Flexible Reality
Friday, February 27, 2004
Phish-ing For Bucks !!
Consumers deluged as fake e-mails multiplyEven experts say telling real mail from phish can be difficult
By Bob Sullivan
Technology correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 1:27 p.m. ET Jan. 21, 2004
"We regret to inform you, that we were unable to charge your card," the e-mail begins. "Click here to continue payment verification process." Is it real, or a fake? Should you fill it out, or delete it? The question seems to be vexing more Internet users every day.
E-mail inboxes are now flooded with such tempting messages, which often turn out to be "phishers" -- identity theft attempts disguised as helpful e-mail from a big Internet site. Some 60 million of the scam e-mails were sent out during one two-week stretch of December, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a non-profit group of financial companies and Web firms studying the trend.
Ninety different versions of the scam e-mails appeared in November and December and now there are about five new attempts every day, the group said. Earlier this month, a phish campaign aimed at Citibank users led the company to actually issue a statement declaring it a fake. U.S. Bank issued a similar warning on Monday, after it was targeted by flurry of fraud e-mails. Ten different scams hit its customers during the past few weeks, the bank said.
The targets are global, too, ranging from the Bank of England to Australia's Westpac bank. UK-based NatWest was hit so hard in December that it was forced to temporarily take down its online banking site, according to published reports.
Making matters worse, virus writers have taken up the tactic as well. A virus released last week promised to add 10 percent to any recipient's PayPal account, if the potential victims filled out an accompanying form. They were also urged to click on an unsafe e-mail attachment named PayPal.exe.
"Registration is simple," the e-mail said. "Just unpack the attachment with WinZip, run the application, and follow the instructions we have provided." When an e-mail arrives that appears to sent by a company consumers often work with, it's pretty hard to ignore, and many consumers don't. Up to 5 percent of recipients respond, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
"Some of them are really, really good," said the group's chairman, Dave Jevans. "That's why people fall for them."
The notes appear to be personal, referencing an open account at a bank or Web site, but they are really just spam. Sent to a wide enough audience, an e-mail referencing Citibank or eBay will hit plenty of people who really are account holders.
Answering that e-mail can have devastating consequences, and virtually assures victims will face identity theft. Earlier this year, with thousands of victims piling up, the Federal Trade Commission and Earthlink issued a warning about this trend in scamming, and experts offered tips for consumers to tell the real firms from the con artists. PayPal, the most frequent target of the scams, has an advice page on its Web site designed to keep users from falling for the trick.But many of the suggestions made to consumers are confusing, or even contradictory.
The "phishing" e-mail quoted above, for example, uses a tactic that flies in the face of one oft-quoted suggestion. For years, consumers have been told to look in their Web browser's address window to know if a Web site is real or an imposter. An address that seemed suspicious -- perhaps it begins with a numeric address, like 211.154.171.106, or has a series of stray characters in it -- was a sure sign of trouble, suggesting to users they've landed in a bad place. But a simple address, like WWW.MSNBC.COM, was considered a green light.
Not any more. A flaw found in Microsoft's Web browser last month lets computer criminals place just the right text up in that address bar, foiling that piece of advice. Users who received the e-mail quoted above and clicked on the link were delivered to a Web page that indicated it was www.Earthlink.net. An absolutely perfect imposter of the real Earthlink, the site sat on a Web server in China and was designed to steal debit and credit card numbers.
Another new version of phishing also preys on people's training to simply watch the address bar before they enter data into a Web site. In this variant, potential victims are directed via e-mail toward a company's genuine Web site, and then presented with a pop-up window to log in. Information typed into the pop-up box is sent to the computer criminal. One recent version sent recipients to the real Citibank site, but then tricked recipients into entering account information into the pop-up box.
"There's no way to tell (it's a scam). There's no address bar up there," Jevans said. Other common advice, indicating that legitimate Internet companies would never solicit personal financial information in a generic e-mail, doesn't always apply, either. Internet service providers often send e-mails warning customers their credit cards have expired, requesting updated payment information. In other cases, Web companies have sent out marketing solicitations which appear similar to phishing e-mails. In one recent example, PayPal sent out a pitch to customers urging them to apply for a new PayPal-branded credit card.
