Last week, some troll named Joshua Foust attacked my article about the massacre in Kazakhstan on December 16. I really had no idea who Foust was until I started getting emails from readers telling me “some guy with a goatee is having a meltdown on Twitter.” What upset Foust so much about my article was that I dared to report a death toll number, “up to 70,” that differed from the official figure of 15 that the regime in Kazakhstan wanted the outside world to believe. Why did Foust take on the role of massacre-denier for Kazakhstan’s notoriously brutal, corrupt regime?
Foust, it turns out, has spent much of the past decade getting paid by defense contractors to front for them as one of their paid PR monkeys. One example: Last year, Foust published a hit piece in the Columbia Journalism Review attacking an award-winning Washington Post investigative series about the vast hidden defense contractor industry, without disclosing the fact that Foust was an employee of Northrop Grumman–one of the largest defense contractors in America.
[UPDATE: After we wrote to the CJR, they updated Foust’s post with an editor’s note up top disclosing Foust’s conflicted relationship with the defense industry.]
Foust’s job is the opposite of journalism—he gets paid by war-profiteers to lie to the public, to cover for them while they soak the public for government contracts. That’s what Joshua Foust does for a living; and besides carrying the water for defense contractors as a “strategic communications” flak, Foust has spent the past few years talking up Kazakhstan’s despot-for-life, Nursultan Nazarbayev—and talking down the appalling human rights records both in Kazakhstan and in Uzbekistan.
Of all the brutal despots in that region, none has stolen Foust’s heart like Kazakhstan’s dictator-for-life, Nursultan Nazarbayev, or “Nazzy” as Foust affectionately calls the man responsible for murdering scores of striking oil workers. “Nazzy” has poured huge sums of his ill-begotten wealth back into Washington DC and London to pay off politicians, academics, think-tanks, and media hacks to lie about what a wonderful reformer he is and what a great place Kazakhstan is turning out to be—they also get paid to attack and undermine human rights advocates who report unpleasant truths about what goes on there, something Foust does all the time for his favorite despot, although we’ll probably never know if he gets money for that too. (One hilarious example: A PR firm founded by Haley Barbour proposed waging an “online social media campaign” attacking Sting after he canceled a concert in Kazakhstan over labor rights abuses; not surprisingly, Joshua Foust attacked Sting’s boycott and belittled the striking oil workers’ struggle as “more than a bit silly”–just a couple of months before they were massacred.)
So this same Joshua Foust attacked my article last week on the grounds that the death toll I reported, “up to 70” killed, was “completely invented”. Here’s an example:
“Mark Ames relies on a completely invented body count to polemicize the #zhanaozen riots. Classy!”
Yes, that really happened: a PR flak for war-profiteers really did shake with righteous indignation to protect a Kazakh despot’s lowball massacre death toll number from a journalist who dared to contradict it. (You’d have to spend some time in DC to understand how that makes any fucking sense.) Foust then went on his blog and attacked my article with more of the same nonsense.
To get a quick taste of the sort of wanton massacring unleashed by Kazakhstan’s forces that day, watch this short video (this came out after my last piece, and it’s much more graphic):
I know these Joshua Foust trolls all too well—they infest our website’s comments section. Which is why I didn’t want to bother responding to Foust. I’ve got too many interesting things on my plate, and I’m used to thwacking more serious trolls, household name trolls, than Joshua Foust. But unfortunately, some people think Joshua Foust should be taken seriously. That means we have to take Foust seriously too, despite the fact that he’s been wrong about everything since the day he first blogged. I’ll start by refuting his lies, and follow up with the real black comedy in the Josh Foust story, by shining a light on this five-foot-tall warmonger’s career, so that we understand his type better. The “Portrait of a Troll As A Young Waffendwarf” story about Joshua Foust’s rise from college flunk-out to community college mediocrity to “geopolitics expert” at the Atlantic Monthly is really the story of how “Failing Up” works in this late, rotten period in America. I should warn you, Joshua Foust’s story is one of the rankest, most depressing lives you’ll ever come across, folks: It’ll make you want to give up, just knowing what the Establishment rewards these days. Here’s a hint: it ain’t merit.
Let’s start with the death count I reported in my article, which upset Foust more than anything else. When I wrote my article about the massacre in Zhanaozen, I went on the assumption that the least credible account would naturally come from the murderers themselves—the regime in Kazakhstan. Which happens to be Joshua Foust’s only source. Unlike Foust, I relied primarily on independent sources, including the only independent report I know of to come out of Zhanaozen: An article published in Novaya Gazeta, Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous muckraking newspaper (where Anna Politkovskaya published until she was assassinated in 2006). Novaya Gazeta sent a correspondent into Zhanaozen, Elena Kostyuchenko, who reportedcounting a total of 64 dead bodies in the main hospital morgue in Zhanaozen, all victims of the massacre, as of 9am on December 17th; the correspondent added to that another 23 dead who, according to surgeons, died on the operating tables, bringing her total to 87 dead; and she reported at least 400 wounded from her reports. Novaya Gazeta also reported bodies seen piled up in the main police station—where scores of locals were savagely tortured, some released to the intensive care ward in the main hospital, others either buried out of site or unaccounted for. More victims of the massacre were reported to have died while being transported by ambulance from Zhanaozen to the regional capital, Aktau (the local hospital was overflowing with dead and wounded, and the ambulances were stuffed with three or four patients at a time).
Because I’m dealing with a paid liar like Foust who people still take seriously, I urge everyone, even Joshua Foust, to read Elena Kostyuchenko’s harrowing dispatch. I know that Foust doesn’t read Russian, despite calling himself an “expert” on the region–so I’m providing my own rough, abridged translation at the end of this article.
Joshua Foust: “OMG stop hyperventilating!“
Besides relying on Novaya Gazeta, I also took my numbers from other independent reports I read at the time of my article, like this one published in the AFP:
“Kyrgyzstan-based opposition channel K-Plus claimed … about 70 people were killed and 500 wounded.”
So there you have it: Joshua Foust lied as only a PR flak can lie when he claimed that “Mark Ames completely invents body count.” One thing to remember is that Foust has absolutely zero qualifications to be an expert in anything, let alone FSU geopolitics: Foust doesn’t even know Russian, the universal language in that region; and as a student, Foust failed out of James Madison U. with a 0.57 grade point average, then spent the Bush years in community colleges trolling for the Iraq war, which Foust called “the most successful invasion in history” while attacking critics of that war as “TRAITORS, IDIOTS!” in CAPS. But I’ll get to that a little later on in this article.
Look, there are a lot of reasons why every self-respecting reporter should distrust the official Kazakhstan account of the massacre, most of it obvious. But since some people got taken in by Joshua Foust’s “expert” thinking, thanks to the Atlantic Monthly giving him a perch next to our old friend Megan McArdle, I’ll explain it here as clearly as I can why you should not trust the official version and official body count coming out the Kazakhstan regime’s PR department. When you try to figure out what happened at the scene of a violent crime or mass murder, the perpetrator of that crime (and anyone on the murderer’s payroll) is always the least credible source, because he has a vested interest in downplaying his crime by several degrees–as do his paid shills. So between victim, eyewitness, and murderer, the murderer is the least credible of all. This is especially true in Central Asia.
Let me give an example. Back in 2005, there was a massacre in Andijan, Uzbekistan, leaving up to 1000 dead. In the immediate aftermath, the Uzbek authorities insisted that only a handfulofpeopledied, while eyewitnesses and victims of the massacre reported anywhere from several hundred to well over 1,000 killed. After awhile, the Uzbek authorities upped their body count to a few dozen, as though it was a big concession; meanwhile eyewitnesses and victims kept insisting it was much higher, in the 1000 range. Finally, Uzbek authorities settled on a hard, specific figure of 187 dead; meanwhile, Western human rights groups’ best estimate is anywhere from 700 to over 1,000 dead. Like with the Kazakh authorities, Uzbekistan’s dictator insisted that it was all caused by foreigners and outside agitators.
Moreover, Kazakhstan is acting like it’s got something to hide. It’s put Zhanaozen under martial law, and the authorities cut off all Twitter, internet, and cell phone access, isolating and terrorizing the city with murders, torture, and beatings. Two Russian reporters were arrested trying to get in, and Western reporters were only allowed strictly monitored Soviet-style access. It’s no wonder Reporters Without Borders ranked Kazakhstan 162nd for press freedoms—less “free” than even Libya in its last year under Col. Gadhafi.
So just to repeat one last time: My death count for the massacre was based on independent local sources. Joshua Foust’s was based on the official death count given by the regime responsible for the murders. His is a PR flak’s version of events; mine is a reporter’s. You take your pick.
Now onto Joshua Foust’s second false accusation: On his blog, he accused me of “dishonesty” because I reported—accurately, and easily verified– that Chevron is the leading Western partner of Kazakhstan’s state oil company, KazMunaiGaz, which belongs to the Nazarbayev clan. What I wrote is that Chevron and KazMunaiGaz are partners on several major projects. Chevron’s revenues from its Kazakhstan ventures are a key contributor to the oil giant’s global profits. Chevron’s deep ties and partnerships with KazMunaiGaz are so public and well-known, I still can’t understand why Foust bothered with a lie this easy to debunk—but then I remember, he’s a PR flak, what’re the consequences of getting caught lying when you’re a PR flak? An extra Christmas bonus?
Here’s what Foust wrote:
“if Ames were honest he’d note that Chevron has nothing to do with KazMunaiGaz (which is wholly owned by the government of Kazakhstan), so tying the American oil company to workers employed by a Kazakh firm is actually pretty mendacious. And to repeat: dishonest.”
Wow, “mendacious” and “dishonest”—somebody owns a Thesaurus.
Foust asserts, “Chevron has nothing to do with KazMunaiGaz.” By “nothing” I assume Foust means “nothing.” As in, there is no relationship whatsoever between Chevron and KazMunaiGaz. Nothing, nada, zilch, never met the guy.
That’s Foust’s position. Again, I wrote, “Among KazMunaiGaz’s leading American partners is Chevron.” Foust wrote “nothing.”
So, guess who lied and who got it right?
Fact #1: Tengizchevroil, which operates one of the world’s ten largest oil fields in Kazakhstan, is owned 50% by Chevron, 20% by KazMunaiGaz, and smaller shares owned by a handful of other oil firms.
Fact #2: The Caspian Sea Pipeline consortium, the multibillion-dollar oil export pipeline, is led by Chevron, and has among its partners KazMunaiGaz. See here.
Fact #3: A few weeks ago, Chevron signed a new deal bringing in KazMunaiGaz as a partner on yet another major oil field project in Karachaganak.
So I just provided three obvious examples proving that what I wrote– “Among KazMunaiGaz’s leading American partners is Chevron”—and disproving Foust’s lie that he published, claiming, “Chevron has nothing to do with KazMunaiGaz.” The reason it matters is obvious: There have been lawsuits over the past decade holding U.S. oil firms accountable for profiting from crimes against humanity overseas. KazMunaiGaz, Chevron’s partner, wholly owns the subsidiary, UzenMunaiGaz, at the center of the massacre and the oil workers’ strike. I’ll bet that Chevron also has a PR payroll to keep this out of the public.
Well folks, there you have it: I’ve proven that Joshua Foust lied to downplay the massacre death toll, and I proved that Joshua Foust lied to protect Chevron from its deep ties to KazMunaiGaz, whose brutality and intransigence towards labor organizers at its subsidiary led to the massacre on December 16. That wasn’t hard–but it was disgusting, having to respond to a massacre-denier like Foust. Now, let’s get to know him.
* * *
What do you get when you inject Chuck Todd’s DNA into the nucleus of Matthew Vadum’s egg?
Now that that’s out of the way, the question is: What kind of lying filth is Joshua Foust? How does someone become so vile? And why do some people take a pea-brained troll like Joshua Foust seriously?
At The eXiled, we’ve been saying for years now that the loudest yapping neocon warmongers are usually pathologically wounded twerps working off their bad childhood grudges.That, and plain old stupidity, explains a lot of what makes a woofing neocon who he is.
Joshua Foust is a textbook example proving the theory, so much so that he deserves more looking into. I want to answer what made Foust admit, without any irony, this:
“for years I’ve wanted to be an action movie super villian… I mean, an evil genius is still a genius, right?”
Joshua Foust got off to a rough start on the road to becoming this “evil genius.” He entered James Madison U. a second-rate public university in Virginia, as a freshman in 1999, but JMU proved more than his little brain could handle. Foust flunked out of JMU his freshman year with a 0.57 grade point average, and spent the next several years in community colleges, while working for a Navy contractor designing web sites. After several years in community colleges, Foust tried transferring to the University of Michigan to get himself a respectable diploma, but Michigan rudely rejected him. The only university that accepted Joshua Foust as a transfer student was the University of Colorado at Boulder—ranked America’s #1 Party School by Playboy magazine.
That, folks, is what passes for a “thought leader” at the Atlantic Monthly.
Joshua Foust thought-leading on Iraq
This is important to point out because Foust has a reputation for being an arrogant ass towards everyone who does serious work–he never fails to belittle others for their supposed lack of intellectual seriousness. So let it be known to every poor victim of Joshua Foust’s trolling attacks: Joshua Foust failed out of a second-rate college with a 0.57 grade point.
