False statements from the Bush administration before the war in Iraq

This should be considered old news, but the Center for Public Integrity has done an extensive analysis of statements made by the president, the vice president, and five other senior members of the Bush Administration between September 11, 2001 and September 2003 and identified 935 specific false statements made. These statements are now part of a searchable database, and they've put together a graph that shows how the frequency and number of false statements dramatically increased during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and then declined as the truth became known in the course of the war:

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

The CPI report is titled "The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War."

"Anonymous" launches "war" against Scientology

In a press release yesterday that cites an article I co-authored in Skeptic magazine, a group referring to itself as "Anonymous" has announced that it has declared war against Scientology. The stated justification for the "war" is the Church of Scientology's attempts to keep a video of Tom Cruise off the net. That video, which is still viewable at Gawker.com, was made for a Scientology awards ceremony. The longer video from which it was taken is also now viewable there. Gawker.com responded to a cease and desist letter with a refusal to remove the video, which it considers to be fair use for news and comment, but I'm not so sure that it has a good legal case for putting up more than short excerpts. (In case you're wondering about all the Scientology jargon in the Tom Cruise video, MTV has done a good job of explaining it. Actor Jerry O'Connell has also put out a good parody.)

The "war," which is described at another site under the name "Project Chanology" (a reference to 4chan, a popular message board, where most posts are made by people who don't login and are thus attributed to "Anonymous"), calls for denial of service attacks over the Internet, prank phone calls, spam emails, and personal visits involving vandalism and harassment. Apparently Scientology's main website was down due to denial of service for at least part of the day yesterday.

The press release cites a number of web pages for further information about Scientology, the second of which is the article "Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech & Copyright Infringement on the Information Super-Highway" which Jeff Jacobsen and I wrote for Skeptic magazine in 1995 after Scientology effectively declared war on the Internet. (A much lesser-known sequel to that article, published only on the web, is "Scientology v. the Internet: An Update and Response to Leisa Goodman.")

I completely disagree with the tactics being used here--Scientology has as much right to free speech and protection of their copyrights as anyone else, though I also condemn Scientology's habitual misuse of copyright to try to suppress fair use of information. To the extent this is a prank designed to get media attention, well done. To the extent it gets taken seriously, though, it's something that may not end well. Read the material, watch the videos, have a laugh, and tell others about the absurdity and abuses of Scientology. But please, don't launch attacks on their websites, harass individuals, or engage in vandalism.

"Anonymous" previously received coverage for attacks on MySpace accounts on Fox 11 in Los Angeles on July 26, 2007.

BTW, the press release gets its facts wrong when it claims that the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup was "shut down." Scientology attorney Helena Kobrin issued an rmgroup message, but almost all news servers ignored it. The accurate facts may be found in Jeff's and my Skeptic article.

UPDATE: Wikinews and Xenu.net have more.

Message from God billboards

Back in 1999, a bunch of billboards popped up around Phoenix that had white letters on a black background and were signed by God. One I took a bad photo of said "You think it's hot here? --God." They're back. There's now one near Kat's workplace that says "Life is short. Eternity isn't. --God." These come from a group that calls itself GodSpeaks, which doesn't actually pay for or put up the billboards, they just help interested groups in doing it locally.

I'd like to see someone make one of those sign generators for these billboards, so I can make some parodies, which these are just asking for. These billboards aren't as lighthearted as some of the church marquee signs (like this one, for example, which suggests a God who has mellowed considerably from the one who sent the plagues of the Exodus).

Here are some ideas for better content:

Stop putting words in my mouth. --God

If I existed, I'd communicate directly to all people in their own languages in a miraculous manner rather than through billboards put up by people pretending to be me, just as parents pretend to be Santa Claus. -- God

Please post further suggestions in the comments. (And if somebody writes or finds a billboard photo generator, please let me know.)

William Lane Craig weighs in on Antony Flew book

William Lane Craig has given his account of the Roy Varghese book written for Antony Flew in an audio blog, which Richard Carrier ably dissects. Craig seems not to be interested in actually examining any of the evidence in any depth.

(Carrier's blog also had a more detailed post in response to Mark Oppenheimer's article in the New York Times Magazine last November, which agreed with Oppenheimer's analysis but provided further background detail, and he has added a 27 December 2007 update to his article on the Secular Web, "Antony Flew Considers God... Sort Of.")

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills

Today's Washington Post reports:

The FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released today.

Telephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI access to wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of the bureau's failure to pay its bills, the audit found.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that more than half of the nearly 1,000 telecommunications bills reviewed by investigators were not paid on time, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office.

...

The report identified one case in which an order obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- which covers clandestine wiretaps of terrorism and espionage suspects -- was halted because of "untimely payment."

The FBI says the problem is caused by an outdated financial management system and is working to fix it. The same Post article also points out that an examination of the backgrounds of the 35 employees with access to FBI funds used to pay for expenses for undercover investigations "found that half had personal bankruptcies or other financial problems" and one FBI telecommunications specialist pleaded guilty to "stealing more than $25,000 intended for telephone services."

The article concludes by observing that Congress is still divided over the issue of granting retroactive immunity to telecoms that have engaged in illegal wiretapping for government surveillance programs and that the most recent extensions of the foreign wiretap law from last summer expire at the beginning of February.

Anti-black, anti-gay, and conspiracy rhetoric in Ron Paul newsletters

James Kirchick of The New Republic has gone back and reviewed the content of Ron Paul's newsletters published prior to 1998, and the results are not at all pretty. They contain repeated anti-black and anti-gay bigotry and conspiracy theory rhetoric, much of it under Ron Paul's byline. And the Paul campaign's explanation is weak:

When I asked Jesse Benton, Paul's campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted "various levels of approval" to what appeared in his publications--ranging from "no approval" to instances where he "actually wrote it himself." After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, "A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no." He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because "Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero."

In other words, Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.

You can find numerous excerpts from Ron Paul's past publications here.

DI's Dissent from Darwinism statement analyzed

John Lynch has looked up the backgrounds of the 300 signatories to the Discovery Institute's "Dissent from Darwinism" statement who signed in 2004 (it's now up to 700, which he plans to also examine). He reports on the backgrounds of the individuals who signed, finding that "Chemists, physicists, engineers, bench jockeys, doctors and mathematicians account for over 200 of the 300 signatories" but only five organismal biologists. He also notes that there's also at least one soccer coach and a home-schooling mom in the list.