"For complete pricing information and important terms and conditions, click here," the note said, listing www.PayPalCreditCard.com as the destination. Recipients complained that the e-mail looked like a fake. Adding to the confusion, it appeared to violate a policy posted on PayPal's Web site that urges users to disregard any e-mails which claim to be from the company but do not begin with https://www.paypal.com/. When security researcher Rob Adams forwarded the message to PayPal's special fraud alert e-mail address with a complaint, the company's Protection Services Department accidentally sent an automatically-generated response indicating it was a fraud.
Incidents like these make it even harder for consumers to tell legitimate e-mails from frauds, Adams said. "PayPal isn't helping," he said. Telling fake e-mails from fair "requires a lot of diligence on the part of the recipient," said computer security analyst Mary Landesman. "Users should consider any site requesting personal financial information as suspicious until proven otherwise. Though in this particular instance, "PayPalCreditCard.com" happens to be legitimate, it would be trivial to create a site that looked every bit as convincing and use it to procure Social Security numbers and other private information."
At the core of the phishing problem is a new kind of identity theft experts are calling "corporate ID theft."
Criminals are increasingly aware of the power that trademarks have over consumers, said Federal Trade Commission lawyer Eric A. Wegner. Users have been trained to only trust well-known Web sites, Wegner said, and now, the criminals are using that trust against consumers. Whether it's an e-mail with an eBay logo, a Web site with Earthlink's name, or a Web site using an address that seems to be a legitimate brokerage, con artists are successfully using these trademarks to trick consumers.
One-by-one, tips consumers have been given to avoid getting scammed are being rendered useless by quick-to-adapt criminals, Wenger said. He is now groping with precisely what advice to give Internet users to avoid becoming ID theft victims. Today, the only definitive way to spot a fake e-mail or Web site is to pick through the HTML source code, something that's just not realistic for most Internet users, Wenger said.
"I have come around to the position only recently it's just too much to ask of people to expect them to figure out what's real and what's not on the Internet," he said.
Phishing has become so common that it's hurting corporate marketing efforts, Jevens said. Some consumers are beginning to throw out the baby with the bath water, ignoring all e-mailed requests for information, including legitimate follow-up e-mails from e-commerce sites. That's enough motivation for Web firms to seriously consider new technologies to solve the problem, he said. He anticipated that some companies will soon begin using digital signatures -- which involves the use of cryptography and third parties to verify the authenticity of an e-mail.
"These guys are getting pretty heavily motivated to stop this," he said. The best way to avoid becoming a victim, Jevens said, is to avoid clicking on links within e-mails, and instead manually type in Web site addresses from scratch whenever financial data is involved.
Cloaking system for RFID tags unveiled
'Blocker' technology used to confuse RFID readers
By Matt Hines, Copyright © 1995-2004 CNET Networks, Inc. All
Updated: 3:59 p.m. ET Feb. 24, 2004
Computer security software maker RSA Security on Tuesday introduced a new technology for protecting information emitted by radio frequency identification tags. The RFID cloaking system is intended to guard proprietary data located on chips used to carry product information. The RSA Blocker Tag technology uses a jamming system designed to confuse RFID readers and prevent those devices from tracking data on individuals or goods outside certain boundaries.
RFID tags, whose descriptive information is read via radio frequency technology, are expected to allow manufacturers and retailers to greatly improve inventory tracking. Considered a more advanced replacement for existing bar code technology, the systems have created a significant buzz among businesses looking to cut overhead through more intelligent management of products and supply chains. But a major obstacle threatening widespread adoption of RFID is concern that the chips might allow unsolicited collection of product data, creating a privacy risk for consumers.
At its security conference taking place this week in San Francisco, RSA is offering demonstrations of the RFID-blocking tool in a mock pharmacy setting. In that scenario, the pharmacy would provide customers with special bags armed with the RSA Blocker Tags in order to keep RFID readers from gathering data.
