Mar
17

Automatic Monthly Payments

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Money makes the world go round, or in Latin: Pecuniate obediunt omnia (all things obey money). Another Latin phrase I like to keep in mind is “cui bono?” – who benefits. When taken together, these two ideas answer most of the questions anyone could ever have about people, politics, economics, or human society in general. The answer to the question “who benefits” is generally the answer to the question “who made money?” or “who found themselves in a better position to make money in the future?”. The current state of affairs across the globe has made me ask these question far more frequently. It is very likely that in the US this fall, we’ll see a multi-millionaire with innumerable friends on wall street run for president against… a multi-millionaire with innumerable friends on wall street. The rampant corruption in Washington frequently involves some senator or congressman proposing legislation favorable to some industry that coincidentally contributed heavily to their campaign, and after retirement, conveniently provides them with a high paying job as a lobbyist. At this point, the corporate takeover of our democracy shouldn’t even be in question; it should be obvious to everyone.

While it’s clear that the largest institutions have a disproportionate impact on government, it’s also clear that certain tactics which are generally seen as unfair to customers are frequently used by corporations to boost their bottom line. A recent example is the controversy surrounding the throttling of “unlimited” bandwidth customers of AT&T (update). AT&T, just like every other company, is in it for the bottom line and nothing else. Far from being the primary purpose of the company’s existence, serving the needs of their customers is just an inconvenient roadblock on the way to making money. This type of behavior should be expected, and unfortunately, it appears to be so widespread that it is literally impossible to avoid. So what can consumers do to protect themselves? The answer is probably little to nothing short of living off the grid on an isolated self sustaining farm. Since that’s not realistic for most of us, where does that leave us?

To begin, we should be cautious any time we deal with institutions that handle large amounts of money, especially institutions whose primary purpose is to handle large amounts of money. The big banks represent perhaps the worst of the worst of corporate greed and objective harm to regular folks, so it should go without saying that you should move your money from a big bank to a local credit union. Don’t give your money to institutions that use finance as a weapon.

Second, don’t assume that a service that most of your peers use is a necessary expense. Many of your peers spend $150/month on a cell phone plan and up to $200 a month on an internet/cable/phone bundle, plus probably at least $8 on netflix or something similar. These monthly charges add up quickly, and even more worrying is who you’re sending so much of your hard earned money to. If you have a cell phone contract with AT&T or Verizon, or any other national carrier, and your ISP is Comcast or any other similar monopolistic giant, then you’re funding the continued erosion of your rights. These companies don’t care about you, and they are actively supporting legislation that diminishes your freedom and privacy. These types of companies should be avoided as much as possible. I understand that in most places in the US, there is only one choice for an ISP, so it is likely that you’ll have to go with one that is working against your own interests, but that doesn’t mean that you have to give them more money for features you aren’t using/don’t need/don’t want. It certainly doesn’t mean that you need to have an always-connected always-on surveillance device that you carry with you everywhere you go, that can track your movements (update) all the time and potentially listen in on every conversation you have, and on top of all that, pay a company that is actively destroying your freedom for the privilege. Americans are paying a very large percent of their annual income to nefarious companies for unnecessary and sometimes dangerous services that they’ve allowed themselves to be convinced are needs, and not wants, when exactly the opposite is true. Don’t be fooled, you work hard for your money, don’t just give it away, and if possible, never give it to a company that will use it to actively oppose your best interests.

These monthly charges are easier to collect when it’s done transparently. When the US ratified the 16th amendment and Americans started paying income tax regularly (it had been collected before, e.g. during and shortly after the civil war, but not regularly), it hurt, because people had to shell out a portion of their earnings to Uncle Sam, and they saw it happen right in front of them. They saw their money disappear because there was a window of time between the passage of the 16th amendment authorizing collection of an income tax in 1913, and the return, during WWII, to income tax withholding, which had also been done during the civil war. According to the US Treasury Department: “This greatly eased the collection of the tax for both the taxpayer and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However, it also greatly reduced the taxpayer’s awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.” After withholding was instituted, some people even began to look forward to paying their taxes because it meant that they got a tax refund. But this is your money! You should be mad that your government kept it from you (interest free) for most of the year! The lack of transparency is good for the party collecting the money, and bad for the party paying it.

Corporations have taken note, and are acting accordingly. They’re using this same model to put their hands into your bank account each month and silently take your money before you even knew you had it. They offer customers incentives in the form of reduced rates or added benefits in exchange for authorizing direct debit, or direct withdrawal (automatic payments). Giving this kind of authorization for direct withdrawal to any third party gives them power that should be yours. Not only are you giving up your hard earned money, but you’re giving up that tiny pinch that comes with handing your money to someone else. You should feel that sting, because when you don’t it’s too easy to spend money. The easier it is to spend money, the more likely it is that you’ll give it up for something you don’t need.

Don’t allow automatic payments. They make it difficult to see where your money goes and how much you spend. It’s easier, and it’s more convenient, but how often does this trade off between freedom and convenience work in your interest and not someone else’s? This is the game: you waive such and such a right, and I’ll make your life easier. It’s not a good deal, and it never will be. Use cash whenever possible. In addition to the benefits to your privacy, there is no mistaking how much you’ve spent when you physically hand those dollars to another person. Using plastic further abstracts the already abstract concept of money and removes it by yet another step from where it originated: the product of your labor. We need to see money as “the product of my labor” rather than “the piece of plastic that gives me what I want.” It is in the interest of uncaring institutions for you to lose sight of what money is, because it makes you part with it much more easily. Pay attention to where you spend your money, why you spend it, and who you’re buying from. These things have consequences, especially as our options are narrowed, and the institutions responsible for increasingly necessary services become larger and fewer. There may be a time in the not too distant future, and that time might even be now, when we’re forced to decide between freedom and a “necessity.” Unless it’s food, water, shelter, clothing, or something similar, you should always choose freedom, even at the cost of convenience.

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Feb
15

Update

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I haven’t posted anything for a long time. I am currently taking computer science courses while still teaching, and I have taken on additional teaching responsibilities, so I have had less time for writing. I am working on a new post about online privacy. The most popular topics here have been about Facebook and it’s use of your data for nefarious purposes, and since I started writing about those topics I have uncovered many more issues that are in many ways worse than facebook. With Facebook’s IPO in the news, and Google’s planned privacy policy change set to take effect next month, there is plenty of visibility on digital privacy, so I want to take this opportunity to explore the topic. Hopefully I’ll have something up next week.

For now, take a look at this article written by Noam Chomsky about the future of American imperial power. The struggle for America to maintain it’s position of global dominance against what are obviously insurmountable odds has a lot to do with the issue of digital rights, which I will address next week. Our eroding freedoms (especially 4th amendment freedoms) which have become most obvious, among other places, in airports and online, are indicative of a government that is struggling to maintain control and of a closing society in general. More to come. Thanks for reading!

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Jan
11

Romney’s New Hampshire Victory

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Romney’s huge victory in Hew Hampshire last night should not be a surprise to anyone. He is the nominee, and I can’t think of anything that will change that. Elections in America, especially since Citizens United, are decided based on money, and nothing else. Romney has the deepest pockets, and he has the most friends with deep pockets, so he’s going to win. That’s just how it works. He’s had the nomination locked up since the summer, but the one moment I can recall when I knew that the race was over was on October 6 when Romney revealed his national security and foreign policy advisers, a long list which included Michael Chertoff and Michael Hayden. This, during an election cycle that has seen staff from both the Gingrich and Bachmann campaigns quit suddenly.

It makes sense to choose Romney, because he’s the only GOP candidate who has a chance at coming close to Obama. Ultimately I think Obama’s job is safe because he has delivered on almost all of his promises. Not to the American people of course, he never intended to keep those, but when it comes to the financial sector, the health care industry, the war profiteers, and big copyright, Obama delivered, and those same monied interests will sweep him right into a second term.

Romney is a backup plan for the wealthy few who control our elections. If you look at his record, Romney is a lot more like Obama than he wants republicans to think, but the most important characteristic that Romney shares with Obama is corporate allegiance. Both of our candidates in 2012, just as they have been in every election since at least the early 1980′s, are corporate candidates who will build and maintain a plutocracy. Just in case we see Obama grow a pair and do something crazy like serve the needs of the American people above corporate interests, Romney will be there to take 51% of the vote this November and bring plutocracy back to America. But unless something crazy happens, I think we’re looking at a two term Obama presidency. This election theater will continue, and our petty 24 hour corporate news networks will continue to cover it at the expense of real stories like the recent passage of NDAA, the potential passage of SOPA, America’s continued use of torture and indefinite detention, the escalation of the “war on terror” at home, failure to do anything about global climate change, and so on. Until we have the option for a candidate that is not of, by, and for the 1%, we will never begin to solve the problems America is facing, problems that literally threaten the continued survival of the human race. We need to repair our election system, we need to repeal corporate personhood through a constitutional amendment, and we need a presidential candidate who will support the 99%.

