Hey, folks!
A really fine fellow by the name of "Reverend Mykeru", a so-called "liberal" blogger joined forces recently with the oh-so-nice folks at scamdy.com, including so-called "liberal" blogger "Anonymous Army" to discredit me when I was attempting to defend the late Andy Stephenson against the attacks against him. To this end, Mykeru put back online a bit of
per se libel that he had concocted several years ago against me when I made him look like a fool and he couldn't handle it. It really is a study in how to spin a mixture of ten percent truth, 80% bullshit, and ten percent artistic talent into a health filled shit smoothie;
http://www.mykeru.com/retribution/bb/Here is the origin of this little character assassination attempt;
Long ago and far away, Mykeru was one of the most active members of Mike Malloy's web board. He stepped WAY over the line there, finally, into pure trollish behavior and was banned from the place. In fact, they had to modify their rules considerably there because he had been obnoxious in ways that they had not considered at first when they created their rules in the first place.
Because Mykeru thinks rules are only for other people, however, he created a sock-puppet account "Mr. Wiggles" and showed up again to spew his hatred and lies. Now, this was about the time I became active on Malloy's board, and so I had not even "met" Mykeru in his first incarnation under his normal Nom De Guerre. I became incensed with Mr. Wiggle's tactics - posting racist graphics from Klan sites, calling people names, etc, and engaged him.
During this exchange, he sent me several email messages via Yahoo mail that he thought were anonymous, but, as everybody knows, these messages reveal the IP address of their sender. I tried to make him aware of this fact and he told me; You think you are such an Smart Hacker, if you knew what you were doing you would have called me on the phone by now; put up or shut up.
Well, now that I had his permission, I did put up. I determined that Mr. Wiggles shared an IP address with Mykeru. I then determined that Mykeru was a particular fellow in the DC area. I then found his telephone and address that he thought were unlisted, and just to verify that (I didn't want to finger the wrong guy) I bought an dossier of Mykeru from one of those online public records search firms. So, I then had more information about him than you could imagine if you don't know how those things work. I had his name, address, birth records, his wife's name, address, and birth records, his credit score, SSN, tax records... The whole works. I could have had even more if I had been willing to pay more.
But, when I outed Mr. Wiggles, I posted only what you could get online without paying a dime; His name, his address, and his phone number.
Now, should I have done this? Nope. Even though he had challenged me to, I shouldn't have done this. And about six hours later, I edited the information to remove the details that somebody could use to find him. My point was made anyway, and he never again trolled the Malloy board. And I then apologized to him for doing that; The first of several dozen attempts I have made to apologize to him.
Now, Mykeru was really pissed off, and accused me of "violating the anonymity of the net", something which I don't believe exists. He also accused me of wanting to see him killed, as (he said) I obviously knew that the freepers from full-auto.com, especially its owner, Tim, were out to get him. Well, I knew no such thing - I had never read the history of Mykeru's postings on the Malloy board, having only recently gotten active there, and not really having the time to read anything but current postings, and then not all of those!
Mykeru by this time had gotten involved with the web board set up by the fine folks (and I'm not being sarcastic this time) from oldamericancentury.com. In fact he was a moderator there. He asked a person who posts on both boards to invite me over there so we could debate our differences online there and settle things. Or so he said.
I created an account on that board, and we debated a bit, and then he started breaking the rules of the place. He edited my postings to add text like "and I love fucking goats" and similar witty things worthy of one of his intellectual abilities. He would wait online until he saw that I had read the particular posting, and then he would change it right back so that when I complained about it he could pretend it never happened. However, I had screen captured this and he was shown up. Then things really got ugly.
I no longer had a record of which day it was, but he created a posting titled; "A Warning To Master Ben" in which he said "If any fucking freeper calls my home in the middle of the night and wakes up my wife, I will personally drive to Elgin, show up at your door, and cut your heart out there on the stoop." In other words, a death threat! (Oh yes, I forgot to mention that he had returned the favor by looking up my address and phone information - and I had to help him find it - and posting it on that web board.) So get this -
he threatened my life over a dispute on a web board!I replied to him that, again, I was sorry I had posted his information, that I didn't want to hurt him, and that had I really wanted to hurt him I would have posted all of the information in the dossier I had purchased, including his wife's name, employer, ethnicity (she was born in a foreign land), etc, but I would never have done that, and couldn't we please bury the hatchet?
He exploded. He deleted the original posting I had responded to... And then accused me of "dead agenting" his wife - of threatening HER life! And thats been his story and justification ever since - That all of his attacks on me were justified because I had threatened to kill his wife! And I had done no such thing.
Next Mykeru dug up my old usenet personals ad and used it to make a series of graphics mocking MY wife in a very sexual way, he makes quite a big deal out of the fact that I have Herpes (as do MANY Americans, most of whom do not know they have it) and also he dug out the record of an attempt to protest the Illinois head of the Concerned Women For America by asking people to call and visit their offices individually to protest how they were treating several friends of mine. (This dispute made it to the national press, BTW, and was not secret in the slightest.) We would have picketed the offices, but as the offices were her kitchen table, and as Illinois law prohibits picketing a home, we had to either find a place to do this legally or protest at her home. We tried to find a legal venue; A soccer game at her son's college that she attended would have been a legal venue. Her husband's place of employment would have been another legal venue, and I asked if anybody on usenet could supply that information so that we could set up a picket line.
In true Mykeru fashion, this became death threats against the family of the illinois head of the Concerned Women for America!
Everything is a death threat to Mykeru it seems.
Finally, he collected together a lot of the insulting graphics he had created against me, and his collected death threat paranoia (and remember, he was the only one who had made a real death threat) and created the web site you see linked in above.
All through the time between then and now, I have tried to settle my differences with Mykeru, but each and every time I have asked him to meet and discuss out differences, it has been met by renewed attacks against me. I even discussed a lawsuit against him with a lawyer that owes me a few favors, but the law is not totally clear on what the jurisdiction would finally be, and I could not afford a case in his home jurisdiction even with the lawyer's fees being pro-bono.
I thought some progress had been had when, last winter, he took down the web site, and I told my lawyer friend that he could stop researching the jurisdictional issue, and that the matter was concluded.
Well, along came the horrific attacks against Andy Stephenson, who was then dying of cancer, and I jumped in to try and see if I could somehow mediate between the people who were accusing him of fraud and those who were helping him get treatment. I quickly found out that the accusers, who now hang out at scamdy.com, were not interested in finding out that Andy was really sick, and were not interested in learning that the monies had been collected and spent on the medical treatment that Andy needed. Every document I got, scanned, and presented to those goons was called by them a fabricated photoshop job. Well, I soon sided with Andy and his friends against them, where I remain to this day.
Looking for some means of discrediting me, the goons contacted Mykeru, and he actually came out on their side, and put his libel site back online, as you can see above.
And that's the story.
Is it actually libel? I have a legal opinion that it is
per se libel, and that I don't even need to prove it is wrong to collect damages.
Am I going to sue? Well, no, not unless there is a lawyer in the DC area who would want to take this case pro bono - when I quit my job to run White Rose full time I made a pauper of myself, something I happily do for the chance to help our cause, but which makes things like litigation impossible to afford.
Really, all I have wanted to do for years now is to have him accept my apology and for us both to go on with life. Honestly, I don't think he'll ever be man enough to do that, but I am prepared to be surprised.
Comments welcome!
-Ben Burch
White Rose Society Webmaster
http://www.WhiteRoseSociety.org/PS. Please recommend this so that people will have a chance to see it before it sinks like a stone.
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