Standing Up for Idiocy

Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin is a U.S. Army physician with eighteen years of service under his belt. Well, for now. Lt. Col. Lakin may not keep his position much longer, since he's decided to disobey a deployment order to Afghanistan until President Obama produces his birth certificate. Lakin believes any order coming from a military with Obama as commander-in-chief is potentially illegal unless Obama can prove he's qualified to be president as a natural born citizen. But the chances that Obama is a foreign impostor seem pretty slim. Partly because Obama has already produced his Hawaii birth certificate and partly because any coverup of Obama's foreigner status would have to involve the Hawaii state government, Obama's parents, all of the mainstream media, and (I'm assuming) the Moonies. However, it is the duty of all military personnel to refuse orders they believe are illegal. But it's also their duty to know enough about reality to discern an illegal order from a legal one. More details here.

Playing the Hits

Maybe Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a little bit like film director Kevin Smith. When Smith ventured outside his wheelhouse of adolescent dick jokes and sub-competent camera work to make the maudlin "Jennifer Lopez is dead" fantasy "Jersey Girl", we was rewarded with equal parts jeering rage and total apathy. So he retreated back into his comfort zone to shit out "Clerks 2", an amateurish (in a bad way) sequel to his first amateurish (in a good way) hit. And after the recent presidential "election" in Iran, when Ahmadinejad extended a cardboard cutout of an olive branch to democracy by pretending to run against a candidate who was also hand-picked by the Supreme Leader, he was probably shocked to be rewarded with angry mobs and green-tinted Twitter avatars. This might explain his recent comments in the Iranian state press just before his trip to Afghanistan this month. He's gone back to basics. He's just Mahmoud being Mahmoud. And as such, he's reiterated his belief that the 9/11 attacks were a "big lie" perpetrated by the U.S. government to invade Afghanistan and to serve as a "pretext for fighting terrorism". Sure, it doesn't make a lot of sense. No one in the U.S. government has profited from the invasion of Afghanistan, and there really doesn't need to be a pretext for fighting terrorism when terrorism is already a crime. But what do you expect from someone whose eyes are so close together? To top it off, Ahmadinejad closed his remarks with his biggest hit of all: sticking it to the Jews by claiming the Zionist-founded capitalist system is coming to an end. I'll say this for the guy: he knows his audience. More details here.

Logogate

Some are very disturbed by the logo that now graces the new U.S. Missile Defense Agency website. And by "some", of course, I mean "idiots". Not only is the logo a blatant ripoff of the venerable seal of the LEGO Space Agency, but it's also rather O-shaped. I don't know if you realized, but President Obama's campaign logo was also O-shaped. Even more damning, his surname begins with an O. But that's just the tip of the rabbit hole, people, because the MDA logo also bears a striking resemblance to a Muslim star and crescent. Now, it's true that when viewed in semi-shadow, the earth itself appears crescent-shaped. And it's also true that the earth is almost never seen against anything other than a starry backdrop. But let me remind you that Barack HUSSEIN Obama is also...NOT a Muslim. Sometimes there are so many dots, you can't help but connect them. Of course, the government is seeking to downplay the truth by pointing out that this logo was used before Obama's presidential campaign even began. But that's just a smokescreen. And you know who uses smokescreens? That's right. James Bond. Who previously battled whom? Communists. Checkmate. More details here.

The Birther State

You expect insanity out of certain state legislatures. The capitol buildings in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina are full of the kinds of people who have rapture wills, for example. Who knew Arizona would elbow its way onto that list? Not content with being known as the go-to destination for tacky turquoise jewelry and sweat lodge manslaughter, Arizona is trying to forge its own crown as the birther state. Nearly half of its state legislators (all Republicans) have approved a bill that would force presidential candidates to prove their place of birth to the state before being allowed on the ballot. This is because they're pretty sure Barack Obama's parents entered into a secret conspiracy with Hawaiian hospitals and newspapers to create the false impression that the President was born on U.S. soil. There's no evidence for this, of course, but there's also no evidence that Arizona is a place you'd ever want to visit, despite what its tourism board would have you believe. The bill's sponsor, State Rep. Judy Burges, says this is no different than an employer demanding to see a job applicant's birth certificate. But the thing is, almost no employers do that. And the ones that do are almost always baby footprint fetishists. More details here.