The comments are worth reading as well.

UPDATE (January 27, 2008): John Lynch has a further post on this statement, and commenter Ken, below, points to his analysis of the religious beliefs of signers at his Open Parachute blog.

UPDATE (May 14, 2008): A YouTube video documents further Discovery Institute deception with regard to this list.

New summary of CMI-AiG dispute from CMI

Creation Ministries International has published a new web page summarizing their dispute with Answers in Genesis, much of which is already familiar to readers of this blog. The summary includes an update of events immediately preceding and subsequent to the attempt at arbitration in Hawaii that occurred last August, and links to supporting documents, several of which are newly made public.

New in this report are two interesting emails from Philip Bell, former deputy CEO of AiG-UK, about what was going on inside AiG after the split from CMI. Bell resigned from AiG in June 2006 and is now head of CMI-UK. The first email is quoted in a letter from Carl Wieland to a CMI supporter in Australia who asked why CMI needed to take legal action against AiG, which includes these two paragraphs:

I am very sorry to say that AiG leaders (on both sides of the Atlantic) have engaged not only in unbiblical/unethical behaviour but in the case of AiG-USA, unlawful too—to the great detriment of their former colleagues and sister ministries in the other former AiG countries, particularly Australia—this is not merely what I have been told by colleagues abroad but rather I have personal knowledge of these things. If anyone contacts AiG-USA to find out what’s going on, they are asked to ‘pick up the phone and talk to us’. This all sounds very reasonable but there is no accountability involved because such words are not recorded and amount to so much gossip—they can be flat out denied if it is deemed expedient. I am afraid to say that I have personally witnessed outright lies (of an incredible kind) involving four individual high-ups in AiG (and in one instance I was asked to give testimony to an independent enquiry; something I took no pleasure in doing). CMI’s response has been to put everything out in the open (not without criticism of some Christian brethren of course, some of whom are upset that this seems to amount to ‘hanging our dirty linen out before the world’. I share their dismay but believe that this has to be, if justice is to be done and the Lord’s name is not to be sullied even more in the long run.

I take no pleasure in having to write these things and I know that I speak for my colleagues in CMI-Australia and around the world when I say that we long to get on with the real work that God has entrusted us with. Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that I have no personal axe to grind with any of the AiG leaders concerned, all of whom I once considered friends and got on with very well. This is not about personal differences but about integrity and honesty—simply put, I left AiG because we had a ministry slogan (which I liked and still like) which said: “We are a Christ-centred, evangelistic ministry dedicated to upholding the Word of God from the very first verse.” I could no longer publicly represent AiG when the actions and words of its representatives were anything but Christ-centred (rather they were/and are often man-centred—pride and an unwillingness to admit fault became the order of the day). Neither could I stomach any longer hearing people talk about upholding God’s truth while I had personally witnessed deceit and even bare faced lies from the same people. I am not their judge and I find it very sobering to even be writing these words (James 4:11-12) but the Scripture also advocates that the Christian is to ‘judge with righteous judgment’. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but it is horrendous when pride prevents people acknowledging sin and they continue to cover their unbiblical/unethical actions in God-speak. Frankly, it appears that there is no fear of the Lord in such people. In spite of my strong feelings, I have continued to pray for AiG to this very day and earnestly desire that there will be a righteous outcome that will not allow God’s name to be sullied before the world.

The second email from Bell discusses a letter sent by Monty White of AiG-UK to supporters about the split (and links to a rebuttal of that Monty White letter) and gives a UK perspective on the AiG/CMI split, and reports that not only Bell but two other AiG-UK staff members, Tim Matthews and Rachel Revell, resigned from AiG-UK over these issues.

Boeing 787 potentially vulnerable to passenger software-based hijacking

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is equipped with systems to provide passengers with on-board Internet access. Unfortunately, the passenger network is also connected to the computer systems that control the plane, as well as communication and navigation systems, which the FAA has complained about in a "special conditions" document that covers issues that are a concern but are not specifically covered by regulations.

Boeing says it has designed a solution that it will be testing shortly, and the FAA says that has to happen before any of these will be allowed to fly.

A Boeing spokesperson claims that the FAA document criticizing the design is misleading because, as Wired reports, "the plane's networks don't completely connect." She goes on in the article to say that there's a combination of physical separation and software-based firewalls. Given the fact that software-based firewalls have themselves had vulnerabilities from time to time, I'd strongly prefer to see complete physical separation.

Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise tell-all

Dlisted has the scoop on Andrew Morton's book on Tom Cruise, to be released on January 15. I would surmise that it will not be published in the UK, which has much stricter libel laws.

Cruise was threatening to sue Morton for this book back in February 2006, before he had even started writing it, because Morton hired gay porn star turned private investigator Paul Baressi, whose allegations of a gay affair with John Travolta were published in the National Enquirer, only to retract them after being sued by Travolta. Photos of Travolta kissing a man on the steps of his private plane during the production of "Hairspray" were widely published in 2006.

L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology consider homosexuality to be a perversion which falls at 1.1 on the tone scale, between fear and anger.

UPDATE (January 12, 2007): Slate reads Morton's book so you don't have to, and reveals that the Tom Cruise of Morton's book is strictly heterosexual.

Notorious major spammer indicted

Alan Ralsky, at one time believed to be the top spammer in the world, has finally been indicted today by a federal grand jury. His home was raided back in 2005, and he's now been charged along with ten other people in "a wide ranging international fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mailing." Those indicted include James E. Bragg, 39, of Queen Creek, Arizona.

The indictment alleges that Ralsky's spam gang "tried to send spam" through botnets and engaged in a "pump and dump" stock scam for Chinese companies. The Detroit Free Press's coverage reports: "Prosecutors described Ralsky, 52, of West Bloomfield, as one of the most prolific spammers in the nation. Until 2005, when federal agents raided his home and seized his computers, his operation sent tens of millions of unsolicited email messages daily to Internet subscribers, hawking everything from sexual enhancement drugs, weight loss products and worthless stock, the government said. In the summer of 2005 alone, prosecutors said, his operation generated $3 million."

The DOJ press release is here.

