Later On

That is, the FBI (a part of the Department of Justice) concluded decisively (in its own eyes, though not in the eyes of those involved in the case) that Bruce Ivins was the scapegoat person responsible for the anthrax attacks, and when a victim sued the government, the DoJ (in its role as defense attorney for the government) filed papers that convincingly showed the FBI’s case was a house made of tissue-paper cards.

Oops! The DoJ doesn’t trust the DoJ? Now the DoJ is going for a take-back, but unfortunately the testimony showing the weaknesses of the FBI case are now public. This report in McClatchy has the story:

Rushing into court to undo a major gaffe, Justice Department lawyers defending a civil suit Tuesday retracted statements that seemed to undercut the FBI’s finding that a former Army microbiologist mailed the anthrax-filled letters that killed five people in 2001.

Although the seven-page correction, filed in federal court in Florida, addresses conflicts between lawyers in the Civil and Criminal Divisions, it does not erase depositions filed by the government that challenged the FBI’s finding that the late Bruce Ivins was the perpetrator.

The department’s legal dance stems from its two seemingly conflicting roles: backing up the FBI’s finding that Ivins, who committed suicide in July 2008, was the killer and defending an Army bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick, Md., against allegations of negligence.

The Civil Division is attempting to limit federal liability over the death of the first anthrax victim, a Boca Raton, Fla., man whose family is seeking $50 million in damages for alleged negligence by the lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

In trying to minimize USAMRIID’s liability, government lawyers have had to walk a fine line, because the FBI says Ivins produced the anthrax powder at the facility while the civil lawyers are arguing it could have been prepared elsewhere.

Tuesday’s retraction came a day after a collaborative report by McClatchy, the Public Broadcasting Service’s “Frontline” news magazine and ProPublica, an investigative newsroom, disclosing what appeared to be an explosive Justice Department revelation. . .

Continue reading. This is very like the DoJ assurance that it would not bother those whose use of medical marijuana was in line with state laws, followed a few months later by a memo saying that those who use medical marijuana in line with state laws are liable to prosecution by the DoJ, thus killing medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington state and at least holding them up in Arizona.

And, in other Obama Administration news, Obama’s chief terrorism adviser John Brennan made the claim that drone attacks have caused no civilian casualties—none, zero, zip, bupkis—and then careful research found scores of casualties of civilians (assuming that the women and children killed were noncombatants). So naturally there’s a FOIA request for the data, and the Obama Administration has—surprise!—blocked it. I think I know why, but (speaking of contradictions) here is Obama once more contradicting his political stance of transparency. Here’s some background information with links to the substantiating reports.

I use a Canon Powershot S2 IS digital camera for the SOTD shots, but this morning, regardless of which memory card I inserted, I get “Memory Card Error”. So I tried a shot with my little subcompact camera but, as you’ll see, it’s not up to the task.

I am contacting Canon USA about a possible repair, but in the event that proves expensive, I’m also camera shopping. I know some of you understand cameras much better than I.

Some desiderata: I like a viewfinder rather than the big screen on the back. I like optical zoom. I don’t need the camera to be compact. I do a lot of interior shots, but also outdoor shots as well. Here are some candidates:

Canon PowerShot SX30 IS – $400, which seems pricey to me.

Nikon Coolpix P100 – $350. The newer version, the Nikon COOLPIX P500, is $380 and might be the wiser choice.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ40 – $290, more like it

Fujifilm FinePix S2800HD – $235, getting there

Fujifilm FinePix S2950 – $180. Now we’re talking.

In looking through the reviews for these and other cameras, I note that Fujifilm cameras are frequently slammed for bad-quality interior shots, which of course are most of my shots.

UPDATE: Repair is going to be $150, so a new camera looks more plausible.

