and he boasts about it. Updated!
Looks like I've gotten on the wrong side of Patrick Byrne.
Byrne is the wingnut chairman of the Milton Friedman Foundation, Ron Paul supporter and "65% deception" anti-schools financier. He runs Overstock.com, which is an internet retailer but he is mainly known for coming on the web to hatch conspiracy theories. He has a hate list longer than Nixon's, including journalists and anybody else who has rubbed him the wrong way. Most of the people on his enemies list are obscure financial reporters, but the best known is Bethany McLean, who exposed Enron when she was at Fortune magazine.
McLean got on his enemies list by writing this great article in Fortune. Read the article and see how he responded to a previous article by accusing her of giving blowjobs to Goldman Sachs traders.
I got on Byrne's enemies list by two diaries: this one and this. He's all over the latest diary's comments section. I dissed him good. Then I gave him a dig in my diary on his pal Glenn Beck. So he had to fight back.
He did this by putting on my case one of his hired help named Judd Bagley.
I know that because of an email I got today. It was from a "Robin Dangelo" and it said as follows:
Tom,
Glenn Beck and Patrick Byrne are two of the leading threats to capitalism going right now. I love what your saying about them on Kos. You need to keep it up.
Here is something that might help it's a screenshot of both of them with their eyes closed at the same time. Kind of like the blind leading the blind. You can use it the next time you post about them which will hopefully be very soon. I'll attach it here and then if you want to use it I have it uploaded on photobucket.com too...
I had been warned by some other people on the Byrne Enemies List to watch out for emails with images. I clicked on the "show original" function in the email and saw this: img src=3D"http://am1.activemeter.com/webtracke=
r/track.html?method=3Dtrack&pid=3D59930&java=3D0">
That's an Activemeter tracking bug. I changed it slightly above. What this does is fish for IP addresses. It functions as spyware when used in this way. It is one of the things Bagley does and is all over the web. See this blog by one of Bagley's targets, journalist Gary Weiss.
Still, I thought maybe it was an accident or something like that. So I played dumb and we had this exchange:
Me:
thanks. you on kos?
"Dangelo":
Hey Tom,
I'm not a Kos diarist. Just not that eloquent. But I do frequently comment, like I did on your earlier piece on Byrne, which was very funny.
By the way, here's an even better version of the Byrne and Beck shot. I made it sharper...
Me:
Which comment was yours?
"Dangelo":
Tom,
That's really strange. My comment is gone, but I know it was posted at one point because I linked to it on a Yahoo post I made. I might have used some colorful language but nothing worse than I've seen others use. Do you moderate your comments or does someone else do it?
Of course, by now I knew this Dangelo was full of it, but I knew for sure when I checked that link. At the top were two from Yahoo user "whambamflimflam." See for yourself. The first consists entirely of the following:
img src="http://www.antisocialmedia.net/wordpress... ">
The second one consists entirely of:
script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
var __pid=48301;
var _aminvisible=1;
/script>
script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.activemeter.com/counter.js"><script>
I've altered both of them slightly because these are real java scripts, and if I hadn't done that they'd have been invisible and actually function for their intended purpose: as sleazy, grimy, scummy web tracking bugs.
This is definitely Bagley, because "antisocialmedia.net" is his website. Weiss has all the dirty details. Antisocialmedia is now part of Byrne's Deep Capture conspiracy website, and Bagley works for Byrne.
Byrne used to support the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry, so this is not a man with high ethics. That and other details can be found on Google.
There's a lot already on Byrne on the Internet, because he has been at this for years. See:
William Wolfrum
Huffington Post
Gary Weiss blog
Rolling Stone
White Collar Crime Blog
Weiss's latest blog describes how Byrne hired the wingnut publicists at Advocacy Ink to push his crap.
There are going to be a lot of comments on this from Byrne and the Byrne mob, just as there were when Rolling Stone gave a "four tinfoil hat" rating to his naked shorting conspiracy scam.
I can understand unethical. This is a CEO, so you can't expect better. But I call this dumb.
POSTSCRIPT: Swift Boat Byrne and his hired help Bagley emerge below, in the comments, as expected, and proudly admit their corporate espionage. Read it and puke. They can be banned here for their phony "outing" but who is going to ban them from the human race?
Byrne is a liar who makes stuff up. Here is a quote from the Deep Capture blog in which he tries to connect me with one of his enemies, Gary Weiss. The post is actually written by Bagley, but he is acting for Byrne so I view this as "Byrne talking":
Now, exactly who’s paying him is unknown, though it must be someone because the fellow has otherwise been unemployed since 2004 (apart from his less-than-lethargic book sales, the pittance in ad revenue generated by his all-but-mothballed blog, and his one ostensibly paid piece for Portfolio Magazine – a publication whose final coffin nail Weiss personally helped to drive).
That's a lie. Weiss's blog (see right panel) lists eight articles for Portfolio Magazine, not "one ostensibly paid piece." Who's lying, him or Weiss? Click on the links there and see if they take you to actual articles or to blank spots on the web. Let that be your test as to who's the liar.
The website of the magazine describes him as a contributing editor. I assume that Portfolio paid its contributing editors.
Byrne is such a psycho liar that he will lie to your face about stuff that you can easily figure out for yourself is a lie. He is famous for a Big Lie that his company was attacked by a "Sith Lord" that is a figment of his imagination. His latest lie, right here on Kos, is that Bethany McLean of Fortune, the bane of Wall Street, is in the pay of Wall Street just because she thinks he is a fraud. He will stop at nothing - lies, corporate espionage. He is a menace. I intend to follow him closely, and will be here with a report every time he lets out a belch.
Important update: I received an email from someone knowledgeable about these things saying as follows:
In one of your Kos comments, you state it's safe to click on the search link. It's not. That's where the spyware is embedded (The post synopsis looks blank. It's not. It's displaying an invisible Antisocialmedia image). You might point out to the KOS people that if they clicked on it, they were being spied upon also. Maybe one of the more tech savvy Kos people will look into it some.
Sorry for my ignorance.