New online atheist newsletter

Octavia, a New Zealand atheist who was formerly an administrator at IIDB until the recent controversies there, has followed through with her proposed creation of a community newsletter for participants of the proliferating atheist and freethought message boards, called Nexus and hosted at the Nontheist Nexus.

I've just started looking at the first issue, and I went directly to the article "Atheist Cop," which was a fascinating read. There's also an excerpt from Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason," some nicely done artwork, some stills from a film being made by one of the board members, an account of a scientist who spent eight months at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, "Sarpedon's Weird Science" with links to interesting recent articles about undersea life, a couple of reviews of "The Golden Compass," a few holiday recipes, and more.

It looks like a great start, and I look forward to reading the rest of this issue and more in the future.

Who's Who in Hell is now online

Warren Allen Smith's massive Who's Who in Hell (2000, Barricade Books) is now online as a wiki, provided by the organization Philosopedia (not yet a 501(c)(3)), which manages a wiki of the same name.

Unfortunately, they're not allowing the public to edit the content. I hope they will at least open it up to registered users in some way. It's also somewhat disappointing that the organization of Who's Who in Hell puts all the entries into 26 wiki pages, one per letter of the alphabet, rather than having a separate entry for each person. My entry on the L page is woefully out of date.

UPDATE: But they're quite responsive... I have a new entry already.

December's Phoenix Housing Stats Update

By now it's barely even newsworthly that December saw another record number of notices of trustee's sales in Maricopa County (3875, which was more than 300 higher than last month's record high, which was almost 100 higher than October's record high, which was roughly 200 higher than August's record high...).

For some extra context and excellent commentary, after looking at the graphs...



...I recommend you check out Mish's Pent Up Housing Demand, and the NYT's Sound of a Bubble Bursting.

Skepticism on the Internet in 1996

Last night while looking for something else, I came across my copy of the September 1996 issue of Internet Underground, a short-lived glossy magazine promoting interesting things on the Internet. This issue featured an article I wrote for them about skepticism on the Internet, which I present for your enjoyment below. If I had to update it today, I'd need to add information about blogs (like Science Blogs), podcasts, and various online forums that have come into existence in the last eleven and a half years or so (including IIDB, its offshoots like Freethought Forum and Heathen Hangout, and skeptical forums like those of the James Randi Educational Foundation and Richard Dawkins), but everything I described below is still around, despite some name and domain changes (I've updated the links) and diminishing significance of Usenet. I'm not sure how I missed the Skeptics Dictionary or Snopes.com, which were both around at the time.

You can see a PDF of the article in its original format here.

403 Forbidden: Skeptics Seek the Cold Hard Truth
By Jim Lippard

The Internet is a place where world views collide. Christianity meets atheist, conventional wisdom meets conspiracy theory, fringe belief meets orthodox science. While most Usenet newsgroups promote particular views and are populated mostly by their purveyors, the critics make up the majority on sci.skeptic. These critics who refer to themselves as "skeptics" have only a tenuous connection to the skepticism of the ancient Greeks, such as Pyrrho, who denied the possibility of knowledge of any kind. Instead, they tend to hold that while knowledge is quite possible, it must be grounded in scientific inquiry and rational investigation. Doubt is valued as a means to reliable knowledge rather than an end in itself.

Skeptics often share an interest in the unusual, bizarre, and the seemingly impossible with the denizens of newsgroups such as alt.paranormal, alt.astrology, alt.alien.visitors, and alt.forteana.misc. There are plenty of fans of The X-Files to be found among skeptics. Where skeptics differ from "believers" is with regard to what are acceptable standards of evidence and what constitutes reasonable methods of investigation. A commonly touted skeptical aphorism is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," and testimonials, feelings and handwaving are not considered extraordinary enough to carry the weight.

Yet skeptics are not necessarily dogmatic disbelievers. Skeptics may be knee-jerk naysayers who reject anything supernatural or paranormal, open-minded doubters, or even those who shelter a few fringe beliefs of their own. The most outspoken critics of one paranormal theory are frequently advocates of other fringe theories, and such criticisms are often accepted and promoted by the skeptics. (In a similar vein, it has been pointed out that Christians agree with atheists about the nonexistence of all gods save one.)

Organized skepticism has largely centered around the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), http://www.csicop.org/, since its founding in 1976. But the growth of local, regional and national skeptical groups, and their interaction via the Internet has led to a diversification of approaches and emphases. The Los Angeles-based Skeptics Society, http://www.skeptic.com/, has published a thick magazine, Skeptic, since 1992 which emphasizes thorough and open investigation of claims, allows detailed responses from those who are criticized, is willing to examine claims within conventional science as well as on the fringes and encourages self-criticism of the skeptical movement. Likewise, the sci.skeptic newsgroup and the SKEPTIC mailing list (skeptic at listproc.hcf.jhu.edu) are places where
well-reasoned arguments by promoters of paranormal claims and skeptical detractors can find an attentive audience (amongst the obligatory flames and ridicule, of course--but flamers may find themselves skewered by their fellow skeptics if they aren't careful).

Within the broad class of skeptics are those who focus on more specific issues, like the Internet Infidels (http://freethought.tamu.edu/), whose Secular Web expresses skepticism about the existence of gods and value of religion. The National Center for Science Education (http://www.natcenscied.org/) engages in religiously neutral criticism of creationist pseudoscience. Trancenet (http://www.trancenet.org/) criticizes Transcendental Meditation. Each has related newsgroups (alt.atheism, talk.origins, alt.meditation.transcendental) and mailing lists, traffic from which tends to overflow into sci.skeptic, the catch-all newsgroup for skeptics.

The Internet has served as a means for skeptics worldwide to coordinate and expand their efforts; the skeptical organizations and publications have shown considerable growth in the last few years despite the fact that major media tends to give skeptical viewpoints short shrift.

Jim Lippard ([email address removed]), a skeptic, Web administrator and philosopher, is the Internet representative for Skeptic magazine.