Very pleasant shave. The Semogue 2000 boar brush still is early in the break-in, but I got a fine Creamy Lather. The brush capacity is still not great, so I returned to the soap to make more lather for the third pass. The iKon used the Personna 74 blade I used yesterday in the Goodfella head, transferred today to the iKon head. Very nice shave, and the iKon head is better (but then the iKon is a pricier razor). A splash of the Alt Innsbruck, and I’m ready to take The Niece to the airport for her departure.

I say that based on this story from the Associated Press, which I found via Ed Brayton’s post on the story. The story begins:

A federal judge reacted skeptically Tuesday to the Obama administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by an American citizen who says he was held in Africa for four months and allegedly interrogated more than 30 times by U.S. officials.At a two-hour hearing in Washington, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan repeatedly said he was required to accept as true at this early phase of the case the allegations by Amir Mohamed Meshal.

Meshal says that U.S. officials threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm unless he confessed to ties with al-Qaida in Somalia. . .

Continue reading. This is our country doing these things, and Obama is at the head of it. Look how vigorously he protects the things being done: because if they are laid bare and investigated as war crimes, it implicates Obama. He is now protecting himself. He in fact has already broken the law (the Convention Against Torture, a signed and ratified treaty, which requires investigation of credible allegations of torture, which we have aplenty included documented and published accounts of prisoners—excuse me, detainees—being tortured to death by US forces acting under orders from the highest levels, aka the President) and by now could be considered an accomplice (as accessory after the fact). If he were acting in accordance with the law (that once governed presidents even as you and I), the allegations Meshal is making would trigger an investigation—a broad-ranging, thorough, and open investigation—into the entire US torture regime (not a phrase that I thought could ever be used). Instead of obeying the law and heeding the allegations, Obama has unleashed the dogs of the Department of Justice in his defense. (“Dogs” used advisedly.)

I am not a lawyer, but it seems very much as if President Obama is using the US government in extraordinary efforts (and arguing morally repellent cases) to protect himself. It’s not for the good of the country, that’s for sure.

UPDATE: It wasn’t until I wrote this post that I realized how clear-cut is the case against him, how public the evidence, how clear the law. It seems as if I, like most, had averted my gaze, but when I looked at it directly, I saw that it is, in the immortal words of George Tenet, a “slam dunk.”

UPDATE 2: It just struck me that a gang of torturers have taken over the US government to the extent that they directed torture and are continuing to use the power of the government to protect themselves from any investigation. Argentina, here we come!

Take a look and browse around. The link goes to one that’s €715 (US$1,011), but there are some for half that.

Very interesting report.

This bottle is terrific, though useful only for cold beverages: you drink directly from the Thermos, so hot liquids (coffee, tea) come out scalding, leading to burns, spills, and car wrecks.

Like my favorite pocket knives, this is designed for one-hand operation. Crucially, the diameter is small enough to fit the cupholders in my 1996 Nissan, much smaller than today’s cupholders.

I first saw this in use by TYD, who likes it a lot. I looked for one off and on, but found it (and was reminded of it) only when I stumbled across the Cool Tools description. Very nifty indeed. Note that you can also get it in various colors (e.g., charcoal) for somewhat more money.

UPDATE: BTW, it’s unlined: no BPA hazard.

An excellent summary of the failing case (never strong to begin with) again Bruce Ivins, along with information on strongly Obama has fought off independent investigations and review. And, of course, it’s interesting to see the DoJ condemn the FBI investigation (in defending the government from a lawsuit brought by an anthrax victim)—and the evidence on which the DoJ’s condemnation is based. From the column:

Indeed, Cohen claimed that “a high government official” told him shortly after the 9/11 attack to carry cipro as an antidote against anthrax.  The Editors of Nature added: ”This case is too important to be brushed under the carpet. The anthrax attacks killed five people, infected several others, paralysed the United States with fear and shaped the nation’s bioterrorism policy.”

