Category Archives: Justice

Corey Hurren

Corey Hurren Sentencing Hearing 1.0

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Corey Hurren, the Manitoba QAnon fancier who drove for 28 hours to get to Ottawa, then rammed his truck through the gate at Rideau Hall, picked up three loaded long guns, and set off in pursuit of the Prime Minister, but then surrendered to the RCMP, had his sentencing hearing today in Ottawa. Reporters were permitted to connect to the Zoom call, while Hurren, defence counsel Michael Davies, and Assistant Crown Attorney Meaghan Cunningham were physically present in Courtroom 7, traditionally the home of sentencing for guilty pleas.

Less than an hour before Hurren drove his truck through the gates of Rideau Hall, a social media account for his business posted a meme that blames the global elite for COVID-19.

Al Jazeera

That post was an invitation to a post-pandemic party and suggestion they look up “Event 201,” Event 201 was a pandemic preparedness exercise, and QAnon supporters have claimed that it’s proof that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is behind a bio-terrorist plan using Covid-19.

A comment from Douglas Thew on that post now reads: “Methinks your “lockdown” is going to last a little longer than the rest of ours…” Which, arguable at this point. Unproven thesis.

He originally faced 21 weapons charges and one of threatening the prime minister, who was not home at the time.

Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to seven weapons charges related to possession of prohibited or restricted firearms “for a purpose contrary to the public peace.”

He also pleaded guilty to one charge of mischief by wilfully causing $100,000 worth of damage to the Rideau Hall gate.

CTV via CanadianPress

Hurren’s original charges, all 22 of them, had been filed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or INSET, which is a counterterrorism unit. Over the course of almost a year of discussions, fourteen of the charges including the threat to Trudeau disappeared, leaving just seven weapons charges and the “mischief” for ramming his truck through the (quite substantial) iron gate.

From July 3, the day after the attack:

The original headline on that article referred to a “Friendly sausage-maker” ie the suspect in custody
Originally I agreed that Hurren’s armed-to-the-teeth and highly forcible incursion onto the grounds of Rideau Hall was an assassination attempt, I no longer believe it. I think clinically depressed Corey Hurren, out of work, with a failed business and a failing marriage, and with the guns in which he placed his own value as a man being newly-restricted by government, wanted to die. He wanted suicide by cop. And, when face to face with the officers on whom he was placing that burden, he simply couldn’t do it. He could not turn them into killers. Speculation, yes, possums, but That Note read enough like a suicide note that his own friends called the RCMP about it. This, by the way, is bog-standard QAnon procedure: you get them all fired up and apocalyptic, and then you just tell them to bring their guns and you let them wing it. That’s why Corey Hurren failed. That’s why the January 6 Insurrection failed. Not because anarchy fails, but because anarchy and fascism are opposites. If you’re a dutiful order-taker you’re the opposite of a lone wolf, regardless of what your favourite subreddit tells you.

After a slight, apparently Zoom-tech-related delay, the hearing got underway. Yes, we’ve been in a pandemic for a year now and everywhere should be pretty fluent in Zooming, but we’re talking about a government institution that still accepts faxes. We’re lucky they don’t still mandate wigs. Before we start, I find it interesting to note that the prosecutor, ie the Crown Attorney in Canadian Parlance, has given public presentations on trauma-informed prosecutions.

Here are my livetweets. Editorial comments will be added in later in italics.

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OpFreeSnowden launches today

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Snowden. Edward Snowden.

Snowden. Edward Snowden.

In an effort to bring greater awareness (if such a thing were possible) to the plight of now-stateless leaker Edward Snowden, Anonymous has announced #OpFreeSnowden, which takes the form of a Tweetstorm today, starting at 10am Pacific Standard Time. The stated objective, to “Take our PRIVACY BACK!” is clearly not going to be won by any action on Twitter, but in a propaganda war every little bit helps. The Tweetstorm package is designed and distributed in French and English, and signed by Anonym Hope and Anonymous Ekspct.

 

A scant handful of previous Anon-sponsored tweetstorms have been successful at trending globally, and with the widespread awareness of the Snowdon situation, this hashtag has as good a shot at the top as any Anonymous has ever launched. Clearly it will appeal only to those who support the ex-Booz Allen employee and his revelations of government spy programs, most famously PRISM and Tempora. There are no shortage of these; although surveys indicate the average American is content to give up the right to privacy for government surveillance, Americans also like a good David and Goliath story, and this one has one hell of a narrative.

 

EU nations banding together to pin the Bolivian ambassador’s plane and force it to land in Austria, on the off chance Snowden was aboard? No screenwriter would pen such a far-fetched scene. A marriage proposal from the most famous spy in the world? A legended white-haired hacker ensconced in an Ecuadorean embassy in deepest, darkest Knightsbridge, apparently pulling invisible strings? A flame-haired ingenue accompanying the leaker around the world and vanishing with him into the mysterious international zone at Moscow’s airport? And now, the internet’s most famous hacktivist hivemind, banding together to drive his name to the top of Twitter? Check, check, check and check.