That’s failure on an epic scale. And it was an experience that filled Foust with lasting illiterate hate:
I harbor a serious hatred towards James Madison University. I went there for one abortive year in 1999. I left in disgrace, on academic suspension with a 0.57 GPA. I hate that I went there, I hate that I screwed up that year, and I HATE that I have to keep sending those horrible transcripts every time I apply to a school, fellowship, or internship
Maybe it’s just coincidence, but Foust also hates my alma mater, Berkeley:
I Hate Berkeley. Berkeley is controlled by a minority population of wacky insane hippie freaks. …Berkeley is controlled by a city council, who in the face of post-9/11 patriotism, asked firemen to remove the American flags from their trucks as to not be offensive.
The man’s a poet, folks.
For resentful dumbshits like Foust, the war in Iraq was a hate-manna from heaven. Foust repeatedly cheered the war as “the most successful invasion in history” and attacked critics as “TRAITORS, IDIOTS!” He attacked Joe Wilson as a “liar” and a “phony” and attacked Eric Alterman for not admitting that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda on the 9/11 attack. Very little has changed from the neocon Bush-era Foust to today’s pseudo-realpolitik Foust defending war, war-profiteers and Central Asian tyrants–except that now he has a copy editor.
But before getting into Foust’s neocon phase, let’s first find out what makes him tick. As Foust himself admitted, what turned him into this warmongering troll was his painful experience growing up a bullied twerp:
I was picked on by all the popular kids, occaisonally beaten physically. It was a very isolating experience, and I spent about three years essentially by myself. This was during the socially-crucial early adolescent years (12, 13, 14), and I can still, today, see how that experience affects my attitudes towards certain things.
Foust wrote this confessional blog post on the fifth anniversary of Columbine, and it’s worth keeping in mind every time you read about Foust today defending tyrants and shilling for war-profiteers:
“I had fantasies about killing each and every one of those boys who had hit me, who had slammed my face into a locker as I walked to class, who had tripped me into the water fountain, who had yanked down my gym shorts and pointed and laughed at my embarassment. I wanted to kill them, and at times I was desperate enough to where I could clearly and calmly imagine myself doing so. That’s why I’m so conflicted about Columbine…I try to stuff that sympathy back into the deepest corners of my psyche, and it’s easy when I see video of what those two wrought. But it comes bubbling back to the surface when their misery is explored. I see them, and I keep thinking I could have been that.”
Oddly enough, this may be the only honest thing Joshua Foust ever wrote, and it almost makes you want to reach out and give him a hug, tell him it’s okay—which may be why he tried to scrub it from the Internet, along with a lot of other posts I found. Painful confessions such as this:
So, I entered high school lonely, depressed, and very aware of how other people saw me. … My life had demonstrated that those in authority had little or no desire to stop violent bullying, and that even parents tended to downplay the severity of what happened.
Looking back on pictures of me from them, I looked miserable. I looked like I hated myself. I was thinking that there was something I was doing, something about me that was causing those kids to harass me constantly. It wasn’t until years later that I finally realized that none of that was my fault. Regardless, I was driven close to suicide more than once.
Now you might be tempted to assume that the pain Foust endured as a bullied twerp would have turned him into a good person sensitive to others’ pain, more empathetic and more enlightened. If so, you’ve been watching the wrong movies.
You should read the reports on bullying, or listen to what real bullied kids are like (I wrote about this in my book Going Postal). Getting bullied like that doesn’t necessarily turn the bullied nerd into a nice empathetic guy. It makes bullied kids hate the world, on a level you non-bullied happy folks will never understand. Sometimes bullied twerps get over it and move on. Other times, they turn into spite-fueled Waffentwerps whose only dream is to bully others–to be a “super villain,” as Foust wrote.
That describes Joshua Foust, neocon loon who spent the first few years of Bush’s Iraq war bullying and attacking and cheering on the mass-slaughter. This sordid episode on Foust’s blog, proudly recounting how he put a young Iraqi woman in her place, is a perfect example:
Tonight, I had class with a girl who has accused me of murder. Her name is Arnish, and she is an Iraqi. She was in my International Relations class last semester (the fall), and she and I spent the majority of the semester arguing about the war in Iraq. She was pushy, loud, foul-mouthed, arrogant, and ethnically snobby (“I’m better because I’m not American, white boy!”).
When did she call me a murderer? Right after she called me a “fucking nazi zionist” because I said I supported the Just War Doctrine. I was trying to explain that the Iraq War fit the criteria for a Just War (a war of justice, not “just a war”) when she cut me off, screaming her invective at the top of her lungs. My professor did nothing to calm her down, instead opting to stare, wide-eyed at the pronouncement of such vitriol.
Luckily, there was a random Serb chick in the class, who, though her English was limited, leapt to my defense, and managed to get Arnish to shut up for a time
This is the larval-stage Joshua Foust: wounded, warmongering, morally indignant against real victims of war: How dare she question a five-foot-tall Waffendwarf’s commitment to the “Just War Doctrine” just because hundreds of thousands of her fellow countrymen were killed in that war? Classy!
But here’s where it gets really creepy: Foust later pursues the poor Iraqi girl in a fitness class in Washington DC, and makes sure that she seethes with the same impotent rage that he’s been seething in his whole life:
When she walked into my fitness class this evening, my stomach lurched slightly. Fearing a cold stare, or some snide quip, I found myself trying to place as much physical distance between us as possible. Yet, while we were warming up, I found myself spending much of the time beside her, ignoring my very existence.
She wouldn’t make eye contact with me the entire night. Eventually, as the class wound to a close, she brushed past my shoulder, her eyes glued straight ahead, her nosed turned the slightest bit upwards.
How sad.
Yes, “how sad.” You can tell Foust practiced that line for years: That moment where he gets to adopt the pious, patronizing concern of the bully. Oh, you poor wounded twerp, so wronged, so misunderstood by the world!
So now that readers understand who Joshua Foust is, let’s see how this translates into Foust’s geopolitical expertise.
In 2004, just as the Iraqi insurgency was about to explode, Foust cheered,
“more than a year down the line from the most successful invasion in history, what has happened is simply stunning. Iraq has a constitution, it has a provisional government that has already begun to ignore some US officials (meaning: independent thought is well on its way), it’s gearing up to hold the first real elections ever. Iraq has the freest press of any Arab nation, and as a whole the infrastructure in Iraq is in better shape than it has been since 1991.”
As for the war’s critics, Foust wrote:
the Left is currently aflame with hatred and shrill irrationality. Which is why, despite my intense dislike for Bush, his seriousness (I never thought I’d say this) is winning out.
When things got undeniably bad, Foust pushed the lie that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks, and attacked real journalists who didn’t buy into Foust’s conspiracy theory:
There is a growing body of evidence that Saddam Hussein had extensive ties to Al-Qaeda. In fact, as more and more evidence becomes public that detail the depth of Saddam’s workings with Al-Qaeda, I have to wonder if anything will really change. Will [Eric] Alterman fess up and say that the case against the war isn’t so easily closed? Of course he won’t. Anti-warriors can never be wrong, because war is always wrong. It’s never justified, no matter what.
Attacking intelligent people who were right and calling them wrong was a skill he worked on early on: He attacked Richard Clarke after his damning testimony made Bush’s war look bad:
Why Is Clark Wrong?
It’s simple, and I’m running out of different ways of expressing this: he has absolutely no case for his self-righteousness…he’s out to get Bush, and he needs attention. Simple, superficial, shallow, seen through, and alarmingly easy.
Foust even troll-attacked Joe Wilson:
Joe Wilson is a fake, a phony, a liar, and a cheap political hack. You’ve been found out, despite the media’s desire not to report your political forgery.
Over and over, Foust practiced trolling and belittling war critics:
The Democrat’s whining over Iraq can be picked apart piece by piece, but it gets old. 500 dead is a “quagmire?” Sheesh – if we cannot accept 500 dead soldiers during a war, then we cannot accept fighting war. It’s that simple – by an historical measurement, our low casualties are nothing short of astonishing.
He contrasted these traitors, idiots and shrill hypocrites who opposed the war with hardened Waffentwerps like Joshua Foust, who used this old Roman cliche in a piece defending Donald Rumsfeld:
“is it better for the world to love us or fear us? While I would prefer love, I’ll take fear—no matter what, the Islamists will hate us, and if they fear us as well than we can at least have some measure of security.”
Super-villain, indeed!
When it came to the 2004 elections, the self-described “libertarian” mused,
“I like Bush’s foreign policy, and I like his tax cuts. Those are very good things that have been executed very well.”
Showing he hadn’t changed much from 2000, when he flunked out of JMU:
“One of the main reasons I supported the man [Bush] in 2000 was his policy on tax cuts, and limiting the federal budget.”
As for John Kerry, Foust wrote: “his refusal to treat Islamo-fascist terror as the grave threat to civilization it is prevents me from considering him for President.”
What it all really came down to for this pea-brained neocon was simple:
“I can understand and debate Bush,” Foust wrote. “I cannot do the same with Kerry.”
And he cheered Bush’s 2004 victory by way of referencing Ben Affleck:
Is anyone surprised that news of a newly-elected pro-business President is making the markets bounce like Ben Affleck? Me neither.
Foust described himself as a “libertarian” and for all I know he is. He bragged about “my friend Doug Bandow”—the Cato Institute guy who was forced to resign in disgrace after Bandow was busted taking money from Jack Abramoff to plant PR in respectable media outlets like BusinessWeek. It’s the sort of thing Foust would later do as a matter of routine, such as when Foust attacked the Washington Post series on defense contractors, which Foust published in the Columbia Journalism Review without disclosing that he was an employee of Northrop Grumman, one of the biggest defense contractors in the country.
Now fast-forward to today: Joshua Foust, former neocon, is a full-time paid shill for war-profiteers. Through relentless networking and corruption, Foust has also burrowed into the media as an “expert” on Central Asia, a region that suffers from some of the world’s worst human rights abuses, but also happens to be the lynchpin of the war machine and revenues for defense contractors.
With Pakistan turning into a complete failure, Foust has been pushing a brilliant plan to keep the war going by moving America’s war machine out of Pakistan and into Uzbekistan, whose tyrant is responsible for boiling dissidents alive and dumping their bodies, and for the massacre in Andijan of 1000 of his own people. That’s the sort of thing only a do-gooder hippie would worry about, according to Foust:
It is pure folly to object to that outlook, or to write it off, as the human rights industry seems to want, as selling out to a vicious thug. In the real world, away from New York and Brussels, there sometimes are no perfect choices, only degrees of imperfect ones. A security partnership with Uzbekistan is one of those imperfect choices.
Or “imbecilic choices.”
Again and again, Foust attacks the human rights “industry” and defends poor Uzbekistan, as in this recent blog post:
“I’m sure in an ideal world we can wish away the war in Afghanistan and make sure every country in the region knows we are deeply displeased with their human rights violations, but in the real world people must make difficult choices. They have to prioritize. And the deal in Uzbekistan is meant to satisfy one purpose only: Afghanistan.”
The Waffendwarf really has it in for the human rights “industry.” A few years ago, when Human Rights Watch issued a 55-page report slamming Kazakhstan’s human rights record, Foust was there to defend his beloved Kazakh dictator:
“I could seriously be off here, but am I alone in thinking Human Rights Watch is hyperventilating over this?”
“Hyperventilating” and “shrill” are Foust’s favorite troll put-downs, going back to his pro-Iraq war shilling days:
“I’m heartened to see that a hyperventilating press has blown things a bit out of proportion. Iraq is still winnable.”
“Jeff Jarvis notices how the shrill harpies on the Left, like Juan Cole, can’t seem to wrap their heads around the tremendous victory this was for democracy.”
“Lately, though, [Jon Stewart]’s been a bit shrill, a touch desperate to see Kerry elected and Bush defeated.]]
Last week, I too got flamed by Joshua Foust for being, you know, “shrill.”
This is the world through a corrupt flunk-out’s eyes. And it fully informs his every word and every thought about Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, public-relations, and war-profiteering.
On December 15, a day before the massacre in Kazakhstan, Foust was busy belittling and demeaning a Human Rights Watch report on Uzbekistan. Rather than take seriously the human rights violations in the report, Foust slammed HRW’s wanting PR department:
The problem with the report is not the data is contains, but rather how HRW is framing it…
Downplaying, mocking and deflecting is his favorite troll line of attack. It’s how Foust tried to undermine the Washington Post’s award-winning investigation into the hidden defense contractor industry, “Top Secret America,” which Foust ridiculed in a Columbia Journalism Review article “What’sSecretin ‘TopSecret’?”
Here’s a neat exercise: with the obvious exception of some interviews with corporate and agency spokesman, and a bizarre interview with a girlfriend in a bar, try to find something in The Washington Post’s “TopSecretAmerica” that isn’t on Google.
You won’t find much.
Indeed, it is truly remarkable how little new information “Top Secret America” presents.
