, and largely misdirected, opposition to the provision by trumpeting the section’s supposed threat to First Amendment rights, freedom, Mom and apple pie. Section 220 of the reform bill, the grassroots provision, was removed by an amendment prior to the bill’s passage late last week, largely because of a blitzkrieg campaign in the media, the blogosphere and on Capitol Hill by Viguerie’s advertising firm, American Target Advertising. Viguerie, for those not familiar with the tarnished panoply of backroom players in American politics, pioneered the use of direct mail techniques for conservative causes, and has been called the “funding father” of the modern conservative movement. His ad agency currently handles direct mail campaigns for non-profits seeking to stimulate grassroots activity or raise funds from the general public.

Note the clumsy wording in the legislation referenced later in the article (something to be worried about)… and note also the astro-turfer screaming ‘Freedom!’ as he works to undermine the free speech of others (something else to be worried about).

(Link via Toby.)

UPDATE – Heh. CuriousHamster puts it far better than I did: Here’s an example of a well-connected conservative manipulating the blogosphere’s anti-establishment sentiment in order to, er, defend the establishment. And it worked. Freedom! (to continue to spin, to manipulate, to misrepresent, to create fake grass roots, to drown out real voices with different views, and to make lots of money while doing so.) Remind you of anyone?








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Pulling a fast-food one

Blink-and you-miss-it McDonald’s ad.








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About as low as it gets…

IP addresses have played a role in recent outings, and we’ve also seen a few people playing fast and loose with issues of identity… so it does not surprise me at all that we now have an IP Spoofer in our midst.

But I must admit to being shocked at how low they will go… Ministry of Truth reports.








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A lack of clarity

BBC – Parliament protester’s legal win: District Judge Quentin Purdy said he had not breached conditions imposed on him by the Metropolitan Police. Applause broke out at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, when the judge said the conditions were invalid as they lacked clarity… He said: “I repeat that I find the Commissioner cannot delegate his powers under Sopca as he purported to do. Additionally I find the conditions drafted as they are lack clarity and are not workable in their current form.”

As I’ve already pointed out before (many, many times) the SOCPA Act itself lacks clarity; it does not even define what constitutes a demonstration.

Well done, Brian.








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The De-Briefing (Guido and his political astro-turfers)

Ministry Of Truth – Generation Gap: There are definable limits to what Tim could reasonably hope to achieve by taking an open pot-shot at Guido, which I’m sure he’s perfectly well aware of, and, for now, the best that he could hope for is to open a few eyes, show Guido up for who and what he really is and, yes, take a fair bit of flak in the process from some of Guido’s camp-whores – the latter aspect of all this is unpleasant (especially if you’re on the receiving end of it) but none the less instructive, as it does serve to illustrate and validate much of what Tim has had to say about the manner in which Guido operates, and while some might consider that Guido has more or less ‘ blown off’ Tim’s ‘ attack’ with barely a hint of being ruffled, quite as few others will have been looking at his reaction and making a mental note or two for the future having been even less impressed with Guido’s arrogance – and his antics – than usual.

Before I take what might appear to be a pointless detour into local matters, I want to ask you a question:

Have you ever watched a politician who has been caught bang to rights maintaining ‘a dignified silence’ while their chums are all over the media pushing forward pissweak defences and/or briefing against the source(s) of the damaging information?

You have? Oh, good. We can move on, then…

Anne Milton.

I began by suspecting that Anne’s election campaign wasn’t all that it seemed, but I pretty much let her get on with it until she made the mistake of thinking she could afford to lie to me. It was at that point I decided to take a closer look at her campaign, using a purpose-built weblog to scrutinise Milton’s activities and publish my findings.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I hit a rich seam of paydirt in two of my earliest posts; the outing of one activist (posing as an independent supporter) and the antics of another (publishing and distributing dangerously misleading literature). After this, many of Milton’s questionable tactics as a candidate were highlighted (pretty much every ‘independent supporter’ shown in her pamphlets was a ringer, and she even flaunted electoral guidelines by posing as a local through the use of a single-bedroom flat), but somehow she managed to squeak past the post with a 347-strong margin.

