A little mood music, maestro…
Yes, kiddies, this week’s post is gonna be a little different. This one will consist of only one wanker, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this wanker has it coming.Bright and early on Monday morning, when I usually start gathering links for this list, I opened my e-mail box and found six messages from the same address. They were all helpfully labelled spam by my mailbox, but they hadn’t been plonked by my blogware. (This is a problem I’ve had quite a bit with the latest edition of Movable Type; I’ve since managed to figure out what was the matter with the anti-spam function, and to set the filter for more aggressive action. Some still gets through, but I’m seeing fewer repeat offenders. That’s progress, I guess.) Now, this didn’t upset me much–at first. I was only mildly annoyed, because I figured that they would be the usual spammy pseudo-comments, the kind that peddle Viagra or its clones. There was, by coincidence, another spam from an entirely different spammer also waiting to be marked as such. So I prepared to flush them all en masse from my comment-management page. But then I took a closer look and realized that I wasn’t dealing with the usual crap merchants. Whoever had sent these messages, they had targeted not just any random viewer, but me and whoever reads my blog. They had all landed on this entry–fittingly titled Vampire Bat Report. The entry–which briefly mentions the murder, by terrorists, of Evo Morales’s elderly, defenceless aunt–had attracted a bat from no less vampiric a place than good ol’ Transylvania. The IP number from which the troll wrote is 89.133.131.83, which I traced to Budapest, Hungary. Those who’ve been reading me regularly will recall that since April, I’ve been tracking and translating news items (starting with this one) about the Bolivian federal police’s excellent work in busting a terror cell composed of foreign mercenaries. That’s where the Hungarian connection ties in. The mercenaries happened to be led by a Bolivia-born Hungarian national who had also been given Croatian citizenship after participating in the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s–a conflict in which Croatia split off from what was then still Yugoslavia. (He was working as a mercenary then, too.) The cell’s objective was to spark a civil war, which their wealthy fascist financiers had hoped would enable the wealthy eastern part of Bolivia, known as the Media Luna (“Half Moon”) to separate from the rest of the country–much like Croatia from Yugoslavia, in other words. Unfortunately for them, but very fortunately for Bolivia as a whole, it was an epic fail–the federales surprised the heavily-armed mercenaries (who had the charmingly paranoid habit of sleeping with their guns) in a hotel in lovely downtown Santa Cruz in the middle of the night. A shoot-out ensued, and three of the mercenaries were killed, including their Bolivian-Hungarian-Croatian leader; two more were arrested and are currently awaiting trial. The arrested men have named several accomplices, who in turn have fingered the cell’s financiers. (You can read more about one of them, and their prominent spook pal–a former US ambassador to Croatia, as it happens–here.) The separatists’ hopes have been further crushed by the refusal of any legitimate international organization to recognize the Media Luna as a nation. And worst of all for anyone who still thinks balkanization can happen, there is the salient fact that Evo Morales–the most popular elected leader in all of Bolivian history–is popular throughout the country. Even in the Media Luna, he is extremely well liked by indigenous and white people alike. He is on his way to an easy re-election, which he will probably win by an even wider margin than his original election in 2005.Now, given that backgrounder, you can pretty well guess that the opposition are getting desperate. El Duderino has already noted that they have resorted to violence, knowing that none of their candidates are popular enough to make inroads against Evo. In Bolivia, that means beating up on anyone they can find who has a brown face and is dressed in some traditional indigenous fashion. It also means anonymous death threats, and other assorted forms of intimidation…
Which leads me rather nicely to this troll and what it’s been trying to do around here since early Monday morning. In case you can’t read Spanish, and you’re wondering just what the troll had to say, it’s all bullshit. I won’t bother to translate or rebut it; it’s not worth the trouble. I left the guano up just so people can see it (if they can read Spanish, and they’re of a mind to witness someone else’s mental breakdown), but closed the entry to prevent more of the same. Well, it didn’t.The troll, being the persistent little shit-stain it is, found other entries to leave its crap on. All of them had to do with Evo or the terror cell in one way or another. It pasted in what appears to be an English translation of the same shit that appeared in the six original spam posts. When I made it plain that I had seen and removed it, and saved the notification e-mails for evidence purposes, that’s when things got truly nasty–and personal. The troll went berserk, posting all kinds of vile abusive drivel, and claiming, even more vilely, to be the mother of one of the dead would-be assassins. A sampling of its hysteria follows:
