Cyber rants

    A fellow came in to our office last week and wanted to talk to me. He didn’t call in advance to set up a meeting, and as a result, showed up at a very bad time. It was Tuesday, our production day and as putting the paper together requires all of us, I couldn’t just drop what I was doing.

    The man left something behind that he had printed off the Internet. Later, when our pages had all been transmitted for printing, I read this item and concluded it was one of the craziest things I had ever read — not the craziest, but certainly in the top 15 or 20.

    The artwork down the side began with a sinister-looking picture of President Obama. Below that was a swastika with the colors of President Obama’s logo. Then, came a side by side comparison of the logo for President Obama’s health care initiative with the Nazi Party’s eagle and swastika emblem. The last bit of artwork bore the words “Change you had better believe in.” It depicted a uniformed figure holding a pistol at the head of a prostrate man. The uniform had President Obama’s logo as a shoulder patch and Nazi SS lightning bolt emblems on the cuff.

    The title of the item was “Obama’s ‘Shock’ Plan For Martial Law Alarms Russia.” The byline identified the author as “Sorcha Faal,” and the whole thing seems an effort to make readers believe that the writer is Russian and has Kremlin inside information.

    One should note that “Sorcha Faal” is not a Russian name. It’s not a Belorussian name, nor a Ukrainian name. It’s not a slavic name. In fact, it’s not a real name at all. It’s a pseudonym that an American computer programmer named David Booth writes under. Apparently Mr. Booth is sufficiently ignorant of both Russia and the Russian language that he was unable to come up with a realistic Russian name to write under.

    Mr. Booth’s most recent Internet post is titled “US Quake Test Goes ‘Horribly Wrong,’ Leaves 500,000 Dead In Haiti.” In this he claims that the Hatian earthquake was the result of a Navy “earthquake weapon.”  Booth is also listed, under his own name, as the author of a book entitled “Dirty, Filthy, Christians: Treatise On The Most Dangerous Death Cult In Human History.”

    All of this should give a clear picture of what a fruitcake this man is.

    The Internet is a great source of information. I frequently use news aggregator Web sites such as Drudge Report and WorldNetDaily. The Internet is also a great source of disinformation and we would all do well to be cautious about accepting something we read on the Web as unvarnished truth.

    If you want to look at actual Russian news sites, then check out the following:

    www.moscowtimes.ru — this is an independent, English language newspaper published in Moscow.

    www.rian.ru  — this is the Web site for the Russian news agency Novosti. This URL takes you to a Russian language Web site, but there is an English option you can click on. It gives the official Kremlin line.

    www.interfax.ru — another Russian news agency Web site with an English option.

    www.novayagazeta.ru — this is the Web site for the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which means “New Newspaper.” It too, has an English option.

    If you like, you can also check out Pravda’s Web site at www.pravda.ru. It, too, has an English language option.

    So, enjoy and remember, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.