An organization out of Canada, White Ribbon is running a campaign to end violence against women, largely by educating men. Note: whiteribbon.ca, not whiteribbon.org. whiteribbon.org is a copycat site trying to leech off donations to the real whiteribbon organization. It’s blatant and shocking. Why would anyone try to undermine the fundraising and popularizing of a legitimate charity like that, unless they’re simply scam artists?
It turns out that they’re much more than scam artists: it’s A Voice For Men, trying to siphon off donations to an anti-violence campaign into the pockets of Paul Elam, only they claim they’re trying to help. Look at this lie:
The people behind the White Ribbon have undoubtedly put in a huge amount of sweat equity and actual funds in branding the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC). …
Obviously, the people getting the job done on behalf of WRC really outdid themselves on planning and marketing.
Well, there was one goof. They neglected to pick up the obvious choices for domains for their program, especially given they are aiming for growth. …
As I mulled over the considerable resources we now have at A Voice for Men, and our ongoing interest in the area of domestic violence, I surmised that this was a very opportune moment to invest vigorously in the WRC project. This was confirmed when I found out that whiteribboncampaign.org, whiteribbon.org, and most of the .coms and .nets associated with that name were similarly unspoken for.
What a fantastic time, I told myself, for the AVfM organization to figuratively join hands with White Ribbon Campaign organizations worldwide and to help them spread the unyielding truth about the problem of domestic violence in this culture.
So that is exactly what we did.
Wait, what? They’re trying to invest vigorously
in the White Ribbon campaign? Then I presume all the money from this helpful creation of a website is going to the Canadian group. They’re going to figuratively join hands
? Then I suppose there has been discussion between the two organizations about how to work together.
Nope. The real White Ribbon campaign has just posted an angry statement on this theft by copycat.
Today, White Ribbon (www.whiteribbon.ca ) became aware that a “so-called” men’s rights group has launched a copycat campaign articulating their archaic views and denials about the realities of gender-based violence.
Their vile sentiments – which include disparaging comments about women’s shelters and victim blaming survivors of rape – are completely incongruent with our values at White Ribbon.
Their misguided attempts to discredit others only make clear the extent to which they see the success of our equality-driven, evidence-based, ally-focussed work on gender justice as a real threat to their ill-informed, isolated views on this issue. This latest example is clear evidence of their insincerity and lack of commitment to developing compassionate solutions for the issues they claim to care about. It also showcases their real focus: attacking, harassing and directing anger towards others.
They’re exploring their options. I’m hoping this means Paul Elam will be receiving a rather serious financial blow sometime in the future.
They ought to suffer for stupidity, at least. It’s vile to scoop up a url and attempt to siphon off some charity donations, but it’s outright idiotic to then openly brag about it.
Not just vile & stupid – I think it would be FRAUDULENT & ILLEGAL to collect monies under the name “White Ribbon” and not send it to the WRC.
How…I mean it’s vile but it’s AVfM so of course it is. But so stupid. Who the fuck do they actually think would believe that shit? “We wanted to help so we took it upon ourselves to buy up all the associated domain names, pretend to be part of WRC, accept donations ‘on their behalf’……without mentioning this to WRC or forwarding the money to them or proposing to do anything remotely in accordance with WRC’s goals with the money we raise by co-opting their good name.” Sounds totally legit.
I hope this turns out like Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter and they end up swimming in donations from people who would never have heard about White Ribbon if AVfM hadn’t done this.
Men’s rights, yeah – right to commit fraud and undermine people actually trying to break the cycle of abuse. AVFM, you’re supposed to wear sheep’s clothing to evade detection, not take a selfie during the crime, wearing a wolf mask and a T-shirt saying “I’m a smooth criminal, smoothly crimin’ in your base, yo!”.
I just looked at the fraudulent site. Now I feel dirty.
Certainly something the FBI and Federal Trade Commission should be looking into.
Vile, loathsome toads.
I’m sure all the people insisting that feminism is bad because we should be focusing on equality will let AVfM know how misguided their “men’s rights” mission is.
and now look at this article I saw posted on their dot org site:
(bolding in the original)
They are now trying to say that the real White Ribbon is the fake one.
Totally joining hands!
Not only is this vile, it’s stupid and self-defeating. Did it not occur to anyone at AVFM that this is clearly fraud and that there will almost certainly be legal consequences?
The only strategic reason I can think of for them doing this is that they’ll want to play the martyr when the inevitable happens.
