Special Blog Post:
Cat and Mouse with the VA (Score One for the Cat)
Author's Note: At some point during the late morning or early afternoon of June 17, 2006, the article that was originally published with this title was deleted without the consent of the author and Webmaster of this site. The article was also deleted from Big Brass Blog, where it was cross-posted. The cause of those unauthorized deletions of an original work is unknown; however, because The Dark Wraith Forums and Big Brass Blog are privately hosted by separate, independent services, and because both Weblogs use Blogger only as the publishing platform, the source of the removal would have to have been Blogger, itself, which is a service of Google. I express my sincere apology to those whose comments on the thread of the deleted article were irretrievably lost.
What happened here could have been a coïncidence or a technical error at Blogger; on the other hand, it could have been far less benign. Should another such incident occur here to a post critical of the Bush Administration, its policies, practices, and results, The Dark Wraith Forums will be shut down permanently under the prejudicial conclusion that this nation has earned the right not to be vexed of dissent and criticism of its rulers.
The Dark Wraith will resume publishing articles in the coming days.
Published 6/17/2006 05:38:00 PM
<< 31 Comments Total
Just maybe, we're "gittin' to 'em".
Well, yes, Peter, but that's sort of like the old story of the guy who decided to wrestle the grizzly bear. As the animal was tossing the fellow around the ring, he said to his fight manager, "I think I've gotten this bear's attention."
That was, of course, right before the bear crushed every bone in his scrawny body.
The Dark Wraith didn't even need a bear skin rug, anyway.
Wow. There'll always be room for you wherever I can get you it, which'll be London from September.
Your post was excellent, though. Pity it was deleted.
Good evening, John.
I'm really glad you left a comment. It had been some time since I had hit the Carnivals, and you just reminded me that I need to keep better track of things like that.
For those unfamiliar with John, his blog provides the links to the Carnival of Socialism cycles, where you can read some heavy-duty stuff.
And by the way, good luck with your London landing. I presume this is a permanent thing. At one time, I would have thought people might stay elsewhere until this Neo-Fascist Lite stuff blows over, but after today, I honestly don't know that it will matter whether or not the neo-cons are eventually driven from office. Cancers don't go away merely because their point of origin is extricated; and I'm not at all hopeful that this nation would be willing to endure a genuine cure for what has come to be its mean nature and bleak future. Hence, the descent into the metastasized mass will likely continue apace.
I suppose that's what might be called "justice for the people"... at least for the ones who thought it was cute to vote for these wretched fools.
The Dark Wraith doesn't feel like mincing words tonight.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
I guess you're not going to repost it? I sure hope it was just an accidental error. How odd that it would be deleted from both places, though.
DW,
With the rampant(!) suicide going around at Gitmo, this is a great PR piece! Just kidding! I'm practicing to work UNDER Karen Hughes!
I didn't get the chance to read all of your post. What's the chance of getting an emailed copy?
Maybe if 2000 other blogs posted it, the bear might run away.
Was the symbolism of the bear (Soviet) intentional?
Good evening, Old White Lady.
No, I shan't repost.
It will, however, be in my first blog book, along with the story of what happened here today.
Google has amply demonstrated in its deal with China that it will gladly sleep with butchers for a buck. I have no desire to give their founders yet another reason to go to the media and snivel about how difficult it is when they have to compromise their values.
The Dark Wraith wonders how these people can sleep with themselves, much less with monsters.
[But I repeat myself.]
Good evening, Father Tyme.
The bear reference was a metaphor for any insensible beast that cares not whom it crushes. The constellation with the Russian bear was unintentional but certainly appropriate, now that you mention it.
And as far as reposting goes, 2000 bloggers can be put out of commission in no time at all.
In fact, Father Tyme, anyone who lived through the Nazi era knows that 2000 people can be disappeared in no time at all, too.
Although I would certainly like people to consider paranoia as a viable lifestyle choice, I most decidedly would prefer that the choice be made in something approaching an experiential vacuum.
It's far better to simply believe that a bear can crush you than to actually learn the hard way that it can and will.
The Dark Wraith encourage people to a faith-based life.
Oh man. I'm sorry that the post was deleted. I don't know what else to say...given the topic of the post, it's pretty scary indeed. Hope you don't stay away too long.
Good evening, Karen.
Unfortunately for whoever was in charge of trying to destroy my work product, I'm not going anywhere... not, at least, until I've gotten in just a few more jabs, anyway.
I have several security-related measures I'll be instituting over the next couple of weeks, things I should have done long ago. Now that I'm in full-throttle, Warp Factor 9 paranoia, it seems like a good time to get things done.