But, of course, in the U.S., the nation’s most powerful political and financial factions — especially those who control the National Security State — are immune from meaningful scrutiny and investigation.  As a result, President Obama — in what I think is one his most indefensible acts — actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI’s anthrax investigation.  Democratic Rep. Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was the site where the letters were allegedly mailed and one of the bill’s sponsors, said at the time he was appalled that “an Administration that has pledged to be transparent and accountable would seek to block any review of the investigation in this matter.”

Indeed, the veto threat issued by the Obama White House was refreshingly (albeit unintentionally) candid about why it was so eager to block any independent inquiry: ”The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”  That would happen only if the FBI’s claims could not withstanding independent, critical scrutiny.  But — as is even more apparent now than ever — the White House is fully aware that it cannot.  In a rational, non-corrupt environment, that would be a reason to insist upon — not take extraordinary steps to block — an independent investigation into one of the most consequential crimes ever committed on U.S. soil.  But that, manifestly, is not the world in which we live, and thus — despite continuously mounting evidence that we do not know anywhere close to the full story of who perpetrated this attack – the country’s political leadership continues to stonewall any efforts to find out.

Think about it:

“The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”  That would happen only if the FBI’s claims could not withstanding independent, critical scrutiny.  But — as is even more apparent now than ever — the White House is fully aware that it cannot.

Obama is in effect strongly condemning his own administration.

The quoted question, or a variant of it, was repeated endlessly by Republicans in the wake of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. Their grave expressed concern for the well-being of America’s children went down well, despite its inconsistency with what they actually did—among other things, try to scuttle SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), cutting back on programs to help poor families (including their children), defunding education at every opportunity, fighting any legislation to improve nutrition (such as nutrition labeling, country-of-origin labels) or to remove toxins from the environment (fighting Superfund cleanups, requirements for clean air and clean water, and so on). The GOP’s actions show little concern for the welfare of children or anyone or anything else, save to increase business profits—which is appropriate, I suppose, since they are more or less business employees (or hope to be as soon as they leave office).

Here’s a book that spells it out:

Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis
by Sandra Steingraber

A review by Laura Orlando

Sandra Steingraber’s first book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, left reviewers calling her “the new Rachel Carson.” It is an apt comparison. Not since 1962, when Carson courageously challenged the chemical industry in Silent Spring, has a scientist woven so much revelation and research together with such gorgeous and persuasive prose. In Raising Elijah, Steingraber makes a case for “outspoken, fullthroated heroism in the face of the great moral crisis of our day.” She girds readers for the struggle we must take up if we are to wrest our world from the embrace of the suicidals.

Steingraber explains that there are actually two crises: climate chaos from the accumulation of heat-trapping gases and the poisoning of our children’s bodies with toxic chemicals. The two share a common root: fossil fuels. She walks us through the terrible statistics on childhood diseases linked to chemical exposures and, to show that children’s health is not an economic “externality,” gives each a price tag: The quantifiable are in billions; others, like early puberty among girls, and thus shortened childhoods, have no assigned dollar value.

When her son, Elijah, was born, Steingraber was living in a rented cabin in rural New York with her husband, Jeff, and daughter, Faith, the inspiration for her acclaimed examination of environmental threats to fetal development, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. She worked from home, gave occasional lectures and considered it her job as mother to keep her children “from situations that seem inherently dangerous,” like eating food grown with pesticides.

Though choosing organic food is good for the eater and the grower — as well as for rural economies and environments — Steingraber knows that the answers to the enormous problems we face are not to be found in “green” shopping guides and websites. “As a matter of principle, toxicity should not be a consumer choice,” she writes. “Believing that we can buy safety for our children with money and knowledge leaves those with neither in harm’s way.” We can try to be our own poison-control centers, but it is institutional change and regulatory muscle that will make the difference.

