Waxman accuses Department of State IG of obstructing investigations

According to an article on the website of The New York Times, Congressman Henry Waxman has Howard J. Krongard in his sights. David Stout and Brian Knowlton (for whom the Times doesn’t have an index page) report that Waxman

sent the inspector general, Howard J. Krongard, a 14-page letter spelling out accusations that he said came from several current and former employees of that office, who documented their charges with e-mails.

– snip –

Some of the accusers have sought “whistleblower” status, which protects government employees who report malfeasance from being punished for doing so, Mr. Waxman said. The accusations are serious and far-reaching, and included assertions that Mr. Krongard has effectively become a political defender of the administration rather than, as his job is meant to be, a studiedly neutral overseer of its spending and practices.

– snip –
Mr. Waxman invited Mr. Krongard to respond to the accusations at a committee hearing on Oct. 16.

– snip –

Since Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 elections, Mr. Waxman has made no secret of his relish in probing activities of the Bush administration. One of the more serious accusations against Mr. Krongard is that he interfered with an investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political adviser, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. Waxman wrote that Mr. Krongard’s detractors have described “a dysfunctional office environment” in which he routinely bullies and berates employees and shows contempt for the work of career professionals. As a result, turnover has been so high that the inspector general’s office has been severely compromised, Mr. Waxman wrote.

Continue reading →

Navy proposes consolidation of helicopter fleet

David Axe reports that the navy is considering reducing the number of helicopter models in service from at least seven to two. (Our minimum number was derived by carefully reading Axe’s piece). This, of course, is very sensible in terms of procurement policy – and, things being what they are – sometimes not politically possible.

Axe makes the case that the two proposed pieces might not suffice, but would if a third, higher-capacity and longer-range model were added.

For those not familiar with his work – I read Axe’s work in Danger Room

and his personal blog, War is Boring – Axe is routinely insightful and original on matters military; and making connections that I find quite helpful and illuminating. (And an excellent cartoonist and artist).

Like crossing S.L.A. Marshall

(I’m thinking here of The Soldier’s Load, rather than his more controversial work) with Malcolm Gladwell and Scott McCloud .

Hantavirus (Ebola, Marburg) Outbreaks in Africa; WHO response; vaccine development

David Axe has an excellent piece on the Wired blog Danger Room, summarizing reporting on recent Ebola and Marburg outbreaks in Congo  and Uganda, respectively. The Ebola is not only affecting humans – it’s hitting the gorilla population, already endangered. At the risk of starting an animal-rights discussion, or worse, one about evolution – one imagines that gorillas are sufficiently sentient to experience pain qua pain – and grief qua

grief.

Link here.  I’m certain that I’ll do damage to this piece in summarizing it; what’s more, like all of Axe’s work, it’s well-written and concise.

I'm Shocked, SHOCKED – We Invaded Iraq for Oil!

Alan GreenspanAlan Greenspan says ‘We invaded Iraq for Oil!’

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

I’m also shocked that most of the coverage is out of the US.

But, now that the cat is out of the bag, let’s do the math. Iraq, according to the Global Policy Forum, and the CIA, Iraq has 112.5 Billion Barrels of “proven reserves” of oil. At $80 per barrel … Iraq’s oil is worth $9.0 Trillion. We’re only spending $1 trillion, so it’s a pretty good return on investment. 900 percent return on investment for the 112.5 billion barrels of proven reserves.

And they said George W couldn’t do math.

If the “probable” reserves – in addition to the proven reserves – are only another 100 billion barrels – that’s 212.5 billion barrels of oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea. That ups the ante to 1,700% ROI. Why that’s better than Microsoft’s historic $3 thousand in 1986 worth $One Million in 1999. And Iraq’s “probable reserves” are estimated to be another 200 billion barrels. Of course this is assuming we win the war, and get to keep the oil.