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Jan
05

Rick Santorum

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Rick Santorum came within a few votes of winning the Iowa Caucuses, losing to the first place finisher and  inevitable GOP nominee Mitt Romney (shh! Don’t ruin it, let the republicans play along with this primary election theater). Since Santorum’s turn at being the-guy-who-isn’t-Romney happened to coincide with the Iowa Caucuses, we can pretend that he’s a real candidate for now, but I think we all know (24% of Iowa republicans excluded) that he’s a giant talking nutsack. Why should anyone who wants to use the force of big government to throw people in jail for possession of condoms have a place on the national stage, even if it’s only temporary? He’s the same guy who compared gay people to people who fuck dogs. Why are you listening to anything he says? Anyway, since he’s in the news, I figured I’d do my part and help Google locate the actual page people are looking for when they search for Santorum.

Santorum
Rick Santorum
Richard Santorum
Richard J. Santorum
Richard John Santorum
Richard John “Rick” Santorum
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, check out this video from Fox Business that shows Judge Napolitano’s view on Santorum as a “conservative.” If Santorum believes that the state has the right (or the obligation as the case may be) to enforce one narrow conception of morality, then Santorum isn’t a conservative at all, he’s a statist. Santorum got a lot of votes in Iowa from self described Tea Party supporters, but his message just doesn’t square with the ideas put forward by the Tea Party that we need less government involvement in our lives. What Santorum wants to do is expand the role of government, and grant more powers to the government. This is not acceptable for conservatives who think the government is already too big.

 

Finally, we’ve heard plenty about racist comments published in a Ron Paul sponsored newsletter from 20 years ago, but listen to what Santorum said only a few days ago in this clip from Democracy Now! Santorum made horribly racist comments about “Black Welfare recipients” which Santorum didn’t even seem to notice were racist. The relevant portion starts at 10:00 and continues for about a minute, but if you keep watching, you’ll see an interview with Ryan Rhodes, Co-Founder of the Iowa Tea Party wherein Rhodes says he doesn’t care about Santorum’s racism, but instead cares about “freedom” saying: “Our goal is to limit government at a federal level. We just do not want people dependant on the government because we do not believe that that makes you free.” This apparently applies to welfare recipients who are dependent on the government to eat, but not to moral crusaders who are dependent on the government to force citizens to behave in a certain way. The corporate media and the right wing has focused a lot on the supposed lack of coherence of the Occupy movement, but the tea party support for Santorum represents a profoundly incoherent position. The right wants the government out of the lives of individuals unless it is forcing them to act like the Tea Party.

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Dec
28

A Foolish Attempt at a Serious Review of a Less-Than-Serious Documentary

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A friend recently let me borrow a documentary called “The Bible vs. Joseph Smith.” It’s about why Mormonism is ridiculous, which I can easily go along with, but the main premise is that the Bible is better than the book of Mormon. To me this is like saying that the tooth fairy could beat up tinkerbell, but I really respect my friend, and I’m willing to watch the documentary if he recommends it. I decided to take notes on it to share with my readers. I honestly didn’t have very high hopes for this movie, but it was described as “smart”, so I’m willing to see what it’s got to say. Let’s get started. I have included timestamps at the start of each section so if you have a copy of the movie you can follow along if you’d like. The trailer is embeded below (warning: contains comically misplaced and overused power chords.)

This movie is a “living hope ministries production,” an organization that is openly biased against Mormonism and in favor of evangelical Christianity. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big problem (though it becomes one anyway), but the film should be taken with a grain of salt. The producers created this with an agenda in mind, and sadly it shows. The entire film centers around a conversation between two men: Joel Kramer, a Christian, and Greg Gifford, a Mormon. I have my doubts as to whether Greg is actually a Mormon, of if he’s an evangelical playing a Mormon character, but I started leaning towards the latter at the end of the movie when Greg exclaimed with teary eyes: “I don’t know what to believe anymore!” (yes, seriously).

The test of a prophet (00:00:30)

The first ideas explored here are the requirements set in the bible for a prophet. it is explained in the Bible in Deuteronomy 18:21-22

21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

00:03:00 - the movie wants to test the prophesies of the book of Mormon and see how they stack up against biblical prophets. The film makers claim that if a single prediction of a prophet fails, then the prophet should not only be considered wrong, but should be summarily executed. I shouldn’t have to explain why this sounds ridiculous to non-believers. I am going to risk my life by making a prediction here: I’ll bet that the standards by which the book of Mormon prophets are judged will be much harsher than the standard by which the Biblical prophets are judged, and when I bring up the rational wiki list of failed prophesies, there will be as many excuses are there are objections to the accuracy of the supposed prophets of the bible. “oh, that wasn’t meant to be taken literally” etc. Just as in Harold Camping’s face saving technique of the “spiritual, not bodily” rapture. Even reading the passage from Deuteronomy reveals a lot about the Christian attitude, since it basically says: “if a prediction someone makes comes true, then it was inspired by God, and if it doesn’t come true, then it was just some asshole, not God.” Great rules… Just like a 5 year old playing basketball who keeps blaming his missed shots on the wind. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered this type of thinking: Great news? Must be God / praise Jesus. Horrible Tragedy? Everything happens for a reason / The Lord works in mysterious ways / it’s all happening according to His plan. This is called confirmation bias, and it’s bullshit. Cut it out.

The Mormon Prophet Nephi (~ 00:08:30)

In the Book of Mormon, Nephi made some sort of prediction (it doesn’t really matter what the prediction was, because our friend Joel already knows its BS). Joel’s primary objection to nephi is that the prophesy was likely written after the fact. There are no manuscripts available to prove that Nephi’s prophesy was made before the event it was supposed to predict. This will be the standard by which we must judge all Biblical prophets throughout the remainder of the film – if we apply this standard only to Mormons, it is unfair. Will the film makers be fair? Let’s find out! The film interviews Dr. Christophe Rico, who says:

 “you know, tomorrow I can come and I can say: ‘look I have had a revelation from Heaven and this is the Holy Book, and all the other stuff is nonsense!’ I can do that. So the only guarantor of it is me. What does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything!” – Dr. Christophe Rico, Linguist 00:09:38

Dr. Rico made a fantastic case against Mormonism. I couldn’t wait to see why the Bible is completely different, unfortunately the case never quite gets made. The argument that is eventually made however is that there are more ancient manuscripts for the Christian Bible than for the Book of Mormon, and that those manuscripts are nearly identical. It is on this point that the film just blatantly lies about the consistency of the ancient manuscripts (at about 00:13:15) saying that they are all more or less identical, and that any manuscript that is different would be obvious. This is just false. I’d like the film makers to back up their claim that all 40,000 existing copies of the NT manuscripts are nearly identical. If this is true it should be very very easy to prove, just show me the manuscripts! Why didn’t they? Because it’s a lie. If you’re looking for an objective view, this ought to be enough to turn the movie off and walk away now – the film makers are obviously being dishonest. Dammit Joel! I had such high hopes for you!

at  00:13:30 the film uses the dead sea scrolls to attempt to prove this same point, but if you actually read them, you can see very clearly that they’re all very different. The Gnostic Gospels, the Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library  – they all show a massive variation from the ideas presented in the original canonical manuscripts, and the canonical manuscripts show massive variations among themselves. It’s clear that the film makers are counting on their viewers not doing any fact checking! This dishonesty is unreal! How can any informed person take this seriously? Dr. Rico goes on:

“when we compare all the ancient copies of the New Testament that we have, the differences are very small… they don’t effect the substance of the meaning. It is like saying instead of ‘but’ saying ‘however’.” – Dr. Christophe Rico

Really? Just tiny details? How about the story in the Gospel of John where the adulterer is caught, and the crowd wants to stone her, but Jesus stops them by saying “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Far from some small detail, this is actually one of the most famous parts of the New Testament. Most Biblical scholars, however, don’t believe it ever happened:

 “The story is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John; it’s writing style is very different from what we find in the rest of John… and it includes a large number of words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. The conclusion is unavoidable: this passage was not originally part of the Gospel.” – Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p65.

Another example is the end of the Gospel of Mark. It even says in the notes in my Bible that verses 9-20 are missing from the earliest manuscripts of this Gospel! This, again, is not a small, insignificant change! Among the verses that are missing in the oldest manuscripts is Mark 16:15-16:

“He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

The chapter concludes with Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. Clearly the entire message of the chapter is different when these verses are included. How can anyone claim that there are no major differences in the New Testament manuscripts? Obviously this is utterly ridiculous to anyone who has done any research on the subject. This Film has lost all credibility, and should at this point be considered nothing more than an anti-Mormon propaganda piece for Evangelical Christianity. I am very disappointed because there is plenty of material to use to criticize Mormonism, but when it is done in this horribly dishonest way it blunts the force of the criticism while simultaneously making Christianity look bad. This is not the way to go about making a convincing film. The Film makers have made several very insulting (or at least they ought to be insulting) assumptions about its viewers: 1) they are unaware of how the Bible came to be, 2) they will not fact check the film and will simply accept it as true.

This makes me wonder who the sources are for this movie who would make such glaring errors (perhaps deliberately). Dr. Christophe Rico is affiliated with “The University of the Holy Land”, accredited through the Asia Theological Association which is a Christian, not an Academic association. The ATA describes itself as “composed of theological educational institutions, committed to evangelical faith and scholarship, which are networking together, to serve the Church in equipping the people of God for the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Clearly this is not in line with established Academic standards, and should not be considered objective. If the Film Makers wanted to present a convincing case, they should have used sources that were objective (in this case, secular). If the case they are making is true, then the sources shouldn’t have to be biased towards the conclusion the film makers wanted to make from the start. It would be completely unfair to use a Mormon scholar as a primary resource in making the film. Why should we think it is acceptable to use someone who is Christian? The only appropriate course of action is to use an objective third party who has no vested interest in one side or the other being correct. Because the film makers did not bother to do that, we can assume that they are not interested in the truth, but rather in pushing their agenda on viewers. This level of bias is completely unacceptable. It’s interesting to point out that we do see several self described “secular” scholars later in the film, but their testimony is only used when it aligns with the agenda of the film makers, and no competing views (though they certainly exist) are given any consideration.

