Propaganda intrusions place unique burdens on blog helpdesks. To begin with, our “hobbyist” political sites are not set up to deal with coordinated attacks. Defensive procedures are generally ineffective. Then secondly, where accounts are taken over for use by the China’s “8-cent-a-comment” propaganda employees it is not unusual for email burglary to be in the mix. Their attacks come in claiming high-status sourcing from Ph.D.s, medical doctors, or scientists as based on identity theft felonies. Reporting the substantive crimes is a big deal.

Unfortunately, helpdesk advice at The Great Orange Satan (as the site is called, affectionately) can be far off the mark with respect to notifying victims and the proper authorities:

“Why in the world would you be contacting (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) before contacting us? That is creepy behavior and really inappropriate.”

When did it become “inappropriate” to report a crime?

Oak Ridge NL is all about protecting their employees, which I know first hand from similar procedures at Lawrence Berkeley NL and other federal facilities. Helpdesk at our Great Orange Satan could not be further off from giving sound advice.

Identity theft was ongoing in this incident and a federal email address was being misused. Yet the helpdesk refused to comprehend that these acts can be felonies.

Over at this progressive blog we had seen a full-blown campaign arrive out-of-the-box from China to attack the book “Bend, Not Break” and its author Ping Fu. The book provides eye witness accounts of the terrors of being a child during the Cultural Revolution. Ping Fu, then 8 years old, was also suddenly responsible for a younger sister in a world with minimal safety or support and no parents.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched an international campaign to bad-mouth this book. Amazon was flooded with faked reviews. Hundreds of them. The CCP campaign involves posting articles and comments around the world that label Ping Fu as a “liar.” They defend all actions of the Red Guards, who today as a broad cohort have risen to prominence in the national political hierarchy.

This author is a woman, and because she was also raped by a Red Guards gang, the tone and language of these attacks have been particularly shrill.

The attacks are also nothing if not repetitive.

Several of the postings at “Great Orange Satan” provide unintentional humor, because clearly the people doing the keyboard-shill work are not allowed to read the book. They also operate from an “1984″-like alternate-history universe where the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1977 was a “revolutionist” picnic in the park instead of a mad rampage that murdered 3,000,000 people and condoned both gang rape and vast thefts of family property.

Mao Zedong urged his followers to “rape the landowner’s wife.” They did.

When authenticity of these blog postings was questioned, claims arrived in emails and messages. These stated that the prime attacker is an employee at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A Senior Researcher with an American Ph.D. in physics. This individual was named in the many text messages in an effort to assert American origin for the attacks.

This named individual had been in China as a child during the Cultural Revolution, though he was somewhat younger and much luckier and did not suffer the personal or family assaults inflicted on Ping Fu and her relatives.

Further, an email address at Oak Ridge NL was provided with assurance that this Senior Researcher could be contacted there.

A Great Orange Satan account from 2006 had suddenly been used to publish 9 articles in two weeks, all attacking Ping Fu and defending Red Guards. In general the language, diction, writing style, and politics differed from what the individual who opened the account had done over the period 2006 into the most of 2012.

Immediately on receiving the email and message claims, I contacted Oak Ridge NL and spoke with their Security operation. Control of that email account was the lead issue.

Federal authorities were also apprised of the likelihood of an intrusion and of identity theft. The named individual, the person with the Ph.D. in physics, had to be warned and going through the Oak Ridge NL system is the way to do that — the email in question is located at ornl.gov.

Reporting cyber crimes, particularly international crimes, also starts HERE.

That page has a number of links. Pick what you think fits the situation and at worst you will be rerouted. The tip line works 100% to meet your legal responsibility.

Blog helpdesk personnel need to know that resource.

Blog helpdesk personnel, as you would expect, have not trained to deal with criminal acts other than threats and verbal bigotry as hate crimes. Procedures did not exist for dealing with identity theft.

You might as well be trying to get a bogus item on a credit report corrected.

Identity theft and the Chinese “8-centers” will require expansion to helpdesk procedures.

I do not want to imply that bogus blog postings are as serious a matter as the Chinese military invading our power grid controls, banks, businesses such as Coca-Cola, and the like. Blogs are for information, at best. Hobbyists blowing off steam is not going to cause another Great Northeast Power Black-Out.

No one is going to die over CCP’s 8-cents-a-posting blog rats slandering Ping Fu.

Still, what you do have over there is a bureaucracy with an annual budget to spend screwing with Western web sites. That money is going to be spent.

We also see coordinated Chinese interference with the global warming issue. It’s not clear who is worse: the American billionaires with their secret funding fronts or CCP ???

At this 8-cents-a-posting pay rate they are not exactly buying so many Colin Powells to do their fakery. Their English fails as much as it succeeds. The 8-centers often rely on fake ID’s to lay claim to credibility.

Faked ID’s follow on lies follow on authoritarian Party Line politics. It’s a mess. Attacking Ping Fu has turned into an enormous mess including bringing Amazon around to erasing their most obvious faked reviews.

Next time, next issue, who knows?

Summary: China has adopted a “1984″ approach to truth, similar to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney when they faked their “WMD” propaganda to invade Iraq. The Chinese, today, are quite happy running Ministry of Truth operations. Attacking blogs is an established part of their strategy. Facts do not matter. What their leaders want is the only thing that matters.