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Wiener's Defense of Bellesiles is Nothing New
See this piece at John S. Rosenberg's blog about Jon Wiener that shows that his ideologically driven and manipulative defense of Bellesiles is just standard operating procedure.
"Sleeping Gas" Ends Terrorist Drama in Moscow
This report indicates that everyone passed out--but news accounts on CNN this morning suggest that some mild form of nerve gas was used. At least some of the hostage deaths were probably caused by this, I would guess.
It's hard to fault the Russian special forces guys using a potentially lethal agent under the circumstances. The choice was the likely death of all the hostages, or of some.
A Personal Note About The Bellesiles Scandal
There won't be any corks popping tonight at my house. My reaction to this is rather like watching a killer being executed: justice requires it, but it would have been far better if Bellesiles hadn't pulled this dishonest stunt--and if the academic community and mass media hadn't decided to play along with it.
I've spent much of my spare time in the last two years gathering evidence on this matter, and writing two books (one now ready for publication, one still a ways out) refuting Bellesiles's nonsense. I have little confidence that either will ever get published, for the simple reason that Bellesiles can now parade around as a "victim" and publishers will simply choose to feel sorry for him.
Bellesiles "Resigns" From Emory University
The final report that apparently caused this parting of the ways can be found here. I am overall disappointed that they didn't go after what I consider the far more blatant violations, such as his altering of quotes and misrepresenting the militia statutes of the colonial period--but they do skewer him reasonably well in the limited area that they were pursuing. A couple of points worth quoting:If Professor Bellesiles did indeed read Contra Costa records believing they were from San Francisco, then the issue could again be one of extremely sloppy documentation rather than fraud. There are three aspects of this story, however, that raise doubts about his veracity.
a. He didn’t accept the opportunity to go find the San Francisco records until a friend suggested he may have found them in Contra Costa. So the idea that he had confused the origins of the records seems to have come from outside. In addition, there is some question as to whether the records he now cites could indeed be ones that he had read in 1993.
...
b. The records he selected and photocopied from that Contra Costa archive were hardly random, but explicitly chosen because they had the words “San Francisco” in them, even though the records themselves clearly identify them as deriving from the Contra Costa court.
c. The records he selected do not seem to provide the sort of information his project requires. They may be California records. They may bear the name “San Francisco” somewhere in the files, but they do not appear to be detailed inventories of personal property. The Welsh inventory includes only livestock and wheat, and the Crippen only livestock and a wagon. These do not seem to be appropriate sources for determining either the presence or absence of guns.
At issue as well is his claim to have read microfilms at the National Archives Record Center in East Point, Georgia. When told that the National Archives had no probate records, he responded that he read so-called “Mormon microfilm” that he brought with him to the archives. When others pointed out that those microfilms do not circulate, he responded that he got them through a friend. [AA 00136, MB 00025-27l]
Since microfilms owned by the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City are freely available to the public through hundreds of small branch libraries all over the United States, we found this explanation puzzling. One need not be a Mormon or even know a Mormon in order to borrow microfilm through this library, and scholars can with permission of the original archive purchase film for a small fee. Wanting to make sure we had not misunderstood his story, we raised the question again in our written queries.
He responded, “Over the time I was looking at probate microfilms, two graduate students in my department were working on dissertations that involved economic themes. All three of us benefited from our association with a member of the Mormon Church who assisted us in getting microfilms. At the time none of us thought anything about it, but I may have endangered his job by what I thought was an innocent activity.” (Since branch libraries are staffed by volunteers, however, there was no “job” to endanger.) [MB00450-00451]
When we asked Professor Bellesiles how his friend knew what microfilm to borrow on his behalf, he said that he selected them from “a binder” that listed the available records. While it is certainly possible that an unnamed friend provided Professor Bellesiles with the microfilms he needed, it would have been an extraordinary act of service and surely would have merited thanks in the acknowledgements of a book. LDS branch libraries do not in fact contain records. What they hold is a catalog (initially on microfiche and later on computer) of the vast Salt Lake holdings. No binder could possibly contain this information. Significantly, Professor Bellesiles told us on June 14 that he had never visited one of these libraries. [Transcription of Interview, AA 00731-AA 00733]
...
