Re: [IWAR] The Chiapas Information War

From: Mark Hedges (hedgesat_private)
Date: Wed Feb 18 1998 - 20:42:24 PST

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    >From Chiapas/Marcos/Paper Tiger TV publication:
    >In August 1996, we called for the creation of a network of independent
    >media, a network of information. We mean a network to resist the power
    >of the lie that sells us this war that we call the Fourth World War.
    >We need this network not only as a tool for our social movements, but
    >for our lives: this is a project of life, of humanity, humanity which
    >has a right to critical and truthful information. 
    
    
    The network of independent media is already here; it's the Internet. It
    makes every average person a reporter, enables everyone to publish across
    national boundaries (even anonymously), and it cannot be controlled... at
    least, through traditional means of media control.
    
    I haven't yet figured out why I only receive bulk e-mail for pornography,
    pyramid schemes, and plastic trinkets, and never for anything like this. 
    I'm not endorsing spam... but it would be interesting. Spam is, to the
    best of my knowledge, an un-tapped political propaganda medium.
    
    As a system administrator for a service provider of varying capacity, I
    get a lot of spam, and I see a lot of the effects of spam. Our use policy
    does not allow our customers to send spam (bulk e-mail). When someone uses
    our systems to send spam, we're cussed at, cursed, threatened (falsely)
    with litigation, and hated by probably about 1% of their distribution (a
    lot of people). We cancel accounts and keep the money. The tech support
    overhead for someone sending bulk e-mail is far greater than the revenue
    we would receive from the spammer. 
    
    Spam is also bad for the performance of e-mail servers, because typically
    everyone receives a separate copy. That places quite a load on the
    sendmail daemons, and uses a lot of disk space. Our sendmail daemons
    already process about 30,000 messages a day, approximately 10% for
    anonymous remailers. The remailers, incidentally, will all one day prevent
    spam, like http://www.anonymizer.com/email/, with some very clever code.
    
    Still, I wonder why political groups don't use spam.
    
    -hedges-
    
    
    On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, ANN ROSENTHAL wrote:
    >The interests here seem more European and Asian, but I find this 
    >information war being waged by the Zapatistas in Mexico to be quite 
    >interesting.  Subcomandante Marcos is not one of the indigenous 
    >tribal revolutionaries.  He is masked when appearing in public and is 
    >rumoured to be one of the educationally elite and of European 
    >extraction.
    >
    >
    >FORWARDED:
    >
    >But there is a third option that is neither conformity, nor
    >skepticism, nor distrust: that is to construct a different way-- to
    >show the world what is really happening-- to have a critical world
    >view and to become interested in the truth of what happens to the
    >people who inhabit every corner of this world. 
    >
    >
    



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