FBI Warns: Many Tsunami Relief Pleas Are Fake

lgrinberg writes "Even in the face of terrible disasters such as the Tsunami that hit South East Asia and Africa in late December, many are finding ways to take advantage of it and make money off of it. An example is fake websites that claim to be non-profit charitable organizations that help out the victims when they really take all the money for themselves. Other instances are emails or websites written by people who claim to be survivors of the disaster and are asking for help. The FBI warns that many of these are fake and recommends people to help via known non-profit organizations."

Comments

How can they sleep at night...?

[Lindsay Lohan]

many are finding ways to take advantage of it and make money off of it

ZDNet Australia had a good article a few days ago about a website, http://www.incybernet.com that the Red Cross and Tasmanian police were investigating for fraud. They were using the Red Cross logo, soliciting for credit card, money order, or cash donations. Of course, they wouldn't return calls from the mobile phone number listed on the website.

Amazingly, the site is still up. The owner, "Damion", offers the following weak apology:

"My sincere apology to redcross Australia and world vision Australia , and other well know charity's for disfame i might of bought to your relief efforts or your company"

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[k4_pacific]

Not only that, it doesn't render well in Firefox. What is wrong with these people?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[fembots]

They probably figured whoever is smart enough to use Firefox will be smart enough to think twice about donating.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[SIGALRM]

Through my unauthorised site to accept donations i did not raise no money nore did no one donate to the site

Am I just overly-skeptical... or is this claim quite hard to believe?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[0racle]

I have no doubt that it's completely true through the use of the double negative. In plain English, '...did not raise no money,' is raised money, and '...nore did no one,' is some people did. So now we have, 'Through my unauthorised site to accept donations i did raise money and people donated to the site.'

That or he is just this side of illiterate.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[ezzzD55J]

Through my unauthorised site to accept donations i did not raise no money nore did no one donate to the site

Am I just overly-skeptical... or is this claim quite hard to believe?

It is. It's also extremely atricious English (dobule negatives). I try not to be irritated by grammar/spelling errors, but people writing in such a phonetic Neanderthal way as

disfame i might of bought

and 'nore', etc., makes sparks in my lobes.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[dingfelder]

im betting that he is illiterate AND he did raise money :D

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Kenja]

"How can they sleep at night...?"

I feel the same way about most religions who take money from their parishioners and buy gold alters and the like while still claiming to be charitable organizations.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

How can they sleep at night...?

I thought this was basic psych stuff.

There are people that simply don't care about anyone other than themselves. They simply don't or can't put themselves in the shoes of the people they deal with. Often, this type of is called a sociopath or psychopath.

Closely related, there are also people that truly have malicious intent against others. They'll do anything they can to benefit themselves.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[caferace]

I try not to be irritated by grammar/spelling errors, but people writing in such a phonetic Neanderthal way...

It's not Neanderthal. It's Tasmanian. Despite what many people think, there is a difference.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Veky]

Amazingly, the site is still up.

Well, finally slashdotted.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[ScrewMaster]

No, he's pretty much over the side, I'd say, even by Slashdot standards.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[ScrewMaster]

I had a psych professor that defined it this way: "A psychopath is a person that doesn't know right from wrong, and a sociopath is a person that does know right from wrong but just doesn't care."

Psychopaths are more dangerous in some ways but are easier to spot (the obligatory chainsaw is a dead giveaway.) Sociopaths, on the other hand, generally do more damage overall because they are very good at protective coloration (i.e., "fitting in") making them very difficult to detect. Significantly, the more capable sociopaths in most societies achieve a degree of success that is denied to their more "moral" counterparts. Frequently we see monikers such as "head of state" or "corporate leader" applied to them, at least up until the arraignment.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[servognome]

*GASP* You want God to have a cheap bronze alters? He did create everything in existance, don't you think he deserves a little better. You shall be burned for heresy, using only the best and most expensive oak and cherry wood, for God's vengence knows no price.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Winkhorst]

It has been my policy over the years never to deal with anyone who can't manage to render his ideas in passable English. Any legitimate operation is at least going to hire somebody to keep an eye on their official verbiage. And anyone smart enough to speak and write decent English is probably not going to need an illegal means of earning a living. This policy has served me well and has been virtually foolproof.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[aztektum]

Small price to pay for the smiting of ones enemies.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[evilmousse]

ahhhh geez, that art is in a large sense communal.

spurn the church's patronage of art and you spurn michelangelo, donatello, and all the rest of the ninja turtles. seriously, people forget that though science and society seems to have outgrown the need for dogma, the church through history propped up the infant institutions of art, and most especially reading education (you learning-worshippers, you. pre-gutenberg writing was often religion's.) i would venture to say that the majority of venerated art though world history has been at least in part religious.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Anonymous Coward]

and all the rest of the ninja turtles.

michelangelo, and raphael.

Your character count: 37
Just stating the rest of the damn turtles: 26

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[CmdrGravy]

To be fair the parishioners know what their donations are going towards and there are a lot of charitable religious organisations who do raise a lot of money for real good causes.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[lord sibn]

Alright. Substitute a "Gold Altar" (which, by the way I have never seen, and i've been around a few times. the worth of such an altar would suggest a high profile target for theft) for "a staff of 30,000 (pulled from my ass statistic) workers who must be compensated in some way.

Get this: Gold Altars are not in high demand among any major religion. Funds to procure such altars are scarce. You are pulling information out of your ass. Information pulled from your ass is equally well refuted by information pulled from mine.

So in that vein, I'd like to see these gold altars you claim to be so common.

I realise there are charities that exist which do not pay their volunteers. but there are so many more that do than there are that do not, you've got no grounds for complaint.

Mod me a troll if you must, but consider: There is no evidence (apart from anecdotal) to support the outrageous claim that any (arbitrary) religious "charities" pocket their income to buy "Gold Alters" (misspellings included) and donate only the leftovers to help those in need.

Mere disagreement between you and a few members of a particular religion is not conclusive proof that the religion in question squanders funds donated for charitable causes. Get the records if you want, and get back to me.

I can't vouch for your donations, but in all the churches i've attended, financing records are available to anybody who dares to question them.

If what you say is true, then Uncle Sam must not care that we're buying Gold Altars with those funds we declared would be sent to relief aid for those tsunami victims. /me prepares for the onslaught of -1 (Troll) mods

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[magefile]

There's a difference between art and some of the crap in churches today that costs so damn much.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off it's altars not alters dumbass. Second, name one church in the world with a gold altar. Not even St. Peter's has one. You're just an ignoramus.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[calculadoru]

Well, I think god would be most pleased if people learnt how to spell altar in the first place.
Only then would he demand one made from expensive materials.
Or a shrubbery.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[evilmousse]

i completely agree with you, but I doubt the church's congregation would more often than not.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[pklinken]

Yes.. constructions like this always remind me of Stephen Fry's The Liar:
"She was not unaware of it's potential lack of insignificance."

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[RobotRunAmok]

I feel the same way about most religions who take money from their parishioners and buy gold alters and the like while still claiming to be charitable organizations.

Yeah, but Dude, I'd still rather give my money to a church than actually pay for a HTML editor.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[10101001 10101001]

people forget that though science and society seems to have outgrown the need for dogma, the church through history propped up the infant institutions of art

<troll>It seems like you've got that backwards. It's art that's propped up the church through such great fiction as the Bible (okay, I don't doubt it's "based on a real story", but we all know how well that translates in just real story to tv movie; imagine thousands of years of oral tradition)</troll>. It's the artist that drew in the people. It was the rituals that drew in the crowds. It was this mighty God with his luxurious temple and the great riches it offered for the wealthy that motivated kings to support churches to a great extent.

The tradition of royalty/aristocrats sending one's first son into the army and his second into the church quite well places how the power structure worked. How many simple farmers sent their sons to the church where they became bishops? Anyways, this is getting way off-topic. The most amusing thing is this: Christianity fundamentally ignores its own rules about art (the 2nd commandment). Art very clearly has the means to move the soul (one's anxiety over one's existence), and clearly there was fear of it in the past. It's ironic to me that you'd turn so happily to church who so readily wishes to subvert solely for its own benefit. If art can truly move the soul, and if it truly is okay to be made and viewed for one purpose, then there should be no sane reason to smack down all art that one hates, unless the goal is to solely to control others through art and not allow people to look into themselves to find out what they truly wish to believe.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[camcloud1]

Despite this sort of fraudulant activity being conducted under the guise of the largest natural disaster many generations have seen, I am not really surprised. These people feed on human misery and would simply be using a different story to fleece money from the kind hearted. The fact that this disaster has affected the entire planet simply makes their jobs easier.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[evilmousse]

which came first, the chicken or the egg? the church used art like the riaa uses artists and the nba uses basketball players. sure, basketball and music came first and exist independantly outside of the nba and published music, but the institutions are where the masses attention has always been, and it's that mass-attention that weilds a lot of power. the players fight for more pay from the nba, not the other way around, the record companies farm for artists, not the other way around, and the church sponsored art.

It's a bidirectional, but NOT EQUAL relationship. The church USED art and writing, not the other way around.

"Turn so happily to it?" Perhaps you've misread me.. though I defend a church's right to adorurn itself, and give historical credit where is due, that does not mean I agree with all of its' policies. And further, my explanation was not limited to the catholic church--it's true for any religion I can think of.

I don't know what subversion you're speaking of--I've never heard of painters whipped into painting for religion. The word is patronage, and like another poster said, is largely tied to the church's position of power rather than any merits in religion. Patronage is important.. many many artists get their practice and paycheck putting their art to someone else's desires rather than any internal muse. Deny patronage and you deny the market for art, making it all the harder to be an artist. The curch was as subverting to michelangelo as kelloggs is to the guy who says "it's gr-r-r-reat!!!".

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Anonymous Coward]

And anyone smart enough to speak and write decent English is probably not going to need an illegal means of earning a living.

Need? Probably not, but some of the biggest scammers use excellent english. It's important for scamming bigots like you.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Ravadill]

Don't deal with passable english? You must have a hard time buying PC hardware, or do you just avoid reading all the included manuals?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[fermion]

Everyone knows the only way to truly worship god is to throw all your valuable and intricately carved tokens into a bog pit. The occasional human sacrifice does not hurt either.

Simply saving up your best token and displaying them is not sufficient worship. I sleep at night knowing that people who keep their tokens are going to be the first against the wall come Armageddon. Fools!

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[coopaq]

First off it's altars not alters dumbass. Second, name one church in the world with a gold altar. Not even St. Peter's has one. You're just an ignoramus.

Strange that an incorrect spelling causes so many to miss the point being made that church charity seems to be used only to sustain the church and pay the salaries of it's holy workers.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[10101001 10101001]

I never mentioned the catholic church, as most (all?) of my witnessing of the shear audacity in the spending of money in adornment of churches has been in the US where the catholic church isn't involved. It's not like religion started with the Catholic Church, anyways. I'd have spoken more about Judaism if I had more experience with it, but I've watched of the clear adornment of Jewish Tabernacles back around 100BC or 100AD (I forget which side it was, but 200 years hardly seems that big a deal in such a time scale). So, I totally agree that it's true for any religion. It's, of course, Christians and Jews which clearly don't follow their own 2nd Commandment, though (I'm quasi-Quaker, and such ritual/adornment is one of the reasons why the Society of Friends formed).

Your final line really sums up the relationship nicely, though. Churches are just like a business, out to buy the talent of people to sell their product. I wouldn't have a problem with this if it weren't for the fact that a lot of Christian groups in the US seems to have mostly joined in a religious xenophobic monopoly that encourages the squashing of competing ideas.

To me, it's the same ethical position as writing a catchy song lingo for Microsoft. At some point, there's something clearly unethical about supporting any group that is in the position to truly hurt others for having or expressing their own ideas. Of course this is a generalization, just like it's a generalization that all record execs are evil blood suckers; clearly there are record execs outside of the RIAA. But, I'm talking most specifically about those Churches who would so feveretly dictate religion to the masses while at the same time doing such unethical acts as trying to destroy/ban in some way all ideas they oppose. I'm all for them not buying things or boycotting stores or whatever. At some point, though, churches really need to stop going after all the ideas they don't like and focus more on the bad acts that people are blatantly commiting in front of them.

Yada yada yada...talk about way off-topic.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[adeydas]

That site looks aweful in Firefox.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Anonymous Coward]

History is made by those in power. Thing is, churches held much of the power in Europe after the fall of Rome until the late middle ages (say 500 AD to 1500 AD) and thus controlled art and literature (and science!) rather than letting it flourish. Art and literature provided a good medium for the churches to push their agenda, they didn't support art because it's "beautiful" or whatever.

That's why whatever literature we have left from those times are often religious, because you simply couldn't publish anything else. Free speech was unknown. Church über alles.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[kd5ujz]

I have yet to see the Red Cross suggest people would burn in fire and brimstone if they did not donate weekly.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Phroggy]

Music too - consider how much great classical music was written on commission, and how much of that was religious.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[VendettaMF]

24 if you lose the unnecessary and incorrect final comma.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[VendettaMF]

or possibly 25, if I don't typo the damn number.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[lord sibn]

(Sorry everybody, this was an answer that had to be given to a question like that): "Very comfortably, on a big pile of money."

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold altars might not be common (San Marco has one, btw). However, the parent was referring to the practice of using too much worth for simple things.

I'm sure most churches are bona fide and very charitable. But I've seen a few church buildings that were extremely luxurious. Again, this seems to be uncommon. But there is not reason to flame the GP such a way.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Zonnald]

Since most holy workers are not in a position to go out and earn an income, don't they need to be paid, so as to pay their bills and feed themselves - or should *God* provide that directly?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[nyekulturniy]

'Most' religions? Isn't that a rather sweeping statement? And don't most religious organizations exist firstly to take care of the spiritual needs of its members? Charity is a mandate for Christians and Jews, but it's not the only thing churches and synagogues must handle in this world.

There will be infrastructure costs for buildings, salaries, insurance, mortgages, and other things any organization needs. Compared to the mortgage, a gold altar might be a small expense. And it might be gilded paint done by a person of talent.