Question 4. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records supporting the figures in Table One to his book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture"? With respect to this question, unfamiliarity with quantitative methods or plain incompetence could explain some of the known deficiencies in the construction of Table One, such as the author’s failure to include numbers of cases or explain the strange breakdown of data. For example, when asked for specific information about his geographic categories, he told the committee that he had included Ohio in the "Northern coast" and counted all data from Worcester County, Massachusetts as "urban.")
But in one respect, the failure to clearly identify his sources, does move into the realm of “falsification,” which would constitute a violation of the Emory “Policies.” The construction of this Table implies a consistent, comprehensive, and intelligible method of gathering data. The reality seems quite the opposite. In fact, Professor Bellesiles told the Committee that because of criticism from other scholars, he himself had begun to doubt the quality of his probate research well before he published it in the Journal of American History. [Interview, p.35-6 AA 00764-764; MB 00448]]
The most egregious misrepresentation has to do with his handling of the more than 900 cases reported by Alice Hanson Jones. When critics pointed out that Jones’ data disagreed with his, Bellesiles responded by explaining that he did NOT include Jones’s data in his computations because her inventories, taken during the build-up to the American revolution, showed a disproportionately high number of guns! Here is a clear admission of misrepresentation, since the label on column one in Table One clearly says "1765-1790." If Professor Bellesiles silently excluded data from the years 1774-1776, as he asserts, precisely because they failed to show low numbers of guns, he has willingly misrepresented the evidence. This, compounded with all the other inconsistencies in his description of his method and sources and the fact that neither he nor anyone else has been able to replicate any part of his data, suggest that there is a real discrepancy between the research Professor Bellesiles did and his presentation of that research in Table One.
Question 5. Did professor Bellesiles engage in "other serious deviations 'from accepted practices in carrying out or reporting results from research'" with respect to probate records or militia census records by:
(a) Failing to carefully document his findings;
We have reached the conclusion with reference to clauses “a” through “c,” that Professor Bellesiles contravened these professional norms, both as expressed in the Committee charge and in the American Historical Association’s definition of scholarly “integrity,” which includes “an awareness of one’s own bias and a readiness to follow sound method and analysis wherever they may lead,” “disclosure of all significant qualifications of one’s arguments,” careful documentation of findings and the responsibility to “thereafter be prepared to make available to others their sources, evidence, and data,” and the injunction that “historians must not misrepresent evidence or the sources of evidence.”
(b) Failing to make available to others his sources, evidence, and data; or
(c) Misrepresenting evidence or the sources of evidence."
We have interviewed Professor Bellesiles and found him both cooperative and respectful of this process. Yet the best that can be said of his work with the probate and militia records is that he is guilty of unprofessional and misleading work. Every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed. Even allowing for the loss of some of his research materials, he appears not to have been systematic in selecting repositories or collections of probate records for examination and his recording methods were at best primitive and altogether unsystematic. Bellesiles seems to have been utterly unaware of the importance of the possibility of the replication of his research. Subsequent to the allegations of research misconduct, his responses have been prolix, confusing, evasive and occasionally contradictory. We are surprised and troubled that Bellesiles has not availed himself of the opportunities he has had since the notice of this investigation to examine, identify and share his remaining research materials. Even at this point, it is not clear that he fully understands the magnitude of his own probate research shortcomings.
The Committee's investigation has been seriously hampered by the absence or unavailability of Professor Bellesiles' critical and apparently lost research records and by the failures of memory and careful record keeping which Professor Bellesiles himself describes. Given his conflicting statements and accounts, it has been difficult to establish where and how Professor Bellesiles conducted his research into the probate records he cites: for example, what was read in microfilm and where and in what volume, what archives, in some cases, were actually visited and what they contained In addition to this, we note his subsequent failure to be fully forthcoming, and the implausibility of some of his defenses -- a prime example is that of the "hacking" of his website; another is his disavowal of the e-mails of Aug. 30 and Sept. 19, 2000 to Professor Lindgren which present a version of the location and reading of records substantially in conflict with Professor Bellesiles’ current account. Taking all this into account, we are led to conclude that, under Question 5, Professor Bellesiles did engage in “serious deviations from accepted practices in carrying out [and] reporting results from research.” As to these matters, comprehending points (a) – (c) under Question 5, his scholarly integrity is seriously in question.
FBI Warned Last Year That John Muhammad Might Be A Terrorist
Not suprisingly, the mainstream media haven't picked up on this story from the Bellingham Herald (where John Muhammad lived last year with Malvo). When you read it, you can see why:Lighthouse Mission director warned FBI about Muhammad
...