Steingraber’s narrative is personal and political, funny and smart. She shows us that feminism and motherhood are not at odds; combined, they make for heroes. Braving the question of whether to tell children about the dangers that lurk in our yards and our atmosphere, she writes, “The way we protect our kids from terrible knowledge is not to hide the terrible knowl edge, or change the subject…but to let them watch us rise up in the face of the terrible knowledge and do something. The immediate lesson for me was: Stop acting like a Good German around your kids and let them see that you are a member of the French Resistance.” Raising Elijah is a call to arms, a cry for the moral solidarity that we must forge to prevent environmental degradation and its assault on children’s health.

Think silent playgrounds.

Laura Orlando is executive director of the Resource Institute for Low Entropy Systems; she teaches at the Boston University School of Public Health.

The Obama Administration seems as fervently dedicated to the notion of endless war against terrorists, however unsuited the “war” format is for chasing down a few dozen criminals. (Leon Panetta estimates that Al Qaeda now has less then two dozen leaders of any significance at all.) This, despite the adverse effects war has on the people—civilians, non-terrorists—in the countries in which we have our operations and, as a result, the stimulus our wars give to the terrorist movement—quite apart what damage funding such wars has done to this country (save for the bonanza for certain companies and, through them, to certain Representatives, Senators, and political hopefuls).

Here’s a look at how the US tries to get its citizens excited about more and more wars and money flowing unimpeded into a military-industrial-Congressional complex. Just one paragraph from that link:

. . . In recent months, government officials have been insisting that the greatest Terrorist threat now resides in Yemen.  Almost before the Al Qaeda leader’s body hit the ocean floor, U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, in Yemen, assumed his (fabricated) role in American government and media depictions as The NextOsamabin Laden.  The Obama administration hasescalated the existing drone program and begun a new CIA drone campaign in Yemen (one that just killed numerous people over the weekend); it also, contrary to public denials, provided the arms to Saudi Arabia to attack a rebel group in Northern Yemen.  Yemen is also the justification for Obama’s attempt to institutionalize a due-process-free assassination program aimed at U.S. citizens.  The administration just commenced aseparate drone campaign in Somalia.  And, as Jeremy Scahill revealed last week, the U.S. is relying upon interrogations conducted in a secret prison in Mogadishu, filled with people from that country and those rendered at the behest of the U.S. from other African nations.  Just like The Communist was seamlessly replaced by the Terrorist when a new enemy was needed, the death of Osama bin Laden and the virtual non-existence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan means that Yemen and Somalia are the New War on Terror Battlegrounds. . .

Well, two more paragraphs. I think the column points out many specific instances of how the leaders of this country (political and media) are working hard to deceive the people of the country. With those two forces in collusion, it’s difficult to see how the decline of the US can be stopped. Witness:

. . . If you drop cluster bombs in a country and slaughter dozens of women and children with drones and then kill a popular governor, you’re going to spawn pervasive amounts of anger and hostility towards the responsible foreign country and also embolden the message of extremists that they are under attack from the U.S and jihad is thus warranted: a shocking observation, I know — but readers of the LA Times, or at least this article on the supposed emerging threat, would have no idea that the U.S. has even been doing that in Yemen.

That the U.S. is creating the very Terrorism problem it claims to be combating is one of the most crucial points in discussions of American Terrorism policy — it was one explicitly recognized even by a Rumsfeld-created Terrorism task force back in 2004 – but it barely is heard in American political discourse.  Further bolstering that fact is the work of Noor Berham, who has spent three years systematically documenting the results of American drone attacks in Pakistan with on-the-scene photojournalism: . . .

Straight razors:

Double-edged blade and safety razor:

Two experiments today. First, another cold-water shave. Second, a commenter suggested trying the Goodfella head with another handle: a very sensible idea.

First, the cold-water part: I washed my beard using MR GLO with lukewarm water, then used cold to wet the brush and work up the lather. A good lather resulted, though somewhat less than I would have obtained with hot water, I think. Lathering was not really an issue, though. The cold-water rinses after each pass were more noticeable, but it went reasonably well. I did not, however, notice enough of a performance improvement to warrant the discomfort, slight as it was. I’ll try again, but then I think I’ll return to my hot-water shaves, which seem to work fine.