The blocker tags work by emitting radio frequencies designed to trick RFID readers into believing that they are being presented with unwanted data, or spam, causing the information collection devices to shun the incoming transmission. RSA claims that by placing an RFID-loaded product into a parcel bearing one of the blocker tags, the system would cause RFID readers to miss any information carried by the product in the bag, thereby protecting consumers.
When a product is taken out of a bag armed with the blocking system, readers would again be able to scan the RFID tag accurately, the company said. Using the pharmacy example, RSA said a prescription bottle could not be scanned when protected but when unshielded could provide useful prescription information.
The company also promised that its cloaking system would not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft control systems or launch denial-of-service attacks.
Casualties of terror
Leader
Thursday February 26, 2004
The Guardian
The victims of terrorism are not confined to those whom the bombers kill, maim and traumatise. Terror's lasting victims also include the principles and habits that make human society cherishable. Too often these include the legality that is the basis of trust and justice, the debate that is the root of democracy, and the liberties that are the guarantees of our self-respect as free peoples. More than two years after al-Qaida's attack on America prompted a rash of new emergency anti-terror legislation, many people in Britain are only now beginning to wake up to how much is at risk, not just now but for years still to come.
The Trade Tightrope
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times
Published: February 27, 2004
You can't blame the Democrats for making the most of the Bush administration's message malfunction on trade and jobs. When the president's top economist suggests, even hypothetically, considering hamburger-flipping a form of manufacturing, it's a golden opportunity to accuse the White House of being out of touch with the concerns of working Americans. ("Will special sauce now be counted as a durable good?" Representative John Dingell asks.) And the accusation sticks, because it's true.
...
Yet it's bad economics to pretend that free trade is good for everyone, all the time. "Trade often produces losers as well as winners," declares the best-selling textbook in international economics (by Maurice Obstfeld and yours truly). The accelerated pace of globalization means more losers as well as more winners; workers' fears that they will lose their jobs to Chinese factories and Indian call centers aren't irrational.
Addressing those fears isn't protectionist. On the contrary, it's an essential part of any realistic political strategy in support of world trade. That's why the Nelson Report, a strongly free-trade newsletter on international affairs, recently had kind words for John Kerry. It suggested that he is basically a free trader who understands that "without some kind of political safety valve, Congress may yet be stampeded into protectionism, which benefits no one."
Mr. Kerry's Wednesday speech on trade seemed consistent with that interpretation. He decried the loss of jobs to imports, but was careful not to promise too much. You might say that he proposed speed bumps, rather than outright barriers to outsourcing: rules requiring notice to employees and government agencies before jobs are shifted overseas, steps to close tax loopholes that encourage offshore operations, more aggressive enforcement of existing trade agreements, and a review of those agreements with an eye toward seeking tougher labor and environmental standards.
I don't see anything there that threatens to unravel the world trading system. If anything, the question is whether it provides enough of a "political safety valve." The answer, I think, is yes — but only if those modest measures on the trade front are combined with much bigger changes in domestic policy.
First and foremost, we need more jobs. U.S. employment is at least four million short of where it should be. Imports and outsourcing didn't cause that shortfall, but if the job gap doesn't start closing soon, protectionist pressures will become irresistible. Beyond that, we need to do much more to help workers who lose their jobs. It didn't help the cause of free trade when Republican leaders in Congress recently allowed extended unemployment benefits to expire, even though employment is lower and long-term unemployment higher than when those benefits were introduced.
And in the longer run, we need universal health insurance. Social justice aside, it would be a lot easier to make the case for free trade and free markets in general if, like every other major advanced country, we had a system in which workers kept their health coverage even when they happened to lose their jobs.
The point is that free trade is politically viable only if it's backed by effective job creation measures and a strong domestic social safety net. And that suggests that free traders should be more worried by the prospect that the policies of the current administration will continue than by the possibility of a Democratic replacement.
Nearly Half of Black Men Found Jobless
By JANNY SCOTT
NY Times
Published: February 28, 2004
It is well known that the unemployment rate in New York City rose sharply during the recent recession. It is also understood that the increase was worse for men than for women, and especially bad for black men. But a new study examining trends in joblessness in the city since 2000 suggests that by 2003, nearly one of every two black men between 16 and 64 was not working.
