From: vadim@bolvan.ph.utexas.edu (Vadim S. Kaplunovsky)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Is Serdar Argic a person, a mutlu or an AS?
Date: 11 Nov 92 06:01:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: ut-emx.83369
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish

The readers of all these newsgroup are probably familiar with Hasan
B. Mutlu who used to flood the net with Goebbels-style anti-Armenian
propaganda.  Recently, articles of the same style and content started
appearing from the account sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic).  At first blush,
it seemed like he is just another Turk that happen to share Mutlu's bigoted
opinions and style of discourse, but the similarities were just too
overwhelming for a mere coincidence.  Most netters thus came to the opinion
that Serdar Argic is simply a pen name of HBM, perhaps used to dissociate
HBM's employer (AT&T) from his net.activities.

I now believe things are not so simple:  sera@zuma postings are not generated
by Serdar Argic, Hasan B. Mutlu or any other human, but by an AS (Artificial
Stupidity), that is, an AI of unusually low intelligence.  Perhaps HBM wrote
this BS-generating auto-poster, but it operates autonomously, like a word
processor attempting to get rid of sexist language and thus turning "manual"
into "personual".  Not even Mutlu can be THAT dumb.

Here is my evidence.  Recently, I counter-flamed somebody (sorry, I forgot the
name) in soc.culture.soviet for the ugly manner of his flames, and concluded
as following:
> .... Do you have any *evidence*  
> to the contrary?  If not, please do everybody a favor and shut up, before
> you turn into another fucking Mutlu.
My article, as well as all the previous articles on the same subject --
"Re: tampon flame, very sad story" -- were posted solely to s.c.s. and had
absolutely nothing to do with Turkey, Armenians or anything related.  There
was absolutely no reason for HBM or any other person whose main interest is
Turkey and her alleged foes to even read that article, let alone respond to it.
And yet, here is what showed up in all of the above newsgroups:

In article <9211062155@zuma.UUCP> sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic) writes:
> In article <82909@ut-emx.uucp> vadim@bolvan.ph.utexas.edu (Vadim S.  
Kaplunovsky) writes:
> 
> >to the contrary?  If not, please do everybody a favor and shut up, before
> >you turn into another fucking Mutlu.
> 
> "Kaplumbaga" has semi-cosmic implications. Kind of narrow and crooked
> and cluttered up. Still living in x-Soviet Union?
> 
>         The Age...Melbourne...6/3/92
> 
>         By Helen WOMACK  .... Agdam, Azerbaijan, Thursday
> 
[the rest of the article omitted, in the interest of brevity]
> 
> Serdar Argic
> 
>                      'This war quickly developed into one of extermination. 
>                       We closed the roads and mountain passes that might 
>                       serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks] and 
>                       then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
>                                                        (Ohanus Appressian)

This response is so disconnected from the subject matter of the original
article trend that I simply cannot see it as written by anything that can
pass for a sane human long enough to hold a job.  AT&T occasionally employs
some weirdos, but not THIS weird!  And the article <9211062155@zuma.UUCP> is
not an isolated incident, there have been tons of this kind of shit before,
all massively cross-posted.  And for a shit-flood like this, there can be
only one explanation: an AS.

Specifically, somewhere attached to the net, there is an AS that scans all
the articles in a wide range of newsgroups (perhaps ALL of them??) and selects
ALL articles that mention Mutlu by name or alias.  Than AS generates a
"response", by combining a two-line quote from the triggering article,
a two-line mindless flame containing a mangled name of the author of that
article, and a looong quote from some obscure book magazine article detailing
some alleged Armenian misdeeds.  Those quotes are apparently selected from some
on-line library in a rather random manner.  The library itself is presumably
maintained by Mutlu or like-minded human bigots, but the selection appears
totally unrelated to the subject matter of the original trend or even to the
newsgroup in which it appeared:  AS-generated BS is always massively
cross-posted.

-- Vadim.

PS:  I apologize for cross-posting myself, but I don't know of any other way
to get to people that might be able to DO something useful about the situation.


**********************************************************************
Vadim S. Kaplunovsky,              | #include <std_disclaimer.h>
Assistant Professor of Physics,    |
University of Texas at Austin.     | My English isn't THAT bad,
vadim@bolvan.ph.utexas.edu         | but my typing stinks:-(.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.turkish:11472 talk.politics.mideast:22062 talk.politics.soviet:8852 soc.culture.greek:10481 soc.culture.europe:9478 soc.history:9338