Norris on Obama

Chuck Norris has had an interesting and varied career. He's gone from being that white guy who fought Bruce Lee one time to that white guy who ranks just below Steven Seagal on the list of compelling straight-to-video action stars of the '80s and '90s. His golden (beard) years have seen him play the part of internet meme alongside those weird little creatures who sing about how much they like the moon and that fat kid practicing his lightsaber moves with a stick. Now, Norris has become an icon of the aggressively uneducated Fox News conservative movement. As evidenced by the non-suicide of Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson, they'll take whoever they can get. The only problem is that getting a hug from John McCain one time has made Norris think his opinions matter. He has a World Net Daily column that has recently become a dispenser for Glenn Beck-fueled conspiracy theories. On December 17th, President Obama signed an executive order granting new "privileges, exemptions, and immunities" to Interpol, the international police organization meant to facilitate communication between different countries' law enforcement agencies. It's likely these new powers don't involve anything like new jurisdiction to arrest foreign citizens, but who really knows? Well, Chuck Norris does. Citing little to no evidence, Norris says Obama signed the order specifically to exempt Interpol's New York office from Freedom of Information Act requests, so that he may use this office as a "secret vault" for documents about the war on terror that the president wants to hide from the public. Which seems a little far-fetched, considering the Bush administration successfully hid all of its questionable documents by invoking the executive privilege of "not telling". But to Norris, the coincidences are just too numerous to ignore. "Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive Interpol order, and that the feds want to try these 9/11 terrorists in civilian courts rather than military courts?" Norris writes. I think what he's getting at here is that it's suspicious that the order exempts Interpol's New York office from FOIA requests while the trials of certain 9/11 suspects are planned to also take place in New York. Obviously, this logic is airtight. If anything, Norris doesn't go far enough. Why doesn't he say anything about David Letterrman's involvement in all this? Doesn't he realize Letterman's show is taped in New York? Seems like public knowledge to me. What's Chuck Norris trying to hide? We're through the looking glass here, people. More details here.

Lesboland

Did you know there's a town of 25,000 women somewhere in the snowy wastes of northern Sweden? Did you also know that any men who attempt to set foot in the town are savagely beaten by buxom, amazonian police officers, that the primary occupation of these sequestered ladies is hardcore woodworking, and that when they aren't sneaking out to the surrounding villages to satiate their rabid man-lust, they turn to each other's succulent bodies for carnal pleasure? If you didn't know about this town, it's most likely because it doesn't really exist outside your masturbatory fantasies. But that hasn't stopped the Chinese news service Xinhua from reporting on the mythical town's tourism woes as fact. No one's really sure how the hoax got started, but I'm willing to bet there's just something in the Campbellian collective mythos that causes stories of Swedish lesbian villages to pop up in most world cultures. More details here.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Idiocy Turns off the Radio

Members of the Earth Liberation Front (or "ELF", if you want to be all Middle Earth about it) aren't incredibly united on what exactly it is they plan on liberating Earth from. They usually commit grand acts of larceny, arson, and vandalism against those they think are polluting the planet or otherwise abusing natural resources. And perhaps this wouldn't be a totally unreasonable position if human lives weren't endangered in the process or the fumes from all the tractors they've set aflame didn't create even more pollution. But every now and then, an ELF cell goes off and does something weird. I guess that's the price you pay for being a leaderless organization of absent minded trust fund babies. Case in point: the destruction of two AM radio station towers in Washington state. You might think AM radio waves aren't much of a threat to Earth (unless, of course, you're talking about stations that carry Glenn Beck's show), but ELF disagrees. Or rather, ELF agrees with some other nutcases who think AM radio waves cause cancer, hurt animals, and fuck with your phone line. It probably goes without saying that there's no evidence to support any of those claims. But what does that matter when knocking down giant radio towers is so damn fun? More details here.

U.F.Oh No

Gary McKinnon seems to be a bit of an idiot. But then again, so am I. He apparently believes without a flicker of doubt that not only are aliens visiting our world, but that their existence is being covered up by the United States government, among others. A lot of people share this belief despite the fact that there isn't any evidence to support it. Because I was once unhappy with the state of reality and wished to live in a science fiction universe of spaceships and holodecks, I used to believe the same thing. Hell, I'm still unhappy with the state of reality and want to live in a science fiction universe of spaceships and holodecks. I've just honed my critical thinking skills. But for those who haven't, the UFO conspiracy trap is an easy one in which to snag themselves. There are mountains of poorly photocopied documents and blurry photographs of nothing to back up the conspiracy. There are UFO websites with more text than the entire Wheel of Time series. It's a mythology, and there's nothing geeks love more than an obsessively detailed myth.