Spoofing a charity’s website in order to steal their donations has to be illegal, right? Right?
Just in case anyone was unclear on just just how low AVfM is willing to stoop in this case, I present you with this (donot)link: Caution: Please beware of false White Ribbon initiatives
Apparently “posted” a day before the copycat statement by the actual White Ribbon. I’m curious if that’s actually the case, or if WordPress lets you backdate posts to whenever you’d like. Cause it wouldn’t surprise me a bit that they’d stoop that low.
In other news, they did a truly horrible job copycatting. Their site design seems a pretty clunky and thrown together attempt to vaguely resemble the actual professionally designed site.
The veiled meaning of their words is creepy. Even in that section PZ quoted, they aren’t sincerely saying what it initially looks like they are saying. It’s like they know that honesty would expose their hate, so they have to play on ambiguity. Such gross tactics, no integrity.
I just donated to http://www.whiteribbon.ca.
Boy, are the MRA fuckwits showing how deep they stoop to maintain their epsilon male status, and how much they lie and bullshit themselves. They certainly work hard at it. They could be feminists for only a fraction of the effort.
I hope this doesn’t damage the UK section of White Ribbon – just down the road and run by a guy called Chris Green, who gets consulted by just about everyone.
http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/
This is an excellent example of why I have no respect for the men’s rights movement as it exists. When I experience people who claim to be acting to support men’s rights, they are nearly always trying to distract from women’s rights, distract from women’s suffering, suppress and distract from women’s messages and more. They are not helping men, they are trying to hurt women. That is no help to me or any other man interested in equality. That is only helpful to people that want to fight a war. Men have a lot of work to do.
Good lord. Not only loathsome enough to do this in the first place but actually stupid enough to brag publicly about impersonating and stealing from a charity – and then imply that the real charity isn’t doing it right! I don’t really know what to say.
This is the behaviour of a cartoon villain.
Web of Trust is a crowd sourced web site security rating program. I would recommend using that to rate the fake poorly And the real one positively. Anyone else know other similar addons and stuff? I think this is a good way to actively help the public distinguish the two
This is beneath even Snidely Whiplash…
What horrible people!!!
This is why trademark protection is such an important issue, and we consider those who mess with trademarks to be scum or worse!! BTW, “avoiceforme.com” was available until I bought it. I absolutely do not intend to do anything nasty with it, and besides it’s not like pointing it at at malware distribution site would do anything but damage the malware site’s brand, but… Anyhow… It’s important to support trademark protections, isn’t it.
It really does seem to be the same crowd in the gamergate crap and AVFM. Is there anything in the gamergate stuff that doesn’t build off the usual AVFM rote of excuses and whining?
I wouldn’t be surprised to find AVFM is being all public with it now to scrape off monies from the affronted Gaters, who’ve now proven themselves over ripe for kneejerk support of anything that decries violence against women as sexist gendered and ignoring the sensibilities of the victimized menz.
As to being sued: I wonder if Mr. Elam thinks that the authentic site being situated in Canada will somehow save him from being legally accosted in the US. There are some in the racist hate ‘communities’ that run sites out of the US to avoid laws active in other countries.
Donated: The white ribbon campaign
Reading this makes me feel ill. For those who are unaware, the White Ribbon campaign was a grassroots movement started by men following the massacre at L’École Polytechnique in Montreal to show solidarity with women who were calling for action to end violence against women. Elam is trying to pocket money that is meant to honour Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. He’s turning a memorial into blood money.
Well, on the plus side this is going to raise a lot of attention for the real thing. On the also plus side, the lawsuit should do some serious damage to the people behind the fraud.
There’s a certain inevitability about it.
… they keep thinking, they and all their acolytes, they’ve mastered the game, got the coded language down. We’re for equality, yadda yadda… Oh, look, suckers of the usual stripe and equally craven double-dealing allies all over the place are falling for it, playing it up, passing it on, and maybe we almost believe it ourselves…
… but cons always out themselves. Such is the nature of greed. Such is the very fibre they are made of. The cookie jar will be there, and they’ll think: ‘I’ve fooled enough of the world… I’ll get away with this… Yeah, I’ll take that, too.’
