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Hysterical Western Media Hype Flimsy Cyber War Against Estonia

By Mark Ames and Alexander Zaitchik, The eXile. Posted June 2, 2007.


By hyping the so-called first massive cyberstrike by a superpower on a tiny, defenseless neighbor, the Western media have played into a sleazy Estonian PR stunt, designed to deflect the world's attention from the country's mistreatment of its Russian-speaking minority.
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There's been a lot of bleating in the West lately about Putin stomping on the last remnants of Russia's free press, but after witnessing Western coverage of last month's cyber-attacks on the websites of Estonian banks and government offices, it's hard to say how the Western press is superior or even much different from the sleaziest Kremlin mouthpieces.

By now everyone and their iGrandma is quaking in their workstations over reports of "the world's first massive cyberstrike by a superpower on a tiny and almost defenseless neighbor," as Newsweek delicately described the attacks. Most outlets' versions were slightly more subtle, emphasis on "slightly." For example, this May 17 ABC News lead paid minimum lip service to journalism ethics:

Estonia: Ground Zero for World's First Cyber War?

By Tomek Rolski

It didn't take long for the problem to be diagnosed as a cyber-attack by another country or a very well-organized entity.

While no one at this stage will point blaming fingers at any one country, Estonians have little doubt that it's Russia taking revenge.

But some were willing to point "blaming fingers." Multiple, throbbing, blaming fingers. For the Washington Post, the story worked like a megadose of Cialis. The daily published not one, not two, but three denunciations of "Kremlin cyber-attacks on official Estonian websites," in the words of Post opinion page editor Fred "Bomb Iraq Now!" Hiatt.

And who could possibly suspect the Estonians of being the world's biggest cyber-bullshitters? What motive could the poor beleaguered Estonians possibly have for hyping the storyline of a Kremlin plot? Everyone knows that the Russkies are liars, but the Estonians? They're so cute 'n cuddly and vulnerable! And they all bank online!

If Estonia was in fact the victim of a Kremlin-coordinated attack, as Tallin first suggested and many reporters took on faith, then the cyber-assaults represent a serious incident indeed. Estonia is a member of NATO, and according to Article V of the NATO charter, alliance members, including the United States, are obliged to respond to an attack on a member state. While NATO doctrine is not clear on whether cyberwar constitutes a trigger for Article V -- or even what constitutes cyberwar -- to bring up collective security and Kremlin aggression in the same breath has dead-serious implications. And so it gave us pause when the Washington Post editorialized against "Russian President Vladimir Putin's … flagrant if novel aggression against a peaceful state."

That the attacks were neither flagrant nor novel didn't slow down Post/Slate columnist Anne Applebaum, who a few days after the Post editorial all but expressed disappointment that U.S., British and German forces weren't already carving up their occupation sectors in Smolensk, Pskov and Vologda. Applebaum admits that while the perpetrators of the cyber-attacks "aren't exactly unknown, their identities can't be proved, either." It's sort of like a known unknown that's really a known known. But even though their identities "can't be proved," Applebaum is quick to raise the specter of Article V, slamming what she considers NATO's slack response "despite the alliance's treaty, which declares that an armed attack on one of its members is 'an attack against them all.'"

"Armed attack," Anne?

It wasn't just usual suspects like the Post and the U.S. networks that jumped on the Kremlin cyberwar bandwagon. Even the Guardian included the cyber-attacks in an editorial litany of Russian polices toward Eastern Europe, taking for granted a Kremlin connection and thus raising disturbing questions about the appropriate NATO response.

But what if Estonia's original claims of Kremlin involvement are wrong? What if the Western media swallowed a hook that made no sense? What if, say, the Washington Post wrongfully accused a country of aggression, suggesting America and its allies should respond with vigor, even if the case against that country "can't be proved"? Surely the Post had learned its lesson from the WMD fiasco, when it pushed incessantly for Bush to attack Iraq on the basis of unproven claims of WMD stockpiles and programs. No way would the Post, or the rest of the media, make that same mistake twice!

We decided to do what journalists are supposed to do in a story this serious: We called up some cyber experts who don't have Estonian last names and aren't "unnamed NATO sources." What we wanted to check was Estonia's "evidence," which consisted of a list of IP addresses of the computers that bombarded and shut down their sites, including one IP address in the Russian presidential administration.