Of course, there are well-publicized cases of televangelists' churches that pocketed money and enabled the ministers to live a lavish lifestyle. The PTL Club and the Bakkers were like this; however, other ministries, such as Coral Ridge Ministries, have opened their ledgers for inspection. The Catholic Church has many precious works of art, but it also has dioceses in the U.S. where parishes are being closed because the cost of maintaining church property is too high (especially with high legal settlement costs)

As in any other establishment, be aware of where your money is going. However, to attack religion without specifics is a sign of mental laziness. If you attack an institution so broad as "most religions," then you don't have any effect but making yourself feel good for a while. Pick your targets for more effect. Better yet, why not find a religious institute that is spiritually satisfying and effective with its money?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[stateofmind]

Exactly, thank you Kenja. I've always thought the same thing.

Josh

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Darby]

Since most holy workers are not in a position to go out and earn an income, don't they need to be paid, so as to pay their bills and feed themselves - or should *God* provide that directly?

Well, if he really wanted them doing what they are doing, don't you think that he would?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Darby]

And don't most religious organizations exist firstly to take care of the spiritual needs of its members?

The Catholic Church has many precious works of art, but it also has dioceses in the U.S. where parishes are being closed because the cost of maintaining church property is too high (especially with high legal settlement costs)

So you are saying that most churches exist for good holy spiritual purposes. Then you give as an example the single largest denomination in the world who has to close churches because *they actively worked to allow and cover up the rape of children?!?*

Does your head ever feel like it's about to explode from cognative dissonance?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Bob Uhl]

Why can they not glorify God and take care of the poor? Charity is not the sole virtue one should strive for.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[kieronbm]

No...beautiful marble halls and stained glass should be reserved for the houses of the rich, not made available for communal use! We wouldn't want the less fortunate to have access to such opulence, would we?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what verbiage means? By your own maxim, I should avoid doing business with you.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Winkhorst]

I own a dictionary. Do you?

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Winkhorst]

Bigot? One wonders who I'm supposed to be bigoted against. I'm not prejudiced against the linguistically. I just don't buy anything from they.

As for the scammers' excellent English, it may be excellent by YOUR standards, but I've never seen one who didn't make some mistake. I suppose I should have mentioned I'm an ex-printer and typographer and a published author, so my sensitivity to poor language/orthography/style is set higher than most.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Winkhorst]

Huh? Would you kindly reread what you wrote and edit it to make sense? Then resubmit it and I will consider answering it. This is PRECISELY the kind of fractured language usage one needs to look out for. And as I suggested, I have never been burned. But then my sensitivity to such things is set extremely high. Most folks aren't linguistically aware enough to pick up the nuances. I didn't say it was a useful practice for the average plebeian, just for me.

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Nykon]

"How can they sleep at night?"

After drinking $1000 a bottle champagne and having sex with super models in their $200,000 sports car I'd say it is easy for them to fall asleep in their $10,000 hand built bed. But that's just a thought...

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[nyekulturniy]

No. It doesn't because there are many, many churches and people in that church, and to say "all priests" is like saying "all Democrats" or "all software engineers."

Re:How can they sleep at night...?

[Darby]

No. It doesn't because there are many, many churches and people in that church, and to say "all priests" is like saying "all Democrats" or "all software engineers."

Except that I didn't say "all priests" so your argument falls apart since it was a simple minded straw man response.

The policy of the Catholic Church was to aid and abet in the cover up of the rape of children. They also took action *in their official capacity* to help these child rapists avoid taking any responsibility for their actions.

You can spew all the nonsense that you want, but that will never change those absolutely proven facts.

So it does not matter in the least if there was one child raper, or a million in the church.
The official policy of that organization is to aid in the rape of children rather than act in an honorable manner.

So giving them as an example of a poor put upon organization that is out only for spiritual good is utterly ridiculous.

If they had a single scrap of interest in living up to what they claim to believe, they would much rather see their whole organization gone than aid in the rape of a single child, yet they actively helped in the rape of hundreds at the very least with the sole aim of preserving their power structure.

Now if you can find any place where Jesus said that that was even remotely ok, then and only then, will you have even a shadow of a point.

The worst thing I heard of...

[Peden]

Happened in Sweden (or maybe Britain). When the lists of missing persons was release, some people cross-referenced it to the list in the phone-book. Then they went out and fsking robbed the houses of the mising persons!

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[say]

At least it happened here, in Norway, but probably other places as well.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[tmk]

I heard it other way round: the swedish government did not release the missing lists in first place to prevent those incidents.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Looke]

That is what happened last time Sweden was hit by an accident this large. When the ferry Estonia sank in 1994, 800 or so were killed. This experience is the most important reason why the list of missing/dead Swedes has not been published yet.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[henrik]

The list was never released by the state department (UD) in Sweden due to fear of this as it happened earlier when lists such as this was released to the public. So somebody told you a lie about it happening this time.

The thing that did happen was that when newspapers and tabloids published names and photos of missing that relatives sent them; then some of those were robbed.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Scrameustache]

When the lists of missing persons was release, some people cross-referenced it to the list in the phone-book. Then they went out and fsking robbed the houses of the mising persons!

Here's a thought: Release the list, but first warn the relatives and fill the missing person's houses with carbon monoxide.

Extreme? Yes, but I think those crooks deserve it.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Tony Hoyle]

In britain some moron went around phoning the relatives of the missing telling them their loved ones were dead.

You gotta be pretty fucked up to want to do that.

(although not half as much as when his cellmates find out what he's in for).

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[roman_mir]

Heh, they won't need that stuff anymore anyway... what's the problem, would you rather see them steal the things from the living?

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[sejanus]

When my grandfather passed away, the day after the notice went out in the newspaper, his house was robbed.

Made me damn near physically ill. I'd pay so much money to have 5 minutes in a room with those scum.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, they won't need that stuff anymore anyway...

What do you know about how large parts of the families are dead? Some went down themselves to check if their family members were alive when they couldn't get a confirmation if they were dead or alive, just "missing"... Later risking coming home to a robbed house. Yay. But of course you didn't think of that.

what's the problem, would you rather see them steal the things from the living?

the problem is that they're stealing :-p

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Detritus]

If the criminals are that predictable, the police can setup armed stakeouts at likely targets. They did that here when there was a rash of liquor store robberies. After a number of robbers were shot and killed by the police, the word got around that robbing a liquor store was hazardous to your health.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[roman_mir]

What do you know about humour? Just as much as the moderators.

---

Seriously, why is this surprising?

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[nyri]

Let's be resonable: it causes more harm to rob a place of a living person than a dead person. If you have to rob a house, please, by all means, rob a dead man's house.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[drix]

I'd double whatever you're willing to pay to see the average Slashdot reader in a room for 5 minutes with somebody who robs houses for a living.

Don't even pretend, twiggy.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[danro]

If the criminals are that predictable, the police can setup armed stakeouts at likely targets.

At 3000+ (at the time) separate sites? Not all that easy...
There were _a_lot_ of people missing here, you know.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Robmonster]

One sicko has recently been found guilty of sending fraudulent emails to people claiming to be from a govermnet relief agency informing them that their loved ones had been killed in the disaster.

He got the email addresses from various sites that had people posting looking for information on missing friends and family.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't funny, and whining about moderation is pretty lame also.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[stanmann]

I don't know about average, but let me pick the slashdot user and you can pick the criminal.

Re:The worst thing I heard of...

[roman_mir]

Oh, but it IS funny, it's that you have no sense of humour, but that's not my problem.

OH GUSH

[Anonymous Coward]

I just donated $100 on Amazon.com!!

Re:OH GUSH

[scaramush]

I just donated $100 on Amazon.com!!

"On" or "to"?

Wikipedia

[JaxWeb]

As many of you have probably seen, Wikipedia is listing charities in various countries of a temporary page. They mention the need to look out for fraud, but I hope none of the sites listed are fraudulent in any way. The page is here .

This is a news story about somebody changing e-mail headers to pretend to be the British government confirming friends of the recipients to be dead. Very sick. Luckily, the police acted in this case.

Re:Wikipedia

[someonewhois]

Yeah, but why don't they have that page locked? It doesn't really make sense to let anyone add a link...

Re:Wikipedia

[arose]

It may however make sense to remove a link. Oh, and because that is the "wiki way".

You'd think it would go without saying..

[wfberg]

Why do dumb/naive people keep falling for scams like this? Each disaster these scams pop up, each time the public is warned about them, but it still works..

Is there some sort of university program I'm not aware of, pumping out mindless peons by the thousands each year so they can make the same mistake as others did last year? Apart from Hamburger University of course..

Then again, University of Miami law professor Enrique Fernandez-Barros somehow managed to become part of a 419 scam in which $1.68 million got lost...

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[kiddailey]

One of my buddies way back in high school used to have a saying:

"People are people, and people are stupid"

I usually think that to myself anytime one of these type of things is reported or otherwise mentioned :)

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, naive != dumb.

happens to the best among us. It's the human condition. Don't be so judgmental.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Is there some sort of university program I'm not aware of, pumping out mindless peons by the thousands each year so they can make the same mistake as others did last year?

Yeah, its called the public school system.

How many schools even have a "home ec" course anymore? And of those, how many actually teach useful modern information like how to balance a checkbook, how to read a credit card statement, how to keep a budget, how to compute interest, how to critically read an advertisement, etc? From what I can tell, the answer is almost zero. People need a firm grounding in basic, day-to-day economics and high school is the place it ought to happen - it certainly will be more useful to 90+% of the students than memorizing the dates of the civil war...

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[joranbelar]

Apart from Hamburger University of course...

Hey! The University of Hamburg is quite a prestigious university, you insensitive clod!

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[moz25]

Perhaps many people are trusting and caring and nice to take pleas seriously. At the same time, they haven't yet properly learned that anything they get in their mailbox through spam can safely be dismissed as scams. The better keyword would be "uninformed" or otherwise "unexperienced".

I have a special folder for 419 spams... it's amusing and easy to recognize as they all follow the same pattern. Yes, it is surprising that even intelligent people can fall for such scams if they let their greed get in the way. On the other hand, more admirable emotions can also get in the way of common sense.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[ultranova]

People need a firm grounding in basic, day-to-day economics and high school is the place it ought to happen - it certainly will be more useful to 90+% of the students than memorizing the dates of the civil war...

Warning - cynical views ahead.

You forget one important matter - public schools don't exist to benefit the students, they exist to benefit the society. If they also happen to benefit their students, good, but that's more or less a side effect.

Now then, lets think on this a little:

1. If people knew basic economy, they would also know that they cannot constantly spend more than they earn. Furthermore, they would realize that it makes more sense to use cash than credit cards and debt, since you have to pay interest for debt. So they would do the logical thing, and start using cash. What would that cause ? Spending would decrease, causing the profits of companies to drop, and at the same time the governments ability to track money flow and people's doings would diminish, since each transaction wouldn't be conveniently logged at the central databases of the credit companies anymore. So it is not in the best interests of the US society, or at least it's overlords, to teach people basic economy (or to be critical of commercials, or anything else that would make them harder to exploit).
2. Schools have to teach people something to justify their existence. If they couldn't say "hey, we teach people things" and ceased existing, it's conceivable that people would get their education from their parents or other such parties, putting it outside of the authorities control. Besides, illterate people cannot fill in order forms.
3. Teaching about the U.S. Civil War allows schools not only to make it seem like they're doing something, but also sends a clear message in a subtle way: "If you defy the central government, you lose".

Don't get me wrong; public schools are a great idea. They ensure everyone can at least read, write and count to ten (at least they should; don't know if they actually do). In this way, they, together with public libraries, give everyone access to the collective knowledge of human race. However, they are also extremely vulnerable to abuse, and any goings-on in schools, public or otherwise, should be interpreted with a healthy dose of paranoia.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[chialea]

I believe the state of CA requires all high school students to take a basic course that includes that information, as well as how to be wary of advertising, how people lie with statistics, and how the stock market works. It's rather basic, but useful information.

Lea

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[BlueArchon]

>modern information like how to balance a checkbook

Modern? I'm 23, and I've never even seen a check in my whole life.

Plastic all the way, baby. Well, at least in modern countries.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[saider]

This reminds me of a Simpson's episode (Homerpalloza), where Smithers is congratulating Mr. Burns for his purchase of "TicketMaster".

Smithers : "... Who'd have thought that people would pay a 100% service fee?"

Mr. Burns : "Yes, it's a wonderful arrangement that ensures a healthy mix between the rich and the ignorant."

The ignorant masses provide manual labor and a steady revenue stream for the business owners. It is as simple as that.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Tony Hoyle]

Err.. by public schools I assume you mean state schools?

In this country 'public' schools are private schools (yeah I know, never made sense to me either).

I had a real hard time reading the post with that assumption in my head :)

Then again, public schools turn out managment types... Hmm... maybe I got it right on first reading...

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Furthermore, they would realize that it makes more sense to use cash than credit cards and debt, since you have to pay interest for debt."

Erroneous assumption, apparently you didn't take Economics, or didn't study long enough.

1. Credit cards don't necessarily cost anything to the end user. Many stores set prices to cover their bank charges, credit card transaction fees and other expenses with a single price. So cash purchases don't save you money in the store.

2. Credit cards have lots of advantages. If my Christmas presents, bought on VISA, are stolen from under the tree, VISA pays. It's an insurable risk, and the owner (still VISA since I have yet to pay off that card) is responsible for insuring it. Not every country made credit card companies follow this logic, if yours didn't hard luck.

3. If you pay on time there's no interest. I've used credit cards and loans which offered anywhere from 45 to 366 days of interest free credit. Did someone, somewhere pay for this facility? Sure, and maybe they'll go bankrupt. But it wasn't me paying, and someone was going to take advantage, so it might as well be me - Economics 101 again.

4. Even if you pay interest, you may earn more money by using debt, just like big businesses that borrow venture capital to make a fortune. Today the UK government lends students money at an attractive rate, then allows banks to provide tax free savings accounts. You borrow money from the government, keep it in the bank, and make a profit for doing nothing. Several people I know borrow £3000 or so from a Credit Card company with a 0% initial rate, put the money into tax free savings, and when the card company finally puts up the rate they simply transfer the card - the new lender is excited by the chance to gain a customer and offers a further 0% rate for a few more months. Essentially these friends are being paid £10-20 per month by the bank for simply filling out a couple of forms on the web.

A smart person can go through their whole life legitimately spending more money than they seem to be earning, without any consequences. You just have to know how the system works, and then use it in your favour.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

> Modern? I'm 23, and I've never even seen a check in my whole life.

