Back from Seattle

We're back from a week of vacation in Seattle--this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights--the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies--a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology "free stress test" center, and building housing the Discovery Institute.

And we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven't seen in a while (or hadn't met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food.

We didn't get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those.

Seattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I'm sure we'll return.

NORAD releases 9/11 tapes

Wired magazine's blog reports that NORAD and U.S. Northern Command "have released a copy of their audio files, telephone conversations and situation room discussions" from September 11, 2001.

9/11 truthers at the University of Waterloo

Jeffrey Shallit has written a multi-part summary of an event hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society on March 19 on "A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory." The event wasn't a debate, however, it was a one-sided presentation by "9/11 Truth" movement members who formulate absurd conspiracy theories and fail to look at the actual evidence. Even the moderator taking questions and answers was a 9/11 Truther who did his best to avoid taking critical questions.

Shallit's posts:

"An Evening with 9-11 Deniers" - Introduction and summary.
"The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event" - The content of a questionnaire given out at the event, which participants were supposed to fill out at the beginning and again at the end.
"An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee" - A letter from Shallit to the event moderator about his performance at the event.
"A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 1)" - A detailed summary of Dewdney's presentation at the event, part 1.
"A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 2)" - Part 2.
"Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Event" - A summary of MacQueen's presentation at the event.
"The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening" - Summary of the Q&A.

Of particular note among the comments at Shallit's blog is a lengthy description of the details of the WTC collapses from Arthur Scheuerman, Retired FDNY Battalion Chief.

Tinfoil hat brigade generates fear about Infragard

An article in The Progressive by Matthew Rothschild worries that the FBI's InfraGard program is deputizing businesses, training them for martial law, and giving them a free pass to "shoot to kill." Rothschild writes:

The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

Nonsense. I've been a member of the Phoenix InfraGard Members Alliance for years. It's a 501(c)(3) organization sponsored by the FBI whose members have been subjected to some rudimentary screening (comparable to what a non-cleared employee of the federal government would get). Most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public (contrary to Rothschild's statement that "InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public"), but the organization facilitates communications between members about sensitive subjects like vulnerabilities in privately owned infrastructure and the changing landscape of threats. The FBI provides some reports of threat information to InfraGard members through a secure website, which is unclassified but potentially sensitive information. InfraGard members get no special "shoot to kill" or law enforcement powers of any kind--and membership in the organization is open to anyone who can pass the screening. As Rothschild notes in the first sentence of his article, there are over 23,000 members--that is a pretty large size for a conspiracy plot.

At one point in the article, Rothschild quotes InfraGard National Members Alliance chairman Phyllis Schneck referring to a "special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not." This is referring to a GETS card, for the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, which provides priority service for call completion in times of emergency or disaster to personnel who are working to support critical infrastructure. There is a similar service for wireless priority (Wireless Priority Service), and yet another for critical businesses and organizations (like hospitals) which need to have their telecommunications service re-established first after a loss of service due to disaster (Telecommunications Service Priority). These programs are government programs that are independent of InfraGard, though InfraGard has helped members who represent pieces of critical infrastructure obtain GETS cards.

The ACLU's concern about InfraGard being used as a tip line to turn businesses into spies is a more plausible but still, in my opinion, unfounded concern. Businesses are not under any pressure to provide information to InfraGard, other than normal reporting of criminal events to law enforcement. The only time I've been specifically asked to give information to InfraGard is when I've been asked to speak at a regular meeting, which I've done a few times in talks that have been open to the public about malware threats and botnets.

Check out the comments in The Progressive for some outright hysteria about fascism and martial law. I saw similar absurdity regarding the Department of Homeland Security's TOPOFF 4 exercise, which was a sensible emergency planning exercise. Some people apparently are unable to distinguish common-sense information sharing and planning in order to defend against genuine threats from the institution of a fascist dictatorship and martial law.

Now, I think there are plausible criticisms to be made of the federal government's use of non-governmental organizations--when they're used to sidestep laws and regulations like the Freedom of Information Act, to give lots of government grant money to organizations run by former government employees, to legally mandate funding of and reporting to private organizations and so forth. The FBI has created quite a few such organizations to do things like collect information about missing and exploited children, online crime, and so forth, typically staffed by former agents. But personally, I've not witnessed anything in InfraGard that has led me to have any concerns that it's being used to enlist private businesses into questionable activities--rather, it's been entirely devoted to sharing information that private businesses can use to shore up their own security and for law enforcement to prosecute criminals.