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See more stories tagged with: cyberwar, russia, estonia

Mark Ames and Alexander Zaitchik are editors of a Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile. Ames is the author of "Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond."

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Mistreatment
Posted by: suprmark on Jun 2, 2007 3:58 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Yup, Estonia needs all the help it can get to distract the world from its requirement that anyone who wants Estonian citizenship should speak Estonian!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» RE: Mistreatment Posted by: willymack
» RE: Mistreatment Posted by: LeftCoastProgressive
» RE: Mistreatment Posted by: in Upstate NY
Hypocrisy... hypocrisy... hypocrisy...
Posted by: hanz on Jun 2, 2007 4:05 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I just love hypocrisy. Isn't is nice to take three papers, on first we write how bad other newspapers are because they only ask one side, on second we do the same thing that we accused other newspapers of, only this time we ask only the other side because well, we cannot trust anyone with Estonian last name and on third page we copy-past some nonsense statements taken from Putin-run newspapers without facts to back them up, or do you actually have any facts to back up the claim that human rights are being broken in Estonia? If not having russian as our second official language is breaking of human rights then most of the countries in the world are breaking human rights. Or what would you have done with those rioting russians? Nicely asked them to not throw you with rocks and stop breking windows of shops and stealing everything in there? Actually they were asked nicely at first, but that didn't works, so something had to be done, otherwise there woudl be no Tallinn today. And just so you would know, that is how riot police works in every country, in France and Germany, in UK and even you dearly beloved Russia, but word of advice, you don't want to be in wrong place at wrong time in Russia, because Estonian riot police is nothing compared to Russian militia.
You should really thing about becoming a politician because politicians also love hypocrisy.

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normpink
Posted by: normpink on Jun 2, 2007 7:20 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This article is a bunch of S..t. The Russians over ran Estonia during WWII and made slaves of the population. Who is writing these articles?
Former communists or Russians. I deeply resent this Russian propaganda being published by Alternet. Poor Russia getting picked on by tiny Estonia. The Estonians finally have freedom and are expressing pent up frustrations for the last 50 years of Soviet domination.

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» RE: normpink Posted by: LeftCoastProgressive
» Russia ran over Estonia 50 years ago? Posted by: Swedish liberal
» Russia ran over Estonia 50 years ago? Posted by: Swedish liberal
» RE: normpink Posted by: hilaryuk
What's next? A long article about the Germans expelled from
Posted by: albrechtkrausse on Jun 2, 2007 7:29 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
the Baltics, Poland, the Sutenland, Danzig (Gdansk), Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad), Bohemia, Solvakia, etc Post-WWII? I know this is popular in some circles in Germany but, get over it. When a country abuses, invades, and exploits another country to such an extent as Germany did in WWII (and as the USSR has done to the Baltic countries) you can't expect that, once the occupation is over, to be treated as royalty!! Russians go home!

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Hysterical Alternet anti-Estonian screed.
Posted by: Tellsomebody Tom on Jun 2, 2007 8:41 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
During a 1989 visit to Estonia, then still a captive of the Soviet Union, we stopped on the way home from an afternoon drive at a small-town churchyard 30 or so miles east of Tallinn. My mother and a cousin were expressing amazement at a stone obelisk about 7 or 8 feet tall, carved with names and dates- late 19-teens and early twenties- apparently a memorial for locals who fought in (and won) the independence war against the Soviets. There was a big crack near the top of the obelisk where it had apparently been broken off and cemented back together.

When I got my mother and cousin to calm down and translate their Estonian into English for me, they said their astonishment was that this Independence War memorial was standing up there in the open. Such things had been outlawed since 1944. In 1989, the Estonian flag was only just beginning to be flown openly for the first time in nearly 50 years.

After a few minutes, we saw a worn-out looking man, probably in his 60's, tending a grave in the churchyard, and my mother and cousin asked him about the monument. Again, I had to wait for a translation from Estonian. He said the monument had just been reiinstalled in the past few weeks, after 'sleeping', broken in two, buried under the floor of a barn or farmshed for forty five years. Russian soldiers had broken the monument in 1944 as they re-occupied Estonia, and some locals, very much at the risk of their lives, had stolen it away the next night and buried it in the barn.

This local man also told them a little bit of his story. He had been one of the ten's of thousands of Estonians loaded into cattle cars in a couple of deportation waves in the 1940's and dumped off somewhere in the east to serve as slave labor in a copper mine. Others went to Siberian forest camps or worked on huge canal projects in the north. He was young and healthy and lucky enough to be one of the relative few to return, coming back to Estonia in 1956.