Gary McKinnon is one of those geeks. He's also been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism that tends to heighten obsessive and compulsive tendencies. Convinced the U.S. Government was withholding alien energy technology, McKinnon bought a book on hacking and decided to infiltrate American military computers looking for evidence of the coverup. Because he's not a very good hacker, McKinnon was caught. Now, he's being accused of perpetrating "the biggest military computer hack of all time" and faces extradition to the U.S. for trial, even though he's a British citizen.

Author, documentarian, and Amateur Scientist Podcast friend Jon Ronson has been following the McKinnon case and recently wrote an article for The Guardian detailing the circumstances of McKinnon's arrest and apparent failure to avoid extradition. There are several layers to this story, one of which being the draconian extradition treaty being used against McKinnon. But I'm not as concerned with the terms of the treaty as I am with the general tone coming from some corners of the skeptical community regarding this case.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy wrote a level-headed analysis of the facts at hand, but many others haven't shown any sympathy at all toward McKinnon. It's one thing to decry McKinnon for flaunting the law and committing electronic espionage. This is a serious crime deserving of some punishment. But it's quite another to ridicule him for simply being a UFO "nut".

Like I said, I've been there. I was also fiddling around online in the days before every home had a modem-enabled PC, much less access to the web. McKinnon started trying to hack military systems in 1995. It may not seem like that long ago, but those were the wild west days of the Internet. Network security was often completely overlooked, and it was relatively easy for computer hobbyists to exploit weaknesses to gain access they shouldn't have. If I had the motivation to get off my ass and read a book on hacking, I might have tried to poke around for UFO files myself. It's easy to forget things like legal consequence when you're alone in your basement with tools not many others have. I stole my high school's ISP password, used their account to download porn through a text browser, and didn't think twice about it. (Well, not guilty thoughts, at least. I thought about those grainy, pixelated booby pics many, many times.)

Granted, McKinnon broke the law. He admits as much. But he didn't do so with malicious intent. The U.S. government claims his invasions cost millions $700,000 in remediation and security fees. That's a lot of wasted taxpayer money, but so was the federal push of abstinence-only education programs. And no one's suggesting George W. Bush should go to jail for that.

In his article, Ronson writes that McKinnon offered to help the government beef up its security in exchange for leniency. He was refused, he says, because the military believed any idiot could have done what he did. If true, this doesn't speak very highly of the U.S. military. If any idiot could breach national security, shouldn't we have paid to plug those holes anyway? It seems like McKinnon may have done the country a favor.

Of course, any claims McKinnon makes for himself should be taken with a grain or two of salt. Writer Kevin Anderson has an article detailing some of the false accusations made by McKinnon's legal team in his own defense. But while it's not unreasonable to think someone in as desperate a situation as McKinnon's would resort to lying for sympathy, none of the disputed claims do a thing to change the circumstances of this case. The issue here isn't with whether or not McKinnon could be declared an enemy combatant (he could be, though this is very, very unlikely). It's with whether McKinnon should be sent to prison at all for an effectively harmless bit of idiotic obsessiveness. The same goes for doubts about the severity of the sentence the U.S. seeks to obtain against McKinnon.

In seeking to debunk claims that an embarrassed military wants to put McKinnon to death, the government says that McKinnon will likely receive something along the lines of a three year sentence, only six months to a year of which would be served in a U.S. prison. If true, this begs the question of why they want to extradite him at all. Yes, he committed a crime against America, but why go to the huge expense of trying him in a U.S. court and entering him into our prison system when he'll just be released to his home country after a few months? If wasted money was the extent of the damages caused by McKinnon, why waste even more trying to prosecute him?

Gary McKinnon did something monumentally stupid because he bought into a fallacious belief in a massive conspiracy theory. U.S. prosecutors should be asking themselves if this crime is worth ruining a man's life over. What's worth more: five or six figures in I.T. costs or a little bit of human compassion? And UFO conspiracy skeptics should be wondering whether their scorn is better directed at those who create phony documents and photographs or the dupes like McKinnon and myself who've fallen for them.