The study, by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit group that serves the poor, is based on data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and focuses on the so-called employment-population ratio - the fraction of the working-age population with a paid job - in addition to the more familiar unemployment rate, the percentage of the labor force actively looking for work.
Mark Levitan, the report's author, found that just 51.8 percent of black men ages 16 to 64 held jobs in New York City in 2003. The rate for white men was 75.7 percent; for Hispanic men, 65.7; and for black women, 57.1. The employment-population ratio for black men was the lowest for the period Mr. Levitan has studied, which goes back to 1979.
"We're left with a very big question,'' Mr. Levitan, a senior policy analyst with the society, said in an interview. "As the economy recovers, will we see a rise in employment among black men in tandem with the rise in employment of city residents generally? In other words, is this fundamentally a cyclical problem or is it more deeply structural? I fear that it is more deeply structural."
Give Back $120M to the Exchange, Mr. Grasso !
Grasso Says He Won't Return $139.5 Million to Big BoardBy LANDON THOMAS Jr.
NY Times
Published: February 27, 2004
Richard A. Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, broke his months long silence by informing the Big Board that he would refuse to give up any portion of his controversial $139.5 million pay package and could ask for an additional $50 million.
In a blistering letter sent on Thursday to John S. Reed, the chairman of the exchange, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., Mr. Grasso's lawyer, criticized Mr. Reed for saying publicly that Mr. Grasso should return large amounts of his pay. "Mr. Grasso has no intention of returning any portion of his compensation to the exchange," the letter said.
"If the exchange believes it has a valid claim, it should file it, rather than conducting a campaign through the press and intermediaries in an attempt to pressure Mr. Grasso." The letter came in response to a letter that Mr. Reed sent to Mr. Grasso on Feb. 12, where he asked that Mr. Grasso repay $120 million to the exchange.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
F.B.I. Agents Took Mementos From Rubble of Twin Towers
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NY Times
Published: February 26, 2004
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - Thirteen agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation took mementos, debris or valuables from the Staten Island landfill that held the rubble of the World Trade Center, and the F.B.I. now plans to formally ban the removal of crime-scene items as a result, officials said on Wednesday.
The department first began investigating charges of possible theft last year after receiving a complaint that the Tiffany globe wound up on the desk of an F.B.I. secretary in Minneapolis. But the inspector general's investigation found that the removal of World Trade Center evidence was more widespread than previously realized and that the problem was a longstanding one at the F.B.I. at other crime scenes as well.
None of the other agents, (aside from Mr. Marx. ed), implicated in the inspector general's investigation are facing disciplinary proceedings because there was no formal F.B.I. policy in place that prevented the removal of such items, according to a bureau official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We didn't have a written policy relative to this type of activity, and that's one of the problems here," the F.B.I. official said. "Obviously we don't encourage this type of thing, and while it was inappropriate, there wasn't a policy we could say they violated." "Our investigation found that memento taking at recovery sites has been a longstanding practice with F.B.I. agents," the inspector general's report found.
US House passes unborn victims legislation
Christian Science Monitor
Posted: Thursday, February 26, 5:10pm EST
The House voted today to treat attacks on a pregnant woman as separate crimes aqainst both her and the fetus she is carrying. Critics say it would undermine abortion rights by giving fetuses new federal legal status. Passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act was actively backed by the White House and President Bush's conservative supporters. Following enactment of the law banning "partial birth" abortions last year, the bill is this year's prime measure dealing with the unborn.
It passed 254-163 after the House rejected a Democratic-led alternative that would have increased penalties for attacks on pregnant women in which the fetus is injured or killed without conferring new rights on fetuses.
Note: And further substantiation of the underlying principle behind this piece of legislation is here
Israel raided three banks in the West Bank city of Ramallah this week and seized at least $6.7 million.
Israeli bank raid breaks new turfChristian Science Monitor, Feb. 27, 2004
By Ilene R. Prusher and Ben Lynfield
JERUSALEM AND RAMALLAH – Israel sees it as an audacious and definitive blow to the financial base of terrorism. But Palestinians view the army's unprecedented raid on Ramallah banks as a targeting of their economy as a whole.