Could the Estonians have handled the statue issue better? Perhaps. The surprise is, given their history, and when one considers how other countries have handled ethnic issues (can you say Yugoslavia?) that they didn't handle it and other issues since 1993 worse. The Soviet bronze statue that caused riots in Tallinn, and perhaps the 'cyber war', was moved to a soldier's cemetery away from the center of the city. The Estonian war memorials were broken, machine gunned, and destroyed.

Whatever the legitmate criticism that MIGHT be due the Estonians and the western media, this article strikes me as being quite a bit more hysterical in the other direction. (sleazy Estonian PR stunt?? Estonian PR goons?? How about the goons at the Estonian embassy in Russia who had the Russian police idly stand by and watch as a Russan mob physically threatened the Estonian ambassador who had to be protected by Estonian security? )

A sober look at Estonian flaws? Certainly. A fact-based investigation into the origins of the cyber attack? By all means. But we have neither in this hysterical anti-Estonian screed written by a couple of morons too ignorant of Estonia to even know how to correctly spell the name of the capital city. (It's Tallinn, with two "n's.")

Tom Klammer
host, "Tell Somebody" www.kkfi.org

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Russia and Estonia
Posted by: The Populist on Jun 2, 2007 9:34 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I can imagine that Estonia has a serious beef against the Russians. In 1940 the Russians made a deal with Hitler and got Estonia as part of the deal. The Estonians fought against the Russians in WW2. There was an Estonian Waffen SS Division. If I was Estonian, I wouldn't want anything to do with the Russians. This article is not very informative, more like a rant.

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Why the cheap shot?
Posted by: PeaceLove on Jun 2, 2007 9:55 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Nice article, but why the cheap shot at Sophia Coppola? You take the reader out of your story for an irrelevant swipe at a serious artist you apparently don't like.

Was that really necessary?

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I thought the article's point was the msm's stupid journalism?
Posted by: Sojourner on Jun 2, 2007 9:54 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Yes, the article here did refer to some possible motivation for setting-up Russia for blame; it said Estonian sympathizers might have wanted to change the subject in order to secure Western sympathy and protection.

Most of the stuff upthread shows how likely that was. Thanks for demonstrating the writer's allegations.

However, the point remains that the DoDS incident has so little likelihood of being a government sponsored Russian effort that "sloppy" Western journalism rides again. We can't do much about what Estonia claims. We should do something about American journalists who can't write their way out of a paper sack.

Is there some annual award for the worst journalism of the year? I suppose the candidates are so numerous it would take too long to reach a decision.

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Is someone trying to revive the Cold War?
Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Jun 2, 2007 11:09 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This article adds to a number of curious events taking place over the past few years that makes one wonder if the US wants to go back to the pre-1989 days of the Cold War.

Take Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning by polonium and the British claims that it was the Russians - Condoleezza Rice... denied that a new Cold War was afoot. "I don't throw around terms like new Cold War," said Ms Rice, a Soviet scholar...

It just doesn't make any sense that a government would use something as obviously traceable as polonium to kill someone, especially in another country. However, if someone wanted to create an 'international incident', that's exactly what they'd do.

Take also the recent proposal by Bush&Co. to place missle defense in Eastern Europe on the Russian border. This is a deliberately provocative action, and missle defense systems just don't work, though they do provide hugely lucrative contracts for the military industrial academic complex - see MIT Professor Alleges Missile Defense Coverup, Claims university is stalling investigation 2005

See also Bush Getting Bored with Middle East; Trying to Restart Cold War with Russia, Buzzflash

Why would Bush be upset with Russia? Russia is now rolling in oil money, unlike the old cash-strapped Soviet Union - an indirect consequence of the Iraq War. An decent overview can be found at the Miami Herald.

Is the empire crumbling? Russia and Venezuela are going their own ways; the EU is dependent on Russian oil... India and China seem headstrong but are tied to the US economy (bad idea, guys)... the US wants to go into Africa in full neocolonial attire, but the locals don't seem happy about it.

Imagine a world without superpowers, but rather with a balance of power. Unfortunately, it's still all based on the control of fossil fuels - and that's the main issue that's preventing the widespread adoption of solar power technology. Geopolitical power is based on the ability to control the physical power supplies, after all.

