The Thylacine Films

Now online is most of the existing film footage of thylacines, a dog-like marsupial from Tasmania that went extinct in 1936. (Hat tip to Pharyngula, where there's some discussion of the possibility of cloning them from the DNA samples of three individuals that has been preserved.) More discussion by Tara Smith at Aetiology, whose post at Panda's Thumb kicked this off.

Bunnatine H. Greenhouse's claims of Iraq contract abuse may be investigated

The claims of former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower Bunnatine Hayes ("Bunny") Greenhouse that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root has been engaged in massive contractor fraud in Iraq may now be investigated by the Department of Justice. These are the claims that Congress refused to investigate, but there were unofficial hearings on before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Bunny Greenhouse was demoted from her position after her whistleblowing, and it was a discussion of her charges about no-bid contracts that led Vice President Dick Cheney say "Fuck yourself" to Senator Patrick Leahy on June 22, 2004. (This is not a transcript of their conversation.)

Cheney: Stop Rewriting History

As reported by Reuters/Yahoo:

In the sharpest White House attack yet on critics of the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that accusations the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify the war were a "dishonest and reprehensible" political ploy.

Cheney repeated Bush's charge that Democratic critics were rewriting history by questioning prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction even though many Senate Democrats voted in October 2002 to authorize the invasion.

"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone -- but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," said Cheney, a principal architect of the war and a focus of Democratic allegations the administration misrepresented intelligence on Iraq's weapons program.

Cheney said the suggestion Bush or any member of the administration misled Americans before the war "is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."

Yet it was Cheney who was rewriting his own 2001 history in 2004 (quoting here from an az.general newsgroup posting I made on June 24, 2004):

Here's another recent example of a lie from Dick Cheney (both are on video, and were shown on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" night before last)--this text is quoted from http://www.spinsanity.org/:

During the CNBC interview, Cheney also dissembled in the following exchange about Mohammed Atta, an Al Qaeda member who was allegedly involved in the September 11 attacks (a witness claimed that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in the spring of 2001, a heavily disputed assertion that the FBI and CIA have questioned):

BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohamed Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."
CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
CHENEY: I never said that.
BORGER: I think that is...
CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9 of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don't know.

But as a White House transcript demonstrates, Cheney said in a December 9, 2001 interview on "Meet the Press" that, "Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been *pretty well confirmed*, that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack." (our emphasis)

So in December 2001 he said the Atta/Iraqi meeting in Prague was "pretty well confirmed," but in 2004 he says he never said that, and that "we have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down."

So he was lying in December 2001 when he said it was pretty well confirmed, and lying again in 2004 when he said he never said that it was pretty well confirmed.

On "Meet the Press" on November 14, 2003, Cheney stated that "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." What else could he have meant when he claimed a "pretty well confirmed" Mohammed Atta link to Iraq?

In the same Usenet posting, I pointed out that the Bush administration was denying that the techniques used in Abu Ghraib had any approval from their administration:

BTW, up until very recently the Bush administration was denying the content of Seymour Hersh's story in the New Yorker which was the first report of Rumsfeld's memo approving these techniques. They were lying.

E.g., look at the quotes attributed to "The Pentagon" and Condoleezza Rice in this USA Today article from May 15:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-15-rumsfeld-abuse_x.htm

I think the most blatant evidence of dishonesty by the Bush administration is found by just comparing their own statements over time, and watching them contradict themselves.

In that USA Today story, the Bush administration response to Hersh's charges, now confirmed, was:

The Pentagon said that story was "filled with error and anonymous conjecture" and called it "outlandish, conspiratorial." National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a German television interview, said of The New Yorker report, "As far as we can tell, there's really nothing to the story."

In the Washington Post, May 17, 2004:

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow called the Hersh story "fundamentally wrong" in its assertion that there was a "DOD/CIA program to abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners." Harlow added, "Despite what is alleged in the article, I am aware of no CIA official who would have or possibly could have confirmed the details of the New Yorker's inaccurate account."

Compare what's in the news these days (Washington Post, November 1, 2005) about CIA prisons to what was said in May 2004:

On Friday, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military will not use certain prisoner interrogation procedures in Iraq and Afghanistan, including sleep and sensory deprivation, as a result of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
...
It remains unclear whether the ban applies to accused Taliban and al Qaeda detainees held by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Nor is it clear whether the ban applies to secret prisons in other countries...