Testing the prophets in the Bible (00:18:00)

Micah 5:1-2 (00:19:00)

1 Marshal your troops now, city of troops,
for a siege is laid against us.
They will strike Israel’s ruler
on the cheek with a rod.

2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times.”

The prophesy of Micah that Christ will be Born in Bethlehem has always appeared to me to be good evidence against biblical prophesy rather than for it. A careful reading of the new testament exposes the Bethlehem story for what it is, a fabrication made to fit the prophesy that already existed. In order to bend events to conform to the Prophesy of Micah, the New Testament Gospel authors (just two of them though, the other two don’t even talk about Jesus’ birth) find some extremely creative ways to get Jesus to Bethlehem then back to Nazareth. The extent to which we must suspend our disbelief in order to get to the point where Jesus is born in Bethlehem strains credulity. The Gospel of Luke puts Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem for a census that for an unknown reason required everyone to return to their ancestral homeland (from which Joseph was 42 generations removed [luke 3:23-38])

The Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod (Matthew 2:1). Herod died in 4 BCE. The census for which Mary and Joseph returned to Bethlehem took place in 6 CE. It should be painfully obvious to anyone who hasn’t already accepted the conclusion proposed in the film that Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem fulfills Micah’s prophesy, that the author of the Gospel of Luke is bending over backwards to find a way to get Jesus into Bethlehem before he is born, precisely because he wants Jesus’ birth to conform to Micah’s prophesy.

If we are to hold Christianity to the standards that the film makers use for Mormonism, we should demand additional manuscripts (beyond Luke and Matthew) that back up the story. Not only do we not find these accounts, but even within the canonical Gospels there is no agreement! Luke says that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem for the dubious purpose of a very suspiciously arranged census that by the Bible’s own admission took place long after the birth of Jesus, but Matthew deals with the Bethlehem/Nazareth problem in a completely different way! In Matthew we are told the story of Herod who wants to kill Jesus, so Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus flee to Egypt where they wait until Herod dies before returning to Nazareth (Matthew 2). Of course Luke makes no mention of the business of fleeing from Herod, just as Matthew makes no mention of the census. In Luke, Mary and Joseph return to Nazareth not after fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod, but after they had “done everything required by the law of the lord” (Luke 2:39-40). Mark and John make no mention at all of the birth of Jesus. Perhaps this all makes perfect sense to someone who already believes it is true, but to an outsider, this story is a giant mess. Nobody can agree on anything, the reasons for Jesus being born in Bethlehem are obviously fabricated, and the authors (or editors) of these Gospels had great incentive to write them in such a way that they fulfill prophesy. The movie attempts to sidestep these problems by saying that Micah’s prophesy predates the “fulfillment” in the New Testament, and that very well may be, but without somehow verifying that the accounts in the New Testament are true, it doesn’t matter. Maybe in 2007 I predicted that John McCain would be president. It doesn’t matter if I actually did say it in 2007 because it didn’t come true in 2008. Being able to verify that the prophesy was made before the event it predicts is only half the work. How do we know Micah’s prophesy came true? Is our only evidence the Bible? If so we must reject this prophesy as being fulfilled because we cannot verify that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem, and any evidence we do have is unreliable at best. Even judging this by the same standards used against Mormonism it fails miserably.

Of course the film does go on to produce an archaeologist to back up their claims: Dr. Gabriel Barkay says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. What is his evidence? He doesn’t present any! Why should I believe him? He relies on his authority as an archaeologist to convince us that he is correct, but being an archaeologist doesn’t automatically make one right about all things related to archeology. This reminds me of those awful commercials for some widgit where the pitch gets interrupted for someone to say “I’m a scientist, so I know this product works.” Oh. Thanks, anonymous scientist. I guess it’s settled then! We need evidence for claims like this, and the complete lack of credible evidence from the film is quite disappointing, yet somehow not surprising. The film relies on this “appeal to authority” argument far too frequently, and they clearly expect their viewers to just eat it up. For a “smart” film, it sure does go out of it’s way to assume I’m pretty stupid. I won’t go into the Film’s treatment of Alma’s competing prophesy that Jesus would be born in Jerusalem. It is just as wrong as the prophesy of Micah for the same reasons.

Isaiah 16:5 (00:26:00)

5 In love a throne will be established;
in faithfulness a man will sit on it—
one from the house of David—
one who in judging seeks justice
and speeds the cause of righteousness.

Joel contends that Isaiah is here making a prophesy that Jesus will come from the ancestry of King David. I’m going to make this short and sweet because I am very tired of watching this movie. Jesus is supposed to be a descendant of King David, but his lineage is traced through Joseph, who is not biologically related to Jesus if the virgin birth is true. This is prima facie absurd. If Jesus was born of a virgin, he’s not descended from King David. End of Story. The genealogy of Jesus can be found in the Bible in Luke 3:23-38 and Matthew 1:1-17, and to make matters worse, once we get to Jesus’ grandfather, the two accounts of Jesus’ lineage are completely inconsistent with one another. Not a prophesy. Case closed.

David – Psalm 22:16 (~00:30:00)

16 Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.

In the above passage, David supposedly predicted that Jesus would be crucified. How are we to verify that the old testament prophesy is genuine? How are we to verify that it was not modified later? Was the author of the prophesy even talking about crucifixion? Why did David say “pierced” instead of “hung on a cross?” Why wasn’t David more specific about who would have their hands and feet pierced? I’m left with a lot of questions here. The movie claims that we have a manuscript from 100 BCE that backs up this prophesy, but by 100 BCE, crucifixion was already a common method of execution for over 500 years. Why is this so impressive? That would be like someone in 18th century France predicting that someone would die by decapitation, or someone in 19th century America predicting that someone would die by hanging. It’s not that difficult to guess the most common method of execution, is it? You know what would have been less ambiguous? If instead, David said something like: “the ratio of a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter is roughly equal to 3.14159265359” That would be a heck of a lot more impressive (not to mention useful). Is that beyond the capability of an all knowing all powerful being?

Daniel 9:26 (00:35:30)

26 After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

Our pal Joel takes significant liberties here when he reads the prophesy, by changing out 3 very important words from the original prophesy (his “interpretation”) in order to make it fit the actual events it supposedly predicted. This is an incredibly vague prophesy, much like the ones Nostradamus made. It can be interpreted in so many ways that it could fit nearly any event, especially if we’re allowed to change it after the fact. If I’m allowed to change any three words out of one of my predictions, then I’ll bet you $1,000 I know who will win the Superbowl this year.

William lane Craig talks about the resurrection story (00:40:30)

Two things:

1) William Lane Craig is a creationist Christian hack who has a terrible reputation outside of the Evangelical community, who should only be interviewed in an intellectually honest documentary when contrasted with someone of a competing viewpoint, as he is clearly about as biased a source as you can possibly find within any discipline.

2) the Biblical accounts of the resurrection are perhaps the best example of the disjointed and inconsistent nature of the Gospels specifically, and of the New Testament in general. Here are some of the inconsistencies I have found in the various accounts of the resurrection as told in the Gospels:

  • There was one angel present: Matt 28:2
  • There were two angels present: John 20:11-12
  • There was a young man present: Mark 16:5
  • There were two men present: Luke 24:4
  • The angel rolled the stone away from the tomb: Matt 28:2
  • The stone was already rolled away from the tomb: Luke 24:2, John 20:1, Mark 16:4
  • Mary and Mary Magdalene found the body was missing: Matt 28:1, Luke 24:1-3
  • Simon Peter and an unnamed disciple found the body was missing: John 20:6-7
  • Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome found the body was missing Mark 16:1-8
  • Mary and Mary Magdalene told the disciples what they saw: Matt 28:8, Luke 24:9
  • Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome told no one what they saw: Mark 16:8
  • Mary Magdalene told Simon Peter and an unnamed disciple what she saw: John 20:1-2
  • Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene in the tomb: John 20:10-18
  • Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene after she left the tomb: Mark 16:9
  • Jesus appeared first to Mary and Mary Magdalene outside of the tomb: Matt 28:8-10
  • Jesus appeared first to Cleopas and Simon on the road to Emmaus: Luke 24:13-35

William Lane Craig attempts to explain this madness at 00:42:28

“we have multiple, independent, early witnesses to the facts of Jesus’ empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection, and its on that basis that the majority of new testament historians have come to believe that these are in fact historical pay dirt and belong to the portrait of the historical Jesus that we can reconstruct.

When I weigh the historical evidence pertinent to the historical Jesus and the various competing hypothesis to explain this evidence, then I am convinced, objectively an honestly, that the best explanation of this evidence is the hypothesis that the original eye witnesses gave, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and for that reason I think that this was a historical event.”