UPDATE (February 9, 2008): The irony is that Matthew Rothschild previously wrote, regarding 9/11 truthers:

We have enough proof that the Bush administration is a bunch of lying evildoers. We don't need to make it up.

He's right about that, but he's now helped spread nonsense about InfraGard and seriously damaged his own credibility. I find it interesting that people are so willing to conclude that InfraGard is a paramilitary organization, when it's actually an educational and information sharing organization that has no enforcement or even emergency, disaster, or incident response function (though certainly some of its members have emergency, disaster, and incident response functions for the organizations they work for).

UPDATE (February 10, 2008): I suspect tomorrow Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy will be getting calls from reporters asking what specifically she confirmed. I hope they ask for details about the conference in question, whether it was run by InfraGard or DHS, what the subject matter was, and who said what. If there's actually an InfraGard chapter endorsing the idea that InfraGard members form armed citizen patrols authorized to use deadly force in time of martial law, that's a chapter that needs to have its leadership removed. My suspicion, though, is that some statements about protection of infrastructure by their own security forces in times of disaster or emergency have been misconstrued. Alliant Energy operates nuclear plants, nuclear plants do have armed guards, and in Arizona, ARS 13-4903 describes the circumstances under which nuclear plant security officers are authorized to use deadly force. Those people, however, are thoroughly trained and regularly tested regarding the use of force and the use of deadly force in particular, which is not the case for InfraGard members.

UPDATE (February 11, 2008): Somehow, above, I neglected to make the most obvious point--that the FBI doesn't have the authority to grant immunity to prosecution for killing. If anyone from the FBI made that statement to InfraGard members, they were saying something that they have no authority to deliver on.

UPDATE (February 12, 2008): I've struck out part of the above about the ACLU's concern about spying being unfounded, as I think that's too strong of a denial. There is a potential slippery slope here. The 9/11 Commission Report pointed to various communication problems that led to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. These problems included failure to share information (mainly from the CIA to the FBI and INS), failure to communicate information within the FBI (like Phoenix Special Agent Ken Williams' memo about suspicious Middle Easterners in flight schools), and failure to have enough resources to translate NSA intercepts (some specific chatter about the attacks was translated after the attacks had already occurred). As a result, the CIA has been working closely with the FBI on counterterrorism and counterintelligence at least since 2001. (Also see Dana Priest, "CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations," The Washington Post, October 23, 2002, p. A02, which is no longer available on the Post's site but can be found elsewhere on the web, on sites whose other content is so nutty I refuse to link, as well as this January 2006 statement from FBI Director Robert Mueller on the InfraGard website, which includes the statement that "Today, the FBI and CIA are not only sharing information on a regular basis, we are exchanging employees and working together on cases every day.")

The slippery slope is this--the CIA is an organization which recruits and develops in its officers a sense of flexible ethics which has frequently resulted in incredible abuses, and which arguably has done more harm than good to U.S. interests. (My opinion on the CIA may be found in my posts on this blog labeled "CIA"; I highly recommend Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.) Some of that ethical flexibility may well rub off on FBI agents who work closely with CIA case officers. (The FBI itself has also had a history of serious abuses, an objective account of which may be found in Ronald Kessler's book The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI.) And then, that same ethical flexibility may rub off on InfraGard members as a result of their relationships with the FBI (and potentially relationships with the CIA, as well). The intelligence community seems to have a hunger for more and more information from more and more sources, but it is already awash in a sea of information that it has trouble processing today. (It doesn't help that the Army fires direly needed Arabic translators because they are gay.) The need is to accurately assess the information that it has, and ensure that bits and pieces aren't cherry-picked to produce desired conclusions, as well as ensure that information isn't sought or assembled to serve personal and political ends of particular interests rather than combatting genuine threats to the country and its citizens.

My recommendation is that all InfraGard members read Kessler's The Bureau, Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, and view the film that won the 2007 Academy Award for best foreign film, "The Lives of Others," to help innoculate them against such a slippery slope.