Skeptics Society Web
http://www.skeptic.com

Other Skeptical Resources
http://www.primenet.com/~lippard/skeptical.html

Disney characters explain copyright law

(Hat tip to Scott Peterson on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

rx videos

rx, who put out some MP3s a couple of years ago that edited samples from George Bush speeches to make him sing songs like U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and John Lennon's "Imagine" mixed with Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," has made videos of several of these and some new songs:

REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It" (Bush):


U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (Bush):


The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (Tony Blair):


John Lennon's "Imagine"/Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" (Bush):

Fundamentalist legalism and murder

Today I've read a few interesting commentaries on the role that certain fundamentalist Christian teachings (specifically a doctrine known as "legalism") have had in producing the outcomes of Andrea Yates murdering her children and Matthew Murray killing several people in Colorado. Murray, who was raised in an ultra-fundamentalist home and home schooled, was in an environment based on the teachings of Bill Gothard, whose "seven basic life principles" may be found here. The obedience to authority component is one which has led to some problems, such as a sex scandal within Gothard's organization. (An online forum for discussing Bill Gothard's teachings, open to both supporters and critics, may be found here.)

Gothard has other teachings beyond his seven principles, some of which are enumerated by a commenter at Midwest Christian Outreach:

Wives who work outside the home are to be compared to harlots — Bill Gothard
It is a total insult in Scripture to be called uncircumcised, and the only moral choice parents can make is to have their sons circumcised in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus — Bill Gothard
“Unmerited favor” is a “faulty definition” of grace. Grace for sanctification is merited as we humble ourselves before God — Bill Gothard
Females who enjoy horseback riding have a problem with rebellion — Bill Gothard, from testimonies of people who use their real names who have heard him say this in person
Unbiblical submission taught — Abigail was WRONG to do what she did in saving Nabal and his servants — Bill Gothard
Tamar was partially at fault for being raped, because she wasn’t spiritually alert and didn’t cry out — Bill Gothard
Rock music is evil because it is evil — Bill Gothard
Cabbage Patch dolls are demonized — Bill Gothard

Matthew Murray wrote about some of these rules, observing that "I still remember how we were told that 'The Simpsons' was a very evil and Satanic TV show with the intent of causing people to leave Christianity (as if that’s a bad thing). As a teenager my mother had the TV tuner removed by a TV technician so that it could only receive from the AV inputs, meaning, could only watch VHS and DVDs." He specifically blamed Gothard's teachings for his problems:

I am 22 years old and I was raised in Bill Gothard's homeschool program all the way through high school. I went to both the Basic and Advanced Seminars. My Mother was fully into both Bill Gothard's programs AND the Charismatic movement. What I found were all these other rules Irealized I could never live up to, yet, the man seemed to have a biblical basis for everything. In Februrary 2001 at age 17 I plunged into a dark suicidal depression all because I thought I had lost my "salvation" and somehow couldn't live up to the rules. Every single hour of every single day, up until October 2001 I thought about ways of suicide and hating myself for not being worthy enough and failing God. I felt like there was no reason to live because I had lost my salvation and could never live up to the rules.

By contrast, Bill Gothard blames it all on rock music:

Gothard, in an interview Wednesday, said he “didn’t recall"ever meeting the Murray family, but he was sure one of the parents was probably trained in his program. Ultimately, Gothard blames rock music for Murray’s murderous rampage. “That is the most contributing factor,” said Gothard, who is based in a small town south of Chicago. “It’d be important to see the connection between his passion to rock music and how it ultimately brought this on.” Gothard said whenever he gets calls from parents having trouble with their kids, he asks about what they listen to. “In every case, (the kid) is listening to rock music,” he said.

The Andrea Yates case didn't involve Bill Gothard--she was a follower of Michael Woroniecki, a traveling preacher who carried a cross onto college campuses. I met and argued with him at Arizona State University in October of 1986, where he was arrested (via citizen's arrest) for allegedly disrupting a campus event occurring on the mall. The charges were absurd--he wasn't creating a disturbance or disrupting any event--and some other skeptics and I attended his court hearing prepared to speak up for him, but the charges were dismissed when the ASU student who made the citizen's arrest failed to show up. Woroniecki's teachings are similar to Gothard in that he places a strong emphasis on following rules (and against following any church or leadership other than his own, since he doesn't seem to think anyone other than himself lives up to his standards, which apparently presents him with a bit of a problem in maintaining followers). He lacks the sophistication, charisma, and organizational skills of Gothard.

There is empirical evidence that excessively rigid parental control over children can cause serious dysfunction. Christians should take notice of this, rather than resort to blaming rock music.

UPDATE (December 31, 2007): I just remembered, by way of contrast with Bill Gothard's view of The Simpsons, that a Christian satirical magazine, The Wittenburg Door, did an issue on the theology of Homer Simpson back in May/June 1999--the issue immediately preceding their "XENA: Warrior Theologian of the Year" issue. I've got a copy around here somewhere...

UPDATE (February 3, 2010): Joshua Woroniecki, son of Michael Woroniecki, has a blog where he criticizes claims that his father had any responsibility for the actions of Andrea Yates, even denying that she and her husband were followers of his father. That should be contrasted with Wikipedia's discussion.

UPDATE (March 1, 2014): Bill Gothard has been placed on administrative leave as a result of accusations of sexual harassment from at least 34 women.

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.

Dembski knew he was infringing copyright

In a September 2007 talk, Dembski used an over-dubbed version of a computer animation of the inner workings of the cell that he took from Harvard and XVIVO, which he subsequently claimed he had downloaded from the Internet in a form that didn't have the credits (e.g., from YouTube).

Peter Irons has now shown that the content of Dembski's latest book, Design of Life, shows that his explanation is a lie. That book includes a reference to the same video, with a link to its original location, marked as "last accessed" on January 25, 2007. Since he knew where the video came from in January 2007, he also already knew in September 2007. ERV points out the details of Dembski's deception.

(Via Pharyngula.)

UPDATE (December 31, 2007): There is an entertaining exchange of letters between Peter Irons, Bill Dembski, and Dembski's attorney John Gilmore posted at Pharyngula.

Chinese intelligence was translating for the NSA

The Washington Times reported on December 21 that several years ago, Chinese intelligence successfully subverted the National Security Agency in Hawaii. First, by creating a company based in Hawaii to do Chinese translations which successfully obtained government contracts with the NSA to translate intercepted Chinese communications. The intercepted communications included sufficient information to identify the sources, giving the Chinese the ability to control what information was obtained by the NSA either by preventing significant information from being carried over by the compromised channel or by introducing disinformation.