The Rev. Al Archer, director of the Lighthouse Mission where Muhammad lived off and on for months, remembers him as a guy who made a good first impression - too good.
"On the surface he was squeaky clean," Archer said. "He was almost too good to believe. I kind of quit believing."
After he got to know Muhammad better, Archer grew so suspicious of his odd behavior that he suspected him of being part of a terrorist organization, and he called the FBI. But that was in October 2001, in the aftershock of the World Trade Center massacre, and Archer doesn't think he got the feds' attention.
...
Although Muhammad spent time at the homeless shelter, he sometimes flashed a wallet thick with currency, and showed off expensive-looking watches and gold bracelets, Parks said.
At the mission, Archer said, Muhammad would stay for a few days and then leave, saying he was traveling to Denver and New Orleans, among other places. The odd part was that Muhammad was traveling by airplane. Archer learned that when an airline ticket agent called the mission asking for Muhammad.
"At the mission, not many airline agents call and ask for residents," Archer said.
Muhammad's frequent flier status seemed odd to other people. One of them was Greg Grant, a real estate agent in Bellingham who owns and manages an apartment complex about two miles south of Sumas on Highway 9. Last year, Grant said, he would often drive residents of Lighthouse Mission - including Muhammad on several occasions - to the apartments to do yard work and other chores, then back to the mission once the work was done.
Once, Muhammad told Grant that he had to travel a long distance, possibly to Jamaica or the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean, to sign some papers on a land sale, Grant said. Grant said he wondered why Muhammad would fly to do that when the job could be handled by mail.
In the post 9-11 climate, Archer felt it was worth a call to the FBI.
"I felt like he was part of an organization. I felt like he had some connection with terrorists. ... I said he's got connections somewhere with somebody who's got money," Archer remembered telling the FBI.
He also contacted Bellingham police with his concerns.
"We both agreed there was something not right, but there was nothing they could nail him with," Archer said.
Archer said he can't help but wonder what would have happened if his concerns had been taken more seriously.
"I always figured we would read about John in the news," he said. "He was involved in something. He wasn't just an average, ordinary guy. ... If he had been stopped at that time, a lot of people would be alive who are not."
Taking Children as Hostages: Hussein as Hitler
The Telegraph also carries a news report that Saddam Hussein has ordered Iraqi diplomats to send their children home to Baghdad. He is apparently afraid of defections. The similarity to Hitler--who after the General's Plot ordered seventh cousins of von Stauffenberg murdered--is really uncanny. I can see why the left is so anxious to see the U.S. leave Hussein alone.
America As a Revolutionary Power
David Frum's article in the Telegraph is another very thought-provoking piece, explaining why:It sometimes seems that the three groups of people in the British Isles most bitterly hostile to American foreign policy are Muslim extremists, Trotskyists and former Tory foreign secretaries. Of the three, it is the former foreign secretaries who have the closest grip on reality. What they understand is the Truth with which we end this series: since September 11, America has ceased to be a "status quo" power in the Middle East and has become, or anyway is becoming, a revolutionary one.
Crunching the Numbers on Ballistic Registration
I've been crunching the numbers.
The clearance rate for murder in 2000 (meaning, an offender has been identified) was 63.1%. There is no breakdown for clearance rate by weapon type, but examination of Table 2.13 "Murder Circumstances by Weapon, 2000" gives some clues. Of the 12,943 murders for which SHDR information was available, 68.8% of all murders have circumstances known; the remainder are unknown, presumably because the offender was not identified. This is close enough to the clearance rate to consider this to be a rough approximation--that is to say, in about 5.7% of murders, the police know what the circumstances were, but they can't identify the killer.
For the 6686 handgun murders with SHDR, the circumstances are known in 69.6% of the cases; for the 396 rifle murders, the circumstances are known in an astonishing 80.3% of cases. This suggests that even without mandatory all-include ballistic
registration, the police aren't particularly handicapped for determining the killer with rifled weapons.
How much of a gain will mandatory ballistic registration get us? Let's make some best-case assumptions that even the gun control advocates would be embarrassed to make:
1. Every gun owner in America complies with the requirement to submit their rifled weapons to ballistic registration, and no one will make an attempt to alter rifling or rebarrel weapons after registration.
2. Every one of those registrations will be kept up to date, as guns are sold, barrels replaced, or worn sufficiently that the ballistic registration is out of date.
