danbri’s foaf stories

Or: towards evidence-based ‘add a contact’ filtering…

This just in from LinkedIn:

Have a question? Zander Jules’s network will probably have an answer
You can use LinkedIn Answers to distribute your professional questions to Zander Jules and your extended network. You can get high-quality answers from experienced professionals.

Zander Jules requested to add you as a connection on LinkedIn:

Dan,

Dear
My name is Zander Jules a Banker and accountant with Bank Atlantique Cote Ivoire.I contacting u for a business transfer of a large sum of money from a dormant account. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive,
but I am assuring u all will be well at the end of the day.I am the personal accounts manager to Engr Frank Thompson, a National of ur country, who used to work with an oil servicing company here in Cote Ivoire. My client, his wife & their 3 children were involved in the ill fated Kenya Airways crash in the coasts of Abidjan in January 2000 in which all passengers on board died. Since then I have made several inquiries to ur embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives but has been unsuccessful.After several attempts, I decided to trace his last name via internet,to see if I could locate any member of his
family hence I contacted u.Of particular interest is a huge deposit with our bank in our country,where the deceased has an account valued at about $16 million USD.They have issued me notice to provide the next of kin or our bank will declare the account unservisable and thereby send the funds to the bank treasury.Since I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for past 7 yrs now, I will seek ur consent to present you as the next of kin of the deceased since u have the same last names, so that the proceeds of this account valued at $16million USD can be paid to u and then u and I can share the money.All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this deal through. I guarantee that this will be executed under all legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. In your reply mail, I want you to give me your full names, address, D.O.B, tel& fax #.If you can handle this with me, reach me for more details.

Thanking u for ur coperation.
Regards,

I’m suprised we’ve not seen more of this, and sooner. Youtube contacts are pretty spammy, and twitter have also suffered. The other networks are relatively OK so far. But I don’t think they’re anything like as robust as they’ll need to get, particularly since a faked contact can get privileged access to personal details. Definitely an arms race…

What obliterate means…

Social Media Addiction Rap

“I surf the web, I used to watch TV
now I’m logged into Joost, it’s commercial free”[…]

I’ve just posted 100 or so photos from the anti-Bush protest in Rome last night. Zac and I were on the way to a restaurant when we stumbled into the protest in Piazza Navona, just by the Senate where Bush apparently was in meetings. We wandered around the square taking photos of the protesters, then suddenly the mood changed from carnival to street fighting at the southern end of the square.

I tried geo-tagging some of the photos (see flickr map) but it is hard to be precise: I don’t know the square well, my memory isn’t perfect, and the tool doesn’t allow me to be clear about position, direction or subject of the image. But it helps. I didn’t see the fighting start, but I ran to the front to see what teargas tasted like (”sort of like lemon sherbet, with an initial zing then a slow, well-rounded plummy finish”; but doesn’t sit well with mild asthma), then hung around as the square was eventually cleared.

Main thing I take away from the experience: nothing says “body language” like street-fighting Italians…

The Flickr Snow War I
Originally uploaded by Hamed Saber.

Unique flickr’d glimpse into “axis of evil” snowball training camp…

Democracy Now! | The New Pearl Harbor: A Debate On A New Book That Alleges The Bush Administration Was Behind The 9/11 Attacks

AMY GOODMAN: You saying that the way you did your research was to do a Google search and you couldn’t find his name?

DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: No, no, no.

Worth a read, for those walking the fine fine line between healthy skepticism and tinfoil-hattery…

Anyways, so I went to the internet café and did my regular tour: raed in the middle, riverbend, etc etc..and then I was bored again. I left the internet café heading towards the financial department again. […]

“come with us, we have some questions please” they said, and I went with them, searching for answers inside my head…

They searched me very carefully; they took my shoes off and searched them, and even took my watch. They read every paper I had in my pockets, and asked me questions about my origin, nationality, and many other questions. Then they asked me to unlock my mobile phone so that they can check it out. […]

I was afraid to be taken to the torture rooms directly; I was praying to find someone to talk to, to explain to him that this all is nothing but a little silly mistake!

For the next few hours, they asked me questions like “who are the other members of our terrorist cell, where does your fund come from? What operations did you have?” […]

Then finally I understood why I was there, after few hours. Security guards at the university had printed out all the websites I was reading while I was online there. They were accusing me of “reading terrorism sites” and “having communications with foreign terrorists”. “Do you know what these pages are?” I looked at them and figured out they were the comment section of Raed in the Middle!!

Excerpted from Khalid Jarrar’s lengthy account of his extended visit to the Iraqi mokhabarat’s jail. See also Rael in the Middle’s earlier (ie. pre-release) “Fortunately, it’s a nice governmental gang!:

The feelings of joyfulness in our family now would give anyone the impression that my brother has won the lottery! My mom spent the morning planning my brother’s future, including the arrangements of his wedding party!

If your child or sibling vanishes for two days then calls from the secret service jail in any other place on earth, that would be considered a disaster and a violation of human rights…

In Iraq, however, it’s Happy News.

Because the other options include: To be tortured, executed, and thrown in garbage by SCIRI and their Badr brigades. To be held by the Iraqi police and left to choke to death in one of their cars. To be held by the US troops then disappear and be mistreated for months in one of their many prisons. To be kidnapped by one of the countless criminal gangs and cost your family some tens of millions of Iraqi Dinars and/or your life.

From Faiza,

Well, when i came back from America before one month, my plans to the future was like that i should go back to Iraq to participate the political operation and try to make change to the better..to stop the violence, the corruption, the evil works controling the daily life. But after the ordeal of my son, i can see Iraq from new eyes, its not the one i want to live in or work with, its now filled with people in power working under the banner : ‘its our turn to revenge and nobody can stop us !’