Still living in your parents basement may be the modern way of life for a lot of 20-somethings, but maybe if you'd had an education in basic economics you might actually have been able to afford the rent on an apartment, which you would be paying with a checking account...

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! The University of Hamburg is quite a prestigious university, you insensitive clod!

I think he was mistaking it for the University of Cheeseburg.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[mboverload]

This is the best arguement against the crappy public school system I have eve heard.

As a current high school student, I can second this fully. I dont learn a SINGLE usefull thing in there, cept for math (only because I'm going to be a programmer).

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[BlueArchon]

Aren't you Americans a tad thick sometimes?
We don't even have checking accounts, except for a few legacy goverment accounts. A private person has been unable to open one for the last decade. We are past those ancient papers.
I don't pay rent, my bank does it automatically. As with my phonebill.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[trawg]

Because people are conditioned to believing anything they seen on TV and read in the newspaper. Why should the Internet be any different?

Its obvious to anyone that takes five seconds to think about it, but most people Just Don't. We all have stories of people that we know that we thought were fairly clever having forwarded us some stupid email or link that we then have to explain why its fake, why its incorrect, why its not true, etc.

I reckon you could successfully make the point that Nigerian scams, virus-infected emails, adware, spyware, and all the like have actually been Good Things, because they've exposed a large chunk of the Internet-using community to the fact that you JUST CAN'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ OR HEAD ANYWHERE!

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[CaptainAvatar]

In this country 'public' schools are private schools (yeah I know, never made sense to me either).

I assume you're British ... the rest of the English-speaking world calls private schools "private schools" :)

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

healthy dose of paranoia

I am fairly sure the drugs that I was being fed while in school increased my paranoia to an unhealthy level. Those sneaky bastards!

Posting AC 'cuz they still watch me.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[jbrw]

Name me a UK bank that does 0% on credit cards for a cash advance.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[nathanh]

If people knew basic economy, they would also know that they cannot constantly spend more than they earn. Furthermore, they would realize that it makes more sense to use cash than credit cards and debt, since you have to pay interest for debt.

It doesn't always make more sense to use cash. A credit card...

• Will be interest free if you pay back within a certain time period.
• Provides some protection against loss, theft, mugging and pickpocketing.
• Gives you an itemized record of everything you've bought. Good for tax purposes.
• Is sensible from the "debt can be used to create profit" point of view.

That last one is difficult to grasp and does require some knowledge of economics. Basically it makes sense sometimes to go into debt because in the long run you will make more money. An example of this is getting a mortgage on a house rather than renting.

Schools have to teach people something to justify their existence.

I have a more cynical belief that schools exist to keep children occupied during the day so both parents can work.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[tommyth]

Is there some sort of university program I'm not aware of, pumping out mindless peons by the thousands each year so they can make the same mistake as others did last year? "Dr. Hibbert: I'm afraid your playing days are over my friend, but don't worry, you can fall back on your degree in--Communications? Oh dear Lord! Luchenko: Da I know I know it phony major. Luchenko learn nothing, nothing!" - Simpsons *ducks*

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[Anonymous Coward]

I read about a case where some scumbags sent e-mail to people and claimed to have found someone that probably was their child and asked for a picture so that they could verify that and then proceed to bringing the child home (i.e. asking for money to do that). I believe that quite a few people that are usually smart enough not to fall for scams might not think rationally under such circumstances (i.e. if the e-mail really does reach someone that is trying to find their children after the tsunami). Disgusting.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[dj245]

They work so well because some of them are very very good. (some of course, are very badly done by people with no english ability) One phishing email (spoofed) recently directed me to a site https:\\ebay.com if I remember right, and the ebay site was perfectly reproduced (I'm a regular user) in most every detail except they immediately demanded "confirmation" of your credit card number. It was a very well done scam. 3 years ago I probably would have been fooled; I'm sure there are lots of people who are "3 years ago" and don't know the difference between a spoof and the real site.

Re:You'd think it would go without saying..

[stanmann]

I wish my bank would pay my rent and phone bill. How do you arrange that? I pay my rent directly to my landlord via direct paycheck deposit, but If my bank were to make that payment it would save me ~$700 a month.

Giving intelligently

[GuyMannDude]

Even legitimate charities are sometimes a bit sloppy with how they spend the contributions they get. Many non-profits spend a considerable portion of their donations on fund-raising (read: telemarketers) and compensation of management. One of my favorite non-profits is the American Institute of Philanthropy which is a watch-dog organization that releases reports that "rate" the charities on various criteria. Given the fact that there are so very many organizations that are set up to aid the tsunami victims, I encourage my fellow slashdotians to give their money to an organization that gets an A rating in the guide.

GMD

Re:Giving intelligently

[jxyama]

FYI, American Red Cross is rated A+.

Re:Giving intelligently

[SEWilco]

The biggest advantage of the existing charities is that some of them are already set up for this type of relief effort, and some were already active in the affected areas. Even if an organization did not have stocked warehouses in the right places, some organizations have people with experience at dealing with emergency situations and can get things moving in the right direction quickly. Those organizations who know how to deal with the political and physical infrastructures also have an advantage over new groups.

Nevertheless, despite the risk of money being diverted, money is the best contribution. It can be sent around the world quickly, and aid organizations can buy appropriate supplies from the best locations. You might want to donate cans of baked beans and blankets, but it costs a lot of money and time to get such material to the other side of the world and baked beans and blankets might not be appropriate.

Re:Giving intelligently

[parvin]

Also http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Re:Giving intelligently

[maunleon]

I would suggest that people split their donations among two or more charities. That way, it is less likely that their money will be stuck due to logistics.

Personally, I usually go with Red Cross & Catholic Relief Services.. And please, no argument about donating to a religious charity, it's my choice.

In the back of my mind there is always the fear that some self-righteous warlord will object to US charities helping those he considers his people, so I sometimes lean to charities not directly associated with the US.

There is too much politics in the world... witness the "US is stingy, not giving enough" followed by the "US is giving too much, they want to buy friends in the area" soap operas. No matter what you do, you can never win with some idiots. I understand that people are frustrated, but some people should just shut the f*ck up and tend to the tragedy instead of playing politics!

And what the hell is with Kofi Annan and all these idiots (yes, US too) who must "tour" the devastated areas. What the hell can they contribute?

It makes me sick... Middle-eastern countries, rich in oil, are contributing crap, and they are supposed to look out for their "muslim brothers". Saudi Arabia, $30 mil? The royal family has this much change in their couch cushions!

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/159/story_15913_1 .h tml

Quotes:

"In her January 1 op-ed in Jordan's Addustour, Ayida al-Najjar wonders whether the tsunami left an opening for America to "wash its face and appear cleaner, more sincere, and beautiful" to the Islamic world. The U.S. may see its aid to the Indian Ocean nations as a remedy for the political ruptures its foreign policies have created in the Islamic world"

"Tapping into some of the wild rumors that are circulating around the Internet, in English and Arabic, Mahmud al-Busayfi wondered in Libya's al-Jamahiria on January 4 whether the tsunami was "a reactionary result of the terrible American bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq?" "

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_ fu ll_story.asp?service_ID=6486

Yes, whining about Bush taking 3 days to work the logistics, but not a word about Mr. Annan continuing his vacation for three days after the tsunami hit..

Re:Giving intelligently

[Anonymous Coward]

"FYI, American Red Cross is rated A+."

So much for the trustworthyness of the list. Does *no one* remember what the Red Cross did after the September 11th 2001 attacks on America?

Re:Giving intelligently

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the trustworthyness of the list. Does *no one* remember what the Red Cross did after the September 11th 2001 attacks on America?

Sure. They gave money to truly needy people in other countries. They gave food to the starving, medicine to the sick, and rebuilt areas destroyed by fire, flood, drought, hurricanes, etc.

Of course, you're probably angry that they didn't give the money to the SUV-driving wealthy families of the 9/11 victims. This is why the Red Cross is an A+ charity and you aren't.

Re:Giving intelligently

[Anonymous Coward]

The ~$100M they gave to some telephone contractor? What of that?

What does it take to not be an asshole?

[SilentChris]

During 9/11, people were shocked that street vendors sold water for $20 a bottle and nearby jewelry stores were robbed. I always thought "Well, if the disaster was of a much bigger magnitude, people would probably not do this."

Now, 150,000 dead, and we still have assholes trying to make a buck off it. What does it take for these people to learn morals? Is the extra cash worth that much when there's now several thousand orphans? Do we need, what, a nuclear holocaust to get assholes to knock it off?

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[lightknight]

Selling a bottle of water for $20 isn't fraud (although it's unkind). Telling people that their donations are going to help tsunami victims, when in fact it's going to buy your new car, is fraud.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[TheRaven64]

The thing that irritates me the most is that almost every company I see has some kind of donations tin (real or virtual). We know you are a faceless corporation and you're only doing it for the PR, so please just give it a rest for once.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumping Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. What a dumb fuck you are.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[CrackedButter]

Maybe you are being too cynical but at least people are getting even more money with their aid. At least they WILL be passing this money, its a better world with their help anyway, thats how I see it.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[Anonymous Coward]

We also have Al-Quida in Indonesia warning the aid workers, and
anti-government rebels infiltrating the aid effort. There will
always be people using whatever happens for their own gain.

How many Scientologists do you think will be promoting their
"purification rundown" in case of a nuclear holocost?

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[jacksonj04]

My school took great joy in handing out envelopes to encourage people to donate. Damn PR...

We also had a couple of asshats go out in their school uniform and go round houses collecting "on behalf of the school" then keeping the cash. Bastards (the police got them though!).

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[Warskull]

To be blunt, short of a disaster killing all human beings you will always have people trying to profit from situations like this. People tend to not care about charity until something big like this happens. Then everyone is tripping over themselves to help creating a situation that is very easy to exploit.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[Riddlefox]

I don't think he was implying that selling water for $20 a bottle is fraud; I think he was trying to lament the fact that even in times of disaster, people can't find it in themselves to actually help other people, rather than profit for themselves.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[_marshall]

Call it the cynic in me, but I believe society will always have people who are ready and willing to exploit the downfall of others for their own ends.

It's the way that humanity is, and always will be.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[SilentChris]

Uh, well, actually at my company the employees started the contribution drive. It may end up being "good PR", but we actually wanted to team up and help. Bit cynical aren't you?

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[t_allardyce]

Actually I heard it was Starbucks who sold the water to paramedics. Out of a big enough sample there will always be afew people like this thats just how it goes.. In a nuclear holocaust allot of people would initially be fighting for their own survival, I always figured that if a nuke went off in my city (and I was far away enough to survive) The first thing I would do is go on to my street and nick a car and knock out the owner - sick I know, but when the choice is you and your family spending the next 6 weeks dieing in the most insane agony you can imagine or letting someone else die, your body makes the choice for you in about 3 seconds and morals fly out the window only to return later when you can't sleep anymore from the guilt OH OH the guilt! why? why? er um.. i mean.. er.. look over there - an eagle! THWACK!

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[roman_mir]

"Well, if the disaster was of a much bigger magnitude, people would probably not do this." - please elaborate, why not? The only reason not to sell water at 100USD a bottle is if a huge fucking meteorite strikes this miserable planet and the currencies lose their value. Was that your point? I actually see it the other way around, the bigger the problem is the more there are chances to somehow profit from it. When an infrastructure is in ruines, rebuild the infrastructure... isn't that in itself not profitting from a disaster? I don't understand you. If 99% of population is wiped out, and I am still alive, you better believe it I will not exhibit any kindness to anyone around who will stand on my way to survival. Be it killing the people/babies to preserve some food/water or not saving those who can be saved but will become a nuisance and a danger to my reserves. Sure sure, I will help those that I personally am interested in helping but no more than that.

Morals, he, it's for well ordered societies and for losers.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[incom]

Quite simple really, our society has very little in the way of a mechanism for penalization of assholes, and in many ways in rewards thier behavior. We are mostly animals, and the succesful strategies will get used.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumping Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. What a dumb fuck you are.

He's all-powerful. He doesn't need a pogo stick.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[wirelessbuzzers]

I think you're being too cynical. Perhaps PR was a factor, but does it not help relief efforts to give relief efforts a large fraction of their valuable screen real-estate? I mean, it amounts to a tremendous amount of free advertising.

For example, for days after the tsunami, Apple replaced their entire 5-section news/ads, which takes up almost all their main page, with links to relief organizations. Amazon also had large redirection signs. Google added tsunami-relief links to their home page. Sure, these made the companies look good, but they also must have brought in hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars in contributions.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[KiloByte]

Not really, a bigger disaster = more opportunities to get rich.

During the WW2, many people didn't even hesitate before selling Jews for a load of bread...

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[AndroidCat]

Apparently Scientologists are already spamming for money to send their books to the area.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[toddestan]

In a nuclear holocaust allot of people would initially be fighting for their own survival, I always figured that if a nuke went off in my city (and I was far away enough to survive) The first thing I would do is go on to my street and nick a car and knock out the owner

If a nuclear bomb just went off, and someone tried to nick my car - I would kill the bastard. You wouldn't want to leave your family without a dad, would you?

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[TheSam]

I've a hazmat for sale

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[Clemensa]

Some people around my town are collecting on the streets. They wear no ID and when questioned, are elusive about which charity they are collecting for. I've seen some kids pocketing the money before, which is why I don't give to people on the streets. It does make you wonder how many of these collectors are real, and how much money is being lost.

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[t_allardyce]

Obviously you've gotta pick a good candidate, if possible a car thats just on the street with no-one to claim it (someone could be at work, hence dead, but they left their car behind to take the bus - or they have two?). The whole point is that sometimes, faced with such a bad alternative (i hear 6 week radiation sickness isn't a walk in the park) you become like an animal and your morals vanish - it happens in places like Iraq on both sides..

Re:What does it take to not be an asshole?

[toddestan]

I thought you were going to try and carjack someone, which could be a bad move. If I was in the same situation though, random car parked on street = mine.

Leviathan Blood Money Surfaces

[Doc Ruby]

According to Allan Nairn, a journalist who's been an Indonesia eyewitness for decades, most of even the legitimate aid money is funneled through governments like the Indonesian, which then funds further attacks on any surviving, devastated populations of these resource-rich "rebellious" regions. Nairn does recommend ETAN, which funnels aid to the indigenous "PCC" relief org - which seems the most conscionable course, at least until someone blows the whistle on them.

