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Soviet Style, Facebook Plants Negative Stories about Google

By Selwyn Duke

Sometimes you just wish that both sides in a contest could lose. Such is the case with respect to the latest revelation about Facebook: that it hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google. Writes Dan Lyons at The Daily Beast:

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like the Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

After learning that the unnamed client was Facebook, The Daily Beast subsequently received confirmation from a company spokesman that it had, in fact, hired Burson. And the company is well-suited to the task it was assigned. Lyons also tells us, “Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, has been a political consultant for Bill Clinton, and is best known as the chief strategist in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.” In other words, Burson could probably disgorge a 25-page analysis on the definition of the word “is.”

Read the rest here.

Online Society, Offline Civilization: How the Internet is Ushering in the End of the Age

By Selwyn Duke

When people discuss the overall effects of the Internet, they will weigh the good and the bad.  On one side, they may mention how the Web, along with talk radio, has broken the stranglehold over public opinion the mainstream media once enjoyed; on the other, they may cite the pernicious effects of pornography, cyber-bullying or the loss of privacy.  Whatever the analysis and verdict, though, it never truly captures how tangled a Web we have woven.  This is because seldom recognized is a simple and profound fact: The Internet is one of the most powerful forces ever unleashed by mankind.

Is YouTube Cooking Stats for Obama?

By Selwyn Duke

News aggregator DrudgeReport.com is currently linking to a YouTube video of a government schoolteacher instructing young students to praise Obama in song. While this is shocking, there is an even bigger story here. Consider this: the video’s “views” counter listed only 363 views as of 1:04 p.m. EST on Sept. 24.

But at the same time it had 2,279 comments.  

What’s wrong with this picture?

Latest Savage Nation Appearance: Talk Show Host Michael Savage’s Website Attacked by Hackers

Talk Show Host Michael Savage’s Website Attacked by Hackers

By Selwyn Duke

Just recently, talk show host Michael Savage had to endure an attack on his character when the British government associated him with terrorists and other criminals and banned him from traveling to the U.K.  But on Saturday the attack — or at least an attack — was brought to his own shores when a computer hacker damaged his website by sneaking into its server through a feedback portal, forcing technicians to shut it down for nearly an hour.