I'm still upset about losing that comment in which I told the story of my orange marmelade cat and the scary cellar. I think I'll rewrite that comment and post it this coming week as an article. I'll add some more context to the story to put it into perspective as a cautionary tale for our times.
Animals make good metaphors.
And friends, of course.
The Dark Wraith is going to feed his cat some extra snackies tonight.
Good evening Mr. Wraith,
Now about that NSA Blogger Toolkit, it's real now isn't?
At first when you said you wouldn't repost, I thought, why not? Call their bluff. But then I thought, no, they won't go for it; they wouldn't tip their hand just yet, way too premature. So your repost would just sit there, waiting to be deleted, but it wouldn't be, and pretty soon everybody ('cept you, PoLT, and me) would think the orginal deletion was a weird fluke. Now we know better.
Now about that cat; I wondering if you learned a lesson from it. After the marmelade jammed out the door, did you ever again enter the basement alone?
Hell, no.
good evening dark wraith: it's nice to see things back up and running, such as they are. i always took some comfort in knowing that since the internet was conceived with the idea of surviving a nuclear conflict that the idea of governmental control was somewhat absurd. then i remind myself that the power of the desktop computer i'm using right now surpasses the old big ass 1370 we all thought was the bee's tits 20 years ago. the limits and controls on police actions were instituted, not to give criminals a break, but to protect us from exactly what is happening now. with the "go ahead and break down the door" mandate given by the supreme court, i fear it won't be long until we see an honest citizen defending himself inside his home while the police break and enter to exercise a faulty or wrong address warrant. i see serious shit hitting the fan for all of us. i'm feeling exceptionally prescient in my move to a more rural and isolated setting. but, it seems these days, self reliance is suspect.
Hell, no.
I thought not.
good morning dw.
wow!!! i'm glad i read the post and comments. i didn't comment myself because i had no original thoughts to add, tho it was in my mind and i was ruminating on it. my own experience of having my high school find me paled in comparison, as i haven't tried to hide. even so, googling my name brings up others with the same name, but not me.
tho your post was creepy, the subject, not your writing, it hardly seemed worthy of actual gov't intervention. but then, what do i know? i'm not understanding how blogger could delete something from other servers, but i do maintain what i consider a healthy level of paranoia.
i suppose that if your worst fears are true then all of us who have commented here are on a list somewhere, some of us maybe on several lists.
"good night and good luck"
Good afternoon, Dread Pirate Roberts.
Incidents of Blogger deleting posts are being reported by others. I had this happen once before, and I am fairly certain that, in that particular instance, it was the result of a bad error in the Blogger system. Blogger has full permission to access files on my Website: that's how it's able to help me publish new articles to my server, edit old articles, and even delete articles; but all of this should happen only on my command. Blogger should never take unauthorized action, although as I noted, it has.
However, this case is different: two separate blogs, both of which use the Blogger publishing interface to manage articles, but neither of which has any of its files on the Blogger servers. The private servers that host the blogs are completely unrelated: they're not physically connected other than through the Internet, itself. The administrator of the two sites is not the same person (I control dark-wraith.com, Pam at Pam's House Blend controls www.bigbrassblog.com). The only thing that binds these two domains is that both give Blogger permission to access the files on the respective servers, but this is supposed to happen only at the command of someone who has authorization to publish articles at the sites.
Even if the administrator, Pam, at Big Brass Blog had decided to delete my article over there (something that just wouldn't be conceivable in my mind, anyway), the deletion could not have happened here, too, since I'm the only one here who has any permissions whatsoever to publish at The Dark Wraith Forums. The only other entity that has access to my server is Blogger. Even the hosting company for my server will not under normal circumstances look at my files without my specific permission.
Was the double deletion an accident, or was it malicious? I cannot rule out error: it's theoretically possible that some bad command went out from Google that became a kind of "worm" virus attacking and deleting posts on a few blogs. I know that such a worm has issued forth before, but it appears that such attacks hit only a single blog in a given instance. How common are such errant actions? I honestly don't know; Google has millions of blogs it's sponsoring, so a single instance of this bad coding could hit tens of thousands of blogs at a time, and the outrage wouldn't even be a blip on the radar unless it happened to hit a famous blogger who could scream bloody murder and be heard. Ten thousand tiny blogs could be literally wiped out and no one would notice. In fact, many of the Bloggers, themselves, would probably just shrug their shoulders and wonder what had happened but just move on. With tens of millions of blogs already out there, and thousands of new ones starting every single day, any given blogger's problems are entirely irrelevant.
So, yes, it's possible this was nothing but a random error. But why the same post on two unconnected blogs?