(NB: We will be following up with Columbia Journalism Review editors over whether or not they still stand by Foust’s article, published without disclosing his conflict-of-interest as an employee doing “strategic communications” for Northrop Grumman.)
And of course, you can count on Foust to defend the lobbying and public-relations industry from pesky investigative journalists. Less than a month ago, Foust was all over a bombshell series of articles by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, exposing PR shills for Third World tyrants in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Obviously, Foust didn’t like it.
First, he belittled and downplayed the significance of the reports, which sparked calls for government inquiries and new legislation in Britain (you can always tell a paid troll by their “nothing new here” nonsense):
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has a blockbuster story about how U.K.-based lobbyists use their relationship with the British government to advance the interests of their clients. The horrors!
…These activities are not on their own necessarily nefarious, unless you think the very existence and practice of PR firms is nefarious (which, in fairness, some people do).
The Bureau’s investigation is …ultimately limited by the outrage that, yes, PR and lobbying firms really do influence their respective governments for income.
But the fallout in Britain continued to grow, so Foust went for a more direct attack in the Atlantic Monthly. He headlined his PR piece, “Is The Lobbying-For-Dictators Scandal Overstated?” You’ll never guess Joshua Foust’s answer:
This does not look like the craven attempt to “whitewash” Uzbekistan’s reputation that BIJ and theIndependent allege.
The BIJ posted a followup story condemning the PR firm for altering Wikipedia pages to benefit its clients (the firm did not do so for Uzbekistan). In a coordinated story, The Independent quotes Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales condemning Bell Pottinger’s edits as “unethical.”
But is editing Wikipedia to benefit oneself really unethical or even new?
People deserve to know the agendas behind the information they’re fed — whether from a bad client like Uzbekistan or a good client like a human rights foundation. But their story here seems to overstate the scandal in ways might turn people off and risk making the whole concept appear exaggerated and overhyped.
Foust even claims that the Founding Fathers were a bunch of public-relations flaks who wanted to found a libertarian lobbying-friendly republic:
In the U.S., that is kind of by design, at least in theory: The Federalist #10 explicitly endorses the idea of private groups banding together to petition their government. In the original concept, so many citizens would be so busy petitioning their government that the total result overall would be equilibrium — that is, the marketplace of lobbyists would lead to an optimal result.
Ten bucks says that Doug Bandow trained him to say that.
So let’s go back one more time to the early Joshua Foust. This is the very first blog post Joshua Foust put up when he launched his waterboy career in late 2003, the day Saddam Hussein was captured. Reading this in context gives us a sense of the continuity linking the early, larval Waffentwerp neocon to today’s Joshua Foust. Note again, Foust tried to delete evidence of his previous neocon incarnation from the Internet–but being an incompetent failure, he naturally failed to wipe it.
Headlined “It’s Over,” Foust debuted his voice to the world thus:
Those who considered this war a failure, or those who refused to see this war as anything but a failure, will spin the war as a failure until we leave the Middle East to its own, destructive devices. I think what’s been shown today is the power of patience, the power of muddling, and the power of our ability to work in terrible circumstances. This is just a huge PR coup for our side, not to mention the best news ordinary Iraqis could have ever possibly hoped to have heard. It’s over now. There is clean up, sure – there are still bad guys to be had. But it’s over. They can start to move on (how foolish they look today), and rebuild their lives. One of the biggest complaints about the occupation was that it did nothing to rid the world of Saddam – we had simply forced him into hiding. Well, that complaint is as old as Saddam looks to be, and the reasons for being so against this occupation will fade away as the resistance does.
Who takes a guy like this seriously? The folks at the American Security Project, a Washington DC defense contractor lobby outfit whose board of directors includes the former CEO of Lockheed and a US Chamber of Commerce Executive. Earlier this year, they described Foust as a “powerhouse of thoughtful analysis” when they hired him away from Northrop Grumman.
And Foust hasn’t let them down. As a “Senior Fellow at the American Security Project” Foust could be seen testifying to a Senate Subcommittee hearing urging them not to increase oversight over private intelligence contractors like Foust’s paymasters:
This public consensus that contracting must be curtailed is based on the assumption that contracting has grown beyond anyone’s ability to control it, that it results in widespread fraud, waste, and abuse, and that the fundamental nature of contracting presents analysts, agents, and officers of the intelligence community with irreconcilable conflicts of interest. These are the wrong issues to worry about.
The biggest problem facing the IC contracting industry is not that some contractors abuse the system, but that the government has designed a system that encourages abuse. …I argue in this testimony that the first step in fixing the issues we associate with IC contractors really begins with fixing the government.
Now Joshua Foust makes sense—he is the living embodiment of “Failing Up,” a cultural disease that is rotting this country at its core. Foust is a failure and a moron, with a valuable mixture of misanthropy and shameless ambition, traits that helped Foust fail his way up to the top of the DC Establishment. Because today, especially in a corrupt cesspool like Washington DC, failure and shamelessness are currency, whereas brains and integrity are handicaps. Joshua Foust has finally become the “super-villain” he dreamed of becoming—not much of an “evil genius” but definitely a villain. He’s a real-life Tracy Flick, only shorter, uglier, meaner and dumber: In other words, the real thing.
Here is Foust, the libertarian, explaining why Washington DC is the ideal place for an aspiring “super-villain” and “evil genius” twerp. It’s a good insight as to why so many fucking libertarians work in the government: Because that way, they can control you and fuck you up while stuffing their own pockets:
It’s way too easy to hate D.C. I’m sick of people, especially from New York and LA, looking down on all us here – we few who really do control your fate. No matter how culturally superior you may feel, it still takes a single rider to an authorization bill, a single poorly placed comma, a single intern working overtime, to seriously dick us all over. D.C. is for serious people who are obsessed with serious things, like power and security and control (and others).
Okay, that’s enough of Foust for now. The reason I went into more detail about this guy isn’t because he’s the worst troll we’ve dealt with, nowhere close. But he does almost perfectly represent the rot and corruption and everything wrong and anti-meritocratic in 21st Century America. It’s depressing when you think about how many Fousts are in Washington and New York, gumming up anything good or honest, providing cover for the very worst that this world has to offer.
Now, as an antidote to Foust’s trolling about the Kazakhstan massacre, I strongly urge you to read this incredible account of what really happened in Zhanaozen, published in Novaya Gazeta. Recall again what Foust wrote, and then scrubbed, on his feelings about Columbine:
as more and more details came out about the motivations behind Harris and Klebold’s rampage, I found myself sympathizing with them. That’s right—I found sympathy with mass murderers.
* * *
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald made an unexpected appearance in support of military contractor Joshua Foust. Greenwald attacked this article and author Mark Ames for our lack of civility — because we’re supposed to be nice when we argue with a military contractor and massacre-denier. The massacre of striking oil workers in US client states can wait for another day. (Note: Greenwald has undisclosed financial and network ties to the oil oligarch-funded CATO Institute.) Read Greenwald’s spirited defense of Joshua Foust here.
UPDATE 2: After this article was posted, Foust’s colleagues posted a remarkably sleazy (and error-pocked) hit-job on Novaya Gazeta’s courageous reporter Elena Kostyuchenko, the only outside reporter to get into Zhanaozen after the massacre. We publish our translation of her article below. Read about Foust & Friends’ attempt to smear Kostyuchenko’s reporting “The Scum Also Rises: Joshua Foust & Friends Smear Crusading Lesbian Russian Reporter Elena Kostyuchenko as ‘Dumb Hag’, ‘Rumor-Monger'”
* * *
ZHANAOZEN
Special “Novaya Gazeta” correspondent Elena Kostyuchenko reports from the rebellious steppes of Kazakhstan. (The names of sources have been changed to protect them)
December 20, 2011
Zhanaozen, or just “Uzen’” as it’s known—is a city of about 100,000 people located in the western part of Kazakhstan, in the Mangistauskaya Oblast’ (region). This Oblast’ is considered Kazakhstan’s most expensive, and it’s most toxic, polluted region as well. And within this Oblast’, the town of Zhanaozen is the most expensive of all, and it’s most life-threatening.
Locals here have a saying: “When a sinner from Zhanaozen dies, instead of going to hell he’s sent straight back to Zhanaozen.” It only rains here once a year—and snows maybe once every few years. No weeds or plants grow in this parched earth; in the city, almost no trees to speak of, and the few that do grow there have to be watered daily. The terrible wind that blows through the steppe throws dust into your eyes. In the summer, it’s unbearably hot; in winter, even when it’s only -3 Celsius (29 F), it’s inhumanely cold, the wind literally blows right through your body. You’ll only find roads paved with asphalt in the very center of town—the rest of the roads are unpaved. The buildings and apartment blocks are built low, made of yellow limestone.
…
15-year-old Aislu, a student in the oil and gas technical college, explains, “We arrived [at the square], and the protesters were there. I knew that my mom was standing there, so I wanted to go up and meet her. But the police wouldn’t let me, they surrounded us. I called my dad: ‘They’ve surrounded me, I can’t leave the square.” I was crying. He left work and came and got me out. They started to let us go home. He led me out of the crowd, told me, ‘You go home, I’ll be there shortly.’ I moved away, and then a bullet struck him in the leg.”
The taxi driver who brought me around Zhanaozen explained to me heatedly how people walked straight into the gunfire without fear. It was only later I understood that it wasn’t so much courage—it was just that no one out on the square could believe that the police would actually open fire on them. “We thought at first maybe these were rubber bullets. It was only when a kid next to me got shot in the head, and the bullet blew a giant hole there, that I understood they were out to slaughter us,” said a striking worker, Sholpan. “I saw right in front of me how they cut down a woman who was kneeling over her fallen daughter.”
The police firing into the crowd on the square lasted about 10 minutes. There were police shooting into the crowd from the Uzenmunaigaz office as well; after they finished shooting, the police moved into the local city administration building, then they moved back to police headquarters.
That’s when the “pogrom” flared up. The youngsters carefully set the city administration building on fire, torched the hotel, the headquarters of Uzenmunaigaz [a subsidiary of the ruling family-controlled KazMunaiGaz, a partner with Chevron on several major projects, and the company that crushed the labor union drive], and started torching the shops. They started with two furniture stores that were owned by wives of city officials, then started burning down others. It was strange how the pogrom had a sort of logic. They torched only those buildings or businesses that were connected to the government or to Uzenmunaigaz.
The burnt-out headquarters of UzenMunaiGaz, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron’s main partner, KazMunaiGaz
At about 4pm, the OMON (Interior Ministry paramilitary forces) arrived and spread out from the main square throughout the city, shooting everywhere.
“I was ready to become one of the looters,” says Akku. “My family is completely poverty-stricken—my husband and i have been without work for a long time now, sometimes we turn out apartment into a sort of beauty salon. I try sewing things whenever I can. The only time we eat meat is when we’re invited to someone’s home. When they smashed into the Sulpak store, I thought to myself, ‘I know exactly where to find an iron, where the sewing machines are. I could earn myself some money if I only had my own sewing machine! So I went in and took one. And that’s when the OMON (paramilitary) stormed in. Everyone scrambled, barely getting out alive. But I saw who was able to steal something—the poor, they’re the ones, the poor.”
Two banks and several ATM machines were looted. Some of the taxi drivers claimed that they saw kids pulling money out of the ATMs, then throwing the money into the air.
The prosecutor’s office confirmed “11 dead from the mass disturbances” and “more than 70 wounded.” [The “official” death toll since raised to 15.]
Right now the hospital and the morgue are under tighter guard than even the main police station headquarters.
About 20 OMON paramilitary soldiers in full gear, with shields, are standing in attack position next to the entrance. About three dozen women and several men are gathered around. They security forces have set up a security perimeter around the entire hospital complex. No one’s allowed into the morgue, no one’s allowed into the hospital wings. No one’s allowed to see the wounded either.
The crowd’s divided into two groups: Those who came for the living, and those who came to claim the dead. They’re not letting anyone in to see the survivors; they’re not letting the dead bodies out. Then there’s a third group, the worst off of all—those who don’t know what happened to their son, their brother, their father. They’re rushing back and forth between the hospital and the police headquarters, screaming through the morgue’s gate at the attendant, then fleeing from the OMON who chases them away.
The senior OMON officer has the list in his pocket of the names of those who survived and those who died, but he refuses to release it. One of the family members tried peeking over the senior officer’s shoulder, to get a glimpse of the list, if only to get an idea of how many names were on it—only to discover that there were several sheets of paper with names on them.
“My oldest son went out looking for his youngest brother, and they shot him in the chest,” a short woman starts whispering. “Who did this to my child? Who does this to children? Never shoot people, never shoot them, never!”
“Shut your trap, idiot!” the closest OMON says. “You have two kids, and still you talk like that!”
This frightened the woman—she hurried out of there. The others went silent.
“Shame on you!” says an old woman to one of the OMON troops. “Who are your parents? Are you even Muslim?”
The OMON turn their heads from her—there’s still a taboo about cussing out an old grandmother. The crowd starts getting restive as she shouts more insults at the troops. The senior OMONets says something into his walkie-talkie, and suddenly another detachment runs out of the hospital, brandishing their shields.
