Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Mazel Tov!

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Google has fired the head of its Google+ effort, and will be redirecting its resources:

When Vic Gundotra, the head of Google+, suddenly announced his departure from Google today, many were left wondering “why” and what it meant for the future of Google+. He didn’t give a reason for leaving, but according to a report from TechCrunch, the likely reason is a major shakeup for Google’s social network.

In short, Google seems to be backing away from the original Google+ strategy. The report states that Google+ will no longer be considered a product that competes with Facebook and Twitter, and that Google’s mission to force Google+ into every product will end. With this downgrade in importance comes a downgrade in resources. TechCrunch claims that 1000-1200 employees—many of which formed the core of Google+—will be moved to other divisions. Google Hangouts will supposedly be moved to Android, and the Google+ photos team is “likely” to follow. “Basically, talent will be shifting away from the Google+ kingdom and towards Android as a platform,” the report said. The strange part is that both of these teams create cross-platform products. So if the report is true, there will be a group inside the Android team making iOS and Web apps, which doesn’t seem like the best fit.

A Google spokesperson gave Ars the same statement the company gave TechCrunch: “Today’s news has no impact on our Google+ strategy—we have an incredibly talented team that will continue to build great user experiences across Google+, Hangouts, and Photos.” On Gundotra’s announcement post, Larry Page wrote “we’ll continue working hard to build great new experiences for the ever-increasing number of Google+ fans.”

Despite Google’s denial, it makes sense for the company to back away from Google+. The social network hasn’t gained the massive userbase it would need to rival Facebook, and the aggressive integration strategy has been universally hated by users. As Google gets bigger and bigger, it faces harsher scrutiny, and few things the company has done have been more disliked than Google+. According to the report, Google+’s YouTube takeover was seen as “a rocky move” even inside the company.

The G+ strategy was driven by abject terror of Facebook, and the change in direction implies that Google is no longer driven by this.

My guess is that Google sees something in the reams of data that they accumulate showing that Facebook’s “threat” is of less concern.

In any case, I’m just glad that they won’t continue to break their other apps in order to foist Google+ on the rest of us.

Why a French Economist has So Many Wingers Terrified

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Paul Krugman has an interesting OP/ED on Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Picketty makes the assertion that capital demands rates of return greater than that of the underlying economy, and that, over the long run capital will extract more and more of the overall economy, to the detriment to wages and labor.

As Krugman notes, this work has the apologists for the rent seekers apoplectic:

“Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the new book by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is a bona fide phenomenon. Other books on economics have been best sellers, but Mr. Piketty’s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a way most best sellers aren’t. And conservatives are terrified. Thus James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warns in National Review that Mr. Piketty’s work must be refuted, because otherwise it “will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged.”

Well, good luck with that. The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty’s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling — in particular, claims that Mr. Piketty is a Marxist, and so is anyone who considers inequality of income and wealth an important issue.

I’ll come back to the name-calling in a moment. First, let’s talk about why “Capital” is having such an impact.

Mr. Piketty is hardly the first economist to point out that we are experiencing a sharp rise in inequality, or even to emphasize the contrast between slow income growth for most of the population and soaring incomes at the top. It’s true that Mr. Piketty and his colleagues have added a great deal of historical depth to our knowledge, demonstrating that we really are living in a new Gilded Age. But we’ve known that for a while.

No, what’s really new about “Capital” is the way it demolishes that most cherished of conservative myths, the insistence that we’re living in a meritocracy in which great wealth is earned and deserved.

For the past couple of decades, the conservative response to attempts to make soaring incomes at the top into a political issue has involved two lines of defense: first, denial that the rich are actually doing as well and the rest as badly as they are, but when denial fails, claims that those soaring incomes at the top are a justified reward for services rendered. Don’t call them the 1 percent, or the wealthy; call them “job creators.”

Needless to say, the defenders of oligarchy are unamused by this.

The book, which, if reports are true, uses rather traditional economic tools, makes a compelling argument that excessive wealth is not synonymous with virtue.

I’m putting Capital in the Twenty-First Century on my summer reading list.

Imagine That, Military Technology Developed Over 20 Years Sees Countermeasures Developed

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Bill Sweetman, writing in Aviation Week, observes that the F-35’s stealth capabilities, when juxtaposed with its limited jamming suit are inadequate: (Paid Subscription Required)

Using secrecy to squelch debate is undesirable. Using bogus secrecy to do it is, to borrow the British civil service’s strongest term of opprobrium, unhelpful.

