*Happy 5th of July! Let's study recent political meltdowns in the USA and examine their electronic elements!
*First, Senator John Ensign of Nevada. Senator Ensign ruefully announced that he had an affair with a staff member – not because of sudden remorse for his affair, but because the offended husband, also a member of the Ensign staff, compiled a damning dossier about Ensign's activities and leaked it to the right-wing press.
*Partisanship is now so toxic in the US that rightwing leakers feel compelled to leak sex scandals to their own pet press, rather than leak it to what they consider the entirely savage "main stream media." They consider this a mercy, the classy way to handle a sex leak.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jun/19/we-have-suffered-indescribable-pain/
Near the end of the two-page, single-spaced document, he (((the injured husband/leaker))) noted: "I could have sought the most liberal, Republican hating media to expose this story, but there are people's lives at stake and justice is about proper process as well as outcome. Senator Ensign has no business serving in the US Senate anymore!" (((I want you to imagine a future America where "proper process" involves the proper crafting of mini-Lewinsky scandals rather than any proper processes of actual law or governance.)))
(...)
In his letter, Hampton (((the husband))) said he sought Fox News’ help out of desperation.
"It appears there may be nothing the law can do to correct and bring justice and restitution to this terrible wrong that has been done us," he wrote. "I have sought a number of lawyers who are having difficulty finding charges that may hold up in court."
Hampton said he understood the story was difficult to believe, but he added that there was a paper trail, phone records and witnesses to corroborate the allegations.
(((Mr Hampton carefully collated all this evidence for the use of Fox media.)))
"It is my belief we are dealing with a very powerful person and institution in the U.S. Senate that only the media can pierce to expose the wrong and bring light and focus to what needs to be done.
"Please help me! This should not be how the leadership of our country should be allowed to behave. I need justice, help and restitution for what Senator Ensign has done to me and my family." (...)
Ensign’s sudden acknowledgment of the affair continues to create fallout in the nation’s capital and Nevada.
(...)
The affair with Cynthia Hampton occurred while she, her husband and their adult son were all on the senator's payroll. (((One has to wonder about the psychological dynamics of this feudal entourage.))) She was Ensign’s onetime campaign treasurer and the former treasurer of the senator’s Battle Born Political Action Committee.
Unnamed sources cited in various media reports (((centipede/bimbo-eruption brigade))) initially raised the specter of extortion as the reason for Ensign's news conference, but Metro Police and the FBI said they were not investigating. Ensign’s office on Thursday declined to say today whether the Hamptons sought any money to keep quiet. (((Hampton wasn't asking anybody for yet more money, he's an upset insider who probably believes in Ensign's Christian rightist "Promise Keeper" rhetoric. But why didn't he confront the Senator privately, and resign on principle (along with his son)? Why fight this out in front of cameras in a massive rupture of privacy? Because that's contemporary politics; that's how he was trained as a modern Senate staffer.)))
(((Meanwhile, Governor Sanford of South Carolina gets outed for having a South American mistress. Somebody hacked her email account and passed their correspondence to the political press in the South Carolina state capital. A classic centipede tactic: but who did it? Sanford didn't out himself; he was mousetrapped. How? Why? Rumor said a jealous South American boyfriend, but Maria Belen Chapur apparently says otherwise.)))
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/70932.html
Here's what Sanford's lover wrote to Argentine journalist
This is the e-mail sent by Maria Belen Chapur to Eduardo Feinmann, a journalist with Argentina's C5N television, as published on the television station's Web site. It was translated from Spanish by McClatchy's Mark Seibel.
Dear Eduardo:
I've decided to send you this communication, which will be the only one, to clarify certain incorrect things that are being said and in that way put an end to the subject that, as you can imagine, is a huge source of pain for me, my two children, my whole family and the good friends, men and women, whom I've gathered throughout my life and who have always been with me.
1. Of my private life I won't say anything, now or in the future. It's been made public enough already, a fact that causes me terrible discomfort.
2. I deny categorically that the person who hacked my "Hotmail" was the friend with whom I shared some days in Brazil during the Rolex Regatta. This friend, as everyone can read in my emails, is a most excellent, respectable and honorable man incapable of doing such a thing. Not only is he not the author of this perverse act, but he also was a victim. In December 2008, the e-mails were sent to him as well as to The State newspaper, anonymously by whoever hacked them.
3. My Hotmail account was hacked around the 24th of November through an old e-mail account provided by an Argentine company. I filed a complaint then with both the Argentine company that was still hosting my old account, and Hotmail.
I was able to shut down this old account and recover my hacked Hotmail on Dec. 8, after answering a long questionnaire sent by Microsoft. All this is on file with Microsoft as well as the Argentine company. I have in my possession all the complaints I sent to Microsoft and all the responses; Microsoft responded to my problem quickly and efficiently. Due to the seriousness of my complaint, the Argentine company, by phone, made an exception and immediately shut down this account, even though it wasn't in my home.
3. (sic) Finally, I have a firm suspicion of who did this great act of damage, which was aimed at me specifically but at the same time destroyed the lives of so many others. Since I don't have sufficient proof and live in a country of laws, I'm obligated to keep their identity anonymous. I'm no one's judge; I leave all that in the hands of God.
María Belén Chapur
(((Ms Belen Chapur may have her firm suspicion about her own enemies, but I kinda wonder why the enemies of some minor Argentinian businesswoman would want to methodically destroy the Presidential aspirations of the Governor of some remote American state. And do that so swiftly and effectively, too. It's not like this lovelorn Argentinian has been the guy's mistress for 15 years. Sanford engaged in some weird machinations to get down there, spent three nights in a hotel and got hammered immediately on his return. My suspicion? Somebody was watching the Governor's computer for quite a while now. They didn't release its hacked contents, because that's 87 kinds of GWOT cyberwar. However, they cracked open the girlfriend's account using the good old Palin method, and had that wrapped up with a ribbon for domestic consumption as soon as the guy committed his blunder.)))
(((Anybody gonna bother to investigate that? Or are they content to leave vengeance in the hands of God (while the next victim Governor awaits the same tactic)?)))
(((Next, Sarah Palin, the American politician nobody anywhere can ever figure out.)))
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/exec-column.php
*((Gotta put First Things First))* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8134807.stm
