#1
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
Here's a pro-Eliot report:

https://gigaom.com/2015/02/04/brown-moses-launches-crowdsourced-tracking-of-troops-in-ukraine/

what a moron
#2
[account deactivated]
#3
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
saying brown moses is a CIA agent assigns way too much agency to him
#4
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +++++
#5
Post rating: ~
#6
political car tune
Post rating: +
are you really a cia agent when you're volunteering for them? doesn't that just make you a collaborator?
#7
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
i can't find the gif of brown moses citing wikipedia
#8
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i read part of the thing and this is the logic: if they can track a lot of vehicle movements, they can prove that new vehicles are appearing, which means that they have to be coming in from russia. likewise, if they can prove that ukraine didn't have these vehicles before the conflict, these vehicles must be from russia. and if they can prove russia is really supplying the rebels, that makes putin a liar.

lol
#9
[account deactivated]
#10
hi
Post rating: +++++
at this rate BM will be "crowdsourcing" the identities of leftist sympathizers in Latin America for death squ enthusiastic advocates of good government by summer of 2016.
#11
Post rating: +++++
#12
Poronto
Post rating: +
why would the CIA pay this guy money when he does their work for free
#13
hi
Post rating: +
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3390388&userid=27232&perpage=40








CONTEXT: above image is BM commenting on a Gaddafi speech
#14
Post rating: ~
It's not the CIA's fault that Brown Moses is wrong in all the ways that happen to drum for war!
#15
Kurdt
Post rating: ~

dipshit420 posted:

are you really a cia agent when you're volunteering for them? doesn't that just make you a collaborator?

no. that's what an agent is (as opposed to an officer)

#16
Kurdt
Post rating: ~

littlegreenpills posted:

why would the CIA pay this guy money when he does their work for free

because you touch yourself at night

#17
Post rating: +

discipline posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

saying brown moses is a CIA agent assigns way too much agency to him

hoooooooo kay


le_ is right tho. brown moses is only CIA in the way kermit the frog is jim henson

#18
chickeon
Post rating: +
why do people take him at his word that he's not paid to do this lol, he's obviously USDS/CIA/SIS or a contractor thereof, is there some reason to believe he's independently wealthy to the point where he can do this garbage for four years? do you think he's getting huge speaking fees for talking about wikipedia? he's a fucking spook straight up, if you were paying attention when he was getting started it's even more obvious
#19
Post rating: +
remember back when fyad created a wikipedia article about Weed Punk as a new genre of science fiction, prompting someone who saw the article to make a blog post about it, then cited that blog post on the wikipedia article to prove it was a real thing? this fooled the wikipedia editorship for something like 8 months before they caught wise

pepperidge farm the CIA remembers.
#20
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
you are mistaking the way ideology works in a propaganda system. no intelligence agency is giving brown moses any orders, giving him any money or probably even feeding him any intel. there are thousands of no-name current-events blogs, probably hundreds of professionally competent attempts among them. he has three benefits that give him a leg-up on others, in order of importance: 1st, a pre-existing audience from being a somethingawul.com forums moderator, 2nd, coming on the scene when news organizations are hungry for Social Media Saving The World stories they don't have to vet or pay for, and 3rd, his analysis and topics are "apolitical" enough* and say what most Westerners and the media and government want to hear anyway.

*by this I mean that he doesn't get bogged down challenging the assumptions of power like a radical or editorializing in a way that makes any western party or official look bad ("looks like Russia's tanks are rolling over the border, thanks to the appeasement of that monkey Obama"). he is pure technocrat
#21
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~

chickeon posted:

why do people take him at his word that he's not paid to do this lol, he's obviously USDS/CIA/SIS or a contractor thereof, is there some reason to believe he's independently wealthy to the point where he can do this garbage for four years? do you think he's getting huge speaking fees for talking about wikipedia? he's a fucking spook straight up, if you were paying attention when he was getting started it's even more obvious



his wife works and he's got a relatively popular blog and is on the british dole

#22
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
also there's not a ton of overhead on using google
#23
Post rating: +
right, and true american hero sean "vilerat" smith was just a humble computer janitor for uh... hmmm, the name of the organization escapes me...
#24
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~

shriekingviolet posted:

right, and true american hero sean "vilerat" smith was just a humble computer janitor for uh... hmmm, the name of the organization escapes me...



uh there was no secret that vilerat was a state department clown

#25
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
i think brown moses is a goddamn moron. if that's just his cover story and he has an underground lair where he dresses in expensive suits then that's fine. he's still some turbonerd who says ridiculous shit all day. but i think he's more comparable to those reddit swarms that try to hunt down clues about crimes and then end up driving some irrelevant kid to suicide over it or something. a lot of news stories about brown moses make fun of him in journalist speak, it's usually blogs of middle-brow clowns who have a BA in international politics and volunteer at their congressman's office or something who champion him.
#26
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

i think brown moses is a goddamn moron. if that's just his cover story and he has an underground lair where he dresses in expensive suits then that's fine. he's still some turbonerd who says ridiculous shit all day. but i think he's more comparable to those reddit swarms that try to hunt down clues about crimes and then end up driving some irrelevant kid to suicide over it or something. a lot of news stories about brown moses make fun of him in journalist speak, it's usually blogs of middle-brow clowns who have a BA in international politics and volunteer at their congressman's office or something who champion him.


