Conspiracy Theory

Readers of Gerald Posner’s Why America Slept know that there has been evidence of Saudi royal family connections to the al Qaeda 9/11 terrorism plot. The final chapter of that book, titled “The Interrogation,” is about the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002 by a team that included American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams as well as Pakistani police and military. After he was captured, Zubaydah was subjected to interrogation by the CIA in a real “false flag” operation, where he was made to believe he had been transported to a country with a reputation for brutal interrogation. While in fact he was in Afghanistan, he was made to believe he was in a Saudi jail, and two Arab-Americans with U.S. Special Forces played the role of his interrogators. To their surprise, Zubaydah didn’t display fear, but relief. While previously he hadn’t even been willing to reveal his identity, he now gave his name, said he was happy to see them, and asked the interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family, for whom he provided private home and cell phone numbers from memory. That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd, owner of the Research and Marketing Group, and owner of the Kentucky Derby winning horse War Emblem. Zubaydah claimed that bin Laden had made a cooperative arrangement with Pakistani air force chief Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, a military official with close ties to the pro-Islamist members of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and that this arrangement had the blessing of Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. Also according to Zubaydah, Turki had made a deal to provide aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan and would not ask for extradition of bin Laden, so long as his activities were directed away from Saudi Arabia. Zubaydah also implicated Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir as supporters of al Qaeda, and stated that Mir and Prince Ahmed had advance knowledge that there would be terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9/11. His interrogators were skeptical of his claims, even though information from him was successfully used to capture Omar al-Faruq, a senior al Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia. And when U.S. personnel (not posing as Saudis) confronted Zubaydah about his claims, he denied it all and said that he had made it up. CIA investigation of his claims found nothing to refute them, however, and some corroborating evidence. A report on his claims was submitted to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, each of which responded that the claims were entirely false. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 43, and on July 23, 2002, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud was killed in a car accident at the age of 41. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was found dead, having “died of thirst” at the age of 25. Prince Turki was fired from his position as head of Saudi Intelligence on September 1, 2001, and became the Saudi ambassador to Great Britain in 2002. On February 20, 2003, Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife, and fifteen others were killed in a plane crash. None of this appeared in the 9/11 Commission Report, though it might have been planned for that document. This is because the Bush administration censored 28 pages of material about Saudi connections to 9/11 from the report on the grounds of national security. In 2004, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, published a book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War on Terror, in which he claimed that Bush covered up evidence that the Saudi government was aiding at least two of the 9/11 hijackers via Omar al-Bayoumi, which Graham discussed in an interview with Salon.com. More recently, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, raises the same point about the Saudi government’s ties to Omar al-Bayoumi. I think the full story of Saudi and Pakistani involvement in 9/11 has yet to be told. None of this involves munitions used to collapse buildings, unmanned drones, missiles hitting the Pentagon, or the innocence of Osama bin Laden, like the crazy 9/11 truth movement’s claims. It does involve U.S. political relations with nations that have been key allies in the war on terror, both of which have governments which have been close to collapse, and one of which (Pakistan) is a nuclear power and one of which is the source of most foreign oil imported by the U.S. It’s clear why the U.S. would treat relations with these countries gingerly even if they did have members of their governments directly involved in 9/11, and why those countries would want to quietly dispose of the problem. UPDATE (July 16, 2009): Greetings to Talking Points Memo readers, here because of a link in the comments from a story about a Bush/Cheney CIA assassination program apparently permitted to operate domestically. That commenter seemed to suggest that the CIA might have been behind the deaths described in the above post, which I think is highly unlikely in comparison to the speculation that the Saudis themselves might have taken care of matters. UPDATE (April 13, 2015): Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, claimed in February 2015 that members of the Saudi royal family helped fund the 9/11 attacks. He specifically named Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud and Prince Bandar bin Sultan. ...

Blair Gadsby, a 45-year-old adjunct religious studies professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, has gone on hunger strike until John McCain agrees to meet with him about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Gadsby thinks that the U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center towers and Building 7 with explosives, even though he’s apparently read the Popular Mechanics book on Debunking 9/11 Myths, for which McCain wrote the foreword. In how many different ways is this guy an idiot? 1. He’s bought into nonsensical conspiracy theories–his version has both Islamic terrorists flying planes into the WTC and explosives put there earlier, so he must believe something like this. 2. He apparently can’t understand the refutations of them. 3. He thinks a hunger strike is a good way to meet John McCain. 4. He’s an adjunct professor of religious studies. Feel free to add to the list. ...

Last night I attended an event at which one of the attendees promoted “Zeitgeist: The Movie.” I was prompted to finally watch this piece of pernicious nonsense back in January when a commenter at this blog made reference to it, and I forced myself to sit through the whole thing. The movie is in three segments–the first is on the origins of Christianity, in which it argues that Jesus was a myth derived from Egyptian myth, based on the work of Acharya S. The second is 9/11 conspiracy theory. The third is an argument that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a scam. It’s almost entirely garbage, dependent on crackpot sources. I posted a series of comments about the movie as I watched it, but I’ll summarize those here and add a bit more. The first part argues that Christianity is derived from Egyptian myth, primarily by pointing out parallels between them. The arguments are apparently derived from the self-published “The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold” by Acharya S (Dorothy M. Murdock) and perhaps also from Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ, both works of pseudoscholarship based on the work of other pseudoscholars like 18th century archaeologist Godfrey Higgins, 19th century amateur Egyptologist and poet Gerald Massey, and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, a high school language teacher and promoter of Theosophy) and entirely ignores actual work in Egyptology. For example, the film draws a list of comparisons between Horus and Jesus that is just fabricated–Horus wasn’t born of a virgin, he was the child of Isis and Osiris, though Isis was impregnated by Osiris through some magic after he was dead. There have been parallels drawn between Isis and Mary that are more plausible (especially in iconography), but the movie exaggerates them, too, and fails to note the considerable areas of dissimilarity. A quick look at the Wikipedia entries on Horus and Isis is sufficient to show that the comparison is strained. The significance of a December 25 birthdate is nonexistent–Christianity did acquire attributes of pagan religions later in its history, and it has clearly been a syncretistic religion, but while this is evidence of falsehood in Christian traditions, it is not a clue to its origin. For accurate information about Christianity and the formation of the Christian tradition, virtually any mainstream academic work will be more reliable. There has been a lot discovered since the work of 19th century Theosophists, both in the form of document manuscripts and archaeology, that sheds light on the early history of Christianity. In discussions at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums, poster GreNME wrote: ...

