On Thursday night, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert waded into the HBGary muck with an explanation of the scam that the cyber-security intelligence firm, along with two other firms (government contractors all) were putting together for law firm Hunton & Williams on behalf of Bank of America, in hopes of discrediting journalists and organizations that supported WikiLeaks.
As readers of The BRAD BLOG likely know by now, a parallel $12 million scheme was being hatched by the same law firm and same three cyber-security firms on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, targeting me and my family, as well as other citizens and progressive organizations the U.S. Chamber had regarded as their enemies.
(I was likely targeted due to my roll in The BRAD BLOG’s co-founding of the non-profit, non-partisan VelvetRevolution.us which has, since late 2009, been running a StopTheChamber.com campaign to expose the insidious, mafia-like tactics of what has become the largest, most extreme corporate lobbying outfit in the nation. Relatedly, late last week, VR filed a complaint with the D.C. Bar Association against the three H&W attorneys heading up these schemes. I hope to have more on that at a later date, but you can now read the complaint yourself right here [PDF]. Legal Times coverage is here, Washington Post’s coverage today is here.)
Though the U.S. Chamber side of the plot is not discussed here, here’s Colbert summing up the scheme as proposed for Bank of America…
…And here is the short interview that followed with Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald who, the same as I in the U.S. Chamber plot, was placed front and center in the Bank of America plot…
By the way, though I didn’t notice it while watching a Tivo’d verison of the interview above on Thursday night — so don’t know if it was in the actual broadcast, or just added online, by someone — PC Magazine noticed a curious anomaly at the 3:22 mark of the above video. For no more than a moment, the infamous Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta, often used as a sort of trademark by the “hacktivist” collective Anonymous (the group which inadvertently exposed both of the above described plots when they broke into HBGary’s corporate servers and stole the emails describing all of this) is briefly superimposed over Colbert’s face, for reasons unknown — but amusing.
For much more on the U.S. Chamber Plot, please see the links below for The BRAD BLOG’s previous coverage of this disturbing story…
2/20/11: VIDEO: ‘Hacker News Network’ and ‘GRITtv’ Cover U.S. Chamber Disinfo/Smear Plot
2/15/11:
Special Green News Report on the U.S. Chamber Plot
2/14/11: Late Updates on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Plot to Target, Discredit, Defraud Political Enemies
Well, Colbert has joined Anonymous, hasn’t he?
Hey, its really hard to catch the bizarre shot where Colbert has the Anonymous face, I saw it at 3:23.
Wow, weird, how would you catch that if you weren’t looking for it?
HHHellllllOOOOOo, interesting times! (Thank you Ancient Chinese curse / blessing!)
‘Anonymous’ Targets Koch-Backed Americans For Prosperity…
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/anonymous-targets-koch-backed-americans-for-prosperity.php
This Colbert interview w/ Greenwald is balls-a-licious. (“Before you can say ‘get this hornet’s nest off my penis…” Smartly summarized!) Had it included Brad (and it should’ve), this journo-combo would have been a total news-jism for me.
@ Joyce – Colbert’s uber-clever production / editing staff often hides these lil’ “easter eggs” for us (the most freakishly devoted members of the Colbert Nation – yours truly a proud card carrying member since 2006 and yes, I actually carry a card) just for the sheer delight of discovery. It makes my genius-angels’ comedy (real) news show a constant inclusion play; an interactive, rolling dialogue.
He (or his people) read us online almost as much as we read him / them. Incredibly savvy. Dime to donuts every writer on the Colbert show is following this story with great interest and surges of joy.
…which is why I’ve sent them all Brad’s links.
Expecting them to call, anyday, now – such is my Colbert Nation Cache. (I’m an Elder!)
Omidemigogery!! I’m *so* buoyed. From Anonymous’ statement in above link:
I. Can’t. Wait.
I loved this interview. Normally, Colbert pwns his guests, usually by taking right wing viewpoints to their furthest limits and exposes where their warped ideology would take us if we actually did all the things they want (a road we’re headed down now). But with Glenn, another brilliant debater, it just didn’t work.
This is way off this excellent topic, but does anyone know why democraticunderground.com has been offline all day?
Are they being attacked?
It is really annoying that Canadians can’t see these videos without first having to go to the crappy Comedy Network site and dig around all over the place to find it. What moron came up the annoying policy to make things user unfriendly for anyone in Canada? I notice that some sites or wp plugins or something do have something in place that allows Canadians to see it, perhaps by recognizing Canadian ips and switching accordingly. This is really bloody annoying. I’ve written to them a number of times to try to correct it or have code that doesn’t just say crap but just switches to whatever bloody entity is acceptable for them? Instead of blocking Canada-based viewers and leaving this obnoxious message that makes me NOT want to watch that channel: “In Canada, Comedy Central Videos are available on The Comedy Network,” Just switch to the embedding that Canadian can see too.
#6
Large site. Wonder if it has anything to do with people pouring into Wisconsin? DU is a good place to go to see what is happening.
Adam –
I’m sorry to hear that’s what they do. Not sure what, if anything, I can do about it, unfortunately. But if you know of anything, of course, I’m certainly open to it!
Sorry for the pain you Canucks have to go through. Serves you right! 😉
OK, c’est la vie. Good for Stephen Colbert. He’s acting mighty Canadian, practicing freedom of speech and all.
Adam – Again, not sue what you’re asking me to do about any of this.
As to Colbert, I suspect he doesn’t have much personal control over that either, for what it’s worth. I suspect it’s Viacom who is making that a prob somehow. But that’s just a guess.
Brad,
I don’t know, Brad. Getting a Canadian strip club bouncer or something to suggest php programming solutions may not produce solutions, but you never know. Even chimps create tools for digging maggots out of rotten logs. Anyway, here goes. Basically, they have a script that detects if an IP is Canadian, and if so place this annoying message over a black screen: “In Canada, Comedy Central Videos are available on The Comedy Network.” Instead of placing the code for that hassle-message there when a Canadian IP is detected, they’d do better job advertising The Comedy Network by having it switch to their corresponding embedding code for any given video (via matching tags or keywords?) and prominently advertise their network on it with a watermark or something. If it was your side, it might involve creating a plugin that:
a)makes it appear that every incoming ip is American. This could also help against monitoring of your site by outsiders (eg, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CIA, or Koch brothers)
or
b)detects Canadian ips and switches to The Comedy Network’s embedding code for same video (perhaps manually pasted in on your side if automatic solution isn’t found).
c) perhaps trade advertising space with a coder to write it for you.
d) forget about it since your site is primarily about US issues and maybe not enough Canadian visitors to justify the effort. Canada has a puny population with a demographic significant enough only to be hassled, but not for finding complicated solutions to unnecessary problems placed there by comedy networks.
Brad,
I have to apologize for griping about this and representing it to be the doing of discriminatory networks. I just learned that we can blame Canada for this care of restrictions contained in a Canadian law package called, “CRTC” (which may have some good in it along with such misguided intrusions like abundantly described). Sorry about that. Blame Canada.
Here is a free program to hide IPs from Canada:
http://hotspotshield.com/ It works. When you install it be sure to uncheck features you don’t want.