I Just Lost US$4.7 Million!

An email arrived, entitled "Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection..." in it, I learned this (verbatim):

We hereby bring to your notice that a consignment been delivered at your residence by two diplomats.

They had been stopped by us. There is a security measure put in place by United States of America, check terrorism and money laundry through the sale of illegal drugs locally and internationally.

After examination, we found out that the consignment contained the sum of US$4.7 Million, which upon further investigation revealed that the fund was your inheritance.

Consequently, the diplomats will deliver your consignment at your residence after all protocols have been observed.

However, in order to proceed we need you to reconfirm the following information,

Full Name: ....
Residential Address:....
Date of Birth: ....
Occupation: ....
Telephone/Mobile Numbers: ....

We await your response.
Regards,
Jason Ahern.

This is so tragic. I just missed my inheritance money! Note, this implies that someone just died, and it's pretty mean of this spammer (and, uh, I assume it is) to assert that 4.7 million dollars worth of loved ones have just died in some poorly translated accident.

Anyway, I recall this excellent New Yorker article on spam (August 6, 2007, by Michael Specter, found here) which stated that "Spammers usually need to send a million e-mails to get fifteen positive responses..." This was eye-opening - that there actually are people who respond to these things! 15 from a million is a very small number (0.0015%!) but that still means that there are 15 people too stupid to understand spam yet smart enough to type.

Pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-11-30.

Myths of Good Criminals

Based on my outrage from the misanthropic "Law and Order" I will bring up another potential case - that of the heavily advertised TV program of rainbow-coalition gentlemen thieves "Leverage". The tagline: "Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys."

I have to emphasize here: Bad guys can make the best good guys? No, no they can't.

While I like "Ocean's Eleven" as much as the next guy, criminals are not foppish gentlemen thieves. Notice how the "Ocean" movies always have the victims be criminals (or casinos, same diff). So yes when "bad guys" attack other bad guys, we can cheer because in the end, bad guys are being schmeitzed. But the "Ocean" team were not actually bad people in almost any decent definition. They were thieves, but only from other thieves. Uh, boo? But "Ocean" guys were loving friends, loyal to each other, generous to the needy, righting wrongs and generally well-dressed and courteous. Why then are they "bad guys"? Show me them doing something bad.

Well, they break the laws. And I guess implicitly there's a belief in the writers that The Man will believe that laws are 'good' even when unjust. So to fight for justice, you need to break laws, which means being Just is bad.

There may actually be pea-brains who believe that. Southern Jim-Crow enforcing sheriffs circa 1955, or the members of the Bush administration, but generally this is a perversion of morality. And people instinctively know it. Which is why the story/archetype of Robin Hood requires a good governor (Richard) being replaced by a bad government (John, Sheriff of Nottingham). Robin is considered 'bad' because the sheriff is in fact the bad one. Were a righteous government in place, and Robin were still mugging strangers at the crossroads, then we'd no longer want to read about him favorably.

I have no problem, though with Robin Hood stories as long as they make the 'evil government' distinction clear. They lap into misanthropy when they refuse to distinguish between "bad" guy and bad-guy.

The lack of distinction can be a result of simple laziness. TNT can't be faulted for calling the group of Mission Ocean's Impossible dudes in "Leverage" a bunch of "bad" guys because they are most likely being lazy lazy lazy. And while laziness ain't good, it also ain't truly bad (maybe not even "bad.")

However, there are those who buy into the Robin Hood image as being necessary and good against every government, good or bad. They see the gentleman-thief as a precursor to the revolutionary. It's one reason why pea-brains have posters and T-Shirts of Che Guevara: he was a revolutionary and they're good because government is bad.


That myth is perpetuated by those who believe that bourgeois "laws" are in place by The Man to keep undesirables in place.

I'm currently suffering through one of the very worst classes I've ever taken; it's all about 'classical sociological theory' (read: stuff nobody reads or uses any more). And the professor decries the 'conservative' theories like Weber and Durkheim because they don't advocate revolution. Or something. But Marx and Foucault, lovely. Foucault is a hero to these pinheads (more on just how much I hate him later) especially because he claims laws are bourgeois inventions to keep the marginal figures in their place. Or whatever.

Let's be clear about "Che" - he killed many innocent people. He was a terrorist. A murderous scumbag. Only a schmuck can claim that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," because attacking innocent people, civilians, for the sole purpose of killing/maiming is evil no matter who does it. And no matter for what ends. The Mumbai terrorists and Che Guevara are equivalents.

But even outside of the terrorists and murdering 'revolutionaries' the Robin Hood myth wants to create a morality among thieves and con-men. Let's be clear about one thing - the gentleman thief is a kid's story, a myth. They don't exist. (I will confirm this by asking Cecil Adams... stay tuned).

Bottom line: I've met criminals and their ilk; these people are criminals not because they are rebelling against the system but often because they are stupid and selfish to a level that you probably won't recognize if you've lived your whole lives in middle class safety.

