Kooks

The “Campaign to Defend the Constitution,” or “DefCon,” describes itself as “an online grassroots movement combating the growing power of the religious right. We will fight for the separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance while respecting people of faith and their right to express their beliefs." They just sent out a mailing calling for people to ask Wal-Mart to stop selling the game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces." What Wal-Mart sells in its stores is irrelevant to defending the U.S. Constitution. The fact is, this is a crappy game that won’t sell well, despite some initial media attention due to its absurd premise. As GameSpot reviewer Brett Todd observes (in a review that rates the game 3.4–bad–on a scale of 10), “Don’t mock Left Behind: Eternal Forces because it’s a Christian game. Mock it because it’s a very bad game." Let the market handle this one, DefCon, and stick to issues that actually have relevance to your mission. Giving it more attention and treating it as a threat is likely only to sell more copies. UPDATE (December 13, 2006): DefCon’s campaign has successfully created more media coverage for this game. UPDATE (March 21, 2007): Looks like the market has spoken. Left Behind Games’ stock peaked at $7.44 in November and closed today at $0.31 (up from $0.18 yesterday). Their financial auditors’ 2006 report questioned their “ability to continue as a going concern." UPDATE (October 9, 2007): Left Behind Games is now sending out cease and desist letters to bloggers who have given the game negative reviews. (And their stock closed today at $0.11.) ...

In five parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Also see these resources and Matt Taibbi on 9/11 conspiracy theorists. qwertyxyz (2007-01-15): The guys from popular mechanics kicked their asses! If i was one of the guys from loose change i would be ashamed of myself from that ass kicking. Their only defense was by cutting into what the popular mechanics guys where saying with stupid "oh yeahs" and shit like that. They are a couple of guys from who the hell knows where vs some of the smartest people in America. 8====D----- All over loose change! ...

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has an excellent article on 9/11 conspiracy theorists, pointing out the absurdity of their claims in the form of a dialogue among the plotters: BUSH: So, what’s the plan again? CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we’ve decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they’re real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we’ll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down. ...

On Tuesday of this week (October 10), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert met with evangelist K.A. Paul, without first consulting with his advisors. He now says that he was “duped” into the meeting, in which Paul performed a “laying on of hands” on Hastert and asked him to resign. Paul says Hastert said that he would. Paul is a full-blown kook, whose record includes (according to a June 2006 Houston Press story): - claiming another minister’s leper colony as his own, and videotaping said lepers for a promotional video - transporting children in an airplane one former crew member called a “flying death trap” ...

Pharyngula summarizes and augments a list of characteristics from the Give Up Blog common to those who deny the existence of various things, whether that be the Holocaust, global warming, HIV causing AIDS, the actions of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, or other well-established phenomena. Key features: 1. Conspiracy 2. Selectivity 3. The fake expert 4. Impossible expectations 5. The metaphor 6. The quote mine 7. Appeal to consequences I recommend reading both the Give Up Blog’s original list and descriptions and Pharyngula’s extended list. ...

Orac at Respectful Insolence recently commented on how he first got involved in responding to Holocaust deniers. In reading his commentary, I was reminded of my own limited involvement on GEnie and Usenet’s alt.revisionism in responding to the Holocaust deniers, at a time when Bradley Smith’s organization, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) was placing full-page ads in student newspapers at universities across the United States. I did a Google Groups search and found this posting that I made on alt.revisionism in response to some people who were attacking Holocaust deniers using namecalling and without offering facts or evidence to refute their claims. As it turns out, Orac was also a contributor to this thread, as were the Scientology-supported “random poetry” bots, which forged the names of major contributors to various newsgroups in an attempt to drown them out and make the groups unreadable. (Read Scientology defector Tory Bezazian’s account of the spamming of Usenet.) This posting led to a short debate with science writer Andrew Skolnick, who strongly disagreed with me–his opinion was that Holocaust deniers should get nothing but ridicule, and no one should bother trying to respond to them. I think this is the wrong approach to Holocaust denial, the wrong approach to creationism, the wrong approach to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the wrong approach to Scientology, for reasons I give below. I do agree that it can be a bad idea to give advocates of crackpottery wider exposure or a respectable forum, but there are plenty of fora on the Internet and elsewhere where these bad ideas should be responded to with good and accurate information. From: James J. Lippard Date: Fri, Sep 24 1999 12:00 am Email: lipp…@discord.org (James J. Lippard) Groups: sci.skeptic, alt.revisionism ...

