Sami Habbas was sifting through his stack of mail when he noticed a credit-card offer addressed to “Palestinian Bomber.”
The stunned Palestinian-American opened the letter that began with the salutation, “Dear Palestinian Bomber.”
“I thought it was a joke or something,” he said. “I’m very sad
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My understanding was that the solicitation was addressed to “Palestinian Bomber”, as opposed to calling Mr. Sami Habbas a “Palestinian Bomber”. The name of Mr. Habbas didn’t appear anywhere on the solicitation.
Apparently, this fictitious name made it on a mailing list that JPMorgan Chase purchased, and its computer generated the solicitation letters.
It would be similar to someone getting the name “Horses Ass” on a mailing list with Goldy’s address. More malicious, of course, in the case of Mr. Habbas, but exactly the same technique would be involved.
Richard, you’re a lawyer, so I’m sure you know that intentionally or negligently causing Mr. Habbas emotional distress by mailing it to his address is actionable. He should get a lawyer. This case is worth at least $50,000.
Now watch the trolls weigh in with their racist comments.
Roger @ 2
Richard or another lawyer might know, but I’d guess that the “reasonable man standard” or something like it applies here. When a company like Chase rents a mailing list, they get literally millions of names from one of the major database companies for one-time or limited-time usage. Nobody could or would manually review every single name in a file before mailing.
The first places they’ll look for a culprit would be someone at the database company, Chase’s ad agency or the vendor that produced the mailing. What is most likely, however, is that some smartass who either knows Mr. Habbas or saw his name somewhere filled out enough online or offline information requests to “create” the ficticious Mr. Bomber at the database company.
If you want to have some fun, reply to a number of promotional offers and/or information requests with the name “Roger Rabbit” and see if “he” doesn’t start getting credit card offers.
What the…??? I’d love to know what in my post @ 4(?) caused it to be held/filtered!
Goldy, you really need to take a look at and edit your word filter list. Or, better yet, switch to a different anti-spam filtering program/plug-in.
Probably a racist neighbor put his address and that name on the mailing list. I’ve received stuff addressed to “Mrs.” so-and-so before, although I am a guy. Found out later it was a friend playing a prank on me.
“Hmm. I’m not sure what’s more disturbing… that somebody would target a Palestinian-American (and a veteran) with bullshit like that… or that Chase is apparently so eager to issue credit cards to Palestinian bombers?”
You Gotta be kiddin’ me! Mr. Habbas and JPM (not the F1 driver) were the butts of a prank and maybe a malicious one at that. I bet JPMs CC application mailing program will filter PB real soon.
Mr. Habbas get a life!
Goldy’s spam filter is working overtime again! Probably a malicious attempt to deny my my right to free speech. I’m calling my lawyer!
5.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
STrike one Rabbit; its not racist or i guess not racist in the bad perjorative sense to notice all the bombings against westerners is from muslim arabs. My german ancestors, and also irish ancestors got “dissed” but i wouldn’t call it racist. And we should be more afraid of the arabs than we were of german americans
I’ve gotten offers in the mail addressed to , Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Stefan Sharansky, a loser blogmaster who gets a paranoid metallic taste in his mouth every time he reads my name. This taste is followed by a huge burst of electric energy in his medula oblongata, followed by an irrational feeling of well-being.
Jackass @ 8
Ohhh! I bet Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph would be surprised to learn that they’re “muslim arabs”, you ignorant fuck.
(speaking of McVeigh in the past tense, of course… unless you believe he went to heaven for being such a devout “muslim”)
i guess not racist in the bad perjorative sense to notice all the bombings against westerners is from muslim arabs.
ALL bombings, wrong one? Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph? The IRA?
Racist? Huh. Ok let’s just say prejudiced.
we should be more afraid of the arabs than we were of german americans
And we shouldn’t be afraid of African Muslims, philipino muslims, persian muslims or white muslims like John Walker Lindh.
We’re certainly full of fear. So afraid blood is shut off to the brain.
This is not racist. Just prejudiced.
