A new report by the Iraqi NGO coordination committee and Oxfam concludes that 4 million Iraqis have been displaced since the invasion by the US began in 2003.

A recent survey concludes that 57% of adult US internet users watch videos online.

It is interesting to see that News (37%), Comedy (31%), Music (22%) and Educational (22%) top the list, while adult content amounts for only 6%.

No wonder Youtube is so popular.

Over the years, I have seen many people getting "accused" of having Jewish ancestry by their political adversaries. This tactic is used to discredit the person, throw doubts on their loyalty, and attribute undefined ulterior motives for their often controvertial actions.

These rumors are appealing to the masses because it offers a simple (wrong) answer to complex questions (actions of leaders).

People that I have seen in the Arab region and the Middle East accused of this include:

This is another form of scam, asking for charity (Zakat in Arabic) for the month of Ramadan (fasting in the Muslim calendar).

Nothing like the prospect of helping orphans and widows to milk people for money.

Subject: Ramadan zakat for poor ophan & widows women
From: Dr. Mrs. Shireen Mujtaba <dr.shireenwcch@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 2, 2007

Dear,
Salam Alai Kum Wa Rahmat Ullah Wa Bara Katu Hu

So, Dries has a new baby, named Axl. Karlijn did a great job, and Dries' dad was the gynaecologist doing the delivery!

Not only did Dries reneg on his promise earlier to name him Druplicon 2.0, but he also dropped a vowel! I have it on good authority (A Flemish linguist) that Dries misspelled the name when registering the baby for the birth certificate, dropping the vowel E.

Hint: this is not the first time he did that!

Here is another variant of the advanced fee fraud. An alleged rich person wants to distribute a large amount of money via a charity, and looking for a trusted person.

Note the new twist of "only having a laptop as a means of communication" in order to allay fears about no phone number/physical address provided.

From: "Mrs.Kate Nuhanvaye" <katenuhanvaye505@hotmail.com> Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book
Subject: From; Mrs.Kate Nuhanvaye ( Charity Project )
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:30:10 +0200

My Dear,

Another scam claiming to be a promotion from Heineken, the beer company.

Note how they say that no tickets were sold in order to remove concerns over "how would I win a lottery if I did not buy any tickets?" 

From         HIENEKEN PROMOTION <lottery102@mchsi.com>
To         undisclosed-recipients <>     
Date        Aug 16, 2007 9:01 PM     
Subject        HEINEKEN     
HEINEKEN

The fine folks at Open Craft, an Egyptian open source software development and consulting firm have invited me for a seminar on Drupal.

I will be in Cairo on August 25, 2007 for a presentation on Drupal scalability as well as userpoints.

See more on Open Craft's web site.

Stefan Nagtegaal (IRC: Steef) is an long time member of the Drupal community. He is the co-designer for the Garland and Minelli themes, the default theme for Drupal since 5.0.

Stefan had an unfortunate event, whereby a power spike killed his iMac.

If you can spare a few dollars/Euros to help him out, please do so at this Chip In.