Testing Simon Elvery’s WP-Footnotes plugin, 2.2

Under the category, “Note to Self: RTFM,” I hadn’t been able to make this work. The clever footnotes plugin ((By the exceptionally clever Simon Elvery

; instructions and links to download available here

.)) wasn’t working properly for me. I think it was because I hadn’t properly read the instructions – a space # where # represents a blank

space – before

the opening parentheses ((

Although this blog isn’t about WordPress – I’m fully unqualified to talk about that -I may leave this up – somewhere – for future reference. Probably mine.

Stephenson spots glaring omission in GAO report

David Stephenson

, who has done outstanding work on the issues which concern Popular Logistics,

has noticed that in a report using 23 criterai to evaluate the Department of Homeland Security, GAO entirely omits the promotion and recruitment of citizen responders.

Here’s Stephenson’s post .  I’m now not sure if reading this particular GAO report is worth the candle.

I regret not earlier posting about Stephenson’s important piece, written with Eric Bonabeau, Expecting the Unexpected: : The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Strategy, published in the Homeland Security Affairs Journal.

Our position on citizen response is this – any plan that doesn’t regard citizen response as central might contain useful tactics – but we submit that no such plan conceivably constitutes a useful strategy. 

Japan’s new bullet train: tiny bit faster – 19% less energy

From “Speeding Bullet World’s Fastest Train You Can Ride Dumps Energy Like a Prius ,” by Alex Hutchinson in Popular Mechanics:

When the latest model of Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train, was launched on July 1, more than 1300 people showed up at 6 am on a Sunday to pack the seats for the maiden voyage, from Tokyo to Fukuoka. The Series N700 is billed by Japan Railways as the world’s fastest bullet train in service (France’s faster TGV train has been used only to break speed records), with a top speed of 186 mph.
photograph-by-ren-zhenglai-xinhua-wpn-via-popular-mechanics-medium.jpg
It’s the first bullet train to be equipped with an air spring-powered active tilting system, allowing it to whip around corners without slowing down. Special fabric hoods cover the gaps between cars, turning the train into one long, seamless, aerodynamic unit.

Despite all these improvements, the 5-hour trip to Fukuoka will be shortened by a mere 10 minutes. More important, though, the journey will be quieter and more comfortable, and it will use 19 percent less energy than current bullet trains.

(emphasis added)

Please bear this in mind the next time someone refers to the United States as the most technologically advanced country in the world.

"Iran Denies Request on Missing American" – AP Report

Nasser Karimi of the Associated Press reports that Iran

had refused a request by the Swiss Embassy to travel to the site where an American is believed to have disappeared earlier this year.

Robert Levinson was last seen March 8 on Kish Island, a resort off the southern coast of Iran, and Tehran has repeatedly said it has no information on his whereabouts.

Levinson is a former FBI agent who retired in 1998, and the FBI has said it has not had contact with him since then. He had reportedly gone to Kish Island to seek information on cigarette smuggling for a client of his security firm.

The Swiss Embassy in Iran represents U.S. interests in the country because Washington has no diplomatic ties with Tehran, but it was unclear whether the travel request was made on behalf of the U.S.

“They had asked to travel to Kish Island, but Iranian authorities demanded they explain the reasons and necessities for such a visit,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday during his weekly media briefing. “Iranian forces are still looking for a trace of him,” he added.

The State Department has made repeated requests for information on the missing American through Swiss intermediaries, and considers it likely that he is in Iranian custody.

The Swiss Embassy in Iran could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday and the Swiss Foreign Ministry refused to comment.

Christine Levinson, the missing man’s wife, said last month that she planned to travel to Iran to investigate his disappearance. Iran said at the time that it would consider allowing her to come even though the State Department advised against it because of the risk.

Link to AP report.    Via Noisy Room

.

"Iran is conveniently heightening tensions by ignoring State Department requests for information about … Robert Levinson"

Craig Crawford‘s post in Congressional Quarterly Politics places Bobby Levinson’s disappearance squarely in the middle of the Persian Gulf chessboard:

Now that George W. Bush seems to be around the corner on Capitol Hill to keep control of the Iraq War, he can move on to his other military target: Iran.