Dave Palmer recently finished reading Tim Weiner’s book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and sent the following review to the SKEPTIC list on May 23. I liked it so much that I asked him if I could republish it here, and he agreed. —– So back in April, I was in a bookshop, and my eyes fell on a meaty, red-covered book called Legacy of Ashes, the History of the CIA. “Huh, that looks interesting,” sez I. Then a more rational voice in my head pops up. “Are you frakking nuts? You already know a bit about that spook house, reading a book like that will only piss you off.” But it was my birthday, so I HAD to have me a little something. Man, does it get tiresome being right ALL the time… This is an appalling, sickening, infuriating book, particularly since its impeccable scholarship requires one to take it seriously. Unlike your average innuendo-and-hearsay CIA book, this one is based entirely on historical and declassified government documents and on-the-record interviews with named (and heavily-footnoted) sources, usually with the most senior personnel. The author, Tim Weiner, is a Pulitzer-winning NY Times reporter who has been covering US intelligence agencies for 20 years. He’s the kind of guy who just pops out for lunch with current and past CIA Directors. Like a lot of people, I had always assumed that the CIA might have a few massive public screwups (such as the Bay of Pigs), and there were surely times when Presidents ignored or twisted the CIA’s intelligence to political ends (witness the current misadventure in Iraq), but underneath it all, there was at least SOME small bit of competence at work in the agency; there were people there who at least knew how to gather useful intelligence. Like the old quote about the CIA goes, their failures are all public, their successes are all secret. OK, so maybe I’m not right ALL the time. Turns out, the CIA is in fact a Mongolian clusterfuck of staggering, breathtaking proportions. And they always have been, all the way back to their founding in 1947 (and even the OSS, the agency’s WWII precursor, wasn’t quite as swift as they’re made out to be on The History Channel). If the guy who coined the term “epic fail” had read this book, he wouldn’t have bothered, there is no point in describing the ocean with teaspoon-sized words. As far as I can tell, they have had NO significant successes at all. Ever. From the very start, they were constructed for failure. The main idea in founding the CIA was “to prevent another Pearl Harbor” by keeping a close eye on other nations and to distill those observations into a keen understanding of what those nations were actually up to. That notion (or at least, the actual practice of it) was pretty much tossed in the dumpster the day the doors opened. Instead, they jumped on the anti-Commie bandwagon like the rest of the government, and there they stayed until chunks of the Berlin Wall actually started falling on their heads some 30 years later. The black-or-white thinking that so characterizes the neocons of today was the CIA’s one and only mode of thought. The rules that set the entire tone for the CIA were simple: -There is ONE enemy in the world: the Commies. -The Commies want to destroy us. -If you’re not with us, you’re against us, and hence a Commie. -The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And that’s it. No shades of gray, no questioning of those basic principles, no consideration of other possibilities (apparently, not even that the recently-defeated Axis powers might be a threat again). This thinking would blind the intelligence-gathering division almost until the 1990s. Then it got worse. Almost immediately, the veterans of Wild Bill Donovan’s he-man OSS corps elbowed their way to the table and decreed that clandestine operations should be the REAL focus of the CIA. Screw this reading other people’s mail stuff, we’ve got to go and blow shit up, shoot people and sabotage the spread of communism wherever it shows its head. From that day on, the intelligence-gathering division was relegated to a barely-tolerated afterthought. The major problem with this plan was that the CIA really sucked at it. No, I mean REALLY sucked…and I mean both the clandestine and the intelligence-gathering. From the start, the agency was run by smugger-than-thou Yalies and uppercrust preppies who felt they didn’t need to actually KNOW about any of this stuff they were blowing up, it was Commie stuff, so it just needed blowing up. The willful ignorance and stupidity practiced by the CIA was just staggering. Over and over and over again, the book lays out details of CIA foreign stations where not a single officer there spoke the local language, knew anything about the history of the region, or ever made any effort to learn anything that was going on outside of what could be picked up over cocktails at the country club. The CIA guys in Laos who were arming and training Hmong tribesmen to fight the North Vietnamese didn’t even know the name “Hmong.” They called them by a term that the author says was somewhere between “barbarian” and “nigger.” In the 70s-80s, the agency’s TOP Soviet expert spoke not a single word of Russian. And he had never even set foot there. The way the CIA learned that the Berlin Wall was falling–and I’m NOT making this up–was when somebody at headquarters happened to tune into CNN. Over and over and over again, the book tells of CIA directors and top officers who were drunks, liars, con men. One CIA director was eventually committed to the happy home, and the guy who ran the counterintelligence division for years was widely regarded to be certifiable for most of his tenure. Over and over and over again, the