Remember the Russian cargo ship MV Arctic Sea that allegedly disappeared after being hijacked? Experts familiar with piracy say the ship’s ordeal was anything but a typical piracy, as the ship officially carried a load of timber worth a mere $1.8 million. It was also allegedly hijacked in a busy European shipping lane where piracy is extremely rare.

A Russian journalist who was among the first to discount the official story has been told in a mysterious phone call to flee the country or be arrested: advice which he successfully took. This fuels further speculation that the MV Arctic Sea was carrying more than the load of timber that was officially reported.

Some think the ship was carrying unsanctioned cruise missiles and anti-aircraft units bound for Iran. Other speculation suggests that the Israeli Mossad or top officials in Russia found out about the smuggling operation and initiated the “hijacking” to intercept the shipment. The alleged arms shipment, some say, may have been put together by high Russian officials acting outside of the law, a “weapons mafia” as one Russian general termed it.

What is clear is that many media reports about the ship’s disappearance were deliberate falsehoods designed to disguise the real activity surrounding the ship. I suppose it will be a long time, if ever, that the public learns the truth about this mysterious incident.

Got a call on my pay-per-use mobile phone from number 916-219-8193, claiming to be from “cardholder services” and saying I was eligible for a program to lower my interest rate.

The scamming scumbags are back in full effect.

Just when the phones at MT.Net were no longer ringing with car warranty scams, we got another one this morning. This time it’s from phone number 732-903-0837. Some folks on the 800notes website say it’s a New Jersey company called Motor Vehicle Protection Corporation. That’s who the salesguy said was calling. Could this company be the spawn of Great Atlantic Warranty/North American Warranty Solutions or Automotive Warranty Solutions?

As I’ve long been on the Do Not Call list, it’s time to collect some money from these bastards. Time to see how this works.

Update 11:30 AM: Bah. Looking at the wording on the N.C. Attorney General’s page, the bastards get one free call before I can sic the dogs on them:

If you have received more than one telephone call by or on behalf of the same entity that is in violation of the Do Not Call law, you may go to state court …

How much you wanna bet that the company will then claim a “prior business relationship” based on the first bogus call? This law is toothless!

To recap, the Motor Vehicle Protection Corporation is violating the Do Not Call registry, but they’re doing it below the penalty phase of the law. The company is identifying itself with a live human being, which is a step up from the previous car warranty scams. In essence, the scam continues but with fewer vulnerabilities for state attorneys general to attack. Clever, indeed.

Also for those of you finding this on Google, we received a dead-air call from this number over the last few days. This is likely from the company’s auto-dialer, finding live phone numbers to later feed to its sales queue. Oh, hey! This is where my “more than one” phone call comes into play! I can sue them after all!

On the heels of the bogus Einstein Bees quote and the bogus Thomas Jefferson Deflation quote comes news that the claim that newscasters in Sweden are named “cronkiters” after legendary newsman Walter Cronkite is also bogus.

David Halberstam gets the dubious honor of first reporting this untruth, having mentioned it in an Atlantic Weekly piece in 1976:

In the spring of 1962 Cronkite became the CBS anchorman. He was rooted in a certain tradition and he was the best of that tradition. He set standards by which others were judged. In Sweden, anchormen came to be known as Cronkiters….

Cronkite himself repeated the claim in his 1996 autobiography A Reporter’s Life:

I remember hearing Paul [Levitan, CBS producer] first explain the term [“anchorman”] as referring to the person on a relay team who runs the key last lap, and then Sig said it referred to the steady anchor that holds a boat in place. In any case, the meaning had been changed forever, and I was the first bearer of it. Sweden was a little slow to adopt the term. There, for some years, anchormen were called “cronkiters.”

Amazingly, no one bothered to fact-check it until after Cronkite’s death. It illustrates the level of Cronkite’s credibility that he could (innocently) repeat this falsehood and people would take him at his word.

If Walter said it, then that’s the way it was!