He’ll keep his most ardent followers, of course. They always do. People are invested, they’ll follow him and defend him through whichever public humiliation ensues. It ain’t for nothing this lot have been compared to a cult; there’s an awful lot in common. They’ll justify this to their dying breath, go on in their now-too-familiar subliterate tirades about how they’re the real victims, they’re really about egalitarianism, so this is all somehow just justice…
A few fewer of anyone watching from without will be fooled, methinks, however. Shelters need money, so I’m not sure how it quite balances out, but I’m not sure I’m seeing that as entirely a bad thing, either, so much as one more own goal from a man must be league champion in that stat, by now…
Enjoy the cookies, Mr. Elam. But as a heads up: you may regret eating these, this close to bed time.
Have they no shame? Never mind, I already know the answer. I hope this is the last straw that gets Elam and his hate organization shut down for good. I hope…
I just gave whiteribbon.ca $25, and also let whiteribbon.org know that I did.
Donated, whiteribbon.ca
Also, it can be quite difficult (or impossible) making the case for international fraud by use of a name by one person which is a second person’s intellectual property in another country, but not the country of residence and activity of the first person. The Geneva Convention internationally protected the Red Cross for just exactly this reason.
What’s new isn’t that two people in different countries are using the same words or symbols in their own commercial or corporate efforts. What’s new is that the internet makes it very hard to place legal and national bounds on those efforts that would otherwise make fraud both more difficult and, where it occurs, more easy to prosecute.
Of course, that’s partly by internet-design. We don’t want every site run by a Canadian to prominently list at the top “Run By A Canadian”. Hell, most of every page would just be disclaimers about what countries contained what routers and what citizenships are represented among the content creators of which portions of the page. Ugh.
But, yes, it makes this kind of thing very easy to do and very difficult to penalize, at least criminally.
Tort, on the other hand, makes it possible to create estimates of loss and sue for that loss. It doesn’t penalize, however. At least not typically. Criminal law penalizes. Suits or torts simply make up what you lost to the other person’s gain.
If AVFM spends that money too quickly and doesn’t have any around later to pay when the tort judgement comes due, that can shut down AVFM (and depending on how they’re structured, leave Paul Elam with a lot of debt or none). However, if they are structured correctly, AVFM would simply spend a lot of someone else’s money (presumably on an inflated salary to Paul Elam and possibly also by hiring a few other like-minded miscreants that would not otherwise have been paid), then die a paper death, while Paul Elam opens the new Center for Men’s Voices or whatever.
Yeah, they lose “sweat equity” as Elam refers to White Ribbon’s efforts, but likely the fraud would be worth it because the individuals aren’t being criminally held liable (or individually liable under suits/torts if they have their act together on incorporation, which isn’t hard).
The problem is that when you start from a place of privilege, you can’t stand that someone else’s problems are getting addressed before yours. Thus we get so many cries of, “Everyone only ever talks about violence against women, but my ex girlfriend slapped me once, so why are even talking about other people’s issues when MY issues still haven’t been dealt with?!”
When you’re used to getting everything you want all the time, seeing someone else’s problems get more attention than yours, no matter the discrepancy in their severity, is seen as the ultimate miscarriage of justice. So you do everything you can to prevent anyone else from getting their problems looked at until yours are rightfully solved first.
AVFM’s primary purpose is to line Paul Elam’s pockets. A site founded by a greedy dishonest fuckwit is committing fraud? Say it isn’t so.
@22 Ibis3…
I did not know that. Makes me feel even better than I did before about donating to the legitimate organization. Thanks for the information.
I think AVfM has created a new low in reprehensible behavior.
It gets worse, I decided to have a look at Paul Elam’s site (yes, it’s as bad as you’d imagine) and they actually have an article titled, “CAUTION: Beware of false White Ribbon Initiatives.” There really is no end to they’re shamelessness.
You know what’s really bad? A WhoIs lookup says the domain is FOR SALE. The IP for the site is 178.18.118.66 – go do a reverse lookup and see what sites share that IP. No surprises really
Ah, Domainmail, where you hold a URL hostage until you get your price. Laugh at it, then offer the registration fee.
At this point in my life, I really shouldn’t be surprised someone can get it in their head that siphoning off money from a charity in this fashion can somehow be A Good Thing. And yet, here I am, dumbfounded at the asshattery in which someone is willing to engage because they feel men just don’t have enough of a voice in today’s world.
Kicked some dirhams whiteribbon.ca’s way to help make up for what they lose to the fraud. I hope these AVFM clowns get (metaphorically, perhaps legally) crushed.