Unorwellian

When news hit last week that Amazon surreptitiously removed downloaded copies of George Orwell's 1984 from Kindle devices, I didn't write anything about it. For one thing, I'm lazy. For another, plenty of other blogs were all over the story, and there really wasn't much more to add. Also, rash rushes to judgment often turn out to bite people in the ass. Plus, I'm lazy. The whole thing seemed a little fishy, too. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos isn't an evil guy. Like Google, Amazon seems to be a megacompany with a heart and a brain. And Bezos is even a financier of the pro-reality Reason Foundation. Sure, he hocked a few Kindles on Oprah, but it's a small concession to make in the march toward putting an electronic book reader in everyone's home. (A side note: I own a Kindle myself and adore it. Aside from nailing the technical side of creating a device that, like a traditional book, disappears in your hand while reading, it's also an important stepping stone toward a more knowledgeable and informed future. Books are good things not because of the materials with which they're made or how they smell but because of the information in the text. Making that information instantly accessible from a massive database the size of a small notebook can only help us as a species. You pretentious asses complaining about the loss of tactile sensation can go fuck yourselves. I read more on my Kindle than I ever did before, because I don't have to worry about the tactile "pleasures" of folding over pages and lugging around pounds and pounds of paper. The Kindle is the best thing to happen to books since the printing press.) So I'm not at all surprised that Bezos has issued a written apology for the way the 1984 situation was handled. Far from being some kind of shadowy government conspiracy to extinguish the truth of an anti-establishment book you can easily pick up for a couple of quarters at a high school library rummage sale, this was a simple legal issue. Somehow, Amazon sold Kindle copies of 1984 from publishers who didn't have the right to print the book. It was stupid (I feel like Barack Obama here...) of them to simply go into people's Kindles through the wireless modem and delete the things, but they did give everyone's money back. And you can still buy an authorized copy if you want. In other words, this is a non-issue. Though I suppose nothing can convince Kindle Truthers that this wasn't an inside job. More details here.

Stephen King: Assassin?

A man from California identifying himself as Steve Lightfoot recently used the public comments forum at a city commission meeting in Sarasota, Florida to drop the bombshell that horror writer Stephen King assassinated John Lennon. As proof, Lightfoot offered up his van, which “says it all over the place”. The commission had Lightfoot escorted away, claiming that the public forum is only for issues related to city business. But since King is a part-time resident of the area, I can’t think of any topic that’s more city businessier. Lightfoot went on to say that “Stephen King is the worst criminal the state of Florida has ever harbored”, but I think that’s a bit harsh. Dreamcatcher wasn’t that bad. (Well, maybe.) It’s tempting to assume that the Sarasota city commission is simply in on the cover-up here, but I suggest we all try to keep a level head about this. After all, everyone knows John Lennon was eaten by a Langolier. More details (including video) here.

Am-Sci on Con-Skep

Our own Karl Mamer, writer of the Podcasting Without Pity column, hosts his own popular podcast, The Conspiracy Skeptic, and he was kind enough to interview me for the latest episode of the show. We discuss badmouthing Koreans, the origins of this very website, and the Illuminati. Give it a listen right here.

Citizen Obama: The Video

Hey, here's something. Those nutjobs who are hell-bent on barring Barack Obama from being sworn in as president because he's not a natural born citizen have put together a TV ad that all the major networks have refused to air. Luckily, YouTube, the proud home of all filmed entertainments not good enough for broadcast media, comes to the rescue. You might have to watch it a few times to soak in the crazy.



Actually, "crazy" might be a little harsh here. One of the most vocal "Obama is not a citizen" proponents is radio host Ed Hale, who years ago tried to perpetrate a Bigfoot hoax on the world. Maybe he just misses all the attention? And you can read my debunking of the matter here.

Sheldrake Stabber Still Sequestered

Biologist-turned-parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake was stabbed in the leg earlier this year by Kazuki Hirano, a Japanese day laborer who had been stalking Sheldrake after believing he was the victim of mind control experiments. For those who don’t know, Sheldrake is widely published in the field of psychic phenomena research, and he’s probably most famous for his insistence that his experiments demonstrate psychic ability in dogs. Sheldrake is a terrible scientist, to be sure, but he definitely didn’t deserve a stab in the leg from some psychopath. Hirano is being held in California while he undergoes psychological evaluation. While doctors so far have determined he’s not technically psychotic or schizophrenic, Hirano apparently believes that he was initiated into secret mind control experiments conducted by Sheldrake on London’s homeless population on behalf of the government. Where does London fit into this story? You’ll have to read all about it yourself right here.

Grove Buster Busted

Vanity Fair contributing editor Alex Shoumatoff was arrested recently for trying to break in to the secretive Bohemian Grove club. For those who don't know, Bohemian Grove is the subject of much empty-headed conjecture from the tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy nuts of the world. Every year, many of the world's wealthy white male leaders meet there to frolic in the woods and jack each other off. Crazy people like 9/11 Truther Alex Jones see this as some kind of shadowy church gathering of the baby-killing Illuminati, when it's really just a frat party for the powerfully impotent. Oddly, Shoumatoff was arrested after passing only the first security checkpoint. He figured he could walk right in while wearing a Pebble Beach sweater and looking stuffy. And I say "oddly" because this is almost exactly how our friend Jon Ronson successfully infiltrated the Grove with Alex Jones. Listen to my interview with him about it here. And read more details about Shoumatoff's arrest here.