This shows one of the problems that faces a world superpower whose own language is commonly used and which does little or nothing to encourage its citizens to learn other languages. Understanding communications in other languages require the assistance of translators who may be working for the enemy, and the enemy can almost get away with speaking freely anywhere while being overheard, since the likelihood of comprehension is so small. The more communications you need translated, the more translators you need, and the greater the likelihood of compromise.

UPDATE (January 2, 2008): Noah Schachtman at Wired and Jeffrey Carr at IntelFusion cast some doubt on this story.

Books Read in 2007

As another year comes to a close, I've again put together a list of the books I've managed to read this year. Once again, there are many that I've not finished, some of which were started but left uncompleted in 2005 or 2006, but I'm not going to bother listing those this year. While in previous years I've reviewed almost every book I read on Amazon.com, this year I've hardly done so at all, and my Amazon.com reviewer rank has dropped accordingly--I had hopes at one time of cracking the top 2000 (and got up to 2,171), but that won't happen if I don't write some more reviews. I'm disappointed with how few books I've read this year--this is the first time I can recall purchasing more new books than I've finished reading, so I plan to use my vacation days (the rest of the year) to see if I can finish a few more.

• Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography
• Barton Biggs, Hedge Hogging
• Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
• Giles Foden, Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika
• Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection
• Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
• Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (nowhere near as good as I remembered, and the other two I read were so bad I didn't buy the fourth)
• Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door
• Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• Mark R. Levin, Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish
• Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
• Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, Goedel's Proof
• Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World
• Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (revised edition)
• Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
• William Poundstone, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
• Rudy Rucker, Frek and the Elixir
• Jim Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer"
• Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
• Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State
• Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea

(Previously: 2006, 2005.)

Chris Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit

Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, has written an article about how the religious right's support for Mike Huckabee "represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right" in that Huckabee is a candidate who repudiates many of the core principles of conservatism in favor of populism. I'd say he's more of a William Jennings Bryan than a Barry Goldwater.

Hedges' article correctly identifies some very serious reasons to be concerned about a Huckabee candidacy, with his ties to Christian reconstructionism and his complete ignorance of foreign policy. He concludes with a few paragraphs about Huckabee's opposition to the HPV vaccine and his desire to quarantine AIDS patients. It's here that Hedges gives Huckabee too much credit, when he writes that "Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position." In fact, Huckabee hasn't backed off from the position, only from the specific words he used to describe it.

Here's what he said about it to Chris Wallace, as reported at the Huffington Post (with the accompanying video record):

This morning, Huckabee first tried to deny his comments. "Chris, I didn't say that we should quarantine," he said. In fact, he said we "need[ed]" to isolate AIDS patients.

Pressed repeatedly by host Chris Wallace, however, Huckabee relented. "That is exactly what I said. I don't run from it, I don't recant from it. Would I say it a little differently today? Sure, in light of 15 years of additional knowledge and understanding, I would."

That's not backing off from the position.

What would happen if Jesus converted to Islam?

The Onion has the story. The part about Jews for Jesus splitting into three groups is priceless.

Irony

Unlike the examples in Alanis Morissette's misnamed song, this is both unfortunate and ironic:

Roofing billionaire dies in fall through roof

The 91st richest man in the U.S., a roofing company billionaire, has died after falling through his home garage's roof, local authorities said Friday.

Ken Hendricks, 66, was checking on construction on the roof over his garage at his home in the town of Rock Thursday night when he fell through, Rock County Sheriff's Department commander Troy Knudson said. He suffered massive head injuries, according to his company, ABC Supply Co.

Lakota Nation withdraws from U.S. treaties

Yesterday, a group of Indians from the Lakota Nation announced that it has withdrawn from all U.S. treaties and will be issuing its own passports and driver's licenses and creating a tax-free state where non-Native Americans are welcome to move so long as they renounce their U.S. citizenship. They've stated that they will be filing liens against the properties within their territory which have been illegally homesteaded, and have contacted the governments of Bolivia, Chile, and Venezuela seeking recognition.

You can find a map of the Lakota Nation territory here, with more detail and explanation here. It covers western North and South Dakota and Nebraska, and eastern Montana and Wyoming.

This declaration of independence was made yesterday by Russell Means, leader of the American Indian Movement (who was nearly the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president instead of Ron Paul), and is based on many years of U.S. government failure to live up to its treaties with Indian tribes. But Means actually has no authority to speak for the Oglala Sioux (the Lakota tribe he is a member of), since he did not win the 2005 election for president of the tribe, though he unsuccessfully contested it.

I haven't seen any specific mention with regard to the Lakota Nation's action of the case of Cobell v. Kempthorne, a lawsuit which has been in federal court since 1996. This lawsuit is over the U.S. Department of the Interior's mismanagement of Indian land lease trust funds, in which they've lost the accounting records for 118 years of data about $13 billion in funds and its accumulated interest, which the plaintiffs would like to see returned to them. (I previously mentioned this lawsuit two years ago as one of the issues former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth was on the right side of.) Eloise Cobell is a member of the Blackfeet tribe of Montana.

Mention has been made, however, of a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision which awarded the Lakota $122 million in compensation for the land that had been taken from them in violation of treaties, but not any land. The Lakota refused the award, which has accrued interest bringing it close to $1 billion today.

Depends on what the meaning of "saw" is

Mitt Romney said on national television several times this year (including at least twice this month) that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1978, he claimed to the Boston Herald that he and his father both marched with King.

Susan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, did some research and found that while Gov. George Romney (Michigan) issued a proclamation in support of King in June 1963 for a March in Detroit, he declined to attend, saying that he did not attend political events on Sundays. He participated in a civil rights march in Grosse Pointe a few days later, but King did not attend that march.

Now, after defending the claim repeatedly, Romney has admitted yesterday that neither he nor his father marched with King--but not that he has said anything false. Instead, he says that he "saw" his father march with King in a figurative sense: "If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described. ... It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

Blackwater shoots the NY Times' dog in Baghdad

A Blackwater bodyguard shot and killed Hentish, the mascot dog of the New York Times that has lived its entire life in the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. Blackwater claims Hentish attacked one of their bomb-sniffing dogs and had to be shot.

Former U.S. military officials against "enhanced interrogation"

December 12, 2007

The Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman
The United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman
The United States House of Representatives
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Reyes and Chairman Rockefeller:

As retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).

We believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat.