The fallout from the raids, which ended at 2 a.m. Thursday, was being gauged by the Palestinian financial sector. Bankers were hoping the army's seizure of 30 million shekels ($6.7 million) in assets would not touch off a run of withdrawals from customers fearing for the safety of their money.
"Now no institution is safe," said Omar Abdel-Razeq, senior research fellow at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. Its offices near the raided Cairo Amman Bank were converted into a military post during the raids. Israeli troops also raided the Palestine International Bank and the Arab Bank, forcing employees to operate computer systems and hand over money from the vaults, employees said.
The soldiers seized assets Israel said were being used to sponsor attacks by Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Lebanese Hizbullah organization, and other groups. "The benefits of this will hopefully be understood over the long term. This is a blow to them because the terrorists who use these banks accounts will be more careful. You create obstacles for these terrorists," said army spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal. "It took a lot of intelligence to identify the accounts of people who are terrorists" or who support terrorism, he said.
But the US State Department criticized the raids, saying Israeli actions "risk destabilizing the Palestinian banking system."
"We would prefer to see Israeli coordination with the Palestinian financial authorities to stem the flow of funds to terrorist groups," department spokesman Richard Boucher said. Israel says the seized money is to be spent on charity for the well-being of the Palestinian population.
Palestinian Authority leaders dispute that the funds seized were used for terrorism. "Israel will use any excuse to destroy the Palestinian economy," says Local Government Minister Jamal Shobaki. "The economy is the pillar of stability and this harms the very stability of Palestinian society." He termed the raids "armed robbery."
Mr. Abdel-Razeq predicts that the effects of the seizures "could be drastic. It all comes down to public confidence now. The stability of the banking system is very important to Palestinian investors both outside the country and locally. This will certainly add to the difficulties of the investment environment," he said.
Eighteen Palestinians were injured by gunfire in clashes that erupted as troops entered Ramallah Wednesday morning. But the operation actually began before dawn, when the Arab Bank's director of information technology, Ahmed Abu Ghosh, was arrested at his home, according to Ahmed-Samah Abu Rajai Aweidah, a vice president. Soldiers later forced him to come to the bank and give them access to the computer system, Aweidah said.
Twenty-five soldiers with guns took over the Arab Bank's al-Bireh branch, an employee recalled. Its regional headquarters was also taken over by troops. At 10:20 a.m., Mr. Aweidah said, "I was sitting with a customer. I saw an Israeli soldier pointing an M-16 in my face and asking me to put my hands up. We and the customers were held up at gunpoint. Some of the soldiers spoke fluent Arabic, and they ordered us to go into the corridor. Once they made sure all of the offices were empty, they split us into two groups, males on one side and females on the other."
"At 12:30, they let the women go out. They checked the IDs of all the men and let all the male employees leave by 2:30. As senior management, we agreed with the soldiers that we would stay. By threat of force their hackers went through the system. They forced us to print out the balances for the accounts. They forced us to open the safe. They had dynamite ready to blow it open if we didn't. Our teller went in and counted the money and gave it to the soldiers. The soldiers gave us a receipt and took the money out of the bank."
Captain Dallal responded: "Obviously we needed the assistance of some bank employees to locate the whereabouts of the accounts. That's true. There was no abuse of the people."
Zeev Schiff, military-affairs analyst for Ha'aretz newspaper, said: "Maybe people will be hurt by this and we have to compensate them. But we have to be tougher on the families of suicide bombers and take money from them as well."
Threat to liberty at FTAA worth a second look
By Jim Defede
Miami Herald
Posted on Thu, Feb. 26, 2004
This weekend the PBS program Now with Bill Moyers airs a segment on the protests in Miami during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in November 2003. I haven't seen the 20-minute piece, but the producers said they were interested in examining the protests as part of a larger theme the show has dealt with in recent months, the criminalization of dissent.
The criminalization of dissent. Four words that capture what I've clumsily tried to write about. The criminalization of dissent is precisely what took place in Miami.
