The “global intelligence” consulting firm Stratfor got hacked by Anonymous, and now Wikileaks has released the emails from that hack. A few of them, from Stratfor’s VP Fred Burton, sound like the comments section at Fox News. Here’s Burton after the 2008 election (via):
1) The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of the election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight. The matter is not dead inside the party. It now becomes a matter of sequence now as to how and when to “out”.
2) It appears the Dems “made a donation” to Rev. Jesse (no, they would never do that!) to keep his yap shut after his diatribe about the Jews and Israel. A little bird told me it was a “nice six-figure donation”. This also becomes a matter of how and when to out.
3) The hunt is on for the sleezy Russian money into O-mans coffers. A smoking gun has already been found. Will get more on this when the time is right. My source was too giddy to continue. Can you say Clinton and ChiCom funny money? This also becomes a matter of how and when to out.
Here’s some more Burton insight that Stratfor expects subscribers to pay for:
p.s. I’m offended that we may believe an Iranian before a Jew.
I thought “Chicom” went out of use in the early 70’s.
Linda Featheringill
So you charge people money and then tell them what they want to hear but you dress it up as “intelligence”?
People have been doing that for kings and queens for thousands of years.
I dunno, maybe it feels good that have somebody lie to you for money. Maybe it’s worth whatever they charge [which may be quite a bit]. But not for me. No thank you.
Sometimes I think that my developmental task during my life has been to separate the truth from lies. People like Stratfor don’t help and frankly make me a bit uncomfortable.
ETA:
First! Also, too.
Yevgraf
I always thought the thing was a joke, run by flabby, pasty, gone to seed wannabes who (if they served at all) had military careers as mess kit counters at nice CONUS bases.
WJS
The STRATFOR brand is, effectively, toast. You cannot claim to be a globally aware think tank and have your dirty laundry spread around for everyone to read. The people who have been paying for their nonsense are now embarrassed to no end and the “professionals” they tout are revealed to be simpering wingnuts. If they survive, then they do so with the implicit belief that mediocrity is okay so long as it confirms the harebrained suspicions of their corporate clientele.
If you pay for ideology with your analysis, your analysis is useless.
zach
I think that’s the first time I’ve seen “black Dems” used in that way… sounds exactly like secession-era rhetoric about “black Republicans” following Lincoln’s election. Sick.
JPL
According to the article at MSNBC.com
Shorter statement, we look like racist toons…
aimai
This won’t affect the true believers at all. This is a tribal thing. Megan Mccardle etc.. didn’t go full metal kerner on the Heartland Memos to prove they were fake because they care just about Heartland. Its for the entire team of fakes and frauds on their side. They won’t go down over this. Acorn had to fold, and PP almost went under, but the far right will circle its wagons and in five seconds Stratfor will have more top level clients than ever before. Remember, these are the same people who respond to “Earth Day” by turning on all the lights in the house and wasting their own money.
aimai
c u n d gulag
I haz intelajance two!
Luke:
Blakity-blak KenyanSocialistFascistCommunistAtheistMuslim Knicker.
Subscraybes two me twos
Joey Maloney
@WJS: Clearly, their only way forward is to merge with Politifact.
Bartleby
Read some of Burton’s other e-mails released by Wikileaks. The man’s title obviously was Lord Chief Moron and Rumor-Monger.
Frank
@aimai:
You are absolutely right. Heck, even to this day, there are people who think that we actually found WMD’s in Iraq and attacking them was the right thing to do.
It seems like ignorance is a virtue among some people.
Omnes Omnibus
They resurrected the John Birch Society. Why not the JBS’s way of speaking as well?
debit
Guys, it has to be true. His source was giddy. Giddy!
scav
Somebody found a way to monetize the stuff most people clean out of their spam box? Slice and Dice, Tranche and Launche.
‘Mercan enterprise 4evah!
