Letters to the Editor
Savannah33
Published Letters: 2 Editor's Choice: 1
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"Gadfly"
[Read the article: Rudy, Mitt, Fred or John]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mr. Shapiro:
I appreciate you taking the time to respond and give us the proper definition of "gadfly". But I'd ask you to take into consideration that since the start of Paul's campaign, his supporters have on a daily basis witnessed him being called: a gadfly, crazy, a kook, a loony, fringe, a racist, an isolationist, a nutjob, etc. And those are some of the NICER terms. I guess we should be used to it by now, but it still inflames many of us to keep seeing these words used, even though Paul has obviously resonated with a wide and diverse group of people who have shown their support by giving him a $5 million 3rd quarter boost.
Paul's opposition to the war in Iraq is a major plank of his candidacy, and people respond to it. He is the only candidate, Republican OR Democrat, who has taken this hard a stand against it. Why should he refrain from talking about it?
As well, the media reports that approximately 70% of Americans are critical of the war in Iraq. Are we all gadflies?
I looked up the definition myself, but instead of giving that, here's a passage I found much more interesting:
"During his defense when on trial for his life, Socrates, according to Plato's writings, pointed out that dissent, like the tiny (relative to the size of a horse) gadfly, was easy to swat, but the cost to society of silencing individuals who were irritating could be very high. "If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me," because his role was that of a gadfly, "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."
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Ron Paul Campaign Under Cyber Attack
[Read the article: Are you part of Ron Paul's botnet?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There has been a recent flurry of news articles that have made the conjecture that the Ron Paul campaign or his supporters are in possession of a botnet and are using it to generate spam emails for the candidate. I have been in the business of computer technology for a long time and have good friends in the IT security business and we have discussed this at length. Cui-bono (who benefits)
I find it far more likely that this botnet spam attack is not the design of the Paul campaign or any of its supporters. It is far more likely that this is the release of a first round of direct cyber attack against the Ron Paul campaign. I base this opinion on the fact that the attack is becoming clearly targeted at the youtube videos of Ron Paul. Youtube links to his videos are beginning to be inserted into the the body of these spam message and as a direct result the video's are being pulled by youtube for violation of their terms of use policy.
This attack method can do far more harm than good for the Ron Paul campaign so I will make a guess that this is the work of those in the NSA using cyber war tactics out of loyalty or possibly under orders to use this stealth attack method to derail the Ron Paul campaign by using the campaign's online strength against them.
I expect that after these attackers have used this method to remove the best google and youtube videos touting the Ron Paul campaign, that the attack method will change and will then go after other key components of the campaign's online strength such as the Web 2.0 communities. These utilities will likely be spammed and the organizations using the applications will be banned from their use.
This is nefarious and demonstrates the kind of tactics that the establishment could use to serve their interest in stopping the advance of Ron Paul and the Revolution for freedom that he is leading as well as his Presidential bid. I can only hope that the Ron Paul online army has some equally talented cyber warriors that can help stop this attack before it is ramped up even further.
http://www.nolanchart.com/article259.html