A major coordinated blogging event took place on the Internet last week when some 200 conservative bloggers showed solidarity for fellow bloggers who have been harassed and terrorized by Brett Kimberlin, a radical, violent, lying, dangerous felon known as The Speedway Bomber.
"Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day" was initiated by popular conservative blogger and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin after she learned how Kimberlin tried to silence an attorney/blogger by framing him for a crime and harassed another attorney/blogger, nearly getting him killed in a "Swatting" operation.
"Swatting" is when a 9-11 call is made to police by an impersonator who alerts law enforcement to a trumped-up shooting at the target victim's home, usually in the dead of night. A SWAT team is then deployed to the unsuspecting target's home, sometimes ending in tragic results.
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The "blogburst" was the largest of its kind in blogging history, with hundreds of bloggers, many who researched further into Kimberlin's background and reported their results on blogs, Tweets and Facebook pages about the diminutive felon who is funded by "progressive," left-wing foundations (including George Soros' Tides Foundation) uses the legal system to launch vexatious suits against bloggers who write about him.
GBTV's Glenn Beck interviewed both Frey and attorney Aaron Worthing on his radio show last week, and The Blaze spotlighted Kimberlin's terror campaign against bloggers in an extensive piece, which featured audio of the police call that initiated Patterico's swatting.
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A left-leaning lawyer and a left-leaning blog also were targeted, as was conservative blogger Stacy McCain, and Mandy "Liberty Chick" Nagy's Twitter feed.
Read the comprehensive investigative piece Nagy wrote at Breitbart.com that set Kimberlin's harassment in motion. Stacy McCain explained the entire scenario in an hour-long interview on my radio program, "The Andrea Shea King Show," last Friday night.
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Ali Akbar of the National Bloggers Club has set up a donation page to help support bloggers targeted by Kimberlin. Please help here if you can. For PayPal, click here.
Are feds salivating over Facebook IPO fail?
Speaking of Glenn Beck, the Internet media mogul is suspicious of last week's major fail of Facebook's Initial Public Offering, asking if the federal government is behind it so it can "rescue" Facebook, thus giving the Obama administration propaganda control over a massive network of nearly a billion users.
"900 million people connect through Facebook," he said. "It is the wave of the future."
Beck questioned why General Motors pulled its advertising just prior to the IPO offering. He also questioned why Facebook was valued at $60 billion more than Disney.
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"Why?" he asked. "What are they creating that is so valuable?"
"Even the president's favorite banker Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan Chase was involved, as was Morgan Stanley. The president doesn't trust anyone on Wall Street, but he trusts these guys?" Beck asked.
"And the guy who did the IPO for Facebook is the same guy who did the IPO for General Motors for the government," he continued.
According to an article at Glenn Beck.com, there are several things most people didn't hear about regarding Facebook: the way the IPO was evaluated, for example.
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Beck noted that unless Facebook increases its revenue by 47 percent for the next three years, it will collapse: "Now it's being reported that the banks made about $100 million off of this, and now the left is coming out against Facebook and demonizing them."
"If I was the government, wouldn't that be great to have an asset like Facebook?" Beck asked. "Especially if you had the kind of ideas of Cass Sunstein or Mark Lloyd where you needed to control the media?"
House: United Nations to regulate the Internet?
The Internet is currently governed by several non-profit, non-government entities or "multi-stakeholders." The consortium is called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.
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Under a proposal by several members of the United Nations, ICANN would go away, and the Internet would instead be governed by rules and regulations imposed and overseen by the likes of China, Russia, Brazil and India, giving the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union control over the Internet instead.
It's nothing new – the U.N. has been trying to wrest control for several years. The latest effort will be deliberated by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology.
According to a published report in The Hill, it's an unpopular idea with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress, and officials with the Obama administration have also criticized it: "The measure would give the U.N. more control over cybersecurity, data privacy, technical standards and the Web's address system. It would also allow foreign government-owned Internet providers to charge extra for international traffic and allow for more price controls."
The House committee will hear testimony this week from Robert McDowell, a Republican commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission; David Gross, a former State Department official; and Sally Shipman Wentworth, the senior manager of public policy for the nonprofit Internet Society.
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A cyber-stalker's dream
A bill introduced by a New York state senator could end the practice of anonymous posting online. Introduced by New York State Sen. Thomas F. O'Mara (R-Big Flats), S6779 would mandate the removal of any anonymous online post, if the poster refused to verify his or her legal name, IP address and home address. Language in the bill is an online stalker's dream. And constitutionally questionable.
Facing a fight for the Internet's future
Former Google honcho Eric Schmidt warned the international community of web users that we "face the real possibility we could end up living in society in which software silently deletes our voices, our thoughts, our culture."
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"Make no mistake," he added, "this is a fight for the future of the web and there is no room for complacency."
Schmidt made his remarks at the Science Museum in Kensington, England. He said much more, but you'll have to click here to read all of it.
Conversely, European antitrust regulators have delivered an ultimatum to Google to change its search business or face legal consequences.
Pointing to Google's Street View data collection practices, one German data protection official said, "It was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen."
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Get on board the fight for Internet freedom!
Here's what you can do to push back against New York senators, U.N. totalitarian governments and U.S. regulators who want to control the Internet. A non-profit group calling itself Fight for the Future has launched the Internet Defense League Project to mobilize an organized fight for Internet freedom.
Its webpage proclaims, "The Internet blackout was just the beginning. Together, our websites and personal networks can mobilize the planet to defend the Internet from bad laws and monopolies. Are you in?"
Well, are you? Sign on here.
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Bits & Bytes
- Worth a read. Columnist Doug Giles: "Kids with cell phones! Record your socialist teachers!"
- Find the path to fitness at MapMyFitness.
- State Department hacking into al-Qaeda sites?
- Techmeme founder talks new media vs. old media (video).