I received many, many announcements by e-mail from New-Fields (www.new-fields.com) about their Bird Flu Summit.
I have never communicated with this organization or enrolled on any of their lists. I believe that bulk e-mail should be sent only through confirmed opt-in, and I have not opted-in with this organization. Presumably my e-mail address was obtained by Usenet trawling or web crawling.
I replied to their e-mail messages with "unsubscribe" several times, to no avail.
The listed telephone number (+1 202 536 5000) just collects messages; no mechanism is provided at that number to reach any human. The web site offers no information about any people who work for the company, and offers no contact data - even the "contact us" page is just a form. The InterNIC domain registration refers to a registrar in Australia; it names Samir Farajallah (apparently the president of New-Fields) as the admin contact, and gives his adress in Dubai.
I did manage to reach an apparenty sentient human named Nancylane (at +1 202 536 5850). She claimed to be managing the Bird Flu Summit; she seemed completely oblivious to the implications of sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail. She promised to remove me from the mailing list. She mentioned that the organization gets e-mail lists from third parties. (Under Sales & Marketing Solutiuons, New-Fields' own web site offers to "List Rental.")
The organization is also apparently running conferences such as Rebuilding Iraq, and apparently running conferences in Algeria, Libya, and Kazakhstan. I have no evidence that the operation is a spam-haus, but it all seems highly suspicious to me.
Charles
2007-03-07