The author and his articles can be found at his blog "Fearfully Opinionated". He can be reached at fearfullyopinionated-at-gmail.com.

The title was paraphrased from a comment by Ben on KTM's blog:

Q: What does whybegay, KTM, Legal Janitor and Loy (Ephraim? Huichieh? Both?) have in common?
A: They are all accused of being PAPanons!

Ron Artest is an NBA basketball player. On 19th Novermber 2004, during a televised basketball match between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons, a scuffle occurred between players from both teams when Artest fouled Ben Wallace, and Wallace responded by shoving Artest back. After the initial scuffle and the whole stadium still in a furor, Artest walked and lied down on a table beside the spectator stands, and was then hit in the chest by a half full plastic cup of beer thrown from the spectators. Angered, Artest charged up the spectator stands, mistakenly confronting a spectator he thought to be responsible. Other players also charged up the stands, resulting in the most infamous brawl in NBA history.

Shortly after the brawl, ESPN.com set up an online forum, soliciting the views of basketball fans. A substantial number of fans said "if I were in the same situation as Artest, I would NEVER have done that". Surprisingly, a number of fans gave the exact opposite response: "if I were in the same situation as Artest, I would ALSO have done that."

Currently, in the plogosphere, there also appears to be a similar conflict of intuitions regarding the "leak" to the press about the "counter-insurgency" and the "PAPanons" (credit goes to Ben, for coining this term):

A: The leak to the press appears to be unintentional. It was either an honest mistake, or the work of a "Deep Throat" insider.

B: The leak to the press appears to be intentional. It is an attempt by the government to divide and conquer, to cause mutual suspicion and infighting among the bloggers.

Proponents of A include KTM, Mr Wang, Aaron Ng, and Xenoboy.
Proponents of B include Bernard Leong, Elia Diodati, Mollymeek and JD Toh.
[Do note that some bloggers take a softer stance than others. BL, for example, admits (on KTM's blog) that A is a possibility, although he finds B more likely.]

The question I want to ask here is, why do we have such differing intuitions about this? [I take it that nobody has any real inside information on what exactly transpired regarding the "leak"]

Here are two more obvious factors:

Pre-existing belief in the devious nature of the government.

Many netizens are already quite convinced that the government is largely self-serving, and capable of being devious and insidious, while some netizens are less convinced. If you believe so, you are more likely to take B than A.

Pre-existing belief in the tight control of the press

Many netizens are already quite convinced that the press never says anything without the government's endorsement, and the press will never release anything which the government does not want it to. Some bloggers think this is too extreme a view of the actual situation. If you believe in the former, then you are more likely to take B than A.

Here is one more factor, which is perhaps less obvious.

Pre-existing belief in the immaturity of the blogosphere

Some bloggers might believe that the blogosphere is sufficiently immature that once the news of the "counter-insurgency" is released, netizens will definitely start mutual suspicion and infighting, regardless of whether the "leak" was intentional or not. If these bloggers also suspect that the government is intelligent enough to realize this, they are more likely to take B than A.