being paid propaganda agents of the government. I believe we have enough information & intelligence here to see these people for who they are. Marlowe has given us enough direct clues in his own words & claims to establish this as a reasonable deduction.

Some people may not care about if this is true or not but speaking for myself I damned well do and intend doing something about it.

I challenge Marlowe & Cybermace5 to prove (and that can be to the administrators of IWETHEY) that they are not being either ...

- paid directly or indirectly to mount a pro govt propaganda campaign here
- are directly or indirectly employed by a defence agency and have been directed to conduct propaganda campaign's in defence of government activities in pursuit of the war on terror or the war on Iraq

Some may ask why I am bothered by who they might be (assuming they are as I am claiming), for me, I want to know who is here to participate as a legitimate community member versus who is here under cover to disrupt or attempt to sow disinformation or to act as pure conduits for government propaganda.

Such tactics can be constured as 'black' (sinister). I say this based on the fact that Marlowe & Cybermace5 repeatedly refuse to identify themselves or establish credentials that would fairly allow other members to accept and understand why they insist on anonimity in the face continued controversy about who they really are and their motives.

My case is that we don't live in NAZI germany nor should we want to, but IMHO, what these people appear to be doing here is leading in that direction and I for one deeply resent that possibility.

I am interested in other peoples opinions but be prepared for a kick in the head if those opinions aren't well argued & of substatnce. For example that shit post by the person who doesn't give a flying fuck merely tells me he would most likely have been a 'good citizen' had he lived in SS land.

I also have some ideas on how to deal with these people and one is to periodically post in the most affected forums, a statement of belief about these people & what I (some of us) believe they are up to - whislt this may not be a perfect way to deal with them, it seems to be to be a lot more honest and has a lot more integrity than what I am claiming they are up to.

Let the comments and flames begin ...

Sincerely Doug Marker

I believe I was not in essence, claiming any thing different about them than what happened with Microsoft during the 'BARKTO' affair of which I was a participant.

BARKTO and others, it was latter admited, were executives of MS who adopted aliases organised by MS public relations man Rick Segal, & claimed to be customers of competing vendors. Their goal was to go into discussion groups to attack these competitors.

But, as already said. The horse is now dead.

Lets get back to normal <grin>

DSM

# Rick Segal (not Sewell)

[link|http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg01529.html|http://lists.essenti...nfo/msg01529.html] Joe Barr's BARKTO write-up (Joe was there)

[link|http://w3.hethmon.com/os2isp/1999/Aug/Msgs/l2w15889.html|http://w3.hethmon.co...sgs/l2w15889.html] Another MS related incident.

Later info that emerged via Will Zachmann that other execs including Ballmer & Gates had admitted to doing similar.

I was in product support in IBM A/P & OS/2 Warp was one of our babies, I had been in contact with & supporting Dave Whittle & Dave Barnes (to a much lesser extent).

I had been attempting to back them up in Canopus, under the propaganda & abuse tirade they were under at the time.

Dave Whittle either did or was close to an emotional breakdown. I know his manager told him to go take a month or more leave at the tail end of the affair.

Microsoft also nailed William Zachmann later, had him fired as technical editor from one of the larger PC magazines - that was lousey because he was always super careful at how he handled MS & what he said about them, but for that job, it wan't enough.

Cheers

Doug
(I was also going to be the country product manager for Workplace OS but as well know Lou G pulled the plug.)

outside of physical combat.

It always gets ugly when people who have hidden agendas, false ids and apparently no scruples about how & what they want to achieve, invade ordinary people going about their normal participation in places like canopus was.

Barkto left me with a very 'bent' attitude to Microsoft and to their tactics. It didn't help that they kept refining the practices & expanding their targets. (Java & that infamous Gates remark 'cut off their air supply', then how they sucessfully out manouvered a disctrict court judge (Jackson) over Win98 integration).

Cheers

Doug