The current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel - military and civilian - should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual.

The Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated last year to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate.

General David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual:

What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect.... Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong.

Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone "talk;" however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

Employing interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism.

This is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message - to U.S. personnel and to the world - that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions.

Sincerely,

General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)
General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)
General Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)
General David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)
General Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)
Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)
Major General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.)
Major General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)
Major General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)
Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.)
Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)
Major General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)
Major General Antonio 'Tony' M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)
Brigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Richard O'Meara, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)
Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)

The bill in question has passed in the House. It still needs to pass in the Senate. Bush has threatened to veto the measure.

UPDATE (December 20, 2007): Notes on a few of the above--Taguba did the investigation of Abu Ghraib. Guter and Hutson were Judge Advocates General (i.e., the top Navy-Marine Corps lawyer). Turner was former Director of Central Intelligence (i.e., head of the CIA).

Who gets Jesus' endorsement, and is it a good thing?

This political advertisement explores those questions.



Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.

"Untraceable" looks unwatchable

In January 2008 the film "Untraceable," starring Diane Lane, will be released. It looks awful. The premise is that a serial killer is killing people live on the Internet, via an "untraceable website" that is connected to contraptions that kill his victims as more people visit the site.

The whole concept of an "untraceable website" or the idea that such a thing would be unstoppable by ISPs and law enforcement is absurd--the immediate upstream provider of the site would merely need to null route the IP address(es) where the website is hosted, and traffic stops. They'd also be able to quickly identify the customer who owns the server in question. Even if that server was compromised and being used to reverse proxy or redirect traffic to other servers, it would still be a relatively simple matter to track that backwards, though it would be somewhat more difficult than stopping the traffic. Even if the domain name pointed to a new server on a compromised host every second, it would still be possible to contact the domain name registrar and get the domain name shut down.

If users can get to it, it can be seen how and what they're getting to, even if that's only the front end in a chain of successive proxies. If it has a domain name, that provides another path to shutting off access.

UPDATE (January 2, 2008): I came across the script online while searching for information about the writers. Let's just say that my opinion above is not nearly negative enough. In the first 16 pages are at least six or seven scenes that really bring on the stupid. For example, FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh, who works in the FBI's cyber division, is monitoring machines that are being compromised by hackers (honeypots, essentially, though the script doesn't use the word). One of her machines gets compromised and she sees that it copies her files including fake financial information. It then accesses eBay to use a stolen credit card to purchase a watch. In reality, the stolen financial information wouldn't be likely to be used from the same machine, it would be sold to another player in the underground economy. Marsh then types commands to look for the IP address of the connecting host--but if they've already got honeypots or honeynets in operation, that should already be logged. She then does the usual CSI-style conversion of an IP address into a name and address without issuing a subpoena to an ISP, and discovers that it's a home belonging to a 56-year-old woman. She immediately concludes that the actual criminal must be a neighbor using her wireless connection, despite the fact that she has no evidence that the woman has a wireless access point and isn't just another victim with a compromised machine being used as a proxy. Without doing any more verification, she arranges to get a warrant to knock the door of the neighbor down, and it turns out to be a teenage kid.

On p. 16 appears this nice quote: "She types several commands into a unix shell. Trace routing algorithms begin to run. A different screen shows possible IP addresses. The list begins growing, from ten to hundreds to thousands.... Marsh shakes her head at the futility." There are multiple methods of performing traceroutes and even of adding fake hops to a traceroute, but traceroute is unnecessary to find out the IP address of a website--it's only useful for finding the path traffic takes to get to that website, e.g., for finding the upstream provider. But getting a list of upstream providers is better done by looking at routing tables rather than doing traceroutes, anyway. The real investigative steps would be to look at the DNS information for the domain, get the IP address or addresses from the authoritative name server (and check to see if those are changing with a short TTL), then find the upstream providers.

Funniest exchange I've seen so far in the script (p. 26) is this marvel of self-contradiction:

[FBI agent] GRIFFIN: I traced it to a Georgetown sophomore named Andrew Kinross. But then I looked closer and saw the post didn't actually originate from his computer.
MARSH: Our guy got into his computer and posted it from there.
GRIFFIN: That would be my guess.
MARSH: So let's go after the originating computer's IP.

And so far, I've not mentioned how the hacker mastermind hacks into the FBI agent's car (which features the fictional "NorthStar" instead "OnStar")--in the preview, the hacker apparently is able to control the steering of her car. I suspect drive-by-wire steering will come soon in the future of the automobile, but I don't believe it exists today. (Turns out the preview gives a misleading impression of what the script says is happening--the hacker doesn't actually control the steering, but remotely shuts off the car's electrical systems and power steering.)

Mike Huckabee's problems

Mike Huckabee's problems continue to accumulate. There's the little problem of his son David hanging a dog by its neck, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death--and the fact that Huckabee himself defends this animal cruelty (of the sort that's often a precursor to serial killing of human beings) on the grounds that the dog was emaciated and had mange. (You may recall that Mitt Romney has a similar, though not nearly as nasty, poor record with dogs.) David Huckabee killed the dog when he was 17 and was never prosecuted, but in April he faced a weapons charge for trying to take a loaded handgun through airport security in Little Rock.

Huckabee also claimed to Pat Robertson's CBN that "I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree," but he doesn't have a theology degree--he only attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a year, he's a theology-school dropout.

Then there's his role in calling for the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who was strongly defended by Baptist minister Jay Cole, a close friend of the Huckabee family. Some conservative activists apparently defended Dumond on the grounds that one of his rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor. Several victims wrote letters to Huckabee describing Dumond's brutality, but Huckabee was quoted in a column by Steve Dunleavy titled "Clinton's Biggest Crime--Left Innocent Man in Jail for 14 Years" saying that "There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime." But as we know today, Dumond was guilty--he was released from prison in September 1999, apparently with some help from Huckabee, and he raped and murdered two women. Huckabee has refused to release his administration's records pertaining to Dumond on grounds that they contain sensitive law enforcement information.

In 1992, Huckabee called for AIDS victims to be quarantined, and refused to retract that position just recently, despite the fact that the disease is not spread through casual contact (which was also well known in 1992).