I don’t know what world William Lane Craig is living in, but magic is not a part of any history I am aware of. We would seem to have so many witnesses to the resurrection because of the above Biblical contradictions, not because it actually happened. This situation would be similar to one where a husband comes home late, and when his wife asks him where he had been he responds: “I was with Larry, no. I mean… I was with Chuck… no. Bill. That’s it, I was with Bill.” What sane person would say: “Oh, well I hope Larry, Chuck, and Bill are doing well.” Of course no one would – but In the world of William Lane Craig, multiple, distinct, mutually exclusive accounts of a single event can all still count as evidence towards the event. I’d like to hear a real historian’s perspective here in addition to Craig, but of course we won’t, because this is Christian propaganda and not a legitimate documentary.

Too much time passed between the events of the bible, and the writing of the book of Mormon (00:55:00)

Our protagonist Joel spends some time criticizing Joseph Smith for rewriting scripture 1700 years after the death of Jesus. This, I believe, is a potent criticism, but it also applies to Christianity. Joel argues that John was the author of the Gospel according to John, which no biblical scholar really believes. It is well known that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and it wasn’t actually recorded until about 50-70CE. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very similar, and are known as the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew and Luke were likely based on Mark, and Mark was likely based on a document called Q. John was written much later, and it is not likely that any of the Gospels were written by people who knew Jesus personally. If it is a real criticism to say that there is a long period of time between when the gospel was written and when it occurred, then it applies just as much to the canonical gospels. I think this movie is taking it for granted that Christians don’t know how the Bible was written. It’s like they think Jesus and the Disciples sat down and wrote the New Testament at the last supper or something. To be fair, most Christians I have met do believe that the Gospels were written by the author claimed in the title (though no scholars do) and that they were written during or shortly after Jesus’ lifetime (though no scholars believe that either). If this film is going to pretend to be an authority on anything it should at least pretend to approach this topic in a scholarly way.

 Logical Consistency (01:10:00)

Here’s where Joel really pulls it together and puts the finishing touches on his argument against Greg’s stupid, stupid religious beliefs.

“this [the Bible] is what I believe and I believe in this alone, and I don’t believe that is foolish to do so. This [The Book of Mormon] I have a problem with because there are so many contradictions between this [The Book of Mormon] and this [The Bible] that to believe in all of that logically doesn’t work.”

At the end of the film, Joel concludes that there are just too many contradictions between the Bible and the Book of Mormon to believe both, and he’s right, but I think if he turned that skeptical eye towards the Bible alone, he would find that just believing in the Bible presents too many logical contradictions to work. It is absolutely astounding that someone can be so skeptical of someone else’s ridiculous religion while simultaneously accepting their own equally ridiculous religion unquestioningly. Stephen F. Roberts summarized this concept very well when he said:

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

I hope any Christian who watches this movie takes the time to apply all the same objections to their own faith and see if it stands up under a similar level of scrutiny. Plain and simple: it doesn’t. The reason the Book of Mormon is nonsense is the exact same reason why the Bible is nonsense – They’re both long, uninformed, rambling books written by uneducated people in unenlightened times that carry with them no real value. I fail to see how it is possible to use these methods to dismiss one and not both.

This is the point in the movie where Greg has his breakdown. “I’m so confused, I don’t know what to believe any more!” he cries, having just been taken down by Joel, an intellectual superman, with arguments like “that logically doesn’t work.” Greg tells Joel that he’s going to have to do a lot of studying to find the answer to the potent challenges Joel has given him, which, if my experience is any indication, likely means he’ll read the Book of Mormon for a while, accept it blindly again, and ignore Joel’s phone calls so that he doesn’t have to think about it any more. I mean, why should he waste his time fact checking his own religion when he already knows it’s infallible, amiright?

Conclusion

Sometimes I think my Christian friends think that I’m not A Christian because I’m not familiar with the types of arguments that are made in this movie. That’s certainly not the case, in fact in many ways, it is precisely because I am familiar with these kinds of arguments that I’m not a Christian. Apologetics fails for a very simple reason: if we are to come to walk with God through faith, then no amount of evidence is sufficient to bring someone to God. If we are supposed to believe based on faith alone, then evidence is always irrelevant, no matter how good.

Even in the absence of the requirement for faith, the evidence I have been presented with here (and elsewhere) completely fails to paint a convincing picture. I would imagine that if God did exist, and he intended for us to use evidence in the natural world to find him, we would have much better evidence than this. This is obviously not the case (because if it was then every knee would bow and every tongue would confess to God [Rom 14:11]), so any time someone tells me that they have great arguments for God’s existence it’s a bit of a joke to me. I thought faith was primary! We shouldn’t need arguments! In this sense, you really have to choose between faith and evidence. If you think we should believe through faith, then why waste your time bothering with evidence? If faith is belief in the absence of evidence, and you think that convincing evidence exists, then why do we need faith?

The question of God is either true or it isn’t, and we can either prove it or we can’t. If it is true, and we can prove it, why haven’t we? If it is true and we can’t prove it, why bother with evidence? If it’s not true (whether we can prove it or not) then it doesn’t matter! No matter which way you go with this, apologetics fails.

Nobody questions the truth of gravity because it is not only obvious, but we have copious amounts of evidence for it. People do question the existence of God because there is neither any evidence nor is his existence obvious. All it will take for me to believe in God is evidence of his existence in the natural world, which shouldn’t be hard to find if, as Christians say, he routinely intervenes in the natural world. He’s either making a difference in our observable reality or he isn’t. If he is, there should be incontrovertible evidence, and if he isn’t, then his existence or non-existence is irrelevant. If you actually have solid proof of God’s existence, you’ll be the first person in the history of the world to have it, and if you don’t, then whatever you do have is unconvincing. Here’s my challenge to theists: put up or shut up.

This film was absolutely ridiculous. I have given my friend a long list of books to read, of which I am unaware of any that he has finished. I have taken a significant amount of time reading his suggested books, watching these positively atrocious movies, and I’ve gotten absolutely nothing in return. This movie was described to me as “intellectual” and it is in fact the exact opposite of that: intellectually dishonest, shamefully uninformed, quick to hide contrary evidence, and apt to assume that viewers would be too stupid to notice. This is a propaganda piece – it is totally detached from any reality but the warped echo chamber of evangelical Christianity, and it contains nothing of redeeming value. What’s worse is that every argument the film makes against Mormonism applies just as well to Christianity, but nobody seems to notice! This is the religious equivalent of the Fa href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Gospels” “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”ord/Chevy debate.

I have wasted my time and yours, and I apologize for even considering the possibility of writing a real response to this nonsense. There is nothing of merit to actually respond to, and I can’t even approach it logically, because it was not itself created with logic in mind – you can’t win a game when there are no established rules, but this type of Christian drivel does one worse: it plays by the rule of “anything I say is right, and anything my opponent says is wrong.” Why should I even try when the deck is stacked against me in such a way? I think most people are smart enough to see past the smoke and mirrors, and this is probably why the church is losing members and the “nones” are growing. For those interested in numbers: there was a 10% decline in those who claim to be Christian from 1990 to 2008, and 7% increase in those claiming no affiliation over the same time period.

This movie represents a major deficit on the part of Christian apologetics that should not be ignored by serious Christians. People are smarter than Christians give them credit for, and gone are the days when it is sufficient to simply scare people with the threat of hell, or tempt them with the reward of heaven. This is the 21st century, and this movie is a perfect example of Christianity struggling to keep its head above water – Religion is becoming less and less relevant, and people know it. The more educated we become, the less this sort of thing is acceptable, and the harder Christians are going to have to try in order to win converts, however they’re doing a horrible job. Listen very closely when I say this: Your religion will be more or less relegated to the dustbin of history in less than 100 years if you don’t stop making nonsense like this. How much longer can you afford to lose 5% of your adherents every decade until the bottom drops out? People are leaving the church because of this garbage, because they see it for what it is. I have probably said this many times before, but I don’t ever want to waste my time on this bullshit again. I’m walking away. I’ve been pushed past the point of no return. Not only does there seem to be no possibility of believing in the existence of God, but there seems to be no possibility of taking religion seriously. Until I hear a cogent argument (I haven’t heard anything good since Kierkegaard, and even he was seriously lacking) I can’t do anything but laugh, because if even Christians can’t seem to take their own arguments seriously, why should I?

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Dec
06

Dealing With False Teachers

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When Christians tell me that since I’m an atheist I probably don’t live a good life because I must subscribe to a petty, unfulfilling, selfish notion of the world;

They are essentially making the argument that my philosophy causes me to ignore true suffering.

That my devotion to the things which I believe to be true, but which they find laughable, causes me to become blind to the real problems in the world.

That because I surround myself with people who think and behave similarly, I create a self perpetuating cycle of misguided ideas, designed only to reaffirm my own false perceptions without ever challenging them, and without truly considering competing views.

And that because I live this way, I have exacerbated the problems of the world, either passively by refusing to address them, or actively by spreading my destructive way of life…

To this criticism I reply: “that is exactly my objection to Christianity.”