The Frankenrazor (parts from different razors put together) worked well. The commenter suggested the R41 handle, but I got a thread mismatch. OTOH, the iKon Bulldog handle works fine, and that change does allow one to get the benefit of the Goodfella head. I used a new Personna 74 blade (thanks to Zach) and the shave was quite nice. If you have a Goodfella, I recommend trying a different handle.

Three cold passes, a swish of the alum bar, and a splash of Pashana. It was a learning experience.

It must be pejorative to be accurate, apparently. Maybe Feeble But Incompetent would work.

The harsh judgment is not for this incident alone, of course, but for a growing pattern of incompetence and botched investigations:

Item: The absolute certainty (until proven wrong) that the Oregon man HAD to have been in Madrid, based on the FBI’s fingerprint expertise.  (The Spanish were always skeptical.)

Item: The several times they have broken up idiotic terrorist “plots” (a plan to more or less hacksaw the Brooklyn Bridge; the bewildered men in Florida who got so far as they did only with painstaking help from the FBI; and others like this).

Item: Their gross overuse of the National Security Letters to the point where they were breaking the law.

Item: Their unceasing focus on liberal and progressive groups as “suspicious.”

Item.. why go on? And those are just off the top of my head. They also don’t seem to have been very good on white collar crime, either.

James Fallows in the Atlantic, in a post he titled “Newspaper writers as novelists”:

Which I mean in a good way: that is, writers who reveal their eye for the telling phrase and the memorable detail. Here is a paragraph to notice, from the latest NYT wrap-up of the long-festering corruption within News Corp:

>>Mr. Murdoch was attending a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in early July when it became clear that the latest eruption of the hacking scandal was not, as he first thought, a passing problem. According to a person briefed on the conversation, he proposed to one senior executive that he “fly commercial to London,” so he might be seen as man of the people.<<

The last few words of the passage amounts to a merciless and unforgettable twist of the knife, in the guise of an innocent explanatory phrase. Congratulations to Jo Becker and Ravi Somaiya, whose bylines are on the story, and anyone else involved in the chronicle. Story as a whole has a lot of other riveting details too.

Notes to the young: this is the first story in memory that recreates the effect of living through Watergate. The revelations don’t stop, what would have seemed unimaginable fantasy a week ago is hard news today, and there is no obvious firebreak ahead that will bring the disclosures to an end. I suspect that some people on the other end of the revelations have thought about the parallel too.

Interesting article by Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones:

On Thursday, the House passed a bill that effectively eliminates federal oversight on water standards. The bill rolls back the Clean Water Act,  returning most oversight to the states, and passed with almost all Republicans and a handful of Democrats supporting it.

The measure has a title that sounds kind of pleasant—the “Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011″—but when you read it you realize it’s really just an effort to return us to the days of the Cuyahoga River fire andLove Canal.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 239 to 184 on Wednesday, but like many of the assaults on EPA authority this year, it’s unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate. Nearly every Republican supported the provision, along with 12 Democrats—most of them from coal states.

MAPLight.org crunched the numbers and found that interest groups that supported this motion—like the National Mining Association and the West Virginia Coal Association—gave 94 percent more money to House members who voted in favor of the bill than they did to those who voted against it. Those interest groups gave 61 times as much money ($13,588 total) to Democrats who voted for it as they gave to Dems who voted against it (just $224).

Were this to become law it would, of course, be a very bad thing in many states—particularly those where fossil fuel interests and industrial polluters already have a track record of ignoring protections for humans and the environment. There’s a reason that a federal clean water protection plan was signed into law in 1972: States weren’t doing a particular good job of keeping their rivers from catching fire as it was.

The reference in the last sentence is to the time the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted that it caught fire and burned, destroying at least one bridge in the process.