But on the other hand, why would it happen to my wholly irrelevant writing? This place is nothing in any possible scheme of political matters, and it will probably remain as such. The traffic here is low, it is not recognized as anything whatsoever by any of the blog rating services, and it has no readers who are influential on the world or national stage. In other words, The Dark Wraith Forums and its author and publisher are irrelevant in a way that borders on non-existent.
Recognizing that as the state of facts on the ground, there is only one possible reason of which I can think for why the post would have drawn attention and been deleted, provided the deletion was deliberate. But if that was the reason, Blogger had no business whatsoever taking the matter into its own hands and taking it upon itself to act unilaterally and without first communicating with me to seek a resolution, especially since none of the offending material existed on Blogger servers.
One way or the other, Dread Pirate Roberts, I shall in due course post an editorial ripping Google up one side and down the other. Whether it was a technical glitch or a deliberate act, it was a destruction of private intellectual property; and it was carried out by a company that trots itself out as some protector of users' privacy while it grovels into bed with the likes of the mercantilist butchers of Communist China.
I've spent too long using the services of such a company, and it's high time I acted upon my own convictions to lessen my dependence upon those whose behaviors are anathema to my values.
It will definitely be a pain in the backside, but once I've finished, I'll be able to sleep better at night, both because my intellectual property will be more secure and because my conscience will be a little clearer.
The Dark Wraith definitely needs, however, to knock it off with this whine-fest in which he's engaging.
Good afternoon, DW.
I'm sorry to see this has happened, but there are alot of rotton apples out there that exist to make other's lives miserable. It seems very probable anyway that this was a direct attack.
Blackdog pisses on the heads of these bastards.
I fear, BlackDog, that some of our leaders would insist upon dinner and dancing beforehand.
The Dark Wraith suspects that some Right-wingers have the occasional romantic streak.
Good afternoon Dark One,
I just visited your "HTML for Bloggers" page. Upon completion of my read, I noticed was visitor 666.
The Dark Wraith suspects that some Right-wingers have the occasional romantic streak.
...as well as some pretty twisted proclivities.
Damn. I wish I could have read the article.
Any chance you could email it to me Dark Wraith? I won't republish it.
But, seeing as how Bush is reading my email, if he reads my email and sees an email from you, maybe he'll shut down my account.
Was the post that controvertial and anti-Bush? I mean, I do and say anti-Bush shit every day.
Now I am getting concerned because while my posts are juvenile and full of propaganda yours tend to be well thought out, logical, and backed up with facts.
I guess that is what makes you a threat.
Update:
Dark Wraith,
I found your article.
More importantly,
why would the gummint want to keep track of all the veterans?
I know a Vietnam Vet who is convinced the only reason the Vietnam War ended was because there were so many well trained, experience soldiers entering civilian life talking seriously about revolution. And not just privates, corporals, and sergeants...Officers too.
My guess is that our guvmint is paranoid that it could fall to an internal coup if so organized. The organization would have to come from ex-military who had access to resources.
Thus, my guess is, knowing where all you Vets are provides them with a sort of insurance policy against a Coup d'Etat which we desperately need IMO.
Good evening, PoliShifter.
A bried note is in order, here. To wit,
You RULE.
That cache was not there yesterday. I went right for it in a Google search that included a keyword run almost identical to yours, and it didn't exist. I swear to God, it wasn't there. The last bot for which Google reported running cache here was on 6/11/06, even though I had logs of search engine bots tapping the site after that date. I had several RSS caches that picked up the article, itself, but they didn't bind the comments or, more to the point, they parsed them out for lack of XML tags in the RSS hand-off captures that would accommodate something anomalous like the comments riding on the article like they were a extension of it.
Now, it's there.
And the comments are there, which is the way it's supposed to be since, unlike normal Blogger sites, I bind the comments right to the article itself (because, in my theory of publishing this blog, the comments are a part of, if not the most important part of, the articles).
Okay, in a while, I'm going to put up the article as a link from this post, but first I need to make absolutely certain that I've successfully restricted Blogger's permissions only to certain directories where normal publishing would occur; then I'll put this in another location in the main domain on my server.
Again, PoliShifter, you definitely rule, and you'd darned well better have no plans to stop blogging for the rest of your natural life: this won't be the last time I'll give up a search only to have some younger rebel go back out and find something I need.
The Dark Wraith really ought to be annoyed at himself for how easily he apparently gave up that search.
Hi Dark Wraith,
I am sure you or someone would have found it.
Funny you should mention never quiting blogging as I have been thinking about doing just that.
I have recently come to the opinion that the majority of Americans truly believe it is "better to fight them over there than here", that "democrats just want to cut and run", that the "Murtha Plan is defeat but staying the course is victory", that Saddam attacked us on 9/11, that Al Qaeda planned the 9/11 attack in Iraq, that there was this 737 fuseloge at Salman Pak, that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S....
