Suspected pedophile Oliver Shanti on his way to Germany

Damn, this is good news.

A new age musician and sect leader going by the name of Oliver Shanti has been arrested in Lisbon, Portugal and is now in custody awaiting deportation to Germany.  Born in Hamburg the 59-year-old is wanted in connection with more than 300 acts of molestation against six children - a girl and four boys from Germany, as well as another girl from Portugal. All of the children were between 10 and 14 years of age at the time.

Shanti, the object several months ago of my first and only Wikipedia edit, had been among Germany’s most-wanted list for several years. According to media reports, Shanti molested the children in one of the communes he founded in the Bavarian forest, another in Munich and again in Portugal. He was arrested outside the German Embassy in Lisbon last Friday after an embassy employee recognised him and alerted police. He had gone to the embassy to renew his passport, apparently on his way to Brazil to receive treatment for Leukemia.

I first came to hear about Shanti when I stumbled upon his Wikipedia entry while doing research for work. Stunned to see that the entry made absolutely no mention of the horrendous charges against him and the €3000 reward the Munich police were offering for any tip leading to his arrest and conviction, I signed up for Wikipedia and added that information. Not the most earth-moving of gestures, but maybe it helped somewhat in the hunt for him. Who knows?

In the meantime, there’s no shortage of drivel and slop passing for music by Oliver Shanti available on YouRube. On this one, notice the Viva music channel logo in the top-right corner. If they haven’t done so already, will someone please tell those people to stop putting this guy’s crap on the air?

BTW, if you didn’t click on his fan site, at least check out the guest page. Brutal stuff.

Too bad we can’t just ignore the Larry Sinclair smear campaign against Barack Obama

Mark June 18th on your calendar.
That’s the day the National Press Club in Washington, DC will give centre stage to the man behind one of the sleaziest smear campaigns ever perpetrated against a US presidential candidate.
Larry Sinclair has for months been blathering on his blog and in a YouTube video that Barack Obama has a dark secret his supporters wish would just go away. He says Obama likes to sleep with men.
Difficult to do, but in case you missed it, here’s a little rundown of his claims:

• Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair had sex in a Chicago hotel room in late 1999 while Sinclair was on parole.
• Barack Obama supplied the cocaine and crack cocaine he smoked while Sinclair performed oral sex on Obama
• Donald Young, the gay choir director at Obama’s former church, contacted Sinclair in December, 2007 shortly before Young was murdered. Sinclair says Young told him he had a similar relationship with Obama.
• Sinclair now claims to be getting death threats; cancel the press conference or get shot.

With the possible exception of The Cleveland Leader which points out Sinclair failed a polygraph test, the mainstream press has completely ignored him. So has Barack Obama, but leading up to Wednesday’s presser and beyond, you have to wonder for how long he can hold off.

There have been so many rumours circulating about Obama and his wife - Obama’s a Muslim, Obama’s book contains racist remarks, Obama’s hiding his birth certificate, Obama’s wife has been seen on video calling people “whitey” from a church pulpit, and other trash - they’ve set up a website to fight the smears. They even ask readers to send in new rumours they’ve heard so they can address them.

What’s notable is they still have yet to mention Sinclair. But with more than 1.25 million hits on the Sinclair blog and hundreds of thousands having seen the YouTube video, they can’t deny nobody’s heard of it.

A number of prominent liberal blogs have said the National Press Club is simply feeding the troll by taking Sinclair’s 3000 bucks and booking his room. Thousands have already signed a petition asking the NPC to cancel the event.

I hope the press conference is held and I hope Obama does get around to Sinclair. There’s a risk that the ranks of Sinclair’s deluded fans and followers will grow in giving this guy the limelight, but if you’ve set up a website to counter rumours and allegations only to ignore the worst, it will be viewed as running away from the issue or pretending it doesn’t exist. Obama has to defend himself.

Besides, Sinclair may be renting a pulpit and floor space and hoping the cameras and scribblers show up, but he must know that going to the press is a double-edged sword. If they do decide to run with this story, playing up Sinclair’s dubious past is the most likely angle they’ll take. Sinclair’s police wanted poster on charges of theft and forgery will surely be included.

