Thank you Francoise,

You can imagine the urgent concern with four decapitated telecommunications
engineers in Chechnya.  They were setting up 300,000 telephone lines using a
sattelite connected radio-link system to stop the isolation of the people of
Chechnya. Everything was destroyed in the two-year war.  Even the telephone
poles were shot down.

Now there are nonesensical news reports floating around that these people of
goodwill - these telecommunications martyrs - were English spies!

Four months ago a Chechen-friendly Russian was helping Chechens set up an
Internet server  - but he was captured, tortured and killed also. There is a
conspiracy afoot to stop people communicating - so I wondered if this was
another aspect of it. This is of course a serious human rights violation -
apart from the obvious crime involved.

So actually I am relieved that there is a simpler explanation for this List
problem.

Ross Wilcock
[log in to unmask]
http://www.pgs.ca/


-----Original Message-----
From:   LISTSERV give-and-take forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Francoise Becker
Sent:   Friday, December 11, 1998 2:13 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: A Chechnya problem

On 11 Dec 98, at 13:40, Ross Wilcock wrote:

> Last Saturday, the Warsaw server (plearn.edu.pl) apparently sent a SPAM
> message with the result that this address has been put on the "Realtime
> Black List " It has the effect that the PLEARN site is not pingable.
>
> Has anyone heard of this - is it an official function or is this some kind
> of email crime or mischief?
>
> You can appreciate that there is grave concern at the moment through the
> gruesome murders of the British telecommunications engineers who were
trying
> to restore telecommunications for Chechnya.
>

This is exactly why, as much as I HATE spam, I hate even more these
vigilante, guilty-until-proven-innocent, techniques for spam-fighting. It's
usually the totally innocent bystanders that are hurt the most by these
tactics. My personal stance is not to deal with the terrorists, but instead
to have the subscribers complain to their provider that they are no longer
receiving the mail they expect and want. If that happens enough, the
providers will eventually stop using these services or lose customers.
As long as we say "pretty please, take us off your blacklist", that only
encourages the vigilantes. Next step will be "give me $$$ or I'll put you
on my blacklist, and that is blackmail." Come to think of it, it's already
blackmail: "Bow down before me or I won't take you of my list" is not far
different from "Give me $$$..."

Not that there aren't some sites that deserve to be filtered, but each
mail admin should decide what those are, and make it a conscious
decision, hopefully after an attempt to find out whether the site in
question is truly a spammer or just another victim. Email admins who
just blindly accept a list of "spam-sites" are not fulfilling their
responsibilities as email service providers, IMHO, and are just accepting
gossip as gospel.

Francoise