Korquelle is one of the few who managed to somehow get inside the hospital that day. Korquelle lives in one of the villages just on the outskirts of the Uzen’ oil fields, but she happened to be visiting her sister on the day of the massacre. Her sister’s husband is an oil worker, so Korquelle’s sister went out to the square to join the striking oil workers demonstrating there. Korquelle arrived on the square with her sister’s daughter, a third grader, along with a whole row of kids.
“I heard the first gunshots,” Korquelle says. “I said, ‘We’re not going there.’ But my niece said, ‘Mommy’s in there!’ So we kept moving forward. When they started firing, the wounded and the dead pushed us back. I saw five people lying right at my feet. Four of them were dead, another one was still alive. As a car drove by, some people forced it to stop, and loaded the dead and the wounded into the car. I got into the car with them and we drove straight to the hospital.
“In the morgue there wasn’t any cold water to wash the blood off of the corpses. I started counted bodies. There was one girl there born in 1995, she was part of the column of school kids I first saw out on the square. And a 10-year-old boy. But I couldn’t get a better look–they wouldn’t show us the bodies, they wouldn’t let us get close. Their bodies were lying in the far corner.
“I know that they brought in three children who were burned to death in the ‘Sulpak’ store, they couldn’t identify the childrens’ remains yet because they were burned beyond recognition.
“They were stacking up one body after another. That day they brought 21 corpses to the morgue. But at 9pm, Tamila, who works in the morgue, locked the door to the main morgue room. She went home, even as they continued bringing bodies to the morgue. So some people opened up a room next door to the main morgue, and started laying out more corpses on the floor—the corpses were laid out one by one, stacked right next to each other. I stayed there until 9am the next morning, on 17th of December, and during that time I saw them bring another 43 bodies.
“I asked around for ice, but I was assured that dead bodies don’t start rotting for three days.
“As for the wounded—by lunchtime there were 340 wounded in the hospital. All with gunshot wounds, although the bullets themselves were different—mostly submachine gun bullets, but also some bullets fired from pistols, and some from heavy machine guns. There weren’t nearly enough doctors to deal with it—we helped all we could by giving as much blood as we could. Those who knew how to use a needle were enlisted as volunteers to draw blood from donors. I didn’t know how to use a needle.
“I saw how they took a photo of one boy—he’d been shot twice, shot from an armored personnel carrier’s machine gun. The doctors told him—‘Go get treated at the local clinic.’ I remember also a 16 year old girl with a head wound, but still alive. By morning, the total number of wounded reached about 400, but 17 of the wounded had already been transferred to Aktau (the regional capital, about 200 kilometers away). They’d pack three to four wounded patients into a single ambulance and rush to Aktau as fast as they could.
“Early in the morning on the 17th, the police started releasing some young boys from the police headquarters jail—the boys had been brutally beaten, two were transferred straight to the intensive care. The medics who brought them to the hospital said that when they were in the police station, they saw corpses there as well, but the police refused to let them take the corpses away. Even later, the authorities still refused to let anyone come and take the dead out of the police station. What happened to them? Have they been buried?
“My sister was in the first row out on the square when the gunfire started. She said that she was able to duck from the bullets. They weren’t aiming at anyone in particular when they fired their AKs into the crowd; instead they just sprayed the crowd with bullets indiscriminately, so was able to duck them. Her daughter, whom I brought to the square just as the shooting started, is so traumatized that she still can’t sleep. And I can’t leave their apartment.”
Would you like to know more? Read Mark Ames’ article “Megan McArdle’s Hypocrisy Exposed: Portrait of a Libertarian as a Taxpayer-Subsidized Brat”. Also read “Anatomy of a Libertard: Will Wilkinson and the Koch-Funded Nomenklatura”.
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
Click the cover & buy the book!
Read more: adijan, american security project, atlantic monthly, caspian sea, chevron, columbia journalism review, defense contractor, eric alterman, human rights watch, iraq, joshua foust, kazakhstan, kazmunaigaz, lobbying, Megan McArdle, mikhail gorbachev, neocon, northrop grumman, novaya gazeta, nursultan nazarbayev, pr, pr flak, shill, sting, tengizchevroil, troll, uzbekistan, uzenmunaigaz, Washington Post, waterboy, zhanaozen, Mark Ames, Media Whores
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135 Comments
Add your own1. Ozinator | December 31st, 2011 at 3:11 pm
BROOOTAL!
I hope this kid doesn’t off himself…well, hope is a silly word
2. Mr. Bad | December 31st, 2011 at 3:31 pm
You’d think insignificant shits like this would learn to leave off Ames, when it gets “personal” he’s at his best. The twerp is right about that Washington Post series though, Top Secret America failed at every level, considered as either investigative journalism or political broadside it failed, utterly, to inform or convince anyone, the fact that it was “award winning” notwithstanding it was mostly a vigorous PR hand-job to the dieing newspaper media empires crying out for relevance after so much compromised reportage. The NY times tried it too but with a self-shilling doc, Page One.
3. Knob Gobbler | December 31st, 2011 at 3:42 pm
I love exiled hit pieces ♡
4. Lev | December 31st, 2011 at 3:50 pm
This whore should be kidnapped, handcuffed and airmailed straight into a Kazakh prison for a little electrifying session a la Room number 6. This whore is not a part of the problem, he IS the problem. He is actually more disgusting and vile and harmful than the scum he is defending, which is saying a lot. Because it’s these mediocre, slow witted, cowardly reactionary brownshirt whores who are the real foot soldiers when it comes to dragging everything down.
Is his phone number public? His address? Personal e-mail? How about throwing feces over his fence? Spitting on his car? Peeing on his lawn? Grass-root-level biological warfare can be fun.
5. Zhu Bajie | December 31st, 2011 at 3:52 pm
How do you get a 0.57 GPA? Wouldn’t it require some effort?
6. darthfader | December 31st, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Twerps like Foust think the only way to get noticed is to suck dicks.
Unfortunately, all those posts that Foust tried to wipe – I’d imagine in preparation for upping his resume with the Atlantic – are now out there again on the non-archived Internet.
Gettin’ noticed in a different way now by all those complex information-seeking algorithms your bosses use, aren’t you, Foust?
7. darthfader | December 31st, 2011 at 4:37 pm
BTW, is post #2, Mr. Bad, is that Joshua Foust commenting after just reading this story? Or what?
8. Mr. Bad | December 31st, 2011 at 4:49 pm
@ 7. darthfader
How’s it feel behind your Maginot pay wall tough guy?
9. Miguel | December 31st, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Sadly people like Foust are all too common in daily life. That said if people like Foust lose their job they have very little to live for….
10. Phil | December 31st, 2011 at 5:54 pm
Nice takedown
11. Stephen | December 31st, 2011 at 6:12 pm
What a fucking dick-chugger. Mr. Foust has no doubt considered the irony of his name being so close to that one who sold his soul to the devil. Great Job, Ames. I’m donating money now. Gargle my balls, Foust.
12. Zhu Bajie | December 31st, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Poor Foust! He wants to be an Evil Genius but he’s only an expendable henchman! Even if he sold his soul, he’d end up with one of the cut-rate demons, like Be’elzebub or Samael.
13. mcarson | December 31st, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Thank you for helping me understand how these people work. I never knew big firms paid people to be trolls.
14. Doctor Memory | December 31st, 2011 at 7:13 pm
The Atlantic Monthly: from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to Joshua Foust, Andrew Sullivan and Megan McArdle. Has any publication ever fallen so far?
15. Bobby | December 31st, 2011 at 8:02 pm
LMAO.
You should send a copy of this to his parents.
16. G.A. | December 31st, 2011 at 8:11 pm
This article made me deeply uneasy. Not because it would be bad, it’s an excellent article, but because of what a person Joshua Foust is.
17. Zhu Bajie | December 31st, 2011 at 8:22 pm
The hair, beard, glasses, etc., look like a disguise. Do you suppose he has a fake passport somewhere, with a photo sans hair, beard, etc.?
18. DocAmazing | December 31st, 2011 at 9:39 pm
How has the Atlantic Monthly fallen.
19. Down and Out of Sài Gòn | December 31st, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Zhu Bajie: laziness probably had a lot to do with it. I knew a lot of people who coasted through school, and then discovered that university can be hard work. Some failed a subject or two; some even changed courses, and many dropped out.
I guess lack of imagination and curiosity (which are assets in PR) assisted Foust to win a 0.57 GPA. He never Googled “Mark Ames” before he did those stupid tweets, did he? Folks, if you lie for a job, it’s best to check out the opposition in case (a) they actually know what they’re talk about, and (b) like their vendettas.
Placing the “Novaya Gazeta” article at the end was a genius move. It’s not just that good journalism is an antidote to bad PR. I also prevents people feeling too sorry for Foust (as I did half way through). All pity dies away when you read about Zhanaozen. Those are the bastards he chose to represent, and to hell with him.
20. Strelnikov | January 1st, 2012 at 12:52 am
This guy, Joshua Foust, is a male bimbo….failed his first crack at college, bullshits for post-Soviet dictatorships, doesn’t seem to realize that Ames cuts bullshitters like himself to shreds with just the facts. And he has no right to complain; he sold his soul a long time ago. The only amends he can make are to liquidate everything he owns, set up a fund for the victims of Zhanaozen massacre, then jump out of an airplane without a parachute.
21. radii | January 1st, 2012 at 2:22 am
I guess I’m a troll and I’m trying to come up with an angle here to protect Joshua Foust but since I really can’t, I guess I’ll shut my fucking mouth.
22. Punjabi From Karachi | January 1st, 2012 at 4:27 am
#4 I would recommend leaving Foust alone.
As for the whole post, I’ld say:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ! ! ! ! !
23. Spoticus | January 1st, 2012 at 4:39 am
I don’t want you as an enemy.
oh and high five Ames.
24. Punjabi From Karachi | January 1st, 2012 at 4:40 am
With Pakistan turning into a complete failure
Ooooh! Please do tell & expand? Do you mean that US policy in Pakistan is a failure? Or are you saying that Pakistan is a failure? A failure that’s pinning down the entire United States Military? Now what kind of failure is that?
Talk more about Pakistan, Ames. Our teeth sharpen when we hear your voice.
25. Zog | January 1st, 2012 at 5:09 am
Reading that, I kept on getting these flashes of a gigantic silverback stomping a small boy over and over again. By the end the little pink neck was stretched like a sock.
26. AMY ALKON | January 1st, 2012 at 6:30 am
COMMENTED ON FOUST’S POST AT REGISTAN ONCE WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER AND HE WAS REAL MEAN AND UNCHARITABLE TO ME. I THINK IT WAS BECAUSE HE COULD TELL THAT I WAS GETTING PUSSY. FUCK YOU JOSHUA FOUST. I GOT TOTALLY LAID IN HIGH SCHOOL WHILE YOU WERE HECTORING RETARDED TEENAGERS ON YOUR SHITTY CIS BLOG. HAHA!
Joshua Foust: Nicht meine Mutter, sondern mein Vater hat mich geboren. Er hat mich aus
seinem Arschloch geschissen.
27. AMY ALKON | January 1st, 2012 at 6:32 am
JOSHUA FOUST
.-.
.’ ‘.
* ( 2012! )
/\ \ /
/\ /o \ /\ ‘- -‘
/ / /_ _o\ \ \ ”
\ \__.’ ‘ ‘./ / ‘
\___.—‘—___/ )
/ @ @_ __.’
/ ) _ ‘ /_/
;_-‘ _(,\__,) / /
/ \ \’uuuu’ / /
,’ “”, ‘—‘ ‘ /
/ “””,–, ,/
/ / ‘”\\\ ‘
**************
* DIDN’T GET *
* LAID *
**************
28. Sancho Panza | January 1st, 2012 at 6:38 am
oh i’m so glad my alma mater rejected this douche. if i had a degree from colorado boulder i would be burning it right now.
29. hey joe | January 1st, 2012 at 6:39 am
Hey Mark–seriously, so I’m a troll here doing PR work to protect Foust and the Atlantic Monthly, and so according to the flowchart my boss here at my PR firm told me to follow, I’m going to start off this comment here pretending like I’m a fan. That way you won’t think I’m a troll, you’ll think I’m all about “fairness” here.
Then I’m going to pretend that “in all fairness” you’re as corrupt as Foust. I’m going to ignore the fact that your newspaper was shut down by the Kremlin authorities and that you were accused by the Kremlin of “extremism” and attacked by the leader of the Kremlin Youth Group Robert Schlegel–and instead, I’m going to try to paint you as someone who was on the Kremlin payroll. It’s going to work, Foust assures me it will.
Signed,
Joshua Foust’s Mom
30. wiley-joshua-קוליק | January 1st, 2012 at 7:58 am
possibly most epic flamewar salvo in the history,like evar.
cringeworthy.