Guys… this is a great example of the spam filter at work, and the unintended, yet absolutely necessary consequences. The word getting caught in the filter is “credit card” and variations thereof. Mortgage, loan, credit card and other financial products are a common subject of blog spam, as they are of email spam.
There is no way to do a key word filter without causing this type of inconvenience. But when I finally do my WordPress 1.5 upgrade, I may switch to a different approach that combines voluntary registration with a filter that holds the first post of any unregistered “guest.” This creates a whole knew level of inconvenience, which I’m concerned could dissuade newbies from participating, but yes, I agree, the current filter approach is becoming too burdensome… for me. I’m the one that has to manually go in and approve all these messages, amidst the hundreds of spam.
You simply don’t see this kind of problem on other sites, because they don’t have the traffic I have, which by page views, now ranks HA among the 400 most popular blogs (on any subject) out of 14 million world wide. And my threads attract more comments than many national blogs with 40 times my readers. This attracts blog spammers.
16.
“Guys”
Oooooh! How sexist! ;)
Is it true that if your comment does NOT include profanity, it gets spam blocked.
I have been spam blocked at least 3 times and for the life of me I don’t know what was objectionable any time. Other than my opinions being contrary to the Liberal mindset. Yes, I said mindset.
The standard for “outrage” (or intentional infliction of emotional distress) is actually much higher than popularly believed. Less so for defamation, but, given that Mr. Habbas, a Palestinian-American, is a veteran, we have to keep in mind that he may have actually used bombs.
Truth is a defense and all…
Congratulations, Goldy, on being in the top 400, but damn you for eating up so much of my time (and just since D & P’s party last week…)
For @13 – I’ll agree that the credit card bit was not racist on its face. However, I am not sure we can say the same about righton’s comments.
Here in the US, the only real terrorists we have had here recently are either fundamentalist religious types or the white racist types. Our domestic terrorists come firmly from the right wing and with the exception of 9/11 they were far more deadly.
But maybe he just meant terrorists operating internationally… Since righton calls himself German and Irish, one might think he would have some clue about those good folks in the IRA if not Baader-Meinhof, the RAF, and various neo-Nazi groups in Germany. That is not to even start with the ETA and the Brigate Rosse in Italy.
Nope, still racist, unless he thinks that the ‘I’ in Irish is for ‘Islamic Arab’ – which he might.
I could go on, but there really is no point. If he either doesn’t know or refuses to acknowledge American and European terrorists, then there really is no hope that he would ever actually understand that ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ are two very different things.
Sad thing is, how can we expect to win the (/Charleston Heston voice) GLOBAL STRUGGLE AGAINST VIOLENT EXTREMISM (\Charleston Heston voice) if we can’t understand what we are up against.
Uneducated folks like righon only weaken us and play into the hands of our enemies.
Wow – congrats Goldy.
While I wait for my last message to return from spam filter hell, let me throw out something a little more contructive then backhanding righton for stupid comments.
If anyone wants a quick introduction to al-Qaida and why treating them as simply violent blood-thirsty evil men who hate us is the biggest single mistake we can make if we want to defeat them.
I reccommend taking a look at the first chapter of ‘Imperial Hubris’ by Anonymous, if not the whole book. It is written by an intelligence officer who made most of his career in studying al-Qaida and he gives a down to earth (and non-partisan) run through of what we have been doing right and what we have been doing wrong.
I can’t believe that this issue was even posted.
As to Rabbit feeling this was worth $50,000 – you need your head examined.
So someone played a practical Joke (in bad taste) on this guy. So what?
If you wanted to address an actual injustice on a veteran, why not discuss the assaults in Pioneer Sqaure?
EUREKA! Now you know why Roger Rabbit/1 (a.k.a. Dean Logan/2) hides his true identity — so smartasses (plenty of those on the right-wing-hater side of the political fence) can’t harass the poor, cute, fluffy, innocent 7-lb. bunny./3 No address — no problem.
End Notes:
1/ Not my real name.
2/ This name is fake, too, but I didn’t dream it up — Stefan Sharkansky did./4
3/ I used to weigh 6 lbs. but lately I’ve been getting fat from lunching on Stefan’s garden and shitting in his flower bed.
