Much like Alberta's "war room", I don't want to give my strategy away, because my own offensive against the government's propaganda could then potentially be countered. I believe now that my strategy may be slightly more effective than I had anticipated and I have my own metrics to gauge this success.
I can give you some examples of the more overt rules. As I said these are personal, not like a mission statement. The biggest of which is this blog does not accept any money what-so-ever from anyone for anything. No ads. No payments. No donations. My work has no ties to anything political, I'm just your regular senior software engineer. I have no agenda behind what I write other than to write it because I'm pissed and I'm not even pissed for me. I'm pissed for everyone. I'm especially pissed for the future.
Another rule was to post under my real name. This was a risk given how "out there" some of my stuff is but I felt it was worth the risk as it preemptively defused any sort of "doxxing scandal". The objective is always to keep the focus on the work. It's not about me, and can't be made to be about me, if I have no horses in any races.
My writing style is another deliberate choice. As there are no copyrights on any of the work on this site. You all own it. The style prevents plagiarizing in mainstream media but does not prevent lifting the ideas and rewriting them. I'm not a journalist, I'm an underground political commentator and it's important I stay that way, for the sake of the purity of the work.
And last but not least, post first-moderate later, commenting. I always welcome debate, and ideas. Please challenge my ideas and add to the conversation (just please ensure you're differentiating between where I'm stating facts and making forecasts, I can defend the facts I use - only time can defend my forecasts).
The messenger is always an easier surface of attack than the message.
My message, for Alberta at this current time, is a need to build bridges. To understand the manipulation being used against us and to counter it, effectively. Albertans are being pitted against each other and this is being done on purpose! I've Twitter-friended a number of conservative leaning folks in the past few weeks now. We're not agreeing on everything, and we don't have to, but the war in this small group is over. The war is what Jason Kenney's legitimacy rests on and so the 'war on Albertans' is the best surface of attack. Take away his wars and what does he have left?
Jason Kenney's biggest fear is that the war between Albertans ends. Of this I am nearly 100% certain now.
This isn't a partisan thing either, for those of you saying "BUT YOUR SITE SAYS NON-PARTISAN" in shouty face. My question for those people is, what brand of conservatism includes state run corporate welfare industry propaganda centres? Whatever the fuck this is it sure as hell isn't conservatism. From my perspective the brand of the government doesn't matter, anyway, I'm fighting a sitting government and actual actions not party gossip. If the NDP had dedicated $30 million per year to propagandize us, correct us, etc I would have been just as pissed. Fuck your political party, this blog is about actions, issues, and motives, and it's always been so.
In the past few weeks since I started writing again and began my guerrilla offense against the fuckwad UCP and their ministry of truth I've gotten a lot more attention than I had expected. Most of it has been pretty good, overall. A certain troll lately has popped up repeatedly though that some in the "blogosphere" might be familiar with. Patrick Ross.
Now, this next bit that I'm going to post has absolutely nothing to do with my post. This is just so if Ross does come to enjoy reading my perspective on political events he has a little reminder where his perspective has lead him before.
/// Begin: fuck you
As it is, Patrick Ross is currently a 33-year-old (UPDATE: now 34-year-old) undischarged bankrupt university dropout, living at home with his parents and looking at 14 years of being an undischarged bankrupt, followed by six (maybe seven, I can never remember which) more years of being a discharged bankrupt. Quite simply, for someone who considers himself the smartest and baddest motherfucker on the Intertoobz, Patrick Ross is looking at dealing with the consequences of his malicious defamation of me, civil judgment and subsequent personal bankruptcy until he is well into his fifties. But that's not the sad part of this.
The truly sad part of this is that I have been assured by my lawyer that, while Patrick Ross is undoubtedly crowing about how clever he is at having his appeal postpone his legal obligation to start making payments, it has also prevented the 14-year payment clock from even starting to tick. In other words, while Patrick dawdles on what to do regarding his appeal, all he is accomplishing is pushing the consequences of his bankruptcy, day by day, further into his old age.
It is precisely for that reason that I instructed my Saskatchewan lawyer that under no circumstances is she to expend any time or effort to track down Patrick Ross or push to have his appeal brought before the court. No, I have instructed her to take his file and put it in a back drawer somewhere, and leave it there. Because, to be frank, I can survive quite nicely without that $200/month, and if Patrick Ross wants to languish as an undischarged bankrupt for the rest of his life, I have no problem with that and he has my blessing.
So here endeth the story. I'm getting on with my life (which involves travelling the world, eating well and drinking really good gin), my lawyer is stuffing the Patrick Ross file into a box, and Patrick is free to spend the rest of his days living in his parents' basement, tweeting about pro wrestling and which upcoming Marvel Comics Avenger movie he looks forward to the most, stocking shelves at the Lloydminster lumber store he works at, and getting used to living without a credit card or a credit record of any kind, never being able to get a bank loan or a mortgage. And if he's happy to be there, I'm happy to leave him there.Let there be no doubt, Patrick Ross is a liar that engages in defamation and has been caught before and instead of facing the consequences has decided to live a life of meaningless bankruptcy, and for some strange reason does this on behalf of Conservative political parties. Why? I have no fucking idea.
/// End: fuck you
And so today he decided to attack me. He first began accusing me of being told "by them" (presumably the NDP?) to complain about the propaganda centre, in literal replacement of a defense of it.