There is a popular view in Miami that a hemispheric trade agreement would benefit this city and create as many as 89,000 new jobs in Florida. And all Miami had to do was avoid the mayhem Seattle experienced when it hosted a World Trade Organization meeting in 1999.
NEW ORDINANCE PASSED
The Miami City Commission helped the police, passing an ordinance just prior to the summit that civil liberty advocates said narrowed free speech and the right of assembly. During a hearing earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Donald Graham, said: ``Frankly, I think if anyone, any judge, looks at the law and looks at the ordinance, the result is pretty apparent. It appears as though the statute is not constitutional.''
Of course, many folks in Miami couldn't care less if the ordinance is unconstitutional because they assume it will never affect them. We cherish our own rights but are cavalier about the rights of others, especially those who are different, either because they look different or they hold unpopular beliefs or they are considered an outsider. It's OK if we enact laws targeting these people because we tell ourselves those in authority will only go after bad people. We call it a necessary evil.
UNCHECKED POWER
We've seen this debate in regard to racial profiling and the Patriot Act. As the FTAA once again proves, the police are not very adept at sorting out the good guys from the bad. And that unchecked power, no matter how well intended, is the greatest threat to our liberty.
In Miami we gave the police a club and they wielded it indiscriminately, striking seniors and retirees, union members and environmentalists, reporters and innocent bystanders. No matter how legitimate your belief or your actions, if you were downtown during the FTAA, you were viewed with suspicion, forced to walk past riot-clad officers and treated as if you were doing something wrong.
You were made to feel un-American.
As The Herald reported Sunday, of the 234 people who were arrested, a third have had their charges dropped, dismissed or been acquitted; another third have had their prosecutions deferred or adjudication withheld -- which almost always leads to the charges being dismissed -- and the final third are awaiting court dates.
Number of convictions: One.
THE COST OF CITY'S IMAGE
The police cost is now estimated at $23.9 million, most of it for overtime and to buy new equipment, including uniforms and weapons.
Here's a thought: Anyone else think the police used the FTAA hysteria to go on an unnecessary, taxpayer-financed shopping spree to buy millions of dollars in gadgets and gear?
And while you ponder that, see if this makes sense: To avoid Seattle's $3 million in property damage, we spent $23.9 million on security.
Angel Calzadilla, executive assistant to Miami police Chief John Timoney, noted: "You can't put a price tag on the damage to the city's image that we prevented by being out there.''
Unfortunately, Miami's image took a major hit during the FTAA. Mayor Manny Diaz's ''Miami Model'' is now synonymous with the creation of a police state where cops in riot gear stand over bloody protesters. But don't take my word for it, watch for yourself.
The PBS program Now with Bill Moyers airs across the country on Friday and in South Florida at 10:30 a.m. Sunday on WPBT-PBS 2.
Hubble trouble
Letting loose of eye on our universe seems premature
Arizona Republic Online Edition
Feb. 24, 2004 12:00 AM
Not so very long ago, "black holes" were viewed as little more than space myths. Physicists could explain their theoretical existence. But nothing so bizarre as deep, dense and deadly voids that ate stars and reduced their mass to the size of pinheads could truly exist. Could they?
Lo, we have now seen it through our own eyes. Or, at least, through the lenses of powerful telescopes that detected a huge X-ray blast in a little-noticed galaxy 700 million light-years from Earth. Scientists say they now have strong evidence of a huge black hole that is tearing up and devouring part of a star that had the misfortune of drifting into the black hole's irresistible gravitational path.
"This is really fantastic stuff," proclaims astronomer Alex Filippenko of the University of California at Berkeley. "This is one of the holy grails of astronomy." Leading the way to this holy grail has been the Hubble Space Telescope, one of science's most valuable tools for confirming the existence of black holes. Indeed, the Hubble has been a literal eye-opener at discovering for earthlings the most distant corners of the universe.
Now it appears the Hubble's time of expanding our universe is coming to an abrupt end. The valuable space telescope is falling into its own black hole: NASA has announced that, for safety and financial reasons, it has canceled a 2006 maintenance mission to the $4 billion telescope. Lacking the necessary improvements, Hubble will slowly deteriorate until it will be rendered useless by 2007.