author details clandestine operations that went horribly, disastrously wrong. Massive clusterfucks like the Bay of Pigs were far more the rule than the exception. For years, the CIA was supplying money and weapons to a Polish resistance group fighting the Soviets. The only problem was, it didn’t exist. It had been wiped out years earlier by the KGB, and the whole operation was just a scam on the CIA run by the Soviets. They even donated some of the CIA’s money to the Italian Communist Party as a final dig. One side aspect of the story is that any JFK conspiracy theories that claim the CIA planned the assassination have had a stake decisively hammered through them. If the CIA had planned the JFK assassination, the only result would have been that a goatherd in a small Congolese village would have become the village’s head man when all seven other contenders for the job suddenly perished in a freak bobsled accident. And a baker in Skipros, Greece would have received a shipment of German anti-tank missiles in crates labeled in Linear B, and an envelope with 2 million Romanian Lei inside. And speaking of presidents and murder plots, the book suggests that the famous plot by Saddam to kill Papa Bush might not have been what it appeared. The “confession” of the plotters that they were working for Saddam was tortured out of them by the Kuwaitis, and the author notes that the alleged conspirators were really just a bunch of hash smugglers and other low-level criminal types. Meanwhile, over in the intelligence-gathering division (and of course, the two divisions did frequently overlap), things weren’t going any better. Over and over and over again, we read of utter and complete failure to plant spies in Commie countries. Not a single one of the dozens and dozens of spies dropped into North Korea during the Korean war was ever heard from again. The same was true for just about every other spy dropped into every other country. In one case, after dozens of spies disappeared without a trace, it was discovered later that the clerk who typed up the orders for the insertion was working for the Commies, so the KGB was there to meet them when they hit the ground. Although the CIA managed to recruit a handful of low-level spies in the Soviet Union (one was a high school teacher, another a roofer), in the entire cold war, they only ever managed to recruit three–count em–THREE spies of any consequence. All were arrested and shot. When they did gather intelligence, it was ludicrously wrong FAR more often than it was right. Indeed, I don’t think the book details a single case where the CIA got its intelligence right on a major issue. In 1961, they reported that the Soviets had 500 nukes pointed at the US. They were just a tad high. 496 high, to be precise. The Soviets had a grand total of FOUR nukes pointed at us. Nonetheless, that report set of a frenzy of weapons building that brought us to the brink of nuclear war and economic collapse. Over and over again, the book tells of the CIA reporting that <X> will never do <Y>. And then two days later, <X> doing <Y> was on the front page of the daily paper. They confidently predicted the Russians wouldn’t have a nuke for years just about 2 weeks before the Russians tested their first one. They said that Saddam was just bluffing when he massed tens of thousands of troops on the Kuwaiti border. The few times they did score on a piece of correct intelligence, they got it from the spy agencies of other countries. In a 1956 speech to the Congress of the Communist Party, Khruschchev delivered a scathing denunciation of Stalin. The CIA had to get a copy of the speech from the Israeli secret service. Even the things that the CIA defined as “successes” were questionable at best, particularly in the long run. What the CIA did have a fair record at was overthrowing democratically-elected governments and replacing them with right-wing despots. When the democratically-elected PM of Iran suggested to the Brits and Americans that maybe Iran should get a little more of all that oil money that they were taking out of his country, they laughed and told him to STFU/GBTW. So he suggested that maybe he might just nationalize the oil fields. WELL, that’s your actual commie talk, of course, so the CIA overthrew him and put a puppet Shah in his place…and then trained and outfitted a brutal secret police to keep the sheeple in line. That is the chief reason why a lot of Iranians hate our guts today. The CIA considered their arming and training of Afghan Muslim fanatics to kill Russians to be a spectacular success…and I think we all know how that turned out in the third act. That was the norm for the CIA. That “enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing led them into bed with every kind of lying, thieving, murdering drunken thug in the sewer, just as long as they were anti-Commie.The CIA cheerfully funded openly unrepentant Nazis just after the end of WWII, and actually went downhill from there. I can’t think of any case where the CIA helped overthrow a government and then replaced it with a fair, lawful one. And the thing is, they weren’t even any good at overthrowing governments, they were just lucky. It wasn’t a case of skillful psychological warfare and precisely-timed black ops, they basically just paid goons to start shooting people in the streets. At least one operation, an attempted coup in Indonesia, ended with the US military shooting at the CIA’s own hired thugs. Now, even though no President in the CIA’s history comes off looking very good in this book, it wasn’t as if nobody noticed how bad the CIA’s record was. Over and over and over again, blue-ribbon panels, inspectors general, and even