On top of all of this, Huckabee appears to be genuinely dumb. While governor of Arkansas, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer fooled Huckabee into congratulating Canadians on preserving their capitol building, the national igloo. He is a proud disbeliever in evolution and has publicly supported creationism, though now he refuses to answer questions about it. He thinks that women's role in marriage should be to "submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband". And in the December 11 Republican debate, Huckabee pledged to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, stating that "We ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is."

Intrade currently puts Huckabee's chances of obtaining the Republican presidential nomination at 16.8%, third behind Giuliani (36.0%) and Romney (22.0%) and ahead of McCain (8.8%) and Paul (8.5%). But it also puts him at the leading candidate for getting the Republican vice presidential nomination, at 28.9%, well ahead of Pawlenty (10.1%), Romney (8.6%), Thompson (7.6%), and Gingrich (6.5%).

UPDATE (December 25, 2007): Mike Huckabee's tied to Christian reconstructionists and thinks that the Ten Commandments are the basis of U.S. law (even though seven of the ten would be unconstitutional).

"War on Christmas" casualties in NYC

When Walter Adler and three friends, all Jewish, said "Happy Chanukah" to a group of subway riders who were yelling "Merry Christmas," they found themselves physically attacked and beaten by the group of ten Christian defenders of the sanctity of Christmas.

Adler and his friends were aided by Hassan Askari, a Muslim student who tried to stop the attackers, which allowed Adler to pull the emergency brake and get help.

Apparently no atheists were involved in the incident.

Do ID theorists generate data?

In an excellent blog post at Quintessence of Dust, Stephen Matheson patiently examines the details of DI Fellow Jonathan Wells' only attempt to engage in scientific research in support of intelligent design by putting forth a hypothesis to be tested. By doing more of the work that Wells himself should have done, Matheson shows that Wells' efforts were far below expectations for scientists and that his hypothesis has subsequently (but with no thanks to ID theorists, who did no work on the subject) been falsified.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Signs in my neighborhood

Gives you some idea of the local demographic and economic conditions (or at least what the people behind these signs believe it to be).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali receives Goldwater Award

Last night Einzige and I attended the Goldwater Institute's award dinner for Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, where she was given the 2007 Goldwater Award for her work in support of freedom, in defense of women against the oppression they face in Islamic countries. Copies of her autobiographical book, Infidel, were given to each table and I obtained the copy at our table since most everyone at the table had already read it and no one accepted my challenge to fight for it.

It was a rainy night and it was a huge event, with about 800 attendees. It took me about 25 minutes to get from the entrance of the Phoenician to the event venue, where I later heard that valets parked 400 cars for the event. It seemed as if the Phoenician wasn't used to hosting an event of that size, which can't possibly be true.

I was extremely surprised to see that the schedule for the event included an *invocation*. I have attended multiple Goldwater events in the past (such as the screening of "Mr. Conservative"), but this was the first time I had been to one that included a prayer. I noted at the table that it seemed disrespectful in the extreme that an event honoring an atheist would begin with a prayer. The prayer itself was an ecumenical, non-sectarian "meditation" (as the individual who spoke referred to it) of the sort likely to be as offensive to hardcore Christians as it is to atheists for its failure to appeal to Jesus Christ, but it was still a public verbal appeal to an imaginary being for his approval and support. It reminded me a little bit of the "Agnostic's Prayer" in Roger Zelazny's book Creatures of Light and Darkness, which goes like this (p. 40):

Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you [a man about to die in a "suicide show" who the speaker has put his hand upon the head of] be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

And I continue to fail to understand why Christians cannot abide by Matthew 6:5-7.

The dinner at the event was phenomenal, though portions were small (filet mignon was the main course). Steve Forbes gave a keynote speech which was well done; it was primarily a recounting of some of the basic principles necessary for economic freedom, such as the importance of the rule of law and a system of stable property rights. Regarding property rights, I was pleased that he commented on a survey of businesses and property in Egypt that found that most businesses and buildings were illegal under the country's laws, and noted that this is common throughout the world. Having recently read Robert Neuwirth's excellent book Shadow Cities, I'm aware that over a billion people in the world live in squatter cities where they are illegally occupying land and often develop their own informal property rights that are not legally enforceable but tend to be respected within their own communities. Countries which manage to give some kind of enforceable title to such people can dramatically unlock wealth and improve their conditions.

The part of Forbes' talk which most caught my attention, however, was his discussion of the current mortgage crisis. He stated that this is a mere blip, so long as the government doesn't overreact. He claimed that there is perhaps $400-$500 billion in losses hiding in securitized mortgage packages, which should be easy for the market to take since that's the amount lost in a bad day on the stock market. The concern is that government or bankers will overreact and withdraw liquidity from everyone (rather than just bad risks) at a time when it is needed. In my opinion, Forbes understates the risks because he repeatedly assumed that the problem exists only within subprime loans, which is already demonstrably false. American Home Mortgage of Tucson, which filed for bankruptcy in August, did not originate subprime loans at all, only "Alt-A" loans, which fall between prime and subprime. The root of the problem has been people of all levels of credit risk using their homes as ATMs who are now underwater, and in particular those using adjustable rate mortgages. This article from someone inside the mortgage industry sets out a worst-case scenario that I think is far more plausible than Forbes' rosy picture, which fails to account for the cascading effects of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and loss of real estate jobs on the broader consumer-driven economy. But in any case, he predicts that the mortgage crisis will be over before the end of 2008, so by this time next year we will know who is right.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's talk was actually an interview conducted by Darcy Olsen, the president of the Goldwater Institute, who asked her a series of questions about growing up in Somalia, her subsequent life, what motivated her to escape Islamic fundamentalism and her arranged marriage, and so forth. She was well-spoken (especially for a non-native speaker of English) and charming, and told of being inspired by works of fiction about individual freedom while living in a community that emphasized submission to family, tribe, and nation. Her sources of inspiration were all secular, of course, though surprisingly included Barbara Cartland romance novels and Nancy Drew mysteries as well as books like Huckleberry Finn.

Afterward, I stood in line to get my book signed, and had a chance to speak to her directly. Although I thought of asking her what she thought of being honored at an event that opened with a prayer, our brief exchange went something like this:

JL: Have you heard of the Internet Infidels?
AHA: No. (She smiles.)
JL: It's at infidels.org, it is a group critical of religion. Are you familiar with Ibn Warraq? [I had also meant to mention Internet Infidels supporter Taslima Nasrin, but couldn't remember her last name.]
AHA: Yes.
JL: Some of his material is published there, though it mostly focuses on Christianity, since it's a bigger source of problems in this country.
AHA: I think I would disagree that Christianity is a bigger problem than Islam in this country.
JL: It's Christianity that has control of the government here.