The canceled maintenance would have extended Hubble's useful life to 2010, perhaps longer. Given its remarkable productivity to date, another three years of stargazing could produce still more amazing results. Of all NASA's projects, Hubble clearly has been among the most productive. Extending its life as long as possible would seem to make sense
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Do You Recognize This Jesus?
By KENNETH L. WOODWARD
NY Times
Published: February 25, 2004
Watching "The Passion of the Christ," Mel Gibson's new movie, I kept thinking the following: it is Christians, not Jews, who should be shocked by this film.
Mr. Gibson's raw images invade our religious comfort zone, which has long since been cleansed of the Gospels' harsher edges. Most Americans worship in churches where the bloodied body of Jesus is absent from sanctuary crosses or else styled in ways so abstract that there is no hint of suffering. In sermons, too, the emphasis all too often is on the smoothly therapeutic: what Jesus can do for me.
More than 60 years ago, H. Richard Neibuhr summarized the creed of an easygoing American Christianity that has in our time triumphantly come to pass: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment though the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." Despite its muscular excess, Mr. Gibson's symbol-laden film is a welcome repudiation of all that.
"The Passion of the Christ" is violent — no question. Although Mel Gibson the believer identifies with a traditionalist movement that rejects Vatican Council II, Mel Gibson the artist here displays a thoroughly Catholic sensibility, one that since the Middle Ages has emphasized Jesus as the suffering savior crowned with thorns. Martin Luther, too, would have recognized in this film his own theology of the cross.
But there is a little twist here. In his prerelease screenings, Mr. Gibson invited mostly conservative evangelical clergy. They in turn responded by reserving huge blocks of movie tickets for their congregations. When the film opens today, expect theaters around the country to be turned into temporary churches.
And what's so strange about this? Unlike Mr. Gibson's film, evangelical Protestantism is inherently non-visual. As spiritual descendants of the left wing of the Reformation, evangelicals are heirs to an iconoclastic tradition that produced the "stripping of the altars," as the historian Eamon Duffy nicely put it. That began in the late 16th century, when radical Protestants removed Christ's body from the cross. To the Puritans, displays of the body of Jesus represented what they considered the idol worship of the Papists. To this day, evangelical sanctuaries can be identified by their lack of visual stimulation; it is rare to see statues or stained-glass windows with human figures. For evangelicals, the symbols are all in sermon and song: verbal icons. It's a different sensibility.
For this reason, I think, evangelical audiences will be shocked by what they see. And, as Mr. Gibson has said repeatedly, he means to shock. Catholics will find themselves on familiar ground: they, at least, have retained the ritual of praying "the stations of the cross" — a Lenten practice that, like Mr. Gibson's movie, focuses on the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus. By contrast, Southern Baptists and other mostly fundamentalist churches do not observe Lent, and even Catholics have muted the ancient tradition of fast and abstinence that commemorated the Passion of Jesus.
Indeed, Mr. Gibson's film leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story that contemporary Christianity now emphasizes. His Jesus does not demand a "born again" experience, as most evangelists do, in order to gain salvation. He does not heal the sick or exorcise demons, as Pentecostals emphasize. He doesn't promote social causes, as liberal denominations do. He certainly doesn't crusade against gender discrimination, as some feminists believe he did, nor does he teach that we all possess an inner divinity, as today's nouveau Gnostics believe. One cannot imagine this Jesus joining a New Age sunrise Easter service overlooking the Pacific.
Like Jeremiah, Jesus is a Jewish prophet rejected by the leaders of his own people, and abandoned by his handpicked disciples. Besides taking an awful beating, he is cruelly tempted to despair by a Satan whom millions of church-going Christians no longer believe in, and dies in obedience to a heavenly Father who, by today's standards, would stand convicted of child abuse. In short, this Jesus carries a cross that not many Christians are ready to share.