- - -

Some other Cheney rewriting of history... during the Vice Presidential debate with John Edwards, Cheney claimed "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session." In fact, he was absent all but two times, and has not presided at the Senate since 2002.

He told Edwards that "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." In fact, Cheney met Edwards on February 1, 2001 at the National Prayer Breakfast and addressed Edwards by name, personally, in his speech and was photographed standing next to Edwards at the buffet. In his speech, he stated: "Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I honored to be with you all this morning."

Can SETI be Called a Religion?

A couple weeks ago (I sincerely apologize for the untimeliness of this post. Busy, busy, busy. Better late than never, I hope), Patrick Smith read my entry for the Halloween edition of the CotG and took issue with my characterization of SETI as a religion. I might be convinced to back off the "religious" label, but you'll be hard pressed to demonstrate that SETI resembles "science."

Given my low opinion of SETI, you may find it surprising that Contact is one of my top 5 favorite films. Aside from the clever way it deals with a number of deep philosophical issues, the positive way it portrays atheism, the cool special effects (the zoom-out at the beginning choked me up the first time I saw it, but luckily my girlfriend didn't notice!), and the well-constructed plot, I pretty much fell head-over-heels for Ellie Arroway. How could you not? She's brilliant, sexy as hell (of course, Jodie Foster is primarily responsible for that), and passionate about what's important to her (and it isn't the ho-hum of children!). Sadly, however, she is possessed by a fixed idea--just as possessed, by the way, as is Palmer Joss, her love interest in the story, by the idea of God. Like I said, I guess we all have our blind spots.

SETI is the brainchild of astronomer Frank Drake, who also came up with what is known as the Drake Equation, which I'll get to in a moment. Drake has been searching the skies via radio waves for 45 years, now, without uncovering a shred of evidence of alien intelligence. When confronted on this, Drake's response strikes a disturbingly familiar chord: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Such is the response of one who is defending a hypothesis that is not falsifiable, and that is exactly what is wrong with SETI. The excuse is always, "We haven't looked long and hard enough." When will that be? When does absence of evidence finally become evidence of absence? Back circa 1994, when Congress - having spent over a billion dollars on SETI - finally cut off the public funding, Drake predicted "the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization." He went on, "This discovery, which I fully expect to witness before the year 2000, will profoundly change the world." Here it is, 2005, and SETI, much like the doomsday religions that predicted the end of the world back in 2000, is still going.

So, what about the Drake Equation? Its purpose is to try to come up with an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations are likely to exist in our galaxy. As an aside, I can't figure out why the quantity R, which is the number of stars that form in the galaxy each year, is even in the equation in the first place. What does R have to do with anything? New stars are not very likely to have life-bearing planets in orbit around them, so WTF? Why not just start with the number of stars in the galaxy? If you have an answer for this, I'd love to hear it. But the real problem with the equation is that virtually every variable is a complete unknown. We don't know how many planets there are around most stars. We don't know how many of those might incubate life. We don't know how many of those might evolve intelligence... We simply have no friggin' clue, so the equation is useless even without the quantity R. Assigning a value to a variable is pulling a number out of your ass, and bears a vague resemblance to an act of faith.

Who knows? Maybe tomorrow they'll get lucky and some benevolent super-race of aliens will beam down plans for a wormhole generator, transforming our lives forever. The occurrence of such an event still wouldn't transform SETI into science.

Conferences on Economic Crime and Freedom

In the past week I attended two conferences--one work-related conference, the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C)'s Economic Crime Summit in Phoenix on November 8-9, and one personal-interest conference, the Freedom Summit in Phoenix on November 12-13.

I had thought after attending the first conference to write a blog entry comparing and contrasting them, but after attending the second conference I realized several of the talks there merit full entries of their own. Einzige also attended the Freedom Summit, so we will both have comments on parts of it.

The Economic Crime Summit was put on by NW3C, a private organization that is funded by Congress and run mostly by former law enforcement personnel. It's an example of one of many private organizations that exists in partnership with the public sector which seem to have proliferated lately for various reasons. Unfortunately, I believe some of the reasons include to be exempt from public disclosure (such as Freedom of Information Act requests) and to engage in activity which might be difficult for public sector agencies to do on their own.