Since then, I’ve published evidence that clearly shows her to be a shiftless, witless and deceitful MP.

Now comes the interesting bit… watch the pattern:

First, I was asked by one of her flunkies why I didn’t have anything better to do. When the matter became impossible to ignore, Milton herself feigned disinterest and sought to cast me as ‘an angry young man’. Soon after, her activists went to work; primarily in an anonymous capacity, on my site and others. When it became clear to them that they would usually lose in a fair debate (and/or dump themselves in it in the process), they reverted to spending most of their time briefing against me via a series of anonymous comments and websites; their two main weapons were repeated suggestions about my sexuality and state of mind, and repeated attempts to pass off the Anne Milton weblog as a personal attack and/or a party-political one. Before too long, they grew tired of compromising other people’s weblogs and instead decided to start fucking about with Wikipedia. Sooner or later (it had to happen) I was clearly libelled. While all of this was going on, Anne Milton could afford to sit back and play the victim.

Now, onto my decision to scrutinise Paul Staines’ activities and publish my findings:

First, I was asked by one of his flunkies why I didn’t have anything better to do. When the matter became impossible to ignore, ‘Guido’ himself feigned disinterest and sought to cast me as ‘an angry young man’. Soon after, his activists went to work; primarily in an anonymous capacity, mostly on other peoples’ websites. When it became clear to them that they would usually lose in a fair debate (and/or dump themselves in it in the process), they reverted to spending most of their time briefing against me via a series of anonymous comments and websites; their two main weapons were repeated suggestions about my sexuality and state of mind, and repeated attempts to pass off the ‘Plonker’ post as a personal attack and/or a party-political one. Before too long, they grew tired of compromising other people’s weblogs and instead decided to start fucking about with Wikipedia. Sooner or later (it had to happen) I was clearly libelled. While all of this was going on, Paul Staines could afford to sit back and play the victim.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is called ‘briefing’ or, when in full flight, ‘negative campaigning‘ of this variety… and in each case, a small number of players sought to cover as much ground as possible under a variety of pseudonyms, which is why it also classifies as something we like to call ‘astro-turfing‘ (i.e. creating the false impression of a grass-roots movement).

This same gang of thugs used similar techniques to launch/support attacks on Bob Piper and Tom Watson. If you scoot back in time in both cases, you’ll be able to watch ‘Guido’ playing Mr Nice Guy in both affairs, leaving his flying monkeys to do his dirty work for him. A lot of familiar names will crop up when you do so… along with an unknown number of anonymous contributors.

In the case of the Watson/Simon affair, they happened across a pretty easy dual target. As far as most people in Westminster were concerned, Tom Watson and Sion Simon were part of a Brownite plot against Blair; half of the village hated them for trying, and the other half hated them for failing. Before too long, useful idiots like Jack Straw popped up, and the rest – as they say – is history.

(Jack Straw condemned Sion Simon’s video without watching it and said; “I believe we have to ensure that political discourse is at the highest level.” Jack Straw was also the man who was less than comfortable with the revelations coming from his own ambassador in Uzbekistan and decided to deal with these revelations by undermining the source with a smear campaign! In August 2003, Craig Murray, the ambassador to Uzbekistan, was confronted with 18 charges, the most serious of which involved “hiring dolly birds for above the usual rate” for the visa department and granting UK visas in exchange for sex. Murray was forbidden from discussing/challenging the charges under the Official Secrets Act, but that didn’t stop a certain interested party from leaking those charges to the press… because shit sticks, even if the charges don’t. All but two of the most minor charges were dropped, and the Foreign Office eventually exonerated Murray of all 18 charges… but not before the smear campaign had taken a drastic toll on Murray’s health and reputation. Eventually, he was removed from his post for “operational” reasons.)

