Many years ago, Jim got a BA in Radiation Biophysics from the University of Kansas. He then got a PhD in Molecular Biology from UCLA and did postdoctoral research in yeast genetics at UC Berkeley and mouse retroviruses at Stanford. He joined biosys in Palo Alto, producing insect parasitic nematodes for pest control. In the early 1990’s, he moved to Gainesville, FL and founded a company that eventually became Entomos. He left the firm as it reorganized into Pasteuria Biosciences and chose not to found a new firm due a clash of values with venture capital investors, who generally lack all values. Upon leaving, he chose to be a stay at home dad, gentleman farmer, cook and horse wrangler. He discovered the online world through commenting at Glenn Greenwald’s blog in the Salon days and was involved in the briefly successful Chris Dodd move to block the bill to renew FISA. He then went on to blog at Firedoglake and served a brief stint as evening editor there. When the Emptywheel blog moved out of Firedoglake back to standalone status, Jim tagged along and blogged on anthrax, viruses, John Galt, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is now a mostly lapsed blogger looking for a work-around to the depressing realization that pointing out the details of government malfeasance and elite immunity has approximately zero effect.
Almost as if in response to Marcy’s noting less than two weeks ago that at least in Detroit the FBI overlooks white terrorists when profiling, the FBI yesterday announced the arrests of four individuals in Georgia accused of planning attacks using explosives, a silencer and the biological agent ricin: Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga.; […]
As the US stumbles around, trying to find its way out of a country it has occupied for over ten years, the path “forward” remains as murky as ever. Just under two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was chosen as the point person for introducing the new US catchphrase “fight, talk, build” that […]
Yesterday, the Washington Post finally caught up to where Marcy was over two weeks ago and discussed the UN report “Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody” (pdf). I’d like to move beyond the primary findings of the report, that torture is widespread in Afghan detention facilities and that the US continued bringing prisoners to […]
One short phrase in an article bmaz alerted me to yesterday set my blood to boiling. I fumed about it off and on through the rest of the day and even found myself going back to thinking about it when I should have been drifting off to sleep. The phrase? “Good faith” Here’s the phrase […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf3KgUoBJno[/youtube] For just over a month, the US and Pakistan have been struggling to deal with tensions created by former Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen’s testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee where he stated flatly that Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency directly aids militants who attack US interests in Afghanistan. Wednesday night, BBC Two aired […]
Ten years ago today, George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law in what many consider to be the single biggest blow to civil liberties our country has seen. I will leave it to others to detail the damage done to our rights, but a quick list of that damage can be seen here on […]
Last week’s visit by a delegation of high-ranking US officials to Pakistan featured the ironic use of the US Secretary of State to deliver a newly militarized message to the Pakistanis regarding the way forward, with the introduction of the “fight, talk, build” catchphrase. Although the US clearly urged Pakistan to attack the Haqqani network […]
A remarkable story in this morning’s Washington Post addresses a report released today from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The report details that the training of police forces in Iraq has been a failure: Over the course of the eight-year-old war and military occupation, thousands of U.S. troops have spent considerable time and effort wooing […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaRKHVw4rUo[/youtube] The high level meetings in Islamabad between US and Pakistani officials head into their second day today, after a marathon four hour session late yesterday. The line-ups of officials present for the two countries is remarkable and reflects the seriousness with which the two countries view the current situation. Pakistan’s Express Tribune provides a […]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus will be in Islamabad today for talks amid somewhat calmer US-Pakistan relations and to set the stage for a possible negotiated end to hostilities in Afghanistan. At the same time, NATO has been conducting raids for about a week on the Afghanistan side of the […]