Re:Leviathan Blood Money Surfaces

[pommiekiwifruit]

Hmm, all I know about Sri Lankan politics I learned from the Ramayana, which may be somewhat out of date (and yup, some guy wants to rebuild the causeway by pumping sulphuric acid into limestone :-).

The point is if the IRA or Al-Quaida did a cash appeal (instead of robbing a bank) I wouldn't be so keen on funding them.

And the Tamil Tigers make the IRA look like pussies (having killed Rajiv Ghandi the Prime Minister of India, and various other people, including several in the United Kingdom).

So without knowing the full details of what they would do with the money, I would be very reluctant to give it to them, even if I think they have a point about the central government.

Fraudulent claims

[Gary Destruction]

It seems that fraudulent claims in the wake of disaster are becoming commonplace. During 9/11 there were many scams and fake pleas for disaster relief. Such claims are no different than denying people the help that they need. In a way, it's almost like a DOS attack against victims.

Re:Fraudulent claims

[Anonymous Coward]

In a way, it's almost like a DOS attack against victims.

A "Disk Operating System" attack? Oh, wait, you mean "Denial of Service", or "DoS".

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone got url's of some of these sites? I reckon we target the ones with there names and address's in there dns record and send letters around there general area warning people of there sick presence.

Re:Well

[NetNifty]

Well, either that or slashdot 'em.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

God I love your sig.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that the Ferengi are a thinly veiled jab at Jews, right?

Re:Well

[strelitsa]

Nonsense. The Ferengi were a thinly-veiled stab at North American robber barons of the 19th Century. Besides, thinly-veiled stabs at the Populist and Free Silver political movements had already been done by L. Frank Baum.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you nuts? The whole TV/entertainment thing is owned by Jews, do you think something like that could get past them? Look, every time a Jew farts in Montreal, there's a 15 minute special on the local english station.

Re:Well

[J'raxis]

Their name likely is derived from the Arabic word Faranj or Ifranj, "Franks", which the Arabs used to describe the European merchants in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean and by extension, all westerners. The name may also derive from a colloqial Italian word ferengi, meaning literally "Yankee Trader".

Wikipedia

Tsunamis and Nigeria

[jwdb]

The nigerian scam artists have have updated their mailings - I just received one from a person claiming to need help distributing $32m to relief organizations in return for a 10% cut.

Are they ever gonna give up?

Jw

Re:Tsunamis and Nigeria

[jcr]

Where can we donate to a fund to hire some goons to break their kneecaps?

-jcr

Re:Tsunamis and Nigeria

[jwdb]

DEAR RESEPECTED MR. JCR

MY NAME IS 1337_/.3r AND I RECEIVED YOUR HIGHLY
PRAIZED NAME FROM A BUSINESS ASSOCIATE. I AM IN
GREAT NEED OF YOUR ASSISTANSE.

I HAVE SET ASIDE THE SIZEABLE SUM OF $1,000,000 (ONE
MILLION US DOLLARS) FOR THE USE OF TRACKING DOWN THE
NIGERIAN TSUNAMI SCAMMERS AND BREAKING THEIR
KNEECAPS. UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IN
SUCH MATERS AND HAVE NEED FOR A WISE AND INTELLIGENT
ASSOCIATE TO STIKE A DEAL WITH THE LOCAL MAFIA.

I AM WILLING TO OFFER YOU 10% OF THE $1.000.000
(ONE MILLION US DOLLARS) IN EXCHANG FOR YOUR HELP
IN THIS TRANSACTION.

I ANXIOUSLY AWAIT YOUR REPLY,

1337_/.er

Re:Tsunamis and Nigeria

[Dr. Cody]

The nigerian scam artists have have updated their mailings - I just received one from a person claiming to need help distributing $32m to relief organizations in return for a 10% cut.

Are they ever gonna give up?

I have just had the misfortune of having several Nigerians move into my dorm. It has given me an interesting perspective on the 419 scam. In Nigeria, these people are well-known--and heroes. According to a source, they are mainly from the Ibo (Igbo, Igloo, whatever) ethnic group. I was told in glowing terms how it is known to be the most clever race of men. (I diplomatically did not share my thoughts about what that must say of the other people in their country) They even have primitive racial destiny notions.

However, 419ers are not the most revered of Nigeria's scumbags. That honor is bestowed upon the gangs who kidnap foreign oil workers and blow up their pipelines. In the West, we understand that these kidnappers are not much more organized than an average street gang and that pipe line explosions are usually caused by people trying to steal oil. In Nigeria, the kidnappers are freedom fighters who don't hurt the oil workers, just show them around the beauties of their country while they wait for payment, like tour guides.

Re:Tsunamis and Nigeria

[HuguesT]

Well, that's a sample of a few.

However I doubt the opinion of your dormmates represent those of all Nigerians. I've had to deal with the Nigeria High Consulate on one occasion while organizing a conference. A bunch of people were posing as government members and trying to get a visa to come to the conference.

I emailed the consulate and got an immediate phone reply: "these people are known crooks, do not send them any letter that would enable them to get visas", from a person with a distinctive accent. I conclude perhaps optimistically that not everyone in Nigeria appreciates scammers.

Possibly next time diplomatically let your dormmate know that Nigerian scammers are severely unappreciated in the West and in fact give their whole country a bad name.

More bogus than help

[tmk]

When you look at an online forum of an hospital in Thailand, you see more adverts for other sites and forums than real help. There are some sick people who want to get as many victims as possible on their sites and pretend that they want to help. Actually they are not ashamed to flame each other.

Reliable Orgs.

[jfonseca]

I've posted this in another discussion.

Not karma hoaring, mods can skip this if they wish, here is a list of reliable places where you can donate.

Problem with Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

The front page isn't being updated if you aren't logged-in.

Education

[Infonaut]

This sort of nastiness is really part of the whole spam/phishing/credit card fraud continuum. Because the Internet is such an important part of all our lives now, it seems to me that governments need to start putting out some education about this sort of crap. I don't know if it's already being done in other countries, but in the United States the federal government doesn't seem to be lifting a finger to educate people about how to effectively use the Internet.

This is one of those "ounce of prevention vs. pound of cure" things. If we spend a little bit of money up front to put out TV and radio advertisements, it seems that the government would have to spend far less money investigating these assholes and helping victims of this sort of fraud. If K-12 schools taught kids how to detect online b.s. and community colleges featured this sort of instruction as part of entry-level computer classes, it could go a long way toward minimizing the negative economic impact of the broad range of Internet fraud.

But of course current thinking in the United States is an extreme form of caveat emptor, so I'm just engaging in wishful thinking.

Re:Education

[Drooling Iguana]

But if the American people learned how to effectively detect bullshit, everyone currently holding an elected office in the country would be out of a job.

Re:Education

[Gray Elf]

And this would be a bad thing?

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Americans really show their ignorance when they say they want their politicians to be honest. What are these fucking cretins talking about? If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse! No-one would know what to do! Honesty would fuck this country up!
And I think deep down Americans know that. That's why they elected and re-elected Bill Clinton. Yeah, because the American people like their bullshit right out front where they can get a good strong whiff of it. Clinton might be full of shit, but at least he lets you know it! Dole kept trying to hide it, didn't he? Dole kept saying "I'm a plain and honest man!" Bullshit! People don't believe that. What did Clinton say? He said "Hi folks, I'm completely full of shit and how do you like that?" and the people said "You know something? At least he's honest! At least he's honest about being completely full of shit".

Ahh, George Carlin kicks ass.

Re:Education

[Cro Magnon]

Only if you're a politician.

Re:Education

[ssimontis]

Can education help people who are unwilling to learn how to use the Internet? I don't think many of the users who are causing problems would want any information on proper Internet usage.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[mmkkbb]

It's news because people forget and need to be reminded that goodwill shouldn't overpower good sense.

Please Help

[JamesP]

You may not know, but Brazil got affected by the Tsunami big time.

After all, it's near Jacarta, India and other countries. Several people died in Brazil

Please help

Re:Please Help

[oberondarksoul]

This looks like a troll, but just in case you're serious, allow me to correct your geography a little.

Brazil is nowhere near India - India is in Asia, whilst Brazil (last time I looked) happened to be a large country sitting in South America. Not too difficult to spot. Also, Jakarta isn't a country - it's the capital of Indonesia.

Re:Please Help

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably confused Brasil with Indonesia as they are both full of ladieboy's.

Re:Please Help

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but the Brazilians ones are way hotter. I think it's because of the German immigration there, you get a nice mix of blue-eyed blondes with tanned skin.

Re:Please Help

[Anonymous Coward]

fool, its thailand with the ladyboys.

I don't donate to charities...

[CrackedButter]

... I don't always have a clear idea where the money will end up. However I'm not one to ignore a homeless bum and buy him a meal when I can. Giving them money does them no favours either.

I got one

[digitalgimpus]

I got this via email the other day, and decided to post it for others to see:

Tsunami Scam

Sounds like a nigerian letter, but with Tsunami mixed in there.

new tld needed

[jsk2001]

.ORG domains are too easy to get. Organizations need to have a domain that are for well known and trusted sites only.

www.red-cross.help
www.red-cross.give
www.red- cross.relief

It's inevitable

[Hamster Of Death]

Lack of morals and greed, plain and simple.
Hell there's even a car dealership down the road offering to 'donate $100 to the tsunami relief for every car sold' once the shock wears off, people try and cash in. It will always happen. Just be on the lookout for the emails from Nigeria wanting to get 'tsunami relief money out of the country' now. =)

I blame Bush =P

Re:It's inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify - greed requires a lack of morals.

Salvation Army

[stankulp]

The only charitable organization I contribute to is the Salvation Army.

They have feet on the ground everywhere in the world, and they don't squander your money. It actually makes it to victims of disaster and poverty.

Re:Salvation Army

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Sally Ann", as it's called here, is just a big cult. They have their own churches ("Citadels" they call them) and enforce religion on their workers.

Re:Salvation Army

[Neph]

I agree that the Salvation Army is a very efficient and honest organization in general, but they need to be more careful about certain things, in particular what they do with donated second-hand clothes:

This may be of interest to you.

Re:Salvation Army

[Magnus Pym]

Yup. Lost your house and all your worldly possessions? Don't worry, just convert to christianity and the Salvation Army will help you.

Magnus.

Re:Salvation Army

[davidstrauss]

they don't squander your money

How would I know where their money goes? They refuse to file financial reports like most charities by claiming a religious exemption. I demand transparency before any charitable organization reasonably expect any cash from me.

The AIP did eventually get the Salvation Army to do some disclosure, but it was back in 1998. But other religious charities, like Christian Aid regularly release their financial statements without a hassle.

Charities exist in a privilaged place in tax law that can easily be abused. So, with the privilage of not paying taxes, charities need to be transparent with their finances. The Salvation Army's use of religious exemption is unacceptable.

Re:Salvation Army

[Anonymous Coward]

The above obviously incorrect flamebait gets modded up. Good job Slashmoron mods.

Re:Salvation Army

[Uber Banker]

Yeah, nothing like giving money to people whose primary objective is spreading religion. I prefer to give my money to organisations that spread food, water and shelter and don't spend valuable time corrupting and destroying cultures.

Assist those in acute need, and let them make their own decisions and help them help themselves in working out of chronic troubles.

Re:Salvation Army

[allrong]

I find your sig:

Drug prohibition laws help fund terrorism.

ironic as, in Australia, the Salvation Army is one of the main opponents to drug law change. I refuse to give money to them due to the conservative meddling in politics and non-secular policies.

Re:Salvation Army

[Rostin]

The people really changing the culture are the people whose culture it is. They aren't spotted owls, and they are perfectly capable of making choices. Insinuating that they need your protection from the big, bad religious organizations is extremely arrogant.

Re:Salvation Army

[sploo22]

I prefer to give my money to organisations that spread food, water and shelter and don't spend valuable time corrupting and destroying cultures.

Any factual basis for this opinion of the Salvation Army, or is it just a knee-jerk response?

Re:Salvation Army

[neonsam]

The "Salvation" in Salvation Army refers to "Christian Salvation" that, and this from their website:

The Salvation Army is an integral part of the Christian Church, although distinctive in government and practice. The Army's doctrine follows the mainstream of Christian belief and its articles of faith emphasise God's saving purposes. Its objects are 'the advancement of the Christian religion... of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind as a whole.'

Re:Salvation Army

[kikta]

Spreading Christianity??? How dare they!!! What will they do next, drown orphans and kick kittens?

The world owes you many thanks for uncovering this wretched plot.


Jackass.

Re:Salvation Army

[Anonymous Coward]

Spreading Christianity??? How dare they!!!

Name me one idea that's killed more people than Christianity throughout the course of human history. Yeah, I didn't think you could...

Re:Salvation Army

[Rostin]

If we're going to play that fast and loose with logic, it's easy. Atheistic communism, by a long shot. But I think you know that you're full of shit, or you wouldn't post AC.

Re:Salvation Army

[Anonymous Coward]

Spreading Christianity??? How dare they!!!

Yes, teaching someone the Bible can be immoral, if it's right after you rebuilt their village and taught their kids to read. It isn't like they aren't impressionable at that moment, right? The missionaries wouldn't take advantage of the villagers, would they? Also, the fundamental values of Christianity are accessible through other religions, ones that might even cause less conflict in certain regions. Why not teach people what will be most valuable to them in their cultural context? I guess that would mean fewer notches on the missionaries' belts, though.

Re:Salvation Army

[Tom]

The only charitable organization I contribute to is the Salvation Army.

These people need food, water and housing, not salvation.

Re:Salvation Army

[Ieshan]

Dude, the point was that there are plenty of organizations that spend every dollar you donate on helping people, and not saving their souls.

That's all he was saying. Yeesh.

Re:Salvation Army

[clarkc3]

Name me one idea that's killed more people than Christianity throughout the course of human history

Easy - here's two:
-Greed
-Revenge

Re:Salvation Army

[kikta]

And if that's what you want, then donate to them. But I'm sick of all these assholes on here pissing & moaning because missionaries dare to tell others what they believe.

How is a religion supposed to grow if you don't tell anyone about it? But, then, that's the point, ins't it? These people hate religion and don't want it to grow. They want it to wither and die.

Re:Salvation Army

[Uber Banker]

The original poster said "they have feet on the ground and don't squander your donation". Well, if they are primarily preaching religion, they are squandering on and every one of their/your donations.