31. Sam | January 1st, 2012 at 9:13 am
Foust is the worst kind of shill: one that masquerades as some sort of critical analyst. He lambasted government employees on Twitter for complaining about the federal pay freeze, saying that they were lazy, insulated etc. as if his money didn’t come straight from the Pentagon and war profiteers (via taxpayers). He also equated Wikileaks to Murcock’s phonehacking scandal, saying that WL had “stolen” the information — as if legitimate journalistic endeavors somehow violates his caste’s god given right to lord over us plebs and send us off to massacre whatever horde of barbarians threaten their mandate from heaven because (ZOMG!) they published leaked classified documents!!! Only people like him, he said, briefly managing to extricate a 2 star general’s throbbing shaft from his mouth, should be able to look at classified documents.
32. Ilona | January 1st, 2012 at 9:37 am
Damn! That was brutal!
“…it almost makes you want to reach out and give him a hug, tell him it’s okay…” Yes. Rub it in. Oh, so gently.
Poor little bullied neocon twat, who actually don’t deserve any sympathy, none whatsoever. The waterboy has clearly chosen his side: the winning team aka the side with the money which pays his electric bills.
I just wished these kind of human specimens couldn’t laugh all the way to the bank and back.
33. Ilona | January 1st, 2012 at 10:00 am
Forgot. Sorry.
Kudos to Elena Kostyuchenko!
34. Kazakhkame | January 1st, 2012 at 10:37 am
This was an awesome take-down! For more on Foust, check out how he’s tried to backpedal and cover his ass after he attacked Ames–and now he’s trying to troll the comments section. What a weasel!
35. Whyawannaknow | January 1st, 2012 at 10:39 am
Tough call here- obviously bound for Malebolge, but which part? Don’t remember the default codes for Hell.
http://dantesinferno.wikia.com/wiki/Malebolge
Circle 8 among the false counselors?
Circle 9 with the liars, sowers of discord?
36. helplesscase | January 1st, 2012 at 10:43 am
Shock and awe.
37. radii | January 1st, 2012 at 11:27 am
I had posted:
“It seems like a lot of effort by Mark to so thoroughly dismantle this guy … maybe the effort was really to draw attention to these Central Asian despots” (or something close to that) … my point being that Foust wasn’t worth the effort of such a comprehensive take-down. He’s a weasel, sure, but a nobody
and for some reason my remarks were replaced with this by the moderator:
“I guess I’m a troll and I’m trying to come up with an angle here to protect Joshua Foust but since I really can’t, I guess I’ll shut my fucking mouth.”
Comment disclaimer says that the Almighty Exiled Censor can and will do whatever the fuck he wants to with my retarded comments. Thank you, AEC, for improving me.
38. E | January 1st, 2012 at 12:17 pm
What you have done is discover and expose one rodent in a Naked Mole Rat hive.
Registan is hosted by HMDNSGROUP.COM, which hosts many groups arguing from the security contractor point of view. So that is a bit of a tip off for me.
Also he is a fellow at The American Security Project
http://americansecurityproject.org
I suspect they employ a few barrel dregs too since one of their “experts”, Veronique Lee, is listed as an expert on Fusion.
Yep, an expert on the process that powers our solar system and gives us life. What did she do before becoming an expert on Fusion Power?
“Prior to joining ASP, Veronique was the administrative intern for the New England chapter of the French American Chamber of Commerce in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Veronique holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an International Relations Certificate from the Five College International Relations Program. She is a dual citizen of the United States and France and hopes to continue her work in transatlantic cooperation on energy and climate issues.”
Yep, she was an intern.
http://americansecurityproject.org/about/staff/veronique-lee/
English Major turned Intern turned expert on Fusion Power. Like I said, you found a hive of Mole Rats.
39. Cernunnos | January 1st, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Human rights “industry,” huh? Yeah, those groups are making so much bank it surely suggests that a profit motive is influencing them to be dishonest…. oh wait….
Gotta love this shit-eating tactic the shills like to use. The Marcellus Shale natural gas industry shills love to use this as well. Environmentalists are fanatics or hippies who “don’t know their facts.” Meanwhile, people with ties to the industry are merely “experienced.”
This is the most depressing thing about today’s generation. It is a virtue to have a conflict of interest. In fact, “confict of interest” does not even exist. If you have financial ties to the institution you defend, you are an “experienced” person qualified to speak about it. But scientific research that goes against the industry just isn’t credible to these people. Apparently grant money corrupts.
Fuck em all.
40. joe | January 1st, 2012 at 12:50 pm
@20 Strelnikov “Joshua Foust, is a male bimbo”
What are you talking about a bimbo would imply not fat and not a nerd.
41. Mason C | January 1st, 2012 at 1:05 pm
This is the most epic-gobsmack trashing ever seen, with a summation worthy of William Shirer. Yikes.
Inflicted on a human being it might evoke pity, but not Foust. He should be thrashed in the public square with a rusty motorcycle chain.
42. radii | January 1st, 2012 at 1:48 pm
ah, the Moderator is feeling feisty and in need of a little attention – Happy Fucking New Year to you too
43. Bobby | January 1st, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Can’t believe Glenn Greenwald is defending this POS. I always knew he was flawed, but im done with him completely.
The only reason I ever thought anything nice of him was cuz I heard him say good things on various progressive shows. Owell.
44. Spomer | January 1st, 2012 at 2:42 pm
I have been enjoying Ames for the last 8 years, and this is by far my favorite piece. Absolute shredding. Good work.
45. Sean the Sorcerer | January 1st, 2012 at 2:58 pm
This is impressive work. As an aspiring evil genius, I can only hope that someday I too will be the target of a Mark Ames hit piece. Of course it’s always fashionable to hate people like Mr. Foust, but unless you’ve walked a few miles in their shoes, you will probably never understand the temptation to grow a goatee, move to your nation’s capitol and seek total power over your tormentors. This is the same impulse that created the likes of Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein, and should serve as a warning to all who shun and despise the ugly little men in your midst.
46. tierbess | January 1st, 2012 at 3:27 pm
This one of Mark’s most trenchant take downs. Foust is a tool, plain and simple. I hate to psychoanalyze this miscreant, but Foust seemed way more rational and much less feisty before he came out. Chip on shoulder perhaps?http://asecondhandconjecture.com/index.php/2008/07/04/the-hated-become-the-hateful/
47. John | January 1st, 2012 at 3:31 pm
I’m sorry Almighty Exiled Censor, I’m sorry for everything
48. Eurotrash | January 1st, 2012 at 4:30 pm
For added fun, check out the guys commiserating with Foust on twitter.
I wonder why these people fixate on Ames. Suspect they see him as a father figure. Acting out, search for validation driven by a father complex, etc
49. John | January 1st, 2012 at 4:36 pm
I’m even sorry for being sorry!
50. John | January 1st, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Oh, and I meant “I’m sorry Almighty Exiled Censor; I’m sorry for everything.”
That was a comma splice!
51. ra | January 1st, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Great takedown piece. Hopefully some Atlantic editors will notice and fire him (and hopefully Jeff Goldberg).
Here’s Josh Foust’s facebook with public statuses: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002035115031
52. wengler | January 1st, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Heh. Foust linked to the whore-r stories on Twitter in some infantile attempt to defame Ames.
He is one step away from crying and running home to mommy.
53. Hannibal | January 1st, 2012 at 5:48 pm
hey you fucking fa–BEEEEEP!
YOUR RETARDED COMMENT HAS BEEN DELETED
54. Sandusky's Tailor | January 1st, 2012 at 7:07 pm
That ass clown looks like he raped a half off clothes rack at Ross dress for less in a fit of roid rage after taking a bottle of face fuzz for men testosterone pills.
Evil? Yes. Genius? In a mega-mind super neck aids kind of way. Maybe.
55. Down and Out of Sài Gòn | January 1st, 2012 at 7:29 pm
tierbess@46: squeamishness is not generally a moral failing – not unless you are someone like Joshua Foust. He’s appalled at all the IMs get got from his mates on Jesse Helms’s death, but shouldn’t he be more appalled at Jesse Helms? He was an evil mediocrity man by all accounts, and without even the redeeming features of a Strom Thurmond.
http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/07/former-north-carolina-senator-jesse.html
Perhaps his squeamishness is Washington-induced. He’s squeamish about how many people died in Zhanaozen, in the same way that the Vatican is squeamish about sexual abuse scandals.
56. Knob Gobbler | January 1st, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Fuck Greenwald. His grasp of politics is so narrowly defined by his pedantic legalism that the fool completely ignores the power differentials inherent in our economic system which enable all of the civil rights violations he otherwise rightly condemns.
He is really not much more than a gigantic waste of time to read. The only real criticism I have ever had of the exiled was the mealy mouthed praise of Greenwald in the initial rebuttal to his histrionics over Ames and Levine’s expose on Tyner’s libertard connections.
57. Rirer Capital | January 2nd, 2012 at 12:00 am
I wrote a piece on Foust in July, after the Norway massacre and his defense of “Terrorism Analysts” –great piece, never knew enough, or maybe cared, to know about his Iraq War cheerleading, no surprise. He’s a hack.
Here’s the piece for any interested:
http://kalpanishads.blogspot.com/2011/07/response-to-joshua-fousts-piece-why-we.html
58. marquis de carabidae | January 2nd, 2012 at 12:29 am
@40 he gave up his nerd card when he decided to try and become a tormentor instead of the tormented
the war nerd is a nerd, fowst is just a mimbo picklepuss
59. platitudes | January 2nd, 2012 at 1:24 am
@ Zhu
When you go for orientation at a major state college they tell everyone’s parents the first day that the only reason their child should ever get an F is if the kid never goes to class. So that leaves two choices for failure:
1) party animal (NOT Foust)
2) a geek who is computer game/internet obsessed. My forced roommate freshman year was did this (and like Foust) and was a short, fat, pimply never-ever-going-to-get-laid mope who NEVER LEFT the room.
At the time I didn’t think much about it other than it led to me to discover creative ways to jerk off, but it goes a long way to explaining Foust’s collegiate failure. Dudes in college may not kick your ass but they will call you a faggot and rub their sex life happiness all up in your scrawny pizza face. And there’s no mom to tell you to turn the damn computer off (which is what I’m sure happened when he lived at home during his community college stint, as he definitely does not seem like the type to work two jobs to support himself through school)
60. Yam Digger | January 2nd, 2012 at 3:24 am
Ames: I think you just made a new enemy for life. That said, I would hate to be on the receiving end of your (well researched) vitriol!
Sub-humans like Joshua Foust is the reason I don’t trust a lot of mainstream papers anymore. It’s amazing how people will sell their souls for a bowl of stew.
61. Yam Digger | January 2nd, 2012 at 4:24 am
Ames: I know exactly what Joshua needs. In the interest of humanity let’s get him some good quality snapper so that he can finally pop his man-cherry. We’ll fly her in from Moscow if necessary. Then maybe…just maybe, he won’t hate the human race so much anymore. Never under estimate the power of a hot chick with a tight snapper. 😉
62. harvey | January 2nd, 2012 at 5:06 am
fuck
63. fajensen | January 2nd, 2012 at 5:22 am
Obviously Mr. Foust is not doing very well.
Dollar-store clothes, shitty grooming while carrying the bloat and complexion of a man who eats far too many value-meals at his desk in the cube-farm.
There is some justice in the world.
64. Big Nose Kate | January 2nd, 2012 at 5:42 am
ra, thanks for the link to Foust’s Facebook. It appears that he whittled it down to just his CV as of Dec. 29, citing a desire for privacy (and/or a belated recognition of social networking overexposure). Even so, what remains is illuminating: a year at Toffler Associates, followed by a year and a half (’07-’09) with TSI Executive Consulting, LLC as a “human terrain systems analyst.” It is from this period, one presumes, that Foust derives his soi-disant Afghanistan and Central Asia expertise — but did he spend any time in Afghanistan? (Opportunities to go and profit surely abounded.) This followed by his time with Northrop Grumman (as “senior analyst” — of what?) and assorted punditocrat gigs. Ames has already done all the legwork here, but it bears repeating — this is an individual not only with no experience in the uniformed military, but not even any experience as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense or any other government agency where he could build genuine credentials as a national security “expert.” It is easy to sound the call for wars of choice when you never had any skin in the game and never intended to.
Contracting, we were led to believe, was a means by which the government and military could retain the skill sets of experienced individuals separating or retiring from the government or military on an as-needed and carefully circumscribed basis. Now contractors, working by definition for financial profit, are freshly minted from college — by which criteria and with what credentials we can only guess at — and never do anything else. This one testified to Congress that “government, not contracting, is the problem.” Well, he would, wouldn’t he? I wish that Foust were a unique creature, but he’s not. It seems that in today’s Washington the ethos of service has been entirely subsumed by the ethos of profit. Very sad. It is to Ames’ eternal credit that he calls these people out for what they are.
65. Hussayn Khariq | January 2nd, 2012 at 6:27 am
If you follow the link, Glenn Greenwald (of the libertarian cato institute)is merely praising one of Foust’s articles that’s against drone attacks. Which is strange because Glenn Greenwald of the Koch-founded Cato Institute normally doesn’t go “looking for” an article to praise by warmongering PR flaks. Also Greenwald was on twitter telling Foust he took his side. In other words, Greenwald thinks it’s okay for someone to shill for war-profiteers and to downplay massacres, so long as that person is not a friend of Mark Ames. Greenwald is shameless and pathetic and should spend his time defending Citizens United again.
