6 ms·

Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign

107 points by tysone 4y ago

peter_d_sherman 4y ago
>"Nada was the founder of a nine-year-old commodities-trading business, Lord Energy. The “Lord” stood for “liquid or dry,” because the company shipped both crude oil and such drygoods as cement and corn." [...] "...and annual revenue approaching two billion dollars." Why does oil (or more broadly, money/derivatives of money -- related to oil, or more broadly, energy companies) -- always seem to pop up in these types of stories? >"The property’s sweeping views and hillside swimming pool were so spectacular that George Clooney—a neighbor—had filmed a Nespresso commercial there, along with Jack Black and various glamorous women; the ad’s running gag was the preposterous decadence of the setting." But then again, maybe the Nespresso had something to do with it...
emmelaich 4y ago
The French Wikipedia entry for Lord Energy is still full of these insinuations. Poor guy. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Energy https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Energy
- oriettaxx 4y ago
  can some French speaking user fix it? I suggest we leave references to old links so users can judge on sources
oriettaxx 4y ago
In Italy Stefano Piazza wrote against Lord Energy https://www.stefanopiazza.ch/immagini/rassegna/Panorama_10-07-2019.pdf https://www.stefanopiazza.ch/immagini/rassegna/Panorama_10-0... (https://web.archive.org/web/20201024035824/https://www.stefanopiazza.ch/immagini/rassegna/Panorama_10-07-2019.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201024035824/https://www.stefa... ) https://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=16&sez=120&id=69076&print=preview&size=2 https://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=16&sez... https://web.archive.org/web/20220304195016/https://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=16&sez=120&id=69076&print=preview&size=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20220304195016/https://www.infor... he has a company in Switzerland https://eyeswiss.ch/chi-siamo/ https://eyeswiss.ch/chi-siamo/ "In the current global scenario, characterized by particularly serious tensions such as Islamist terrorism and organized crime on an international scale, states and the economic world are obliged to equip themselves with new tools for preventing and contrasting the aforementioned criminal phenomena." (google translation)
- oriettaxx 4y ago
  btw, in italian "informazione corretta" means literally "correct information" my god!
thimkerbell 4y ago
Random observations - It looks like this article was published the same day that the Nashville school shooting happened. The New Yorker cartoons within it, that I see, seem (for the most part) uncharacteristic.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20230327101056/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/the-dirty-secrets-of-a-smear-campaign https://web.archive.org/web/20230327101056/https://www.newyo...
kodah 4y ago
I'm all for seeing more justice around smear campaigns, however there's a long way to go. This is why I maintain a hefty chunk of skepticism around things that seem just a bit too coincidental and lack concrete, direct evidence. As the saying goes, a lie travels around the world in the time that the truth laces up it's boots.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  All the obvious stuff aside, the billions of dollars, the Islamic stuff, bankers and bank politics, the ties to militaries and the drama… there is just so seemingly a second side to this story.
  - scythe 4y ago
    There is certainly a second side in the broad sense: we know that Qatar hired a rival private intelligence firm likely up to the same no good. But in the narrow sense it is just ridiculous to suggest that third-order connections among the upper classes in the Arab world and diaspora describe anything other than an endemic culture of class stratification and family privilege. Good fences make prognathism.
    - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
      Are you acknowledging the reality of a system that intentionally combines government and religion, or do you not know about it?
- _2uwr 4y ago
  [dead]
AlbertCory 4y ago
> When the officer left the room for a few minutes, Nada found himself alone with the case file. Desperate for answers, he riffled through it. The officer had written notes dismissing him as paranoid, Nada told me. (The local police and prosecutor declined to comment.) But the police had also obtained copies of requests for records about Lord Energy and a local mosque. Both had been filed by a Geneva-based private intelligence firm, Alp Services. What an amazing stroke of luck! They left the room and "forgot" to bring the case file with them. I hope he thanked them afterwards.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Okay, but Alex Jones's lawyer sent the other guy incriminating docs he didn't mean to. Lots of people are just dumb. And, in government I'm sure that number is doubly so because governments never fire people.
- oriettaxx 4y ago
  https://www.alpservices.com https://www.alpservices.com
- burnished 4y ago
  I feel like this is a hard one to summarily judge like this - people really do make basic and glaring errors all the time
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    If you want to believe a cop leaves a witness alone in a room with a police file about him, accidentally, I guess you're welcome to.
    - gamblor956 4y ago
      I've seen cops leave suspects alone in a room with the key evidence needed to convict them, accidentally reveal the names of confidential informants in conversation, and various other case-killing mistakes. It does not seem like a stretch for a cop to accidentally leave his notes in an interview room in a police station. Most interviewees aren't bold enough to risk looking.
hammock 4y ago
>terabytes of files exposing a covert campaign against him—and the culprit wasn’t a rival but an entire country This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community does. It defends American business (favored corporations of course) abroad by getting humint and sigint from competitors behind closed doors, sabotage operations, etc. It isn’t all coups and war, although a lot of it does tie back to national security in one sense or another
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  > This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community does. France focuses most of their intelligence services on this task. America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree and normally focuses on defense rather than offense in the corporate space.
  - adolph 4y ago
    > America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree How would anyone know? Are we supposed to believe the IC's claims?
    - bilbo0s 4y ago
      No one who would talk about it knows anything reliable. Least of all anyone bloviating on this thread. Including me. Best you'll get here are the comments ok'd by professional influence campaigns mounted by the intelligence services of various nations. None of which have any interest in you being "informed". So take everything with a 10 pound block of salt. Skepticism is warranted.
      - rapjr9 4y ago
        One thing we do know, it is Congress that tasks the USA intelligence services, as well as the President. Found this PDF on the web: https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/the-agency-and-the-hill/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/the-agenc... which seems to be a history of the relationship between the CIA and Congress. So a reasonable guess would be that the priorities of the people in Congress and the current President determine the priorities of the intelligence agencies. Many in Congress are concerned with boosting companies in the USA, especially those related to national security, so it seems reasonable they would create tasks related to that. What members of Congress actually do with the information they receive from spying seems to be left entirely up to them, it is not the intelligence services that decide who to reveal it to. Congresspeople could pass it to the US companies that could benefit. We know they sometimes make it public, though often without attribution.
B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
Sheesh, and he wasn't even running for president or something.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  But when you are things can get really ugly. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for instance. What gets me is that such things are not dealt with in the same way that you would deal with election fraud.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for instance That was such a disgraceful episode of our political history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jongjong 4y ago
I've also been victim of a smear campaign by the leaders of a blockchain community which involved maybe a hundred people and it may have been one of the reasons why my project fundraising failed. I can relate to the point about turning paranoid. For me, it happened just before COVID19 lockdowns which exacerbated the feeling of paranoia.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- DJBunnies 4y ago
  What were you making?
  - jongjong 4y ago
    A blockchain project which allowed people to buy fractions of income from a real estate enterprise and an open source Decentralized Exchange which any group of people could operate. We also launched some other projects on that DEX like a quantum-resistant blockchain.
    - DJBunnies 4y ago
      Ah, yea I could see the negativity around that.

