Later On

The US government is moving quickly to establish routine comprehensive surveillance of citizens. The NSA seems to already be filtering all communications (telephone, email, and the like), thanks to the lawbreaking of the telecomms, which have (illegally) given the NSA complete access to their equipment and to the call and message streams. (Barack Obama, after pledging that he would vote against giving the telecomms immunity on their lawbreaking, broke his word and voted in favor of giving the companies immunity. An early indication of his attitude toward civil rights and toward the law.)

Now it looks as though Facebook is part of the new focus. Read this post by Ed Brayton, which discusses this report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which begins:

Recent news has made it abundantly clear that the government uses the Internet and social networking sites as tools for investigation. But what’s not clear, and what the government has been reluctant to reveal, is how this information has been collected and utilized. To get answers, EFF, with help from Berkeley Law’s Samuelson Clinic, made a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests asking various law enforcement agencies to disclose documents detailing their use of social networking sites in their investigations. When the government refused to comply with these requests, we went to court to compel them to respond. The latest disclosures from this litigation reveal just some of the ways the government is obtaining and using information from the Internet. . .

Brayton also quotes from, and links to, a Computerworld article.

Ominous and consistent with the direction the US is moving.

I read a brief discussion on reddit’s Wicked_Edge about the efficacy of a cold-water shave: the claim is that cold water causes the skin to tighten, erecting the stubble for effective demolition. So I thought I’d give it a go. (The guy who started the thread was asking whether this would work. I never understand that: he presumably has access to cold water and shaving paraphernalia, so he has everything he needs to get the answer—and not just a general answer (“yeah, it works for some guys”) but the answer to the specific question: “Will it work for me?” Still, I understand why he wants to verify before trying: he shaves in the shower, so a cold-water shave has more severe implications for him than for me, who shave at the sink.)

Still, his asking prompted me to give it a go. I soaked the Edwin Jagger boar brush in hot water while I showered, but I used cold water to wet the brush and work up lather. It wasn’t nearly so unpleasant as it sounds: cool, but not shocking. I couldn’t tell that using cold water helped: I got a very close shave, but then it’s a two-day stubble attacked with a Slant Bar razor: it will naturally be a close shave.

I guess I have to try again with normal stubble and a regular razor. Still, not too bad. Three passes, the alum bar (which I’ve drifted back to using once again), and a splash of Pinaud Special Reserve (with a thanks to the reader who sent it to me), and I’m ready to get my ankle X-rayed.

Glenn Greenwald points out (and comments on) an important article by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation, which begins:

Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior members of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times, he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents. “In this environment, it’s very tricky. They want to help us, but the situation is not allowing them to do [it] however they want. They are not in control of the politics, they are not in control of the security,” he adds. “They are not controlling the environment like Afghanistan and Iraq. In Somalia, the situation is fluid, the situation is changing, personalities changing.”

‘Essentially, the CIA seems to be operating, doing the foreign policy of the United States,’ said a well-connected Somali analyst.

According to well-connected Somali sources,

Continue reading. And I highly recommend Greenwald’s column, which discusses how the media and government work together to keep hidden information the government doesn’t wish to disclose.

The Bradley Manning case just got a lot more interesting. Detailed column by Glenn Greenwald, which begins:

Yesterday — more than a full year after it first released selected portions of purported chat logs between Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo (representing roughly 25% of the logs) — Wired finally published the full logs (with a few redactions). From the start, Wired had the full chat logs and was under no constraints from its source (Lamo) about what it could publish; it was free to publish all of it but chose on its own to withhold most of what it received.

Last June — roughly a week after Wired‘s publication of the handpicked portions — I reviewed the long and complex history between Lamo and Wired Editor Kevin Poulsen, documented the multiple, serious inconsistencies in Lamo’s public claims (including ones in a lengthy interview with me), and argued that Wired should “either publish all of the chat logs, or be far more diligent about withholding only those parts which truly pertain only to Manning’s private and personal matters and/or which would reveal national security secrets.” Six months later, in December, I documented that numerous media reports about Manning and WikiLeaks were based on Lamo’s claims about what Manning told him in these chats — claims that could not be verified or disputed because Wired continued to conceal the relevant parts of the chat logs — and again called for “as much pressure as possible be applied to Wired to release those chat logs or, at the very least, to release the portions about which Lamo is making public claims or, in the alternative, confirm that they do not exist.”

Now that Wired has released the full chats, I just want to highlight a few passages that they concealed, and dispassionately lay out several key facts, so that everyone can decide for themselves if Wired told the truth about their conduct and assess the journalistic propriety of it. . .

Continue reading.