The Economic Crime Summit was mostly attended by law enforcement personnel from Arizona and elsewhere, representing federal, state, and local agencies as well as a small number of private companies, mostly banks. The main subject matter was economic crimes, with an emphasis on identity theft and fraud on the Internet and directed against the elderly. As I'm in charge of information security for a global telecommunications company, I have an interest in finding ways to prevent fraud and to help law enforcement catch such criminals.

The Summit began in a large banquet audience of perhaps 300. To my surprise, everyone was asked to stand for the presentation of colors, the singing of the national anthem, and an ecumenical prayer by Chaplain Rabbi Robert Kravitz of the Phoenix Police Department. I felt like I had stepped into a military/religious alternative universe, and found Kravitz' comment in his prayer about supporting the U.S. Constitution rather ironic. As NW3C is a private organization this was likely not an actual violation of the First Amendment, but since it is Congressionally funded and most of the presenters were from government agencies, it felt very much like a violation to me. I wonder if this kind of disregard for the sensibilities of nonbelievers is as common in law enforcement as it is in the military (with the Air Force Academy's promotion of evangelical Christianity a particularly egregious example).

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard showed up and gave a short talk after the invocation, which I thought was well-timed. Other morning breakfast banquet speakers included Arizona Department of Public Safety Director (and former Pinal County Sheriff) Roger Vanderpool, who also included a reference to God at the end of his talk, John Vincent of the Rocky Mountain Information Network, and Assistant Chief of Police for the Phoenix PD, Kevin Robinson.

Fortunately, there was no further endorsement of the supernatural in any of the individual presentations I attended. F/Sgt. Charles Cohen of the Indiana State Police gave an excellent presentation on "Successful Investigation of Skilled Offenders" which included information on what information is available from FinCen (currency transaction reports, CTRs, for transactions over $10,000 are available to law enforcement without a subpoena; casino reports; foreign bank account information; Form 8300 reports of large purchases made with cash--these were expanded under the USA PATRIOT Act to include such things as automobile purchases, as I learned firsthand when I bought my last car with cash).

I also attended talks on identity theft and electronic crime by a U.S. Postal Inspector, a U.S. Secret Service Agent, and a joint presentation by a Special Agent from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Education (I didn't realize such an office existed--she investigates student loan-related fraud issues) and an Assistant U.S. Attorney. One of the things that struck me is how seemingly uncoordinated many of these federal law enforcement activities are, with the exception of some cooperation between the FBI and U.S. Secret Service (the latter of which has now moved from the Department of Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security). The use of private organizations like NW3C and others that were present with exhibits at the conference is probably in part due to actions by individuals trying to solve problems that arise from such separate silos.

By contrast, the Freedom Summit did not begin with a prayer but with a debate on the existence of God between atheist George Smith and Mesa pastor Eric Lounsbery. I did not attend the debate, which took place on Friday night, as I feared it would not go as an Internet Infidels-sponsored debate would go. From what I heard, it was as bad as I feared, with Smith unprepared to address Lounsbery's shotgunned series of arguments. (In a debate format, dropping the opponent's arguments is a way to lose.) The public debate format is not a great format for seriously addressing any intellectual issue (written materials are essential for any real depth), but it can be done well if the participants are properly prepared and skilled and experienced at working in the debate format.

The Freedom Summit was an interesting and entertaining mix of speakers from a variety of fields on topics relevant to personal freedom, with a few well beyond the fringe (which I'll discuss individually). Especially good talks were given by David Friedman (on market failure), Chris Heward (on failings of government-sponsored science), Karen Kwiatkowski (on the war on Iraq), and Jim Bovard (on the Bush Administration and the use of the threat of terrorism to trample on civil liberties).

Royal Air Force Officer Court-Martialed for Refusing Third Third Tour of Duty in Iraq

Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith is being court-martialed by the RAF for refusing to return for third tour of duty in Iraq. He maintains that his study of the justifications of the invasion show that the war and occupation are "manifestly illegal." Kendall-Smith, a New Zealand-British citizen who has degrees in medicine and moral philosophy, previously served tours of duty in Iraq (twice) and in Afghanistan.