It’s reasonable, if misguided, to argue that the U.S. military has all the EA-18G Growlers that it needs. It does not make sense first to maintain that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not need electronic-attack (EA) support, but then simply to cite “its combination of stealth and advanced sensors” in support of that statement, while withholding comment on any details. And that is what Lockheed Martin has been doing. (The JSF project office is not commenting at all on the issue.)

Two characteristics of the JSF that bear on this debate have been raised by Boeing and recent think-tank papers. One is the fighter’s susceptibility to detection by very-high-frequency (VHF) radars, and the other is the extent of its EA, or jamming, capability.

They are not secret at all. The F-35 is susceptible to VHF detection and—as Boeing’s charts suggest—its jamming is mostly confined to the X-band, in the sector covered by its APG-81 radar. These are not criticisms of the program but the result of choices by the customer.

To suggest that the F-35 is VHF-stealthy is like arguing that the sky is not blue—literally, because both involve the same phenomenon. The late-Victorian physicist Lord Rayleigh (photo) gave his name to the way that electromagnetic radiation is scattered by objects that are smaller than its wavelength. This applies to the particles in the air that scatter sunlight, and aircraft stabilizers and wingtips that are about the same meter-class size as VHF waves.

The counter-stealth attributes of VHF were discussed here a few months ago (AW&ST Sept. 16, 2013, p. 30). They were known at the dawn of stealth, in 1983, when MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory ordered a 150-ft.-wide radar to emulate Russia’s P-14 Oborona VHF early warning system. Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth division should know about that radar—they built it.

VHF-stealth starts with removing the target’s tails, as on the B-2, but we did not know how to do that on a supersonic, agile airplane when the JSF specifications were written.

Neither did the technology to add broadband active jamming to a stealth aircraft exist in 1995. Not only did stealth advocates expect jamming to fade away, but there was an obvious and (at the time) insoluble problem: To use jamming, you have to be certain that the radar has detected you. Otherwise, jamming is going to reveal your presence and identify you as a stealth aircraft, since the adversary can see a signal but not a reflection.

We can be sure that onboard jamming has not been added to F-35 since. Had the JSF requirements been tightened by one iota since the program started, its advocates would be blaming that for the delays and cost overruns.

What the JSF does have is an EA function in the radar and an expendable radar decoy—BAE Systems’ ALE-70—which may be free-flying or towed, most likely the former. Both are last-ditch measures that would be used to disrupt a missile engagement, not to prevent tracking.

Potential opponents have known of stealth for over 30 years, and the mathematics of this technology have been public for even longer, so the use of lower frequency radars (as is the case of the confusingly name VHF) along with advances in computer power and phased array radars, imply that the effectiveness of stealth has been mitigated.

This is why the USAF putting its eggs in on basket, stealth, is concerning.

I Would Expect to See More of This………

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Ecuador has expelled a military contingent from the US embassy:

Ecuador has ordered 20 U.S. Defense Department employees attached to the U.S. Embassy in Quito to leave the country next week, U.S. officials confirmed, further straining an already rocky relationship between President Rafael Correa and the Obama administration.

The Ecuadorean government made the request on April 7, asking the U.S. embassy in Ecuador to end the activities of the Security Cooperation Office by Wednesday, said Jeffrey Weinshenker, an embassy spokesman. He said that the civilian and military workers had been mainly engaged in joint programs with Ecuador to fight human smuggling and the drug trade.

………

In an email, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Angela Cervetti said, “[the U.S.] regrets that the outcome will severely limit our bilateral security partnership. Our close military cooperation over the past four decades has resulted in significant advances against drug trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism, and other transnational crime.”

But the Ecuadorean embassy in Washington characterized the closing of the Security Cooperation Office as part of an agreement with the Obama administration. “A core group of U.S. military attaches will remain, as typical for normal bilateral relations,” an embassy statement said.

In January, Mr. Correa had said that Pentagon workers were used to “infiltrate” Ecuador. The order ousting the Americans came days after Mr. Correa wrapped up a U.S. tour that included talks at Yale and Harvard universities and television interviews where he described himself as a “modern socialist” who wanted to improve relations with the U.S.