Re:Salvation Army

[kikta]

I'm going to spell it out for you very slowly:

WE... DON'T... CONSIDER... IT... SQUANDERING.

If you do, then by all means, donate to someone else. And they are not primarily "preaching religion" (nice try), but if that's still too much for you, then donate elsewhere. But don't claim that something others find important to them is "squandering."

UH DUH!

[Chanc_Gorkon]

This is the danger of everyone and there brother adding links to say help the tsunami survivors to their web pages. Everyone should have just link directly to the Red Cross web site or similar organization. This is why I have not donated anything yet because I want to be absolutely certain that when I donate the money, it goes to the right place. I will probably wait until the real money is needed. There's going to be alot of waste now and when everyone forgets about it is when the problem will really start. It will take YEARS to recover the area affected. It's not something that will even be over on December 26th of 2005. This is a once in a lifetime disaster for much of the world. The loss is tremendous. Unfortunately during times such as this, there's always some incredible assholes who think hey I will scam some people. As always, I give IN PERSON. Walk in to the Red Cross in your town and just give them a check or cash. Only then will you know that a good percentage of your money will go where it's needed. Also, don't just give to the Red Cross now. They always need your money. Make it a yearly donation and increase it a bit when the Red Cross is in need of extra help for hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, tornadoes and terrorist attacks.

Better yet, if your technically inclined, get your ham license and donate sometime to ARES by training in events and field day. Then when disaster strikes in your area, you'll be ready. I used to think it was ridiculous, but after a bad ice/snowstorm took out people's electric and 2-3 inches of rain falling right after that cause flooding in and around Columubus we'd never be needed but in just 14 days we had 2 activations of ARES to staff the red cross shelters with communciators. I know it won't help the Tsunami victims, but then when something like this hits your town, you can not only donate your money but also your time.

Re:UH DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, donate to the Red Cross so that you can help them pay for their lawyers in the blood contamination lawsuits that are still ongoing in Quebec. They didn't bother checking if the blood was clean, you can guess what happened. A few of them got compensation (about 15,000$, which is ridiculous), the rest are still waiting/in court, heh...no thanks, I'll keep my money.

Re:UH DUH!

[donnz]

True. Also worth supporting long term initiatives like the this one proposed by Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to the G8.

Re:UH DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about ARES and the ham radio bit, but bureaucracy works best when things are centralized and that is what is currently happening in these places. Once man power leave the areas, money can be shifted through the system, but without a great level of people accounting for things, there's a greater chance to be lost in overhead and delay.

Re:UH DUH!

[Chanc_Gorkon]

And a good percentage of the people I read that live in America and would donate to the AMERICAN Red Cross. Not the Canadian Red Cross. Just cuz one division of a initernational organization has a problem does not mean the rest do.

Big nonprofits have big "administrative costs"

[Cryofan]

I have seen reports that many of the well known charites and nonprofits spend a egregious amount of money on so-called administrative costs, with only a small percent eventually going to those in need.

Apparently these "administrative costs" are often things like new cars and fat bonuses for the nonprofits' management...

Re:Big nonprofits have big "administrative costs"

[soft_guy]

Legitimate charities disclose the percentage of donations goes to overhead vs. to help victims. The IRS requires this, btw.

For organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army, the amount going to overhead is very small.

Re:Big nonprofits have big "administrative costs"

[mumblestheclown]

stop with your junior high-school grade bullshit analysis already.

sure, /some/ charities are needlessly wasteful, but the fact of the matter is that to provide the maximum help to the maximum people in the shortest amount of time, you need good people who demand at least close to a market salary. you want logistics experts doing logistics, not well meaning but inexperienced volunteers. running an effective relif agency is at least as hard as running a corporation.

let me clue you in: the majority of people who give to charities are well meaning but clueless. the classic (real life) example that i like to use is a group of english business owners decided to help estonia in the days after their independence by building them a school. now, what do a bunch of english business owners do? they spent their money on cement and other building materials and a fleet of lorries (trucks) to carry then from from the UK to estonia. Look! how photogenic! building materials for building societies! Bullshite. as if estonia needs cement bought at english prices to be shipped over or even unskilled builders in the form of english volunteers to build the thing. fuck no. for the money spent on all that photogenic bullshit and feel-good volunteerism (plane tickets to get the volunteers there, etc), an expert could have been hired at a competitive salary that would have hired local building crews and arranged the necessary logistics. but, morons like you would just scream and yell "fat consultants getting paid!"

the truth is that the relief and development world IS filled with a large number of people who do get paid good salaries... usually a bit below a business salary, but quite good nonetheless. buy, by in large, they damn well earn their money despite know nothing reporters writing exposes about how the money is going to "consultants."

here's another clue folks: by in large, sending canned food to africa is a waste of time and money compared to sending skilled consultants who can teach africa to feed itself. if there is a warzone where a consultant could not go, don't worry, your can won't make it there either.

I don't know about you guys..

[Anonymous Coward]

but I donated my money to a nice fellow from Nigeria, he seemed very kind and trustworthy. Funny thing is, he contacted me (through e-mail) before I was able to even look at the possible organizations I might donate to. Maybe he's psychic?

You're an ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't donate to charities...I don't always have a clear idea where the money will end up.

Someone above already posted a way for you to know which charities are careful with your money. You are just trying to justify hoarding your money.

Re:You're an ass

[CrackedButter]

I didn't see that post and second. I'M a STUDENT, what fucking money are you talking about! Besides its better to buy a homeless person a meal rather tham give them money, they might spend it on drugs, this is common knowledge I thought?

Re:You're an ass

[AKnightCowboy]

Someone above already posted a way for you to know which charities are careful with your money. You are just trying to justify hoarding your money.

Since when is "hoarding your money" a crime? He earned it, he can keep it or give it away in any way he pleases. Some people are going to starve to death and some people are going to be filthy rich, it's just how capitalism works, but it's the best system we've got. The majority of the middle people live relatively decent lives.

And the worst offender is...

[pi_rules]

UNICEF. Check this guy who's on the ground and watching the UN's presense first hand: http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/

Hint: The only way to get away from the UN there is to go where there's actually people in need. Hang out in 5 star hotels and you'll be swamped by 'em.

I'm ashasmed to know that my country is where their head quarters sit.

Re:And the worst offender is...

[winkydink]

I'm ashasmed to know that my country is where their head quarters sit.

Only because we can't find another host country stupid enough to take them in.

Re:And the worst offender is...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

How are we supposed to believe the postings ON A BLOG??? Although, I did find one statement particularly true.....the countries affected know us American's will do it all. Pretty sad really.

Re:And the worst offender is...

[hexi]

Aaaaaargh! Why on earth is the UN nowadays viewed as some kind of evil empire in the US? Is the reason still the opposition to the Iraq war to destroy Husseins WMDs (which can't be found but that's an other story)? I mean I know the UN has its problems, but still it is the only forum where nations can talk there problems over easily. Also I feel that a little bit of cordination wouldn't probably be a bad idea during catastrophis that affect many countries.

Re:And the worst offender is...

[J. T. MacLeod]

The problem that people have with the UN is that it's more than a place for nations can easily discuss problems.

It's a controlling entity, itself. It's from the issues stemming from this that many people take issue with the UN. Well, that, and it's filled with liberal US-haters.

Hating the UN goes back much farther than discussion of invading Iraq under George W. Bush.

Re:And the worst offender is...

[Impotent_Emperor]

I hear the Australians are helping a lot, as well as a few other local militaries.

Re:And the worst offender is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, the right in the US is like a kindergarten full of rich toddlers who will fucking whine until they get what they want: a UN resolution to support their invasion, and now, it seems, they will whine until they get Kofi Annan out of office. Why? Because he represents most of the rest of the world who were opposed to the war and because they were right about it in the end after all. It's so fucking frustating seeing the US government -- helped with the media corps -- fuck their own people and the rest of the world. I want to see this arrogant empire go down in flames, in my life time, please...

Re:And the worst offender is...

[hughk]

It's a controlling entity, itself. It's from the issues stemming from this that many people take issue with the UN. Well, that, and it's filled with liberal US-haters.

The UN is filled with representives from around the world, it's staff are all from around the world and it repesents a dimension of world opinion.

If a country behaves unilaterally (Iraq, Kyoto, or whatever), it will not be liked. If a country sets international standards to which it does not adhere, it will not be liked.

The UN has no military, no police force and definitely no black helicopters. This is a problem and an asset at the same time. When it does have a military or police presence anywhere, it relies upon personel, materiel and command structure of its members.

The main current issue is with the democracy within the UN, where the security council members dominate, especially the permanent ones (of which the US is one).

Are you really surprised?

[andalay]

I'd be surprised if there were NO such cases. Cmon, we're just selfish, greedy bastards.

I bet there were no Linux users involved!

Haha.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Now seriously, why can't /. delete worthless vomit like this from its userlist? What a malformed stench. Luke727 has all the appeal of a paper cut.

And you are surprised ?

[karvind]

It was expected and is bound to happen. Even the money from the so called non-profilt organizations will be lot less when it trickles down to the real people. Lot of food and clothes will never reach the peoeple who need it. Don't be surprised if you hear that food was rotting in some stores because it didn't pass through the require paper work.

Welcome to the real world Neo.

Re:And you are surprised ?

[hahafaha]

Well no, I am not surprised, just angry! Also, the purpose of the article was more to alert some ignorant people. But, of course, many already know...

Acts of God

[Doc Ruby]

It will be interesting to see how the FBI deals with "muslim" charities it has identified as terror funding conduits, as their pipes are filled with donations from Muslims (and others) targeting the huge Muslim communities devastated by the quake and tsunami. Will the FBI reveal that some Muslim posers are ripping off virtuous donating Muslims, stealing lifesaving aid to instead fund suicide bombers in their jihad? When some are revealed, how will Muslim leaders around the world react? Will some of the leaders who are complicit with the funders find a way to blame the FBI, and America, for their own sins? And will the US government find a way to frame legitimate Muslim charities with fake charges of this kind of fraud, fueling the counter-jihad crusade? God only knows - god certainly isn't doing anything to stop it.

Re:Acts of God

[oliverthered]

You pay tax and get ripped of by your Christian government who seems to like killing too.

Deal with it.

Re:Acts of God

[Tom]

Actually, it would be much more interesting to find out that these same terror organisations actually do help the suffering population, and what then? Will the FBI freeze their accounts anyways? And what will the mass media report?

No, I'm not from another planet. Hamas, for example, the leading palaestinian terror group, is also a major development organisation, building schools and even hospitals in the israeli-occupied territories.

Re:Acts of God

[Doc Ruby]

I'm sure its the case, and I think that would be interesting. We'd actually get to have a theological/moral discussion about whether "the good outweighs the bad" (it certainly doesn't). That might actually illuminate the hypocrisy of many other religious conjobs running amok in the world, covering their crimes with the figleaf of "charity' or "compassion". So I'm pretty sure the FBI and the media won't be reporting it, because they're two of the biggest faithsome criminal operations ever.

Re:Acts of God

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation +2
80% Interesting
20% Flamebait

What kind of sick bastard tries to suppress a post like the parent I submitted with "Flamebait" mods? There really has to be some kind of accountability for that power they wield, like at least requiring a comment to explain their mod to the metamods, and probably more severe penalties for repeatedly receiving negative metamoderation.

Red Cross / Red Crescent

[bigberk]

I normally don't email around appeals to people, but the magnitude of this disaster is so large that I have emailed my friends informing them how to donate online.

I pointed people towards the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which as well as accepting donations online, also provides a convenient listing of Local Red Cross / Red Crescent which are probably better for donating through. For instance, I gave through the Canadian Red Cross since the Government of Canada is going to be matching private donations through them.

Re:Red Cross / Red Crescent

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, in case there's any dispute about legitimacy, IFRC is listed under Google's relief page. I prefer the red cross societies over organizations with religious agendas.

MEMO TO CAPTAIN OBVIOUS

[Anonymous Coward]

People suck.

Crime and Punishment

[atriusofbricia]

There are times like these when I wish public horse whippings were legal.

Re:Crime and Punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

What did the horses do to deserve this?

Why are you looking at me like that for?

Moral Insomnia

[fm6]

How can they sleep at night? Well, siphoning off some charitable contributions is evil, but not as evil as, say, hitting somebody over the head and taking their wallet.

And let's not forget all those "legitimate" charities that spend as much as 80% of their contributions on their own "expenses". (The standard of the "charity industry" is supposed to be 25% overhead -- but I find even that much repulsive.) Which is why, when I reach for my own wallet, I examine the organization I'm giving to as carefully as the cause they're raising funds for.

Re:Moral Insomnia

[AntiNazi]

How can they sleep at night? Well, siphoning off some charitable contributions is evil, but not as evil as, say, hitting somebody over the head and taking their wallet.

many would argue that. atleast in #2 you have to work for the cash and the person has a chance in hell of defending themself...

Re:Moral Insomnia

[fm6]

Bah. Violence against innocent people is an evil in itself, a whole class worse than simple theft.

not just webscams

[Dionysus]

And you can't always tell. An asshat in Norway had managed to steal a Red Cross collection tincan (or whatever you call it in English, bøsse in Norwegian). Fortunately he got caught, but there have been a couple of instances of people either stealing directly from the collection plates or just going around telling people they are collecting money for the tsunami victims.

Le Sigh

[halcyon1234]

So, should I donate to the Red Cross, or the guy in the mall with the mayo jar and a hand written sign that says "Sunami Relief"?

Oh, how I wish I was joking...

Re:Le Sigh

[SunFan]

...the guy in the mall with the mayo jar and a hand written sign that says "Sunami Relief"?

Give him counterfeit money. Oh, sweet sweet irony.

Re:Le Sigh

[hahafaha]

Well if you think that what he is doing is legitimate then by all means, donate! Maybe you can verify his claims...

won't help

[DreadSpoon]

It's pretty naive and foolish to think that people are going to somehow instantly get morals when a bigger disaster strikes. The kind of people that abuse a small disaster will just abuse a bigger one even more so. Post-holocaust those same people that rob and fraud survivors of "minor" disasters will be the ones taking and stealing everything they can for their own survival, uncaring of whether that theft and brutality affects anyone other than themselves.

No offense...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but this is a perfect example of why I only donate my hard-earned (US) money to US-based disaster charities/etc. for crises that are US-affected. I like to keep my US money in the US, and I do my homework before being oh-so-generous.