Read this amazing post by James Fallows at the Atlantic blogs. The quoted list of accomplishments pretty much shows how far along this particular path we have gone.

I got this via Ed Brayton, who has a pertinent comment on it:

By “grub” I mean an improvised meal with components selected purely for nutritional value but in hopes of tastiness. That means 3-4 oz protein, 1 serving (usually a little less) starch, not more than 2 tsp oil, and ample veg. Today’s grub for lunch turned out quite well. I wanted to use the little All-Clad Stainless wok I found in my storage room, and I found some very interesting local sun-dried tomatoes in the little PG produce market: twisted into one corner of a plastic bag, it resembled a plastic-wrapped large strawberry—not an enormous strawberry, just a large one. I had to ask what it was.

So: I heated wok and added:

2 tsp olive oil (I used the Fiery Chili olive oil)

When the oil was hot I added:

2 spring shallots, including green stems, chopped
pinch salt
freshly ground black pepper

Sautéd that for a while, then added:

4 oz skinless chicken breast, chopped
the little wad of sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 c. cooked Forbidden Rice (more antioxidants than blueberries)

I continued to sauté and stir. After a while I got some reasonable browning, and at that point I added:

1/3 c. white wine

I continued to stir and sauté. Then I saw the Ginger People Ginger Peanut Sauce:

3-4 Tbsp Ginger Peanut Sauce

Continued cooking it for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Extremely tasty, as it turns out.

A brief video (in English):

A do-it-yourself enthusiast from Chita in Siberia, Alexander Perfilyev, has been handcrafting miniature replicas of firearms and other weapons for over 30 years. A mechanical engineer by profession, whom the locals call a hands-on wizard, he took up his unusual hobby in the late 1970s after a trip to Tula, an arms manufacturing center.

You really should read these posts:

Rep. Cantor Wrap-up for Now

What the President Knows (and When He Knew It)

The Most Incredible Thing Fox News Has Ever Done

The first two give a cogent and persuasive case in favor of Obama’s handling of the deficit situation. Well worth reading. (This topic comes up in the third person quoted in the Cantor post.)

The third one is astounding. Really, we are in a race to the bottom.

Today I saw at Whole Foods cartons of coconut water, a novelty to me. I’ve had coconut water before, but only from coconuts, not from cartons. It’s quite tasty, certainly convenient, and I just realized would be excellent as the liquid in which Forbidden (black) Rice is cooked. Then mix that with a little maple syrup and some drained yogurt. Oh, my.

Mark Bittman has some great ideas for variations on the old summertime treat. Just a sample:

2. SAVORY

Avocado-Cilantro

Purée 2 ripe avocados, 1⁄4 cup lime juice, 1⁄2 cup cilantro leaves, 1 1⁄2 cups water and salt and pepper.

Tomato-Cucumber

Purée 1 pound tomatoes, 1⁄2 small seeded cucumber, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, 1 garlic clove, 1⁄2 cup water and plenty of salt and pepper.

Coconut Curry

Purée 2 cups coconut milk, 1 inch fresh ginger, 1 tablespoon curry powder, 1 small hot fresh chili, 2 tablespoons lime juice and salt and pepper.

This article details what amounts to a limited takeover of Scotland Yard (aka the Metropolitan Police) by Murdoch’s corporations. It’s almost as though Murdoch bought a minority interest in Scotland Yard, enough to redirect and stop investigations. And he got it quite cheaply, in monetary terms—much like the enormous returns corporations get from trivial (for them) campaign contributions and other such kickbacks: a few changes in regulations and laws can bring billions into corporate coffers—cf. the oil industry subsidies, the cost-plus military contracts, and so on. Sound business decisions.

Of course, Murdoch’s people ultimately muffed it, but people—corporations, I should say—learn fast and the next ones to do this will not make the same mistakes. Corporations will continue to innovate ways to control the powers that attempt to control them until some corporation or group of corporations finds a way that works, and that technique will be quickly copied. Since not all copies or all situations will be the same, variations inevitably arise, and evolutionary pressures ensure that the most successful prosper—get copied a lot—and those that fail become evolutionary dead ends. And this sort of evolution—memes evolving—is incredibly rapid compared to evolution of living entities.

Certainly in the US one can actually see which corporations have taken strong control of the parts of the government that concern them: the defense industry, the energy industry, the financial industry, agribusiness, pharmaceutical companies—the list goes on. People all know that the government is now to a great extent controlled by corporations, but they have yet to see the full fallout from that.