internal CIA reviewers were commissioned to report on the effectiveness of the agency, and like the reports were Xeroxed, they all reached the same conclusion: the CIA is seriously, SERIOUSLY broken, and probably the best thing we could do is just torch the place. These reports were all either just buried, or tut-tutted over in the press for a couple weeks, and then everything returned to incompetence as usual. The punchline to all this is it really appears now that the Commies just weren’t that much of a threat, even when Stalin was in power. Khruschchev himself wrote that the concept of an all-out war with the west terrified Stalin, and then later Khruschchev was making tentative peace feelers with the US when the CIA sent “just one more” U2 flight into Russian airspace, and that slammed the door for years. Sure, the Soviets were out to flatter, bribe, steal, or bully influence in countries all around the world that had oil, minerals, or a strategic location. Just as we were. Just as every other world power has done in history. I think that a great deal of the fault for the cold war has to be laid at the CIA’s feet. And since “the only enemy in the world” up and vanished, the rudderless ship of the CIA has been even more adrift. After the 9/11 attacks, the command structure of the agency was changed (think re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic), and the former position of CIA director was more-or-less replaced by the position of Director of National Intelligence. The last actual CIA director was Porter Goss, and his main contribution to the fun was to systematically sack everybody in the agency who disagreed with Dubya’s policies. That got rid of the last people who might actually know something useful. After that, some 50% of the employees were so new as to be classified as “trainees.” And then it got worse. Today, a number of private intelligence agencies have sprung up like weeds, and they all pay much better than the CIA. So the current career track there is to join the CIA, get the training, put in five years or so, quit, join Spooks R Us for double the pay…and then show up for work the next day at the CIA wearing a contractor badge instead of an employee badge. Reading this book was a gut-wrenching, eye-opening experience. For the first couple hundred pages, I was outraged. Then, it just kept coming, it didn’t let up, and I was eventually left with just a numb shock, and even a kind of disgust at being an American. The book really gives you a better perspective of what’s been going on in the world for the last 60 years, and why we are where we are and why the people who hate us came to that opinion. The book has just been released in paperback, and it should be required reading in high school. My opinion now (and I mean this with almost no sarcasm) is that one of the greatest threats–perhaps THE greatest threat–to America since 1947 has in fact been the CIA. They have spent uncounted billions of dollars, caused uncounted thousands, hundreds of thousands, of deaths, put America in bed with a staggeringly long list of murderers, liars, goons, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, …well, lots of bad guys. And through all that, they failed to predict even a SINGLE event of significance to the US (there have been a couple of cases where they got something right, but nobody listened because they were usually wrong). Instead, they tarnished our reputation around the world, and led us to the brink of both nuclear and conventional war too many times to comfortably recount. And so far, every single President has gotten disgusted with them, decided they weren’t worth the powder and shot to put them down, and then increased their budget and left them as a mess for the next President to clean up. But the CIA HAS demonstrated a cheerful willingness to spy on Americans (they’ve been doing it at least since the 60s), and to do any vile thing they’re called upon to do. So with the current neocon push for an Imperial President and a Big Brother state, they are in a perfect position to step up and become our very own KGB or Gestapo…but minus the competence. [Previously at this blog on Weiner’s book: “Abolish the CIA” “A Brief History of the CIA: 1945-1953 (Truman)" “A Brief History of the CIA: 1953-1961 (Eisenhower)" “The CIA in Venezuela in 2002” Also Rottin’ in Denmark has a review of the Weiner book similar in some respects to Dave’s.] ...

We’re back from a week of vacation in Seattle–this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights–the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies–a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology “free stress test” center, and building housing the Discovery Institute. And we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven’t seen in a while (or hadn’t met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food. We didn’t get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those. Seattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I’m sure we’ll return. ...