Paramount

[pronobozo]

Paramount Theatres has had spiderman and ET heart pins that are used for rasing money for charities. They are $3 each but they keep 2/3 of the money. In one ad they mentioned they raised 50 million meaning they made 100 million. It'd be nice if they gave their part aswell.

Re:Paramount

[lux55]

They do this regularly in theatres around here. I'd be interested in the source of this claim, to verify that it's true. If it is, that's despicable. I can understand some of it going to the cost of the pins and perhaps a very low administration cost, but $2 out of $3 is fraudulent activity, IMO.

Re:Paramount

[pronobozo]

They say $1 dollar from every pin gets donated yataa yataa... Then go on to say that they've raised 50 million this way. It usually says right on the back of packaging. We are the ones doing the donating they are the ones gaining 100's of millions of dollars from it. :-P They are crooked.

Re:Paramount

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, the pins are worth 2 bucks each.

You're an asshat and I hope you get sued for libel spouting bullshit like you do.

Re:Paramount

[kaligraphic]

Gee, and they get the pins for free? They're probably making 50c or less apiece after costs.

Re:Paramount

[A beautiful mind]

Well, there was worse here in Europe afaik. Danone sold yoghurts in advertisement that if someone buys their products 1/100th of the product's price goes for charity. Im sick of things like this. Fair business practice? Scam.

beware spammers too

[AmericaHater]

Someone is circulating an email appealing for help identifying a lost western child. it says this:

" The boy about 2 years, from Khoa Lak is missing his parents.
Nobody knows what country he comes from. If
anybody knows him please contact
us by phone 076-249400-4 ext. 1336, 1339 or e- mail :

info@phuket-inter-hospital.co.th
image001.jpg"

Trouble is, it contained a spammers zombie (I didn't realise when I got it) and it depends on suckers trying to be helpful and recirculating it to people they know to infect them. That's how it got to me but 'cos I use Linux I was immune and I didnt circulate it anyway.
What I did do was waste the cops and the Norwegian embassy's time. I recognised the kid in the picture from a TV news report that named his parent nationality name and location. I spent an hour on the phone to the TV station the police and the Norwegian consulate telling them that I knew who the kid was and I could help.
Turns out they knew anyway so did I do right or wrong? did the spammer do wrong? suppose I had been the only one to indentify this lost 2 years to the parent but I had infected loads of people in the process?

Spammers - what slime-bags.

Re:beware spammers too

[claes]

Of course the spammer did do wrong. I know this exact case, the child was found on the internet by his aunt, who saw the picture on the hospital web page. You only identified him since he was in the media already, because of these lucky circumstances. This was one of the "miracle stories" that media reported about, to have something good to write in days of absolute horror.

Re:beware spammers too

[AmericaHater]

No, You have clearly misread my post. The news report I saw described two Norwegians losing their 2 year old son to the waves and they couldnt find him and believed him to be dead and drowned. They were in tears in front of the camera saying how desperate they were to find him and they showed a picture of him.

I was aware of him because of the news report yes, but not because of a media report saying he had been found: if the report had said he'd been found then obviously I would not have phoned the TV station, police and Norwegian embassy.
It may be that the boy's aunt discovered this seperately but neither I nor anybody else knew that - nor did the TV station making the news report. Consider what would have happened had his aunt not seen the hospital web page. Who would have identified him instead? me. Or at least, according to the Norwegian embassy, one of the 6 other people who phoned in the same information. So my question remains: "what are the moral balances?"

Re:beware spammers too

[calculadoru]

hey, I got that message too. forwarded through about five different people, and with a gazillion Cc-ed innocents. it did not, however, contain anything but the text and the two pictures...or so I think. are you sure it had nastiness in it? not that I circulated it, and besides I use Thunderbird so it shouldn't have done any damage, but still - are you sure? what kind of zombie was it?

Selling Bottles of Water for $20 is a Great Thing

[BrianMarshall]

Consider - if 911 had stranded people for a longer period and lots of people want trustworthy water. People that have some on hand start selling it, but realize that they are soon going to be out. The price goes up and you have people selling water for 20 bucks.

With cell phones, word gets out fast - if you can get water into that end of The City, you can make big bucks. Many people start working hard at getting water to the folks who need it.

Anyone can sell water for $15 bucks and have a huge market... no wait, the guy across the street is selling for $10, so $7... but now there are people wandering through the crowd selling for $5.

Pretty soon the price is not much higher and maybe even lower than it was before the disaster.

If there is a way of making a buck selling something, it always attracts others trying to cut in on the action with a lower price.

It is like sweatshops. As more people try to make a buck at it, wage rates are forced up.

Re:Just so you know

[Monkelectric]

Sorry to have to do this --

I am revoking your slashdot license. Although your spelling is above average, your cofunsion of the concepts of trademark, patent and copyright are unacceptable. Please note you are still fully qualified to post at fark.

On top of a pile of money....

[rsilvergun]

surrounded by many beautiful woman.

Come 'on poeple, not to troll or anything but this isn't anything to be surprised over. Heck, real charities were throwing out warnings about this crap as soon as talk of charity hit. People are evil, film at 11. Get used to it.

Now what is kinda fscked up is seeing spam used for this, especially ala 419 scamming. Still, you got to be kinda dumb to fall for this:

My home and everything I own was destroyed by the Tsunami, except mysteriously for my computer and the power lines running to it. Truely it is a miracle. Now if you'd just send me some money....

Be careful who you donate to

[thesatch]

Check out this story:
T.O. police arrest man posing as Red Cross worker

There's no reason you should to give your money to strangers. If you can't/don't want to donate money over the internet, go to your local Redcross office. Every major city has one.

Re:Be careful who you donate to

[Quixote]

Here's what takes the cake from this story:
He is a Zimbabwean refugee claimant.

Just think about this: this guy is claims to be a refugee, and then turns around and commits a scam like this.

If I were a Canadian, I would go on a fuckin' hunger strike to have my government throw these scumbags back to whereever they came from!

Of course, expecting Canadian politickians to do anything sensible about the "refugees" is asking for the moon.

Re:Selling Bottles of Water for $20 is a Great Thi

[NarrMaster]

Nope, that may be true in a non-emergency situation/area, but trying to justify selling water (a basic fucking commodity) for $20 a bottle in an emergency with economic theory is pretty lame.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You must really love paper cuts.
On a serious note, I wish there were a way to remove some of my old accounts. Don't you find it odd that a site devoted to privacy leaves your account active forever? If my coworkers were ever to put the pieces together, going to work would be very awkward.

Straight from the faq:
How can I delete my account?
You can't. The system needs to keep track of the users, so accounts are permanent. Don't sweat leaving unused accounts hanging around. It doesn't hurt anything.

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/13/00

Doesn't that kind of scare you? Not that I think Slashdot would do anything bad with your comments, but people in real life can use them against you. Hell, Slashdot removed a user's comment a while back; removing an account is just the next step. Maybe I'll just have to involve the DMCA somehow :) Also, that answer makes it sound like the Slashdot system actually CAN'T remove user accounts or else it will break. Maybe that's not the case, but that's the way I read it. Hell, if you can't remove your account then they will have your email address. If someone were to get access to that list...

One day I might create a few thousand accounts and post a few kilobytes of trash to their journals. 2,000 accounts * 10,000 character journal entry * 50 entries = 1GB. Not too much, but it's 1GB that can't be used by someone else. Plus it would take a while to bring all the accounts down to terrible karma :) Maybe then they will delete my accounts.

Nicely done.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've added you to my friends list :) Good job.

Re:Just so you know

[f1rb]

It's more than just copyright protection - the name and symbols of the ICRC are protected under the Geneva Convention. See the ICRC's explanation, and the actual article of the convention is:

Art 45. The High Contracting Parties shall, if their legislation is not already adequate, take the measures necessary for the prevention and repression, at all times, of any abuse of the distinctive signs provided for under Article 43.

Typo in blurb

[Citizen of Earth]

Even in the face of terrible disasters such as the Tsunami that hit South East Asia and Africa in late December, many are finding ways to take advantage of it and make money off of it.

This should read "Especially in the face of terrible disasters...".

Small is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, now people won't give money to the grassroots organisations who are actually doing good stuff. Instead they'll stick to the big charities like Oxfam who spend most of their money on advertising and administration.

Re:Small is good

[t_allardyce]

Not true, if someone knows of a grassroots organisation and they know its legit then they will donate to that instead of someones random email. But knowing small charities means someone usually has to tell you about them, i.e they spread through word of mouth which can be better or worse than conventional advertising depending how its done. Basically what it boils down to is that if you know a grassroots organisation then you would have donated to them anyway, this FBI warning isnt going to put you off, because that organisation was around before the tsunami so chances are its not one of the fakes..

Money, Aid, and Internet Porn

[buckhead_buddy]

Money is an easily transportable way to move physical effort to places that need it; it's the most efficient way for me to help out, but it's also the easiest way for my efforts to be mis-used. There are three ways that bother me about the calls for aid... The Debts Owed Western banks are holding huge debts that these countries can't realisticly repay. The greedy bankers want asian relief so that they'll have a slim chance of seeing their money again. They'd probably be equally happy with telethons asking for sympathetic viewers to help out by pledging money to pay off these huge burdens but they aren't talking of writing off these debts (only of freezing interest or temporarily restructuring payment schedules). The Massive Organizations of Relief The best of these agencies have large administrations that need service aid. They need IT upgrades in their luxurious administrative headquarters. They need new parking decks. In the late nineties I volunteered to help a large non-profit in Atlanta for a day. I had all sorts of ideas about cost saving Linux installs, but my job was to act as upgrade boy migrating users to some Windows 98 service pack. The small organizations have trouble doing much but the larger ones are bloated and wasteful of their resources. The elite in charge There stories of elite hotels and expansive mansions being washed away give me the impression that much of the rebuilding and relief will be wasted on reconstructing the property of the elite rather than basic necessities for the common man. Lack of follow through A friend who works with a local church based charity said that they ask for money when crises like this arise. They don't say that all donations will go to help those victims. Like a sweepstakes they give out X amount of money when they've taken in 100X. I'd almost given up on the idea of sending any money to a charity based on these misgivings. What changed my mind was, oddly enough, a plea on the blog of a amateur pornographic model that I follow. His familial ties to the area caused him sincere grief over the incident and he had selected Oxfam America as the charity he was asking people to give money to. I still have all of these reservations about donating money, but the difference was in hearing a voice I was familiar with make a recommendation of a "least bad" charity to donate to.

It's really odd when I think about it, but a personal message put out over the internet reached me far deeper than our President's cynical call for (bank) aid, or my church's call for extra donations in the collection basket, or the endless streams of impersonal pleadings that I've seen on television. I guess that's the real power of the internet to raise money... the personal touch... and if some goes astray (as I feel in my gut that it will) I feel much less disgusted with myself for my action.

Re:Money, Aid, and Internet Porn

[vhold]

In a better world it would be odd, but in this one, it actually makes sense to have more respect for a porn model then for the president.

Re:Just so you know

[labyrinth]

The Dutch movie Ja Zuster Nee Zuster used the red ross trademark without asking permission... They settled by collecting money for the red cross in the cinema, if I remeber correctly/

Re:Just so you know

[ceejayoz]

The Red Cross has a patent on that logo, and they aggressively defend it, even against other philanthropic, non-profit, and medical organizations.

And rightly so... if it were to become diluted, you'd get situations like hospital ships being fair game in combat.

I will donate

[1n33d4n4m3!]

Please go to my site: http://www.v-ia-gr-a.com/

I will get paid by my sponsors for the views and will donate everything to the poor people in asia.

Also, if you could all leave your e-mail I will sell the complete database on cd-rom to the highest bidder on ebay!

The relativity of evil

[Scrameustache]

Well, siphoning off some charitable contributions is evil, but not as evil as, say, hitting somebody over the head and taking their wallet.

1. Diverting money intended to provide relief for people who are starving and without shelter, in dire need of medical aid and driking water.
   
2. Inflicting physical harm on an individual and taking away some of his money as well as most of his IDs and his sense of security.

We're clearly comparing apples and oranges here, but #1 isn't less evil, it's just more cowardly (it is done remotly and does not entail the possibility of inadvertantly attacking a blackbelt). People might die for lack of charity in these cases. But the crook doesn't see them die, his hands are clean, it's not his fault if people are gullible enough to give him/her the money instead of giving it to the red cross.

Re:The relativity of evil

[fm6]

Your the second person to assert that a mugger deserves points because he's taken personal risk. You can admire someone for being an intrepid risk taker -- but that doesn't mitigate any crimes that peson commits.

I have to admit that I neglected the concept of the effect of the criminal's action. And it's certainly more wrong to victimize somebody who's defenseless. But stealing from somebody, however badly off they are, just isn't in the same class as inflicting harm on a person. If I hit you over the head, I risk damaging a lot more than your sense of security. I probably give you a concussion, maybe fracture your skull. I am immorally inflicting on you the risk of permanent neurological damage and death.

Perhaps we've all seen too many TV shows and movies where people get knocked out, then recover a little later, maybe feeling a little groggy. Pure Hollywood bullshit -- you can't knock somebody out without inflicting serious, possibly fatal harm.

Re:The relativity of evil

[Scrameustache]

Your the second person to assert that a mugger deserves points because he's taken personal risk. You can admire someone for being an intrepid risk taker -- but that doesn't mitigate any crimes that peson commits.

No nonono no no.

Not points, I just love it when I read about a mugger getting his ass kicked by someone coming back from martial arts classes.

That never happens to people who commit fraudulent charity-impersonations. Therefore I hate them more, because they get punished less.

I have to admit that I neglected the concept of the effect of the criminal's action. And it's certainly more wrong to victimize somebody who's defenseless.

Well, at least you got that part : )

Re:The relativity of evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're just one of those "fraud doesn't really hurt anyone" people. It's amazing a burgler stealing a hundred dolars gets far more time then someone raiding a retirement fund and forcing thousands into poverty. This country sucks.

Don't forget Caritas

[Spy der Mann]

Caritas, international

http://www.caritas.org/

It's a group of over 150 catholic organizations dedicated 100% to charity.

They are charitable.

[raehl]

Just not charitable to OTHERS. Giving them money so they can buy gold altars is very charitable to them though.