UPDATE: Amy Goodman interviewed Matt Rothschild for "Democracy Now!" on Wisconsin Public Television, in which it is pretty clear to me that Rothschild is exaggerating something he doesn't understand--what he cites as evidence doesn't support what he claims. Here's a key excerpt, see the link for the full transcript:

MR: [...] And one other member of InfraGard [Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy] confirmed to me that she had actually been at meetings and participated in meetings where the discussion of lethal force came up, as far as what businesspeople are entitled to do in times of an emergency to protect their little aspect of the infrastructure.
AG: But just to clarify, Matt Rothschild, who exactly is empowered to shoot to kill if martial law were declared? The business leaders themselves?
MR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.
[...]
You know, this is a secretive organization. They’re not supposed to talk to the press. You need to get vetted by the FBI before you can join it. They get almost daily information that the public doesn’t get. And then they have these extraordinary, really astonishing powers being vested in them by FBI and Homeland Security, shoot-to-kill powers. I mean, this is scary stuff.
MR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.

It looks to me like the following transformation has occurred:

1. At a DHS conference on emergency response, somebody asks if owners of critical pieces of infrastructure should be expected to use deadly force if necessary to protect it (e.g., a nuclear power plant).
2. Somebody at DHS answers yes. They may even add that in some cases the law provides specific justification for use of deadly force (as in the Arizona statute I cite above).
3. Matt turns that into a general right to "shoot-to-kill" in times of martial law by any InfraGard member.
4. The blogosphere turns that into roving citizen patrols unleashed on the nation as the Bush hit squad after declaration of martial law.

I don't see his key source--Christine Moerke--confirming anything beyond #1 and #2.

Note other exaggerations and contradictions--Rothschild claims that InfraGard is highly secretive and selective, yet has quickly grown to over 23,000 members and has multiple public websites. He fails to note that most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public, or that it has been discussed in many articles in the national press over the last decade. Rothschild speaks of "business leaders," which the blogosphere has turned into "CEOs," yet I suspect the most common "business leader" represented in InfraGard is an IT or physical security manager.

UPDATE (February 15, 2008): The FBI has issued an official response to Rothschild's Progressive article (PDF), which says, in part:

In short, the article's claims are patently false. For the record, the FBI has not deputized InfraGard, its members, businesses, or anything else in the program. The title, however catchy, is a complete fabrication. Moreover, InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to "shoot to kill" than other civilians. The FBI encourages InfraGard members -- and all Americans -- to report crime and suspected terrorist activity to the appropriate authorities.

The FBI response also states that Rothschild has "refused even to identify when or where the claimed 'small meeting' occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed," and promises to follow up with further clarifying details if they get that information.

UPDATE (February 25, 2008): Here's another blogger with a rational response to The Progressive article.

UPDATE (March 2, 2008): Matthew Rothschild has responded to the FBI's response on Alex Jones' Info Wars blog, and he stands behind every word of his original article. He doesn't display any knowledge of or response to any of the criticisms I've offered.

Ron Paul connected to white supremacists?

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out allegations from a neo-Nazi that Ron Paul has regularly met with a variety of white supremacists at a Thai restaurant in D.C. Others have pointed out that Paul campaign expenditures have included expenses at that restaurant and that he has spoken to some questionable groups.

I've also updated this blog's post on "Ron Paul, religious kook" to point out his recent statement that he doesn't accept the reality of evolution.

UPDATE: The alleged campaign expenditure link to Wednesday restaurant meetings with white supremacist groups has been conclusively refuted at the Irregular Times blog, which goes through the expenditures in detail and shows that while Ron Paul has spent money for meetings at the Tara Thai restaurant in D.C. (which is right around the corner from an office he rents in D.C.), none of those expenditures have occurred on a Wednesday. The source of the allegations, Bill White of the American National Socialist Workers Party, is not a particularly credible source, as has been remarked repeatedly in the comments at Ed Brayton's blog (first link above).

However, Paul has definitely taken contributions from and posed for photographs with at least one white supremacist, Don Black, who runs the Stormfront website.

Oral Roberts University scandal

Ed Brayton has an entertaining post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars about the lawsuit against Oral Roberts University and Oral's son Richard Roberts by several former ORU faculty:

The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former professors. They sued ORU and Roberts, alleging they were wrongfully dismissed after reporting the school's involvement in a local political race.

Richard Roberts, according to the suit, asked a professor in 2005 to use his students and university resources to aid a county commissioner's bid for Tulsa mayor. Such involvement would violate state and federal law because of the university's nonprofit status. Up to 50 students are alleged to have worked on the campaign.