[UPDATE (April 15, 2008): See the NCSE’s “Expelled Exposed” website for a look at the deceptive tactics of the filmmakers and the real facts that they aren’t showing you.] [UPDATE (April 18, 2008): Further updates on “Expelled” theater counts, box office take, and ratings are here.] “Expelled” was originally claimed to be opening in February 2008, and I recall seeing claims that it would be on 4,000 screens. Its website has subsequently been claiming an April 18 opening date (“in theatres nationwide”), and somewhere I’ve seen an estimate of about 1,000 screens. (UPDATE: This was said by John Sullivan, an “Expelled” producer, on the Expelled blog in December 2007, as the estimated screen count for a February 2008 release.) But for some reason, the film is not listed on April 2008 distribution schedules: IMDB April 18 releasesRottentomatoes.com upcoming releases Launchingfilms.com April 2008 releasesFilm-releases.com upcoming 2008 releasesPopculturemadness.com April 2008 releases I only found it listed with an April 18 date at AOL’s MovieFone, with no photo or trailer. Movieweb.com lists it with “To Be Announced 2008” as the release date. (UPDATE: It’s also at movies.go.com with an April 18 release date, and a poll to grade the movie. It’s polling at 85% “F,” 11% “A,” 2% “D,” and 1% each for “B” and “C,” with 474 votes.) Is it really going to show in theaters at all on April 18? Or are they just going to continue with these “private screenings” and then go direct to DVD, suitable for church and homeschool distribution? The distributor for the film is Rocky Mountain Pictures (formerly R.S. Entertainment) of Salt Lake City, UT, distributor for the following films: Akira (1988, lots of distributors)Carman: The Champion (made 2001, released 2 March 2001, grossed $1,743,863, $769,080 opening weekend)Race to Space (2001, released 15 March 2001)Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (made 2001, released 21 September 2001, grossed $5,974,653, $1,573,454 opening weekend)Manna from Heaven (made 2002, grossed $505,675, shown in 5 cities, made $5,340 opening weekend on 4 screens)Elvira’s Haunted Hills (made 2001, released 31 October 2002)Luther (made 2003, released 30 October 2003, grossed $5,791,328, $908,446 opening weekend)Unspeakable (made 2002, released 27 February 2004)End of the Spear (2005, released 20 January 2006, grossed $11,703,287, $4,281,388 opening weekend)These guys are clearly not a blockbuster powerhouse of distributors–their biggest film ever was back in 1988 when they were one of many distributors, they specialize in small independent films, mostly “family films” and often with an explicitly Christian theme, and they have rarely seen their films have an opening weekend of over $1,000,000. The two partners in Rocky Mountain Pictures are Ronald C. Rodgers and Randy Slaughter. Rodgers got his start in film with Sunn Classic Pictures in 1968, which made and distributed movies in the seventies and eighties like bad documentaries about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, The Bermuda Triangle, psychics, space aliens, conspiracy theories, and Noah’s Ark, several of which were written by David W. Balsiger. Balsiger was the ghost author of several fabricated autobiographies, such as those of alleged Ark-finder Fernand Navarra, phony ex-Satanist Mike Warnke, and phony faith healer Morris Cerullo. (See my 1993 Skeptic magazine article on George Jammal’s Noah’s Ark hoax, which Balsiger helped foist upon the American public along with a whole slew of bogus claims.) Slaughter has had a more mainstream career with bigger studios and distributors and working for a Texas theater chain. “End of the Spear” was financed by Philip Anschutz, founder and former head of Qwest Communications who also funded “The Chronicles of Narnia” (and has also been a contributor to the Discovery Institute). “End of the Spear” received some extra publicity because lead actor Chad Allen, who plays the lead in the film, came out as gay. (He told the producers before his contract was signed in 2003, when he came out publicly, and they did the right thing and continued with him in the project anyway). I suspect “Expelled” will have trouble doing anywhere near as well as “End of the Spear,” which appears to be the best Rocky Mountain Pictures has done to date. I’ll offer five predictions for “Expelled”–if it opens in theaters at all on April 18, it will (1) be on fewer than 500 800 screens, (2) will have an initial weekend box office of less than $2 million, with (3) a per-screen take of less than $2,500, (4) won’t break the top ten despite it being a slow opening week, and (5) will make less than $10 million in box office take by the end of 2008 (though it may make more than that through DVD sales). Note that Philip Anschutz owns the Regal Entertainment Group, which Wikipedia says is “the largest theater chain in North America” with “6,423 screens in 529 locations in 41 U.S. states.” He may well push the film, but there’s no way he’s going to allow it to get in the way of making profit, but I’ll adjust my prediction (1) to be fewer than 800 screens on the assumption that Anschutz might put the film into each of his theaters. (UPDATE: Chez Jake has found and commented below that Anschutz is only showing “Expelled” in 141 of his 529 locations, which he suggests indicates a 27% level of confidence in the film by Anschutz.) (For my previous comments about a film’s opening weekend, see my blog post on the film “Untraceable." In the comments there, I offered this bet to the film’s insiders who showed up at my blog to defend the film: “How about a deal–if it gets a ‘cream of the crop’ freshness percentage above 70% at rottentomatoes.com (say, by a week after release, when there are at least a dozen or so reviews), I’ll agree to watch it, if you’ll agree on a percentage of below 30% to post here that you were wrong, and it really does suck. Anywhere in between, we can agree to disagree.” Needless to say, I didn’t have to see that movie, as it ended up with a “freshness” rating of 15%.) UPDATE (March 28, 2008): Using Reed Esau’s excellent suggestion of using the theater locator on the Expelled website, here’s the current number of theaters where it’s planned to be showing per state: AK: 1 AL: 15 AR: 10 AZ: 5 CA: 52 CO: 10 CT: 3 DC: 0 DE: 0 FL: 51 GA: 11 HI: 3 IA: 6 ID: 6 IN: 19 