 

The ground rules of a tweetstorm are simple: instead of retweeting the posts, you copy and paste them into your Tweet box, so that they seem to be original to you. Tweetstorms were developed in response to widespread Anonymous frustration that they could get hundreds of retweets but never, ever make it to the Trending list. With copy/pasting, they can. If you can’t think of anything to say but want to support the hashtag, they’ve already gone ahead and made up some tweets; some quotes from Snowden’s interviews, some simply statements of support. You’re allowed to make your own original tweets in a tweetstorm, the Tweetstorm Police won’t throw you off the hashtag, but the concept of repetition is important to the strategy: in marketing they say it takes nine exposures to make an impression, and Anonymous is counting on the power of repetition to get noticed.

 

What difference that makes to the fate of Edward Snowden, or the American people, remains to be seen. This is far from the last item in Anonymous’ bag of tricks.

ZOMG LIKE THE CONSTITOOSHUN PROTEX MEEEE!

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There's one born every minute

There’s one born every minute

Just the latest and greatest of the bizarrarie in the forum:

Oh Leonard J. Gojer, what have you done? [besides deleted your blog since this post went live?]

  1. I paid for traffic from http://www.visitorshark.com. The contract with them says that there is no guarantee that the traffic will show up on my analytics, which is your WordPress analytics. The traffic was for 6 million visitors per month. The traffic does not show up, just like they said it would not.

    How can prevent this problem in the future? That is, what do I do to insure that I chose a source of traffic that DOES in fact show up on your analytics?

    The blog I need help with is npcompleteproof.wordpress.com.

  2. Hi,

    You can see your WordPress.com site stats through your My Stats tab. There’s a link to get to your My Stats tab at the bottom of this support article.

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/stats/

  3. I’m not sure if that will completely answer your question, but it’s a start.

    Also, although you don’t specifically mention Google analytics, this support thread may also help with your question of analytics in general.

    http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/how-to-add-google-analytics-in-wordpress-free-account?replies=2

  4. I was going to hire a programmer on Odesk who had promised me that I could see the analytics if I hired him. I need to know if there is any way, whether with Google Analytics or some other analytics that this can be done, because I don’t want to pay the programmer if the idea doesn’t really work. This is a low budget project for a website.

  5. If you are paying for traffic, you are paying for spam hits. Spam hits are stripped out of WordPress.com analytics, because they are spam.

    You can try building legitimate traffic instead of paying for robots. Do you even know what you just did to your brand by posting this in a forum that shows up in Google?

  6. So, it’s not good to pay for traffic?

    My objective is to convert my personal labor, (let’s say about 2 hours a week, give or take), into quality traffic to the site. How can do that in a reliable way?

  7. 6,000,000 robot hits will do nothing except lighten your bank account – why do you want the traffic? If you are that desperate how about going down to the local coffee shop and giving cookies to anyone that clicks on your blog – waste of time I think

    Search the forum here for SEO or traffic – you will find hundreds of suggestions

    see also: http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/

  8. So, what you’re suggesting is that ALL of these services on the internet, (not just the expensive ones), don’t accomplish anything at all.

    I started my “career” (if you could call it that) in internet marketing by reading these paperback books that they have in popular bookstores.

    What I am trying to avoid is to devalue the hourly worth of my time. I have a normal daytime job and this work is supplemental in addition to that. Think about this, why I would want a “second” job that only is worth minimum wage hours?

    What you’re saying is that spending money doesn’t get the value of the money spent.

    This website that I am promoting is a university academic topic. I am trying to target people who are like Computer Science students. Perhaps I should find some forums that have more of those types of people.

  9. On your blog, you say you believe you’ve proved P=NP. If you really believe that you have, then the most profitable use of your time would probably be to write it up, submit it to a peer-reviewed journal, and then collect your million-dollar Millennium Prize.

  10. The literature that I read says that my objective is to obtain a lot of traffic. If the traffic can only be generated by my labor, that limits the total income that comes from the work, because there are 24×7 hours in a week, and I already have a job.

    I think that these people who send emails saying that you can get rich in internet marketing and don’t mention anything about the method that you would reliably do this should be put in prison for creating a big scam.

  11. With respect to what you say about P=NP, I spoke with the dean of computer science from my university where I graduated, and he said pretty much the same thing that you said.

    I have been paying a lot of money to scam websites thinking erroneously that at least one of them would not be a scam.

  12. When I discovered my formula, I was a student in the university, and on the day that I was thinking about it, it created a “ruckus” among the students in the school, and I basically got expelled from that school and had to graduate from another school.

    I am trying to avoid situations that operate like scams.

  13. One thing that all of this experience has taught me is that scams have a certain sociological structure to them. At the top of the scam is someone who is malevolent who is directing the scam.