107 points by tysone 4y ago

>"Nada was the founder of a nine-year-old commodities-trading business, Lord Energy. The “Lord” stood for “liquid or dry,” because the company shipped both crude oil and such drygoods as cement and corn." [...] "...and annual revenue approaching two billion dollars." Why does oil (or more broadly, money/derivatives of money -- related to oil, or more broadly, energy companies) -- always seem to pop up in these types of stories? >"The property’s sweeping views and hillside swimming pool were so spectacular that George Clooney—a neighbor—had filmed a Nespresso commercial there, along with Jack Black and various glamorous women; the ad’s running gag was the preposterous decadence of the setting." But then again, maybe the Nespresso had something to do with it...

emmelaich 4y ago

The French Wikipedia entry for Lord Energy is still full of these insinuations. Poor guy. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Energy https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Energy

oriettaxx 4y ago
can some French speaking user fix it? I suggest we leave references to old links so users can judge on sources

oriettaxx 4y ago

In Italy Stefano Piazza wrote against Lord Energy https://www.stefanopiazza.ch/immagini/rassegna/Panorama_10-07-2019.pdf https://www.stefanopiazza.ch/immagini/rassegna/Panorama_10-0... (https://web.archive.org/web/20201024035824/https://www.stefanopiazza.ch/immagini/rassegna/Panorama_10-07-2019.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201024035824/https://www.stefa... ) https://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=16&sez=120&id=69076&print=preview&size=2 https://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=16&sez... https://web.archive.org/web/20220304195016/https://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=16&sez=120&id=69076&print=preview&size=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20220304195016/https://www.infor... he has a company in Switzerland https://eyeswiss.ch/chi-siamo/ https://eyeswiss.ch/chi-siamo/ "In the current global scenario, characterized by particularly serious tensions such as Islamist terrorism and organized crime on an international scale, states and the economic world are obliged to equip themselves with new tools for preventing and contrasting the aforementioned criminal phenomena." (google translation)

oriettaxx 4y ago
btw, in italian "informazione corretta" means literally "correct information" my god!

thimkerbell 4y ago

Random observations - It looks like this article was published the same day that the Nashville school shooting happened. The New Yorker cartoons within it, that I see, seem (for the most part) uncharacteristic.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20230327101056/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/the-dirty-secrets-of-a-smear-campaign https://web.archive.org/web/20230327101056/https://www.newyo...