And note, similar to Weber and Durkheim, I *like* middle-class safety. The best things in the entire world have been created because there was widespread middle class safety. MCS is the cause of civilization.

Criminals are usually very stupid. And unreliable because of that. And also because to a person criminals are self-absorbed and often hateful of others. Hence why they break the law, steal things, hurt people, etc.

The concept that a bunch of 'outlaws' will be your crime-fighting force is ludicrous in a civil democracy. A real criminal will be completely unreliable and will hurt his 'teammates' and run off to get stoned.

But it's a trope of pop-fiction: that the bad guys can actually be good! That professional killers are nice folk; that they were just born on the wrong side of the tracks.

Good TV shows that show a reality in crime - the Sopranos, The Wire - emphasize my point well: criminals are selfish, petty, stupid and will hurt you. That's why they are bad and to confuse bad with good, which is what this misanthropic entertainment wants to do, is a perversion of morality. And I'm against that.
Lego Che image from here.

Flag Pins in American History

This is too good to be true, but it's on the internets, so it must be. From The American Conservative blog (a real conservative magazine, and thus anti-Bush), linked by Sullivan, a quote in Bill Kaufmann's 2008 book "Ain't my America:"

American flag lapel pins had been distributed to members before the president spoke to Congress on April 2, 1917, requesting a declaration of war. It took a certain obdurate courage to refuse to wear the colors; Senator La Follette was among the refusers, as was the Mississippi senator Vardaman. (Wilson had called for “stern repression” of disloyalty in his speech of April 2–a Prussian formulation that ought to have set American throats to gagging.)

It's possible the story is true but it sounds almost mythic. I don't have Kaufmann's book and I don't know his ultimate source, but since it's a new book, it's not inconceivable that he is trying to apply current events to earlier times.

Why it sounds too good to be true: the match up between Wilson & La Follette is too much like Bush/Hillary and Obama. Bush's foreign policy is Wilsonian (and for the record, despite his affiliiation with Princeton, I think he was a bad president and a bad person) and La Follette was the head of the Progressive party (and the Hair Club for Men, evidently). He's considered one of the best Senators in history, a real thinker and patriot, who was beacon of sanity in the insane 1920s.

A myth, to my hoax-busting ears, always sounds *too* neat and pat. Let's see how this plays out.

Don't Sign That Petition

From Haaretz:

ADL warns Web users not to sign petition against anti-Semitic site

By Lisa Zilberpriver

The Anti-Defamation League on Monday issued a statement warning Internet users against signing an online petition to have Google remove the anti-Semitic Web site www.jewwatch.com from its search results for the word 'Jew'.

The petition, which was initiated in 2005 by an Internet user identified only as 'SMW' makes signatories' names publicly accessible. According to the ADL these have been posted to anti-Semitic Web sites which then published offensive commentary about them.

At the time of writing, the petition requesting Google ban the site from its results had 455178 signatories.

In response to the original petition, Google published a statement which appears below the anti-Semitic site when a search is performed, explaining that its searches are based on algorithms which cannot censor results.

ADL spokesperson Arieh O'Sullivan told Haaretz that his organization was aware of Google's explanation, but had requested Google respond to new allegations of signatories' names appearing on other Web sites.

I was worried about this. I hate online petitions for a number of reasons (e.g. nothing worthwhile comes from something of such little effort, online ANYTHING is dangerous), but this takes the cake. Our enemies *really* do study our behavior and know that the best way to attack us is to lunge for our sense of togetherness (petitions) and feelings of persecution.

Hat tip: EM. 2009 Update, pic from here.

Website of the Day: Museum of Hoaxes

Hoaxes. Yum.

Hoax is Believed

See below about my debunking of the British Holocaust Education Hoax. Well, it turns out that the blog "Cross Currents" - written by the finest minds of the Chareidi world who have been trained in the forbidden art of typing and somehow allowed on the extremely forbidden internet - were duped by the hoax.

I learned the hard way - after falling for a few hoaxes in my early years - that before you post anything on a website, you need to do the research!

Backpost finished 8/10/07; started 4/20/07 - which appears to have been a big day for abandoned posts.

British Holocaust Education Hoax

I've already received from a few people this news story from the British "Daily Mail":

Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims

By LAURA CLARK

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

Yet, despite coming from the (never incorrect) Internet, I had the sneaking suspicion that this was a hoax.

First off, this sounds impossible in the real world but totally plausible to the deranged black-white extremism of bigots and/or tabloid readers. E.g. "Bill Clinton impregnates Panda!" Me: 'Impossible'; Tabloid/Bigot: 'Well of course he did, the randy bastige!'

The bigots somehow think that Muslims deny the Holocaust as a matter of faith. They don't; it's a socialization problem not something in the religion and only a right-wing-wacko would think the leftist wackos would be so self-sacrifically stupid to legislate Muslim hatred. This is Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter country. Stupid on as many levels as stupidity can be.