The lawsuit's allegations include:

• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

• Mrs. Roberts -- who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site -- frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."

• The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an "evangelistic function of the president."

• Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, "As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.

• Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.

• University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.

• The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.

• The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

Surprise! A televangelist and his family are using a ministry for personal gain.

UPDATE (October 9, 2007): The above allegations come from a report prepared by Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts' sister-in-law, which was on a laptop which was being repaired by an ORU student. The student gave a copy to one of the professors, who turned it over to the university board of regents.

UPDATE (October 10, 2007): CNN reports that Roberts has denied (and in some cases, given explanations for) the allegations. (Thanks, Sphere, for the link to this post from the CNN story.)

UPDATE (October 14, 2007): The allegations in the lawsuit have become even more lurid.

History channel wipes the floor with 9/11 conspiracy theorists

Rightwing Nuthouse reports that the History Channel's documentary, "9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction" gives the conspiracy theorists a high-quality debunking. The format is to allow a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to make a claim, and then have experts in the appropriate fields respond to the claim. I've got the TiVo set up to record this weekend's showing.

UPDATE (August 26, 2007): I watched the show today, and I thought they did a very good job, though of necessity they were fairly brief in their rebuttals. I was pleased to see that, contrary to some conspiracy theorist claims, they did in fact address conspiracy theorist claims about the collapse of WTC Building 7. I was also quite amused to see that in Alex Jones' concluding remarks, he made the classic crackpot self-comparison to Galileo, and did so in such a way to demonstrate his own lack of awareness or concern for factual accuracy by stating that the dispute between Galileo and the Catholic Church was about whether the earth was round or flat.

Melanie Morgan vs. Naomi Wolf

Crooks and Liars has a video clip of Melanie Morgan and Naomi Wolf appearing on Chris Matthews' Hardball to discuss Cheney's position of 1994 about why invading and occupying Iraq was a bad idea. Morgan immediately descends into dissembling, claiming that 9/11 changed everything, when in fact it changed nothing about Iraq. Naomi Wolf calls her on it, and correctly describes how the Bush administration has engaged in deception and lies to get us into the war and to seize unconstitutional powers for the Executive branch. Morgan's response to Wolf: "You're going to look super in a burqa."

Morgan seems to think that radical Islamic fundamentalists are about to take control of the United States, and that invading Iraq (one of the few countries in the Middle East which actually had a secular government) and turning it into a breeding ground for radical Islamic insurgents is an essential step to prevent it from happening. That's wildly insane.

The Cheney of 1994 was exactly right in his predictions of what would happen if we invaded Iraq, and no one has yet explained what changed his mind. September 11 is not an answer to that question. I think part of the answer can be found in James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans--groupthink from the Project for a New American Century crowd infected him, and he thought he could be at the center of power of a new American empire controlling the Middle East. But they were completely wrong about what would happen.

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Ron Paul, Religious Kook

One of the serious problems I have with our democracy is that politicians are a package deal. When one gets elected we celebrate their good ideas, but we have to endure their idiotic ones. I think this could explain the popularity of the "lesser-of-evils" argument people often use to persuade others to vote for their pet candidate of the moment. Arguably, all politicians are idiots - to a greater or lesser degree.

Case in point: Ron Paul. You can love him for his stance on the war in Iraq, but this sort of stuff really makes me wonder about the guy:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.

WTF??? Isn't Ron Paul supposedly a constitutionalist?

It's not a big surprise to me to find that the source of the above patent absurdity is an article posted at lewrockwell.com - home of the kookiest of the kooks in the "libertarian" world.

Thanks to the no god zone, which has more to say on this topic.

UPDATE by Jim (October 18, 2007): Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on Ron Paul's views on religion and government, with lots of data in the comments.

UPDATE by Jim (December 25, 2007): Ron Paul rejects evolution.

Messianic Jew issues death threats to Colorado University biologists

For over a year, an individual has been harassing several evolutionary biologists at the Colorado University at Boulder about their "devilutionism," and has now crossed the line into threats. The Discovery Institute claims that whoever is doing this is clearly not a Christian, a creationist, or religious (of course, only atheists are capable of doing anything unethical or crazy, right?), but the identity of this individual is known to the people being harassed.

The Panda's Thumb, Pharyngula, and Dispatches from the Culture Wars have more.

