thaddeus e. grugq

If I had to place a bet, I would say it is the Intelligence of Austria on their own.

It could be. It could be a “competent Black Cube.” It could be a friendly EU service that was given permission by the Austrians because they legally couldn’t do it themselves. “Hey Fritz, we think there’s a counterintelligence risk with Strache, mind if we check?” “Please!!”

Also suspected candidates are a german political activist group @politicalbeauty and a satirical german late night host, but both deny it.

That would be hell of a scoop for the "Center of political beauty". But their actions are never covert, they leave at least a signature. The way this was executed - masterfully! Very hard to attribute.

Yeah, I’ve seen the reporting this morning. I am not sure what to think. The timing of the release is still bizarre. If it was the artists, why didn’t they strike after he first became a member of the coalition government? Not ruling them out, but it would only solve one mystery

This is the next best timing for impact, right before the EU elections. Interesting thing is, that most analysts speculate that the conservative party will have the most benefits in votes for now and for the new elections in fall. They will bounce off it hard, did they plan to?

Yeah, the EU election does seem like the timing event, but this was filmed in 2017 when Strache was an ambitious right wing guy with no political position. It would be extremely far forward thinking to build kompromat on him. There are just so many questions and so few answers.

The direction was clear long before the election (Kurz takeover, new elections). From an amateur's political analysts perspective the probability of him getting a meaningful governmental position soon was very high. So I think, that Q is covered.

Ok. That’s good to know. (I really know nothing about the politics, so I’m not good for this analysis. I just know good kompromat when I see it.)

an interesting detail is that apparently sebastian kurz knew about the content of the video 48 hours before it was released by the newspapers.

https://twitter.com/winter_jakob/status/1130148701119369217?s=19 … Looks like they were asked to put coded messages at the end of press releases

This is an anti strabag note, and strabag(huge construction biz) was used as an example for companies the Russians could replace

That is fascinating. Plus the message itself “who pays creates” has very obvious connotations wrt bribery. I’ll be updating the post, thanks!

That he’s a dumpster fire racist doesn’t mean the kompromat attacker’s identity and motives aren’t important. Interesting, though a rich left aligned Austrian, Austrian intelligence, other EU intelligence services seem likely to me. Russia motive unclear.

Yeah, I can’t figure it out, and their motives are important. Just wanted to show how you can take a clearly political leak and determine whether it was newsworthy based on criteria other than “is it true?” .. in this case, does it deal with their public service?

At a certain point you need to take the gloves off and start playing the same game: the longer you wait the harder it gets to have a sufficiently strong kompromat to overcome the wave of propaganda. Someone decided to start in Austria, that's for sure.

I totally agree

The footnote is: "you better have your own house in order 'cos they are not going to pull punches coming back at you"