Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Cyberattacks on journalists

For quite some time now, I have felt like a voice crying in the wilderness with my public complaints about numerous cyberattacks on my Yahoo and Google accounts, along with virus bombs directed to my computers.

But now Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times http://nytimes.com/ reports that hackers have attacked his account and the accounts of other reporters, along with activists, whose writings don't conform to China's Communist Party line. Yahoo, which has servers in China, wouldn't tell the Times what was going on.
Jacobs added that increasingly virus bombs are being used to target specific persons in order to thwart their views or reports from dissemination. (Recently I have thrown out yet another computer hampered by such a malware bomb, despite my efforts to avoid such trickery.)

Jacobs notes that the attacks could stem from somewhere other than China.

The cyberattacks on the Times and others may be more pervasive than Jacobs' story indicates. In a remarkable situation, I have a copy of Arthur Gelbs' memoir "City Room" borrowed from a public library in the New York region. It has been extensively tampered with by someone clearly intent on snubbing the Times and its professionalism.

Gelb, a onetime Times rewriteman who went on to rebuild a crack rewrite bank, has his copy mangled in ways that are simply impossible. For example, the word "transpired" is used at one point to mean "happened," which all New York newspaperpeople know is a journalistic no-no of the first order. And, the book is littered with the word "since" to mean "because" not a few times, but extensively. It is evident that, in many cases, the leading clause is mangled; that is, "Having done so and so..." is changed to read "Since so and so was done..."

Gelb, a former top Times editor, had access to the best copyreaders anywhere. So it is apparent that this book is a counterfeit, intended to make the Times look defenseless. It is easy enough, with modern computer technology, to "instant publish" such a travesty.

I plan to alert Jacobs to this matter, but I don't expect much response.

From the same library I have a copy of Robert Novak's memoir, "The Prince of Darkness." I haven't examined it closely yet, but I intend to do so.

APRIL 1, 2010.

I realize that some may consider the report above to be an April fool hoax, but it is not. I haven't time for such trivia.

I sent out an email to all relevant NY Times addresses and got one robo-response. Otherwise, nothing. Neither has a call been received from anyone at the Times.

BTW, some months back, someone entered one of my (now defunct) Yahoo accounts and deleted my copy of a New York Times list of reporter and editor email addresses. The Times had ceased to publish that list.

APRIL 5, 2010

On page 397 of "City Room" is found: "I agreed it was quite possible, aware that--like most reporters who had covered the police beat--of what often transpired behind the closed doors of a precinct interrogation room." No New York newspaperman would have written that.

As for "The Prince of Darkness," we have:

Page 173: "What transpired in Pittsburgh after the LeMay announcement produced one of the most bizarre moments in my half century of covering politics."

Page 282: "But with Chris half a foot taller than me, my feeble punch landed on his chest and fellow journalists grabbed us before anything more serious transpired."

Page 541: "I said I did not either, and I did not envision CNN as a possible bidder considering what had transpired so far."

Surely Novak in his early years as an AP reporter learned to avoid that word, once a favorite of police officers trying to sound educated. Surely his editor, a longtime editor for Readers Digest, would have stricken it had he seen it.

Novak of course was detested by the super-neocon Israelophiles and the ultra-left, but I am uncertain as to the motive for these childish alterations.
++++++++++++


To report cyberattacks of this sort, either post a comment, or phone me on my cell at

!+a8+b6+c5+++d2+e3+f5+++g2+h9+i7+j4+! (Ignore non-numerals.)

Spook wars: Is CIA up or down?

It seems as though some clandestine unit with reach inside media is determined to make the CIA look bad. Otherwise, how to explain the repeated stories claiming "bin Laden said" thus and such.

If bin Laden is really dead, as has been widely reported by counterterrorism experts, then why the need to resurrect him? Well, if you're a top spook, in, say, the Pentagon, who wants more of Panetta's pie, you have a reason to embarrass the CIA and manipulate cooperative reporters and editors. How could the CIA be doing such a bad job with bin Laden when it has been allegedly capturing other terrorist chiefs with abandon?

The CIA however isn't taking this affront to its dignity lying down. The world has just learned (was Panetta ABC's source?) that a top Iranian nuclear scientist is living in Mecca and working for the CIA.