UPDATE (July 13, 2007): The specific kook responsible has been identified as Michael Korn:

Menacher “Michael” Korn is a 49-year-old Israeli national and former Messianic Jew who says he was baptized into Christianity in the Sea of Galilee seven years ago and is now on a mission to convert Jews and Muslims. His blog, JesusOverIsrael. blogspot.com, references CU-Boulder specifically and says he lives in Denver, although he has a North Carolina area code.

See Pharyngula for links to Korn's website and other information.

9/11 Conspiracy Nutball Convention in Chandler

I've just learned that I missed the "9/11 Accountability: Strategies and Solutions Conference" that was held in February in Chandler. The guest list is filled with the expected kooks like James Fetzer, Steven Jones, and Col. Robert Bowman from "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (Jones apparently has withdrawn from co-chair of that group and started another of his own with a similar name after clashing with Fetzer), and Jim Marrs, among many others.

If there was any doubt that this is a collection of people with no concerns about their credibility, I was quite amused to see this entry on the speakers list:

Michael and Aurora Ellegion Michael and Aurora Ellegion, have been investigative reporters for over 25 years. They have insight into the powerful mind control aspect that 9-11 was utilized to create. They have appeared on numerous television programs, the BBC TV and Armed Forces Radio, newspapers and magazines. The Ellegions are also futurists and deeply desire to enlighten mankind, feeling that we must each play a part in directing our government. Michael and Aurora have spoke at cutting-edge conferences worldwide and at the Press Clubs throughout the U.S. on numerous social and political issues.

This description is remarkable for what it omits. I'm familiar with this couple under the name "El-Legion" rather than "Ellegion," from meeting them at a psychic fair in Phoenix around 1987 when I was head of the Phoenix Skeptics. There, they presented themselves as channelers of Lord Ashtar and other discarnate extraterrestrial entities from the Pleiades, along with the occasional Archangel. The website I've linked to, "channelforthemasters.com," seems to indicate that they are still in that business. Hopefully they've discontinued their side business of selling stolen telephone card numbers in Hawaii, for which they were arrested in 1987.

Admission to the psychic fair gave me a ticket for a reading from the psychic of my choice. I chose Michael El-Legion, thinking his reading would be the most likely to provide entertainment, and he did not disappoint. He told me I was an "Eagle Commander" of the Star People and a person of great cosmic importance. I'm pretty sure I still have an audio tape of that reading somewhere.

I wrote up my encounter with Michael El-Legion in the Arizona Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 1 (July/August 1988), which unfortunately I can't seem to find my copies of.

UPDATE (March 31, 2007): Found my copies of the Arizona Skeptic. Turns out I misremembered writing it up, and misread grep output from my search of the online index. The only reference to the El-Legions was in vol. 3, no. 3 (April 1990), in Mike Stackpole's "Editorial Blathering" column. The psychic fair I reported on in vol. 2, no. 1 didn't include anything about the El-Legions, though I did converse with a man who claimed to be an alien contactee, who now is claiming online to have had a near-death experience that have given him healing powers.

Orac uncovers the real cause of the WTC tower collapses on 9/11

Over at Respectful Insolence, Orac has followed up a post about those who believe that the Towers were taken down by missiles disguised as planes by flying hologram generators with one in which he identifies the real cause of the building collapses--loose trains. The evidence is at least as compelling.

(But seriously, if you're curious about 9/11 conspiracy theories, read this, and check out the further sources at the bottom. Also check out Popular Science's book on the subject, and Skeptic magazine's vol. 12, no. 4 (2006) issue.)

DefCon goes off the deep end about Left Behind game

The "Campaign to Defend the Constitution," or "DefCon," describes itself as "an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right. We will fight for the separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance while respecting people of faith and their right to express their beliefs."

They just sent out a mailing calling for people to ask Wal-Mart to stop selling the game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces."

What Wal-Mart sells in its stores is irrelevant to defending the U.S. Constitution. The fact is, this is a crappy game that won't sell well, despite some initial media attention due to its absurd premise. As GameSpot reviewer Brett Todd observes (in a review that rates the game 3.4--bad--on a scale of 10), "Don't mock Left Behind: Eternal Forces because it's a Christian game. Mock it because it's a very bad game."

Let the market handle this one, DefCon, and stick to issues that actually have relevance to your mission. Giving it more attention and treating it as a threat is likely only to sell more copies.