 

 

note: The title is borrowed from 2 Timothy:

“ 22 Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.” – 2 tim 2:22-23

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Dec
03

The Case Against Facebook

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Fed up with constant threats to privacy, data mining, targeted ads, unpatched security vulnerabilities, and a privacy policy willing to share any and all data with the US government, I finally decided to quit Facebook many months ago. Since then, I have felt as if an entire invisible civilization exists just beyond my reach as it seems to be the De facto method of all human interaction, at least among those in my age group. In this alternate reality, a longtime friend eloped, then published his account of the event for the whole world to see, including photos and video, which was available mere minutes after the fact. About a month later he called me, embarrassed that he forgot that I no longer live in that reality, and told me about everything I had missed. It’s not just him. I have lost touch with nearly every friend I have ever had except those who I live close enough to see on a regular basis. I suppose it isn’t that bad though considering that most of the people who have suddenly disappeared from my life were last close to me in 6th grade or some other long gone part of ancient history. It seems as if the natural social order has been disturbed. It used to be the case that the kid you knew in 3rd grade who ate his boogers behind the jungle gym at recess always remained 7 years old, he just sort of disappeared. Now it turns out he moved to San Francisco to become an IT expert? I don’t have room for this level of information. Theres just something unsettling about knowing all that; about being responsible for maintaining such an extensive database of social information. Does anyone in real life actually have 900 friends? We’re just not built for this sort of thing.

Though I do feel like I am absolutely missing out on some huge (800 million person strong) party that’s going in full-swing without me, I also feel a strong sense of relief, as if I’ve finally woken up from a long and disorienting dream. I was reading a dead-tree edition of a recently published e-book on my porch when I saw 3 people walk down the sidewalk together, all furiously typing away at smart phone keyboards, presumably texting the people they’d rather be walking with, or perhaps updating the world via twitter on the exact nature of the street’s topography. The scene made me laugh out loud, and not one of them noticed. Where is everybody?

I have brought these and other concerns to the attention of my few remaining friends, and none of them seem quite as concerned about any of it. I think I’m abnormally tech-savvy for being such a Luddite. In my free time I like to experiment with LAMP server administration, web development, coding in various languages, and general hardware hacking / tinkering. I worry that one of the reasons my friends are so remarkably unconcerned is that they don’t have the same level of knowledge about what’s actually going on behind the scenes with the technology they’re using. I wanted to write a comprehensive post to once and for all explain every aspect of my opposition to Facebook, so that years from now when my descendants try to look me up in the joint government-Facebook archive, they aren’t so confused about why their great-grand father seems to have never existed.

Many of my objections are technical, many have to do with the current political climate and laws regulating government access to cloud data, and others (as described above) are purely social. I want to explain each reason for why I deleted my Facebook account, and why I believe you should too. I have separated these reasons into multiple sections.

Facebook’s lack of commitment to privacy or security

“[Social networking] Made [hacking] easier. I can go into LinkedIn and search for network engineers and come up with a list of great spear-phishing targets because they usually have administrator rights over the network. Then I go onto Twitter or Facebook and trick them into doing something, and I have privileged access. If I know you love Angry Birds, maybe I would send you an e-mail purporting to be from Angry Birds with a new pro version. Once you download it, I could have complete access to everything on your phone.” – Kevin Mitnick

 

as described in the privacy policy / terms of use

You can access Facebook’s Data Use Policy (privacy policy), and their Terms of Use online. If you have an account, and you haven’t done so recently (or at all) I highly recommend that you read both of these documents. As an account holder, they’re legally binding agreements about nearly everything that you do on the site, and it’s probably good to know exactly where all that data you post is going and how it will be used. If you don’t have time to do that (face it – you’ve never read either of them, have you?) don’t worry – I read them, and similar to the way many people read the Bible for the first time and decide they don’t want to be Christians anymore, I think reading either privacy document ought to be enough for you to walk, but if not I plan to give you plenty of other reasons.

The Data Use Policy

This document has undergone many changes. Facebook updates the policy almost constantly despite the fact that users only have to agree to it once (when signing up for an account). This was called out as a dishonest practice since users should realistically have to opt-in to privacy policy changes rather than having them be automatic – imagine signing a 2 year cell phone contract only to find that after 1 year your carrier modified the contract to 20 years at 5x the price without your consent. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission charged Facebook with misleading its users and intentionally violating their privacy, and the case was settled late last month (though it won’t be final until the end of the year). Facebook has agreed to be better about privacy this time. Mark Zuckerberg apologized and promised not to do it again, so… case closed I guess. The current version of the policy says that no matter your privacy settings, some information will always be public including your name, profile picture, network, and user name or user id number. This might not sound too horrible, but in the case of the user id number, there are some very serious security concerns presented by being able to resolve the number into a real name because it is used in lots of places across both Facebook and as it turns out, the entire internet, effectively destroying your anonymity in places completely unaffiliated with Facebook. More on this later.

Terms of Use

The Terms of Use document is telling. It’s completely one-sided, and I’m sure you can already guess who’s going to come out on top of any dispute. When it comes to intellectual property rights (i.e. rights to the photos and videos you post) it turns out that as long as there is a copy of something on Facebook, it can be used in any way Facebook sees fit (including the right to allow third parties to use the media) without giving you credit or compensation:

“you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”

Think about what this means. You might have a great photo of yourself on your profile, then one day see the same photo used as part of an anti-abortion ad campaign, or on a billboard for Pepsi. Facebook has denied that this is a possibility, but go ahead and reread the excerpt above. They’d be completely within their rights if they did it, and according to an article in Wired, it has already happened, even if on a small scale.

The next item in the Terms of Use that is worrisome concerns legal disputes. If you have a legal dispute with Facebook, you agree to settle the dispute in Court in Santa Clara County, California. Want to sue Facebook, but live in Thailand? Better get your ass on a plane.

“You will resolve any claim, cause of action or dispute (claim) you have with us arising out of or relating to this Statement or Facebook exclusively in a state or federal court located in Santa Clara County. The laws of the State of California will govern this Statement, as well as any claim that might arise between you and us, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of the courts located in Santa Clara County, California for the purpose of litigating all such claims.”

You also agree that nothing is ever Facebook’s fault, If they leak your data, or if your account or identity become compromised, or if anything bad ever happens, you agree that it’s your fault and not Facebook’s (caps in original):

“If anyone brings a claim against us related to your actions, content or information on Facebook, you will indemnify and hold us harmless from and against all damages, losses, and expenses of any kind (including reasonable legal fees and costs) related to such claim…WE ARE PROVIDING FACEBOOK AS IS WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES… WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT FACEBOOK WILL BE SAFE OR SECURE.”

The above should illustrate pretty clearly that Facebook does not have your interests in mind, and they are more interested in harvesting your content for profit, but that’s just the stuff they tell you! It’s difficult to see the exact extent of their abuse of your trust, unless of course you live in Europe.

Europe Versus Facebook

European citizens are entitled to a copy of all data any company holds on them via the European Data Protection Law. A website called Europe Versus Facebook (http://europe-v-facebook.org) has demonstrated how this law can be used to get a copy of all personal data Facebook holds – showcasing the length that Facebook goes to build extensive records on all of its users. In many cases, European Citizens who requested information were given a PDF over over 1,000 pages including every message sent or received, every friend, every friend request (accepted or not), every login (including date, time, IP address, and any other login from other users on the same IP address.) even every poke. Take a look at the data categories included in the released PDFs here, or have a look at some (redacted) example PDFs on the same page to get a sense of the extensive nature of Facebook’s data mining operation. The biggest thing we should take away from Europe Versus Facebook is that literally nothing that you do on the site is private. From the pages you like, to your religion, to people you have unfriended – everything you have ever done is kept in a file maintained on Facebook’s servers, some of it indefinitely.

Facebook Photo Security

Photos are a huge HUGE part of Facebook. According to their own blog, over 250 million new photos are uploaded each and every day. That’s 1.75 billion photos per week. That’s just over a metric fuck-ton for those keeping score. I have made a few posts in the past (here, and here) about the security of Facebook photos. The basic problem is that Facebook is so massive, and it contains so many photos that they have to be served from a completely different location than the majority of the rest of the operation. Facebook uses what’s known as a “content delivery network” (CDN) to serve photos. You may see that many of the direct links to your photos start with “static.ak.fbcdn” or just “fbcdn.” This stands for (presumably) facebook content delivery network. Because the photos are served from a completely different location, there is no security associated with them. There is no form of authentication to ensure that people who look at the photos fall within the groups you define on the main site. Seriously – try it yourself. Grab a Facebook photo url associated with your account, then log out of Facebook and try to look at it. It’ll still work. Try it on your phone, or someone else’s computer or phone, try it at the library – it’ll always work with no password or login necessary.

What’s worse is that if you inspect your photo URL carefully, you will see that it’s mostly numbers separated by underscores. These numbers actually mean something, but to save time (especially since I’ve explained it before) I’ll just explain the important one. the third-to-last number is your user ID (sometimes starting with 100000), which is associated with you real name (I mentioned earlier in the post that there are some reasons why it’s dangerous to be able to easily resolve user numbers to real names). Here’s a trick – grab a Facebook photo url. Now look at just the third-to-last number. Strip off the leading 100000 if there is one. Now add it to this URL: “https://graph.facebook.com/[enter number here and delete the brackets]?metadata=1” when you enter this url into a browser, you’ll see your real name and some other information about yourself. Now imagine you have a cool picture of yourself on Facebook. Let’s say you downloaded that photo and then uploaded it to your website without changing its name. Anyone who looked at that photo could use its filename to identify you. Because of these insecurities, researchers were able to write a program that correctly guessed the urls of private photos given only a user id number.