3. No rifled weapons will be stolen and criminally misused (or at least the receiver of the stolen weapon will submit it to ballistic registration).
4. Every bullet fired from a rifled barrel will be recovered sufficiently undamaged that it can be matched with the database. (Remember that bullets sometimes go through a victim and are hopelessly lost; much more rarely, they are still in the victim,
but are inoperable without risking the victim's life.)
5. The problems of searching databases accurately described in the recent California DOJ report will be solved to achieve 100% success in finding a match--without false positives.
6. Questions about who actually had the gun for situations where multiple parties had access to it (such as a large family of miscreants, or the crack house where the six year old in Michigan was living a year or two ago).
7. I am using the circumstances unknown as a rough approximation for offender not captured, though this understates clearance rates by about 5.7% overall.
If all these most unlikely circumstances were achieved, we would get the following improvements in clearance:
78 additional rifle murders solved;
2033 additional handgun murders solved;
0 additional murders solved with all other weapons.
Now, does anyone really believe that any of the assumptions of items 1-7 above will be achieved at even 50% compliance levels? That the multiplicative result will even be at 10% levels? At what cost?
Barbarism
The Chechens who have taken hostages in Moscow aren't content, it appears, with just killing hostages to get the message across that they are serious:A blanket-shrouded body, identified only as a woman, was wheeled out of the theater Thursday afternoon, apparently killed in the early hours of the hostage drama. Sergei Ignachenko, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said the woman appeared to be in her 20s and had been shot in the chest and her fingers broken.
Was it really necessary to break her fingers before killing her?
I am aware that Russian forces in Chechnya have not operated by international standards of acceptable behavior. The U.S. for a number of years encouraged them to behave better in suppressing a civil war. We didn't do this to rack up gold stars with the Chechens, or with al-Qaida, but you would have thought that both groups would have recognized that our hearts were in the right place. Instead, we get 9/11.
Three or four years ago, I wondered why the Russians didn't just let the Chechens go--that the cost of fighting didn't justify holding onto Chechnya. I no longer think that way. Barbarians need to be civilized, or they remain a threat to civilized societies. Al-Qaida and the Chechen terrorists are reminders that there are real difeerences between cultures. Some cultures are inferior to others, and need to be reformed. Is this imperialism? Yes. Some cultures seem to be criminal at their core, and need to be treated as such.
Strong language? Consider this:Meanwhile, members of minority religions have suffered from ghastly violence, including collective terror. The Nation reports that some Buddhists and Christians were blinded, had fingers cut off or had hands amputated, while "others had iron rods nailed through their legs or abdomen." Women and children have "been gang-raped, often in front of their fathers or husbands." In addition, hundreds of temples were desecrated and statues destroyed; thousands of homes and businesses looted or burned.
As for Hindus, the human rights organization Freedom House reports they have been subject to "rape, torture and killing and the destruction of their cultural and religious identity at the hands of Muslims."
Let's See, How Well Did I Predict Who The Snipers Were?
1. Strong accent that would identify him as being from another part of the world.
2. Not the domestic white male that the gun control groups and news media (which are pretty much the same thing) wanted.
3. Probably not a native speaker of American English (first blogged by Nathan Alexander, but I had the same thought independently).
4. Two people involved suggests terrorism with an al-Qaida connection. Let's see, the older guy they have in custody goes by the name Mohammed, and this morning CNN reported that one or both of the suspects expressed sympathy for the hijackers after 9/11. The Seattle Times story here says the same thing.
UPDATE: The "stepson" is a citizen of Jamaica. It was his non-American English that I am alluding to above.
Al-Qaida Pressuring Russia To Back The U.S.?
That's one explanation for this terrorist attack in Moscow by Chechens--long time allies of al-Qaida--that has taken hostages. As I have previously discussed, al-Qaida wants an all-out war, a Manichean struggle between Good and Evil. They are just a little confused about which side they are on.
And who do you suppose might be behind this attempt to shut down the Internet? Nah, must just be a coincidence.
Boise: City of Four Seasons
We had our first significant rain since fall begin last night, and I can see snow on the mountains behind my house! It's not much, but it is a taste of what is to come! While I sometimes miss California's weather, having snow-capped mountains in sight is a real lifter of my spirit.
So Why Is The Beltway Savage Using Something To Disguise His Voice?