UPDATE (December 13, 2006): DefCon's campaign has successfully created more media coverage for this game.

UPDATE (March 21, 2007): Looks like the market has spoken. Left Behind Games' stock peaked at $7.44 in November and closed today at $0.31 (up from $0.18 yesterday). Their financial auditors' 2006 report questioned their "ability to continue as a going concern."

UPDATE (October 9, 2007): Left Behind Games is now sending out cease and desist letters to bloggers who have given the game negative reviews. (And their stock closed today at $0.11.)

Loose Change vs. Popular Mechanics: The Debate

In five parts:

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Also see these resources and Matt Taibbi on 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Matt Taibbi takes on 9/11 conspiracy theorists

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has an excellent article on 9/11 conspiracy theorists, pointing out the absurdity of their claims in the form of a dialogue among the plotters:

BUSH: So, what's the plan again?

CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.

RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.

CHENEY: No, Dick, we won't.

RUMSFELD: We won't?

CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.

RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?

CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Dick. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.

BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of fucking nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of fucking nowhere.

There's lots more dialogue in the article... Taibbi summarizes:

None of this stuff makes any sense at all. If you just need an excuse to assume authoritarian powers, why fake a plane crash in Shanksville? What the hell does that accomplish? If you're using bombs, why fake a hijacking, why use remote-control planes? If the entire government apparatus is in on the scam, then why bother going to all this murderous trouble at all -- only to go to war a year later with a country no one even bothered to falsely blame for the attacks? You won't see any of this explored in 9/11 Truth lore, because the "conspiracy" they're describing is impossible everywhere outside a Zucker brothers movie -- unbelievably stupid in its conception, pointlessly baroque and excessive in its particulars, but flawless in its execution, with no concrete evidence left behind and tens of thousands keeping their roles a secret forever.

Check it out--highly recommended, along with these other 9/11 conspiracy debunking sites.

Hastert meets with religious kook, says he was duped

On Tuesday of this week (October 10), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert met with evangelist K.A. Paul, without first consulting with his advisors. He now says that he was "duped" into the meeting, in which Paul performed a "laying on of hands" on Hastert and asked him to resign. Paul says Hastert said that he would.

Paul is a full-blown kook, whose record includes (according to a June 2006 Houston Press story):

- claiming another minister's leper colony as his own, and videotaping said lepers for a promotional video

- transporting children in an airplane one former crew member called a "flying death trap"

- leaving a trail of unpaid bills for the plane's fuel and maintenance

- interfering with a murder investigation in India, earning the wrath of that country's National Council of Churches

- fleeing to the United States from India after nine of his American volunteers were arrested and thrown in prison

- abandoning an 11-year-old girl after checking her into a hospital

Hastert should resign simply for showing such bad judgment.

UPDATE: I should say kook and con artist, after reading the full Houston Press article.

Mr. Anand Kilari (K.A. Paul) has defrauded a lot of people, and been supported by Evander Holyfield, PromiseKeepers founder Bill McCartney, Carl Lindner, Jr., Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others. Of those mentioned in the article, the only ones with enough integrity to publicly warn others rather than remaining silent and refusing to comment were Houston millionaire Jim McIngvale and Colorado Springs businessman Ted Beckett and his wife Audrey. Those Christians who have supported this fraudster and remained silent are as guilty of deception as Paul is, and should be ashamed of themselves. As the Houston Press article points out:

From the start, his ministry has depended solely on the wealthiest evangelicals in America. With such a tenuous infrastructure, it would have shattered Kilari's ministry if any one of these Christian men had publicly criticized him.

Fortunately for Kilari, none ever has, which is why the unairworthy Global Peace One is still in Kilari's possession, patiently awaiting the day when it can carry another group of orphans across the ocean.

Key characteristics of denialism

Pharyngula summarizes and augments a list of characteristics from the Give Up Blog common to those who deny the existence of various things, whether that be the Holocaust, global warming, HIV causing AIDS, the actions of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, or other well-established phenomena.

Key features:
1. Conspiracy
2. Selectivity
3. The fake expert
4. Impossible expectations
5. The metaphor
6. The quote mine
7. Appeal to consequences

I recommend reading both the Give Up Blog's original list and descriptions and Pharyngula's extended list.