IL: 21 KS: 4 KY: 6 LA: 2 MA: 0 MD: 0 ME: 0 MI: 11 MN: 7 MO: 6 MS: 3 MT: 5 NC: 4 ND: 1 NE: 1 NH: 1 NJ: 0 NM: 2 NV: 6 NY: 2 OH: 9 OK: 5 OR: 6 PA: 11 RI: 0 SC: 5 SD: 1 TN: 17 TX: 62 UT: 3 VA: 3 VT: 0 WA: 16 WI: 17 WV: 5 WY: 1 Total U.S. theaters: 435 UPDATE (March 28, 2008, 6:00 p.m.): The numbers have changed a bit: AK: 2 (up from 1) AL: 17 (up from 15) AR: 9 (down from 10) AZ: 7 (up from 5) CT: 2 (down from 3) DC: 1 (up from 0) FL: 50 (down from 51) GA: 17 (up from 11) IA: 7 (up from 6) IL: 18 (down from 21) KS: 7 (up from 4) KY: 7 (up from 6) LA: 6 (up from 2) MD: 7 (up from 0) MI: 10 (down from 11) MN: 10 (up from 7) MO: 16 (up from 6) MS: 4 (up from 3) MT: 3 (down from 5) NC: 17 (up from 4) NH: 0 (down from 1) NM: 1 (down from 2) NY: 1 (down from 2) OH: 13 (up from 9) OK: 8 (up from 5) OR: 7 (up from 6) PA: 6 (down from 11) SC: 10 (up from 5) TN: 16 (down from 17) TX: 61 (down from 62) VA: 16 (up from 3) WI: 14 (down from 17) WV: 1 (down from 5) All the others have remained the same. That’s a net increase of 55 theaters to a new total of 490. UPDATE (March 31, 2008, 2:45 p.m. PDT): AK: 1 AL: 20 AR: 12 AZ: 8 CA: 60 CO: 11 CT: 3 DC: 1 DE: 3 FL: 58 GA: 19 HI: 3 IA: 9 ID: 6 IN: 20 IL: 23 KS: 10 KY: 7 LA: 6 MA: 0 MD: 8 ME: 0 MI: 20 MN: 13 MO: 18 MS: 6 MT: 5 NC: 35 ND: 2 NE: 1 NH: 1 NJ: 3 NM: 5 NV: 6 NY: 12 OH: 19 OK: 9 OR: 7 PA: 27 RI: 0 SC: 16 SD: 1 TN: 23 TX: 63 UT: 3 VA: 24 VT: 0 WA: 19 WI: 19 WV: 5 WY: 1 New total: 651 theaters. UPDATE (April 4, 2008, 7:13 a.m. PDT): AK: 1 AL: 20 AR: 12 AZ: 17 (up from 8) CA: 65 (up from 60) CO: 11 CT: 5 (up from 3) DC: 1 DE: 3 FL: 60 (up from 58) GA: 29 (up from 19) HI: 3 IA: 9 ID: 7 (up from 6) IN: 22 (up from 20) IL: 29 (up from 23) KS: 11 (up from 10) KY: 10 (up from 7) LA: 12 (up from 6) MA: 2 (up from 0) MD: 11 (up from 8) ME: 1 (up from 0) MI: 27 (up from 20) MN: 23 (up from 13) MO: 20 (up from 18) MS: 8 (up from 6) MT: 5 NC: 38 (up from 35) ND: 2 NE: 4 (up from 1) NH: 2 (up from 1) NJ: 8 (up from 3) NM: 8 (up from 5) NV: 6 NY: 18 (up from 12) OH: 24 (up from 19) OK: 13 (up from 9) OR: 11 (up from 7) PA: 31 (up from 27) RI: 0 SC: 18 (up from 16) SD: 1 TN: 28 (up from 23) TX: 75 (up from 63) UT: 3 VA: 31 (up from 24) VT: 0 WA: 23 (up from 19) WI: 20 (up from 19) WV: 6 (up from 5) WY: 1 New total: 795 theaters (up 144 since March 31). UPDATE (April 6, 2008, 12:45 p.m. PDT): I checked again after seeing Kevin Miller claiming that the film is now set to open on 1,000 screens. There must be several theaters planning to show it on multiple screens, then. AK: 2 (up from 1) AL: 20 AR: 12 AZ: 17 CA: 64 (down from 65) CO: 11 CT: 5 DC: 1 DE: 3 FL: 60 GA: 29 HI: 3 IA: 9 ID: 7 IN: 22 IL: 29 KS: 11 KY: 10 LA: 12 MA: 2 MD: 11 ME: 1 MI: 27 MN: 23 MO: 20 MS: 8 MT: 5 NC: 38 ND: 2 NE: 4 NH: 2 NJ: 8 NM: 8 NV: 6 NY: 18 OH: 24 OK: 14 (up from 13) OR: 12 (up from 11) PA: 31 RI: 0 SC: 18 SD: 1 TN: 28 TX: 74 (down from 75) UT: 3 VA: 31 VT: 0 WA: 23 WI: 20 WV: 6 WY: 1 New total: 796 theaters (up by one theater since Friday). UPDATE (April 12, 2008, 8:16 a.m. MST): AK: 3 (up from 2) AL: 23 (up from 20) AR: 12 AZ: 18 (up from 17) CA: 105 (up from 64) CO: 19 (up from 11) CT: 7 (up from 5) DC: 1 DE: 3 FL: 79 (up from 60) GA: 38 (up from 29) HI: 4 (up from 3) IA: 12 (up from 9) ID: 7 IN: 28 (up from 22) IL: 46 (up from 29) KS: 12 (up from 11) KY: 13 (up from 10) LA: 14 (up from 12) MA: 12 (up from 2) MD: 14 (up from 11) ME: 1 MI: 36 (up from 27) MN: 25 (up from 23) MO: 20 MS: 8 MT: 5 NC: 45 (up from 38) ND: 2 NE: 4 NH: 3 (up from 2) NJ: 24 (up from 8) NM: 8 NV: 9 (up from 6) NY: 26 (up from 18) OH: 35 (up from 24) OK: 14 OR: 17 (up from 12) PA: 32 (up from 31) RI: 1 (up from 0) SC: 20 (up from 18) SD: 2 (up from 1) TN: 28 TX: 80 (up from 74) UT: 14 (up from 3) VA: 33 (up from 31) VT: 1 (up from 0) WA: 30 (up from 23) WI: 20 WV: 8 (up from 6) WY: 1 New total: 1022. They now have theaters in every state, and clearly have more than 1,000 screens, falsifying my prediction (1). At this point, I think my prediction (4) may also be falsified, but prediction (3) has probably become more likely since their audience will be diluted across a larger number of theaters and screens. UPDATE (April 14, 2008): “Expelled” has finally shown up in the “opening” category at Rotten Tomatoes (and was never listed as “upcoming”), with a 0% fresh (i.e., 100% rotten) rating. The only review counted at the moment is Variety’s review. UPDATE (April 16, 2008, 7:00 p.m. MST): AK: 2 (down from 3) AL: 23 AR: 12 AZ: 19 (up from 18) CA: 110 (up from 105) CO: 19 CT: 9 (up from 7) DC: 1 DE: 3 FL: 81 (up from 79) GA: 42 (up from 38) HI: 5 (up from 4) IA: 12 ID: 7 IN: 29 (up from 28) IL: 47 (up from 46) KS: 12 KY: 13 LA: 14 MA: 16 (up from 12) MD: 13 (down from 12) ME: 1 MI: 37 (up from 36) MN: 24 (down from 25) MO: 22 (up from 20) MS: 8 MT: 5 NC: 43 (down from 45) ND: 3 (up from 2) NE: 4 NH: 4 (up from 3) NJ: 26 (up from 24) NM: 8 NV: 9 NY: 27 (up from 26) OH: 36 (up from 35) OK: 14 OR: 16 (down from 17) PA: 34 (up from 32) RI: 1 SC: 20 SD: 2 TN: 28 TX: 81 (up from 80) UT: 14 VA: 33 VT: 1 WA: 31 (up from 30) WI: 19 (down from 20) WV: 8 WY: 1 New total: 1,049 theaters, up from 1,022 despite a few states losing a theater here and there. (The big drop will come next week.) Reviews are starting to show up at Rotten Tomatoes; it’s currently scoring one positive review and six negative, for a 14% freshness rating and an average rating of 2.8/10. UPDATE (April 18, 2008, 8:10 a.m. MST): It’s opening day, and further updates on theater counts, ratings, and box office will be posted here (and won’t include state-by-state breakdowns). The-Numbers.com reports that “Expelled”’s opening theater count is three more theaters than Wednesday’s total, 1,052. ...