News reports indicate that the sniper left a message through some sort of voice altering gadget. Why? I don't know enough about voice analysis to know if such a gadget would destroy the possible use of the recording for identifying the killer later, but there are three other possiblities:
1. He's a celebrity with a very recognizable voice. (Okay, not likely. This sort of crime certainly runs in Woody Harrelson's genes, but he's in London doing a play at the moment.)
2. His voice is distinctive enough to be recognized by a friend or acquaintance.
3. His voice is so strongly accented that we could make a pretty good guess from what region of the world he hails. Didn't I read a while back that al-Qaida is having some trouble raising money? Hmmm. You could buy a lot of airline tickets and boxcutters for $10,000,000.
Always Fun To See Lawyers Made Into Fools...
From a trial in Britain--more fun than any transcript should ever be.
More Coverage Of The Possible Iraq/Oklahoma City Bombing/Mohammed Atta Connection
This article is from an online publication called This Is London. Most of it isn't new (at least, if you have been reading my blog for a while), but there are a few interesting new items here:Senior aides to US Attorney-General John Ashcroft have been given compelling evidence that former Iraqi soldiers were directly involved in the 1995 bombing that killed 185 people.
One complaint: the article describes McVeigh and Nichols as "white supremacists." I have yet to see any evidence that McVeigh was a white supremacist, and Nichols was married to a Filipino gal--rather a confused form of "white supremacist."
...
Davis, who was one of the first reporters on the scene after the blast, has spent seven years gathering evidence of a wider conspiracy. But it is only as America prepares to wage war on Iraq and Saddam Hussein that her conclusions are being taken seriously at the highest level. Finally, she says, the authorities are examining the idea "that the Oklahoma bombing might not simply be the work of two angry white men".
After hearing her evidence, several senior members of Congress have called for a new probe.
Real Pacifism vs. Convenient Pacifism
Professor Volokh tells a story of a discussion going on in a law professor email list:Pacifism is not my view of the world, but at least those who practice nonviolence in their own lives are just taking their own lives into their own hands. If they tell me (as some friends of mine have) that they don't think they could pull the trigger to kill someone who's trying to rape or even kill them, that's their choice. But the proposal on the list isn't just pacifism: This is an attempt to force nonviolence on others, by threatening to imprison them for exercising what I see as one of their most fundamental rights. Let's call it the pacifist-aggressive approach. I don't like it.
It's not even the pacifist-aggressive approach; it's hypocrisy. If you believe that killing is wrong, and that guns should be outlawed, why would you call the police if someone broke into your house? The police aren't going to come out and lecture the bad guy; they will come and try to arrest him. If necessary, they will draw a gun and shoot the bad guy.
Real pacifism I can disagree with, but respect. A lot of what pretends to be pacifism is really laziness and moral cowardice. It's the person that doesn't want to get blood on their own hands, but doesn't mind if a policeman does the dirty work for him.
Hired violence is still violence; real pacifists don't call the police.
Really Devastating Analysis of Why The War Isn't About Oil
This appeared in the British Telegraph. Yes, it's by a former Bush speechwriter, but the analysis is still devastating:But here is where the no-war-for-oil crowd make their mistake. Those Americans who worry most about oil tend to oppose action against Saddam, because they worry about the effects an Iraq war would have on Saudi Arabia. Take, for example, former Georgia Senator Wyche Fowler, President Clinton's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Last November, Mr Fowler resigned his post and returned to America to slam President Bush's Iraq policy.
A war with Iraq "would open wounds in the Arab world that we don't want to deal with", he said. Saddam's "neighbours can't stand him, but they don't understand why we won't leave him alone. They're also fearful of the break-up of the country into feuding ethnic groups if and when Saddam is ousted."
The real danger to the Middle East, Fowler added, was undue pressure on Arab states to democratise. "All of us Western democrats believe that the finest expressions of the human mind and spirit happen under democratic governance, but that's not the experience of most of the world."
...
Fowler's is the authentic voice of the oil lobby, the people who ran America's Middle East policy more or less unchallenged until September 11: pro-Palestinian statehood, sceptical of Arab democracy and concerned above all with the "stability" of the Middle East - meaning the preservation of the Saudi royal family.
Many of these people supported Bush in 2000, but they are found in both parties and throughout the American government. Listen to the retired officials and distinguished public servants who have criticised President Bush's Iraq policy - the Brent Scowcrofts and the James Bakers, the Anthony Zinnis and the Laurence Eagleburgers - and you will hear that word "stability" over and over again. "Stability" means oil.