kodah 4y ago

I'm all for seeing more justice around smear campaigns, however there's a long way to go. This is why I maintain a hefty chunk of skepticism around things that seem just a bit too coincidental and lack concrete, direct evidence. As the saying goes, a lie travels around the world in the time that the truth laces up it's boots.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
All the obvious stuff aside, the billions of dollars, the Islamic stuff, bankers and bank politics, the ties to militaries and the drama… there is just so seemingly a second side to this story.
- scythe 4y ago
  There is certainly a second side in the broad sense: we know that Qatar hired a rival private intelligence firm likely up to the same no good. But in the narrow sense it is just ridiculous to suggest that third-order connections among the upper classes in the Arab world and diaspora describe anything other than an endemic culture of class stratification and family privilege. Good fences make prognathism.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    Are you acknowledging the reality of a system that intentionally combines government and religion, or do you not know about it?
_2uwr 4y ago
[dead]

AlbertCory 4y ago

> When the officer left the room for a few minutes, Nada found himself alone with the case file. Desperate for answers, he riffled through it. The officer had written notes dismissing him as paranoid, Nada told me. (The local police and prosecutor declined to comment.) But the police had also obtained copies of requests for records about Lord Energy and a local mosque. Both had been filed by a Geneva-based private intelligence firm, Alp Services. What an amazing stroke of luck! They left the room and "forgot" to bring the case file with them. I hope he thanked them afterwards.

renewiltord 4y ago
Okay, but Alex Jones's lawyer sent the other guy incriminating docs he didn't mean to. Lots of people are just dumb. And, in government I'm sure that number is doubly so because governments never fire people.
oriettaxx 4y ago
https://www.alpservices.com https://www.alpservices.com
burnished 4y ago
I feel like this is a hard one to summarily judge like this - people really do make basic and glaring errors all the time
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  If you want to believe a cop leaves a witness alone in a room with a police file about him, accidentally, I guess you're welcome to.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    I've seen cops leave suspects alone in a room with the key evidence needed to convict them, accidentally reveal the names of confidential informants in conversation, and various other case-killing mistakes. It does not seem like a stretch for a cop to accidentally leave his notes in an interview room in a police station. Most interviewees aren't bold enough to risk looking.

hammock 4y ago

>terabytes of files exposing a covert campaign against him—and the culprit wasn’t a rival but an entire country This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community does. It defends American business (favored corporations of course) abroad by getting humint and sigint from competitors behind closed doors, sabotage operations, etc. It isn’t all coups and war, although a lot of it does tie back to national security in one sense or another

CSMastermind 4y ago
> This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community does. France focuses most of their intelligence services on this task. America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree and normally focuses on defense rather than offense in the corporate space.
- adolph 4y ago
  > America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree How would anyone know? Are we supposed to believe the IC's claims?
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    No one who would talk about it knows anything reliable. Least of all anyone bloviating on this thread. Including me. Best you'll get here are the comments ok'd by professional influence campaigns mounted by the intelligence services of various nations. None of which have any interest in you being "informed". So take everything with a 10 pound block of salt. Skepticism is warranted.
    - rapjr9 4y ago
      One thing we do know, it is Congress that tasks the USA intelligence services, as well as the President. Found this PDF on the web: https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/the-agency-and-the-hill/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/the-agenc... which seems to be a history of the relationship between the CIA and Congress. So a reasonable guess would be that the priorities of the people in Congress and the current President determine the priorities of the intelligence agencies. Many in Congress are concerned with boosting companies in the USA, especially those related to national security, so it seems reasonable they would create tasks related to that. What members of Congress actually do with the information they receive from spying seems to be left entirely up to them, it is not the intelligence services that decide who to reveal it to. Congresspeople could pass it to the US companies that could benefit. We know they sometimes make it public, though often without attribution.

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago

Sheesh, and he wasn't even running for president or something.

jacquesm 4y ago
But when you are things can get really ugly. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for instance. What gets me is that such things are not dealt with in the same way that you would deal with election fraud.
- Clubber 4y ago
  >Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for instance That was such a disgraceful episode of our political history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jongjong 4y ago

I've also been victim of a smear campaign by the leaders of a blockchain community which involved maybe a hundred people and it may have been one of the reasons why my project fundraising failed. I can relate to the point about turning paranoid. For me, it happened just before COVID19 lockdowns which exacerbated the feeling of paranoia.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
DJBunnies 4y ago
What were you making?
- jongjong 4y ago
  A blockchain project which allowed people to buy fractions of income from a real estate enterprise and an open source Decentralized Exchange which any group of people could operate. We also launched some other projects on that DEX like a quantum-resistant blockchain.
  - DJBunnies 4y ago
    Ah, yea I could see the negativity around that.