Keep posted.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Mirrors for backup

I've been having troubles with my computing for some time. Some of the problems are my doing, and some aren't.

I'd suggest that others make mirrors of my 9/11 report pages. Backups can't hurt. I've found myself locked out of my accounts more than once. In fact, under Atty Gen Gonzalez one of my Google blogs was frozen because, I suspect, it discussed an encryption technique that I had devised.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Time for political action on 9/11 coverup

What is to be done about the silence of reporters and the jeering of commentators concerning 9/11 coverup?

Neither major political party is interested in bringing the 9/11 traitors to justice because the issue is seen as a career death warrant. Politicians respond to what the press legitimizes as issues; lawmakers also respond to the big influxes of money from 9/11 coverup interests, such as AIPAC and its allies.

Without profound political changes, in the unlikely event Congress backs a new investigation of 9/11, the result would simply be more coverup.

This blog has already called for a panel of scientists to review the NIST investigations to see whether scientific fraud or deception occurred and for a citizens' commission to review the entire matter.

Beyond that, we need committed and talented people to back candidates willing to stand up and chastise government 9/11 inquiries, candidates who are prepared to take the heat or cope with the lack of coverage from big media.

Use the internet fundraising skills that went into Obama's campaign (and before that, into Ron Paul's campaign) to build a war chest for backing such candidates.

Our strategy is not to win most races, or even any race, but to SPOIL chances of either Democrat or Republican, by insisting on promoting the 9/11 coverup issue via the candidates we back. Congress and the White House will hear us, no matter how the media ducks. We want to begin to force meaningful congressional and-or White House action. We want to nudge scaredy-cat main party candidates to start speaking up.

It's a strategy well worth trying. We won't get anything done if we don't try. Congress only respects political power. This is something we must channel and create.

Don't give in to defeatism. Back in the late nineties, the term limits movement had made enormous gains amidst a virtual national media blackout. It was only when the snowball got too big to ignore that coverage broke into the "establishment media." The same happened with the adoption by many states of "right to pack" laws.  We are not talking about the merits of those issues, of course, but making the point that media blackouts can and do fail.

I'm not in a position to undertake such a campaign. But some of you are. Go for it.

Recently the House implicitly reprimanded the FBI, suggesting it covered up the facts about the anthrax attacks. But the House was too weak to do anything more than ask the intelligence chief to have another look, to see whether there was foreign involvement. This is a far cry from a real congressional investigation and unlikely to lead to much. But it shows that Congress has no faith in the security system, despite its inability to do much about it.

Friday, March 12, 2010

W.H. Israelophile scrambles to keep lid on

White House ramrod Rahm Emanuel is the White House force behind the deal to deny civilian trial to the al Qaeda prisoners accused of 9/11 crimes, reports
Jason Leopold of Consortium News.

It is rather disconcerting that yet another fervent supporter of Israel is involved in maneuvering to keep the lid on the 9/11 facts. It has been clear that a number of prominent Israelophiles have attacked 9/11 skeptics as generally anti-Semitic. This particularly holds for the AIPAC crowd, though that position is publicly muted.

While it is true that a military tribunal would not accept advance guilty pleas, it is clear that such a tribunal would be much easier to control with different standards of evidence and career judge advocates who, despite best efforts, are going to feel Pentagon pressure for pro-forma show trials.

Once it became apparent that it was quite possible that a federal judge, considering the problem of enhanced interrogation, would forbid the planned advance guilty pleas, the pressure began to block such trials. Imagine a tough defense team challenging the government's 9/11 fairy tale at point after point. Even if the AIPAC-fearing press failed to cover the trials objectively, the public record would be available to many in alternative media.

MARCH 15, 2010. White House honcho David Axelrod yesterday said that no decision had been made on the trial venue for the 9/11 accused. Axelrod, who is Jewish, also blasted the Israeli govt. for its housing decision in the midst of Biden's visiit. Axelrod said Obama was right behind him. Clinton had taken the decision's timing as a calaculated insult of the Obama administration, which is trying to broker a peace deal.

OK, we can accept that the White House is not dominated by  AIPAC allies. Nevertheless, Rahm's maneuvering on the trial venue is disturbing.