If it’s not it should be. This is vile beyond words.
Marcus Ranum wrote:
Within reason. Monster Cable and the Komen foundation are both despicable companies that abuse trademark protections.
Sadly, all of this is par for the course for assholes like Paul Elam. It’s his usual modus operandi of using male victims of abuse (sexual and otherwise) as weapons against feminists to enrich himself. Anyone who actually wants to advocate on behalf of these victims have learned to stay far, far away from Elam’s menagerie of merry misogynists.
Anyway, donation in progress…
Brony @15
Absolutely. If they were really interested in helping men, they could set up a site that channelled donations to refuges and other services for abused men. As a bonus, they’d get respect and acknowledgement from the rest of the world for doing so.
But they can’t even think that far.
This is hosted in the UK? Probably not wise.
I was disbarred from the Association of Internet Lawyers for gross ignorance, but someone may find this useful:
Charity Donation Fraud on police.uk
White Ribbon UK’s legitimate registration with the Charity Commission.
Just like xians – if it helps their cause, anything is OK.
Donated to the real thing, with a note that the news of the fraud brought me to the site
This is almost more stupid than it is vile, and that is saying something.
AVFM should be sued into oblivion for this.
Elam is comitting two tragedies with this single idiotic stunt. One, and most obviously, he is leeching money from the real White Ribbon, and thereby declaring more clearly than ever before his antipathy towards women. Two, he has tarnished the concept of men’s rights movements in general; anyone that genuinely wants to campaign for a genuine male-oriented cause will now have to work through an added layer of suspicion before anyone is likely to listen, let alone donate.
So, thanks for throwing women’s AND men’s causes under the bus for your own fucking vindictiveness.
The Old WRC is about women as victims of men — “ONLY”… Right? They NEVER talk about women being violent, toward men or women… or how their victims suffer… Ever! Does anyone here really think women are never violent?? So AVFM is now going to shed some light missing around the men in DV/IPV relationships, (and false rape allegations/ culture/ etc.), which studies show running at about 50/50… So what’s wrong with that??
Jack Day@42:
You mean aside from fraudulently claiming the name of another group to promote an antagonistic agenda? That’s just for starters. But you already knew that. Fuck off.
Once again supporters of A Voice for Angry Immature Men show that no lie is too outrageous for their cause.
I know of some girls who may have some choice words for these guys.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=793691827336181
Jack Day @ 42
You mean the real and not fradulent WRC, right?
Like, OH. MY. GAWD! They never talk about shit that doesn’t fall under the purview of what they were created for?! Someone direct me to the fainting couch! Once I’ve regained my composure, I’ll get busy yelling at every anti-bigotry activism group in the world for not also talking about how horrible the dominant group has it! How dare LGBT rights groups not also talk about the ways straight/cis people suffer!? And those fucking anti-racism groups, acting like nothing bad ever happens to white people! It’s shameful!
Did anyone here really make such a claim??
And they couldn’t think of a way to do that without fraudulently using the name of another charity and then trying to imply that the real charity is the fake one. I mean, what else could they do, amirite? It’s not as if they already have a well-established web site dedicated to men’s rights……oh wait…
Which studies show that? The ones that use the scale (can’t remember the name of it) which counts bruised knuckles from punching someone in the face the same as it treats the victim’s bruised jaw?
Donated.
Rinsing my mouth out with wine as I took a look-see at the fake WRC facebook page.
That’s Ye Olde Conflict Tactics Scale.
If a woman’s being attacked by a chokehold, that counts as one action on the man’s part. When she swears, kicks, slaps and punches while defending herself and getting out of it, that counts as four separate violent “actions” on her part. So she’s more violent than him according to the scale. (At least as it’s used by some dopey researchers.)
Yeah, and do you know that some people run shelters for abandoned and abused dogs? What about all those people who have been hurt by dogs. And then there’s the environmentalists that want to do something about rivers. What about the victims of drowning? And don’t even get me started about those who want to save sharks! Those are killers!
Oh, I also hope that the original WRC sues them bankrupt so they’ll be licking their financial wounds for years to come. That could actually do men some good because really, we’d have much more time to discuss ligitimate men’s issues and how gender roles hurt men if we didn’t have to deal with those assholes all the time.
And, inevitably, here’s someone @42 to prove that the only thing stupider and more dishonest than blatant fraud and complete arsehole Paul Elam is one of his supporters.