I know of a website for a local restaurant in my town that was registered by proxy (the name of the person who registered the site is hidden), but they put up several Facebook photos without modifying them. Even though they clearly wish to remain anonymous, there their name is, for anyone to see. Perhaps this isn’t such a huge problem, but then again, how many other people have inadvertently shared data about themselves this way? Believe it or not we can get an idea of the answer to this question – go to http://www.reddit.com/domain/fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/ to see all the photos linked to reddit.com from a section of Facebook’s CDN. You can use the above trick to identify the real name associated with what these Reddit users probably intended to be a largely or entirely anonymous post. I once used this technique to reveal the name of a reddit user and I was called creepy. It’s odd – when I do it with one person it’s creepy. When Facebook does it with 800 million its a business model. Think about that. To be fair you shouldn’t publicly reveal the names of the people that post these types of photos. They didn’t intend for their name to be out there, and it’s not right to screw over innocent end-users to punish a company that’s screwing them worse but doing it quietly. The right course of action is to bring the security problems to light and hope that the company in question fixes them, or convince end-users that the service is insecure.
Facebook has acknowledged that you can convert a user id number into a real name in their data use policy (because they did it intentionally). Facebook does not consider this photo filename issue to be a problem. It is a feature. From the FB data use policy: “someone with your Username or User ID can access information about you through our APIs, such as our Graph API. Specifically, they can access your public information, along with your age range, locale (or language) and gender.” This brings us to the next issue.

The Facebook Graph API

Facebook publishes a set of standards and tools in order to help developers to build apps. the facebook API (application programming interface), can be and has been abused. It isn’t necessarily third party API hooligans that are causing the problem either. In fact, it’s right there in the API itself. Again its a feature, not a bug. To see one way this information can be used to expose the data of those who most likely never intended to share it, check out http://youropenbook.org/.

Every time you install an app on your Facebook page, you authorize it to access certain information contained in your profile. Once you grant permission for an app to do something on your behalf, or to access certain information, you must be aware that you have opened the door for a third party (someone other than you or Facebook) to have access to your account data and to control certain aspects of your account (e.g. when farmville makes a post on your wall about your accomplishments in-game, what’s actually happening is that a computer program, acting on your behalf, reads your data and modifies your account). Doing so requires a certain level of trust between the user and the third party, but unfortunately it is not obvious to most people what they are actually consenting to when they install a third party app.

Different apps will have different permissions, and app access to your account is controlled via an “access token,” a sort of second password for your account that only the third-party app is (or should be) able to use, and which is restricted to the permissions you consented to during the app installation. About 6 months ago Symantec revealed that there was a major flaw in the way access tokens were transmitted, and it was possible to steal access tokens, granting other parties the same access to your Facebook account as the app associated with the leaked access token. This vulnerability existed from the time apps were released on Facebook in 2007 until it was fixed in 2011. If you had a Facebook account with a third party app installed during this time, it is possible that your private data made its way into the hands of someone with whom you never intended to share it. This security breech represents a massive oversight on the part of Facebook, and it is not characteristic of a company that cares at all about your privacy or security of your data, and to entrust so much to a company that cares so little seems irresponsible at best. If you wouldn’t keep your money at a bank that accidentally forgot to lock its vault for 4 years straight, you probably shouldn’t interact at all with Facebook, and I think the fact that people continue to do so is more a product of a lack of understanding of the technology they are using than it is a conscious decision to use a product in spite of such massive shortcomings.

Facebook tracks you across the internet, even when you’re not logged in, and even if you don’t have an account

“Facebook’s real customers are the companies who actually pay them for this data [that is collected about us], and for access to our eyeballs in the form of advertisements. The hours Facebook users put into their profiles and lists and updates is the labor that Facebook then sells to the market researchers and advertisers it serves… on Facebook we’re not the customers. We are the product.” – Douglass Rushkoff

Like Buttons

The Facebook like button as displayed on Salon.com

When facebook.com is blocked, salon.com still displays fine but the like button disappears

 

like buttons are featured on nearly 1 million websites across the internet. When a user loads a website that features a like button, the website contacts facebook through an “iframe.” I’ll come back to the like buttons, but before I do, you need to understand iframes, user-agents, and some other basic web development stuff. Feel free to skip this section if this isn’t new information.

ip addresses, iframes, user-agents, and referrers

When building a website it is possible to allow website users to view a third-party website in a small window called an “iframe” within their site. It works as follows: a user enters a web address into their web browser (e.g. www.foo.com). When foo.com loads, there is a small window within it that loads another outside website (e.g. www.bar.com). We call foo.com the “parent”, and bar.com the “child”. The next important thing to know is that your browser always reports certain information to the websites it visits. This information can be important in helping web developers to serve content correctly. It makes sense to know, for example, if a website visitor is using a regular computer or an iphone, or if they are running windows or mac os, so that appropriate content can be served – because this information is available, a website can do things like offer a windows download to windows users, and mac downloads to mac os users on the same page. Information reported by your browser to every website you visit includes things like your operating system, browser type, monitor size, browser window size, and most recently visited website (called the “referrer”). When you go to Google and search for a website, then click the first link that appears, the website you visit knows that you got there by searching Google because of your referrer, and this can present some obvious benefits to people who run websites – it’s always useful to know how your customers found you. When you load a site that has an iframe, referrers work a little differently; the parent site sees your referrer as whatever site you most recently viewed (like Google if you got there via a search), but the child iframe site sees your referrer as the parent site. Another piece of information reported to every website you visit is your ip address (a unique number associated with your internet connection that can be traced back to you personally). Check here if you want to know your current ip address. Ip addresses themselves contain certain identifiable information, like your general geographic location (usually within 30 or so miles of where you are)

How the like button works

with or without tracking-cookies, and regardless of whether or not you are logged in to a Facebook account, Facebook still has the potential to track users across the internet via its omnipresent like buttons. Every time you log in to Facebook your ip address is logged. We know because of Europe versus Facebook that every Facebook account has an associated “permanent record” that includes every ip that has ever been used to access the site, as well as a list of any other accounts that have accessed the site from the same ip – essentially allowing Facebook to build a database of households: a list of accounts that are associated with the same ip address roughly translates to a list of accounts that are either maintained by the same person, or separate people living in the same residence. This is presumably one way in which Facebook makes guesses about “people you may know”.

when you visit a site that contains a Facebook like button, the like button loads in an iframe on the parent site. Your browser will report all the items mentioned above to both the parent site and to Facebook. When your browser reports your referrer, it is the website you are looking at (because the referrer for an iframe is the parent site), and Facebook, like every website you visit, will also know your ip address. Essentially this means that every time you look at a site that contains a like button, you are letting Facebook track your web browsing habits, and due to the number of sites that contain like buttons, Facebook more or less has a complete history of your use of the internet.

If you have or have ever had a Facebook account, Facebook has your name and associated ip address, so every time you load a “like” button, Facebook is able to track both who you are and what website you’re looking at, but this should be equally distressing even if you don’t have an account. Facebook has given me no reason to believe that this information is not logged – this is in fact the exact business that Facebook is in, so it would be tremendously irresponsible (from a business perspective) for them not to log it. I would imagine that this is actually what the like button is for. Speculation isn’t even necessary though as Facebook mentions this in their data use policy: “We receive data when you visit a site with a social plugin. We keep this data for 90 days. After that, we remove your name or any other personally identifying information from the data, or combine it with other people’s data in a way that it is no longer associated with you.” In other words: Facebook has a list of nearly every website you have looked at for the last 90 days. This means that because of the Patriot act and similar legislation (which I will discuss shortly) the US government (since Facebook is based in the US) has access to the same information. It is conceivable that your government accesses and updates this information every 90 days, so that a complete profile of your browsing data is constantly being maintained and updated, and as I will explain, this is likely the reality.

Super-Cookies

Last August it was revealed that Facebook uses cookies (a file placed on your computer by a website to manage your active sessions for things like shopping carts or remembering site preferences) that are not deleted, and remain active when users log out of the site. The cookies contain personally identifiable information in the form of the Facebook user id number discussed above. These cookies could potentially be used by other websites to track uniquely identified users across the internet, creating a record of every website visited, and associating this list of web activity with your ip address and real name using a completely different method than used in the previous section. Facebook’s use of these so-called “super-cookies” was one reason for an FTC investigation of the company that I already mentioned. the problem of Facebook’s tracking schemes does not apply only to Facebook users. Facebook’s use of super-cookies, as well as the “like buttons” track users and non-users alike. This sort of pervasive tracking is Facebook’s stock and trade. It is how the company makes money. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Facebook would engage in this type of behavior, but what should be surprising is that such behavior seems to be so routine.

Facial Recognition

Facebook uses facial recognition software to add tags to photos. This software is so dangerous that it has pushed Computer Science pioneer and free software advocate Richard Stallman to ask people not to post photos of him on Facebook, and Germany has openly declared that it is outright illegal. It might not be easy to immediately see why this is dangerous, but perhaps this video will help you to understand why this is a big deal. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a mobile app that allows users to take a photo of a stranger, and find the stranger’s name, address, phone number, and even social security number. This is possible because Social Security Numbers are not random. The app relies on data and photos taken from Facebook. Remember that with recent changes to Facebook’s data use policy, profile pictures are always public, and are always linked to your real name. Black Hat 2011 featured a must-watch talk by Alessandro Acquisti called “Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality” which fully demonstrates the problem at the heart of this issue, including a full demonstration of a similar mobile app capable of guessing SSNs from live photos.