Jeffrey Shallit has written a multi-part summary of an event hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society on March 19 on “A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory.” The event wasn’t a debate, however, it was a one-sided presentation by “9/11 Truth” movement members who formulate absurd conspiracy theories and fail to look at the actual evidence. Even the moderator taking questions and answers was a 9/11 Truther who did his best to avoid taking critical questions. Shallit’s posts: “An Evening with 9-11 Deniers” - Introduction and summary. “The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event” - The content of a questionnaire given out at the event, which participants were supposed to fill out at the beginning and again at the end. “An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee” - A letter from Shallit to the event moderator about his performance at the event. “A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 1)" - A detailed summary of Dewdney’s presentation at the event, part 1. “A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 2)" - Part 2. “Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Event” - A summary of MacQueen’s presentation at the event. “The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening” - Summary of the Q&A. Of particular note among the comments at Shallit’s blog is a lengthy description of the details of the WTC collapses from Arthur Scheuerman, Retired FDNY Battalion Chief. ...

An article in The Progressive by Matthew Rothschild worries that the FBI’s InfraGard program is deputizing businesses, training them for martial law, and giving them a free pass to “shoot to kill.” Rothschild writes: The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.Nonsense. I’ve been a member of the Phoenix InfraGard Members Alliance for years. It’s a 501(c)(3) organization sponsored by the FBI whose members have been subjected to some rudimentary screening (comparable to what a non-cleared employee of the federal government would get). Most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public (contrary to Rothschild’s statement that “InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public”), but the organization facilitates communications between members about sensitive subjects like vulnerabilities in privately owned infrastructure and the changing landscape of threats. The FBI provides some reports of threat information to InfraGard members through a secure website, which is unclassified but potentially sensitive information. InfraGard members get no special “shoot to kill” or law enforcement powers of any kind–and membership in the organization is open to anyone who can pass the screening. As Rothschild notes in the first sentence of his article, there are over 23,000 members–that is a pretty large size for a conspiracy plot. At one point in the article, Rothschild quotes InfraGard National Members Alliance chairman Phyllis Schneck referring to a “special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not.” This is referring to a GETS card, for the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, which provides priority service for call completion in times of emergency or disaster to personnel who are working to support critical infrastructure. There is a similar service for wireless priority (Wireless Priority Service), and yet another for critical businesses and organizations (like hospitals) which need to have their telecommunications service re-established first after a loss of service due to disaster (Telecommunications Service Priority). These programs are government programs that are independent of InfraGard, though InfraGard has helped members who represent pieces of critical infrastructure obtain GETS cards. The ACLU’s concern about InfraGard being used as a tip line to turn businesses into spies is a more plausible but still, in my opinion, unfounded concern. Businesses are not under any pressure to provide information to InfraGard, other than normal reporting of criminal events to law enforcement. The only time I’ve been specifically asked to give information to InfraGard is when I’ve been asked to speak at a regular meeting, which I’ve done a few times in talks that have been open to the public about malware threats and botnets. Check out the comments in The Progressive for some outright hysteria about fascism and martial law. I saw similar absurdity regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s TOPOFF 4 exercise, which was a sensible emergency planning exercise. Some people apparently are unable to distinguish common-sense information sharing and planning in order to defend against genuine threats from the institution of a fascist dictatorship and martial law. Now, I think there are plausible criticisms to be made of the federal government’s use of non-governmental organizations–when they’re used to sidestep laws and regulations like the Freedom of Information Act, to give lots of government grant money to organizations run by former government employees, to legally mandate funding of and reporting to private organizations and so forth. The FBI has created quite a few such organizations to do things like collect information about missing and exploited children, online crime, and so forth, typically staffed by former agents. But personally, I’ve not witnessed anything in InfraGard that has led me to have any concerns that it’s being used to enlist private businesses into questionable activities–rather, it’s been entirely devoted to sharing information that private businesses can use to shore up their own security and for law enforcement to prosecute criminals. UPDATE (February 9, 2008): The irony is that Matthew Rothschild previously wrote, regarding 9/11 truthers: We have enough proof that the Bush administration is a bunch of lying evildoers. We don’t need to make it up.He’s right about that, but he’s now helped spread nonsense about InfraGard and seriously damaged his own credibility. I find it interesting that people are so willing to conclude that InfraGard is a paramilitary organization, when it’s actually an educational and information sharing organization that has no enforcement or even emergency, disaster, or incident response function (though certainly some of its members have emergency, disaster, and incident response functions for the organizations they work for). UPDATE (February 10, 2008): I suspect tomorrow Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy will be getting calls from reporters asking what specifically she confirmed. I hope they ask for details about the conference in question, whether it was run by InfraGard or DHS, what the subject matter was, and who said what. If there’s actually an InfraGard chapter endorsing the idea that InfraGard members form armed citizen patrols authorized to use deadly force in time of martial law, that’s a chapter that needs to have its leadership removed. My suspicion, though, is that some statements about protection of infrastructure by their own security forces in times of disaster or emergency have been misconstrued. Alliant Energy operates nuclear plants, nuclear plants do have armed guards, and in Arizona, ARS 13-4903 describes the circumstances under which nuclear plant security officers are authorized to use deadly force. Those people, however, are thoroughly trained and regularly tested regarding the use of force and the use of deadly force in particular, which is not the case for InfraGard