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Most people can barely turn their machine on and off without calling help desk to...
Posted by: ateo on Jun 2, 2007 12:45 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
do it for them, so don't expect them to be able to digest any news of this sort on their own.

These things are so far beyond the scope of the average person to understand that they have no choice but to accept at face value what the media tells them.

Hackers anyone? lol

The layman is at the mercy of the technocracy that controls all of the information traffic and storage around the world, either educate yourself to the point where you can understand the basics or learn to live with it.

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» Your reply supports my opinion Posted by: ISlamIslam
Bring Putin and Russia "In Line"
Posted by: sofla100 on Jun 2, 2007 2:28 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
While Washington continues to use the same playbook from 30 years ago, Russia has been moving forward. As for bringing Putin to heal, he is not going to be persuaded to support an invasion of Iran nor the Iraq debacle, no matter how much Washington tries to turn the screws. Obviously, encircliing Russia by bringing former Soviet bloc countries into NATO and wanting to build "anti-missle" sites in some of these same countries, is not going to appear as very friendly behavior. Now, no matter what Washington says, Putin retains enormous popularity within Russia. Even many of his critics at least respect him. If you have been to Russia, you would know its not the country it was during the Soviet era, nor will it be again, but, it still has enormous challenges ahead of it. And, the Russians have to decide for themselves the best ways to deal with change and modernization. The American way, to just install a ruling, well-moneyed, corporate elite, doesn't sit well with many Russians, they prefer something more egalitarian. Especially after Russians saw that some of this same "elite," as it formed after the collapse of the USSR, wanted to rape the country of its natural resources by selling them off on the cheap to Western companies. Well, Putin put his foot down, and this, along with him (Putin) not going along with Washington (and Tel Aviv) on foreign policy "requirements," has resulted in a robut American "divida and conquer" (with former Soviet bloc countries) approach. One which, I believe, is doomed to fail.

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This article is disgusting
Posted by: lil bird on Jun 3, 2007 9:49 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I usually like Alternet but this article is a piece of hysterical, unsubstantiated trash. If you choose to charge Estonia with 'human rights violations', it would behoove you to actually provide some evidence - just because Russia repeats it incessantly does not make it true.

Estonia has actually done an admirable job of respecting its Russian minority given its own brutal treatment at the hands of Russia in the past. Many nations would have retaliated against the people for the acts of their nation, but Estonia has not. It should be noted that the requirement that a country's citizens actually have some command of the official language is hardly a novel idea, and neither does it constitute a human rights violation.

If the official 'cyberattack' story is wrong, by all means please do report it and explain your reasoning. However, hateful racist characterizations of Estonians as 'sleazy' and otherwise should have no place here, and any charges of human rights violations need to be backed up by facts.

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"Sleazy" is author who can't spell place names
Posted by: pklammer on Jun 3, 2007 1:08 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Who's the sloppy writer, or lazy editor, who can't even spell a national capital correctly, over and over?

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» It's spelled... Posted by: Joshua Holland
» RE: It's spelled... Posted by: in Upstate NY
» RE: It's spelled... Posted by: Joshua Holland
» RE: It's spelled... Posted by: in Upstate NY
What I Don't See...
Posted by: apophenia_monkey on Jun 3, 2007 1:23 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...is anyone--and forgive me if someone did--pointing out the lack of security in kremlin/russian networks.

fer the luv of gawd! any gov't with a penetration level detailed in this report needs some SERIOUS help! if any script kiddy with two brain cells can zombie gov't machines and launch a DDoS then someone, and i dont' care who, needs to really take a look at that security.

russia has a standing army, something of a navy, an airforce, and bombs! lots and lots of bombs. if their gov't secure networks are so easily compromised they need to be unplugged.

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Estonians cuddly?
Posted by: in Upstate NY on Jun 4, 2007 4:06 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As someone with an Estonian last name, I was truly surprised to see Estonians called cuddly? Cold, remote, icy, forbidding, yes; cuddly, never.

That aside, why so angry. These journalists may have gotten their facts right, but I was unable to tell because so many emotions were flying about. They may be Western journalists writing from Moscow, but they have certainly adopted the Russian style of hysteria with regard to anything Estonian.