When juxtaposed with this:

Correa said he became aware of what he described as a bloated US military presence in his country after learning that four Pentagon personnel were aboard an Ecuadoran military helicopter that came under fire in October near the border with Colombia.

When you consider things like the role of the US Army School of the Americas, which educated generations of military juntas and coups in Latin America, it has to be a legitimate matter of concern for any government that military personnel and contractors are operating in military operations without the knowledge of the sponsoring government.

This is particularly of concern for someone like Correa who is not particularly friendly to the US agenda in that part of the world, particularly when one sees the sort of activities that the US engages in its neighbor Venezuela, where it is clear that there is an active attempt to destabilize the government.

The Rich are not the Best of Us, they are the Worst of Us

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An interesting study finds that the more money you have, the more likely you are to ignore rules and endanger others:

What defines low socioeconomic status? Objectively, it means fewer economic resources and educational opportunities, less access to elite schools and clubs, more subordinate positions in the workplace, and increased levels of stress. For the upper-class, it’s just the inverse: more resources, more leisure, less stress.

From the realities facing each group, you might assume that members of the lower-class would be more focused on meeting their own survival needs and, thereby, prioritize their needs over those of others. As a result, you might also expect them to be less trustworthy as compared to members of the upper-class who, given their greater resources, have the luxury to trust. But if you do, you’re missing a central point about how trust really works. Trust isn’t a luxury. It’s a tool we need to get by when we can’t make it on our own; it’s a means of survival for those who must depend on others. Viewed this way, predictions about trust and class get turned on their heads.

………

To relate that to social class, consider this experiment. You’re standing on a corner in downtown San Francisco. It’s a four-way stop, meaning cars are supposed to pause before entering the intersection. As you’re sipping your latte, you look to your left before stepping off the curb. The car approaching is a shiny BMW. Do you cross? How about if it’s a Ford Fusion? The model of trust I’ve been describing suggests you might want to pause if it’s the BMW. There’s really only one way to tell, though. You’ve got to put yourself out there. And that’s just what Paul Piff and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley did.

As cars approached this busy intersection in San Francisco, a researcher would enter the crosswalk. Unbeknownst to drivers, he also noted the make of their car and their perceived age and gender. The main datum for each car was whether the driver paused to let the researcher cross at the stop sign (as is required by the California Vehicle Code) or sped up to cut him off and thereby proceed more quickly toward the driver’s goals. Paul and colleagues divided drivers into five SES categories based on their cars—think Hyundais on one end and Ferraris on the other. The results were quite remarkable.

At the lowest end of the class gradient, every single driver stopped to let the pedestrian entering the crosswalk continue on his way. Midway up the class ladder, about 30 percent of drivers broke the law and cut off the pedestrian so that they could keep going. At the upper end of SES, almost 50 percent of drivers broke the law to put their own needs first. At the most basic level, these findings offer a provocative warning. When you’re vulnerable, upper-class individuals are more likely to disregard the trust you place in them if doing so furthers their own ends.

This is the first of a number of tests executed by Professor Piff did.

The better off someone was, the more likely to act in a completely self-absorbed and untrustworthy manner.

It applied to cars, lying to a potential job applicant about a job, or cheating at a gambling game.

It is precisely the opposite of the Calvanist ethos that grips the right wing.

It’s a Start………

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The IRS has revoked the 501(c)3 tax exempt status of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a right wing group that has routinely engaged in illegal electioneering.

The kicker is that Center is in part a political advocacy group formed by Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas:

Under the tax code, it’s illegal for a charity to engage in electoral politics. In its response to the IRS, the Patrick Henry Center said its statements could be interpreted differently by different people, and that many of them did not advocate voting for or against a candidate.

The center’s most recent tax return disclosed $343,503 in revenue for tax year 2012. In recent years, it’s become aligned with the Tea Party movement, contributing to at least one of the groups targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS beginning in 2010. Also in 2010, the Patrick Henry Center merged with Liberty Central, an advocacy group headed by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese serves on the center’s board.

The IRS’s revocation means contributions to the Patrick Henry Center are no longer tax deductible.

I incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization in the early 1990s, and I recall the sh%$ I had to go through to incorporate.

I was originally turned down, because the examiner thought that the organization was better suited to 501(c)7 status, a membership organization, as opposed to a charity, which would lose tax exempt status and (more importantly to us) a special low postal rate. (Had to explain some terminology we used in my appeal,k and it worked)

In retrospect, I believe that the examiner morally right on this, though my application was was within the parameters of existing law and regulation.

It’s just that and the rules that the IRS is not enforcing are way too lax, and more observed in the breach than in actual enforcement.

It’s nice to see that this is changing.

The Ultimate 2nd Stringer

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I am referring, of course, to Earl Morrall, who died today:

Earl Morrall stepped in when the 1972 Miami Dolphins needed him most. And then he willingly stepped aside, earning enduring admiration from his teammates and coach Don Shula.

 Morrall, who started 11 games during the Dolphins’ perfect season and spent 21 years as an NFL quarterback, died Friday at age 79. He had been in failing health for some time.

 “There would be no perfect season, and probably no Super Bowl win in 1972, without Earl Morrall,” Bob Griese said Friday.

 When Griese broke his ankle in 1972, Morrall came off the bench and started the final nine games of the regular season. Morrall won praise from Shula for returning to the sideline without complaint when Griese came back to play in the final two postseason games, including the Super Bowl to cap the only perfect season in NFL history.

 Morrall also played for the 49ers, Steelers, Lions, Giants and Colts, winning three Super Bowl rings. He came off the bench to replace an injured Johnny Unitas and help the Colts win the Super Bowl to cap the 1970 season, and he was the backup to Griese on the Dolphins’ 1973 championship team.

 Morrall also was the starting quarterback opposite Joe Namath in the 1969 Super Bowl after guiding the Colts to the conference title and winning the league’s MVP award. He struggled in that famous 16-7 loss to the Jets, throwing key interceptions, and was benched during the second half for Unitas.

Morrall as the steady backup was sort of a fixture of my youth.

No Blogging for You!

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I just got back from picking up my mother in law to the airport.

She visited my sister in law in Memphis over Passover.

Unfortunately, this means that I will have to delay my brilliantly satirical essay about how conservatives are stunned and chagrined to discover that their favorite welfare cheat rancher is a bigot who liked slavery because it kept them in their place.

Posted via mobile.

Thanks, Obama

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You know, this is to be expected. Obama appoints an industry lobbyist to head the FCC, and the FCC ends network neutrality: (See also here)

………

 The following can be attributed to Michael Weinberg, Vice President at Public Knowledge:

“The FCC is inviting ISPs to pick winners and losers online. The very essence of a “commercial reasonableness” standard is discrimination. And the core of net neutrality is non discrimination. This is not net neutrality. This standard allows ISPs to impose a new price of entry for innovation on the Internet. When the Commission used a commercial reasonableness standard for wireless data roaming, it explicitly found that it may be commercially reasonable for a broadband ISP to charge an edge provider higher rates because its service is competitively threatening.

“It is hard to see how the commercial reasonableness standard, which inherently offers less protection than the standard in the previous Open Internet Rules, can serve the same policy goals. Additionally, approaching discrimination on a case-by-case basis creates less certainty than clear rules and disadvantages small businesses and entrepreneurs. The Commission should instead seek to find a way to ensure true net neutrality, including protections against discrimination by ISPs for commercial purposes. The DC Circuit Court opinion made it clear that the only way to achieve net neutrality is to reclassify internet access as a telecommunications service.”

What a thought: Obama’s FCC chair does not have the guts to reverse the that it made under the Bush administration to classify if ISP’s service as information services, as opposed to telecommunications services, which meant that they were not common carriers.

It also refused to appeal the DC Court of Appeals decision to the Supreme Court.

And they did this because ……… Regulatory capture, I guess.

It certainly fits in with Obama cozying up to malefactors in dysfunctional markets as opposed to trying to fix those markets. (Obama care, Banksters walking free, The Droning of Brown People, the NSA, etc.)

Oh well, when the Kochs take over the internet, maybe they will give Obama a medal.

Naah ……… I’m just sh%$#ing you ……… They’ll find a trumped up charge to throw him in jail.

H/t Kevin Drum for the pic.

911 Truther Links Polish Government to Right Wing Paramilitaries in Ukraine

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There are reports that the Polish government gave military training to fascist militia members from the Ukraine:

The Polish left-wing weekly Nie (No) published a startling witness account of the training given to the most violent of the EuroMaidan activists.

According to this source, in September 2013, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski invited 86 members of the Right Sector (Sector Pravy), allegedly in the context of a university exchange program. In reality, the guests were not students, and many were over 40. Contrary to their official schedule, they did not go to the Warsaw University of Technology, but headed instead for the police training center in Legionowo, an hour’s drive from the capital. There, they received four weeks of intensive training in crowd management, person recognition, combat tactics, command skills, behavior in crisis situations, protection against gases used by police, erecting barricades, and especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.

Such training took place in September 2013, while the Maidan Square protests were allegedly triggered by a decree suspending preparations for the signing of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, which was issued by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on November 21, i.e. two months later.

The Polish weekly refers to photographs attesting to the training, which show the Ukrainians in Nazi uniforms alongside their Polish instructors in civilian clothing.

Let me be clear: this source is highly dubious.

I know nothing of the Polish weekly Nei, and the machine translation is anything but clear, but I do know that the author of this article, Thierry Meyssan, is a 911 truther, and hence highly suspect.

That being said, if there is one thing that is certain about “Tradecraft”, as some are wont to call covert activities, it is that Poland would not do something like this without explicit support and approval from the US state security apparatus.

After all, they supported the CIA’s establishment of torture sites following 911.

So the short form is that if this report is accurate, and that is a big if, then the CIA or the State Department had to give support and approval.

Hopefully someone with a bit more journalistic credibility will look into this.  (It’s one of the reasons that I put “911 Truther” in the hed: it is simply not credible at this time).

Why the Boy Scouts Leadership Need to be Fired, and it Offices Should Moved from Texas to a Civilized Place

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There is was a boy scout troop in the Seattle area whose leader is openly gay, and BSA ejected him from the scouts.

When the church at which his troops were based refused to discharge him, because they oppose discrimination, and the BSA closed down those troops:

Church Pledges to Resist BSA’s Demand and Remain Open and Inclusive; Scouts for Equality Deplores Boy Scouts’ Callous Act as a Discriminatory Attempt to put Politics before Boys

In a startling and discriminatory move, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) revoked the charter of Seattle Troop 98 and Pack 98 for its refusal to remove gay Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. The BSA revoked the charter of Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s (RBUMC), a Seattle church whose two Scouting units serve a neighborhood with few other positive opportunities for local youth.

“The Boy Scouts’ decisions only serve to hurt a group of boys who need the values and leadership of someone like Scoutmaster McGrath,” said Zach Wahls, Executive Director of Scouts for Equality, a national organization dedicated to ending the BSA’s ban on gay members and leaders. “Unfortunately, the BSA’s decision calls into question its commitment to leadership and values by perpetuating an outmoded policy rooted in fear and discrimination. History will show that today’s announcement is a self-inflicted wound.”

The controversy surrounding Troop 98 emerged in March, when an NBC News report on the inclusive troop prompted the BSA to question the sexual orientation of Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. McGrath, abiding by the Scout’s commitment to trustworthiness, acknowledged his sexual orientation to the BSA, which in turn, responded by revoking McGrath’s status as Scoutmaster.

Since then, support for McGrath has been overwhelmingly positive. The entire Seattle City Council, as well as more than 20 Washington State legislators, have expressed their support for Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s right to determine its own leadership for McGrath’s ability to remain a Scoutmaster. Most important, RBUMC Rev. Dr. Monica Corsaro has stood by McGrath and has refused to remove him from his post. BSA is taking this action in direct contradiction to the inclusive religious beliefs and wishes of Rainer Beach Methodist Church.

It makes no sense to support the BSA until the leadership gets its head out of its collective asses.

If they are sponsored by your house of worship, or your church, you should consider finding some other organization that better represents a moral view of our society.

Linkage

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Here is a video about how to make smoked salmon at home:

FWIW, if you are bit less ambitious, you can make Gravlox.

I Want to be Sephardic

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First, there is the food.

They got olive oil, we got schmaltz.

They sit on the spice road, and we got ……… schmaltz.

Over Passover, they get to eat rice and beans, legumes are known as kitniyot, which Ashkenazic rabbis have ruled could be made into something too close to flour, though this does not apply to things like chestnuts, whose flour is actually used to make pastries. (Go figure)

Well, Rabbis have now declared marijuana to be kitniyot, and hence forbidden on Pesach, so no 420 on 4/20:

It’s that time of the year again — Passover and 4/20, the unofficial marijuana celebration day. On the same day.