So, they are controling the streets, the media, the decisions, the social and political activities.. And the moderate groups are helpless, there is no chance to them now, nobody listen to their voice, the violence and hatred are talking now loudly in Iraq , some groups from inside and outside of Iraq, want this to be, to accomplish their agenda… and the victims are iraqis, all iraqis, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the men and women and children, the sunni and shi`ee, and iraqis and noniraqis ….all have been targeted in this mess. I have met different kinds of iraqi people, working with government as moderate, trying to make change, but i saw how depressed they are, and trying to protect their families to get them out of iraq, this is their priority now, and i saw them as powerless, they cant help any iraqi in jail or bad condition, they have nothing to do..

See Khalid’s post for stories of the other prisoners, more on the interogation and court process…

My family played an important role to help me get out of the Mukhabarat’s jail faster than other people. Like any other corrupt system, you can get a better treatment by knowing the right people and giving the right “gifts”. My family didn’t pay anything to the judge because they believed I was innocent, they tried their best to get me a lawyer, but they couldn’t. I was freed because I was innocent, and I have the capabilities to defend myself in front of a judge.

The question is: what about the rest of Iraqis? The ones who don’t have the money or the power to leave places like that? The innocent people who were taken away from their families and loved ones and accused of false crimes? What happens to them? Who will stand for them? What about human rights? What about civil rights? What about humanity?

Meanwhile, in London …

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.

–Robert Benchley, Benchley’s Law of Distinction

From a recent Guardian article, “Police scrutinise extremist Islamist websites“:

Among the sites causing concern is Jihadunspun (JUS), a highly professional website which claims to present “a clear view of war on terror”. It has been widely criticised in the US by agencies including the state department.

Nearby in the Web, Google News carry the site, causing much grumbling amongst those who’ve noticed its iffy content.

Digging around a bit more unearthed a bit of controversy around the site, specifically, claims that it is a CIA front. For example, see commentary on the Wisdom Fund site, or Information Clearing House. Both of which draw attention to the Canadian hosting of the site, its use of PayPal to sell video content, etc.

Who to believe? :)

Rummaging on the JUS site itself, there’s a lengthy and peculiar story from its “owner and publisher”:

My name is Khadija Abdul Qahaar and I am the owner and publisher of Jihad Unspun. I am Muslim, who like many others, embraced Islam as the result of 911. Many of our viewers will know me as Bev Kennedy and Paul Morris-Read, the pen names I have used on this portal, a necessary precaution particularly in the early days of publishing this portal, due to the nature of our work. […]

Most intriguingly…

For the curious, a copy of my CV is located here.

That article mentions “Bev’s” prior work in the Web industry, and her work for the “aerospace market”. The CV includes 1999-2003 as president/director/shareholder of DataCrafters Inc. Their website is now blank, but much of it is available through the Internet Archive. The Client Kudos section is interesting, as is the Before and after page, which features happy customer Royell Manufacturing, makers of aerospace parts. Back in the pre-9/11 copy of the site, the “spinbin” section had a press release announcing the release of the “eSYS Online Estimating System”, including a glowing quote from a Robin Crabb of Aeroalliance, (whose website is full of pictures of scary military jets):

“We are delighted that eSYS is now in beta testing. With feedback from high caliber Aeroalliance members like Royell, we are confident that we will have captured the ease of use and familiarity of process that aerospace manufacturers find appealing.”

The company seems to have had a lot of dealings with the military-tinged aerospace industry, before Bev switched to working on JUS. Bev’s autobiographical note on the JUS goes into some detail describing her change of heart, as - if you believe twf.org - does this lengthy letter, which also discusses the “CIA front” accusation. Whatever the truth, it’d make for a good movie.

I could go on, there’s plenty more out there on the site. It’s hard to know really what the Guardian guys should’ve done. Ten minutes of digging around the background to DataCrafters does suggest a remarkable change of heart, and one that’s not documented heavily on the JUS site.

Is the “this is a CIA front” accusation purely an exercise in tin-foil hattery? Who knows!

Another quote from the JUS site, puffing up the warmongering ‘clash of civilizations’ agenda…

I named the portal as a reference to Benjamin Barber’s best seller, Jihad vs. McWorld, an excellent work that explains the clash of two civilizations, but that entirely omits the reason why. The result was Jihad Unspun.

Update: there’s a huge and often silly, offensive etc thread on the libertyforum.org site. See also jihadunspun unhinged on the Internet Haganah site; they seems to take JUS seriously and quote from Bev’s JUS-hosted story:

Late in 2002, the Jewish vigilante groups struck with a vengeance. Through a stupid error on our part, we had a portfolio gallery showing off some of our client work on our web company’s website and after putting two and two together, they managed to access some of our client list. They of course went after the aerospace companies and I was forced to sell of my aerospace application at a significant loss and eventually I had shut down the company entirely in order to protect my clients.

I wonder what happens next…

Via Raed in the Middle, awful pictures from Iraq: Undermars.com. As I write, the site is barely getting any attention, according to Google News. Shannon Larratt’s Zentastic Blog claims some backstory:

I want to be clear as well this is not a pro-war or anti-war or pro-Bush or anti-Bush site; it’s just an attempt to help people express what’s going on in their lives and communicate it to others. The more we know about each others lives, the better this world will be.

These are some of the worst pictures I’ve seen online. I expect we’ll be hearing more about ‘Under Mars’…