4/ This is a fake name, too. His real name is Stefan Sharansky (he might as well lie about his name, since he bullshits about everything else, especially his public records requests/5), and his real address is posted on his web site (soundpolitics.com).
5/ Hey Stefan how much have you collected in penalties from King County? Are you above $0.00 yet? How’s your beer … er, legal fund doing — have your gullible readers contributed $2.75/6 yet?
6/ $2.75 is what a low-end tap beer costs at Montlake Ale House; even though Stefan’s audience is a bunch of uneducated and ignorant rednecks, they must not be completely stupid because Stefan hasn’t shown up for Drinking Liberally yet, from which we may infer he hasn’t raised $2.75 for his beer … er, legal fund yet.
Erratum
#21 (my post with 6 end notes) is a reply to Mark’s post at #7. This reference was inadvertently omitted./7
End Notes:
7/ The poor, cute, fluffy, 7-lb. bunny is sleepy after a long night of hard work eating Stefan’s garden.
Reply to 5
The filter is a random sequence of events through which your posts mutate by a process of natural selection until you turn into a liberal.
Mr. Bomber may be registered to vote in Seattle.
Reply to 9
“Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.”
Does this mean George W. Bush is basically a good guy you can drink a beer with, who just has no fucking idea what’s going on in the real world?
Comment on 10
Told you so (see #3).
Goldy @ 16: “…the traffic I have, which by page views, now ranks HA among the 400 most popular blogs (on any subject) out of 14 million world wide.”
What do you have as a source? Just the WordPress rankings?
Have you tried looking up the overall website rankings on Alexa.com?
HorsesAss.org is ranked 1,026,448 overall by traffic.
SoundPolitics.com is ranked 70,724 overall.
What is even more interesting is the “realated links” list for each site that shows what else your site’s web surfers look at. Of course, people looking at SP go to Malkin, InstaPundit and… HA. Where else do your readers go, Goldy? Yes, a couple of progressive and government sites… plus the EFF… and Entertainment Tonight and the official Deborah Gibson website!
reply to 25
“Does this mean George W. Bush is basically a good guy you can drink a beer with, who just has no fucking idea what’s going on in the real world?”
It may be that he is the first politician in decades to have the balls to address:
1. Liberal whining just needs to be ignored.
2. The best way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and kill them.
There are eleven “BOMBER” voter registrations in King County — as of November 2004 thanks to Stefan’s database. No “RABBIT” voters, no “HITLER” voters, but there are five “STALIN” voters.
There are eight phone listings for “HITLER” nationwide, and no doubt a lot more unlisted “HITLER” names. “RABBIT” seems fairly common too — over a hundred listings nationwide.
How can a company tell if a name is malicious? Real people can have very off-the-wall names.
Comment on 17
We know you’re really a guy Bob, even though you go around in drag. The tipoff is your screen name “Bob”.
27
I’m a little skeptical about that alexa.com. I think you have to be dumb enough to have their spyware on your PC.
Reply to 19
What’s not constructive about backhanding “righton” for stupid comments? (Other than it’s time-consuming because he makes so many of them.)
Interesting — “RABBIT” is not a common last name, but “RABBITT” is. The extra “T” makes all the difference in the world. There are four “RABBITT” voters in King County. So when I said there were over a hundred “RABBIT” listings nationwide, most of these probably are actually “RABBITT”.
pisson roger rabbit @ 20
Hey prr, play this practical joke on me — I need the money.
I think Roger might have more of a man-crush on Shark than even Goldy.
Reply to 27
“SoundPolitics.com is ranked 70,724 overall.”
Whoop-de-doo! Big fucking deal! I have an REI number under 20,000.
Reply to 28
“2. The best way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and kill them.”
When’s he gonna start?
pencil dick @ 34
I’m sure I’ve said enough at your expanese for your pathetic liberal ass to sue me.
Just calling you pencil dick is, I am sure, a blow to your self esteem and now you have noticed a lack in your ability to satisfy your wife.
Sue away rabbit.
pencil dick @ 37…
you mean like “able danger” or the countless terrosist that have been killed in Iraq?
