Feb 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From ZDNet News, [2/20/03]:An Australian entrepreneur has created what may be the first antispam service that lets its users charge for the privilege of sending them e-mail....
"Spammers aren't going to be sending many spams to you if you charge them 50 cents," [Bernard] Palmer said. "A spam would cost them $2 million."
... At least in its current form, CashRamSpam is more of a "proof of concept" than it is a robust antispam solution. Anyone who wishes to contact a CashRamSpam customer must purchase an account themselves first, there is no provision to permit friends or colleagues, and the system does not permit legitimate mailing lists to which users voluntarily subscribe to bypass the payment process. CashRamSpam keeps 10 percent of a user's contact fee as its payment.
When someone tries to contact a CashRamSpam customer, a message is automatically returned saying: "We regret your message cannot be delivered using ordinary e-mail because the receiver has a CashRamSpam account...If you want to succeed in reaching this receiver please register at www.cashramspam.com and resend the message from there."
To make it work, the service needs to make it easy to add a list of people who will not be charged. The article has a lame comment by the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation saying it would have a "chilling effect on speech"--which makes it clear he has no understanding of the First Amendment whatsoever.Feb 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's one I've been holding onto for awhile. Here's a campaign tactic of the "count every vote" Gore team in the New Hampshire primary:
As late as 3 p.m. that day, Gore operatives had access to exit polls showing the vice-president being defeated by Bradley. They also learned that while Democratic voters were voting in large numbers for Gore, independents, many of them upscale suburban voters, were voting for Bradley's sophisticated brand of liberalism. Knowing that Bradley's strength came from tony tech havens such as Bedford, the Gore team organized a caravan to clog highway I-93 with traffic so as to discourage potential Bradley voters from getting to the polls. (Michael Whouley, a chief Gore strategist, recounted the Gore team's Election Day field efforts at a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics symposium, and his comments are included in a book compiled by the Institute titled Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2000. He knocked down the rumor that they considered overturning an 18-wheeler to clog up traffic.) The caravan--spoken of with awe by operatives who worked on the campaign--had the desired effect. It was harder for Bradley voters to get the polls. [Boston Phoenix, 2/6/03]
How's that for cynical?Feb 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The following letter was sent to the The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk> by Dr B Khalafand. It was published on Friday February 14, 2003:I write this to protest against all those people who oppose the war against Saddam Hussein, or as they call it, the "war against Iraq". I am an Iraqi doctor, I worked in the Iraqi army for six years during Iraq-Iran war and four months during Gulf war. All my family still live in Iraq. I am an Arab Sunni, not Kurdish or Shia. I am an ordinary Iraqi not involved with the Iraqi opposition outside Iraq.
I am so frustrated by the appalling views of most of the British people, media and politicians. I want to say to all these people who are against the possible war, that if you think by doing so you are serving the interests of Iraqi people or saving them, you are not. You are effectively saving Saddam. You are depriving the Iraqi people of probably their last real chance get rid of him and to get out of this dark era in their history.
My family and almost all Iraqi families will feel hurt and anger when Saddam's media shows on the TV, with great happiness, parts of Saturday's demonstration in London. But where were you when thousands of Iraqi people were killed by Saddam's forces at the end of the Gulf war to crush the uprising? Only now when the war is to reach Saddam has everybody become so concerned about the human life in Iraq.
Where were you while Saddam has been killing thousands of Iraqis since the early 70s? And where are you are now, given that every week he executes people through the "court of revolution", a summary secret court run by the secret security office. Most of its sentences are executions which Saddam himself signs.
I could argue one by one against your reasons for opposing this war. But just ask yourselves why, out of about 500,000 Iraqis in Britain, you will not find even 1,000 of them participating tomorrow? Your anti-war campaign has become mass hysteria and you are no longer able to see things properly.
Locum consultant neurologist, London
Feb 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Daily Telegraph, 2/13/03:
President Robert Mugabe was given permission yesterday to visit France in violation of a European Union travel ban, delivering a further blow to the crumbling sanctions policy against his regime in Zimbabwe....