I continued to call him out on his lie. Like fuck you, debate my points, debate my opinions, I generally as a rule block no one regardless of how heated a conversation gets. But accusing me of being "told" what to say? Like.. seriously? That Ross would take this line of attack is interesting though, attempting to publicly convince people (and he repeatedly refers to 'we' and the 'people' apparently watching throughout the conversation) that "they" are telling me what to say is protective not of the opposition, or moderates, its a message aimed at protecting the conservative base from me. And that is interesting.It doesn't require a defense. You only complain about it because you were told to.— Patrick Ross (@OutlawTory) December 17, 2019
Tell us more about Prestige Liquor. π€£π€£π€£#ABleg #ABpoli
Don't read this, don't look at this, because "they" must be saying it. That he chose this to attempt to attack me by inventing some sort of allegiance between myself and the NDP (like, did he bother to even spend 5 minutes looking at the stuff I write and say?) says to me my line of messaging against the propaganda centre is on target. It's building bridges, it's causing questions to be asked, the political climate is not one of adversarial discussion of party ideologies because the province's problem are not ideological problems. They're real, practical problems that have been decades in the making and of which the only way out is through and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you (especially if they fund a propaganda centre to do it), it's as simple as that.
Patrick Ross decided then to do some "investigating". He found, not much, given I don't use Facebook all that often. Ages ago I joined a group called Father's Rights Edmonton. It's one of the few places fathers can go to ask for legal help among men regarding family court and such. In the last few years since the rise of the "alt-right" or "new right", the group has gone a bit off the rails.
Patrick Ross, upon finding this tiny nugget of information, began spinning new conspiracies on the spot. Asking "#ableg" if people in pictures he took from this group and had posted were me, am I the group admin? No... no I'm not, and none of the pictures Patrick Ross posted aside from the one I use in my Twitter profile contain myself in them.
I am not re-posting these tweets here as the father's rights group is a private matter, the tweets contain photos of other people's children and it's about people's personal legal challenges and frankly its none of your fucking business what's going on in there except for those who are in it. He has them up on his Twitter if you're curious.
With that said, the fact he decided to go to such lengths to attempt to defame me in the eyes of the conservative base, speaks volumes. His attempt to whip up a mob did not work, I'm still kicking credibility intact, and I largely thank my personal rules for this.
Attempting to intimidate and defame seems to be the main M.O. of the Kenney government and the cultist followers lately as the "open for business" slogan and that line of messaging has fallen further and further behind.
While their war room attempts to regain some sort of credibility by implying that "the average Joe" investor (who's name is literally Joe) is just idly sitting around reading his morning propaganda centre "investor brief".πHere it isπ— BabyAlbertaYoda (@SpunkyAlternate) December 18, 2019
‘I expect an apology from Jason Kenney’@CTVCalgary on Executive Director of Issues Management for Alberta Premier Jason Kenney aka Taxpayer Funded Twitter Troll @MattWolfAB attacking fellow Albertans on Twitter with profanity, derogatory & vulgar slurs.
π#yyc pic.twitter.com/i9NPjhSJbB
Of course the morning Joe reading the "investor brief" ends up being a Lawyer at the Dentons law firm which for those who have forgotten was the sole sourced receiver of the contract for the "public inquiry" into the bullshit Vivian Krause conspiracy theory. Dentons is closely tied to Harper & Associates (of course), and shares an office with them.Lmao. Thanks Joe from Dentons. pic.twitter.com/JccCUuutLL— Richard Fantin (@RichardFantin) December 17, 2019
The propaganda centre - which lets not forget has disabled all comments on their videos, all feedback on their videos, has no comments or feedback on their articles, and provides no possible way for all of the vague "foreign funded environmentalists" to clarify their own position regarding the falsehoods the propaganda centre based on the work of Vivian Krause continues to say is occurring (and which Global News just let slide, like WTF Global News? You just pander to liars pushing debunked conspiracies now?) - wants newspapers to run their hastily prepared op-eds for "clarifying".
LOL. They can barely control the message in Medicine Hat and they think they're going to convince the world?Bring it on, war room #ableg pic.twitter.com/VAdHLkujx1— Jeremy Appel π (@MHNJeremyAppel) December 16, 2019
Of course not.
We should take note at how interested the war room is in correcting a tiny criticism of it from Medicine Hat. As we discussed in my post Alberta's Great Panderer, the stated purpose for the war room is a lie. It doesn't exist to convince the opposition, it exists to speak to the base. To keep them on board, to give them the impression that something other than a huge transfer of public wealth into private hands is happening. It's tweeting of self validation by getting a Dentons insider lawyer to act like a regular Joe just reading his investor brief wasn't geared at investors, it was geared at the base wondering if investors really are reading the "investor brief".
From what I can see however, the war room is a tactical blunder on the part of the UCP that may end up driving a unifying force rather than a divisive war.
It's a major fear, and a weakness.
I'm on the offensive.
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Richard Fantin is a self-taught software developer who has mostly throughout his career focused on financial applications and high frequency trading. He currently works for CenturyLink
Nazayh Zanidean is a Project Coordinator for a mid-sized construction contractor in Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys writing as a hobby on topics that include foreign policy, international human rights, security and systemic media bias.