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American Nihilist Underground Society
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ANUS.com Refutes Corporate Attempts at Media DominationSalvation Army Rebuked for Aggression Against Net CriticsNovember 13, 2006 The Salvation Army, a $3.1 billion dollar "charity" that helps shelter corporations from taxes in exchange for minimal effort spent "helping" the impoverished, today threatened ANUS.com's domain name provider with legal action over a graphics file that satirized the Salvation Army logo. The Salvation Army's law firm, a beltway favorite known for its closeness to large business interests, threatened to remove the ANUS.com domain from the internet by Friday evening if the graphic was not censored. "This is a classic case of aggressive image control by a parasitic organization," said ANUS writer Thomas Martinez. "The Salvation Army is hoping that its unchallenged violation of law, since American law specifically allows satirical or journalistic depictions of logo and trademarks, will allow it to control any associated image or symbol." Martinez pointed out that financial gain can be achieved with punitive lawsuits and that this case could set a precedent by which smaller web sites could be bullied by those "with the money or tax-deductible status to have an army of attorneys. The graphic portrayed a similar icon to the familiar Salvation Army shield motif, but labeled it "The Satanic Army," offending the Christian organization which received increased funding under President Bush[1 and is known for firing non-Christians and homosexuals[2]. Although the Salvation Army believes it is strengthening itself, like modern society it is instead showing the world its impotence by attempting to control reality through symbols when reality is far more independent than human pretense allows. ANUS.com has through its eleven years of operating satirized and trolled many social institutions give artificial importance by the degenerate emphasis on marketable illusion that sustains modern society. "If it's not real, we mock it," said Martinez. "This pissess off religious fanatics who are so spiritually bankrupt and emotionally out of control that they would rather accept a pleasant illusion than face reality and move on. They're immature, and everywhere they go, they wreck civilizations. In a laboratory, we call people who 'believe in' things that aren't there 'insane.'" In accordance with CORRUPT policy of challenging dubious concepts of reality, the following letter was sent to the Salvation Army and its lawyers: November 13, 2006 Re: The Salvation Army - National Headquarters Dear Lawyers: We have been forwarded your letter of November 9, 2006 regarding the Salvation Army "Red Shield" service mark and your concerns about Trademark violations, unfair trade practices, unfair competition, and defamation by ANUS against the Salvation Army. Your letter is enlightening because it demonstrates the level to which American society has deteriorated. While none of us are trained legal professionals, it takes less than 15 minutes to perform basic research to show your claims representing the Salvation Army are spurious and absurd. It remains unclear whether you are ignorant of the law or are deliberately misrepresenting it order to file a frivolous claim of infringement and perpetrate a fraud on behalf of your client, the Salvation Army. For the purposes of educating you on the law, we provide the following answers to your concerns. I. The Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 makes it clear that infringements occur only when using a mark in commerce. The ANUS.com web site does not offer any goods, services, trade, commerce, or any means of income. Further, the Act specifically provides an EXCLUSION for fair use, explicitly exempting parodying and noncommercial use of a mark from infringement claims. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-683 II. Unfair trade practices ANUS.com does not engage in trade and has no income. However, in Russia the Salvation Army has been ruled a paramilitary organization subject to expulsion. Source on the Salvation Army as a paramilitary organization: III. Unfair competition ANUS.com does not compete with the Salvation army. ANUS.com has no income, nor does it solicit income, nor does it actively discriminate against gays, Jews, and others groups as does the Salvation Army. Neither does ANUS.com accept government funding as does the Salvation Army. ANUS.com has made no secret government deals, but the Salvation Army agreed to support George W. Bush's faith-based initiates with substantial federal funding in exchange for exemption from civil rights legislation. Source on the Salvation Army policy of discrimination: Source on the Salvation Army anti-civil rights government deals: IV. Defamation When extremist religious organizations, such as the Salvation Army, are the subject of parody, no defamation occurs. No reasonable member of the public would confuse the humorous "Satanic Army" icon with an openly discriminating organization like the Salvation Army. If you need further clarification on these issues, please feel free to contact us directly. The original threat from the Salvation Army can be found here (PDF, 438k). Examples of similar images can be found here: [3], [4], [5], [6]. The original "The Satanic Army" graphic was on this page. About The Salvation Army The Salvation Army, a tax writeoff for those who live comfortably enough to get a small emotional rise out of trivial altruistic acts, has for at least two decades handed out aid to the homeless and insane without ever finding a lasting solution to those problems. Those who are homeless, usually by reason of perversity or mental illness, come to depend on the handouts and cause urban decay wherever the Salvation Army provides them, turning former prosperous neighbhorhoods into ghettoes. In exchange for this service, the Salvation Army requires only a paltry three billion dollars a year, most of which is donated by guilty CEOs and existentially bored housewives. http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/ About Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP is one of the nation's oldest legal firms, yet could not think of a better image for their website than the old hackneyed "black and white photo of pencils in which some turn colored to suggest inspiration." Their practice seems to consist mainly of harassing abusers of internet icons, taking candy from children and suing old ladies for smoking. About ANUS The American Nihilist Underground Society advocates nihilism, or a removal of interpretive layers from our perception of physical reality, as a means of transcending illusion. Nihilism denies value and purpose, which are byproducts of the human desire to judge reality and make a consensual "social reality" that by seizing on a single material factor misses the intelligible, or design-based, knowledge we need to adapt to reality. ANUS has been promoting nihilism since 1987. About Nihilism Nihilism is the belief that nothing we perceive has Absolute value; reality exists, but beyond its inherent meaning to us as the physical container of our existence, it has no significance outside of what we perceive. "The world is my representation," indeed. When we strip away all of the values projected onto physical reality and its outcomes, we are left only with personal ideal and natural ideal, and bringing the former into adaptation with the latter is the lifetime task to which nihilism is a gateway. |