Responding to Holocaust Deniers

Orac at Respectful Insolence recently commented on how he first got involved in responding to Holocaust deniers. In reading his commentary, I was reminded of my own limited involvement on GEnie and Usenet's alt.revisionism in responding to the Holocaust deniers, at a time when Bradley Smith's organization, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) was placing full-page ads in student newspapers at universities across the United States. I did a Google Groups search and found this posting that I made on alt.revisionism in response to some people who were attacking Holocaust deniers using namecalling and without offering facts or evidence to refute their claims. As it turns out, Orac was also a contributor to this thread, as were the Scientology-supported "random poetry" bots, which forged the names of major contributors to various newsgroups in an attempt to drown them out and make the groups unreadable. (Read Scientology defector Tory Bezazian's account of the spamming of Usenet.)

This posting led to a short debate with science writer Andrew Skolnick, who strongly disagreed with me--his opinion was that Holocaust deniers should get nothing but ridicule, and no one should bother trying to respond to them. I think this is the wrong approach to Holocaust denial, the wrong approach to creationism, the wrong approach to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the wrong approach to Scientology, for reasons I give below. I do agree that it can be a bad idea to give advocates of crackpottery wider exposure or a respectable forum, but there are plenty of fora on the Internet and elsewhere where these bad ideas should be responded to with good and accurate information.

From:		James J. Lippard
Date:		Fri, Sep 24 1999 12:00 am
Email:		lipp...@discord.org (James J. Lippard)
Groups:		sci.skeptic, alt.revisionism

I first encountered claims that the Holocaust never happened sometime during my undergraduate years in college. At that time, I had recently abandoned the religious faith of my family, and I had gone from being a somewhat gullible believer to a somewhat militant atheist. I felt that I had been betrayed by authority figures in my life, and I set out to find the facts for myself. I was prepared to find that "everything I know is wrong."

Fortunately, my first exposure to Holocaust deniers was on the GEnie online service, where there were some extremely well-informed people responding to the Holocaust deniers with facts. For me, the sometimes emotional appeals were the kinds of argumentative techniques I had come to distrust, and those who clearly had facts at their disposal were the ones to be relied upon. While the Holocaust deniers tried to present themselves as being cool, dispassionate observers presenting the hard facts, it quickly became obvious that their collection of facts was similar to the collection of facts of creationists which I had been fooled by earlier in my life.

I've never spent a whole lot of effort on examining the history of the Holocaust, primarily because I was devoting my effort to other things, and because I saw that people like Ken McVay, Jamie McCarthy, and Danny Keren on alt.revisionism seemed to have things well in hand. (My big "bogus" issues which I've done a large amount of research on are creationism and Scientology; the patterns of delusion and deception seem to be pretty much the same.)

What has prompted me to write this is that I fear that there may be others here who are in a situation like I was when I first encountered this stuff. This present discussion seems to be dominated by emotional responses and namecalling, by claims that Holocaust deniers are Nazis, that they should be silenced, driven off, or even thrown in jail. I suspect that I would have taken the Holocaust deniers much more seriously in my younger days if that had been the nature of the responses to them on the GEnie service. Those of you are responding in that manner, please give this some thought. If you don't have the facts at your disposal to respond to the actual claims being made, then maybe you should leave the bulk of the responding to those who do. I'm not saying there is no place for the emotional response, or for pointing out what you see as the ultimate consequences of the views being expressed, or the motivations behind them--but just keep in mind who may be in the audience and how they may react to what you are saying. You may be accomplishing exactly the opposite of what you want.

--
Jim Lippard lipp...@discord.org http://www.discord.org/
Unsolicited bulk email charge: $500/message. Don't send me any.
PGP Fingerprint: 0C1F FE18 D311 1792 5EA8 43C8 7AD2 B485 DE75 841C

9/11 Myths debunked

I've just come across the 9/11 Myths site, which debunks a lot of the bogus claims made on the Internet by conspiracy theorists. It's well worth checking out along with the Popular Mechanics website and "Loose Change" debunking website referenced in this posting on the conspiracy-mongering Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Also check out the Nyctohylophobia blog debunking 9/11 conspiracy claims, run by a bright Catholic high school student.

UPDATE September 1, 2006: The Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories site is also a good resource.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

The group "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" has just gotten considerable press via CNN's website, which attempts to portray them as serious scholars with genuine academic credentials.