I sincerely doubt that NATO would drop bombs on Russia if it were found to be the author of the cyber attack on Estonia that did happen. It was the Russians that attacked the Estonian diplomats because a statue was being moved to a military cemetary, not something I think of as grossly insulting. It is the Russians that put learning Estonian on par with such human rights violations as torture. (The Russian children in Estonia are NOT required to attend Estonian-language public school.)

On the other hand, Estonians have been slaves for 700 years, shaking off those shackles under Tsar Alexander II in the 1860's. They did win independence in 1919, and the Russians have been hysterical ever since: authoring a failed putsch in 1923, successfully invading in 1939 and again in 1944.

Doncha know that the Estonia "belongs" to Russia? And anything else is turning the world upside down.

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Unbelievably
Posted by: jpjmarti on Jun 4, 2007 6:57 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
idiotic and ignorant rant against Estonians! While I usually enjoy alternet articles, as a balance against poorly informed mainstream articles, this article was horrible. I live in Finland, close to Estonia and have become used to the regular Russian bullying its former satelites. This behavior has gotten systematically worse during Putin who is systematically trying to create external enemies to justify or distract from oppression inside Russia. The human rights violations of russian speaking people in Estonia are non-existent and requirement of being able to speak at least some official language of the country before granted citizenship hardly constitutes torture. (Even though it is a difficult language).
Most of the russian speaking minority moved into Estonia after the Soviet invasion on 1944. Russians call this "liberation". While it is technically true that this was a liberation from the nazis, it practice it just replaced one tyranny with another. Only those European countries which were not occupied by the Soviets, were free after the war.

The cyber attact against Estonia was most likely not directly done by Russian administration. It would have been much worse if that had been the case. But remember, when Putin wants his opponents beaten up, he often lets his youth militia do the beating while the police stands by (and often arrests the opponents after the beating).

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BS
Posted by: jama on Jun 4, 2007 1:34 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm not the least bit surprised since the author, Mark Ames, is known for his anti-Baltics attitude. He recently published an article called "Burn, Baltics, Burn!" in the Exile.

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» RE: BS Posted by: in Upstate NY
chornyvolk is a homo
Posted by: chornyhomo on Jun 4, 2007 2:21 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
He likes licking the ass of Polacks and Estonians.

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Tell Somebody Tom
Posted by: Tellsomebody Tom on Jun 4, 2007 8:05 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I have been a regular reader of Alternet for some time now. I like the site so much that for a couple of years now, I think, I have had it set as the default site for my browser. I get on the internet at home, the first thing I see is Alternet.org.

I have found a very consistent mix of intelligent, thoughtful, relevant articles on the most important issues of the day. That is why I am doubly disappointed and very confused at seeing an article like this disturbed rant about Estonia appearing anywhere on Alternet, much less being the most prominently featured article on the site all weekend.

There is some 'something' in common in some otherwise very different groups of people, like the Nazi's who engineered holocaust against the Jews, and those people today who smear with the epithet "anti-Semite" anyone who has the least criticism of ANYTHING the right-wing Israeli government does to Palestinians. It is in common with the the American whites who lynched blacks in the United States, and with the most rabid flag-waving American warmongers and torture advocates who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's in the aftermath of their liberation from the tyrant that the U.S. uber-flag wavers' political heroes propped up when he, this very same tyrant, was "gassing his own people".

And it is in common with the deliberate Soviet policies of famine visited upon Ukrainians and others leaving millions of them starved to death and some, as seen in some old photo's I can't erase from my memory, driven to cannabalism.

Any doubt that this vile, sick commonality is evident in the hearts and minds of the authors of this piece is completely erased in reading the "Burn, Baltics, Burn" piece by Mark Ames that another poster here linked to. ( http://www.exile.ru/2007-May-18/burn_baltics_burn.html )

Joshua Holland, I don't know you, don't know that much about you, but as a casual reader of this site for some time yours is a name that has become somehow familiar, and the impression of you from this period of casual reading had been very positive. Is this just a one-time aberration now, or should I go back and read your work more carefully to see what I missed?

Why on earth, Mr. Holland, did you not post an apology for publishing this sick piece of hate speech, rather than an incorrect, pathetic, rather irrelevant defense of the (as likely intentional as ignorant) misspelling of the name of the capital of Estonia?

Shame on you, Mr. Holland. Unlike Mr. Ames, better is expected of you.

Tom Klammer

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» RE: Tell Somebody Tom Posted by: Joshua Holland
» RE: Tell Somebody Tom Posted by: pklammer