"Growling - When a bunny feels threatened or annoyed, you may here (sic) a growl.
"Screaming - You never want to hear a bunny scream. A scream indicates severe pain or fear, and is a sign that your bunny needs help, and needs it fast."
From ToRP correspondent Rude Salis and Anonymous.
Commander Bunny's August 11 blog post (if deleted see copy at page bottom) shows he hasn't lost his knack for
Here's the short 'n' dirty version...
Desperate to shrug off rumours and mounting evidence that he may have tried to get rival shortwave pirate radio operators busted by the FCC or Industry Canada, Commander Bunny faked an exchange of e-mails purportedly between shortwave radio fan and DXLD contributor Artie Bigley, and the FCC, in an attempt by His Hareness to frame Bigley for the recent FCC enforcement activity against The Crystal Ship.
The frame up unraveled quickly amid a flurry of e-mails circulated around the shortwave pirate radio
The faked e-mails from the WBNY blog are reproduced below. See if you can spot the discrepancies:
Note: Artie Bigley's e-mail addresses obscured at his request. -- GF
X-From_: gabXXXXXXX@hotmail.com Sat April 9, 10:15:43 2011
X-Originating-IP: [66.213.29.2]
From: Artie Bigley (gabXXXXXXX@hotmail.com)
To: teslamotorhome@simbala.net
Subject: FCC Enforcement action Detroit Office
Date: Sat, 9 April 2011 10:15:33 -0400
Dear Mr. Bridgewater:
I want to report Pirate Radio activity in central Michigan, and special attention on a Communist who calls himself "Poet". He is using 6815kilohertz to broadcast his Communist message on his station "the Crystal Ship". He broadcasts the Russian National Anthem. He is a treasonous voice of dissent and needs to be silenced. Your attention to this matter is appreciated. He also has a blog called "freeradiocafe", where he will announce when he is going on the air. He also posted that he was in Central Michigan on this blog. I also want to FOIA any information about this station from the FCC database as soon as possible. I am doing what I can to rid the airwaves of these lowlifes.
73s,
Artie
- Subject: Illegal Pirate activity, FOIA Request
- Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 13:20:31 -0400
- From: James.Bridgewater@fcc.gov
- To: jXXXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com
-
- Mr. Bigley,
-
- The FCC received your information about illegal pirate radio activity on April 9, 2011
-and have taken appropriate measures. While we would like to respond to your FOIA request,
-you did not provide the address to which you want the FCC's response to be sent.
-Please respond with a mailing address for the response.
-
- Thank you.
-
-James.Bridgewater - Detroit FCC
-CC:Diane Law-Hsu
- Enforcement Bureau
- FCC
So, what can we make from all this? Well, for starters, apparently Artie Bigley has a time machine. Actually, there are a few temporal anomalies in WBNY's August 11 blog entry, almost enough to make a Star Trek Voyager episode. But more on that later.
First, we're supposed to be looking at an e-mail thread comprising two messages.
Artie sends an email to the FCC to report a pirate, and second is the reply from the FCC thanking him. But let's look at the posted text - there's something glaringly wrong here. The quoted text at the bottom is the reply from the FCC, dated May 6, while the email from Artie, at the top, isn't quoted. That's opposite to how the text should appear, Artie's message was the first one, so it should be quoted. So when the Commander made up this email, he accidentally swapped the two messages. Another reason not to top post, Commander...
Next, Artie's email is addressed to "teslamotorhome@simbala.net". That sure seems like a funny email address for an FCC Field Agent to use. Maybe he's under cover. Deep under cover. Apparently in Togo.
So what about the text of the email supposed from Artie? Well, it's full of all sorts of derogatory ("nasty", in CB parlance) remarks about Poet, calling him a "Communist" and "treasonous voice of dissent". He even plays the Russian National Anthem! So he needs to be silenced. Fortunately, he posts about his broadcasts in advance on the "freeradiocafe" (sic), so it will be easy for the FCC to catch him. Just log onto the website, and wait for the posting.
Oops.
Note the date of Artie's e-mail: April 9, 2011. Now go and find out when freeradiocafe.com was registered. You can use BetterWhois.com to do this.
Go ahead, I'll wait...
Back already? Good. So you saw the same thing I did, that the domain name was registered on April 21, 2011. 11 days after this e-mail was supposedly sent.
"So...
...apparently Artie has the keys to a souped up DeLorean (with functional flux capacitor), or CB made yet another mistake while trying to frame a DXer. I'm betting it's *not* the DeLorean."
The supposed reply from the FCC (again, in the quoted text, not the unquoted text where it should be) is addressed to a different e-mail account rather than to the e-mail address from which the purported complaint originated. There's some mumbo jumbo about a FOIA request, probably because Artie has done these in the past. Note that there's nothing nefarious about an FOIA request. Forging an email? That is pretty nefarious, but also par for the course in Commander Bunny's goofy golf game of disinformation.
The FCC reply is signed James Bridgewater, with a CC to Diane Law-Hsu, although Ms Law-Hsu isn't actually listed in the CC field of the email. Perhaps the FCC Gnomes hand deliver her a printed copy of the email. These names are public knowledge, on the FCC site. It is rather curious how the email signature just says "FCC", "Federal Communications Commission" seems more likely to me.
At this point, it's pretty obvious the email exchange is a hoax. Yes, I know, it would be pretty safe to assume so anyway, but we gave The Commander the benefit of the doubt, and decided to actually take a look for ourself.
I'm not quite sure what to conclude from this. Certainly, CB is still trying to deflect blame for Poet's bust from himself. But why such a shabby job of generating a fake email exchange? This should be simple. Instead, DXers now have even more evidence that CB is lying and fabricating evidence.
By ToRP correspondent Rude Salis.
Late addendum: Via e-mail to GF, Artie Bigley said he did not write the above e-mail attributed to him by Commander Bunny, and did not file any complaints about pirates to the FCC. He said a FOIA request would support him. --GF 8/12/11
In our next Tale of Radio Paranoia: George Zeller bans Artie Bigley from pirate radio!
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