This is an excellent example how businesses now run the country by controlling the legislature. Businesses are, of course, focused solely on increasing their profits—not on making sure our drinking water is clean and safe, our air is breathable, our schools work, and so on. Those things will be noticed by businesses only insofar as they affect profits. So as business takes more and more control of the government, you can expect to find more and more cuts to programs designed to benefit the public (rather than the businesses).

In fact, I suspect that ocean life is like a network, in which some species play pivotal roles: bring down one of those, and you get a widespread collapse of other species. Perhaps menhaden is one of these. I guess we’ll find out. Tom Philpott reports in Mother Jones:

So, there’s this company called Omega Protein, and it seems intent on catching as much as it possibly can of an obscure, tiny, practically inedible fish called the Atlantic menhaden.

From Omega Protein’s perspective, hoovering up menhaden like they’re dust bunnies is a great idea. The company’s entire business model hinges on transforming the oily fish into everything from livestock feed to omega-3 pills for people. In fact, it owns a monopoly on Atlantic menhaden fishing and processing—and has been doing just that for years. The stock market values Omega Protein at a cool quarter-billion dollars.

For the health of the ecosystem along the East Coast, though, declaring open season on the menhaden really, really sucks, as Alison Fairbrother and Randy Fertel say in their recent Gilt Taste piece, “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.” All along the eastern shore, menhaden have entered a phase of calamitous decline. Stocks have plunged 88 percent in the past quarter century, the authors report. As Omega Protein sucks them out of the ocean, things are getting quite out-of-whack down below. Fairbrother and Fertel explain: . . .

Continue reading.

From a business perspective, high unemployment does have some benefits: employees are much more tractable because they live in fear of losing their jobs. This means that they can be more easily exploited—for example, squeezing 60-80 hour work weeks from salaried employees (who do not get overtime) and forcing unpaid overtime from hourly employees (one reason businesses are so eager to kill off unions). Wages also can be lowered: supply and demand at work.

Dean Baker points out Robert Samuleson’s current column in the Washington Post:

Robert Samuelson Wants Us to Follow the Example of a Country With 7 Years of Double-Digit Unemployment

Yes, I am serious. In his column today Samuelson holds up Latvia as the model for the United States to follow. The unemployment rate in Latvia is currently close to 20 percent. According to the latest projections from the IMF, it is still projected to be double-digits by 2016, the end of its projection period. Its 2016 GDP is projected to be 1.5 percent below its 2007 level. If this is a model for success, it’s interesting to think of what Samuelson would view as a failure.

I suppose exporting our bad eating habits does help some in our balance of trade, assuming that the corn-based foods abroad are made using American corn. And we use corn for just about everything, including meat (grain-fed beef: lots of corn there, though they mercifully slaughter the cattle before they die from the unnatural diet—see King Corn, available on Netflix Watch Instantly; plus all the other foods manufactured from or based on corn).

But the impact on the health of countries following our lead is severe. Jeremy Cherfas reports on NPR (audio available for download at the link in addition to the text story):

It’s not news that Americans are getting fatter and fatter, and the same is happening in many countries around the world. What may come as a bit of a surprise is that it’s even happening in Mediterranean countries, especially among young people.

Pioppi, a little seaside Italian town south of Naples, is home of the Mediterranean Diet. In fact, there’s a museum here dedicated to Ancel Keys, a Minnesota physiologist who traveled to Europe during the 1940s and 1950s to study the diet of people living near the Mediterranean Sea.

Keys, who liked to eat Mediterranean-style meals, lived to be 101 years old. The problem is, in Italy generally, even here in Pioppi, the diet is being ignored.

“The Mediterranean diet is absolutely something that we are trying to pursue every day,” said Dr. Angelo Pietrobelli, associate professor of pediatrics and nutrition at the University of Verona. “Unfortunately, in particular among adolescents, they try to avoid Mediterranean diet because they try to ‘imitate’ the U.S. diet.” . . .

Continue reading.

A very tasty dessert last night, made by The Niece. She used a non-gluten baking mix, and it came out terrific.