members. UPDATE (February 11, 2008): Somehow, above, I neglected to make the most obvious point–that the FBI doesn’t have the authority to grant immunity to prosecution for killing. If anyone from the FBI made that statement to InfraGard members, they were saying something that they have no authority to deliver on. UPDATE (February 12, 2008): I’ve struck out part of the above about the ACLU’s concern about spying being unfounded, as I think that’s too strong of a denial. There is a potential slippery slope here. The 9/11 Commission Report pointed to various communication problems that led to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. These problems included failure to share information (mainly from the CIA to the FBI and INS), failure to communicate information within the FBI (like Phoenix Special Agent Ken Williams’ memo about suspicious Middle Easterners in flight schools), and failure to have enough resources to translate NSA intercepts (some specific chatter about the attacks was translated after the attacks had already occurred). As a result, the CIA has been working closely with the FBI on counterterrorism and counterintelligence at least since 2001. (Also see Dana Priest, “CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations,” The Washington Post, October 23, 2002, p. A02, which is no longer available on the Post’s site but can be found elsewhere on the web, on sites whose other content is so nutty I refuse to link, as well as this January 2006 statement from FBI Director Robert Mueller on the InfraGard website, which includes the statement that “Today, the FBI and CIA are not only sharing information on a regular basis, we are exchanging employees and working together on cases every day.”) The slippery slope is this–the CIA is an organization which recruits and develops in its officers a sense of flexible ethics which has frequently resulted in incredible abuses, and which arguably has done more harm than good to U.S. interests. (My opinion on the CIA may be found in my posts on this blog labeled “CIA”; I highly recommend Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.) Some of that ethical flexibility may well rub off on FBI agents who work closely with CIA case officers. (The FBI itself has also had a history of serious abuses, an objective account of which may be found in Ronald Kessler’s book The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI.) And then, that same ethical flexibility may rub off on InfraGard members as a result of their relationships with the FBI (and potentially relationships with the CIA, as well). The intelligence community seems to have a hunger for more and more information from more and more sources, but it is already awash in a sea of information that it has trouble processing today. (It doesn’t help that the Army fires direly needed Arabic translators because they are gay.) The need is to accurately assess the information that it has, and ensure that bits and pieces aren’t cherry-picked to produce desired conclusions, as well as ensure that information isn’t sought or assembled to serve personal and political ends of particular interests rather than combatting genuine threats to the country and its citizens. My recommendation is that all InfraGard members read Kessler’s The Bureau, Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, and view the film that won the 2007 Academy Award for best foreign film, “The Lives of Others,” to help innoculate them against such a slippery slope. UPDATE: Amy Goodman interviewed Matt Rothschild for “Democracy Now!” on Wisconsin Public Television, in which it is pretty clear to me that Rothschild is exaggerating something he doesn’t understand–what he cites as evidence doesn’t support what he claims. Here’s a key excerpt, see the link for the full transcript: MR: […] And one other member of InfraGard [Christine Moerke of Alliant Energy] confirmed to me that she had actually been at meetings and participated in meetings where the discussion of lethal force came up, as far as what businesspeople are entitled to do in times of an emergency to protect their little aspect of the infrastructure. AG: But just to clarify, Matt Rothschild, who exactly is empowered to shoot to kill if martial law were declared? The business leaders themselves? MR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told. […] You know, this is a secretive organization. They’re not supposed to talk to the press. You need to get vetted by the FBI before you can join it. They get almost daily information that the public doesn’t get. And then they have these extraordinary, really astonishing powers being vested in them by FBI and Homeland Security, shoot-to-kill powers. I mean, this is scary stuff. MR: The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.It looks to me like the following transformation has occurred: 1. At a DHS conference on emergency response, somebody asks if owners of critical pieces of infrastructure should be expected to use deadly force if necessary to protect it (e.g., a nuclear power plant). 2. Somebody at DHS answers yes. They may even add that in some cases the law provides specific justification for use of deadly force (as in the Arizona statute I cite above). 3. Matt turns that into a general right to “shoot-to-kill” in times of martial law by any InfraGard member. 4. The blogosphere turns that into roving citizen patrols unleashed on the nation as the Bush hit squad after declaration of martial law. I don’t see his key source–Christine Moerke–confirming anything beyond #1 and #2. Note other exaggerations and contradictions–Rothschild claims that InfraGard is highly secretive and selective, yet has quickly grown to over 23,000 members and has multiple public websites. He fails to note that most InfraGard meetings are open to the general public, or that it has been discussed in many articles in the national press over the last decade. Rothschild speaks of “business leaders,” which the blogosphere has turned into “CEOs,” yet I suspect the most common “business leader” represented in InfraGard is an IT or physical security manager. UPDATE (February 15, 2008): The FBI has issued an official response to Rothschild’s Progressive article (PDF), which says, in part: In short, the article’s claims are patently false. For the record, the FBI has not deputized InfraGard, its members, businesses, or anything else in the program. The title, however catchy, is a complete fabrication. Moreover, InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to “shoot to kill” than other civilians. The FBI encourages InfraGard members – and all Americans – to report crime and suspected terrorist activity to the appropriate authorities.The FBI response also states that Rothschild has “refused even to identify when or where the claimed ‘small meeting’ occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,” and promises to follow up with further clarifying details if they get that information. UPDATE (February 25, 2008): Here’s another blogger with a rational response to The Progressive article. UPDATE (March 2, 2008): Matthew Rothschild has responded to the FBI’s response on Alex Jones’ Info Wars blog, and he stands behind every word of his original article. He doesn’t display any knowledge of or response to any of the criticisms I’ve offered. ...

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." ...

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 LippardThe 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. ...