 

 The US Government has full access to everything on Facebook, and has demonstrated an interest in collecting all available data

 

“Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo– all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use. Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.” – Julian Assange

 

compliance with government orders for information

Facebook will share information about you with any government when the request is consistent with the law in that jurisdiction:

“We may share your information in response to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so. This may include responding to legal requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law in that jurisdiction, affects users in that jurisdiction, and is consistent with internationally recognized standards.”

If Facebook will share your data any time the law requires them to do so, we must then ask: “when does the law require Facebook to share my information?” Let’s set aside the fact that Facebook has stated that they are willing to share any and all information about you with any world government who asks as long as they comply with their own laws and instead explore a single question: what is the likelihood of the US government making such a request, and what is the likelihood that such a request would be legal in the US?

Why should I think the US Government has an interest in looking at what I post online?

Massive expansion of Government and Private-Sector intelligence industry post 9-11

I promised myself that this article would not devolve into an extended rant about the death of the 4th amendment, but Facebook’s own data use policy says that the terms under which it will release information to a government are set by the government asking for the data, and it would seem that I have no choice, so without further ado…

First things first: what is the likelihood that the US government would have an interest in making such a request to Facebook? If the past is any indication, the answer is “extremely high”. Starting in about 2001, only discovered in 2005, and probably still running today, the US government had/has a program of complete surveillance of all domestic communication: land line, cell phone, web browsing, email, everything. This isn’t some x-files level conspiracy; AT&T whistle blower Mark Klein provided substantial evidence of a secret NSA room at an AT&T office that split all communications, sending a copy of everything that came through the office to the NSA. If the NSA is engaging in this behavior it’s hard to believe they aren’t interested in Facebook. If it can happen at AT&T, why shouldn’t we assume that it’s happening at Facebook?

Beyond this, there has been an explosion in the use of classified information by governments and contractors. In 2010, the Washington Post published a high profile expose’ called “Top Secret America” that documents the massive post 9-11 expansion of the security industry. According to one report in the project, 50,000 intelligence reports are published each year, by any of 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 different locations in the US. The number of companies creating security or surveillance products is huge, and increasingly they are exporting their work to other countries like Egypt and Syria. Wikileaks has recently started a new project called The Spyfiles to expose the activities of these companies. In August, IBM announced that it would be building the world’s largest storage array at 120 petabytes (125,829,120 gigabytes) for an anonymous client. Clearly the market for this sort of thing is huge, and the US Government has demonstrated a willingness to participate fully.

USAF “Persona Management”

It isn’t just surveillance. The US has recognized the importance of social networking, and social media, and has recently gotten involved in attempting to sway public opinion through the use of such technology. Using fake profiles and “persona management” software, the United States Air Force maintained accounts at various websites for up to 10 fake personas for every one real person controlling them.

Government spyware

Finally and perhaps most bewilderingly we face the possibility of government use of malware/spyware. Recently the Chaos Computer Club discovered what is called the Bundestrojan” (“Federal Trojan”) spyware, also known as “R2D2″ or “0zapftis.” Germany was caught using spyware against its own citizens, and has admitted selling the same software to other governments. It would be foolish to believe that Germany would do this and the US would not.

Is it legal for the US Government to request that Facebook share personal information?

I think the above proves the the US government at least has a desire to access any and all available data about every American, but is it legal? The preeminent law in the US governing access to information about US citizens is the Patriot Act. Under the Patriot Act, the US government as well as local law enforcement have pretty much unchecked power to search or seize anything (or any data) that they want. We could discuss the Patriot Act here in much greater depth, but it might turn out to be an exercise in futility, as it has been revealed that there is a secret government “interpretation” of the law. In the parlance of our times the full scope of the patriot act is a “known unknown.” What we know about the patriot act is that the FBI can search or seize any tangible thing without a warrant (section 215), it allows the government to bypass constitutional checks and balances via “national security letters” that claim such checks would compromise national security, and the government can use a “sneak and peek warrant” to raid a home, search or seize property, and not even bother to notify the subject of the search. This is what we know, and according to Senator Ron Wyden (D – Oregon), what we don’t know is much worse.

Beyond the 4th amendment busting usurpations of the post 9-11 executive branch, other previously existing laws only make matters worse. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), though 25 years old, is still one of the most comprehensive digital privacy laws in existence in America. One of its more worrisome provisions states that if data has been stored online (or if you’re into bullshit buzzwords “in the cloud”) for more than 6 months, it can be accessed by the government without a warrant as it is considered “abandoned”. Police departments are able to legally and warantlessly search trash left on the curb for pickup under similarly worded provisions in other laws. The US government is both willing and able to catalog everything you do on Facebook.

Facebook changes the way we think and interact

“[Facebook] know[s] that if you’re a 30-something woman and you see that your female friends have uploaded pictures of themselves, you’re likely to upload a picture of yourself in the next month. And they know that if you do that, that your male friends are very likely to comment on that picture, and they know that if your male friends comment on that picture, they’re likely to stay on Facebook for months to come. And so, what Facebook does, according to one person I talked to there, is they actually kind of run that in reverse. They say, oh, this guy looks like he’s kind of getting bored of Facebook. Let’s find one of his friends, show her pictures of her friends that they’ve uploaded so that she uploads a photo so that he comments on it so that he stays on Facebook more.” – Eli Parsier

 

The Filter Bubble

The idea of the “filter bubble” proposed by Eli Parsier in his 2011 TED talk and book is essentially described as the websites responsible for delivering relevant (read: targeted) content creating an echo chamber by constantly delivering the same type of content at the expense of all else. Parsier explains that on Facebook, liberals seem to see more posts by liberals, while conservatives see more from conservatives, and the profiles of the people you interact with (read: stalk) most often show up more frequently than everyone else etc. Shaping content like this could potentially lead to more relevant posts working their way to the top of a user’s newsfeed, but it could also have the effect of burying perfectly good posts and keeping people from being exposed to ideas that contradict their own. Consider the above quote (used to introduce this section) from Eli Parsier from an interview with Brooke Gladstone featured in an episode of “On the Media,” Friday, May 20, 2011.

increased superficiality

Call me a Luddite, but I feel like the kinds of relationships I had on Facebook, though numerous, were intolerably superficial. I felt as if the ease with which relationships were able to be maintained across long distances or over long periods of time came at the cost of the intimacy generally associated with friendship as many of us used to know it. It’s like all of my friendships were slowly replaced with fake relationships that resembled the connection that used to exist, but which ultimately proved to be hollow and devoid of the type of meaningful connection I crave as a social being. It’s like filling up on candy – sure, you can eat it, but that doesn’t mean you should, and it certainly shouldn’t be your only form of sustenance. I know many people who maintain friendships exclusively via Facebook. I know we’re well over a decade into the 21st century and time is at a premium, but have we honestly reached a point where a phone call takes too much time? Occupy wall street (and incidentally the tea party as well) has a saying about the bank bailouts: “too big to fail is too big to exist.” I’d like to co-opt this sentiment for friendships and social media: “too shallow a relationship to maintain over the phone is too shallow a relationship to maintain.”

 

contributing to a corrupt system

 “The ubiquitous objects of technology have finally become so much a part of everyday life that they have become invisible to critical scrutiny… First, (and perhaps the most obvious and most noted) Facebook and Twitter aren’t “technology.” They are commercial firms with services developed and deployed as commodities that circulate solely as a means to capture surplus value and thus provide a return on investment for shareholders… We ignore the cultural, political and economic complexity of technological artifacts and let off the hook the people, institution and worldviews that rely on these tools to reproduce inequality and injustice.” – David Correira

 

we live in a culture dominated by corporate control/ownership over customer held data

you put data on Facebook, but Facebook will use it however it wants. The data use policy has the following to say on this topic:

“While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don’t share information we receive about you with others unless we have: received your permission; given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it.”

this seems to be contradicted by findings from Europe vs. Facebook which suggest that even after data is deleted it is retained on Facebook servers. Deleting a message for instance only removes user access to the message, while it still remains part of the users account as accessible by Facebook. Still, one of the terms mentioned is that Facebook may share your data when it has “ given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy.” This is a nice legalese way of saying “we’ll share your data in anyway that we want at any time, and we can get away with it as long as we silently update this document.”

I don’t feel comfortable trusting Facebook with my data. From DRM to DMCA, and even the new possibility of the passage of SOPA, the current climate has been extremely hostile to individuals with regard to data use rights and very very generous to wealthy corporations. This is happening in part via the “War on Piracy” and through US government seizure of domains that are accused of violating copyright law. Many different threats currently exist, but the common thread between them is that corporations are right, and you are wrong. You can’t trust that your data is safe with Facebook because any conflict that emerges will almost certainly be decided in favor of the multi-billion dollar company with the team of lawyers and lobbyists.

I have nothing to worry about because I have nothing to hide

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984

 

I’ve made what I believe to be some pretty good arguments in favor of leaving Facebook for good, but I still see one potential objection to my points above. If you’re the type of person that’s willing to voluntarily waive your 4th amendment rights during a traffic stop, or if you are aware of potential privacy violations in online services, but think it’s alright to still use them because “I have nothing to hide,” consider the following section carefully.