And while Congress dithers about Iraq, developments on the Iranian front are playing into the president’s hands. Europeans, especially the Germans, are stepping back from sanctions against Iran that might delay or prevent a U.S. bombing campaign. The British are once again playing ball by agreeing to a U.S. request to move troops to the Iraq-Iran border. And Iran is conveniently heightening tensions by ignoring State Department requests for information about an American, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in March.

[emphasis supplied]

All this comes at a time when Democratic leaders in Congress show no interest in legislation that would tie Bush’s hands if he wants to make a move on Iran — which he will probably do before the year is out.

“Craig Crawford’s Trail Mix: With Iraq Policy Intact, Bush Free to Target Iran.”

Also via Evil Poet Lost in Thought.

Land mine detection via plants – from GoodMagazine.com

GoodMagazine reports that that Denmark-based ARESA has conducted successful field tests with its genetically modified Thale Cress, for use in land mine detection.

Thale Cress, also known as Arabidopsis thaliana, commonly called arabidopsis, or mouse-ear cress, has a short life cycle – six weeks from germination to mature seed.The ARESA modified Thale Cress is very sensitive to nitrogen, which is a component of the explosives in land mines, and emitted in tiny amounts.

thales-cress-photo-credi-goodmagazinecom.gif

Photo (Aresa) by Henrik Freek; via GoodMagazine.

The Thale Cress

has been genetically modified to provide a natural warning in the presence of land mines. Thales cress is inherently sensitive to nitrogen dioxide, a chemical byproduct of land mines. The Copenhagen-based biotech company Aresa tweaked the weed’s genes so that its leaves would turn from their natural green to bright red in the presence of latent explosives. Field tests have thus far been successful, meaning traditional methods of human and canine mine detection may soon have a less dangerous alternative.

From Ben Jervey’s post in Good Magazine .While there are good reasons to have reservations about the genetic modification of plants, until and unless the powers that have been responsible for placing land mines start removing them, this seems an excellent technology.

Ben Jervey is also the editor of GreenAppleGuide

.

Mexican Oil Pipelines Attacked at six points, causing fires, evacuations

Kris Alexander at Danger Room has a short report and incisive analysis of these attacks, which PEMEX (Mexico’s oil exporting entity) claims will require hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs. PEMEX also claims – in my view, not plausibly – that it won’t cause disruptions in exports (and to United States imports).

photo-by-pablo-spencer-associated-press.jpg

Photo by Pablo Spencer of the Associated Press.

Flames were visible at least six miles away. Thousands of people were evacuated; two women died of heart attacks.

Mexican authorities told the Associated Press that a note from a leftist group was found next to at least one unexploded device.

From Kris Alexander’s piece in Wired.com’s Danger Room

:

Mexico supplies much of US oil and gas imports. Are higher gas prices on the way? Pemex, Mexico’s state-run oil company, claims that the attacks haven’t disrupted export supplies, but will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. With the U.S. economy already on shaky ground because of the sub-prime loan crisis, another such attack that did actually disrupt export oil supplies could have a direct economic impact on the U.S.

Counter-terrorism expert John Robb sees both attacks as a particularily good systempunkt — a point where a series of attacks on key nodes will cause the collapse of the entire system, essentially effects-based operations on the cheap. A few hundred dollars spent on explosives causes millions in damage.

It’s not clear from the underlying Associated Press report, published on MSNBC, whether or not the pipelines are underground or aboveground. Our concern about that detail is that we’re still working up the learning curve in trying to understand the risk of petroleum pipelines. (The “editorial offices” of Popular Logistics are in a roughly .75 square mile area which contain four underground petroleum lines, about which we presently know far too little).

NYC Resistor opens

NYC resistor has opened – or is about to open. They’re part of what one might call the great Warranty-Voiding Conspiracy which includes:

There are more, of course. But these are places I check when I have time. Posting a question on Toolmonger will prevent suffering, embarassment and save money.

But NYC Resistor – well, it’s new. And it’s here

– so we’re looking forward to keeping up with them.