Bill Clinton Uncovers Cover-up

This is just getting ridiculous. Or, more accurately, this is just getting ridiculouser. Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is losing the Democratic in the popular vote, cannot catch up with Barack Obama in the delegate count, and still would lose even if the DNC counted votes in Florida and Michigan that they won't actually count, her lovable husband Bill is claiming that she is, in fact, ahead. We just don't know it because anti-Hillary forces are covering it up. And like 9/11 conspiracy theorists can't name the real estate speculators who supposedly profited from the WTC attacks, Bill can't tell us who's orchestrating the conspiracy against his wife. For Christ's sake, can't this woman catch a break? Back in the '90s, she and her husband fell victim to a vast right-wing conspiracy as well. More people have conspired against her than even Alex Jones. (If you're reading this, Alex Jones, you should know I can see you through your shower head.) If this level of insanity continues, we might all be wondering in a few months if Hillary's Obama assassination intimations were less wishful thinking and more actual plans. More details here.

Al-Qaeda vs. Conspiracy

Last week Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined the 9/11 Truth Movement and ranted crazily about how the 9/11 attacks were probably some kind of U.S.-led conspiracy. Of course this kind of paranoid, faith-based nonsense is an insult to the intelligence of anyone with either critical thinking skills or a friend or relative whose last moments were spent suffocating under a pile of burning rubble, but who knew al-Qaeda would be so pissed off? In a recent audio tape posted online (clash of the technologies!), the terrorist group's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri (pictured here from his high school yearbook), accused Ahmadinejad of spreading the lie that Israel and the U.S. collaborated on 9/11 and assures the world that, no, it was just al-Qaeda. They've got a reputation to uphold after all. Of course, no murderous madman could be completely on the side of reason. Al-Zawahiri went on to claim that the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan was secretly negotiated with Iran's help. Apparently, every aspect of Bush's War on Some Terror is, in fact, and inside job. This should give Ron Paul a lot to think about. More details here.

Anti-Zionists Exposed

This has been on my mind ever since those reports of Ron Paul rallies erupting into Zionist-bashing sessions. One of the first 9/11 conspiracy theories out of the fever-riddled brains of those nuts who backed the Paul campaign had to do with the rumor that Israeli citizens in the World Trade Center were warned not to come into work the day of the attack. And there's a general feeling among the nation's tinfoil hat wearers that Israel somehow has its evil tentacles in the buttholes of our government leaders. Now the State Department has put together a report detailing the transformation of anti-Zionism into a new kind of antisemitism. Criticism of Israel's national policies has turned into a blanket portrayal of the Israeli state as some kind of hand-wringing mastermind of world affairs. It's fine and appropriate to criticize Israel's occupation of the West Bank or anything else the government does, but when people begin using anti-Zionism as a front for their own cartoonish vision of Jews as the secret rulers of the world, they suddenly turn from being smart contrarians to racist nutbags. More details here.

Mark of the Beast? (No.)

Get ready for another round of mouth-foaming rants from your conspiracy-worrying, Ron Paul-supporting friends and loved ones. A new driver's license seems to be coming along--one developed by the Department of Homeland Security as a more secure alternative to those used now. The nation's nutjobs have been screaming about this for years. They say that America has been moving toward a federally issued identification card which would be tantamount to the New World Order's mark of the beast. But there are some key differences with this new card. For one thing, it won't be federally issued. Instead, the states will be given the option of checking driver's license applicants' information against a federal database. The new cards won't contain any kind of information-transmitting microchip, and they will only be required to drive (obviously), board an airplane, and enter government buildings. And only if you're under 50. Not such a big deal by any stretch, but still entirely unnecessary. The 9/11 plot didn't hinge on easily counterfeited driver's licenses. And for that matter, it didn't hinge on taking shampoo aboard a plane. More details here.

Real Time with Real Idiots

You may have seen this clip already, but on last week's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, there was an amusing incident involving some screaming 9/11 conspiracy theorists and an incompetent studio security staff who took an extraordinarily long time throwing these nuts out. I'm no fan of Maher. He demonstrates more smarm than talent, and earlier in this same episode he stupidly blamed rising rates of staph infections on a carnivorous diet. But his handling of this situation was pretty entertaining. Take a look: