A Reply to Our Critics

We know our readers may be concerned about this magazine and its editors. It has been some months since our inaugural issue. During those months, the ongoing corona virus pandemic, economic collapse, and wildfires are only the most obvious of the threats we have faced. We know the anxiety that silence from Mouse may have induced—but rest assured. We have been doing the utmost to secure ourselves and the Mouse project from all threats OVERT and COVERT. More than you may have been aware, though, the Mice may have been among you sub rosa as important developments were afoot. 

It should have been obvious from the inception of such a project that Mouse Magazine would have enemies. Rest assured also that this public riposte is only the visible counterpart to the visible moves against us. Our friends and our enemies alike should know that the movements against us in every other sphere of struggle are being met in their respective arenas.

Quailbell’s Q-uail Pellet

The nearest sign of the plot against Mouse Magazine was revealed on May 26, when a website called “Quail Bell” released what purported to be a review of our first issue. This was a highly convincing facsimile of the state of the discourse in young new online “literary” publications. Convincingly  assuming a millennial voice, this product focused on form over content, complaining that “many of the essays would take more than ten minutes to read fully and accurately, something that is problematic when presenting content on the internet when most readers are accustomed to quick reads.” The piece interpreted our first issue as a first step in a process of our publication “finding its voice,” “establishing an identity” and “building an audience.” To this end, it assumed as natural that our “about” page would include more information about the “identities” of our editors, perhaps following the model of “Quail Bell” itself and including contributor photos to complete the insinuation of its being run by human beings.  

As any astute reader would gather, this was in fact no review, and questions remain to be answered about the true nature of the “publication” hosting it. For those familiar with such affairs, this “review” clearly reads as a coded “dead drop,” alerting in coded terms some unknown party of important information, slipping the message by in a spoofed innocuous context in plain site. This method was pioneered by Anglo-American intelligence agencies during the Second World War, when orders to saboteurs behind the Axis lines were encoded in mundane radio broadcasts.

The emphasis on “headshots” and missing clues to the identities of the Mouse editors would indicate that the message is signalling a stage in some kind of information-gathering effort. This comes as no surprise—we cannot say too much but the experience of “targeted individuals” is known and sympathetic to many Mice. 

If our readers need any more evidence, they can turn to part of the key to this communication which the “Quail Bell” have elsewhere on their site. Possibly indicating a longstanding plan and possibly featuring a spoofed date, “Quail Bell” in 2018 featured what purported to be a personal essay called “Vanessa Mouse,” where the author fixated on and eventually purloined a toy mouse from the toy store. 

Coupled with the target dossier apparently being compiled in the “review,” the language here is chilling: 

But it was the display of dressed up toy mice that captivated me. I’m not sure whether it was the fact they were three-inches tall, with tiny mouse hands and feet and jackets and dresses, and even light blue parasols; or whether it was the price tag strapped to their furry ankles, which fit so nicely in the realm of possible in my world. But all I needed was one dollar and ninety-nine cents to purchase a mouse of my very own. I understood one-dollar and ninety-nine cents…. It was the process of planning my very first mouse purchase that got me into trouble…. I needed to decide which mouse would be the first acquisition and the start of my collection

Where the one document is concerned with identification, this document appears to be a strategy document laying out priorities and tactical approaches being considered:

CAPTIVATE = INTENSIVE MONITORING?

PRICE TAG = BAGGED AND TAGGED?

ACQUISITION AND COLLECTION = CO-OPT OR NEUTRALIZE?

VANESSA MOUSE = VANISH A MOUSE? 

1.99 = LESS THAN 2 = MOUSE MAGAZINE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO REACH A SECOND ISSUE?

As dangerous as it may seem for us to use these pages to reveal the actions of such plainly adept and merciless actors, in the age of “fifth generation warfare” operations, educating the Mouse constituency constitutes the best defense. We invite all supporters of the Mouse cause to engage in a distributed effort to educate themselves, build civil society networks resilient to disinformation, and conduct citizen research to uncover the true nature of these cyber-warfare belligerents. Is this Q-styled magazine affiliated with the QAnon movement? Is it a product of the Wu Ming Collective? While we have every reason to believe from the evidence above that “kinetic operations” of some kind are being contemplated, the chief weapon of actors such as these is chaos and confusion. We have therefore made our most effective move against them by releasing this second issue, packing it with clarity and moral truth, and delivering to our faithful supporters this communique. It is now up to you to do your part by reading Mouse.