But if the world does turn out to be flat and Sinclair’s allegations somehow prove to be true, Obama should be shunned and banished from the stage forever, but not for taking drugs and having gay sex. What country on earth would want to have as its leader someone with such horrible taste? Have you watched that video? Surely if Obama was bent in that direction and could have his pick of lovers and rent boys, he could do one hell of a lot better than Larry Sinclair.

Talking with an 11-year-old about insurance fraud

We finally broke down and bought the little red-haired girl a new bicycle last week. Summer’s already here and besides, pretty soon I’m going to have to drop the little.

We’d been holding off because it’s just so difficult to find a decent bike for a growing kid in Germany. You either find junk at the bottom end of the scale - expensive junk to boot - or top-flight bikes that will get ripped off the moment you leave it outside, which she is forced to do because there is no other place to lock them up where we live.

Then at one shop where we’d finally found one that was right for her, I told the guy that we wanted a really good lock, mentioning also that I’d had parts ripped off from my own bike after leaving it outside for only one night.

No problem, he said. If you’re worrried about security, you can get a complete insurance package for only eight euros a month. It includes replacement for theft and new parts if they’re stolen or the bike vandalised. Even if she has a fall, they’ll fix it for her.

So I signed up for the deal, thinking that it’s cheap at twice the price if I don’t have to worry about replacing a stolen bike a week after buying it.

After explaining to her that the insurance only works if she locks the bike around a bike stand or pole so that it can’t be carried away, she asked me:

How does the insurance work? What if you had two kids who needed bikes, but only enough money for one? Couldn’t you just hide the bike and tell the insurance company that the bike was stolen? Then you’d get another one for the other kid for free.

Sure, you could do that. I’m sure there are people who have done that. Would you like to be one of them?

No.

Well, I’m glad to hear that. Did you know there are people who try to get out of working by pretending they’re sick, saying things like their back hurts all the time, or that they can’t get out of bed?

No…

They get to go on disability pension, which means they get money every month without having to work anymore, even though they’re not sick. But there’s a catch. The insurance companies have people who check up on them. If they see them carrying around a pair of skis, riding their bikes, whatever, they get cut off their money, they don’t get to go back to their old jobs… they end up with nothing.

Oh…

Trying my best not to sound preachy, but probably failing because I’m doing all the talking, I add:

It just makes more sense to be honest and tell people the truth. That way, you don’t have to remember what you said to anybody, because it will always be the same thing.  You won’t always have to be looking over your shoulder, either.

Every ecosystem has its predators and bottom-feeders

The comments on my last post about photos and copyright show that there is a lot of confusion about what images you can put in your blog and still sleep soundly at night.

After all, as I pointed out, there are predators and bottom-feeders out there with jaws poised like a spring-loaded trap, ready to sue your butt at the first sighting of your using any of their photos.  The link to the whole show - it’s the first item - is now in the right-hand sidebar of the show’s site.  It’s near the top under Video, which from my advanced language course I learned is German for video.

But even if you don’t speak German, take a look at the TV segment.  You’ll at least get a close-up view of who I’m talking about.  Have a barf bowl ready, just in case.

The show - and I - recommend using only your own stuff if you want to be 100% protected from these, errr… people.  But safe to some is boring.  What if you want to use somebody else’s work, and still be safe from a lawsuit?

Some hide behind the fair use fig leaf.  As pointed out by timethief - a tireless worker in the thankless and never-ending job of helping out wordpress.com users lost in their chaotic forums - as long as you’re not using it to make money you should be OK.

But where does occasionally using a photo or drawing for illustrative, critical or satirical purposes end, and systematically mining someone’s work for publication on your own blog begin?  Take a look at Comics I don’t Understand.  Actually, a lot of the comics on that site I do understand.  What I don’t get is how they can claim fair use.  His entire concept is based on the work of other people.  I asked him in the comments under a post with a full-colour Garfield cartoon what he does about copyright, but got no answer from the blog author.   Someone else in the comments said that since the site is for comment and criticism of copyrighted work, it’s OK to use it.

Buddy, I hope you have good insurance, because if I were the author of any one of those cartoons, I’d tell you to butt out after three posts of my stuff.  Sure, you might not be out to make a profit, but it’s like having a site entitled Photos I think are, like, bitchin’ and posting the collected works of Annie Leibovitz a little at a time. 

Headbang8 of Deutschland über Elvis says that if you’re a serious amateur blogger, get an el-cheapo subscription to clipart.com, where you can choose from more than nine million illustrations and model-released photos.    The catch with that site is, sure you can download as many gigs worth of images you like in one week for only 15 bucks, but if you don’t use them for the first time within the period of your subscription, you can’t use them unless you take out a new subscription.  To do so would be stockpiling, which is against their rules. 

Simon, a caricaturist based in London, is coming at it from the author’s side.  What to do about his stuff being grabbed and used on other sites?  Simon, if you want to make sure your art doesn’t get stolen, don’t post it on the Internet.  Like others pointed out in the comments, whatever you post is going to be scraped and used elsewhere whether you like it or not.  I’ve bitched and whined about this myself, and all I am is some duff blogger.  I’m slowly getting over myself though.

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Speaking of photos, and since recent events have put me in a giddy mood, I will now break two rules.  One: I am going to go completely off-topic within the same post, and two: post what we had for dinner last night.  Ta-da…..!

Sweetie, just take the picture.  My fingers are burning.

Photos and pizza guaranteed 100% home-made.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

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How much is that doggie on the sofa?

I had great laughs this morning reading through B’s latest Eurotrippen post about the celebrity life of her dog, but it also got me thinking about a German TV show I saw on the weekend, which had an item about photos and copyright.

B’s photos are all her own, so she’s free and clear. But what if B didn’t have a dog? What if she had that twisted little idea in her head, but no dog to illustrate it? She could probably find a few pics of doggies dressed in leather and lace and weave a little story around them, right?

Sure, but she’d be putting herself in serious financial peril, not only for the obvious reason that a lot of photos out there have rights on them, but that there are websites out there dedicated to sucking you in to using their photographs on your blog and then turning right around and suing your sorry ass off.

The TV show profiles a couple who started up a little site dedicated to keeping birds as pets. They went a - googling for a few shots of common vegetables so they could brighten up a page on what to feed them. They clicked on one of the top results and found hundreds of photos on the Voldemort of recipe sites, the link to which I not only absolutely refuse to provide, I won’t even mention its name.

If you fail to look for the page that says they don’t give out the photos for free, and take one of their photos for use on your blog, the site tracks the photo’s new location and immediately fires off a bill to you for around €700 euro - or more than one thousand US dollars - per photo! Our pair of budgie boffins were asked to fork over €8600, and they are just one of hundreds the show says the site has already sued.

Since users are most likely to click on the top lines rather than wade through pages and pages of stuff, the shows says the site uses Google-bombing to game themselves into the top ranks of search results. And with more and more people getting into blogging for the first time without a clue as to its many pitfalls, their supply of fresh meat is almost endless.

The experts on the show say that if you don’t want to go to court and risk paying thousands more should you lose, there’s not much you can do besides negotiate the price down. After all, nearly a thousand euro for a fuzzy thumbnail jpeg is pretty outrageous.

So if you want to be like B, do what she does and use your own dog, your own camera, your own frilly clothes, your own electrician’s tape, and your own sofa. That way, the only mess you’ll have to clean up is a few hairs - provided it’s fully housebroken.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

PS: You can tape the show - schade, nur auf Deutsch - in repeat on Wednesday, February 20 around 2345, or Friday the 22nd at 0920 on HR (Hessischen Rundfunk) or simply watch it on the web via the link provided above when they get around to posting it.

PPS: Please see this excellent post on fair use from The Blog Herald, a blog on blogging.

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The French Anne Frank? A new holocaust diary is published

Amazing story and a book recommendation in one, so I thought I’d pass it along.