The celebration of all things green poses a particular problem for the chosen people. Namely, is smoking pot kosher for Passover?

Sorry to disappoint, but it seems not.

In 2007, Israel’s Green Leaf Party, which supports the legalization of marijuana, declared that cannabis is among the substances Jews are forbidden to consume during Passover.

“You shouldn’t smoke marijuana on the holiday, and if you have it in your house you should get rid of it,” Michelle Levine, a spokeswoman for the party, said at the time.

Why? Because hemp seeds are considered to be kitniyot.

While biblical law prohibits eating leavened foods, rabbis have since extended the rules to apply to foods like beans, corn and rice. Hemp seeds, found in marijuana, falls under that category. So voila, no Mary-Jane for you — if you’re Ashkenazi that is.

Sephardic Jews have traditionally been allowed to eat kitniyot during Passover, so when it comes to 4/20, they’re in the clear.

I’m seriously bumming, even if I have not indulged in over 20 years. (The joys of a pee in a cup career)

H/t my hairier brother, who posted this to Facebook.

Our Clusterf%$# in Guantánamo

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As has been obvious since their founding, the military tribunals at Guantánamo are completely dysfunctional, and the latest problem, where the FBI has been infiltrating the defense teams is getting even worse:

The major fissure concerning the controversial military commissions at Guantánamo Bay is no longer between civil liberties and national security. It’s between the commissions and the intelligence services, with the future of the 9/11 war crimes tribunal hanging in the balance.

On one side are both the commission prosecutors and defense attorneys, all of whom grapple in different ways with bringing justice to defendants who spent years in the brutal black box that was CIA custody. The prosecution in particular is laboring to send the message that, after years of stop-and-start proceedings, the commissions are now a viable, professional complement to federal courts.

On the other side are the CIA and the FBI, which have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent information about the detainees – particularly about their torture in CIA custody – becoming public. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ equities at Guantánamo, at a minimum, conflict with the successful military prosecution of the detainees. At worst, they undermine the venue meant to provide a final dispensation for alleged post-9/11 war crimes.

And the agencies may now have overplayed their hand.

Last week, defense attorneys for 9/11 co-defendant Ramzi bin al-Shibh revealed that the FBI surreptitiously compelled a classification specialist assigned to them to sign documents indicating he would inform on the defense teams.

They have also bugged defense conference rooms, seized control of the muting system at the trial without the knowledge of the of the judge, and they are preparing to defy that judge’s order for details on the CIA’s torture program.

If the military tribunals were anything close to a real trial, the charges would have already been dismissed because of malfeasance on the part of the government.

For f%$3’s sake, just move this to the Federal Courts, where the jurist are capable of finding their posteriors with either, or both, hands.

Times Ombud Calls Out Shoddy Financial Reporting

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The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan criticizes their coverage of Bank of America’s latest financial results, because they completely ignored the massive fines for fraud:

Reading The Times’s coverage of Bank of America’s quarterly loss last week, I almost felt sorry for the financial behemoth. It has mortgage troubles, you see. It has onerous legal costs.

“The disappointing news shows how Bank of America is still paying for its mortgage problems nearly six years after the financial crisis,” the article said.

I thought of sending a small check to help or at least conveying my sympathy.

I really should have remembered what this is all about because it was only last month that Bank of America settled a lawsuit that claimed the bank had committed mortgage fraud. The cost of the settlement? More than $9 billion. Bank of America was one of the banks that sold mortgage securities backed by subprime mortgages, which went south during the housing and financial crises – in many cases driving American consumers into financial ruin.

Some Times readers wrote to me about it, pointing out that there was more to the story. They hadn’t forgotten what happened, it seemed. Jamison Wilcox, for example, noted in an email that he was “dismayed to see the term ‘legal costs’ given a vague and euphemistic meaning – and repeated in a headline – as a short replacement for the specific identification of monies paid out … as a legal consequence of wrongful conduct by a corporation or bank.”

………

The language certainly isn’t overheated. In fact, nowhere in this article is there any straightforward mention of what really caused these legal troubles and costs.

It says only this: “At the heart of the additional legal expenses was a $6.3 billion settlement that the bank announced last month to settle a lawsuit arising from troubled mortgage-backed securities it bundled and sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial crisis.” (The bank also agreed to buy back $3.2 billion in mortgage securities, bringing the penalties to $9.5 billion.)