In the meantime, food prices are rising (interesting video at the link, where speculators are blamed)—as was obviously going to happen with climate change destroying harvests. I believe the American Southeast has been experiencing a drought for some time, and temperatures climb. Although speculation may play a role now, as harvests dwindle over the coming years, serious food shortages really will occur. Although I don’t hold with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the disasters selected as horsemen shows what people of past centuries most feared: death, famine, pestilence, and war. Famines we’ll surely see well within this decade, and famines will certainly bring along the first and fourth horsemen and probably the third as well.

I guess this is one of my gloomy posts. But I’m amazed at the degree to which these trends, which seem obvious if you look at the news, are seldom discussed. Well, that’s not quite fair to say, given that I began this post with a link to a lengthy (and fascinating) NY Times article on a corporation’s heavy influence on the London Metropolitan Police. What I mean is that the story is reported from an extremely limited perspective and without a broader context—indeed, one interesting thing is yet another demonstration that lying down with dogs means getting up with fleas: as corporations assume greater control of the government, that control becomes a corporate asset and thus must be maintained and nourished, which the government likes (campaign contributions are only the tip of the iceberg), so gradually the awareness dawns that they are really in it together: that it’s a common enterprise, called “taking lots of money from common people and making sure they can’t stop it or fight back effectively”.

You can read many histories of this enterprise: Howard Zinn’s work, for example, or any good history of the US labor movement. The trend is obvious once you look. What we now have is a single culture emerging at the top: People Who Control and Gain Great Wealth. And it really doesn’t make much difference any more which control subgroup has their (current) membership, government or business. They will move back and forth as needed, and one hand washes the other because they belong to the same body. Bill Keller and the NY Times held back the surveillance story (how the NSA has gone full time into spying on citizens) so that George Bush could get re-elected. Then, once the election was safely in the bag, they ran the story. Keller admits this—well, not that Bush’s re-election was the reason. In Keller’s telling Bush’s re-election (which would have failed had the story run prior to the election) was just an amazing coincidence. No, they held the story for quite another reason, one that’s perfectly okay, now please shut up about it. And the NY Times has indeed pretty much shut up about that.

UPDATE: It strikes me that the Internet has greatly accelerated the pace of evolution for memes: a new meme can go global in an instant, and variations and offshoots begin at once. It’s not just YouTube videos: the Internet is heavily used for serious work in meme creation.

To get a sense of the speed of development and evolution, compare the cultural landscape of today with that of 10 years ago: July 2001. Enormous changes. And even comparing today to 5 years ago, one can trace the on-going development of memes in all spheres.

UPDATE 2: A good example of rapid evolution of a meme: violence in movies. The original meme (imitation of a fight) was wooden, with clunky choreography. But it was a meme and thus could be imitated, and imitated it was. Many of the grade B westerns of my childhood seemed to use identical choreography, with certain themes endlessly repeated: the fall against the upstairs railing, breaking it, and toppling down; and of course all the glassware in the bar had to be demolished. But then variations appeared and competition ensued. I suppose there was only a few directions to go: specialized dying choreography (e.g., Lee Marvin’s little ballet of death throes—though these were more soft pitches—in The Stranger Wore a Gun, if I remember correctly); and so on. But, essentially, the level of violence had to escalate. The Wild Bunch broke new ground. I recall reading about a test screening in Kansas, where someone ran from the theater into the street and vomited, and Sam Peckinpah realized that he had done it. But that was then, and this is now, and the violence level is high and constant, even in comedies. The meme took hold, evolved, and spread. And the difference in that aspect of movies today vs. movies 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and so on is obvious. Indeed, I would bet that there are dissertations in which violence levels have been quantized and the trend studied.

And it seems exactly right to view this in terms of a meme’s evolving without getting into particulars of the various individuals involved. The real story—the narrative thread—is the meme and how it survived and evolved.

Madonna has famously reinvented herself several times, thus lengthening (and strengthening) her career.

I realized last night that I, too, am reinventing myself (though not quite so completely or publicly as Madonna): the move from BofA to the local credit union is, to some degree, a reinvention. I realized that I already was developing a different intuitive sort of “feel” associated with “ATM”. I was starting to associate “ATM” (the concept) with different set of locations in town. And I realized I was thinking about my bank differently—as though I had some responsibility to take care of it. I felt more like an owner, less like a victim from whom the bank would extract every fee possible (and try to seize my home that is completely paid for—not true for me, but that’s what BofA actually, in fact, does).

And as I was riding my Brompton about, and thinking of routes for errands, I realized that switching to a bike for as much in-town work as possible (I’ll be getting the wire-frame baskets that fit on the rear wheel and are sized exactly right for a grocery bag) has made me start to think differently as well as act differently—and this time quite visibly in public. (When I commuted to work at ACT just outside Iowa City at the time, I did it by bike quite often, and I think that did cause people to develop a certain view of me.) So another tiny reinvention—and it does seem to cascade changes from that initial decision—sets one on a new path.