And then I stepped away with my book, and joined the long line at valet parking right behind Barry Goldwater, Jr. I tipped my valet with a $20, which he seemed very pleased to receive, and then thought that I should have said "this is a tip from an atheist," since I saw several other people (not Goldwater) apparently fail to tip at all, even though they were more elegantly dressed and driving vehicles several times the price of mine.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to be focused exclusively on Islam--not surprising given her history. Several of her answers were somewhat defensive of Christianity (no doubt appealing to her audience), at least by comparison to Islam, much like her response to me above. Yet the Bible contains teachings very similar to the Koran in regard to calling for the death of unbelievers, the subjection of women, slavery, and so forth--the difference is that there are fewer who endorse those teachings, perhaps in part because Christianity has gone through a Reformation while Islam has not.

UPDATE: Note that Wikipedia reports that Hirsi Ali has admitted to falsifying some information in her application for asylum in the Netherlands (specifically her name, date of birth, and claim to have spent time in refugee camps on the border of Somalia and Kenya), and her family disputes her account of her forced marriage, though Hirsi Ali has provided letters from family members (including her father) to the New York Times which substantiate her account. It was the exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down as a Member of the Dutch Parliament and led to Rita Verdonk saying that her Dutch nationality was therefore invalid, which was subsequently overridden by vote of Parliament.

This blog post quotes from a Reason magazine interview of Hirsi Ali that shows that she is somewhat extreme and illiberal in her position regarding Islam, as well as having some unusual ideas about Christianity (e.g., she thinks Catholics have a conception of God where there is no hell). One commenter at the Reason blog compared her to Ann Coulter. This post critiques her understanding of Islam as overly simplistic, like confusing all of Christianity with its most extreme fundamentalist varieties.

UPDATE (February 20, 2008): I've just finished reading Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel, and I highly recommend it. Contrary to my statement above, it wasn't the "exposure of her fabrications on her asylum application that led her to step down" as an MP; she had been open with many people, including the press, about having used the name Ali instead of Magan on her asylum application and claiming to be a refugee from Somalia instead of a resident of Kenya fleeing a forced marriage to a Canadian.

UPDATE (May 5, 2024): Since at least November of 2023, Hirsi Ali now identifies as a Christian, which for her seems to be a cultural stance not grounded in any reasons for believing Christianity to be true.

UPDATE (January 11, 2025): Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no longer a remotely serious person. 

False confessions from torture produced Iraq WMD claims

It turns out that part of the intelligence case for Iraq WMD claims and a concern about al-Qaeda trying to obtain them was the result of false confessions extracted via waterboarding and hypothermia treatment.

UPDATE (January 27, 2010): The CIA operative, John Kiriakou, who claimed in the media that Zubaydah produced accurate intelligence information as a result of waterboarding has now retracted the claim in his new book. He gave accurate information before waterboarding, and, as Andrew Sullivan points out in the link above, inaccurate information as a result of waterboarding.

Mitt Romney on religious freedom

Mitt Romney made his long-awaited "JFK-style" speech, which was hoped to alleviate concerns that he would rely on Mormon religious authority as the ultimate authority in making political decisions rather than the Constitution. His statement to that effect was rather weak, however, and he never actually came out and said that he would rely on the Constitution as the ultimate authority for his political decisions. He stated that "I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith." But he did assert that lack of faith was grounds for rejection of a candidate, and made the absurd statement that "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Romney did say (as the Arizona Republic reported, but CNN did not, in the above link) that "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin." Conversely, the Republic failed to report Romney's "freedom requires religion" statement.

For Romney, it is clear that he does not agree with Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitutional Convention that the First Amendment protects the nonbeliever as well as the believer (as is clear from their writings, their actions as president, and from earlier drafts of the First Amendment that were rejected). Instead, his version of the Constitution requires everyone to belong to some religion, whether it's a cult founded by a con artist or an ancient world religion. He thinks that freedom and religion always must coexist, despite thousands of years and millions of people worth of evidence to the contrary. (Though perhaps his "requires" is a moral claim, that in order to be worthwhile or good, those things must come together--in which case I'd agree that religion requires freedom, but not that freedom requires religion.)

The Republic also noted another serious defect in Romney's comprehension of the First Amendment:

At the same time, he decried those who would remove from public life “any acknowledgment of God,” and he said that “during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.”

Such scenes are already welcome in public places, so long as those public places are equally open to religious and secular displays by believer and nonbeliever alike. The only thing that is forbidden is exclusively allowing displays by a particular religion, which of course is what many Christians are actually demanding. For such an exclusive right favoring a particular religion or religion over nonreligion, displays must be on private property. It's a simple and fair concept, but the religious right repeatedly misrepresents it and falsely claims to be oppressed because they aren't given special privileges that no one else has, and whines and complains when something happens like a Hindu giving a prayer before Congress. And nobody has tried to prevent Romney, Giuliani, and the rest of the presidential candidates from their repeated references to God, despite the transparent phoniness of most of their claims to faith. It's clear that most of them are simply signalling to the religious right that they will continue to be granted special preferences, rather than truly displaying what they believe--their records of political expedience and lack of integrity speak more loudly than their words.

With people of such opinions in political power, explicitly willing to deny political freedoms to those who are nonbelievers and grant special privileges to anything calling itself a religion, it should not be surprising that some people will, out of pure expedience and self-defense, take steps to convert atheism into a religion. Yet that should be unnecessary under our Constitution, as a Washington Post editorial on Romney's speech agrees.

UPDATE: DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds comments on and posts the entirety of Romney's speech, which is certainly better than the quotes above would suggest--he does criticize the establishment of religion in the Massachusetts colony, for example: "Today’s generations of Americans have always known religious liberty. Perhaps we forget the long and arduous path our nation’s forbearers took to achieve it. They came here from England to seek freedom of religion. But upon finding it for themselves, they at first denied it to others."

UPDATE: P.Z. Myers and Greg Laden each give their take on Romney's speech. And here's Christopher Hitchens' view.