But the list of their members shows a few that are well beyond the pale, such as:

Paul Andrew Mitchell (AM)

Federal witness; Criminal investigator; Private attorney general

This associate member is known for filing absurd lawsuits over copyright infringement for his work "The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue," which appears to be a crackpot tax evasion guide. He once named Primenet (my employer at the time) as defendant in one of these lawsuits, because we rebuffed his demand that we remove a link to a nonexistent document on the website of one of our users. Primenet was never properly served, and one of the other defendants got the entire case thrown out. Another website on Mitchell that includes the text of some of his lawsuit documents is www.paulandrewmitchell.com. You can see a page of one of his complaints that includes Primenet as a defendant here (line 50). This one is dated August 1, 2001--Primenet had ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1997.

Among the full members are

Jim Marrs (FM)

Author, Researcher, 9/11, JFK, more

Marrs is a well-known JFK conspiracy theorist whose book Crossfire was used as part of the basis for Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. One of his arguments for JFK conspiracy is a list of mysterious deaths, examined further here.

James H. Fetzer (FM)

Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a former Marine Corps officer, author or editor of more than 20 books, and co-chair of S9/11T

Fetzer is another JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, who claims that the Zapruder film was fabricated by the conspiracy. (Some critiques are here and here.) Fetzer has complained about Wikipedia reverting his changes to pages about September 11. Fetzer also thinks the Apollo moon landings may be fake.

Robert M. Bowman (FM)

Former Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions

Bowman is also, according to Wikipedia, the "founder and Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church, an "independent Catholic fellowship" created in 1996 and held to be connected through apostolic succession to the Old Catholic Church." He attempted to gain the Reform Party nomination for president in 2000, but it went to Pat Buchanan [not John Hagelin, this has been corrected]. (I wonder if he is the father of Robert M. Bowman, Jr., of the Watchman Fellowship, an evangelical Christian apologist who is critical of cults?)

On Bowman's political campaign website, he gives this resume:

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III Corporation, and retired Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam and directed all the “Star Wars” programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers' ROTC Award of Merit (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security. Dr. Bob was an independent candidate for President of the US in 2000, beating Pat Buchanan in Iowa, Illinois, and California. He has resided on the Space Coast for 16 years.

"lechrus2" has commented on his findings about some of the claims on Bowman's resume, and others have pointed out similar problems in comments at DailyKos. Apparently Bowman claimed to have twice won the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal, but the list of all such winners since 1926 does not list his name; the list now says "ROTC Award of Merit" instead of "Gold Medal." He claims to be a recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, but the list of recipients of the American Assembly's Eisenhower Medal does not include him. There is a Milton Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Service to Johns Hopkins University, but I haven't found a list of recipients. He claims that he (secretly?) headed the "Star Wars" program during the Ford and Carter administrations, even though the program was initiated under Reagan in 1983. No one has yet been able to verify the existence of a "George F. Kennan Peace Prize." The Millennium III Corporation has a website with a front page and a bunch of bad links. The domain is registered to a John Gantt, 1623 33rd St., Washington, D.C. 20007, with a hotmail.com contact address and a phone number which is listed to David H. Barron at that same address. The address is missing a "NW," but is in Georgetown. (A David H. Barron was chairman of the Young Republicans from 1981-1983, but this David H. Barron appears to be involved with the World Wildlife Fund and/or the International Conservation Partnership.) If John Gantt is John B. Gantt, there are D.C. listings for him at two different addresses, one of which is an office building at 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and the other of which is an office building at 1401 H. St. NW. Anyone want to investigate Bowman's claimed military rank and Vietnam missions, his Caltech degree, or Millennium III?

The other co-chair of the group is Brigham Young University physicist, Steven Jones, who has argued that the World Trade Center building collapses must have involved controlled demolition. Former Scientific American columnist A.K. Dewdney is also a member; he has argued that it was impossible for cell phones to have been used from the hijacked planes, and therefore they must have been faked.

UPDATE August 8, 2006: Maddox addresses some 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Here's a detailed critique of "Loose Change."

Here's the Popular Mechanics article on 9/11 conspiracy theories.

UPDATE August 9, 2006: Correction to the above--Pat Buchanan was the Reform Party candidate, not former Natural Law Party candidate, physicist, and TM practitioner John Hagelin (though he also tried for the nomination).

UPDATE August 16, 2006: By way of comparison to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, here's a list of the individuals who consulted on the Popular Mechanics article referenced just above.

UPDATE August 19, 2006: Also check out the 9/11 Myths website.