Schlemizel
I have heard Rush rant about ‘chicoms’ over the last few years so, no, amongst certain breeds of high functioning sponges its still used. Like other words the morans don’t have a clear concept of (see: so-shall-ist, liberal, conservative) ‘communist’ is a word they like to toss around but have no clue what the hell it means.
If there were a communist left in China he or she would probably be in a reeducation camp by now.
dr. bloor
Not if your chief source of foreign policy data is the catalog of Rambo movies.
Kirbster
Somehow, before I even checked, I just knew that this company had to be based in Texas, although I would have guessed Dallas instead of Austin.
Woodrowfan
check Burton’s Wikipedia page. It sounds like he wrote it himself, and there’s a “this needs to be cleaned up” warning on the page from 2008.
Villago Delenda Est
The true believers are impervious to fact. This outfit is obviously filled with deluded loons, but deluded loons is what these people are all about.
Invisible sky buddies, ChiComs, this shit never ends. Reality has an unpleasant liberal bias.
ET
I like how Wikipedia already has changed his entry to include quotes from the documents.
terraformer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Indeed. Probably our greatest task (and by “our”, I mean those inhabiting reality and who are receptive to fact) is to find a way to marginalize these people so they can never hold positions of power over normal people. But it is just so entrenched, as it was designed to be. That is the “what” to do; I just don’t know what the “how” is.
Woodrowfan
Translation: A black person was seen voting!
existential fish
As noted, Rush has ranted about Chicoms, and Fox has picked it up too.
4tehlulz
I think Obama managing to be a tool of the Iranians and the
JewsZionists is a very rare skill, deserving of a second term.scav
Tell me these guys weren’t possibly wearing footed pin-striped pajamas with cheeto dust.
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
With a bunny ear hood.
Davis X. Machina
@4tehlulz: He’s a trimmer.
scav
They’ve got a Senior Analyst keeping track of publicized Yes Men appearances, one of the e-mail mentions a tweet and a review in a college newspaper! 02-11-11 02-04-11
scav
@scav: biggest WTF is why routine published info is going out in freaking e-mails, that sort of day to day stuff should be just entered into the database w/o comment.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@scav: They’re the job creators!
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Palin’s influence is more insidious than anyone thought.
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
Oh, I don’t know. They’re into demonstrating to clients that they care about them, so the send them this information like it crossed their desk and the client just had to see it, it’s so important, see, we’re looking out for things that are of interest to YOU, your money is not being wasted on this service, we’re delivering product to you PERSONALLY!
RalfW
@aimai:
Yup. These are the “fvck you, liberals” assclowns and 13 year-olds who constitute the current Republican Party.
Its everything I hated about middle school writ large and financed by rich bullies who’s insecurity is magnified by their ill-gotten money.
I’m so fvcking sick of this decades-long adolescent tantrum. The GOP needs the mother of all time-outs.
Brandon
ChiCom’s been alive and well over at FreeRepublic for years. Which makes sense consider that is probably where this guy has been collecting his “intelligence”. It’s a bit sad that this guys “sources” have now been outed as posters on wingnut message boards.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: I was assuming these were internal e-mails, they don’t read like client ones (not enough soothing buzzwords, although the one Subject-lined along the theme of Private ON PAIN OF AGONY was a giggle). Being of the mere data-geektitude manning global dbs class, I clearly lack the need for meaningless personalized clutter to prove my importance. I want it in useful formats, silly silly me. Damn, busy day at Levenson too — I need fewer hobbyhorses.
RalfW
Also, too, you can see why GWB was completely in the dark about Bin Laden’s plans pre-9/11. It wasn’t a conspiracy in the classic sense, but no doubt this Stratfor uhh, intelligence is pretty much emblematic of the quality of work Bush was getting from his hand-picked heck-of-a-jobbers.
Hard to notice Richard Clark waving his arms about some moooslem in the mountains when your rich, moronic buddies are e-mailing about black Democrats who may be up to some ACORNing.