66. Brazilian Rascal | January 2nd, 2012 at 6:57 am
Remove Ta-Nehisi Coates from the Atlantic and you can use it to line birdcages or to insulate hobos from the cold without any waste whatsoever. Between McArdle’s useful idiocy, Sullivan being a conehead trying to be an actual human being (“Why yes fellow hu-man, torture certainly is nasty. So is abusing altar boys but…umm..Tatcher Jesus ) before moving to Sully’s HIV Jamboree at the Beast, and now this chucklefuck.
Hordes of petty villains will always do way more harm than a single supervillain. Every damn time. Way harder to remove, too.
67. Trevor | January 2nd, 2012 at 8:20 am
This is why I love the eXile – they’re one of the few places on the web that calls out all the little fascist nerds. What sort of stunted man-child brags about wanting to be a super villain? What moron hires an analyst who so clearly built their world view from fucking comic books!?
And an interesting side note on that – a whole hell of alot of the guys who wrote all those “classic” comic books? Die hard randroids. I’ve read Going Postal and it’s brilliant but sometimes I wish for a full on nerd pogrom…
68. Epsilon | January 2nd, 2012 at 8:50 am
Wait, he get’s PAID for that? That’s impressive. There’s a lot of crazies out there that would do that shit free.
69. Freedom Fairy | January 2nd, 2012 at 11:26 am
Is Faust his real last name? Me thinks there’s a decent chance he opted to go with Faust as part of his post-bully-ee makeover project.
70. Marcus McSpartacus | January 2nd, 2012 at 12:18 pm
I thought eXiled had gotten all precious and childish about the comments section over the last year or so, what with all the AEC alterations. It is just the bottom half of the Internet anyway, and it seemed particularly dickish in a hypersensitive way. I remember seeing a few comments from self-described conservatives before that weren’t just trolling but actually seemed thoughtful, and the whole business just seemed like you only wanted fanboys commenting.
But Christ Almighty, if this sort of fellow really is one of many that are posting here or elsewhere… go right ahead and enjoy the Punch and Judy show, Almighty Exiled Censor.
71. Digital Lo-fi | January 2nd, 2012 at 12:33 pm
I’ve never read Rouse before this, but Greenwald leaping to his defense of twitter gave me pause. For a while I’ve been enthusiastically following Greenwald but lately his shilling for Ron Paul has given me pause. Okay, I get that Paul’s non-interventionist stance on foreign wars make him interesting to those who should otherwise find him abhorrent. Along with the hoards of Salon commentors who will get into a slugging match with anyone who doesn’t tow Greenwald’s contrarian line, it’s getting a little hard to take him at face value. Learning about the Cato association is troubling. I’m getting the sense that Glenn likes to talk to the talk without walking the walk, or at very least is willfully blind to the hypocrisy that his hardline ‘civil libertarian’ stance engenders.
So, Ames, how about an Exile smack down of this self-righteous blowhard?
72. gonzo | January 2nd, 2012 at 2:03 pm
You went easy on him. Each and every post of his blog is so incredibly embarrassing or pitiful I couldn’t continue reading.
73. Marcus Bradley Nestor -11/25/1968 | January 2nd, 2012 at 4:34 pm
From the “waffendwarf”: “who had yanked down my gym shorts and pointed and laughed at my embarassment”
wow…thats some tearful, Oprah-like full discolsure there. Its painful to read. I wince. But, i also point and laugh with the (no doubt) stoned DIO t-shirt wearing flunkies at his lil’ shrivelled “embarassment..,,as I was once one of them (in the 80s) .. Thanks for pointing and laughing with me.
74. Vendetta | January 2nd, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Nice takedown.
75. darthfader | January 2nd, 2012 at 6:32 pm
Hahaha so I see from the comments here that Mr. Bad (comment #2) is Foust. Wonder if he was dumb enough to post from a recognizable IP.
76. gatorade | January 2nd, 2012 at 9:54 pm
it’s kind of weird how if america didn’t have inequality and bullying as its culture, maybe all of these ~libertarian~ pieces of foul garbage wouldn’t exist.
Let’s create some kind of slogan to promote social programs and high taxes to prevent the creation of gross sad sack monsters.
As a sort of related point, I was always very confused how there were “royalists” in european civil wars. Like who sides with the tyrant who tells everyone what to do. But you don’t need a real king for royalists to exist, you just need some awful people in power with enough money to spread around, and plenty of gross fucks will be able to do whatever awful thing to their fellow man
77. RanDomino | January 2nd, 2012 at 10:22 pm
Fear leads to Hate. Hate is the path to the Dark Side.
78. matt | January 2nd, 2012 at 10:27 pm
This article just got posted on Naked Capitalism and the 3rd comment contains:
“Your article shows a needless cruelty toward another human being and an intellectual arrogance surrounding one’s selection of undergraduate school. Stick with the great insights backed by facts. Avoid the personal attacks and intellectual arrogance. Your anger motivates you to investigate, but here it takes you past the constructive and into a darker place.”
Ha! What a bunch of shit. Oooooooo! Ames watch out, you’re heading into a darker place! That comment is another small piece of evidence of the failings of the American left. They’re afraid to get mean. Foust deserves our contempt.
79. marquis de carabidae | January 2nd, 2012 at 11:04 pm
@67
I’ve read Going Postal and it’s brilliant but sometimes I wish for a full on nerd pogrom…
just to be safe let’s dispose of anyone who wears glasses
by the way, what do you think of yellow on red as a color combination
80. strahlungsamt | January 3rd, 2012 at 12:35 am
(From his Facialbook page)
Joshua Foust updated his work and education.
Northrop Grumman Information Systems · Senior Analyst · May 2009 to Jan 2011
TSI Executive Consulting, LLC · Human Terrain Analyst · Dec 2007 to May 2009
Toffler Associates · Consultant · Dec 2006 to Dec 2007
James Madison High School
University of Colorado at Boulder · International Affairs
81. Wyse Guy | January 3rd, 2012 at 4:43 am
You guys’ve really kicked Foust’s ego in the nads. He’s gone quite and thoughtful on twitter.
82. Wyse Guy | January 3rd, 2012 at 6:56 am
*quiet* and thoughtful on twitter.
83. Glenn Greenwald | January 3rd, 2012 at 7:29 am
I’m not surprised to see such blatant misinformation at this place.
I did not “side with” Foust. In fact, I had my own fairly acrimonious exchange with him a year ago when I wrote about his undisclosed ties to defense contractors and his friends spent days swarming me in his defense. See here:
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2010/11/30/a-salonian-beclowning/
http://www.salon.com/2010/11/30/wikileaks_10/
But I also know that Mark Ames is extremely irresponsible with his “facts.” Aside from the piece that he wrote about John Tyner that the Nation had to retract, he continuously refers to me – ever since he had to retract that article – as “Glenn Greenwald of the CATO Institute,” which is nothing but a total lie.
I’ve never been employed by the CATO Institute. I have no ongoing or regular relationship with them at all and never did. I’ve been writing about politics for 6 years. In all that time, I’ve written a grand total of 2 articles – TWO: one advocating drug decriminalization based on its success in Portugal, the other opposing the growing bipartisan Surveillance State.
To claim – based on 2 freelance articles – that I am “of the CATO Institute” – as a way of discrediting me as some sort of libertarian – is a blatant, deliberate lie (are drug decriminalization and opposition to the Surveillance State now anathema to liberal politics?).
I’ve written far more articles for The Guardian and the ACLU over the years. Why doesn’t Ames say: “Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian” or “Glenn Greenwald of the ACLU”? That would be equally false – since I’ve never been employed by or affiliated with them either – but it wouldn’t further his smear campaign.
So yes, I think Foust’s relationships are relevant, to the extent they’re accurate. I’ve written about them before myself. But the last person I’d trust to expose them is Mark Ames given my personal experience in being smeared by him falsely as “of the CATO Institute.”
THE EXILED REPLIES:
It’s hard to believe that this is really Glenn Greenwald since he makes statements here that are easily debunked and patently false, whereas the real Glenn Greenwald has a reputation for operating on a more sophisticated and intelligent level. On the other hand, this comment did come from Brasil, and even Glenn has been known to have his down days, so we’re going to go on the assumption that this really is Glenn Greenwald and respond as follows:
1. Where is the “blatant misinformation” in this article? Please back up your wildly unfounded assertions. Are you saying that there is no evidence whatsoever that up to 70 or more were massacred in Kazakhstan? Or that Chevron is a partner with the state oil company whose subsidiary sparked the massacre? Please explain.
2. We are aware of your little mini-spat with Joshua Foust, and we are aware that you would and should normally be on the opposite end of a defense-industry flak, warmonger and attack-troll like Foust. That is why we were deeply bothered—we would say “shocked” but we’re growing used to this, and have added Greenwald’s reaction to the growing ledger we’re keeping on Glenn Greenwald’s questionable ethical behavior. A principled Glenn Greenwald would not prioritize the petty hurt feelings of a defense-industry flak over defending the massacred victims in Kazakhstan and the role Chevron has in Kazakhstan’s state oil firm—instead, what we see here is this real-world, petty Glenn Greenwald placing his own hurt feelings above his supposed principles, forming common cause even with a warmonger and massacre-denier. That’s pathetic—Greenwald’s fans expect him to show a greater commitment to his principles than this.
3. Greenwald falsely claims that The Nation “had to retract” our piece about the TSA and John Tyner. In fact, the Nation did not retract that piece. The Nation did not retract the piece because all of the facts were correct. That is why the piece is still up. Will Glenn Greenwald now apologize for falsely claiming that The Nation retracted our article?
The Nation apologized to Tyner (but did not retract the piece), and the only reason why the Nation apologized was because it was forced to by a hysterical campaign led by Glenn Greenwald and his libertarian comrades. Greenwald did this without disclosing the fact that Greenwald was coaching Tyner at the time that Greenwald attacked Ames and Levine’s article in The Nation. We repeat: Greenwald was coaching Tyner, according to email threads leaked to The eXiled, and Greenwald did not disclose this. Why didn’t Glenn Greenwald disclose his relationship to John Tyner?
Moreover, Tyner has since admitted that he deceived the public and that he had in fact planned his “Don’t Touch My Junk” stunt. Did Glenn Greenwald know that Tyner was deceiving the public when he claimed he hadn’t planned his “Don’t Touch My Junk” stunt? If so, why didn’t Greenwald disclose this? Why didn’t Glenn Greenwald disclose his own deep libertarian ties, and ties to the Koch-founded Cato Institute, going back several years, when Greenwald attacked our article exposing the Koch-funded libertarians leading and fronting the anti-TSA media hysteria? Why hasn’t Glenn Greenwald apologized for not disclosing his conflict-of-interest? Also, John Tyner has come out in favor of privatizing the TSA, against unions, against gay marriage, against drug legalization and as a follower of racist libertarian Murray Rothbard, promoter of David Duke’s candidacy, contradicting the progressive Jimmy Stewart image that Greenwald painted in his article defending the Koch-linked libertarians behind the anti-TSA media hysteria.
4. Glenn Greenwald claiming he only wrote “2 freelance articles” for the Cato Institute is offensive it’s so utterly absurd. We know it. Glenn knows it. For one thing, one of those “free-lance articles” was nothing resembling a “freelance article”—it was a major policy whitepaper, a one-year massive report that included numerous speaking engagements on behalf of the Koch-founded Cato Institute. And let’s not forget, the Cato Institute was originally founded as The Charles Koch Institute of Wichita. We merely copied the phrase “Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute” from the description used by numerous mainstream media outlets across the country over the past few years. For example:
Here: http://www.ohio.com/editorial/commentary/will-republicans-take-lessons-from-british-conservatives-1.169415
“Glenn Greenwald of the libertarian Cato Institute, endorsing the California measure, notes that…”
Or here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8207584/Politicians-should-say-what-they-really-think-about-drugs.html
Moreover, as Greenwald himself knows better than anyone, his ties to the Cato Institute and the Koch-funded libertarian nomenklatura go deeper than this. For example, Glenn Greenwald was one of the keynote speakers at an elite “Cato Benefit Sponsors” event, featuring Glenn and Cato fellow P.J. O’Rourke. Who among progressives is invited as a top entertainer for the elite Cato Institute Benefit Sponsors event? Glenn Greenwald, that’s who.
But even if Greenwald’s ties to the Cato Institute didn’t go deeper, the idea that taking money from the Koch brothers for a one-year drug-decriminalization project shouldn’t be disclosed each time Greenwald attacks progressives while defending the Kochs’/libertarians’ book—as when Greenwald defended Citizens United, much to progressives’ confusion, or when Greenwald attacked our article in The Nation about the Koch-funded libertarians leading the anti-TSA union campaign—is plain wrong and ridiculous. Payoffs and influence-peddling usually comes in more subtle forms than payments marked “BRIBE.” In Russia, bankers would pay off government ministers not by giving them money earmarked “Vzyatka” but rather by giving them a “book advance” on a completely unrelated, intellectual endeavor. But even in Russia, bribery schemes like that, which clearly tie the recipient of that money to the donor of that money, led to ministers being fired. So when the Koch brothers pay for Greenwald to spend a year on a policy whitepaper, even on something as “benign” as a drug policy whitepaper, we don’t see it as benign when Greenwald simultaneously protects libertarians, defends Citizens United, and attacks journalism critical of Koch-funded libertarians.