It is easy, of course, to contrast third-millennium Christian mores with the story of Christ's Passion. Like other Americans, Christians want desperately to know that they are loved, in the words of the old Protestant hymn, "just as I am." But the love of God, as Dorothy Day liked to put it, "is a harsh and dangerous love" that requires real transformation. It is not the sort imagined by today's spiritual seekers who are "into" Asian religions.
Significantly, the Passion and death of Jesus is the chief element in the Gospel story that other religions cannot accept. In Islam, Jesus does not die on the cross because such a fate is considered unfitting for a prophet of Allah. By Hindus and Buddhists, Jesus is often regarded as a spiritual master, but the story of his suffering and death are considered unbecoming of an enlightened sage. Like the Buddha, the truly liberated transcend suffering and death. But Jesus submits to it — willingly, Christians believe — for the sins of all.
Were we a nation of Bible readers, not just Bible owners, I don't think a film like Mr. Gibson's would cause much fuss. While I do not think that "The Passion of the Christ" is anti-Semitic, I do think it presents Christians with a "teaching moment." But the lessons have more to do with forgotten Christian basics than with who killed Jesus.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
A Wall as a Weapon
By NOAM CHOMSKY
NY Times
Published: February 23, 2004
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order. Israel's so-called security fence, which is the subject of hearings starting today at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is a case in point.
Few would question Israel's right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security wall if that were an appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall would be built if security were the guiding concern: inside Israel, within the internationally recognized border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49 war. The wall could then be as forbidding as the authorities chose: patrolled by the army on both sides, heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize security, and there would be no international protest or violation of international law.
This observation is well understood. While Britain supports America's opposition to the Hague hearings, its foreign minister, Jack Straw, has written that the wall is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who inspected the "security fence," said it should be on the Green Line or "indeed on the Israeli side of the line." A British parliamentary investigative commission also called for the wall to be built on Israeli land, condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate" Israeli "strategy of bringing the population to heel."
What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also — as the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel's war of "politicide" against the Palestinians — helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.
Even before construction of the barrier was under way, the United Nations estimated that Israeli barriers, infrastructure projects and settlements had created 50 disconnected Palestinian pockets in the West Bank. As the design of the wall was coming into view, the World Bank estimated that it might isolate 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians, more than 10 percent of the population, and that it might effectively annex up to 10 percent of West Bank land. And when the government of Ariel Sharon finally published its proposed map, it became clear the the wall would cut the West Bank into 16 isolated enclaves, confined to just 42 percent of the West Bank land that Mr. Sharon had previously said could be ceded to a Palestinian state.
The wall has already claimed some of the most fertile lands of the West Bank. And, crucially, it extends Israel's control of critical water resources, which Israel and its settlers can appropriate as they choose, while the indigenous population often lacks water for drinking.
Palestinians in the seam between the wall and the Green Line will be permitted to apply for the right to live in their own homes; Israelis automatically have the right to use these lands. "Hiding behind security rationales and the seemingly neutral bureaucratic language of military orders is the gateway for expulsion," the Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in the daily Haaretz. "Drop by drop, unseen, not so many that it would be noticed internationally and shock public opinion." The same is true of the regular killings, terror and daily brutality and humiliation of the past 35 years of harsh occupation, while land and resources have been taken for settlers enticed by ample subsidies.
It also seems likely that Israel will transfer to the occupied West Bank the 7,500 settlers it said this month it would remove from the Gaza Strip. These Israelis now enjoy ample land and fresh water, while one million Palestinians barely survive, their meager water supplies virtually unusable. Gaza is a cage, and as the city of Rafah in the south is systematically demolished, residents may be blocked from any contact with Egypt and blockaded from the sea.
It is misleading to call these Israeli policies. They are American-Israeli policies — made possible by unremitting United States military, economic and diplomatic support of Israel. This has been true since 1971 when, with American support, Israel rejected a full peace offer from Egypt, preferring expansion to security. In 1976, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement in accord with an overwhelming international consensus. The two-state proposal has the support of a majority of Americans today, and could be enacted immediately if Washington wanted to do so.
At most, the Hague hearings will end in an advisory ruling that the wall is illegal. It will change nothing. Any real chance for a political settlement — and for decent lives for the people of the region — depends on the United States.
Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance."