The leader of the UK invasion force, Admiral Michael Boyce, says he now believes that the British military does not have "the legal cover necessary to avoid prosecution for war crimes."

More at the Leiter Reports and at Counterpunch.

Dembski continues to put his foot in it

Dembski still doesn't admit error--he says his copy of the filing (plaintiff's response to defendant's motion for summary judgment) doesn't have the Shallit deposition, implying that it wasn't part of the filing and Ed Brayton must be mistaken.

The Shallit deposition (in uncorrected form--the draft transcript of the deposition without errors corrected and edited) has been online at the NCSE's website at least since September 21.

It has been pointed out that the link above is to Shallit's expert witness statement, not the uncorrected deposition, which is in Appendix III, Tab O of the plaintiff's brief opposing the defendant's motion for summary judgment. Tab N is Shallit's disclosure statement.

Bush's dishonest response about pre-war intelligence

Today CNN quotes President Bush:

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said during a Veterans Day speech in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," Bush said. "They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

Bush has a terrible habit of going on the offensive even when he's in the wrong, as he is in this case. Here, he is conveniently forgetting that much of what his Administration presented as solid fact was already discredited prior to its presentation to the American public, but it was used anyway. He forgets that this wasn't a matter of objective intelligence assessments, but of reports that were assembled by a new special intelligence analysis unit set up for the White House by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith (#3 man in the Pentagon, who resigned on January 26, 2005), David Wurmser's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which cherry-picked intelligence to find anything that suggested a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, as documented in James Bamford's book, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (2004, Doubleday).

It was the Feith/Wurmser group's bogus intelligence which led to Colin Powell making a speech to the UN Security Council filled with errors based on forged documents and testimony from a discredited source, "Curveball." It was a leaked Feith memo of bogus Iraq/al Qaeda links which was the basis of a Stephen Hayes article in the Weekly Standard (expanded into a book, The Connection), which led to Hayes' embarrassment at the hands of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. (I posted specific refutations of a number of Hayes' alleged connections on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.)

Feith is the man who Gen. Tommy Franks said had a reputation as the "dumbest fucking man on the planet." This opinion was seconded by Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's right-hand man in the State Department, when he resigned in October 2005, saying "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man."

It was a man in Feith's organization, Larry Franklin, who pleaded guilty to passing intelligence information to the Israelis. This is no surprise to readers of Bamford's book--which describes how Feith, Wurmser, and Richard Perle previously worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to draw up a policy on taking a more aggressive stance with Iraq that Israel wisely rejected--but which was then successfully foisted upon the United States through George W. Bush.

Bush's criticism of the Democrats is mostly unfounded--most of the Democrats who voted for the war were deceived by bogus, cherry-picked intelligence put together by the Feith/Wurmser group with the specific intent to deceive them, and that's what needs to be further investigated and demonstrated to the general public that wasn't able to recognize the deception at the time (though the evidence was, to my mind, already pretty clear, as reflected in my postings to the az.general Usenet group prior to and in the months immediately following the invasion of Iraq). On the other hand, as Snopes points out, there were Democrats who already believed Saddam Hussein had WMD and hadn't destroyed it by the mid-nineties.

I find it amazing that Bush has had as much success as he had with the deceptive and dishonest tactics described in the book All the President's Spin. I am happy to see that more and more people are realizing the deception.

I'll be hearing retired lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski speak this weekend--she is a critic of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq who was former deputy to Feith in the Pentagon who resigned in 2003.

Further Dembski dishonesty about Shallit

William Dembski continues to dig himself a deeper hole with respect to his false claim that Jeff Shallit did not testify in the Dover case because his deposition went badly and was an embarassment to the plaintiffs. In fact, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, who withdrew from the case, and because the defense filed a motion to prevent it.

Dembski also continues to claim that the Shallit deposition is somehow being concealed, when in fact it was filed in the case and is a public document. (More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Sony BMG to "temporarily" stop using rootkit-based DRM

Sony has said it will "temporarily" stop making CDs with the problematic DRM technology. I'm sure they'll make more in the future with a modified version or a new DRM technology.