The Other John Cole
Did the doc dump include a client list?
Bex
The guy doesn’t even know how to spell sleazy. Or is he referring to one of the seven dwarves? Why does he hate America/Disney/little kids…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This is the second time in a year Strafor has been hacked. rofl
quannlace
When they mentioned Jesse Jackson and Israel, at first I thought they were referencing that comment about NY being Hymie-town. Then thought, ‘but that’s so old!’ Well, so’s a lot of the garbage in these emails.
Ash Can
So that’s where the Whitey tape went.
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
One of the ones at the link about the ‘Yes Men’ showed email addresses at Dow and Union Carbide.
That was product delivery to clients. They should feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, for sure! We read The Guardian so you don’t have to!
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Nothing says security like using unencrypted “STRATFOR” as a password…
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Q: What’s a Stratfor?
A: To pee with.
grape_crush
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/leaked-email-shows-stratfor-ceo-george-friedman-resigned-two-hours-ago-over-latest-breach
Stratfor CEO apparently resigned as of yesterday.
John
It surely depends how you define Communism. There are a lot of people in China who are members of the Communist Party of China, and I don’t see how one can consider it inaccurate to use “Communist” as a synonym for “member of a party that calls itself the Communist Party.” Even beyond that, the CPC still considers itself Marxist-Leninist and, at least ostensibly, contends that the current accommodation with capitalism is part of a “Chinese way to socialism.”
Obviously, in practice, there’s very little left of Mao or Lenin or Marx in the CPC’s ideology. But describing it as a Communist regime doesn’t seem obviously wrong to me.
Paul in KY
Considering they are presumably talking about the 08 election, they are really holding on to these ‘bombshells’.
Paul in KY
@Schlemizel: They’d have him/her in a mental hospital for not being out there trying to get rich.
Amanda in the South Bay
The Government pays money for this? Don’t they have their own intelligence agencies that they can get analysis from for free?
These jokers have pasty right wing tough guy written all over them.
Trakker
In fairness to Burton this is just his way of reporting that somehow “black Dems” (I’m surprised he didn’t write “Dem blacks”) were allowed to vote in Philly and Ohio. The Republican party is now hard at work making sure it doesn’t happen again in 2012.
Tom65
Whitey Tape, anyone?
ruemara
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t mock my dressing style.
Violet
Rush Limbaugh says “Chicom” all the time when speaking about the Chinese. The first time I heard him say it, I didn’t even know what he was talking about. The emails you quoted sound like they are channeling Limbaugh. I’m sure he’s a listener.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: Good GSD. OK, reading all the bits now, they’re idiots at both ends of the relationship. And I thought I had contempt for men in suits before . . .
GregB
This one segment from an e-mail was priceless:
“There are still about 20,000 Jews in Iran (Tehran and Esfahan mostly), but IMO, they are far too scared of being accused as Israeli spies too actually help Israel out.”
Shorter Stratfool:
These loyal citizens are afraid to be traitors for another country.
Nutella
@grape_crush:
And we know this because Wikleaks is getting their new emails. They don’t have the ‘intelligence’ to stop using a communication path they know is compromised.
Reminds me of Oliver North. He thought he was a brilliant spy but used email for confidential info. If he’d worked as an actual spy rather than a poser in a DC office he’d have been shot on his first day.
In this resignation email, the CEO seems to be reporting his resignation to a supposed subordinate, a VP. Sounds like this Burton guy spends his time passing around ‘news’ from WND and also runs the place.
JoyfulA
@scav: Well done on the spam-filter tranches!
Woodrowfan
someone should point out to these clowns that the “Chicoms” have gone so full-bore Capitalist that they make Andrew Carnegie look like Eugene Debs…
scav
OT break from the other Hobbyhorse, 2006 email about NoW/Sun/NI knowledge of hacking, bringing in Crone/Coulson/Rebekah/ThePolice ah, just read it if you care to, it’s a shorty. Bye-the-bye (sic. hoping), don’t I just love that the new Murdoch wonder is SoS (Sun on Sunday).