I’ve just come across the 9/11 Myths site, which debunks a lot of the bogus claims made on the Internet by conspiracy theorists. It’s well worth checking out along with the Popular Mechanics website and “Loose Change” debunking website referenced in this posting on the conspiracy-mongering Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Also check out the Nyctohylophobia blog debunking 9/11 conspiracy claims, run by a bright Catholic high school student. UPDATE September 1, 2006: The Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories site is also a good resource.

The group “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” has just gotten considerable press via CNN’s website, which attempts to portray them as serious scholars with genuine academic credentials. But the list of their members shows a few that are well beyond the pale, such as: Paul Andrew Mitchell (AM) Federal witness; Criminal investigator; Private attorney generalThis associate member is known for filing absurd lawsuits over copyright infringement for his work “The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue,” which appears to be a crackpot tax evasion guide. He once named Primenet (my employer at the time) as defendant in one of these lawsuits, because we rebuffed his demand that we remove a link to a nonexistent document on the website of one of our users. Primenet was never properly served, and one of the other defendants got the entire case thrown out. Another website on Mitchell that includes the text of some of his lawsuit documents is www.paulandrewmitchell.com. You can see a page of one of his complaints that includes Primenet as a defendant here (line 50). This one is dated August 1, 2001–Primenet had ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1997. Among the full members are Jim Marrs (FM) Author, Researcher, 9/11, JFK, moreMarrs is a well-known JFK conspiracy theorist whose book Crossfire was used as part of the basis for Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK. One of his arguments for JFK conspiracy is a list of mysterious deaths, examined further here. James H. Fetzer (FM) Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a former Marine Corps officer, author or editor of more than 20 books, and co-chair of S9/11TFetzer is another JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, who claims that the Zapruder film was fabricated by the conspiracy. (Some critiques are here and here.) Fetzer has complained about Wikipedia reverting his changes to pages about September 11. Fetzer also thinks the Apollo moon landings may be fake. Robert M. Bowman (FM) Former Director of the U.S. “Star Wars” Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missionsBowman is also, according to Wikipedia, the “founder and Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church, an “independent Catholic fellowship” created in 1996 and held to be connected through apostolic succession to the Old Catholic Church.” He attempted to gain the Reform Party nomination for president in 2000, but it went to Pat Buchanan [not John Hagelin, this has been corrected]. (I wonder if he is the father of Robert M. Bowman, Jr., of the Watchman Fellowship, an evangelical Christian apologist who is critical of cults?) On Bowman’s political campaign website, he gives this resume: Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III Corporation, and retired Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam and directed all the “Star Wars” programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers’ ROTC Award of Merit (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security. Dr. Bob was an independent candidate for President of the US in 2000, beating Pat Buchanan in Iowa, Illinois, and California. He has resided on the Space Coast for 16 years.“lechrus2” has commented on his findings about some of the claims on Bowman’s resume, and others have pointed out similar problems in comments at DailyKos. Apparently Bowman claimed to have twice won the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal, but the list of all such winners since 1926 does not list his name; the list now says “ROTC Award of Merit” instead of “Gold Medal.” He claims to be a recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, but the list of recipients of the American Assembly’s Eisenhower Medal does not include him. There is a Milton Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Service to Johns Hopkins University, but I haven’t found a list of recipients. He claims that he (secretly?) headed the “Star Wars” program during the Ford and Carter administrations, even though the program was initiated under Reagan in 1983. No one has yet been able to verify the existence of a “George F. Kennan Peace Prize.” The Millennium III Corporation has a website with a front page and a bunch of bad links. The domain is registered to a John Gantt, 1623 33rd St., Washington, D.C. 20007, with a hotmail.com contact address and a phone number which is listed to David H. Barron at that same address. The address is missing a “NW,” but is in Georgetown. (A David H. Barron was chairman of the Young Republicans from 1981-1983, but this David H. Barron appears to be involved with the World Wildlife Fund and/or the International Conservation Partnership.) If John Gantt is John B. Gantt, there are D.C. listings for him at two different addresses, one of which is an office building at 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and the other of which is an office building at 1401 H. St. NW. Anyone want to investigate Bowman’s claimed military rank and Vietnam missions, his Caltech degree, or Millennium III? The other co-chair of the group is Brigham Young University physicist, Steven Jones, who has argued that the World Trade Center building collapses must have involved controlled demolition. Former Scientific American columnist A.K. Dewdney is also a member; he has argued that it was impossible for cell phones to have been used from the hijacked planes, and therefore they must have been faked. UPDATE August 8, 2006: Maddox addresses some 9/11 conspiracy theories. Here’s a detailed critique of “Loose Change." Here’s the Popular Mechanics article on 9/11 conspiracy theories. UPDATE August 9, 2006: Correction to the above–Pat Buchanan was the Reform Party candidate, not former Natural Law Party candidate, physicist, and TM practitioner John Hagelin (though he also tried for the nomination). UPDATE August 16, 2006: By way of comparison to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, here’s a list of the individuals who consulted on the Popular Mechanics article referenced just above. UPDATE August 19, 2006: Also check out the 9/11 Myths website. ...

