Scam impersonating Bank of America

A couple of days ago I got a phone message which started by asking my answering machine to press a number for a language selection. When it didn't, it went on: "This is an urgent, non-marketing message from Bank of America for [name nothing like anyone living here]. Please call us at 866-231-4406 and enter message code ..."

The use of a phonebot and a name I never heard of made me suspicious. Checking this page confirms that it was an attempt to defraud me.

People have found other entries of mine on scams by doing a web search on the phone number. I hope this post will help a few people not to be defrauded.

Bank of America provides a toll-free number for reporting fraud, but you have to give your Social Security number before they'll listen to you. I sent email to abuse at bankofamerica dot com as the only way I could find of reporting the scam.

April 19

I've written before about the government's senseless assault in Waco on April 19, 1993, which resulted in the deaths of over eighty people. Many others have written about the brutal and senseless destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building exactly two years later, killing 168 people.

This year, April 19 is being observed as the anniversary of an act of even greater disdain for human life, though it's fortunately just mythical. The guilty party: God. According to Chapter 12 of Exodus:

And at midnight Yahweh struck down all the first-born in Egypt from the first-born of Pharaoh, heir to his throne, to the first-born of the prisoner in the dungeon, and all the first-born of all the livestock. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up in the night, and there was a great wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without its dead.

Imagine it. You wake up one morning and find your oldest child has died during the night. You run out to your neighbors, to beg them for support and help, but their oldest child has died too. The house down the block? Same thing. And so on, all over town. Always the first child, suggesting it was somehow deliberate killing, not just a sudden plague.

The purpose of this was to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrews emigrate from Egypt, and it worked. But if such an event had actually happened, we can be sure that the death of prisoners' children, or the children of peasants working along the Nile, or the children of workers lugging rocks to build Pharaoh's pyramid, played no part in his decision. Indeed, all ten of the plagues in Exodus were inflicted not specifically on Egypt's rulers, but on its general population. If Egypt was inflicted with mosquitoes, horseflies, frogs, locusts, and diseases, whether from divine or natural causes, the ordinary people felt their impact much more than the ruling officials in their palaces. These peasants and laborers had no say in government policy; they couldn't vote out one Pharaoh and elect another. Killing their kids served no purpose.

The ten plagues described in Exodus constitute wanton cruelty to innocent people, and the tenth constitutes mass child murder.

For many Jews today, probably most, the story of the plagues in Exodus is nothing but an ancestral myth. They aren't celebrating the actions of a murderous deity, only the legend-shrouded origin of their people as a separate nation. But it's important to recognize that the actions ascribed to Yahweh in Exodus starkly contradict the idea of a benevolent, just God.

France charges Bardot with blasphemy

Whatever we may think of George W. Bush, at least we can't be openly prosecuted for the views we express in letters to him. If President Sarkozy of France doesn't like what you say, you can be hauled into court, fined, and perhaps even jailed, as Brigitte Bardot is finding out.

Bardot has been prosecuted "for her comments denouncing the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep without first stunning them." I haven't heard of this practice before, but have found this page offering to justify the practice on religious and humanitarian grounds, and I haven't seen any claims that her charge is invented, so apparently she didn't make it up. She is charged with "inciting hatred," but she was not speaking before a mob, urging them to hunt down and kill Muslims; she was writing a letter to Sarkozy, who was then Minister of the Interior. Does the French government consider Sarkozy at risk of running amok and committing murder because of the letters he reads?

In order to buy off the goons who threaten Holland and America for permitting free speech, France is prosecuting those who speak badly of Islam. This is an act worthy of the Vichy government.

Update:I hadn't noticed before that the charge brought against Bardot is inciting "racial hatred." There is no racial reference in any version of her comments that I have seen. So not only is the charge a violation of human rights, it's a fabrication.

Asking "Why?" is now a crime

At least it's a crime when done at the Jefferson Memorial. See the American Spectator article.

Perspective on privacy

Privacy advocates are quite properly concerned about national security letters, illegal wiretaps, Real ID, and the like. But for most of us, the greatest intrusion into our privacy is the one which culminates today every year -- the vast network of intrusion into our livelihood and financial matters for the purpose of squeezing the maximum amount of income taxes out of us. This gets less attention, and only a "fringe" of libertarians and conservatives actively objects.

To some extent, it's that we're used to the IRS inquisition, while the other attacks are comparatively new. But it's also the result of a major inconsistency in many privacy advocates' thinking: while they support personal liberty and privacy in matters of communications, educational records, and sexual conduct, they consider themselves entitled to other people's money, and don't mind a government that collects information on every little financial transaction in order to take our money.

But the two can't be separated. Social Security has grown into a national identification scheme. Bank records give information about every sphere of activity. The income tax, and especially the current scheme of complex deductions, penalties, credits, and exceptions, is the worst assault of all on American privacy.

Book review: Access Denied

I've posted a review of Access Denied, an up-to-date book on the international Internet censorship scene. It's strong on information, weak on some other points.