Re:Moral Dilemma

[jonhuang]

I'm sorry for you and those around you. Good luck in the future.

donate to well-known charity funds/NGOs

[PerlDudeXL]

I think most people know respected charity funds and relief NGOs to donate money for.

I wouldn't trust some obscure website when donating money. Most major TV stations or newspapers have lists of trusted organizations.

Have at you!

[The Tyro]

Heh... I did not use "copyright" in my post at all, and "patent" is defined here by any number of sources. I would refer you first to the sidebar, where the noun "patent" is defined as "an official document granting a right or privilege."

Trademark is defined as a "formally registered symbol."

I see no problem with anything I wrote, including my spelling.

Although your spelling is above average, your cofunsion

YOUR spelling, on the other hand...

Re:Have at you!

[Trepalium]

The parent's post was intended to mean that the Red Cross does not have a patent on their logo. On the other hand, they may have a trademark on it. Patents are limited to inventions not art and logos. In addition, patents expire after 21 years, which would make them rather useless for company logos and names. Considering the American Red Cross was created in May 21, 1881, any patent would've long since expired. Trademarks don't expire unless you fail to defend it. A copyright on the logo is also possible, but it would've likely expired by now.

Re:Have at you!

[penix1]

There is a trademark on it as well as some more restrictive uses. For more info see:

here

B.

A scorpion can't help but sting you!

[Scrameustache]

During 9/11, people were shocked that street vendors sold water for $20 a bottle and nearby jewelry stores were robbed. I always thought "Well, if the disaster was of a much bigger magnitude, people would probably not do this."
Now, 150,000 dead, and we still have assholes trying to make a buck off it. What does it take for these people to learn morals? Is the extra cash worth that much when there's now several thousand orphans? Do we need, what, a nuclear holocaust to get assholes to knock it off?

I don't follow the logic of that at all.

Why would heartless vultures stop being opportunistic thieves because something bad happened to other people? They lead lives where they constantly look for their next victim, they routinely inflict misery on others, and you, somehow, expect them to suddenly stop being leeches because an unrellated event killed a lot of people at once?

I seriously don't understand how anyone could be surprised that thieves keep on thieving, even when you're upset. If someone has no empathy for the people he/she routinely con in person, there is no reason to expect them to have empathy for the faceless dead, no matter how numerous.

Re:A scorpion can't help but sting you!

[Glonoinha]

Maybe we just need to kill all the bad people.
Pretty simple, actually.

Re:Selling Bottles of Water for $20 is a Great Thi

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Not really...just because it's a disaster area doesn't mean economics doesn't apply. You've still got supply and demand working... Though I'm sure the economics are a little different than normal... Regardless, it's quite sad what's happened with this whole tsunami.

apologist for power?

[Cryofan]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A553 54-2004Aug10.html

http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/1124/loc al /stories/08local.htm

Re:apologist for power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Niether of the posted links work.

Making the links clickable would also be nice.

Re:apologist for power?

[martinX]

From here: And Oral Suer, the former chief executive of the...

What sort of a name is "Oral". And "Oral Suer" at that. I don't mean to point out "nya nya you have a funny name" but this one's pretty wacky.

Re:apologist for power?

[mumblestheclown]

Dear Dumbfuck:

First, I can't believe people marked my post as "troll". This might be a troll because i'm calling you a dumbfuck, but I happen to know something about foreign aid.

NOTHING in the one article of yours that I could get to disputed my points. in fact, I quote from the mail tribune article:

"Currently, a charity must show that it has compared its salaries with those paid at organizations of similar size. The comparisons may be made with businesses as well as charities"

Which is to say that big consultant salaries ARE TO BE EXPECTED IN ORDER TO GET COMPARABLE RESULTS.

For marking me a troll on the original post, slashdotters, shame.

Note: Although I happen to know a lot about the aid / relief / development funds game, i do not in any way get compensated from it.

Why do you hate freedom?

[Brightest Light]

The entire purpose of free speech is to ensure that somebody can put forth the most disgusting and unpopular viewpoints. I agree that the grandparent post was pretty worthless, but if you don't like what they've got to say, then add them to your enemies list and get over it. It's a fact of life that people will say things that you don't like to hear, and if that's the case then you ought to ignore it. You're stepping over the line by calling for the removal of users who post things that you don't like to read (though i feel you have every right to suggest such a thing).

Besides, how would such a decision be made? By karma level? What about people who are victims of abuse of the moderation system (mod-bombings of -1, Overrated and the like)? Who gets to decide which user accounts are worthwhile and which aren't? And who would watch those decisions to prevent abuse? What about people who don't agree with the Slashdot Party Line(TM)? Should their accounts be removed because they disagree with all the *nix/Apple/OSS/anti-copyright zealots? It's quite the can of worms you're trying to open...

OT: sig

[m50d]

Didn't Mike Nichols cut her nude scenes though? (And then went into hiding as millions of angry geeks came baying for his blood)

/still going to see it as soon as I get out of my mother's basement

Re:The only ones that help...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that in many countries including the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States it is a felony to provide direct or indirect support to a Terrorist Organization, particularly monetary funding.

No thanks, I value my freedom to much to support a known terrorist group.

Re:Selling Bottles of Water for $20 is a Great Thi

[coldfront]

Well, what are you going to do about it, illegalize it? Compare the situations: people selling water for $20, and those same people not coming and not bringing any water. The existence of water for sale is an option that wasn't there before, and makes people no worse off than they would have been if these people hadn't bothered to come selling anything. These people certainly are doing more to help the disaster than someone who does nothing at all, regardless of whether the motive was being good and saintly or looking to make a cheap buck.

The moral qualms, really, come into play when you get there with your water to sell. OK, so you've hatched up this plan to sell water in the disaster areas. You go there with your water and a money box. When you're there, can you really look into the eyes of the victims, some clinging to the brink of death, and say, I won't give you this basic need of life unless you pay me up? A lot of people can't, I think myself included, and this really should be the root of why the practice draws any moral discomfort. However, if someone can do that, while we might say that this could reflect badly on their general moral characteristics, they are, again, still doing more to help than someone who does nothing at all.

In case someone jumps me on this - no, I don't think relief efforts should be privatized, or whatever. Governments put forth large efforts to get basic commodities and needs into areas, and I certainly have no problem with that, and am glad of it. I'd want it if some kind of natural disaster struck me. But governments can't do as much as governments and individuals can do combined, and if you are outraged at water sellers, you should be even more outraged at every individual out there who hasn't contributed to the relief efforts. Yes, just as outraged at every one.

Saying something is "lame," by the way, isn't a very coherent argument towards showing that it's "wrong."

Aww sheesh

[Scrameustache]

this guy who's on the ground and watching the UN's presense first hand: The only way to get away from the UN there is to go where there's actually people in need. Hang out in 5 star hotels and you'll be swamped by 'em.

So that guy is hanging out in his 5 star hotel, whining that there's more people than usual?
"Yo, kettle! You black foo!"

Latest news on the UN efforts there.

Re:Aww sheesh

[pi_rules]

Dude, the link you posted even SUPPORTS what I'm saying!

He said the number of international staff on the ground had also increased with about 50 UN international personnel in Banda Aceh alone

50?! How much money has UNICEF got for this operation? Isn't this a little disproportionate?

Tell you what, go find a picture of a guy with the fancy blue helmet handing food and water out to people in the tsunami area. You can't. They aren't there yet!

I'm not sure how I got modded down to 0; Troll. That's a first for me. How anybody can say with a straight face that donating to UNICEF is a good idea when there's far, far better and less corrupt charities out there is beyond me.

Re:You're not an ass

[ZosX]

Is that a real picasso quote? I saw that and was thinking about my sig. Austin Osman Spare wrote "Art is the realization of truth." He embedded much of his working knowledge of witchcraft and magick in his paintings. In fact they speak a great deal more about what he knew than what he actually wrote. People that see his art describe seeing heads turning and eyes moving in his paintings. You should check out some of his art, it is very unsettling. He claimed it was what he termed automatic art, that he drew and painted while under the influence of beings that he invoked or under his own subconcious expression. (Pretty much the same thing in a lot of ways) His work is very etherial, and if he didn't see into the spirit realm, I really don't know who has.

Sorry about this useless ramble, but the quote was so close to AOS's that it made me pause and wonder if you used it in response to my sig. Go google for AOS and check him out, he is certainly interesting at least. He was also one of the first surrealists (and was never really recognized as such, at least historically). Dali was much later. Jimmy Page and Genesis P. Orridge were the largest two collectors of AOS's artwork and his stuff has finally made its way into quite a few british museum collections.

Also, as someone that was once homeless for a period of over a year it warms my heart to no end that you would buy a homeless guy a sandwhich or something. I've had so many people help me out in my time that now all I do is try to help others as much as I can. You'll find in life that good karma pays off in spades whether you expect it to or not.

Oh, btw, don't get so reactionary on slashdot. Whatever you say can and will be rebutted pretty quickly around here, and people are oh so quick to pass judgement. Don't let it get to you.

Good luck with school! Its probably the best thing anyone can do with themselves in a lot of ways.

Re:Moral Dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent AC here, thanks for your sympathy. I still don't know what to do though...

Morality

[nurb432]

Morals are relative.

For the Geography challenged......

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The tsumani did not hit Nigeria!

Re:The only ones that help...

[t_allardyce]

Wait, how do you know its going to marines helping in the tsunami relief or marines doing other things that marines do? can you specify in the donation? if not then just remember that your donation is effectively split across all marines, some of who might be doing things you don't support (e.g. raping prisoners, killing babies etc. etc.). Im sure they do good things too like re-building hospitals in Iraq, just saying.

How about a banner link on Slashdot?

[Magickcat]

How about a banner link for the genuine Tsunami charities on Slashdot?

I remember one for 9/11, so why not now?

Re:How about a banner link on Slashdot?

[Jugalator]

Or just donate to reliable organizations, like the Red Cross, etc. Some have been listed in the newspapers. It's not that hard if you stay up to date with the news. The problems arise if you surf off on your own and enter keywords in Google, or think people e-mailing you are automatically honest.

Re:The only ones that help...

[craw]

As a side note, I would like to point out the the US Marine Corps Reserves sponsors the Toys For Tots program. This is the biggest holiday charity in America.

Here's a nice article that was published on the 50th anniversary of this program.

Re:Just so you know

[The Tyro]

you'd get situations like hospital ships being fair game in combat

It's fair to mention that the LOAC (Laws of Armed Combat) make such facilities fair game if they are being used to perform military action. That said, I haven't seen too many terrorists being shy about targeting hospitals regardless of use, or using them (and mosques, and schools) as fighting positions. When I served in the Afghanistan theatre, we even made troops leave their long-arms (and all ordinance heavier than side-arms) outside our hospital. Now our "hospital" was a tent, we were miles from anything, and there were no media types around to see it, but we still did it. It wouldn't have stopped the terrorists from rocketing our position, but we at least tried to play by the rules.

In the subject of the Red Cross, the LOAC explicitly prohibits perfidy, or treacherous actions, including misuse of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. The laws of warfare can probably stand alone without the support of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Re:Moral Dilemma

[CmdrGravy]

No, neither of those were valid reasons.

Re:You're not an ass

[CrackedButter]

I got the Picasso quote off the bottom of Slashdot actually, so I can neither prove or disprove Picasso as saying it! Sorry. I'll change it however if it is incorrect.
I will check out his art, art is something I can never get enough of, this artist sounds interesting, however before I pass comment, my favoured is anything to do with Modernism or Vortisim. Those movements which died during WW1. Surrealism is nice though, it gets the mind wondering.
Thank you for your comments, I've marked you down as a friend as well.

BGP Blacklist

[macdaddy]

This would be a perfect instance in which to use a BGP blacklist of known scamming sites to keep your unwitting users from getting caught up in the scam. nbar is a wonderful thing after all.

Teachers

[rcw-home]

So it is not in the best interests of the US society, or at least it's overlords, to teach people basic economy (or to be critical of commercials, or anything else that would make them harder to exploit).

No, but it is in the interests of the local community, of which the teachers are members.

Ask a teacher sometime what they're proud of - what has given them their greatest sense of accomplishment - and when they answer, consider taking them at their word.

Re:Moral Dilemma

[Trillian_1138]

I'll take the bait...

Your first reason for not donating is flawed because you assume there is a standard of "meaning" that can be assigned to people and accomplishment. While many have their own personal definitions for what a life of "accomplishment" is, or what a "meaningful" life is, there is no universally accepted standard for living a "meaningful and accomplished" life. Thus, while you personally may feel those affected by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean *are* meaningless and/or live meaningless lives, you (fortunately) do not have the authority to assign meaning or accomplishment to others. In short, who the hell are you to define whether someone is living a meaningless life, or has accomplished something?

Your second argument is just as flawed. You said, "the general population is usually wrong." Even if I agreed with that statement, the word "usually" means that (by your own admission!) the general population is *SOMETIMES* correct. I'm not going to even attempt to decide whether the general population is right or wrong, or whether you personally should donate money. However, saying "so-and-so is doing something so I *won't*" is just as flawed as when your mother warned you as a child, "If Bobbie jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?" While the actions of those you respect (or, in this case, seem not to respect) may offer guidance for your own actions, you must judge your actions based on their own merrit, not on other people telling you to do or not to do something.

So your first argument is, basically, "I'm passing judgement on the worth of others and find this group's worth lacking." If that's true, then fine. Come out and say so. But don't pretend that "meaning" and "accomplishment" carry the universal weight you attempt to assign them.

Your second argument is even worse, as it implies that you always (or perhaps just "usually") go against the will of the general population. So in addition to being a judgemental ass, you're spineless as well and can't make your own decisions.

Again, I'm not attempting to say that you *should* donate money. All I'm saying is that your present reasons for doing so are, at best, logically flawed and, at worse, the sign that you're simply a jerk.

-Trillian

If the church had not been arts patrons....

[jotaeleemeese]

... other rich political institutions (because the church acted and still acts as such) or individuals would have done so.

Check 20th century art. The church is gone as a patron because it lost political influence.

Their contribution to the arts is incidental rather then planned.

Re:If the church had not been arts patrons....

[evilmousse]

Oh absolutely, enter the curch's motives into the equation and they can fall from grace, so to speak. Still the fact remains that they WERE patrons though much of written history. Getting back to specifics as well: each church's congregations seem pleased with the work, it keeps the craft-artisans employed if not keeping the whole art from dying out.