Another notable thing about the ‘public’ reactions to the Sion Simon video was the number of people operating anonymously under comments at the Guido Fawkes site who were outraged at Simon’s ‘personal attack’ one minute and banging on about his piggy eyes and floppy hair the next.

(In my view, Sion Simon’s video was not funny, but that did not make it worthy of outrage. And it was not a personal attack, it was valid criticism. David Cameron’s Webcameron stunt was just that; a stunt. He could have engaged directly and honestly via text alone and done something no-one at this level had done before, but instead he tried to invent credibility out of thin air by being caught ‘unscripted’ at home. In doing so, he willingly prostituted his family.)

This same gang of thugs also contribute to Paul Staines’ already-skewed agenda-friendly comments set-up; many people have reported being shouted down on those occasions when they haven’t been deleted. If you attempt to press your point, you run the risk of these bastards slipping their chains and coming after you.

Meanwhile, Paul Staines not only gets to sit back and play Mr Nice Guy, he also gets to claim that there is very little interest in or support for your opinion.

While I’ve got you in a private moment in front of your computer, I’d like to ask you to put your hand up if you’re one of the people who haven’t got involved because you’re afraid of what Team Guido might do to you.

Nothing to be ashamed of if you are… I’d just like to request that you spend some time thinking about what can be done to reign these bastards in before they start doing some real damage.

Moving on…

The advantage you have when operating under a number of pseudonyms is that you can be a total hypocrite without being called on it. Happily, some members of Team Guido have started taking pleasure in traffic generated by individual semi-established identities, which allows me to do this:

PragueTory: Clearly shown to be an active Tory briefer and astro-turfer, but he moans about anti-Tory astro-turfing and then bans me from his weblog for politely calling him on it. Hypocrite.

[MINI-UPDATE – This post is mostly for those ‘in the know’, but PragueTory’s responses in the comments under this post can be appreciated even by the casual bystander.]

Dizzy: Pledged to allow me to continue to comment on his website. Hasn’t said a word against ‘Guido’ after Staines suggested that homosexuals near children is a bad thing, but seems to think John Prescott is worthy of a bashing after he suggested that homosexuals near him is a bad thing (check the linked thread at the head to see him skip right over my question, then check this comment thread for a veiled threat and this one for Dizzy’s ‘explanation’). Hypocrite.

[MINI-UPDATE – Finally, an answer (of sorts) from Dizzy. It was all an innocent mistake, of course.]

OutFromUnder: Same thing, but with one subtle difference; he’s learned a little trick from Staines, and so has not only ignored my comment, but also taunted me for sending him traffic in a pathetic effort to stop me from doing it again.

‘Peter Hitchens’: According to ‘Guido’ “took it upon himself to try to broker a peace deal.” Sent a direct email or two and played nice. (I’ve been trolled before, PH… and by better players than yourself.) Claimed that ‘Peter Hitchens’ was just a character he played for a bit of a laugh… but when I too played a character for ‘a bit of a laugh’ he responded with an angry ‘the gloves are off now’ email. Hypocrite.

Folks, I’m really sorry about all the shouting that’s gone on this past week, but if it’s any consolation, I’ve done my best to ensure that it was my website and my reputation that bore the brunt of it.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for Paul Staines, who has sought to rule out any intelligent discussion of my concerns on his website and – at the same time – deliberately played the part in a way that he knew would rev up his thugs… who are now popping up everywhere with all sorts of briefs against me.

Yes, I expected this. No, I didn’t expect them to make my point quite so clearly. I really thought I’d have to do most of the work myself.

To close:

I suppose it could be said that “On the internet, nobody knows if you’re an attack dog”… and I’d like to do something to change that.

Beta-testing of National Service begins soon. One very important aspect of it will be a totally organic (and not at all fascist) way of identifying bloggers with credibility.

I plan to make life very difficult for astro-turfers (of both the amateur and the professional variety); hopefully in time for the next general election.

[Psst! What I have in mind is nothing like this… but you’ll want to read the related post anyway.]








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