Here, lurking manly-men, just go here to get all your questions answered for a nominal fee: http://thewomansplainer.com/
Donated (.ca). Fuck Elam, his cronies, and their sorry excuse for an ideology.
Can any Canadian tell me why the real site demands my address in order to make a donation? Supposedly it’s for a “tax receipt”, but as I’m not a Canadian taxpayer, this seems odd.
Wow, every time you think MRAs can’t get any more obtuse, they manage it. It’s kind of an achievement, I guess.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in the UK we have people collecting for charity in the street, with all the official paperwork and t-shirts and so forth. This is basically the online equivalent of just putting on an Amnesty or Oxfam shirt and filling your pockets from people too busy to properly check who you are. Incredibly fraudulent.
By comitting fraud?
Seriously, A Voice For Men ain’t gonna shed a light on anything, because the only time Paul “Bash a Violent Bitch Month/Hugo Schwyzer Deserves Prison Rape/Fucking Your Shit Up Gives Me an Erection” Elam cares about men other than himself is when they can be used to bash on women, or give him money.
SNORE
Why do you care only about women victims of men? What about men victims of men? What about dogs victim of women? What about BENGHAZI!!!
A number of years ago, I was planning on popping by the official White House website (I don’t recall why) and was stupid enough to type the address as .com instead of .gov. Not too surprisingly, the .com address was a porn site.
On their entry page, they had a pretty substantial disclaimer to determine if the browser really meant the .gov site, and gave a link to it, while clearly saying that they were a porn site.
In other words: congratulations, AVfM, you’re using tactics lower and less honest than a copycat-URL internet porn site. Clearly, you are exactly the kind of people who should be running a social justice movement.
White Ribbon seems like a great candidate to receive my “$1 for each misogynist I block on twitter/facebook” donations at the end of the year (I was looking for a feminist cause to donate to)
It’s sad that men’s rights groups always seem to migrate to counterproductive tactics, even when they start in a reasonable place – Fathers4Justice in the UK were an effective campaign group, effectively pushing for equality in one area where men were genuinely disadvantaged: the presumption that children would remain with their mothers after a divorce, and the difficulty in retaining access rights. But then they started harassing people and (especially the founder) going after politicians who they didn’t think were doing enough in thoroughly nasty ways, effectively losing a lot of the goodwill they’d gathered. Oddly, it seems that even the parts of the men’s rights movement that start off vile (like AVFM) also seem to travel even further towards the evil end of the spectrum…
The Mammoth story has a link to the fraudulent site’s Facebook page. I just went and reported it as a scam.
International trademark law will probably apply here given how much of the content the AVFM site outright took from the legitimate site, and unfortunately for Mr. Elam, trademark law is general enforced heavily by most governments (it’s much, much easier to get around copyright than trademark. The fair use restrictions on trademarks are much more stringent – this is why those side by side comparisons in ads can’t name a competitor or use anything that looks like their logo).
Personally I hope the real White Ribbon campaign can wipe him out.
*headshake*
Like in this picture.
They’re not even merry.
Worse: they’ve never talked about Aëtogate! How fucking dare they ignore the single most important issue in my world!?!
Because I probably need to spell it out: I’m mocking you, .
All three of them… no, wait, FIVE! Five!!!!!
Stupid web design, like all those petitions that want my zip code, don’t let me put “D-” in front of it, and then send me e-mails that assume I live in the US.
I gave up being surprised by the depravity and dishonesty of creationists a long time ago. But the MRAs still find new ways to make me lose faith in humanity. That there exist so many decidedly evil people in the world, that they have been able to find each other through the internet and use it to amplify their voices, truly disturbs me. I had previously thought that, while such thinking might still exist, at least we should be beyond the point where it is entirely unacceptable to voice it, let alone act on it and brag about it. But we appear to be regressing.
IANAL, of course, but I sincerely hope that both a substantial civil lawsuit and criminal prosecution can be made against these clowns.
I also sincerely hope this causes a sort of Streisand effect leading to a large increase in donations to the real White Ribbon.
Sidebar:
Also, I suddenly find myself disturbed by the term “Streisand effect”. Mainly because she’s a liberal, Jewish woman who a large group of conservative, white men are already determined to hate, and thinking about the actions of men online lately, I suddenly have a completely different view of that story. She may have been overzealous and not understood the technology in question, but she was also simply trying to protect her privacy, and one wonders how many of the people who took part in gleefully spreading the image of her house far and wide did so purely out of hate?