I don't think it's any more right to fault a church for doing so as it is to fault me for drinking--each do enough good, allow some frivolity.

How One Phisher Got Phucked

[ctwxman]

A few days ago I checked my Gmail and found a tsunami plea in my spam box. After enabling the graphics, I was pleased to see the actual charity whose name was being used realized one of their graphics was linked in the phishing email. So they changed it! Here is the result. Very clever. They deserve a donation for doing this, if nothing else.

Re:How One Phisher Got Phucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it's good to see they have acted upon this. I got the same email and thought it seemed a bit dubious and forwarded it onto Paypal's spoof/phishing email address (when it still had the original image obviously..). I don't know if anything came about because of my email to them, but I'm glad it's been picked up on anyway - hopefully their action has stopped a few people being scammed.

Re:This is also why I pray to the God of War

[Anthony]

Two problems. 1. By perceiving others as less like humans and more like statistics, one can justify all manner of injustices. 2. Disasters, man-made or natural, have no impact on population growth. Fertility is the ultimate determinant of population. For example, Cambodia's population quickly rebounded after Pol Pot's regime.

Fertility is generally related to education levels and standard of living. Money directed to emergency relief and subsequent social infrastructure rebuilding can be seen, in this light, as enlightened self-interest.

Really sad.

[Refrozen]

You know, that's really sad. There are some things that sure, these morons can try to scam people out of but, when you see the piles of bodies being pushed in to large ditches they call mass graves, I can't imagine how you could do something like this.

I don't even see how you could CONSIDER it, just considering it would make me sick... maybe I care about things too much? maybe they are just insensitive pieces of sh*t?

Donation spam from MercyCorps, NOT!

[AndroidCat]

Last day or so, I got a spam claiming to be from MercyCorp, asking for donations. When I checked their domain, I was suprised to see that they had had the domain since 1996. The spam used a lot of graphics direct from the MercyCorp site, but the payment was via paypal hooked to some Hotmail address. According to MercyCorp's site they don't accept paypal. Email sent to paypal in hopes that they cut off those phishing scum's .. money path.

Re:Selling Bottles of Water for $20 is a Great Thi

[ergo98]

So it is on the back of water vendors to supply water in a disaster situation? Shouldn't this be the domain of government? If you have a problem with vendors jacking up their prices (to be fair a lot of them probably went through very rough economic times for a period following) based upon the simple rules of supply and demand, then complain that the government trucks didn't show up with loads of water and undercut them out of business.

In any case it's hardly like people were dying of thirst - people wanted the luxury of immediate satiation of their thirst. Most of them went very little time at all without water, and it's only by our luxurious first world measures that someone can act as if they're on the cusp of death because they went a couple of hours without a bottle of water.

Re:Just so you know

[ceejayoz]

In the subject of the Red Cross, the LOAC explicitly prohibits perfidy, or treacherous actions, including misuse of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. The laws of warfare can probably stand alone without the support of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Certainly, but if the symbol is misused when not in wartime, it'll make distinguishing between real and misused versions of it a lot harder when the next war starts. Hence, the symbol needs to be protected even during times of peace.

Re:Just so you know

[Anonymous Coward]

The grandparent says patent, the parent says copyright. Dudes, it's a f-ing trademark! Get it straight or leave, please.

Re:I'm doing my bit for the Tsunami!

[Zorilla]

Apparently, he did a pretty good job.

Too many legitimate people taking donations ...

[Titusdot Groan]

I'm not sure why but everybody seems to want to get in on this.

I'm not sure why every school board, web site, city, province, state, etc. etc. needs to set up their own charity system whenever one of these things happen.

Send people to the Red Cross, like Amazon and Apple (to name two of many) are doing -- the Red Cross knows how to spend the money, where to spend the money, and their admin overhead is VERY low.

The only thing I want to see from my city is the offer of firemen, paramedics and road engineers, from my province the offer of engineers and emergency medical services. The only group I want to see offering money is my federal government (as well as offering army engineers, soldiers, doctors and food).

Right now my school board is giving money, my city is giving money, my province is giving money and so is my federal government. How much money is being wasted in salaries for hundreds of administrators to do this? Just so everbody and their dog can claim to have done something? How about the federal government writes one BIG check and everybody else just makes a personal donation to the Red Cross?

I shudder to think of the mess that will happen at the end of the year when all the school boards are short on their budgets because they did matching donations.

Fake schmake ... What does the IRS say?

[soupmaster]

If I contributed to a "fake" fund... can I still declare it on my 2004 taxes?

Re:Fake schmake ... What does the IRS say?

[DarkTempes]

'No' because it wasn't a real non-profit organization if i remember correctly you have to get some sort of ID number from the non-profit organization to put on your tax form to be able to deduct it

Russian variant on 419 scam

[Animats]

Here's another new scam. It's not very "exclusive"; I received four copies.

• Dear Friend,

  I am Yuriy Lagutin and I represent Mr. Mikhail Khordokovsky the former C.E.O of Yukos Oil Company in Russia. I have a very sensitive and confidential brief from this top (oligarch) to ask for your partnership in re-profiling funds over US$450 million. I will give the details, but in summary, the funds are coming via Bank Menatep. This is a legitimate transaction. You will be paid 4% for your "management fees".

  If you are interested, please write back to my email address yuriylagutin@netscape.net and provide me with your confidential telephone number, fax number and email address and I will provide further details and instructions. Please keep this confidential; we can't afford more political problems. Finally, please note that this must be concluded within two weeks. Please write back promptly.

  Write me back. I look forward to it.

  Regards,

  Yuriy Lagutin.

  Mail sent from WebMail service at PHP-Nuke Powered Site - http://yoursite.com

Wave Rat

[DaveAtFraud]

The expression showed up on BuzzWhack last week. Seems somewhat insulting to rats to compare common vermin to these bastards.

Greedy Western Banks

[Detritus]

Then I'm sure you wont mind if your granny's pension check is permanently reduced by 25% because the pension fund's managers woke up one day and realized "Hey! We're a bunch of greedy Western bastards. Let's forgive all the debts of the developing world! Who needs the money more, an industrial concern in Indonesia or a widow in Ireland?".

Tsunami 411

[Anonymous Coward]

I recieved this in my email today:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: TSUNAMI RELIEF AIDS APPEAL
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 14:48:58 -0800
From: stones

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are from a small village in the Aceh Region in Indonesia affected by the recent Tsunami Quakes/floods Disaster that swept through South Eastern Asia.

We have been rendered homeless and have lost all we have in life. Many foreign tourists also were affected by the quakes/floods.

Since we have no other way to survive as of now and have lost most of our relations and children, we have decided to write this letter of APPEAL FOR DONATIONS.

We will be very grateful if you can assist us with any amount of money to enable us start a new lease of life. Our little business have been swept off by the floods and we cannot go and steal. All we need is money to rehabilitate and start business again to make a living. No amount is too small to assist in this relief efforts.

We are sending this mail to many people all over the world for assistance as we can't help ourselves. The United Nations and other world bodies/organisations are helping but the funds are not well circulated. So we need your assistance.

Sir/Madam we pray that God/Allah will reward you abundantly for listening to the voice of the less privileged and people whose lives have been devastated by a natural disaster.

Any donation can be sent either by Western Union Money Transfer Services or Money Gram Transfer to:

Mr. Musliman Musliman
Kp Kurus RT 009-RT0089
Utara, Jakarta,
Indonesia,
14130.

As soon as you effect the Payment, email me the relevant Money Transfer details vis: Money transfer control number, senders name and address as it appears in the transfer receipt, amount sent, test question and answer (if any).

My email for further contact is: tsunamirehab@netscape.net

Your assistance will be appreciated. Thanks for your anticipated cooperation.

Mr. Musliman Musliman
For: Aceh Victims of Tsunami
Indonesia
email: tsoonamirehab@netscape.net
__________
Mail sent from Penny's Research service at
- http://iresearch-solutions.com

if you want to contribute...

[univgeek]

I've been working with AID (aidindia.org) for 5 days so far. It's been a crazy time - the amount of stuff coming in and going out has been incredible. Primary problem being that stuff comes in small lots, but has to go out in big lots, with first priority going to whatever is the immediate need on the field.

If anyone is still interested in donating, I'd suggest they look up aidindia.org and the daily reports filed by the field volunteers.

Liar liar

[Jerf]

Look, buddy, I am a bona fide, certified product of the American Educatiunal Systam and I happen to knouw that Brazil isn't anywhere near Jakarta, which is a made up place name any ho. It's near Belguim, Bogata, Bolivia, and Boland (a former USSSR member state), and is several letters away form India.

If people knew basic economy

[oliverthered]

1: Credit cards take interest at the end of the month, if you pay off first then you make the equivilent interest.
2: You get interest on the money in your account until you make a debit transaction, because you have to take cash out before you shop you loose interest on it for the time it is in your pocket.
3: They didn't teach me that at school your officer, so the Government can't think that's it's that important.

Re:Just so you know

[f1rb]

The parent doesn't say it's copyright protected; if you bothered to read it you would know exactly what sort of protection it has: specific legal protection which is required of parties to the Geneva Convention. It might well be a trademark, and may also be copyrighted, but that's not what they rely on to counter abuses.

Note to self

[serutan]

The tsunami did NOT hit Nigeria.

This reminds me of a guy I knew.

[Omni Magnus]

I knew this guy that raised about $3000 several years in a row to spend two weeks a year in Honduras helping build houses or churches for the people there. I never could figure out what the $3000 went towards since they got a bulk rate on really cheap airfare. The tickets cost less than $300 and they lived like peasants while they were there. (1 minute showers in lukewarm water and really horrible food, while living in tents) For the money he would raise, he could have gotten a construction team of probably 20 to 50 Honduran men to work on those churches. I always knew there was somebody that was making a killing off this "charity".

Re:This reminds me of a guy I knew.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like a lot of charity bike rides, especially the long distance, multi-day ones like the AIDS rides.

If you read the fine print, you'll notice that a huge portion of the money raised by the person doing the ride is used to pay for the support and organization of the ride.

You may well be doing little more than subsidizing your friend's bicycling vacation when you "pledge" to his ride for XYZ.

Re:This reminds me of a guy I knew.

[pclminion]

For the money he would raise, he could have gotten a construction team of probably 20 to 50 Honduran men to work on those churches.

And as a result he'd have no income for that two week period, wouldn't be able to make his mortgage payment back home, and might lose his house. Try thinking sometime, it's fun.

Let's clean up our own house first.

[Scud]

Here at home we have the MCA, which despite the resounding accolades it gives itself, has yet to disperse a single dollar.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/oda/20 05/0103pledges.htm

So FBI, how about working on where the one billion dollars appropriated to the Millennium Challenge Corporation have gone first?

I mean, we wouldn't want to swat at flies now would we?

Tamil Tigers

[pommiekiwifruit]

Well, the Tamil Tigers were collecting money in Trafalgar Square (London) this weekend, with pamphlets explaining that they thought the Sinhalese (Sri Lankan government) was biased in aid distribution. I was uneasy about that so I think I might stick to NGOs like OxFam and the Red Cross/Crescent.

Re:Tamil Tigers

[Doc Ruby]

As I pointed out in another post in this thread, Allen Nairn reports that OxFam, Red Cross/Crescent and others also flow their aid funds through the local governments in the business of killing and suppressing these devastated populations on a regular basis. At least in Indonesia, he suggests the PCC as directing money to the people without that agenda, though I have only his word as to PCC's reliability.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[Egregius]

I think it's a sign we have more appropiate targets for terrorism than politicians, Iraqi policestations and symbols of capitalism.

Why aren't trucks filled with explosives driving into the servers that host these sites? Or better yet: the homes of these people?

Not a 419

[Dusabre]

You're wrong. RTFA.

Fernandez-Barros, who holds three doctoral degrees, said he received the whopping check from Penske Truck Leasing, deposited it in his credit-union account and later had the money wired to Nigeria -- a sequence of extraordinary events that landed him in the middle of a U.S. Secret Service investigation and a federal lawsuit over the vanished funds.

He got involved in a fraud using a check that didn't reach its original recipient.

A 419 by the current internet definition is a scam using an advance fee - "Give me money and I'll give you more."

sad world

[Anonymous Coward]

The world community only seems to respond to change. Most of the people worst of were even before in a very bad situation and now they find themselves in a very very bad situation. Yet the relief money they now receive did not go from very much to very very much. It went from hardly nothing to actually something.

Re:I'm doing my bit for the Tsunami!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job.

As an American, I refuse to donate anything to them. If the world wants to hate me for where I live, that's fine. If you think I'm going to help when some disaster occurs, think again.

Religion = Death; Christianity = Death Cubed

[FreeUser]

If we're going to play that fast and loose with logic, it's easy. Atheistic communism, by a long shot.

Sorry, no.

"Athiestic Communism's" dead, while quite numerous, pales in comparison to those killed by Christianity throughout its history, including the Nazi's, a Catholic holocaust against the Jews, Roma, Gays, and others, which by the way was almost universally endorsed by the protestant clergy of the day as well. In addition we have the 20,000,000 dead in Russia, and millions of others elsewhere.

The christians scream bloody murder and try to disavow the Nazi's as athiests having nothing to do with Christianity, usually by leveraging Hitler's cynical power ploys as evidence he wasn't a "real Christian" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (the same may very well happen to Bush after his polices run their course ... all those fundamentalists lauding him today will tell everyone he wasn't a "real Christian" tommorow), and thereby missing the point that, whether or not he was truly devout or merely opportunistic, he was endorsed by virtually all of the clergy of his day, including the Catholic church and protestant leaders of central Europe.

Then of course we have over a millenium of bloody history before that, which, while populations year-to-year may have been a fraction of what they are today, total over the course of time to far more dead than those killed by communists. Even Islam, which today is in the grips of its own version of fascism and is arguably the most toxic religion of the moment, pales in comparison to the numbers killed by the Christians in the name of their religion over the last two thousand years.

Would have been better with a URL

[Paul Crowley]

It would have been even better if they'd put the text of a URL in the image explaining the fraud and what they'd done...

Re:Moral Dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your insight. I have donated.

New department

[g0bshiTe]

This should go under a new department

From the desk of Captain Obvious department.

DUDE!

[hahafaha]

Wow! I cannot believe you are posting this in a forum that is critisizing just what you are doing. I mean,

"...Brazil is near India, too..."

This is what my article was about in the first place!