Bundles and troubles and costs, yes. Fraud accusations, not so much.

I do not think that this will make a difference, though.

This is Symptomatic of a Crisis in the Culture of the Military

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Air Force pilot Joshua Wilson, who blew the whistle on problems with the F-22 oxygen system, is having his career systematically destroyed in retaliation:

The Air Force has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past two years correcting problems with its premier jet fighter – issues that Capt. Joshua Wilson helped expose by speaking up, both to his bosses and on national television.

Since then, Wilson’s career as an F-22 Raptor pilot has stalled. A member of the Virginia Air National Guard’s 149th Fighter Squadron, Wilson hasn’t been permitted to fly the jet since early 2012. He’s fighting disciplinary actions that he sees as retribution for going public.

“I’m a fighter pilot. I worked my entire life to get in the cockpit and to that job,” said Wilson, who is 37. “Right now, I’m fighting the Air Force when I should be fighting our enemies.”

Almost two years ago, Wilson and Maj. Jeremy Gordon told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the F-22 had a defective oxygen system that was endangering pilots.

The veteran aviators, dressed in their Virginia Air National Guard flight suits, shared their personal accounts of mid-flight oxygen deprivation that left them disoriented. Other pilots had similar life-threatening experiences but were reluctant to speak publicly, they said.

………

Back at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia Air National Guard leaders were also taking action. Even before the “60 Minutes” segment aired in May 2012, the squadron’s leadership began a series of punitive measures against Wilson.

In April 2012, they stopped his planned promotion to major, and they threatened to take away his wings, jeopardizing his military career.

They also forced him out of his full-time desk job with the Air Force’s Air Combat Command at Langley.

During that time, Wilson alerted the Department of Defense’s office of inspector general, which is investigating. He and his lawyers say the Virginia Air National Guard’s actions are reprisal for speaking out.

This is a direct outcome of the up or out system that our uniformed military used.

By making a single disagreement or conflict with a superior officer a career ender, they have created a risk and conflict averse culture where careerism trumps doing the right thing.

I Can Do This Pissing in a Bucket of Bleach………

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After screwing it up by using Fascists to stage an at best marginally effective coup in the Ukraine, it looks like the Obama administration is
trying to use new dodgy allegations of chemical weapons use to try to create support for US action:

The United States has indications of the use of a toxic chemical, probably chlorine, in Syria this month and is examining indications that the Syrian government was responsible, the US State Department said on Monday.

 “We have indications of the use of a toxic industrial chemical” in the town of Kfar Zeita, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

 “We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she told reporters.

Earlier this month the Syrian regime and opposition forces accused each other of carrying out a chemical attack in Kfar Zeita, located in the embattled country’s western-central province of Hama.

 Opposition activists reported that dozens of residents suffered from symptoms of suffocation after air units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad targeted the town with explosive barrels allegedly containing toxic material.

 Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande said that his country had “information” that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has continued using chemical weapons, although Paris lacked proof, AFP reported.

 “We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof,” AFP quoted Hollande as telling the Europe 1 radio station.

And yes, you can create chlorine gas by peeing in a bucket of bleach.

Unlike the (blatantly false) allegations that the Syrian insurgents lacked the capabilities to make Sarin, making chlorine gas is pretty simple: (Pee has a low yield)

  1. Run DC current through sea water.
  2. Collect the oxygen and chlorine off of the anode.  (This is why, in chemistry class, they used something other than table salt, typically Epsom salt or lye).
  3. Either cool the mixture to less than -40°, or pressurize it at room temperature to more than about 100 psi. (or some combination of the two)
  4. When the chlorine condenses into a liquid, VERY carefully collect  it, and put in munitions.

Note that the provenance of the the Sarin is unclear, with Seymour Hersh detailing how the Obama administration chose to very suppress significant facts to in order to justify their abortive attempt to create a justification for a bombing campaign.

Hersh’s latest, The Red Line and the Rat Line, details how many inside and outside of the US state security apparatus are accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan of actively aiding the Islamist rebels in Syria develop chemical weapons capability.  (It appears that he objects both to Syria’s secular character, and wants the country to be a client state of Turkey).

Note that we have tapes of senior Turkish security officials planning an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb, technically Turkish soil, so as to justify direct Turkish (and possibly NATO) intervention.

Count me as tremendously dubious of the latest chemical weapons revelations.