It’s about the diary of a young Jewish girl living in a major European city during the Nazi occupation of her country. Described as beautifully written and quite personal, it details her life and that of her family members leading up to their deportation to the death camps.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Anne Frank, right?

No, it’s Hélène Berr, the diary of whom has become an instant best-seller after its recent publication in France nearly 65 years after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Comparisons to Anne Frank are inevitable. But while Frank detailed a life spent in hiding from the Nazis in her Amsterdam home, Berr tells a story of everyday life under the German occupation in Paris.

Before being sent away to die along with most of the rest of her family, she gave it to the family cook, who passed it along to Berr’s fiancé, who eventually gave it to Berr’s niece. After an editor noticed a group of girls gathered around a display case trying to read the diary at a Paris holocaust exhibition, the niece was approached with the idea of publishing, but it took another five years to come out in book form.

The book sold more than 26,000 copies in its first three days of sale in France. Rights had already been sold in 15 countries before the French publication, but an English translation is slated to come out only in September. I can’t wait that long, so I’m going to pick it up at Amazon.fr and hope to translate an extract or two over the coming weeks.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Queen Elizabeth Foundation email scam reply

A scam email making the rounds has slammed into my inbox with a resounding thud. Polite Canadian that I am, I always respond to emails - especially ones from Her Royal Highness - but I’m in a hurry today, so I’ll just fill in my responses in bold.

QUEEN ELIZABETH FOUNDATION
QEII FOUNDATION,
UNITED KINGDOM,
LONDON.

Concern.

Yes, you bet I’m concerned.

The QEII Foundation, would like to formal notify you that you have been chosen by the board of trustees as one of the final recipients of a cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, educational, and business development. What if I just feel like going out and getting smashed a little more often?

The QEII Foundation established 1977 by the Multi-Million groups and with the objective of human growth, educational, and community development. Grammar lessons will one day be offered too, I hope?

To celebrate the 28th anniversary program which, if you’re paying attention, was nearly three years ago, The QEII Foundation is giving out a yearly donation of £488,210.00 (Four Hundred And Eighty Eight Thousand, Two Hundred and Ten Pound Sterling) to 100 lucky recipients. These specific Donations/Grants will be awarded to 100 lucky international recipients worldwide; in different categories for their personal business development and enhancement of their educational plans.

At least 15% of the awarded funds should be used by you to develop a part of your environment. Development proposals include turning forest into housing, landfill, amusement parks or server farms to ensure shit like this has a safe place to be stored and distributed.

This is a yearly program, which is a measure of universal development strategy, whatever the hell that means. The objective is to make a notable change in the standard of living of people all around the Universe (From America to Europe, Asia to Africa and all around). The Klingons will be miffed you forgot to mention them.

The QEII Foundation has been assured of highest organization standard courtesy of the British Government. It is our belief that we can achieve a great positive change in the general welfare of the universe through this program. OK, now I’m suspicious. The Brits spell it programme.
That is why the foundation is doing everything possible to get all recipients notified of their donation.

Note that your country is not the only country that is benefiting from this donation. Finally being nice to the Germans, are we? Oh right, your family’s German. Sorry.

Beneficiaries have been chosen from countries from all continents. The idea of this donation is that within ten years from now, there will be notable richness among many unusual people around the world. Gee, thanks! I guess…

This will give many people the opportunity to get their lives to a stage where they had always wanted. Kindly note that you will only be chosen to receive the donation once, which means that subsequent yearly donation will not get to you again.

Take time and thought in spending the donation wisely on something that will last you a long time. Guess that rules out iPods? Recipients are only eligible to be awarded this donation once.

You were selected among the lucky recipients to receive the award sum of £488,210.00 (Four Hundred And Eighty
Eight Thousand, Two Hundred And Ten Pound Sterling) as charity donations/aid from the QEII Foundation. Is there an echo around here?

Note that all beneficiaries email addresses were selected randomly from over 100,000 internet websites or a shop’s cash invoice around your area in which you might have purchased something from). Punctuation trouble is temporary. Please do not adjust your viewer.