Even as Bush himself denies most of this shit, Conservatives just keep on keeping on with the propganda. What's worse, most believe it is true; They believe Saddam attacked us on 9/11.
Sometimes it just gets to be a bit much and I think about giving up and going to live in the mountains far away from humanity.
But for now, I am still here.
I will warn however that I am going to be getting even more acerbic and offensive on my blog in the future. I have had it with these Republican Fucks and I consider myself a Conservative, can you believe that?
What the fuck happened to Conservatives? What happened to small government, State's Rights, Fiscal Responsibility, truth, justice, integrity, and freedom?
I feel like Alice in Wonderland having crossed the looking glass. Everything is upside down and opposite.
Well, since you guys mention you found it, I took a spin around and finally found it, too. I'm feeling like maybe I'm picking up some smarts about the Internet!
I know it's hard not to get discouraged, Polishifter, especially the way that the MSM unflinchingly broadcasts whatever it's being fed by the White House. Consider- just one month ago news breaks of the Haditha massacre, US death toll in Iraq approached 2500, polls show Bush's support tanking at 29%, approval of the Iraq War was at an all-time low, and the majority felt that it was a mistake to invade. Then, as if on que, Al-Zarqawi is killed, Bush does a quick Photo-op in Baghdad, government sources announce that documents purportedly captured in an al-Qaida hideout portrays the insurgency in Iraq as being in "bleak" shape, Republicans turn the Congressional Iraq debate into a farce and suddenly no one in the MSM is talking about the polls (or the Haditha Massacre, or even the Gitmo suicides) anymore. Sounds to me like Rove & Co are orchestrating a PR blitzkeig, and the public is too tired/confused/demoralized to comment. But I strongly suspect that the polls haven't changed in Bush's favor- it's just that the public is waiting for real leadership (or a close approximation thereof) to throw these idiots out of power.
Which means, of course, that the public is in for a long wait, LindiBee, considering what we have for leadership in the Democratic Party these days.
Did you hear that the big-wigs in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are saying that they might still support Lieberman even if he has to run as an Independent? Good God, what does it take to get the Democratic leadership to answer the incoming phone call from Clueville?
At least the Dark Wraith won't be getting discouraged as long as he remains outraged.
Good evening, Trailer Trash.
And how is it that everyone and his brother seems to be able to find the cached version of that article when I nearly tore a brain muscle tearing up the Web yesterday night looking for it?
Sometimes, the Dark Wraith thinks he's finally hit the Junk Heap of the Obsolete.
Good Evening, DW --
Long time no chat, but I do try to make a visit to the DW Forums once a day almost every day -- except when I have to be away from my computer on family business. Such was the case this past week for just long enough to miss your "missing post."
Intrigued by the latest comments, I made a little search that returned your post at the top of the "heap." Having read it (I "cached it" -- both as a text file & a web file), I'm a bit puzzled on several counts.
Other than the absolutely natural conclusion & confirmation that the government is keeping track of us a lot closer than we night have thought, I saw nothing that I'd think would trigger clandestine deletion by an "agency unknown." Maybe I need better minds to help me out on this aspect. Did I miss something in my reading?
I'm also a veteran of sorts, having served in the Navy in the days prior to the build up to Viet Nam, most notably sweating bullets & fearing the worst during that thrilling adventure called the "Cuban Missile Crisis." Since I've (as yet) received no such letter from the VA, I wonder if guys my age are off the radar -- which it appears would be a good thing.
Let's enjoy this ability to communicate across all boundaries while we may -- the government won't shut it down since it's a great source of raw "ore" to "mine;" but the corporations might kill it for we common folk w/ their greed.
o
o
ROF
Good evening, ROF.
The reason you didn't get the letter was because you were discharged before the earliest records that would have been in that stolen database.
I have heard rumors over the years that many old service records are either in terrible condition or have been lost or severely truncated, sometimes by fires in records repositories or by plain old administrative "Heck, I don't know where they are" incompetence. I don't know to what extent this is true, although something along the lines of a claim like that was used to make it sound like President Bush's records were too incomplete to prove his incredible and heroic military service to his country.
It seems to me that, unless a veteran actively uses services available to him or her, the records would pretty much just languish except for the occasional idiot taking them home so they could be shared with burglars. I guess to that extent, having crooks get their mitts on the records would at least bring them back to life and some degree of use.
I suppose that's not what one would call a silver lining to a black cloud of possible identity theft for 25 million people, though.
The Dark Wraith should probably leave the positive spin on bad events to professionals in the Republican Party.