JoyfulA
I used to be on their free mailing list. They provided interesting reports on locales that never make the MSM, but anything about the U.S. was at least tinged with right-wing wacko. Several times, I wrote back to explain how Stratfor was wrong.
(Then I never heard from them again, I thought because I hadn’t responded to their marketing. A year or so later, George Friedman wrote to me 6 or 8 times in rapid succession to assure me that my personal and private information (my email address?) was secure and safe.)
Rafer Janders
Here’s what I always find hard to absorb: many of the commenters here are smart, intelligent, well-educated, aware and motivated people. Fred Burton is, based on his emails, a flat-out moron. And yet Fred Burton is VP of a strategic consulting company, making a good six figure income peddling supposed intelligence to companies which have a real monetary interest in getting accurate data.
How does this happen? How does someone like that get a job like that while people here couldn’t?
MattR
@Rafer Janders: Ethics and morals.
Karen
And when are they planning to “out” all this information? The day after Obama wins his second term?
scav
@Rafer Janders: I’m not naturally deferential (especially to idiots in suits), I’m fussy about data, and my CV confuses HR so they toss it.
Water balloon
Sounds like Larry Johnson of “Whitey Tape” fame. Constantly assure people that you have inside information about some bombshell about to drop so they’ll continue to listen to you. With people like these specializing in intelligence it’s no wonder we’re in such bad shape.
handsmile
While gleefully celebrating this exposure of Stratfor’s fraudulent operations, how about a little gratitude for its purveyors, Wikileaks and Anonymous, two organizations that are regularly lambasted here?
It’s noteworthy that the estimable McClatchy news organization (in addition to Rolling Stone and several international newspapers) has agreed to partner with Wikileaks in publishing selections from this cache of hacked Strafor emails.
In what should come as absolutely no surprise, the most important aspect of this story for the NYTimes, Kaplan Test Prep Daily, and Forbes.com (according to their respective news reports today) is that it reveals a closer working relationship between Wikileaks and Anonymous. Kaplan describes it as “upgrad[ing] from buddies to fast friends. The two have long been something like partners-in-crime.”
Expect to read far more about Julian Assange’s (alleged) sex crimes than Fred Burton’s (now documented) buffoonery.
Rafer Janders
@scav:
It’s appalling, isn’t it? Think of the money we could make if we weren’t burdened with a sense of shame….
Jay
James Fallows must be so proud of the fact that he linked to these clowns.
“I thought ‘Chicom’ went out of use in the early 70’s.”
Not so. I believe Mr. Burton was writing in his capacity as a formal adviser to Thad McCotter’s presidential campaign.
Catsy
@ET: The version of the page when I looked at it was so left-wing POV (“the fever swamps of Fox News”) that I had to go in and clean it up to something more NPOV–it’s information that should be in there, but the previous version wouldn’t have survived to the end of the day.
bjacques
*sigh* I guess it’s up to me, then.
I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Brachiator
@aimai:
Not really the case at all. I know a few Stratfor subscribers who are pro union Obots.
However, they are “true believers” in the sense that they eat up a pro Western, conventionally realpolitik view of foreign policy. They are like military history wonks who have a fetish for great generals and battles, but there is no single political ideology shared by them.
Ken
@Linda Featheringill:
Dante called it by the correct name, flattery, and put them in the eighth circle of Hell with the other frauds. (They’re in the second bolgia or pit in that circle, where they wade neck-deep in – well, in what they’ve been spewing all their lives. Except it’s not metaphorical.)
Joel
@WJS: Well, McKinsey survived Enron, so that’s something…
Wilson Heath
In 2000 they had an all-hands meeting telling their employees to vote Dubya. Dumb enough to do some transparent “we’re being subtle about this” thing, too.
This would be even more embarrassing if it happened before they spun off their data security company (12 years back?)