As I noted in my “Scientology Sampler” post on March 4, my web sites still get periodic visits from Church of Scientology IP addresses, at that time most recently on January 1. They just came by again on May 22, attempting to look at my online copy of Russell Miller’s biography of L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, as well as the article I co-authored with Jeff Jacobsen, “Scientology v. the Internet,” and my skeptical links pages on Scientology. Here’s an example web log entry: [Mon May 22 11:42:00 2006] [error] [client 205.227.165.11] client denied by server configuration: path deleted/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html, referer: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-09%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=Jim+Lippard+Scientology Then, yesterday afternoon, this blog got a visit and a comment (from a brand-new Blogger account) on my post on Arizona legislators accepting trips from the Church of Scientology in return for sponsoring bills for Scientology’s front group the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. This poster, asking why I don’t support Scientology’s mental health efforts, came across the entry by Googling for “CCHR”: Time of Visit May 29 2006 4:49:43 pm Last Page View May 29 2006 4:59:42 pm Visit Length 9 minutes 59 seconds Page Views 4 Referring URL http://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg&q=cchr Search Engine search.blogger.com Search Words cchr Visit Entry Page http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html Visit Exit Page http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html Out Click a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills http://www.azcentral...cientologists11.html Time Zone UTC-6:00 This individual’s source IP, however, is an Ameritech/SBC IP out of Springfield, Illinois (not a big Scientology stronghold like Los Angeles or Clearwater, FL). Illinois is, however, the location where Scientology won a battle to get an exhibit that compares psychiatry to Nazis put back on public property in the Thompson Center–so it looks like the CCHR Chicago has a bit of pull. Anyway, this is a good opportunity to recommend reading Janet Reitman’s “Inside Scientology” from Rolling Stone magazine from February, an excellent overview and introduction to Scientology’s beliefs and history.

The latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2006) features an article titled “Hoaxers, Hackers, and Policymakers: How Junk Science Persuaded the FBI to Divert Terrorism Funding to Fight Hackers” by Carolyn Meinel. The descriptive text on the first page (between the article title, subtitle, and author’s name) says “Hoaxers warned of an imminent and deadly electronic Pearl Harbor. Consequently, the FBI diverted resources and attention away from terrorism and toward fighting hackers. This may have contributed to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Use of critical inquiry and the scientific method could have avoided this misdirection." While most of the article appears to me to be accurate and its conclusion about treating claims from self-proclaimed computer security experts with scrutiny is sound, the article itself contains unsubstantiated arguments (in particular the arguments of the title and subheading) and comes from a self-proclaimed hacking expert of questionable credibility. Meinel’s article is in three sections–an introductory section about the title, a section about specific claims made by two hackers, and a section on “critical analysis of e-terrorism.” I find little to criticize in the latter two sections, except for its implication that Peter Neumann’s testimony before Congress was unfounded (Neumann is a highly respected expert on computer risks, the editor of the RISKS Digest, and author of the book Computer-Related Risks, 1995, The ACM Press). Meinel begins by describing Fred J. Villella bringing hackers “Dr. Mudge” (Pieter Zatko, though Meinel never mentions his name) and “Se7en” (“Christian Valor”, who was indeed exposed as a chronic fabricator as Meinel claims in the second part of her article) to meetings of federal policymakers where they warned of “a looming electronic Pearl Harbor.” The most notable such meeting was testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on May 19, 1998, where the above-mentioned Neumann testimony took place, and where Mudge testified that he could make the Internet unusable with less than thirty minutes of effort. Meinel argues that this testimony “may have contributed to an entrapment scheme” by the FBI against hacker “Chameleon” (Marc Maiffret, now “Chief Hacking Officer” of eEye Digital Security) as a way to show that “hackers were actually collaborating with enemies of the U.S.” But she provides no evidence of a connection between the testimony and the action. She falsely states that “books (Penenberg 2000; Mitnick 2005) hyped the raid [on Maiffret] to say that hackers were in league with al Qaeda.” Neither of these two books says that. Adam Penenberg, in his book Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America (with Marc Barry, 2001, Perseus Books), writes that “Hackers are always on red alert for the FBI. In fact, when Maiffret was contacted over the Internet by the alleged terrorist Khalid Ibrahim, a member of Harkat-ul-Ansar, a militant Indian separatist group on the State Department’s list of the thirty most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, he assumed Ibrahim worked for the feds.” Kevin Mitnick, in his book The Art of Intrusion (2005, Wiley, pp. 32-34), raises the possibility that Khalid Ibrahim was part of an FBI operation, but questions it on the ground that only Maiffret received any money from him. On the other hand, he points out that Maiffret told Wired News “he had not provided any government network maps” and wonders why, despite his confession to accepting money from an terrorist-connected individual (Mitnick writes “foreign terrorist”), no charges were ever filed. Then, he writes “Perhaps the check wasn’t from Khalid after all, but from the FBI.” (As an aside, Mitnick’s book states that few know the true identity of “Chameleon,” but Penenberg’s book had already published his identity in 2000.) Perhaps Maiffret avoided prosecution by agreeing to work with the FBI, as other hackers have done (such as Justin Tanner Petersen, “Agent Steal,” whose story is partly told in Jonathan Littman’s The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen, 1997, Little, Brown). The specific argument of the title and subheading–that the testimony of these hackers led to a diversion of funding that may have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks–is stated in a single paragraph in the second column of the first page of the article (p. 32). In that paragraph, Meinel states that cyberspace czar Richard Clarke’s formation of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) diverted funding increases “earmarked against terrorism to hire FBI agents for the hacker beat.” This diversion of funds led to only $4.9 million spent by NIPC on counterterrorism, and it therefore lacked the resources to follow up on Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams’ warning about al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools. This argument assumes that NIPC, rather than the FBI’s counterterrorism unit, is the organization which should have followed up on Williams’ memo. It also overlooks the role of the FBI’s incredibly antiquated computer systems, which technophobe FBI Director Louis Freeh had refused to take steps to upgrade (with Congress withholding $60 million in funding for FBI’s IT infrastructure between 1998 and 2000 because of its failure to produce a credible upgrade plan). Not until July 2000, when Freeh appointed Bob Dies to begin work on an overhaul, did Freeh address the issue. The result was that the FBI had 42 separate database systems that could not be searched simultaneously and many agents had computers that did not work or could not display images or connect to the Internet. Many agents used home computers in order to receive email photo images of suspects from local police departments. (See the “Missing Documents” chapter of Ronald Kessler’s The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, 2002, St. Martin’s Press. Similar observations are made in the “9/11” chapter of James Bovard’s The Bush Betrayal, 2004, Palgrave Macmillan. Bovard cites (p. 27) a Los Angeles Times story that reports the FBI diverting $60 million in funds earmarked for IT upgrades in the year 2000 to be used for staffing and international offices. The fact that the dollar figure is the same in Bovard and Kessler may indicate that Bovard is misdescribing the same $60 million Kessler mentions.) By contrast, NIPC’s entire budget (PDF) was under $20 million per year through 2000, and Bush requested a budget of $20.4 million for NIPC in 2001. (This is not to say that NIPC was effectively using what funds it had–it wasn’t. But Meinel’s complaint that only $4.9 million of NIPC’s budget was spent on counterterrorism should be put in context–that was a quarter or more of its annual budget.) These IT failings and the other failures reported in the 9/11 Commission Report and elsewhere strike me as more plausible reasons for the U.S. government’s failure to avert the 9/11 attacks than trying to pin it on the hackers who testified before Congress in 1998 about the dangers of cyber attacks. Ironically, in October 2001 an article arguing that the Code Red worm demonstrates that there really are significant risks of Internet-based attacks on U.S. infrastructure (“They would be far worse than not being able to make bids on eBay–potentially affecting product manufacturing and deliveries, bank transactions, telephony and more. Should it occur five years from now, the results could be a lot more severe.”) appeared in Scientific American. The author of this article, “Code Red for the Web,” was Carolyn Meinel. It’s more surprising to me that Skeptical Inquirer published an article by Carolyn Meinel at all. Meinel’s author description printed in SI states: ...