Now, that just stinks to high heaven–a real grieving mother, one would think, would withdraw to heal, not cyber-stalk complete strangers and the president of Bolivia with death threats and intimidation and ineffectual curses. (I can just picture some old, wrinkled woman in a babushka saying that, in the same tone as she might say “Gypsy, ptuh!”)I removed all of these troll-posts except that one, which you can see here. That one was left, I later found out, using a forged Hotmail address; I had contacted Hotmail to let them know of the abuse, and they notified me that the address didn’tBolivia and the shameful “president” Morales, a homicidal killerassasin feel soon a “hands of justice”!Muerte a asesinos!JUSTICIA!* * *Sabina C. Becker!You uneducated biach!I wish for you: the cruel, brutal death of your child!Soon!I wish for you: the cruel, brutal death of your child!Soon!I wish for you: the cruel, brutal death of your child!Soon!God help me!Mother of Árpád assassinated!
exist. Sort of tells you something about the character of Internet trolls, doesn’t it?The troll also repeated the invective on Powers & Morrison, a progressive news site that syndicates me. I received the following notification, one of two, again, by e-mail:
Classy, no? This is who Branko and Rubén hire to do their dirty work, intimidating complete strangers. Gotta love ’em.And don’t you love how this “moral, educated” person can’t even spell what it so courteously calls me? (It’s B-I-T-C-H, and it stands for Bina In Total Control Here—bitch!) Yeah, God’s really gonna reward them for that. That was one; the other was a bunch of links to putrid oppo sites from Bolivia not worth reproducing here, full of false charges and dirty disinformation. I’m not going to bother disseminating any of that dreck. Oh yeah, and more charming Hungarian invective, which rolls off me like water off a duck, seeing as I don’t speak a word of the language and couldn’t care less what this classless cretin chooses to call me. (If this person were truly educated, s/he might recall that Hungary wouldn’t ever have gotten paprika if not for the indigenous people of the Andes–particularly Bolivia. They were the first ones to cultivate the stuff, which is certainly not native to Hungary. And s/he wouldn’t be such a fucking racist, either.)The final message from The Mother of Arpad the Assassin was this one:You immoral, uneducated biatch!I whish you a death of your child very soon!I whish you a death of your child very soon!I whish you a death of your child very soon!Megátkozlak, dögölj meg, Isten engem úgy segéljen!Dögölj meg, és a gyermeked is!
All your base are belong to us! Booogaboogabooga!!!Yeah, whatever. You can go to the cemetery if you want; I’m staying right where I am. Your silly threats don’t scare me any more than your shrieks for “justice” (that is, MURDER) move me. The Europarliament isn’t listening to you, either. They are in Bolivia right now, observing the elections, which I can tell you will show no irregularities, just a decisive win for the man you futilely execrate here. The yelling of a lunatic is just a lunatic’s yelling, at the end of the day.Except for the one from the forged Hotmail addy, the droppings were all left by someone writing from this address: fiuka1@yahoo.com. So far, Yahoo has not been able to confirm or deny the existence of this account; they tell me there’s a problem with the headers (surprise, surprise). I do not believe that this person is who they claim to be, but on the slim chance that they are, they should be thoroughly ashamed. This is conduct entirely unbecoming. And yes, I dug out that vile crap explicitly to shame them. I do not believe in letting people get away with anonymous intimidation on the Internet no matter who they are. (Plus, I’m hoping that some English-speaking Hungarian cop sees this and acts accordingly. I’m going waaaayyyyy out on a limb and guessing that harassment and death threats are against the law over there, too.)Finally, another little musical dedication. If this person is really Hungarian, there’s a better than average chance that they understand German…Good night, and may you get arrested, whoever you are. Maybe then you’ll finally get the psychiatric help you so obviously need.Sabina, you disgusting whore, be a damned!I coming! You come with me into the cemetary!Be a damned you and your child, your family!