White Ribbon Canada sent me a charitable donation acknowledgement by e-mail when I completed my donation. Quick and easy. Way faster than any other charity I’ve ever donated to.
I am not a tax expert, but I’m definitely putting that in my US tax returns, along with Doctors Without Borders and etc. Don’t think you have to be a US-based charity in order to have your donations be tax deductible. Hence, the need for your real ID and address.
@drst (#60): As usual, I can’t find the button I want on Facebook. Is there a built in tool for reporting the page?
@drst (#60) Nevermind, found it under the little ellipses button. But man, Facebook really doesn’t want you to report stuff. I kept looking through their “See more options” to find “this is fraud” and it never showed up. I guess I should have gone with “this is hate speech”, but by then I was deep into the “this is something else” cascade.
I was reporting some vile rape threats on Facebook a while back and it asked me to explain more about it. I typed: “vile rape threat. Read it, it’s self explanatory”. Today, I got no option to provide more information, when I really needed to provide more information.
Funny how the internet and social media have simultaneously created situations where companies can hear more from the customers and be more responsive and allow people to marshal others to support their complaints, and also created companies that do everything possible to prevent their customers providing and receiving meaningful feedback.
gussnarp – whoops, sorry I should have explained. Yes, you can report a page by going to the top, under the header image, and click on the ellipsis to find other options. I hope the real White Ribbon people have filed a complaint that way about stealing their intellectual property – Facebook is much faster to react to that, especially coming from a recognized organization, than it is to general complaints.
Yeah it’s fair to say that because Paul Elam says “One, White Ribbon Campaign is not trademarked by anyone. Deal with it.” he has _absolutely no fucking idea_ how trademark works. With all the malicious intent he’s gladly spewing all over the place, too, AVfM will have a hell of a time pedalling this back.
I’ve been thinking of doing a writeup about why they absolutely do not have a case and are in deep, deep shit over this stunt, but I’d rather not give out any legal advice. On their Facebook page, they’re actually saying there was a temperance movement in the 19th century that uses the White Ribbon, so if anyone is violating Trademark it’s the modern White Ribbon. And… yeah. No.
@Sally Stearns:
No defense against a trademark case? Or no defense against a fraud case?
I’d read it either way.
The following site is worth noting and passing on to the actual White Ribbon site. There’s a good case for filing intent to commit fraud.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/domain/legislation.html
Several other conditions listed may also apply.
Kevin Kehres@63,
Thanks for that – though I’m not an American either! No UK charity I’ve donated to has ever offered a tax receipt, so possibly the law’s different here; I’ll check it out. I know that as a UK taxpayer, I can enable the charity to claim the tax I’ve paid/will pay on what I donate by filling in a “gift aid” form.
Avfm and it’s founder are appalling. Impersonating a charity so as to intercept funds meant to fight domestic violence is a fairly blatant case of racketeering. I realize wiki isn’t definitive, but it is a good starting point.
Since afvm’s entire mission is to attack the evil menace of feminism, there seems to be grounds for the real Whiteribbon organization to sue their asses into the ground and or request a criminal investigation.
. They might be able to legally run that hate incubator because free speech, but intercepting monies meant for the actual Whiteribbon organization seems to violate multiple laws regarding money and commerce regardless of the possible trademark infringments.
Nick Gotts@70,
I’m going off-topic here, but that’s not *quite* how gift aid works. The government has promised to pay an extra 25% of your charity donations, provided you’re a taxpayer. The idea is that they want to support charities that are popular amongst their constituents, and your gift aid form is you telling the government, “You should send money to this charity! You work for me! I COMMAND YOU!”
If I believed in god, I’d say that David Futrelle is doing the lord’s work.
I don’t, but he still is.
Donated to both wehuntedthemammoth AND WhiteRibbon.ca.
Canada and the US have a tax agreement. Because of it, any donation I make to a US charity can be deducted against any US income I might have and pay US taxes on. This includes taxes withheld on any dividends paid to me by US companies.
I don’t know, but I would expect that the converse should also be true. If so, it may not apply to many people but that would be one reason to offer tax receipts to USAians.
Also, a phrase I only learned this week, “Lower than the belly of a snake in a wagon wheel rut.” certainly applies to this Paul Elam creep.
Just donated to whiteribbon.ca. I hope those bastards caused a Streisand effect.