We find it disturbing that Greenwald never said a single critical word about his benefactors the Koch brothers until a Weekly Standard interview with Charles Koch in March 2011, which finally elicited a mildly critical column of the Kochs before saying anything marginally critical of his benefactors.
We believe that when you take money from the Koch brothers and a notorious corporate-rightwing libertarian outfit like the Cato Institute, that you should disclose your conflict-of-interest when you attack the credibility of journalists who expose Koch-linked libertarians running the TSA media hype, as we did at The Nation, or when Greenwald defends the Citizens United decision against progressives, as Greenwald did in 2010, much to progressives’ confusion.
Lastly, we find it disturbing that Greenwald said in an interview that he “would also be happy to see a billionaire run without the help of either party, to “disrupt the two-party stranglehold.”
http://www.out.com/news-commentary/2011/04/18/glenn-greenwald-life-beyond-borders
4. As to why we never referred to Glenn Greenwald as “Glenn Greenwald of the ACLU” the reason is simple: We (and many other progressives) find it far more disturbing that Greenwald would take money from the Koch brothers and not disclose this relationship when discrediting critics of Koch-backed libertarians, or when defending Citizens United as Glenn has done. And we find it disturbing that when principles are at stake–a defense industry flak covering for a Central Asian despot’s massacre– versus Glenn’s personal hurt feelings and his friendships to fellow libertarians, Glenn Greenwald sides with his fellow libertarians and his petty feelings over principles.
UPDATE! Holy shit folks, you can’t make this up…Glenn Greenwald–we swear this is true, we’ll post a screenshot shortly–anyway, Glenn Greenwald actually tweeted to his libertarian comrade Joshua Foust his righteous indignation at The Almighty Exiled Censor’s patented troll-trapping policy. Greenwald called our policy, and we quote, “the most basic violation of ethical Internet journalism imaginable”. That’s Greenwald of the Cato Institute to Joshua Foust of the American Security Project, agreeing that the most, very worst of all journalistic violations is not lying, not taking money under the table, but what the Almighty Exiled Censor does here on these pages, fully disclosed. You can’t make this up, folks. Oh, how the mighty have fallen… More coming…
84. cee | January 3rd, 2012 at 7:29 am
this guy isnt an enemy, he’s a weed to be wacked down on the way through the forest. well done.
85. dogbane | January 3rd, 2012 at 9:27 am
Foust reminds me of Richard Rich in “A Man for All Seasons,” someone who would sell his soul for Wales.
86. atlas_lied | January 3rd, 2012 at 10:48 am
@75
Mr. Bad could very well be Foust. The commentary usually starts off with “libertards are idiots”, but then it morphs into remarks about people being too dumb to think, thus the elites really don’t seem so bad. Usually the PR shills have this modus operandi. Or you could catch them on a bad day and watch them go nuts.
Or he could be a paid shill from some other idiotic billionaire propaganda outlet. Doesn’t really matter, no shortage of trolls here
87. atlas_lied | January 3rd, 2012 at 10:51 am
I do have to commend Foust. He messed up at school, has no real credibility, yet he’s still at least getting paid. Sure he’s along the lines of Squealer from Animal Farm, and sure he’s probably just channeling his inner hatred, but he isn’t flipping burgers.
But then the people who flip burgers are at least being productive and leading honest lives.
88. gooficus | January 3rd, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Ames article about this dude BEEEEEP!
EXCUSE US WHILE WE SPRAY TROLLICIDE HERE…GO DEFEND YOUR MASSACRE-DENIER SOMEWHERE ELSE, DUMBFUCK
89. Zhu Bajie | January 3rd, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“but he isn’t flipping burgers.”
Flipping burgers is honest work. Shilling is not honest or honorable.
90. darthfader | January 3rd, 2012 at 3:33 pm
@86
Doesn’t matter? I’d say it matters. Foust would perhaps like us to believe it doesn’t matter if he posts here . . .
Hmmm hmmm hmmmmm, and according to Google, Mr. Bad seems to constantly comment on War Nerd stories, unfailingly attacking Brecher, pimping questionable defense technology like aircraft carriers, and deluging each thread with ignorant defense-industry technobabble.
The Foust evidence grows . . .
91. Flatulissimo | January 3rd, 2012 at 3:46 pm
I am disappointed to see that Greenwald’s comment didn’t get the full Almighty Exiled Censor re-write hilarity, but just got responded to seriously.
Yeah, sure, the Exiled’s dignified response totally demolishes Greenwald’s arguments an’ all, but where is the profanity, smart-assedness, fun, and general disregard for propriety we’ve come to expect? It’s not like Greenwald deserves to be respectfully responded to. Fuck that dude.
92. dominic | January 3rd, 2012 at 5:42 pm
hey Mark Ames, I am a nobody so theres no real reason you should reply to me, but i heard an interview with Steve Coehn (husband of the editor of The Nation, Russian studies professor at NYU) on Democracy Now! and he was talking about the protests in Russia, Putin, and the murder of the Novey Gazzyeta (butchered the spelling I know, hell Im not even sure i got the dudes name right). Anyway i was really wanting to know Mark Ames perspectives on the same topics and your/his opinions on the things this guy was saying. He sounded pretty legit, but the interview was WAY too short.
THE MIGHTY EXILED CENSOR RESPONDS:
Stop drinking and learn to fucking spell
93. dominic | January 3rd, 2012 at 6:08 pm
also, it seems to me that Glen Greenwald, if he was a legit leftist/liberal non-fascist friend of humanity, he would know that the only real way to treat PJ O’rouke and the CATO institute would be to avert his eyes and hold a croos in front of himself. He’s lost all credibility with me and WHY WHY WHY does Amy Goodman keep him around!??!?!! (see my comment on the Greenwald article)
94. dominic | January 3rd, 2012 at 6:18 pm
its fucking RUSSIAN for christs sakes!
95. Eurotrash | January 3rd, 2012 at 11:28 pm
You called out the eXile, Foust, and now the eXiled hand is bitch-slapping you across your crooked beardy mouth. It may be a weird, scat-filled type of justice, but it is justice nonetheless.
You folded fast, too. Your recent remarks have all the forlorness of a white hanky raised on the end of a stale French bread from a smelly manhole, as members of the Hitler Youth bicycle auxilliary corps (soprano division) look down with bayonets fixed.
Are you very, very sorry indeed? I’ll bet you are.
96. Mr. Bad | January 4th, 2012 at 6:31 am
@ 86. atlas_lied
the only reason you post is to give voice to your damp-pants fervor for everything Exiled, you’re a flunky suck up who has never made one intelligent comment but hastens to defend points others make because thinking for yourself is too much work – your comment has nothing to with the comment I made, just an irrelevant mishmash of your paranoid fantasies.
All I did was point out that even a broken clock is right 2x a day, and that Foust was right to point out that that “Top Secret America” was pointless and furthermore that it was illustrative of the problem with big newspapers generally, specifically the NY times, a newspaper you probably tell people you read because you’re a pretentious bi-curious undergrad @ a mid tier state school in PA. You don’t have to believe me, just whine some more but why don’t you read what a libertarian icon like Chris Hedges has to say about it, he actually worked at the times like Darth Fader does, difference is he didn’t fill coffee orders the whole time:
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_myth_of_the_new_york_times_in_documentary_form_20110706/
97. Mr. Bad | January 4th, 2012 at 6:41 am
@ 90. darthfader
hahahaha, hmmmm, hmmm, hmmm, are you lost for words schmuck? I know you worship brecher because he is the fictional 1/2 man a 1/5 man like you yearns to be but I’ve actually contributed something to the debate, it’s not technobabble just because your communications degree didn’t prepare you to understand it. Brecher (Dolan) has an interesting point of view but unfailingly misses the overall strategic picture and omits necessary technical details in order to make a more readable piece, which I appreciate, but that’s no reason not to enlarge the debate in the comment section.
98. marquis de carabidae | January 4th, 2012 at 10:10 am
Chris Hedges = Libertarian?
i knew from day one there was something screwy about him
99. atlas_lied | January 4th, 2012 at 10:30 am
Mr. Bad IS Foust. His antivillain name and his descent into rambling, petty insults is just like Ames’ psychological assessment of him.
How does it feel to suck on the teat of corrupt arms suppliers 24/7? Does internet trolling make you feel as bad as you want to be? How does it feel when countless nobodies openly deride you for being an inept, amoral, talentless propaganda hack?
Oh, and Chris Hedges =/= Libertarian.
100. tierbess | January 4th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Since the “failing up” piece, Foust’s postings on Twitter have been narrowly focused on salvaging what’s left of his shattered integrity. What a gaping twat.
101. Mr. Bad | January 4th, 2012 at 11:30 am
“Oh, and Chris Hedges =/= Libertarian.”
Christ, you’re truly stupid. No that there was ever much doubt, but thanks for writing that and removing any.
102. dogbane | January 4th, 2012 at 11:32 am
Chris Hedges: Why I am a Socialist
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_why_i_am_a_socialist/
DOH!
103. atlas_lied | January 4th, 2012 at 11:43 am
‘Cept Mr. Bad was the genius who (without hint of sarcasm) wrote that he was one.
And here’s a direct quote from Mr. Bad:
“why don’t you read what a libertarian icon like Chris Hedges has to say about it”
At any rate, how does it feel to be outed as an inept PR hack?
104. sucker for punishment | January 4th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
@97
Keep scrambling to justify the penis-extension grandeur of the United States’ military excess while it all floats down the drain, you insane clown. It’s not impressing anyone, particularly when you employ the selfsame arguments Brecher preemptively tore down in the very articles you’re so devoted to trolling.
105. DeeboCools | January 4th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Chris Hedges is NOT a Libertarian, obviously. Whoever said he was is likely trying to dick-ride on Hedges recent rise in popularity( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zotYU21qcU ) and confuse people into thinking that “there’s some good libertarians.” There’s not-a-one.
106. DeeboCools | January 4th, 2012 at 1:43 pm
You can also tell Hedges isn’t a libertarian because instead of cheering on the repression and assault on Occupy Protests like every “freedom-loving” libertarian, he was getting arrested with them.
107. deadcats | January 4th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
im surprised im the only who has found his grindr account, kind of explains the analingus bristles he has going on there well it is DC after all you can probably find him tapping his foot in rest stop bathrooms all over the metro area
108. Mr. Bad | January 4th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
@ 102., 103.,…
Way to go, nice save, your not stupid at all rather your idiocy is a special sort of cool ironic distance from the obvious. Troll harder next time.
109. Mr. Bad | January 4th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Oh and while I’m calling out retards, how about DeeboCools, a rather unique username if I do say so myself, especially when spelled with a capital “C” for COOL, if you don’t know now you know, eh? So is this you my man?
http://www.4degreez.com/disorder/forum/histrionic-personality/3784-hisrionic-schizoids/thread.html
An excerpt for those who won’t click through (posted to a sexual confusion/schizoid self help site)
“I want people to love me without having to deal with them. I feel uncomfortable but not scared in social situations, and most delighted when someone praises me when I don’t have to talk to them.
I’m posting this in the ‘schizoid’ and ‘histrionic’ forums because they are separated and I wanted to hear both sides- if there are sides. I can only see myself and this is my personality. I want love and admiration, and I want to be alone and undisturbed. I don’t think those are separate ideas.”
Get help dude, get it soon, someday the FBI will drag you out of your moms basement kicking and screaming, don’t let it come to that just get medicated, for all our sakes and since your new to “life” you ought to know I was using Hedges’ article because aside from some of the details his criticism of the NY Times could just as easily apply to the Washington Post, especially in light of their kid gloves handling of the Murdoch fiasco and general rightward turn over the years – I also thought that calling a longtime liberal/Socialist with a column on Truthdig an “ICON” of libertarianism might be considered mildly sarcastic, not even funny, but sarcastic, yes. I was wrong. I weep for the future, you retarded kids deserve what you get for being so breathtakingly stupid.
110. Mr. Bad | January 4th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Atlas_lied has some fun totally normal interests too, they mostly involve tentacle rape, but compared to what else is on the anime site he visits every day I would rank that low on the sicko-meter. Thanks for the idea of “googling”:
http://www.hentai-foundry.com/profile-Atlas_lied.php
North Cali, EMT? I’m off with location but not so much orientation, I mean I have never seen so many dicks, dicks on robots, dicks on girls, dicks on animals, dicks on dicks. It’s OK, nothing to worry about dude, it’s just a “phase”. I think the funniest shit is the “draeneis” comment on this artist:
http://www.hentai-foundry.com/profile-TheRealShadman.php
I had to “google” it, I mean, WTF is a “draeneis”? Turns out it’s something from World Of Warcraft but I digress.