what a douchebag, your spammer. i suppose you know why i’m commenting again… Argentina, Mexico, Brazil has ’em, we in Bolivia don’t! feel free to not post this comment, just had to say it.
On the contrary, I’m glad you said it. Thank you.
WOW, ‘Bina. I had NO idea that this kind of shit would happen to someone that I ‘knew’ as an internet person. What a perverted lowlife. You hear about this sort of thing, but you never get to see it first-hand. I am still shaking. The poisonous concoction running through this person’s brain should be extracted and studied. Or maybe it has already rotted the brain and the brain stem is slowly deteriorating. What a happy thought. Soon the world would be minus one less bigoted, violent, hate-filled snotwad.
Being less than up to speed on this whole intertubes thing and all, is there no one whom you can go to for redress on something like this? Is there no way to put their internet provider on notice that this sort of harassment is going on and that you will hold them liable for it?
It just seems to me that there has to be a way to stop psycho’s such as this from just boring on through the subsoil of life with their vitriol. Free speech is one thing, but these folks have demonstrated time and again that they will resort to criminal action like murder, assault and any other violent thing that happens to thrill them at the moment. While I wouldn’t be stopped by this garbage, it has taken me several minutes to stop shaking enough to type. It is just sick, sick, sick.
Jim, I’ve had this happen to me several times before. Racist, fascist and other extremist trolls always pick on me, and they seem to take a particularly sadistic pleasure in it. One never quite gets used to it (just as one never quite gets used to being punched without warning in the nose), but one does learn a thing or two over time. Namely, that trolls will always pick on women because they perceive them as weaker. BIG mistake. We are NOT the weaker sex.
This troll’s other big mistake was to assume that I have kids. I don’t. But they will threaten a person’s children as a way of intimidation if they can. And they’ll always use it on women first. (I don’t need to remind anyone of what the Coalition of the Killing did to kids at Abu Ghraib, do I?)
I don’t know if there’s a vaccine against this kind of shit, but I found that after I posted this last night, I slept well for the first time since Monday.
It’s really scary when a crazy right-winger like “the mother of the dead mercenary” unleashes a verbal tirade like the one posted in this article, Bina. It pretty much tells the whole nature of the right-wing movement, that they’ll try and intimidate their rivals using these kind of phrases. Writing and repeating “I’ll wish for the death of your child soon” – not even Heath Ledger’s Joker would write something crazy like that.
And what Flores seems to have missed is that the “Media Luna provinces” weren’t a nation inside a nation like Croatia during the Yugoslavian era – it’s a right-wing construct of Bolivian provinces that happen to have the country’s natural resources. And of course, their intention is to give it all to the white man, using the money to build up similar clandestine (more like Klandestine, in this case) operations across South America.
That seems to be the really sad part about former Soviet bloc countries getting independent from Moscow in the early 90’s – they seem to breed the worst kind of militant right-wingers with all sorts of nasty schemes. And seeing how Hungarians in particular show overwhelming support for either the conservative Fidesz Party or the really right-wing Jobbik Party, I’m afraid I don’t see the hate from Hungary dying down anytime soon.
Situations like these make me ashamed of being part-Hungarian, having part of my family hailing from Budapest and all. (I’ve been there once, it’s a really beautiful city.) But I guess that’s where the wind is blowing in Hungary right now. All I can do is stay away and not inhale.
