The Final Sock-Puppet: "Rick Ellensburg"

"Rick Ellensburg" posts here at Right Wing Nut House, once again, I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear, defending Glenn Greenwald.

Right Wing Nut House checked the IP:

201.8.3.146
OrgName: Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry
OrgID: LACNIC
Address: Potosi 1517
City: Montevideo

Montevideo again. The same origin-city listed for the now-famous "Ellison" IP address. (Clarification at end of post.)

It gets better.

"Rick Ellensburg" (sounds similar to "Ellison" and "Thomas Ellers," don't it?) writes a post, on RWNH's site, at 7:03 Central Time, which is (if I haven't f'd up my math too much) 9:03 Brazil time.

Here, Glenn Greenwald himself posts at 8:43 Brazil time. (His blog is on Brazil time, one hour ahead of Eastern time. I checked.)

Correction: "Rick Ellensburg" first posted on RWNH at 6:52 Central Time, which is 8:52 Brazil time. So he actually posted there within 9 minutes of posting a (brief) comment on his own site. Thanks to dedicated Greenwald defender "Mantis" for pointing that out.

Within twenty nine minutes. Within twenty nine minutes of Glenn Greenwald posting on his own blog, someone fluent with all of Glenn Greenwald's arguments, re-making all of Glenn Greenwald's points, writing like Glenn Greenwald, defends Glenn Greenwald on a right wing blog, posting as "Rick Ellensburg," a pseudnym somewhat silmilar to "Ellison" and "Thomas Ellers."

Gee, Glenn Greenwald sure has a lot of rabid fans in Brazil, doesn't he? And they, once again, post during the same time frames he is known to be active on the Internet.

Like here, where Hot Air points out that sock-puppet "Ryan" posts on Dan Riehl's blog within 20 minutes of Glenn Greenwald posting on his own blog.

Another coincidence, Glenn? Your Magic Boyfriend just happens to always be posting on the internet -- about you, no less! -- at the same time you're active on your own blog, huh?

But there's more.

Read comments 5 and 6 on RWNH's blog, especially. Do these sound like a Magic Boyfriend merely defending his man? Or do they sound like Glenn Greenwald himself?

Does Glenn Greenwald's Magic Boyfriend just happen to be completely fluent with Greenwald's arguments and mode of thinking, such that, when pressed, he can argue Glenn Greenwald's points on his behalf at the drop of a hat?

But there's more.

Eric H. has taken the trouble to look at some of the tics that both Glenn Greenwald and "Rick Ellensburg" share. Apparently the Magic Boyfriend is also a stylistic mimc, capable of writing in Glenn Greenwald's voice at will.

This gets a little weedy (yeah, yeah, I was in the thick weeds since early yesterday morning), so I'll put it in the jump.

Fjrst, Eric noticed that the various puppets used a lot of hypens to set off clauses.

Like here:

Rick Ellensburg Said: 7:03 pm And one other thing – in his update, he provides an example of conservatives who HATED FISA under Clinton and thought that eavesdropping on Americans, even with judicial oversight, was a dangerous threat to freedom.

I love how Franks claims not to know who Greenwald is and never reads his blog - "I really have no idea who Glenn Greenwald is" — but somehow also claims to knows that he’s just a "lefty-boy" who only writes "pretty much what you could read at the Democratic Party’s web site." Wouldn’t you have to know who he is and read him to know that?

Eric then offers these nuggets from the man himself:

Here:

If - as the Administration is now claiming - they had such significant difficulties obtaining the warrants they wanted for eavesdropping that they had to go outside of FISA, surely Baker - who was in charge of obtaining those warrants - would have been aware of them.

So now we're a country which allows its leaders to flagrantly violate the law -- even cheering them on as they do it -- and we imprison the journalists who report that illegal behavior to the public. That sounds like a lot of things. The United States isn't one of them.

Or even here:

Put another way, Administration lovers were so desperate to defend their leader at all costs -- they begin with the pre-ordained resolve to defend Bush no matter what and thereafter search for a rationale to prop up that goal -- that they latched onto an argument this weekend which is so facially wrong that even the Administration itself repudiates it as a grounds for defending the President’s conduct.

Yes, I know all sorts of people use hyphens. It's not smoking gun. No, it's a cumulative thing. Because the sock-puppets and Greenwald also have a fondness for a certain phrasing.

Sock-puppet "Rick Ellensburg:"

To recap:

Conservatives under Clinton – "eavesdropping with judicial oversight = fascism"

Conservatives under Bush – "eavesdropping with no judicial oversight = OK"

if you’re going to argue Greenwald’s point, you should argue the points, instead if pretending he had none.

Glenn Greenwald, arguing in the comments of a different blog:

To re-cap - The New Republic published false information in claiming to quote from an e-mail Steve Gilliard sent to the Townhouse list. No such e-mail was sent. The information is false.