An army of basement dwelling WOW cretins and Brecher, who can’t tell the difference between an Italian self propelled gun and a russian tank (good thing for IFF, pilots get fired for blowing up the wrong stuff) are somehow gifted with global strategic insight surpassing all others. Yep, just another day at the Exiled comment section think tank, time to go back to your OTHER online fantasy world you ponces.
111. DeeboCools | January 4th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Yeah, that’s totally me, and I’m not really embarrassed. I’m on lots of drinking/drug related forums with the same handle, so go look up all my posts, since that’s a good use of your time and all.
Now you’re back-tracking on calling Hedges a Libertarian. You weren’t joking, and now you’re lying to try to cover your ass.
112. Strelnikov | January 4th, 2012 at 7:03 pm
@40 I agree he doesn’t LOOK like a male bimbo, but MENTALLY he is as dumb as any blonde stereotype.
Now that Glenn Greenwald has entered the fray, I would say that the sort of idiocy that afflicts Joshua Foust also hits him hard. Very hard.
113. jimmythehyena | January 6th, 2012 at 9:36 am
In a way he’s kind of like Svejk but not at all amusing.
114. GiggleMeMrBad | January 6th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
LOL. Takedown. Meltdown. Game, set, and match. Nice work Ames.
115. Yam Digger | January 7th, 2012 at 9:45 am
Come on, Mr. Bad: Stop hiding behind the moniker and admit that you’re Joshua Foust. At least Greenwald had enough balls to post here with his real name. After seeing post about the anime nonsense that atlaslied likes to visit, I recall what Ames said about Foust posting links to Ames whore-r-stories in the old Exile paper. Grow a pair of balls, you arm-chair-warrior chicken shit, and admit to us that you’re actually Foust himself and stand behind everything you post like a man. Then again, maybe I’m expecting too much of you. It will be interesting to see what you come up with when you google my moniker.
116. Yam Digger | January 7th, 2012 at 9:57 am
…Oh, and one more thing Joshua “mr. Bad” Foust; have you popped you’re man-cherry yet? And if you did, how much did you have to pay her for the privilege?
117. Mr. Badman | January 7th, 2012 at 10:34 am
Sorry for the delay, I was blocked from posting and for good reason, this sort of flame war is probably quite boring for everyone else, especially since atlas_lied and whomever else have switched handles, and by that I mean what happened to that internet tough guy? Oh yeah, he went away, and has been replaced by ANOTHER internet tough guy who writes in the same dull, accusatory style and fails to make any point other than to initiate the same tired, hackneyed claim that I am Foust. The final, hilarious irony is that YOU are Foust, not literally but you’re obviously a shoddy thinker, ass-kisser, knob polishing nerd who never got any and spends his time playing WOW and wanking to misogynist anime because of the constant and continuing rejections from the fairer sex. Have you ever heard of Fanatic Narcissism? You should look into it, and get some help.
The Fanatic Narcissistic Pers—BLEEEP! THERE SHALL BE NO WIKIPEDIA COPY AND PASTING ON THIS PROPERTY. PROTECTED BY TROLLWHACKER BRAND TROLLICIDE.
118. atlas_lied | January 7th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
@ Mr. Bad: I’m not that guy. I’m not from California, not an EMT, not into tentacle porn or whatever. See how I easily refuted your idiotic accusation? Nothing I have written comes close to your pathetic attempt at a smear. If my exiled nickname were Ben_Franklin or Che_Guevara or Mickey_Mouse, would you have dug up other pieces of supposed dirt?
When others noticed your military contractor shilling and histrionic personality and accused you of being Foust, you resorted to cheap personal attacks and even more military contractor shilling. In short, your behavior is the same as Foust’s.
How the hell does Mr. Bad/Joshua Foust get paid to be a shill? Couldn’t his bosses have found someone better?
119. Catherine Fitzpatrick | January 8th, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Mark, you may have figured out by now if you reviewed the original source in Novaya Gazeta that Elena Kostyuchenko herself didn’t count the bodies in the morgue; she interviewed a relative of striking workers who did. [The article translated by Ames puts all of the body-counting in quotes from Kostyuchenko’s sources, so don’t make troll-idiot statements like this.]
Trolls and shills enter this site at their own risk; trolls and shills who suck up to tyrants and defense-contractors are not only banned, but may get thoroughly Fousted. Those are the rules here, fuck off if you don’t like them.
Whatever Foust and his little PR shill buddies are doing on his website to try to cover Foust’s back is of no concern to us.
Happy trolling!
120. Dilshod | January 9th, 2012 at 3:06 am
What a waste of time. Freud wouldn’t get any closer to the sort of personal profile analysis you’ve made 😉
As to the story, it’s typical KGB-type reaction, when they couldn’t kill the story they would kill the messenger.
121. YorkshireRose | January 9th, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Yeah, Foust is an unbearably untalented bullshitter. And a cunt.
122. Mr. Bad | January 11th, 2012 at 5:11 am
@ 118. atlas_lied
Oh, I think you are THAT atlas_lied faggot. What about your post on this exiled article?
http://exiledonline.com/water-wars-gov-jerry-browns-pet-public-to-private-wealth-transfer-project-is-a-go/
Your comment was:
“The HSR is another pathetic story. It’s actually needed, but right now it’s supposedly too destructive to be built.”
So what is “the” HSR? The article makes mention of how a giant infrastructure bill concerning a High Speed Rail line to link South and North Cali is concealing a public to private transfer of water resources in the form of a canal (the whole point of the article) but mentioned nowhere in the Exiled article or the article it links to in the Sacramento Bee is the generic initialism “HSR”. Also, you use the definitive article as opposed to “a” in reference to the generic initialism for High Speed Rail, together these two inflections imply familiarity and ownership. Finally, there is the reference to it being “supposedly too destructive to build”, again, not information that is found in either article and an indication that you have excellent knowledge (you write “supposedly” so you’ve obviously parsed several sources to form your opinion) of a proposed infrastructure project and it’s environmental impact, as well as it’s necessity to the California economy. But you’re not from California, right? You just closely watch and keep tabs on the subtle nuances of California’s proposed infrastructure plans.
See how easily I exposed you, again?
And stop being such a fucking whiney bitch, you love it when Ames gets personal, you can’t wait to see another little douchebag get skewered in print – how come you can’t take it when I call you out, douchebag? Ames doesn’t fuck around, he fights mudslinging with mudslinging, you’re just a stupid pussy crybaby.
123. atlas_lied | January 11th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
I shouldn’t feed the troll, but Joshua “Mr. Bad” Foust’s personality is like some psychological case study.
What’s with the homophobic slurs? Go ahead and call me a faggot and a bitch. You don’t have any credibility anyway. Interestingly, weren’t you bullied because you are gay? Did that lead to your current mindset?
BTW, your non-personal indictments don’t make sense. I commented on the farming/water baron article. I studied finance and urban planning. Upgrading inter-city rail transit is sorely needed. Yet there are various libertarian/airline/oil industry shills who argue that it’s too destructive to be built. Look at the anti HSR editorials in the media.
But instead of actually responding coherently, you’ll regress to shilling for the defense industry, then use homophobic slurs against dissenters.
124. atlas_lied | January 11th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
If you were a bit brighter, you’d see that my IP address isn’t even in the US.
125. Dimitri Ratz | January 11th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
As of January 1st Kazakhstan and Belarus’ border checkpoints as well as tariffs have been removed with Russia as EuroAsian Union came into effect. It sadens me that EAU is ignoring this, and aside from some son-in-law getting fired (and I don’t mean firing squad) it leaves the appropriate remedy absent. It’s not a suprise, as young womens rights are constantly violated at regional level in Chechnya where they are forced to dress in folklore style reminiscent of Wendish hillbillies found in Austria, and which is cool for a Renaissance Fair, but when women get paint balled wearing business causial on the streets and the Sultan there publicly praises the practice the Federation not so much as questions for fear of loosing influence. Until Russians recognize that there is no true lasting influence (like Trojans defending one woman’s right to leave a bum) unless the fundamental women’s right to wearing those nice tight shiny outfits found at New York parades Russians will just continue to get filthy rich (exceeding the current 40,000 millionaires and 117 billionaires), but without the thought that their constitution is totally followed in it’s entirety as it’s 1993 founders had intended.
126. darthfader | January 13th, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Whoa I broke Foust’s brain
127. Mr. Bad | January 14th, 2012 at 10:34 am
@ 124. atlas_lied
Nobody can see your IP except the mods, but nice red herring. It’s also true that a pro troll like you will use a proxy when posting under your various handles. But nice try, my gay tentacle porn loving friend.
128. Dr RedBook | January 16th, 2012 at 8:23 pm
It’s better read. You could focus on K+ and slamming. I am easy. But at least you have your world.
129. atlas_lied | January 17th, 2012 at 10:29 am
The awesome thing with Mr. Bad/Joshua Foust is, he has absolutely NO talent. So it’s all about desperate smear campaigns and professional trolling. He knows nothing about what his topics, but is motivated by his bosses and has a creepy OCD thing. Them gay jokes cease to be funny when YOU are the ironic idiot dishing them out.
Deep down he knows he’s full of it, but it won’t stop him from making an even bigger idiot of himself. And anyway, shouldn’t Foust/Bad concentrate on the newer takedown articles by now?
130. Mr. Bad | January 17th, 2012 at 11:37 am
129. atlas_lied
What? In your post (.123) you asked me to call you a faggot and a bitch! Now I can’t? I’m sorry,I only called you a faggot because you love shemale anime dick-porn and a bitch because you whine like a punk-bitch. The comments are filled with lots of homo ranting from your aliases darth_fader and deeboCools, but now when it comes to your precious human feelings you’re suddenlt a PC crybaby. Awwwww, so sad.
It’s fun how you’ve started to accuse me of mental illness (histrionic/OCD) after I correctly pointed out that you have all the traits of fanatic narcissist, it’s a phenomenon called “mirroring” found when Narcissists get cornered and are revealed to be brain dead losers, they’re pitiable ego can’t handle it and they respond with the emotional equivalent of “I know you are but what am I”.
I love this sentence too:
“Them gay jokes cease to be funny when YOU are the ironic idiot dishing them out.”
Now, what does that mean exactly? Besides the obvious fact you are a stupid mook as the construction “ironic idiot” makes no sense. It’s obviously a Freudian slip written out in sheer, impotent fury, it really means:
“Them gay jokes cease to be funny when ironically I’m not the no longer the one dishing them out.”
U mad? Remember it’s down the road not across the street:
http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0912/when-cutting-emo-stupid-gay-demotivational-poster-1260323746.jpg
131. Mr. Bad | January 18th, 2012 at 9:57 am
Hey buddy where did you go? Here I’ll post for you:
atlas_lied @ Mr. Bad
You are foust, you are OCD, you are shill, you are a military industrial jerk, you are not Ames best friend, you do not like homosexuals, you hurt my feelings, brecher is always right…
Got it. The funny thing is the comment I made that started the legions of but-hurt punks’ posting’s was against the Washington Post and its well known rightward turn and utter irrelevance, I never defended Foust – and neither you nor any of your burger flipping, basement dwelling minions even attempted to challenge my statement, only attacked me personally.
I think that fundamentally all this is about the fact I posted .2 in the thread and my comment wasn’t an unadulterated verbal blowjob for the fan-boys to lather each other up with and cheer each other on.
DOES THE AEC NEED TO STEP IN HERE BEFORE YOU TWO START SPILLING PATHETIC TROLL TEARS ALL OVER MY COMMENT SECTION? I’D LIKE TO REMIND YOU THAT THE AEC MAINTAINS A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY FOR TROLL JUICE…
132. RPG Cunthair | January 26th, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Hey, this may be late in the day. Lay off Glenn. He is a good guy. Feel free to fuck Foust. He is a cunt.
133. Light Blue | February 1st, 2012 at 11:53 am
Glenn Greenwald of the Cato institute just happens to (A) run interference for and (B) take money from the same billionaire Libertarian interests. But that’s just a coincidence, not a quid pro quo. I know this because I have the assurance of the renowned “RPG Cunthair” that he is a “good guy”.
Good for what, exactly?
134. Hairy man | October 13th, 2013 at 9:43 am
Foust might have gotten those links taken down with a request to archive.org. Really contextualizes the grounds for being deemed an “expert” on national security when you look at this unintelligent clown repeating what his peers say
135. art | May 24th, 2016 at 5:17 pm
We all know the Iraq war was based on lies, and deceit, and sold as a mix bag of shite to the world. Now many years later with the fact that 911 has ties to Saudis in the 28 pages of the commission report, while the Saudis are freaking out using their own brand of threats towards the US and claiming they did 911.. it all become clear, that the war mongers, like this war criminal “GW Bush” and “Tony Blair” who were found guilty of war crimes, while other war criminals like Joshua Foust may just find themselves being investigated for war crimes themselves as propagandist. They all in the end get their just deserve justice anyhow, one way or another, as it all comes out in the wash, when they trip over their own lies after lies and then have to lie further to cover up their last bag of shite. One day you will read how the Joshua Foust’s was found in a dark deep hole and somehow died of a strange accident
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