Learning Spanish: being fluent in Spanish is certainly a reinvention, and an obvious one.

And I can see that, just as Madonna’s several reinventions enabled her to explore new themes and new directions in her music/performance/life, so too these minor reinventions that I am doing seem to kick up my own energy.

OTOH, I have to remember that I enjoy novelty and variety, and some people hate it. For them, reinvention would be difficult and unpleasant, I imagine. To me it feels like breaking free of a chrysalis that I hadn’t realized was so restricting, and spreading my wings: a caterpillar transformed.

I’m enjoying being on Google+, but still getting oriented. Here’s an explanation of how it is:

The “circles” idea is quite intuitive, and you can have people belong to more than one circle. The Son, for example, is now in two circles I have: Family and Shaving. (He uses a Gillette English Aristocrat #22, a TTO with an open comb.) Very cool. And (IMO) better than Facebook so far as managing privacy and controlling who can see your posts.

I did get a Bell helmet. I tried on several of various makes, including Giro, but the Bell was the best fit. And I realized that the bicycle that had caught my eye was the Bianchi Torino. However, another candidate was mentioned in the comments:  the Trek Belleville. I certainly liked the Treks I’ve owned in the past, so I may check out the local Trek dealer as well. But it will be a while. I want a working ankle and knee before I start seriously riding a bike.

I ate some cherries and sort of regretted throwing out the stack of pits—there were so many, and they were uniform in size, etc. Then The Wife told me that cleaned cherry pits, sterilized (in the sense of being made infertile) in the oven, could be used to make a pillow that works extremely well as a hot-pack or a cold-pack for… well, for sprains, bruises, and the like. (Opportune, no?) And she’s right, of course.

So I got another bag of cherries, and I’m carefully hoarding the pits.

I have no idea why I get such satisfaction from making such stuff (Worcestershire sauce, pepper sauce, cherry-pit pillow, yogurts, etc.). But I do.

I’m now refrigerating a batch of Villi made with Half & Half, and it is indeed much thicker than when I used regular milk. My next experiment will be to use some of the Buttermilk culture, which consists solely of Streptococcus Lactis, to try making Half & Half fraîche. Right now, though, I’m making a new batch of crème fraîche (using whipping cream) for The Niece to use in a baking project.

I took a look at Nancy’s Nonfat Yogurt, which was the one I’ve been buying. The culture they use is quite varied:

Once I get caught up, I’m definitely going to use that as a starter. I had looked at the ingredients list in the past, but only to verify that the yogurt contains only milk and culture (e.g., no pectin, no sweetener).

And thanks to Simply Shaving for the invite. Google+ at first look seems extremely nice. Great, uncluttered interface, clear distinction of different “circles”: family, friends, acquaintances, “following”, and of course you can readily create your own “circles”: project team, co-workers, interest group, whatever. And when you post, you select the circle(s) to whom the post will be visible.

I am so glad to be shut of Facebook.

UPDATE: Just to be clear: a person can belong to multiple circles—e.g., suppose I worked for Big Corporation. A co-worker Fred might belong to circles (my circles, which others do not see) Friend, Big Corp, Project Able, Slo-pitch league. He’ll then get anything that I post and release to any of these circles, so the post can be specifically targeted to a particular group: “Slo-pitch practice Wed night at 7:30″, would be seen by Fred, since he’s in the slo-pitch circle, but not necessarily by others in Project Able or at Big Corp.

This is well worth watching—and thinking of how you would handle the situation:

Via Ed Brayton, whose post is worth the click. And note, in the video, that once again we have prosecutorial misconduct—something for which prosecutors have been given immunity in recent Supreme Court decisions. That is, deliberate misconduct of concealing evidence in order to gain a (spurious) conviction: that is okay, as decided by the current Supreme Court.

I think I know what’s causing the intermittent black screen: the go-to-sleep operation has a problem in my computer. I noticed last night when I shut the computer the Apple logo in the lid continued to glow brightly, though the lid was shut. That was unusual, so I opened the lid and saw that the screen was fully lit. But just as I saw that the screen went completely dark—the sudden blackness phenomenon. And, in just 1-2 seconds, it came back on: this is the same thing that’s been occasionally happening with the lid wide open. And just now, as it happened again, I noticed that a new Web page was not loading at all for a brief moment after the lights came back on, and then it started—as though the function was suspended briefly as part of the shutdown.

Now I think I have more info for the Genius Bar.