  14. Long ago advertisers figured out how not to pay for fake robot traffic – in fact advertisers are good enough to figure out if you are trying to run up your count or getting a few friends to fake traffic for you – then you get suspended from their program – and you can’t sell ads on your blog here anyway – you can signup for Adwords and a lot of traffic gets you not much money –

    You want traffic – read the link I gave you – all you did with your “research” is make the people that sold you the book rich – there is a sucker born every minute – sorry

  15. I charge $200 per hour for my advice as an independent WordPress consultant, and for free I told you that was spam. You may persist if you so desire, but be aware that Google is sophisticated enough to know what kind of patsy pays for spam hits, and vindictive enough to throw his search engine rankings down a well.

  16. “People who send ‘get rich quick’ emails may be scamming me” WELL DUH.

  17. I will read the information that you gave me. (to auxclass).

    (to raincoaster). I don’t want to take advantage of you, because you are a dedicated person to your profession. I am doing something that is like a “pastime”. That is to say that I don’t need the money to function at a basic level. I only need the money if I want to have “nicer” things.

    I got into a big argument with the employees of Google about two years ago, for the same thing that you just mentioned right now.
    They were very angry that I was “moonlighting” from my existing job.

    You have to keep in mind that my daytime job is for a construction related company, and those people don’t have any legal obligation to take orders from Google, because construction requires a university degree in Civil Engineering.

  18. PS – once they find a sucker they will sell your info to other people that will scam you – sort of a round robin thing

  19. A person like me can use the mathematics of the “Net Present Value” computation, (if you don’t know what this is, look it up on wikipedia), to evaluate internet marketing propositions. That is a more suitable method for determining if a financial arrangement is a scam.

    What is really a shame is that all of these companies on the internet are committing the crime of “material misrepresentation”. If you buy something in a store, (like Target or Sears), you don’t have that problem.

  20. I have been dealing with someone who is an attorney. He said that this problem falls under the subject heading of “due diligence”. The task is to separate the legitimate from the illegitimate.

    There is a way to make this work. It just takes work.

  21. The difference between what I know and what you know is that you know things about the internal mechanism of the internet, (like what happens inside of the servers). I never learned those things, that’s why I am at the mercy of those paperback books which don’t tell the whole truth.

    Do you think I can find a book on such a topic?

  22. So two years ago Google told you that what you were doing was wrong. Yet you persist.

    I don’t give a rat’s ass what your day job is, you are clearly not entering the internet space with anything like authenticity and honesty and thus you are getting the results you deserve. Either stop behaving like this or deal with the fallout, which is (as you’ve noted) basically ostracization.

    There is no way to make what you are doing work. It does not work. In fact, your WP.com blog has already been reported for violating the Terms of Service over this issue. STOP DOING THIS.

    Duh.

  23. Please explain that last statement to me about the “Terms of Service”.

    I don’t know anything about that. I did not read them very well.

    You talk about honesty, but you forget one very important thing. As long as there are scams going on out there, you haven’t “cleaned” up the world by attacking me, you have only stifled a very good idea, which is my formula.

    I am not going to spend any more money on those services.

  24. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re going to spend money at WordPress.com; my concern is that people who buy into scams don’t pollute the statistics and the blog pool here.

    If you didn’t read the ToS before, I suggest you read them now.

    If you haven’t gotten the point, con artists don’t generate legitimate web hits. Legitimate web hits are what is counted here. If you wish non-legitimate web hits, you will have to go somewhere else.

    No-one who pretends to a knowledge of algorithms can be ignorant of the import of these statements: take your spam farm elsewhere.

  25. What you just said right now is in violation of the U.S. Constitution, and you know it down to the core of your being.

    The politics of the world DOES NOT revolve upon what you say it does.

  26. You’re hilarious. The internet was not invented in 1776, moron. Spam and con artists do not enjoy the protection of the Constitution or the Amendments, which is why fraud is punishable by law in the United States. Fraud. Which is what you have engaged in. You have paid for fraud, and you have posted to this forum complaining that your Fraud was not counted as the equal of lawful web views. You’ve done all of this in writing. Congratulations, you are truly the stupidest person I’ve seen online today and that counts Ron Brynaert.

Jeremy Hammond’s Bail Hearing Record

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Keanu knows

Keanu knows

LulzSec hero Jeremy Hammond had his bail hearing (denied) last week, and now the transcript has been uploaded to Issuu, so here it is. Sixty-five pages, but they seem to be mostly about half full, so it’s not as intimidating as it seems.

And here’s video from the press conference once it was revealed that the judge’s husband is a Stratfor client (Stratfor, as you may know, was allegedly hacked by LulzSec, a circumstance which may lend some skepticism to the concept of a fair and impartial trial).

Anonymous comes to the rescue of suicidal teen

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anonymous angel

anonymous angel

I don’t do this often, but I’m doing it today: sending you to a different site to read the story, because it’s a Storify and it won’t embed here. But it’s an important story and you will be very, very glad you read it. A fifteen-year-old girl was on the brink of suicide when her real life enemies jumped on Twitter to encourage her to do it. That’s when Anonymous and Rustle League stepped in. I’ve never been prouder of them.

Go Read It Now