Second of all, I hadn't heard of this earth shattering news from any of the daily papers I read - mainstream Israeli and US stuff - who would pick up this atrocity rather quickly.

Third of all, after I searched for the original piece online, I saw that the article was dated "1/4/07"

Fourth, I search for the news story in a quick google-news search: nothing. Grand google search: only right wing wacko blogs.

Fifth (and what I should have done at the beginning): I went to the ADL website. Where they say this:

False E-Mail Claims UK Has Ended Holocaust Education

Friday, April 13, 2007

A much circulated e-mail claims that the United Kingdom has 'removed the Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Moslem population.' There is no truth to this claim. Holocaust education is mandatory in British schools and continues to be part of the national curriculum.

Thank you [deep bow], thank you.

A Different Agunah Problem

I received an email about a seiruv against a man named Samuel Rosenbloom. The Baltimore Beit Din cited him in contempt for not showing up and for not giving his wife a get. The email then said that he owns the web-business succah.com and that we should boycott the business until he gives his wife a get.

I am all for helping the batei dinim, and the email made reference to a good organization, ORA, who posted a PDF of the seiruv.

But before I publicized this, I felt that I can't destroy a business - days before Sukkot - on the basis of an email. Email is very dangerous. Who knows how long an email has been bouncing around the netspace. I've been using email regularly since 1993 and the same hoaxes are still poppin' about.

So I called the Baltimore Beit Din. They confirmed that the seiruv is still effective. But the Rabbi I spoke to did not think Rosenbloom was still affiliated with Succah.com!

I then called Succah.com and asked the man who answered the phone if Rosenbloom was still with the company. He said no, it was solely owned by Debra Weintraub. I told him that this was a serious matter and I need to confirm that, and I identified myself and gave my phone number. He insisted that I didn’t sound genuine and that I should just email succah.com to talk about this. I asked him twice for his name and he evaded the question. Then he hung up quickly. So I emailed succah.com (that was yesterday, Thursday).

Today I called succah.com again and I reached Weintraub. She says she owns the company exclusively and has for 6 years. I told her of the gravity of the email campaign against her company. She didn't act like a person who was outraged by a slander campaign. She sounded defensive and evasive - just like bad mashgichim do when I ask for their credentials. I asked if she knew Rosenbloom and she said yes, he worked for succah.com and was important as a consultant… he also does heavy lifting for her (she said she couldn't physically do all the stuff alone).

I asked if he received a salary or had any financial stake in succah.com; she said no. I asked if her relationship with him was exclusively professional. She said they were just friends.

The person who sent me the original email said that she received it from her rabbi. I emailed him today and he responded just a few minutes ago (some Erev YK this is for the both of us!) saying that he got the info from the RCA! So I just emailed them.

My conclusions:

1. If the RCA is sending this kind of message out, they need to do so with due-process.
2. Because the due-process was not demonstrated in the emails that have bounced around, I implore anyone who receives that kind of message to *not* forward it around until due-process is met.
3. The RCA - and the Baltimore Beit Din - must provide proof that succah.com should be boycotted. Otherwise, we are stealing money.
4. Rosenbloom was likely the guy I spoke to on Thursday. Weintraub's description of her relationship to Rosenbloom and to the company sounds odd.

Why due process? Because:

1. It's the basis of any legitimate legal system. It’s the *only* basis. The rule of law depends on equal treatment and clear transparent procedure. Without due-process, even a Beit Din with old rabbis with big white beards and thick spectacles is no more than a pack of vigilantes.
2. We in the Jewish community need to trust our beit dins. This ain't the way to do it.
3. We want people to support the practice of a ban/cherem/seiruv. It's one of the only weapons we have against recalcitrant husbands. What are we to do if we use the weaponry wrong?!
4. We tend to believe the husband is wrong and the wife is right - and we're willing to err on the side of the wife. Except, I happen to know of one high-ish profile case of a woman who led a campaign against her ex-husband where it turned out the guy was totally innocent. The woman was a crackpot, the husband was a tzaddik, and the wife slandered him mercilessly. Eventually she kidnapped their child and fled the country. DUE PROCESS WILL PREVENT THIS.

Anyway, bli neder, after Shabbos I'll be able to discover more of the case's ins and outs.

Data:
Baltimore Beit Din
(it has the same address of the synagogue Adath Yeshurun Mogen Abraham)
3 Pinelea Court
Pikesville, MD 21208 (the above pdf says Baltimore)
Fax: 410-922-7356
Rabbi Simcha Shafran (he's in the shul, I don’t know if he's in the beit din)
Phone: 410-655-0864

Succah.com
(301) 990-0466

The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, Inc. 646.796.4551, info@getora.com
http://www.getora.com/

RCA
212-807-7888, 212-727-8452 (Fax)
info@rabbis.org