i think the most plausible explanation is that he's an idiot whose particular brand of stupid idiot obsessions align well enough with desired propaganda lines that interested parties maneuvered him into mainstream attention and success, and may occasionally point him in the 'right' direction.

whether or not he is aware of this (or aware of what it entails) is kind of academic.

#27
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
haha brown moses got 50k pounds on kickstarter in june
#28
Post rating: +
hypothetically all the CIA would have to do to fund him is give him anonymous donations on one of his kickstarter thingies right? itd be pretty easy to push a dupe of his magnitude into whatever the CIA wants without him directly knowing about it. imo
#29
Post rating: +
like Goat is right that ideology causes spontaneous genesis of these clowns, but they are most effective when they're curated with a light touch instead of just being left to wander. it's a lot of pay off for a very small and deniable investment
#30
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +++++

shriekingviolet posted:

like Goat is right that ideology causes spontaneous genesis of these clowns, but they are most effective when they're curated with a light touch instead of just being left to wander. it's a lot of pay off for a very small and deniable investment

oh that's completely true. some guys invited him to turkey to talk about syria so he flew out there. i would guess they probably funded that. then magically he was whisked away by some turkish military officials and given a scoop about syrian weapons use or something. and he sold the story as like 'being in the right place in the right time' when it was obvious he was being shepherded around by turkish officials as a way of leaking a fake story.

#31
Post rating: +
this is the shape of how state intelligence and counterintelligence has evolved in the wake of getting caught red handed back during the church & pike committees.

agents who can never be caught because they don't even know they're agents, diligent witch hunting informants who will never feel guilty because they don't realize they're informing on anyone, and twits posting their organizing strategies on facebook and tHE rHizzonE.
#32
chickeon
Post rating: ~
I guess it doesn't really matter since he performs the exact same function either way but with the sheer amount of coincidences and the treatment and attention he's received from imperial media I still believe he's Their Guy in at least a somewhat more official capacity
#33
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +

shriekingviolet posted:

twits posting their organizing strategies on facebook and tHE rHizzonE.

I just ate four Mars bars.

#34
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

shriekingviolet posted:

twits posting their organizing strategies on facebook and tHE rHizzonE.

I just ate four Mars bars.


goddamnt getfiscal will you follow opsec guidelines and keep your mouth shut for once!!!

#35
Post rating: +

chickeon posted:

I guess it doesn't really matter since he performs the exact same function either way but with the sheer amount of coincidences and the treatment and attention he's received from imperial media I still believe he's Their Guy in at least a somewhat more official capacity


to clarify, i think that even brownmoses probably isn't stupid enough to have not noticed that all these convenient things line up for him or that he occasionally gets spoon fed cool new 'facts,' i do think that he's stupid enough to think it's no big deal though

#36
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

shriekingviolet posted:

getfiscal posted:

shriekingviolet posted:

twits posting their organizing strategies on facebook and tHE rHizzonE.

I just ate four Mars bars.

goddamnt getfiscal will you follow opsec guidelines and keep your mouth shut for once!!!

then how would he fit in the mars bars

#37
Post rating: +
here's a little scenario I thought up, in which brownmoses meets his CIA handler, and the public reaction that follows:
#38
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~

shriekingviolet posted:

chickeon posted:

I guess it doesn't really matter since he performs the exact same function either way but with the sheer amount of coincidences and the treatment and attention he's received from imperial media I still believe he's Their Guy in at least a somewhat more official capacity

to clarify, i think that even brownmoses probably isn't stupid enough to have not noticed that all these convenient things line up for him or that he occasionally gets spoon fed cool new 'facts,' i do think that he's stupid enough to think it's no big deal though

Xhe probably just believes it is a facet of being quasi-celebrity self-made expert guy. Naturally, being so imporntant now, xhe would start getting phoned up by people who want to share privileged information with xher, their reasonings being, "I bet Brown Moses would know what to do with this info for sure." Xhe is in essence a budding Seymour Hersh. Lol at this thread title by the by.

Edited by swampman ()

#39
political car tune
Post rating: +
to be fair agent is a colloquial term we use thanks to james bond and other such nonsense. the CIA employees are "handlers" and they manage "assets" just thought i'd clear that up. oops, got an asset calling g2g
#40
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

it's usually blogs of middle-brow clowns who have a BA in international politics and volunteer at their congressman's office or something who champion him.



also people who write all white papers for the u.s. government aka the same people