The remarkable thing about America's post-September 11 Middle Eastern policy is that, for the first time in a generation, oil has been bumped to second place in the country's concerns.
Think for a minute about the logic of the claim that America wants to fight for oil. Does that mean "for access to oil"? America can already freely purchase all the oil it wants. There has not been a credible threat to access to oil supplies since the Arab embargo of 1973-74 and there is no credible threat to access today. Saddam wants to sell more oil, not less. And if conquest and occupation were necessary to obtain oil, why wouldn't America attack an easier target than Iraq - Angola, for example?
So does "for oil" mean "for cheaper oil"? Is it suggested that America will invade Iraq, occupy its oilfields, and then sell oil for, say, $12-$15 a barrel, rather than the $25-$30 barrel it fetches today?
Even though a $12-$15 price would close down the larger part of America's domestic production and drive the country's dependence on oil imports up from 50 per cent toward the two thirds or three quarters mark?
Even though America winked when its close allies Mexico, Norway, and Oman co-operated with Opec in 1998-99 to drive the price of oil back up from $10 to $30? Even though Mr Bush's own father publicly worried in 1986 about the dangers of an excessively low oil price - at a time when oil prices adjusted for inflation were only slightly lower than today?
My New Shotgun News Article: Another Reason To Vote Against Gray Davis for California Governor
"Gun Laws Under The Influence," Shotgun News, November 18, 2002, 20-22. This article is about California's new firearms product liability law, and why even those who don't live in the West Coast "open ward" need to be worried. Here's a taste:What does AB 496 do? Surprisingly enough, it changes a law that was originally about drunk driving and bars. California law has long made it illegal for a bar to serve alcohol to an obviously intoxicated person. Back in the early 1970s, the California courts decided that if a bar broke this law, and the drunk drove off and hit someone, the bar could be held liable for those injuries.
There is a certain logic to this; the bar was already breaking a criminal statute when they served alcohol to someone who was obviously intoxicated. Why not make the bar liable for injuries caused by the drunk? The bar has deep pockets, and this would certainly make the bar owner a lot more careful to whom it served alcohol.
One problem with this is that some drunks do a much better job of hiding their intoxication than others. Another problem is that the drunk is already drunk: he might go out and kill someone whether the bar gives him another drink or not. California’s courts then went one better, and decided that if you were serving alcohol at a party at your house, you could be liable if one of your drunken guests drove off and hit someone.
Unsurprisingly, California’s legislature went ahead and wrote Civil Code § 1714, which told California’s courts where to stuff these decisions. The bar (or the host at a party) was not responsible for the actions of the drunk driver “because the furnishing of alcoholic beverages is not the proximate cause of injuries resulting from intoxication, but rather the consumption of alcoholic beverages is the proximate cause of injuries inflicted upon another by an intoxicated person.” This is perfectly logical; the bar didn’t run you over; the drunk ran you over. Sue the drunk, not the bar.
Like a Monty Python Skit
I was looking for information about the traditionalist Muslim organization headed by the former president of Indonesia, and I found a news account that reads like a Monty Python skit:Indonesian Muslim leaders have expressed outrage following reports that the largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, is inviting Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to a talk on globalization in Jakarta on March 30-31.
Islam: the religion of peace!
Chief organizer Nur Hamid Ketang told the media that Peres was "an old friend" of the Nahdlatul Ulama and that the organization was seeking to obtain Israel’s help to overcome the social, economic and political crisis facing the country.
Indonesia has the world’s second-largest Muslim population and its government has resisted establishing ties with Israel. Under former president Abdurrahman Wahid, however, the government secretly undertook a policy to open trade ties with Tel Aviv; this policy has not been revoked by President Megawati Soekarnoputri who replaced Wahid in July 2000.
"If Peres ever set foot in Indonesia, what will we do?" asked a Muslim leader in a gathering of 5,000 people at Al Azhar Grand Mosque in Jakarta last Friday to show solidarity to the Palestinian cause. His congregation chanted, "kill, kill!"
A Useful Paper for Dealing with Radiophobia
No, that's not a fear of talkradio, but the irrational fear of low levels of radiation. People look at me strangely when I mention that a number of studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors show that those exposed to low levels of radiation actually had higher survival rates than those who were not exposed at all. This paper , originally published in Physics Today, mentions that, along with the evidence that the greatest health hazard from Chernobyl for most Soviets was the psychological damage induced by the promotion of radiophobia. The exposure rate for the vast majority relocated out of the region was trivial compared to the natural background rate. The paper also points to the political misuse of radiophobia. (Can you say Green?)