In exchange, France agreed to renew sanctions against Zimbabwe's political elite for a second year. These include a freeze on assets, a travel ban and a weapons boycott.
Paris, which regards tensions between Britain and Zimbabwe as a post-colonial family spat, feared that other African leaders would boycott the summit unless Mr Mugabe was included....
Critics say the sanctions policy has already been rendered worthless because of waivers allowing banned Zimbabwe ministers to make almost weekly shopping trips to Brussels under the pretext of attending EU events.
Feb 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
By now you probably have heard that thousands of people across the world have been demonstrating against war in Iraq today. Here in Manhattan, the number 100,000 keeps getting tossed around, but I have no idea how reliable it is. In general, the protestors have nothing to offer but cliched slogans and stale altruism; at best they are guilty of intellectual sloth, but the leaders are dishonest. The whole thing fills me with contempt and disgust.
For my part, I went to see the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (something else that would be lost if a nuclear bomb went off here--but then, the protesters don't take that threat seriously, and if it happens, they'll blame it on our belligerence). I didn't like having to compete with crowds at the exhibit, but it did remind me that there still are civilized people in the world.
According to the AP,
Other demonstrators supported the possibility of U.S. military action. About 1,000 demonstrators gathered on Manhattan's West Side, where 41-year-old George Sarris held a sign reading "Bomb Iraq." [Associated Press, 2/15/03]
I wish I'd known; I would have stood with them.Feb 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
This evening I attended a debate in Manhattan on the question "USA vs. Europe: Who's Right About the War on Terror?" The debate, hosted by the Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation, featured Dieter Dettke, executive director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (a foundation run by the German Social Democratic Party), Michael Howard, a Tory member of the British Parliament, and Richard Perle, chairman of the Department of Defense's Defense Policy Board. The debate was quite civilized, especially for such a contentious issue.
Dettke started by addressing the question directly: Who's right about the war on terror? His first answer was that nobody knows. His second answer was that in both Europe and the US, some are right and some are wrong, so the answer is both and neither. After that cognitively valueless introduction, he proceeded to explain the position of the German government by noting that Germany had started World War II; after the war the German constitution legally prohibits it from starting a war of aggression. He urged that we refrain from an unprovoked pre-emptive attack on Iraq, accepting the "power of law" instead of the "law of power." He did agree that Saddam Hussein must be disarmed, but proposed "coercive inspections" with more inspectors, combined with bringing Saddam before a war crimes tribunal. He said he believed Saddam could be "contained." Dettke came off as a pleasant, jovial fellow.
Michael Howard, a Cambridge man, was very good--clear and to the point--though too willing to accept the UN and humanitarian foreign policy. He noted that international law respects the right to pre-emptive self-defense: It has to, he said, because it has to recognize reality. He asked the audience to imagine a situation in which a world leader addressed his people after millions had died in an attack, saying: "I knew they had weapons of mass destruction; I knew they were likely to use them. And I could have done something to prevent this attack before it happened. But international law prohibited me from doing so."
Perle was magnificent. He was calm, sober, penetrating, clear, forceful, and had complete mastery of his subject. As far as I could tell, there wasn't even a whiff of altruism in anything he said. He pointed out that saying an attack on Iraq would be "unprovoked" depends on what you mean by "provoked"--that the Gulf War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace and that Saddam has violated the conditions of that cease-fire. He forcefully defended the appropriateness of pre-emptive action against Iraq, and exposed the absurdity of a UN "multilateralism" that subjects American security to the veto of France, Russia and China. He pointed out that, following the logic of the idea that Saddam could be contained, there would be no reason even to disarm him. The proposal of more inspections and a war crimes tribunal was exposed as empty and designed only to delay action. By the end of it all, he had Dettke drawing a largely incoherent distinction between "prevention" (e.g., what Israel did against the Iraqi reactor, which Dettke accepted) and "pre-emption," which Dettke did not accept. Perle is definitely someone to watch for.