Ah, I know he spelled it differently there; he added a hypen. But Glenn Greenwald also spells it differently on his own blog from time to time. On his own blog, he also drops the hyphen:

So, to recap - America is currently at war and its enemies are domestic liberals and The New York Times. This war was started by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter when they opposed the invasion of Iraq.

And here, too:

So, to recap: the extremely unpopular Bush nominates as CIA Director...

And (yawwwn...) here...

To recap: a Republican Senator is vowing to hold hearings because the President of the United States has embraced theories which maintain that he has the right to break the law...

And here, with bonus hyphens...

So, to recap: The President -- being The President -- would never do anything to harm the country's intelligence efforts...

And yes, with the hypen in between "re" and "cap" again...

So, to re-cap the rules: (1) When a pro-war politician gives a pro-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony...

Hyphen again...

To briefly re-cap what really ought to be a disqualifying event for Zinsmeister...

By the way, those last six are just from one month, May 2006. The search just kept finding more. Yes, I got bored with it myself.

Yes, yes, yes, I know... it just so happens that Glenn Greenwald has been blessed to be living with a perfect Spirit Twin who spends all of his day doing what is actually Glenn Greenwald's job (i.e., defending Glenn Greenwald, recruiting for the cult of Glenn Greenwald), and also seems to do this while Glenn Greenwald is known to be active on the Internet, and is fully committed to, and fully conversant with, all of Glenn Greenwald's arguments and beliefs, and furthermore does not merely content himself to briefly tout his lover's accomplishments, but rather argues all of his points in full on his behalf, and furthermore is capable of mimicing his lover's writing style, with its various gramatical and word-choice tics, at will.

To re-cap:

Soul-Mates.

Westley and Princess Buttercup? They weren't half as perfect for each other as are Glenn Greenwald and his Magic Boyfriend.

Hey, Why Not? If someone's a prick, why not say so? Can't be walking around on eggshells around pricks.

Thanks to All of My Friends Say You're A Dick Amish.

Clarification On Montivideo Origin: Glenn Greewald's and Ellison's IP also showed a Montivideo orgin. Which struck me as strange, but I'm not a tech guy. I figured, hey, who knows, maybe Montivideo is the big internet hub in South America.

It's not. What's going on is that I was using ARIN for the IP lookup, which apparently only looks up American (or maybe North American) IP's. South American IP's it tends to spit out as "Montivideo."

The correct lookup system for South/Latin American addresses is LACNIC.

Running the confirmed Greenwald/Ellison IP through that -- I don't think there's any big secret now when I reveal the full IP is actually 201.37.43.117; I think most people know that by now through inadvertant dislcosures -- reveals the following:

inetnum: 201.37/16
aut-num: AS28573
abuse-c: LFB
owner: NET Serviços de Comunicação S.A.
ownerid: 000.065.376/0002-65
responsible: Lauro Fernando Costa Barbosa
address: Rua Verbo Divino, 1356,
address: 04719-002 - São Paulo - SP

Sao Paulo, Brazil, of course. Greenwald lives in Brazil; whether he lives in Sao Paulo I don't know, but we know he's using this IP as he posts from it, in his own name. No assumptions need to be made here. (Actually, I think he lives in Rio, but I don't know why I think that. The cities are close enough.)

Running the "Rick Ellensburg" IP through Lacnic:

inetnum: 201.8/16
aut-num: AS7738
abuse-c: CGR13
owner: Telemar Norte Leste S.A.
ownerid: 002.558.134/0001-58
responsible: Marlemar Telgon
address: Rua Humberto de Campos, 425, 7º andar
address: 22430-190 - Rio de Janeiro - R

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Blogger Xlrq tells me there's a difference here, not just in city (which are, again, somewhat close to each other). The first provider is NET Servicos, the second ISP is Telemar Norte. I don't think this is a major thing-- after all, he could merely have switched internet providers, as the Right Wing Nuthouse posts were from March and the recent Greenwald/Ellison posts are from last week. He may have changed cities.

Or, he could have been posting this day from an internet cafe, or from a library, while doing "research" on his "book."

Admittedly, there is a different ISP involved. I may be a biased observer, but it seems to me unlikely that this difference in ISP proves a commenter other than Greenwald. After all, how many gung-ho batshit-rabid Glenn Greenwald blog fans are there in Brazil, after all? I'm guesing, and I don't mean this in a snotty way-- only one, Glenn Greenwald himself.

Furthermore, a source has an email from Greenwald from Nov/Dec 2005 which also puts him on the Telemar Norte network. So either he did have that service at one point, or he frequents some location that's on that network when he blogs and checks email.

Anyway, that's the full story on the Latin America IP thing, and why previous attempts to discover the origin kept coming up "Montivideo, Uruguay."

posted by Ace at 07:48 PM

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