You are required to fill the form below and email it to our Executive Secretary below for qualification documentation and processing of your claims. After contacting our office with the requested data, you will be given your donation
pin number, which you will use in collecting the funds. I’ve always wanted to tell you how much I love the way you grasp your sceptre at the opening of Parliament, my Sovereign.

All information is strictly confidential and will only be used for the purpose to which it is been requested. Vacuuming my bank account, perhaps?

Please note that these donations/Grants are strictly administered under delegated powers from the British Government. This means that your qualification number will be reffled to know the organization that will handle your payment. That’s a relief. Adequate reffling is the first thing I check for when verifying an offer’s legitimacy.

You are to keep this whole information confidential until you have been able to collect your donation, as there have been many cases of double and unqualified claim, due to beneficiaries informing third parties about his/her donation. Lips are sealed, Queenie babe.

On behalf of the Board kindly, accept our warmest congratulations.

Regards.
Queen Elizabeth II, By the grace of Google, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith in Spam.
(Foundation officer).

© 2007 QEII Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

Murder, she messaged

I’m a collector of tales of how human beings do nasty things to one another, but I missed this story completely. Passing it along in case you did too.

A man is to go on trial in Buffalo, New York today, charged in connection with the killing of a colleague in a love triangle that raises serious questions about how we conduct ourselves over the Internet. It’s one of the most bizarre stories I’ve heard in a while. Though it apparently has been out there for nearly a year, I only caught wind of it on a recent BBC Podcast. (scroll down to get the audio)

Forty-eight-year-old factory worker Thomas Montgomery, married with two teenage kids, went to a website two years ago and started to pretend he was someone he wasn’t.

He became an 18-year-old Marine. Taller, stronger, fitter, richer, more well-endowed. A perfect catch for 17-year-old blonde student Jessi, who fell in love with him almost before their first IM chat came to an end.

Soon the middle-aged man and the teenage girl were spending several hours a day online, professing love via instant messaging and getting horny. He sent her pictures of a man who fit his description. She sent him panties and trinkets. He proposed marriage. She accepted.

Then the man’s wife found out. She contacted Jessi and told her who the man she thought she was in love with really was.

Jessi, suspicious that the wife might actually be a jealous teenage rival, found another man online to check out the story for her. Brian, a 22-year-old who worked part-time with Thomas, confirmed what the older man’s wife had told her.

And then, Jessi and Brian also started an online love affair.

You’d think Jessi would have cut off contact with her older and fraudulent friend, but no. They stayed in touch, and sure enough, Thomas caught wind of her relationship with the younger man. In a jealous rage, Thomas shot Brian to death one day after work.

Bear in mind that Thomas had never met this young woman in person.

Police soon had Thomas as a prime suspect, and located Jessi in West Virginia. Local police went to her house, but when they knocked, it was her mother who came to the door.

Jessi was away at school, she said, and wouldn’t be back for weeks. No, she wouldn’t give details.

But soon the mother was forced to admit the truth: She was Jessi. The 17-year-old sweetheart infatuated with the 18-year-old marine was in fact a 45-year-old housewife in a fake relationship with a 48-year-old factory worker. In another sick twist that makes you wonder where the woman’s head is, she had used her 18-year-old daughter’s real name and sent him actual photos of her.

Thomas confessed to the shooting, but before sentencing in late-August changed his plea, saying he wanted to go to trial because he claims his lawyer gave him false information in hammering out a plea bargain.

Beyond the lurid details and chatroom transcripts you can find in this excellent Wired story, what interests me is how often we come across examples of how the Internet renders possible what a decade ago would have been almost inconceivable. Contacting old friends and lovers via Facebook, for example.

Second Life, anyone?

Perhaps it’s a cautionary tale.

Live in the here and now. Cherish your loved ones. Be real.

© 2007 lettershometoyou

PS: Sockpuppetry has a long tradition. This recent article looks at a few high-profile examples and shows how you can spot and thwart them.