When we make choices about ethics and about morality, we don’t do so in a vacuum. The choices you make and the actions you take have an effect on others. We exist in a complex web of decision making. Something I want to do here may have an effect on someone on the other side of the globe. Take the choice of fair trade or organic food over the alternative, for example. This is rarely done for any reason other than the perceived impact of our choices on the rest of the world. The best personal example I can think of is my diet. I’m a vegan because I am morally opposed to the way meat is produced in America. I don’t have a moral opposition to eating meat that you raised and killed or hunted yourself, but I don’t do those things because I haven’t had the time or desire to learn, or the space to do it if I could. That said, I know a lot of people that do, and I think it’s commendable to put that much time, effort, and education into your food. It’s especially good when people make a conscious choice only to eat meat that came to their table in an ethical and environmentally sustainable way. It’s not that I think I can make a difference by refusing to participate in a bad system (I know I am just one voice) but I feel morally obligated to avoid contributing to institutions I know are as harmful as modern factory farms.

I feel the same way about Facebook. It’s not that there is necessarily a problem with social networking, but there are a lot of problems with Facebook specifically. I feel like Facebook does have huge advantages and can make massive and lasting positive contributions (the Arab Spring for example has used it very well), though I think on the whole Facebook does more harm than good, and I feel like contributing to it, even if only as a small cog in an 800 million cog ‘relationship monetization’ machine, is something I can’t justify. The small, shallow reward of a few hundred fruitless online relationships, or the facilitation of communication for similarly hollow offline relationships, seems terribly insignificant next to the cost of constant corporate and government surveillance. It has become too heavy a burden to face the prospect of some anonymous corporate shill silently absorbing every ounce of my online activity in order to custom craft a social networking experience designed only to plant in my mind the seed of superiority for yet another product in an endless line of indistinguishable widgits; a sea of increasingly useless manufactured goods that is slowly drowning the entire planet.

We’ve locked ourselves in a constant but quixotic pursuit of some long lost and almost mythological social connection whose absence we all feel in our hearts, but in our zeal for a quick solution to the problem of loneliness we are left prematurely satiated by little more than empty promises at the cost of what in another time would have been our own private thoughts, musings, and memories, now left open and exposed to the world, mixed endlessly together with identical feelings of millions of other people. By publishing everything, we blur the lines between public and private, and ultimately rob ourselves of our own subjectively meaningful experiences. Using this method of interaction to try to build quality relationships seems less like a convenient way to maintain friendships and more like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. It’s essentially an issue of supply and demand – when we share our thoughts selectively, they are more meaningful, but when everything we think goes online as soon as we think it, we artificially devalue each piece of information we post, and when everyone we know does the same thing simultaneously, all we’re left with is noise.

Facebook’s stated goal is to “help you connect and share with the people in your life.” but it seems that the act of sharing has pushed us farther away rather than bringing us closer together, and the loss of the intimacy that was once present in our relationships is not the only cost. As a member of Facebook, your primary purpose is to unknowingly further the agenda of some far removed CEO while simultaneously satisfying the voyeuristic desire of an overtly Orwellian government to record every private thought at all times. “helping you connect and share with the people in your life” is only a means to an end, it is not the objective. The purpose of Facebook is to turn data about your relationships and interests into money, and as even a low-level, casual Facebook user, you are voting for the use of such tactics elsewhere; you are saying that Facebook’s view of the world, its violations of its users trust and privacy, its exploitation of it’s users data for profit is something you support. If you give Facebook any data, even if you don’t mind sharing it with the world, you are doing more than putting your stamp of approval on a system of relationship monetization, you’re making a donation.

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Nov
27

White House Petition to take Petitions Seriously Surpasses Necessary Signatures

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The petition for the white house to take their own petitions seriously has enough signatures to require the white house to make a flippant response! I can’t wait to see how they bullshit their way out of this one! Whatever their response, one thing is clear: they don’t give a shit what you think.

Honestly, I don’t know why anyone ever thought these petitions would do anything. It always seemed more like a clever way for Obama to say on the campaign trail: “I’ve heard the voices of the American People, and I gave them the opportunity to speak louder through the ‘we the people’ website.” …This was never meant to be taken seriously. What I did hope to see though, was something that made the White House extremely uncomfortable, like when a petition to start dealing with marijuana like adults instead of shooting at, imprisoning, killing the pets of, or otherwise destroying the lives of peaceful pot smokers got 70,000 more signatures than necessary in a single month. In fact it was the response to this petition that inspired the creation of the petition to take petitions seriously. This government does not serve our interests, nor was it intended to. President Obama is the president of the financial services sector, not the American people. He serves the interests of the healthcare industry more than he does the people.

It was revealed recently that the Obama administration signed a deal with one of its largest campaign contributors to purchase a massive quantity of an overpriced, untested, and unproven drug that claims to do the same thing as a drug we already have in more than sufficient quantities, for a disease that has been eradicated. The Obama administration (as with any administration for the past 40 years at least) does not care about you unless you care to give him a little something for his efforts as the healthcare industry, the financial services industry, and countless others have. Nearly every action we have seen the president take in his first term has been an effort to pay back someone who helped get him elected (and he’s done such a good job at it I’d be surprised if he wasn’t reelected). In America (especially since the Citizens United decision), large campaign contributions are actually investments that pay huge dividends. Elsewhere, instead of calling them “campaign contributions” they are called “bribes”

I sincerely hope something happens that causes our government to start listening to the voices of the people – to the voices of the 99%, rather than continuing to pander to the special interests that have been dragging this country closer and closer to the brink at the expense of the rest of us. This petition seems insignificant, but I think the response it garners will be telling. Will the Obama administration take this opportunity to listen to the people it purportedly serves? Unfortunately I think we already know the answer.


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Nov
11

When you the give police more power, they will use it whether they need to or not

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I watched the video of the police violently shutting down the first amendment rights of the non-violent Berkeley protesters, and I was shocked and appalled. The biggest surprise of course is that videos of police brutality in America still surprise me.

The war on drugs has been an abject failure when viewed as a means to stop the flow of drugs into the country, or to stop their use once they arrive. If instead you view the drug war as a method of funneling billions of dollars of federal money into state and local government coffers while simultaneously militarizing local police forces across the country, it has been a terrific success. In our efforts to end drug use and addiction, admittedly very noble goals considering drug abuse and addiction are both recognized as psychological disorders by the American Psychiatric Association, we have instead ignored the source of the problem and created a monster that we cannot stop. In the effort to stop drugs, police departments nationwide have escalated the methods used to stop non-violent criminals to the level of something resembling military tactics (including the use of military weapons: assault rifles, tear gas grenades, flashbangs etc).

Perhaps those tactics involve kicking in a family’s front door and shooting and killing a family pet in front of a child while the pet was in a cage, all in order to find a few grams of marijuana, or executing dangerous raids in the middle of the night in a bad neighborhood without notifying the homeowner that it is law enforcement breaking in and not some other armed assailant, such that the Iraq war veteran who lives in the house being raided attempts to defend his family from unknown home invaders and gets shot and killed by police.

Police use these tactics because they have been given the power to do so, and as Abraham Maslow famously said: ”It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” If we give our police departments more guns, and bigger guns, tanks, armed unmanned drones, mobile surveillance units, tasers, pepper spray, tear gas, flashbangs, the authority to wiretap civilians and infiltrate places of worship for the purpose of surveillance with no warrant or court oversight, and most importantly absolute and unchecked authority, should we really be surprised when they use the tools they have been given?

Increasingly, the enemy has become the American people. The reason police have these weapons is so they can use them against the American people. Perhaps the Americans these weapons are being used against have been labeled “criminals,” but when possession of half a gram of a harmless, naturally growing plant will have you labeled a criminal, or when exercising your first amendment rights, or asserting your fourth amendment rights gets you labeled a criminal, and subject to all the brutality above, the excuse that ‘these are tools necessary for the police to stop crime’ becomes null and void. The police are fighting on one side of a war, and those on the other side are the American people. This means that in this war, the citizens of the United States of America are the enemy. The police have too much authority, and that authority needs to be taken back before more innocent or otherwise harmless American “criminals” are hurt or killed by these brutish, heavy handed tactics.

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Nov
09

As if Rick Perry’s campaign wasn’t already over

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Rick Perry will immediately eliminate three government agencies as soon as he takes office: 1) the Department of Education, 2) the Department of Commerce, aaaannnddd… uh. well… all we know is that the third one isn’t the EPA.

I literally facepalmed. Perry was already done, but now even he can’t deny it. Video to follow.

 

edit: when I wrote this last night I planned on grabbing the video and posting it here, but if you want to see it, just go to the homepage of any newspaper in America. This Perry gaffe is great news for Romney. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and let these clowns destroy themselves while he continues to coast towards the nomination. The less Romney says the better his chances are, and he knows it. He’s the default nominee at this point, and now it just seems to be a contest of who can embarrass themselves the least before the election. Cain just overcame Perry in that department, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I’d imagine that the number of things Perry can’t remember is fewer than the number of women Cain has sexually harassed in the past that have yet to come forward. In this kind of crash and burn atmosphere that most of the GOP contenders are finding themselves in, I’m pretty surprised that we didn’t hear more attacks on Romney. There’s still time, and I think we can expect to see increasingly desperate attempts to stay relevant from nearly the entire field.

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