Yuwie, the Unsociable Social Network

Having been on Myspace for a while and enjoying a decent following on my blog there, I was excited to here of a new social network that paid its users to do the things I was already doing for free. I eagerly signed up as a referral of a friend and began posting some blog entries there. I quickly became the most read blogger on the site. Woohoo! Then my account was locked.
An admiring fan sent me a comment one evening, while I was away, that was a mildly sexually suggestive cartoon. No nudity or profanity; just suggestive. I returned home that evening to find my page locked where no one could view it.
The item in question was removed along with several others because they did not tell me exactly what was offensive to them, just 'a comment someone had left on my page'. I realized I had already removed it when the lady who had sent it contacted me to let me know she was locked out, as well.
It took them less than an hour to lock my account after she had left the comment, but more than 13 hours to get it back up after it had been removed. As noted earlier; I was generating a huge number of page views for them; making them money.
During this locked-out period, I re-read their Terms of Service and found nothing in the comment that would warrant locking my account and told them so. I was informed that regardless of what was stated in the TOS, the decision for locking an account was at the sole discretion of the Y-Guy. I later learned that the owner of the site and his wife were the morality monitors there.
I started pre-approving my comments, to conform to the new unwritten rules and toned down some of the language in my blog entries. I should also state here that Yuwie is a MLM site and the more active referrals you have; the more money you make. The price for a new referral has changed recently.
The site gets a number of unsolicited people joining because they are tired of Myspace. The Y-guy was pondering what to do with these people who were not in anyones referral tree. Should he auction them off, like slaves to an unwanted master, or what? The contest he devised will be the undoing of the site.
In his infinite wisdom, the owner of Yuwie (the Y-Guy) has started offering these people who came in over the transom as rewards for getting peoples pages locked. Narc on ten of your 'friends' and get a free referral.
Thats right! For every 10 accounts you get locked out, you get a free referral. Who, in their right mind, could ever think that this is a good business decision?
He released the details of this contest in his blog and posted a list detailing his definition of offensive material. The ensuing witch hunt has many pages being locked that do not fall anywhere within the guidelines he set forth. This has prompted many to close their accounts and take friends with them from the site.
The hunters have become the hunted. There are groups that have formed to track down the snitches and post their profile links in an attempt to get people to delete them from their friends list and to report the slightest questionable image on their page. The activities of both sides is beginning to create an environment of paranoia where people are afraid to add friends or leave comments. The Yuwie social network has become unsociable.
Has the owner of Yuwie gone too far in his crusade to have a clean site or are the people who are getting upset and leaving too blame?

The War in Iraq; Why We Are There

There are things both known and unknown and there between lies the doors (to the truth). That statement holds true to many things, including the current war in Iraq. Most people have their theories as to why we are at war. Some say it's all about oil or G-Dub's plot to avenge his father's planned assassination (which was never carried out and was probably just some of Saddam's propaganda to begin with). Others believe it is a justifiable retaliation for 9-11-01. There are the ones who believe it is the Bush administration's crusade to Christianize the world. And there are the few holdovers from Bush-1 who believe it has to do with a "New World Order"; complete with unmarked black helicopter gun-ships to keep us all in line. You are all WRONG! This current miltary action was in fact started as a result of policies written during the latter days of the Carter and early-on in the Reagan administrations. If these policies had been followed through at the time; we would have no Al-Qaeda, Iran would be a democratic state and there would be peace in the middle east. Unfortunately, the Carter administration was too inept to follow through on them and the military's capability was in such a free-fall that it would not have worked, even if they had tried. Subsequent administrations, including Billary, have updated, altered, and re-written these policies; but for the most part they keep the same basic theme: A DEMOCRATIC IRAN IS THE KEY TO MIDDLE EAST PEACE. Have you looked at a map lately? What country lies between the borders of Afghanistan and Iraq? IRAN! This portion of the policy came about in the early 1980's (Reagan) when we were arming the mujahadin (whose members included Osama Bin Laden) in Afghanistan and cuddling up to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The theory was that if we helped the Afghan's win their freedom and kept Saddam in our hip pocket, we could place military bases in each country. Then, sit a Naval group or two in the Persian Gulf, and totally blockade Iran. No Economy .......leads to........ No Governmental Support .........which, in turn, leads to.......... Revolution .........we step in to help build a........ Democratic Government in Iran. Or so the theory goes. During Bush-1, relations with Saddam cooled when he tried to overtake Kuwait (and he also had made it clear through diplomatic channels that we would never be allowed to base troops there). We were fine with him, for the most part, while he was fighting Iran. But let him try to invade Kuwait (who also plays an important role in the plan), and the whole world comes down on him. About this time, as well, the Soviets began pulling out of Afghanistan. The void of control quickly gave rise to the Taliban, a new (even harsher than Iran) quasi-fundamentalist Islamic state and the birth of Al-Qaeda. Our hopes for a military base in a new democratic Afghanistan.........gone. The Clinton administration backslid on the policy a bit (it was still in place, but not always followed). The military, for the most part (except "don't ask; don't tell" and the "tail-hook" scandal), was ignored. Middle-East policy, overall, suffered. There was some glad-handing between diplomats that was supposed to lead to peace in Gaza and the West Bank; but a blind-eye was turned to other interests in the region allowing our allies to make significant investments in places they shouldn't have. The terrorists began to see us as weak and unwilling to commit the man-power to take them on directly. A few missles, here and there, into the middle of a desert isn't going to deter any determined terror group. And along comes G-Dub. Still perceiving us as weak and unwilling, the 9-11 attacks occur. America responds with force; driving the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda training camps out of Afghanistan. A little embellished evidence and we are in Iraq as well! The plan to blockade Iran is well underway! But it is flawed. The whole strategy, most notably in Iraq, was flawed from the beginning. We assumed that, with Saddam removed from power, the people would just fall in line and be overjoyed with us for liberating them; granting us widespread access to their country. Wrong again. Not enough troops from the beginning in Iraq to stabilize the country. Not enough in Afghanistan to keep it stable. The current plan in Iraq is to start at the center and slowly drive the terrorist elements to the borders. It is a good plan but is probably (even with recent troop additions) under-manned. We should have went into Iraq, at the onset, with 300,000 troops and started from the borders driving everything in front of us, like Ghengis Khan, until they were all in a small area and wiped out. Then proceeded back to the borders to keep anyone else from coming in. Would we still be in Iraq today? Yes. But probably with less than 50,000 troops. Some of the hundred or so thousand less troops there could have then been sent to Afghanistan to secure the Pakistani border and keep the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from coming back in. Is securing Iraq and Afghanistan in our national interest? YES! Is it important that they are friendly with us and allow our troops to base in their country? YES! The largest state-sponsor of terror in the Middle-East is Iran. We need troops in a peaceful Iraq and Afghanistan to serve as a deterrent to the state-sponsored terrorism of Iran. A less active Iran will ultimately lead to a more peaceful region. Resuming a diplomatic dialog with Iran should be a top priority. Remember the old saying: "Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer". Nuclear arms must be kept from Iran. Dialogue with the nut-job from North Korea worked; why not try it in Iran, as well? And if it doesn't? A blockade followed by the bombing of nuclear facilities may be in their future........... We have all heard the popular theories; now you have mine. Agree? Disagree? Tell me what you think!