Interesting Archaeological News
Probably impossible to prove that it is what it claims to be, but if not a later forgery, it would appear to be the earliest known written reference to Jesus. From the Washington Post:Scholars say a nondescript limestone box, looted from a Jerusalem cave and held secretly in a private collection in Israel, could be the first-ever reference to Jesus in the world's archaeological record.
The box is an ossuary, used by Jews at the time of Christ to hold the bones of the deceased. The ossuary has almost no ornamentation except for a simple, yet riveting, Aramaic inscription: Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua, it says -- "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."
"I was very excited," said French philologist and epigrapher Andre Lemaire, who was invited by the ossuary's owner to take a look at it this spring. "Could it be James the brother of Jesus? There was no mention of Nazareth, but it was very impressive.."
Since Lemaire's visit, scholars and scientists have examined and analyzed the box, seeking to expose it for a fake, or to show that it is otherwise impossible for it to be the ossuary that once held the bones of St. James, founder of the Christian church of Jerusalem, and, in the words of St. Paul to the Galatians, "the Lord's brother."
So far the ossuary has withstood scrutiny, but even those who have studied it concede it cannot be fully authenticated: "It will always be controversial," said Aramaic scholar Rev. Joseph Fitzmyer, an emeritus Biblical Studies expert at The Catholic University who studied the inscription.
Logic Problems in Australia
This article in the British Independent discusses how Australians are responding to the massacre in Bali:Newspaper letter-writers and pundits were quick to draw attention to Australia's alliance with the United States in the war on terrorism and the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, citing this as provocation for the attacks.
So, let me get this straight: the prospect of Australia helping the U.S. against Iraq causes Islamofascists to perform a brutal act of mass murder--thus establishing that the Islamofascists are allies of Iraq--and for this reason, Australia should disengage from the struggle against Iraq?
If you wanted to argue that Iraq and international terrorism are two entirely separate entities, and therefore Australia should not assist the U.S. against Iraq, there would be some logic to that. But the left in Australia is explicitly arguing that the two are related--that the threat of an attack on Iraq causes Islamofascist barbarians to kill Australians. The left is acknowledging a connection between the two, and says that Australia should withdraw from attacking Iraq. The only plausible explanations that occur to me are that the Australian left is scared witless of more attacks--or doesn't consider that there is anything wrong with al-Qaida engaging in this sort of savagery. It is, after all, not much different from the sort of crimes the left perpetrated in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cambodia, and so on.
UPDATE: Here's an Australian politics professor who, while otherwise writing a fairly intelligent column in The Age, agrees that Islamofascism is the problem, but argues against a preventative war against Iraq, largely on pragmatic grounds:Contemporary American policymakers would be wise to recall that it was because of the unpredicted level of slaughter and destruction in the First World War that communism was able to seize power in the old Russian empire and that the ideology of Nazism came to birth. They would also be wise to remember that it was precisely the military struggles fought by the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet army that provided the crucible in which fundamentalist Islam was transformed into that vicious ideology Islamo-fascism, which now imperils the world and which was, on October 12, almost certainly responsible for the murder of 100 or so fine young Australians in the prime of their lives.
UPDATE AGAIN: Here's the note that I sent to that Australian politics professor pointing out that while the containment policy of the Cold War worked, they probably don't work in the current context:
I found your column generally quite thoughtful, but let me suggest that there is one area where the circumstances differ between the Cold War and today.
The Soviet Union had a powerful incentive to not engage in terrorist attacks against the U.S.--a nuclear explosion terrorist attack, throughout much of the Cold War period, would have been clearly the work of the Soviet Union or Red China. No other country else had the nuclear capacity throughout most of that period, and the U.S. would have likely destroyed both the Soviet Union and Red China, just to be sure we got all the guilty parties (and several hundred million innocent civilians).
Containment of Iraq would mean preventing the leakage of nuclear weapons, poison gas, and biological weapons into al-Qaida hands. While biological weapons might be traceable back to Iraq, a nuclear explosion in an American city would not be traceable. There is nothing to fingerprint or measure within several hundred meters of the explosion. Against whom would the U.S. retaliate? Iraq gets all the benefits of supporting anti-American sentiment, without any real costs. (Yes, the U.S. would probably nuke Iraq at that point, but the rest of the world would be furious at us for doing without positive proof of their involvement.) Non-state terrorism, and the emerging number of possible sources for nuclear weapons, make the containment policy of the Cold War simply inappropriate.