I’d say you made a wise choice there, Anthony…
BTW, for what this is worth, my mom’s family are from the Vojvodina region of what used to be Yugoslavia and is now Croatia. (A part of the country which, as you probably know, has a lot of old fascist problems, dating right back to World War II and Hitler’s local golden boy, Ante Pavelic.) They started out as Germans from the Rheinland-Pfalz (near the French border), moved out of there because they were Protestants and the local prince, or duke, or whatever, was Catholic (and subjects all had to follow the landlord’s religion, which these Prods weren’t about to do.) Under Queen Maria Theresia of Austria’s benevolent auspices, they moved to what was then a part of Hungary where they would be free to practise whatever religion they wanted, as long as it was Christian and kept the Turks out. The ethnic Germans in the Vojvodina region kept pretty much to themselves, kept their Franco-German language and culture and religions, occasionally intermarried with a Croat or Hungarian neighbor, and just generally got along until 1944, when things finally got too hot. The Russians invaded that year. Meaning, all my mom’s relatives had to skedaddle or die. (Her grandparents died en route anyway, as did her youngest sister, a baby of 11 months.)
And the supreme irony of it all? My grandpa was drafted into the SS, despite having a sensitive temperament, dark hair and brown eyes, an olive complexion, zero sympathy for anything Nazi (and absolutely no hatred for anyone)–and was “called home” to serve “with honors” a Germany which turned out to be very inhospitable to ethnic-German refugees from Eastern Europe. My mom and grandma and aunt, and everyone on that side of my family, all faced all kinds of discrimination and danger. Some of what they lived through would turn your hair white overnight.
So this stupid troll’s curses and invective have very little effect on me psychologically. My family has already paid its karmic dues pre-emptively. I owe nothing. Now, it’s the troll’s turn to suffer the consequences. I’m relying on some semblance of common decency in Hungary, that the feds there will acknowledge that it has a fascist problem and act on it at long last. Germany has had to do it; now it’s everyone else’s turn.
I hope this troll is quickly brought to justice.
I’m not a “stupid troll”.
I’m a mother.
Sabina, you are a liar: you have too a childrens!
But you are not a women, you are not a mother!!!
You are a stupid B_I_T_C_H!
It is so terrible, how many stupid people exist!
What if your son or brother was killed like this? What would you do? Would you just sit and do nothing about it? Wait for your country to do something about the case and see that nothing is done? To see the criminal stupid Bolivian president to be re-elected and telling you he is right without any proof? Would you just sit and do nothing? Tell me, you wouldn’t! Please, do tell me you would fight till the end of your life for your family. Nothing more! Thanks!
[video link removed by site owner. Get fucked, Fiuka]
I was wondering when you’d be back.
Spare me your lying videos and your fucking incoherent gibberish. Magyarosi Arpad was not an innocent, he was a mercenary. He got what he frankly deserved for going into other people’s countries and trying to take them over for those who had no right to them.
You are NOT a mother, you are a vampire and a GHOUL. And also the world’s dumbest fucking skank. When I say I don’t have kids, don’t fucking come on here contradicting me–I’m the one who had my tubes tied six years ago. I CHOSE not to have kids so I wouldn’t become the mother of a douchebag like YOU.
Now fuck the hell off. You’re in my spam filter, and there to stay, so no more of your lies and trolling will make it onto my site ever again. I only kept this comment up so anyone else coming in could see just what kind of primitive person breeds Hungarian fucking Nazis and murderers. I hope you’re embarrassed, because you SHOULD be.
Once again, folks, that troll is fiuka1@yahoo.com, and its IP number is 89.133.131.83. Police inquiries welcome!
I hope that makes it abundantly clear to anyone coming on here to try any more of this kind of shit. IT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
Oh, and another thing: MY FAMILY DOESN’T PLAY WITH GUNS. And we also don’t go invading foreign countries with them. So I don’t care about your pathetic what-ifs. You should have thought of that before you taught your kid how to Heil Hitler, bitch.