NEWS ITEM — UNION HELPS FAMILY OF ACCIDENT VICTIM
Wingtrolls hate unions. That’s because they hate people. All people, but especially working people.
Last week, a young working mom was tragically killed on Tacoma’s docks by a freak longshoring accident. Members of her union are coming together to provide solace for her surviving husband and children, and are raising money for the children’s future. http://www.komotv.com/stories/38765.htm
This is exactly the sort of thing Wingtrolls hate! It’s socialism! It’s a threat to survival of the fittest! The Wingtroll program for tragic workplace accidents is
1) No L & I benefits
2) No Social Security benefits
3) No union!!! No helping hands!!! No fundraising!!!
4) If the kids don’t have a parent to raise them — tough shit! The race goes to the swiftest! Law of the jungle! Eat or get eaten! Nice people finish last!
38
What’s an “expanese?” Is that a vegetable? Can I eat it?
pencil dick..
I’ve got something for you to eat right here
NEWS ITEM – MILITARY SPYING ON CIVILIANS
Well, I see the National Guard is spying on anti-Bush activists again. Same old Nixon shit — use the military at taxpayer expense to harass and intimidate ordinary citizens who think you’re a dumb fuck.
According to news sources, “California’s National Guard engaged in more questionable surveillance beyond a previously publicized Mother’s Day peace rally, a state senator said Thursday, citing a confidential Army inspector general’s report.”
According to the report, the CNG’s domestic spying included “other events and other activities that they labeled as questionable … other protests, demonstrations, activities … “more than one or two” additional events.
Not only that, Brig. Gen. John R. Alexander flat-assed LIED when he “said last week the inspector general determined that a Guard intelligence unit was not established to spy on U.S. citizens and did not illegally gather information” because “he believed the report would never be made public and his interpretation would not be contradicted.”
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/new.....0909990003
Same old, same old — the more things change, the more they stay the same. For nostalgia buffs, this is just like Vietnam.
Mark,
I wasn’t looking at Alexa. But since I don’t publish my stats, these ratings don’t include me. But based on page views, HA falls somewhere within the 400 to 500 range of blogs ranked… and in the top 60 or so of progressive blogs nationwide.
Curiously, when judged by incoming links, my ranking falls dramatically, as I’ve done absolutely no self-promotion in that regard, and have very few sites blogrolling me, relative to my total traffic.
But that’s entirely besides the point unless you are somehow claiming that I have deliberately inflated my traffic to you all, to cover up my nefarious efforts to censor comments I don’t like, buy temporarily holding them a spam filter based on content. My point is, I have a lot of traffic compared to most other blogs… that should be apparent from the size of my comment threads (although it is true that my comment threads are atypically large for a site with my range of traffic.) And thus I get a lot of blog spam.
Just like Vietnam, but Nixon was more crazy less evil.
43
Did you wash your hands before you “harvested” it?
46
Republicans have gotten more calculated in their evil. They’ve spent 30 years learning how.
Goldy @ 45
I don’t believe you have to publish stats in order to be ranked by Alexa. They DO have traffic and rankings for you.
“But based on page views, HA falls somewhere within the 400 to 500 range of blogs ranked”
I don’t doubt you. I just wanted to know from where you get that information.
Republicans have gotten more calculated in their evil. They’ve spent 30 years learning how
You mean from the MSM, right Rabbit? I might be wrong but I don’t think the repubs pulled off the lying memo stunt yet. You donks got it down. To bad Fox is breathing down your necks now. Ah for the good old days when all we had was the MSM.
It’s also possible that the Chase customer service number he called was answered by someone whose primary language was one that left them unaware that “Palestinian Bomber” was not a real name in the USA. That’s what can happen when customer service telephone reps are outsourced to third world countries.
I know the Habbas family in So Cal. They are a bunch of whackos!
Hey Abdullah, I know your family. Look at the pot calling the kettle black. Clean up your own backyard then come back and talk about wackos! It’s not enough for you that arabs are getting a bad rap because of a few crazy extremists. You have to make things worse by calling your own kind names. No wonder arabs have such a hard time with their image. No matter how much we advance, there is someone like you that makes us take a step back. Your ignorance is pathetic.