If, as a number of Australian leftists claim, and as your article seems to imply, there is a connection between the possiblity of Australian attacking Iraq, and this horrifying crime in Bali, it indicates that al-Qaida regards Iraq as their ally. Any nation that would be allied with such monsters needs to be disarmed.
Evil Is Always American
What drives the fierce anti-American sentiment of the left? It is very tempting to see leftists as very naive sorts, who simply can't imagine that al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein, or any of the other players against whom the U.S. is now struggling, are evil. But leftists do believe in evil. They just know where it is located, as this recent news coverage from UC Bezerkeley demonstrates:
The United States may have had an active role in carrying out last week's bombing of an international nightclub, members of a panel said at a campus round-table discussion Friday.
Look, I know that our government isn't filled with saints. But al-Qaida has celebrated their success in the 9/11 attacks. Across the world, Muslims of extremist bent (and "bent" is the right word) have celebrated it as a great moment. So why do a bunch of UC Bezerkley academics consider it more likely that the U.S. government did it, rather than al-Qaida?
Five academics and journalists came to UC Berkeley and examined a number of theories on the source of the explosion.
The Oct. 12 blast in Bali, Indonesia killed nearly 200 people, including more than 100 Australian tourists.
"The information received is that several groups are being looked at more closely," said Jeffrey Hadler, a UC Berkeley professor of South and Southeast Asian studies. "The most important thing is to wait for the investigation."
But the United States may have been directly involved in the bombing in order to further its war on terrorism, he added.
President Bush alleged Oct. 14 that Al Qaeda terrorists were behind the bombing because Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country, Hadler said.
The allegation also furthers Bush's call for war in Iraq, he said.
"Al Qaeda has turned into this incredibly convenient phantom," he said.
Sylvia Tiwon, a professor of Indonesian at UC Berkeley, said Al Qaeda is too small to have perpetrated the bombing.
Some panelists said a western military response to the bombing would have negative repercussions for Islamic countries, which they described as politically interconnected.
"Muslims are global and part of a global entity," Tiwon said. "They are all connected."
PCBs and Sexual Identity
I am really skeptical of these sort of claims, because they sound like they were designed by a committee of environmentalists. A few years back, the claim about chlorinated hydrocarbons was that they were shrinking alligator penises, and reducing fertility. "What can we do to get conservative men really freaked about the environment? That's it! We'll tell that their penises will shrink! That'll get 'em!" This report makes me wonder if that same committee, having failed to provoke panic, decides to one-up the "shrinking penises" claims. "We'll tell them pollution makes their kids get confused about their sexual identity!"
Nonetheless, the report does raise some interesting questions. Are deviant sexual identities (and behaviors) rising because the society is more open? Or because it is more polluted?The study – carried out by doctors and scientists at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam – is the first in the world to show that normal levels of the chemicals affect humans. It follows a host of studies showing that gender-benders can turn wildlife species, from gulls and alligators to fish and turtles, into hermaphrodites. In the case of the children in the study, the chemicals caused girls to play with guns and pretend to be soldiers, and boys to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.
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The girls exposed to higher levels of PCBs were more likely to engage in masculine play, while similarly exposed boys were more likely to enjoy feminine play. Dioxins produced more feminine play in boys and girls.
In Case You Were Wondering Why I've Been So Silent Over The Weekend...
I have been reading--very carefully--William L. Shea's The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century (Louisiana State University Press, 1983). Very, very impressive piece of scholarship, and one that answers a number of questions that I have been coming up with while trying to make sense of Virginia's colonial militia laws. I can't tell that Shea has any strong ideological motivation--though you get the impression that he wasn't thrilled at how well-armed the people of Virginia were in the middle of the 17th century--and he presents a wealth of information that could be misconstrued by people on either side of the gun control debate to support their position.
It is really unfortunate that serious historical scholarship--yet still highly readable--like this gets completely ignored by the popular press, while dishonest trash like Michael Bellesiles's Arming America gets glowing reviews in, it seems, every newspaper and journal larger than the Upton County Historical Journal & Organic Composter Monthly.
