Infra Penny, Infra Pound
November 8, 2021
The Good News
- US Navy launches ship named for gay rights activist Harvey Milk (CNN)
- Abu Dhabi to allow non-Muslim civil marriage under family law shakeup (Reuters)
“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” — Henry David Thoreau
Dear Diary
Last Friday, James O’Keefe, founder of the right-wing Project Veritas, gave a full-throated defense of his group’s disinformation activism after acknowledging the organization was being investigated by the Justice Department and that he had received a grand jury subpoena. The day before the FBI had raided the homes of two of O’Keefe’s associates in connection with last year’s theft of a diary allegedly belonging to President Biden’s 40-year-old daughter, Ashley.
During the 2020 campaign, President Trump sought to undermine candidate Joe Biden’s credibility by portraying Biden’s son, Hunter, as engaging in corrupt business dealings. In October 2020, a representative of the Biden family reported to federal authorities that several of Ashley’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary. A week and a half before election day, a right-wing website published dozens of hand-written pages from the purported diary. The website said it had gotten the diary from a whistle-blower who worked for a media organization that refused to publish the story before the election. It also claimed to know the location of the diary and that there was an audio recording of Ashley admitting it was hers. Ashley has never publicly authenticated the diary.
In Friday’s video statement, O’Keefe said: “It appears the Southern District of New York now has journalists in their sights for the supposed crime of doing their jobs lawfully and honestly.” Describing his group’s activities as the “stuff of responsible ethical journalism,” O’Keefe ensured the public that Project Veritas “acted properly at each and every step.” The next day, the FBI carried out a court-ordered search of O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, NY.
O’Keefe is a self-styled “muckraker” with a long history of targeting everything from Democratic congressional campaigns, labor groups, and news media organizations to organizations like ACORN and Planned Parenthood. Since Project Veritas’s founding in 2010, the group has conducted sting operations complete with hidden cameras and fake identities. At one point, Project Veritas employed the services of former British spy Richard Seddon to teach operatives espionage tactics, like using deception to secure information from potential targets. Although Project Veritas itself didn’t publish the diary pages, Flyover Media, the company that owns the website that did publish the pages, is registered to the same Sheridan, Wyoming address as Seddon’s company.
In the summer of 2020, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was formed with experts who could research, identify, and counteract pervasive election mis- and disinformation before it went viral, and document specific bad actors, transmission pathways, and narrative evolutions. EIP especially noted a video released by Project Veritas in September 2020, alleging illegal ballot harvesting in Minnesota, as a stand-out example of what a domestic, coordinated elite disinformation campaign looks like in the U.S. (Business Insider, NYT, WaPo, EIP, Media Matters)
A Thwarted Attempt
- An explosive-laden drone targeted the Baghdad residence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi on Sunday. Al-Kadhimi was unhurt and tweeted moments later that he’d escaped the “cowardly” assassination attempt. He called for calm and constructive dialogue “for the sake of Iraq and the future of Iraq.”
- The attack occurred as Al-Kadhimi was returning from overseeing security forces engaged in a stand-off with protesters at the southern gate of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area of the capital where the prime minister’s residence and other government and diplomatic buildings are located.
- Seven of Kadhimi’s security personnel were injured in the blast. Two armed drones had actually been launched from about 7.5 miles northeast of Baghdad, but the Iraqi military was able to shoot one down. No one has claimed responsibility for the assassination attempt. (CNN)
Oil Tanker Explosion Leaves Many Fatalities
- An oil tanker truck exploded near Sierra Leone’s capital late Friday when it pulled into a gas station and collided with another truck. The station is located near a busy intersection in Wellington, just east of the capital of Freetown.
- According to the National Disaster Management Agency: “Both drivers came out of their vehicles and warned community residents to stay off the scene while trying to address a leakage emanating from the collision.” But Sierra Leone is a deeply impoverished country, and despite the warning, crowds still rushed in to scoop up fuel.
- Somehow, the leaking fuel ignited and a massive explosion soon followed, killing almost 100 people. Dozens more were taken to area hospitals; about 30 of the most severely burned weren’t expected to survive. (CBS News)
Additional World News
- Biden promised to reopen the Jerusalem consulate Trump closed. But can he? (NBC)
- At rally to back military’s campaign, Ethiopians denounce the U.S. (Reuters)
- China’s exports stay strong, trade surplus tops $80 billion (ABC)
- COP26: The Glasgow climate summit scene, inside and out (WaPo, $)
- Death of pregnant woman ignites debate about abortion ban in Poland (CNN)
- How a poor country imperiled by climate change tied its future to oil (NPR)
- In Nicaragua Election, Ortega Crushes Dissent (NYT, $)
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Infra Penny, Infra Pound
- The House Progressive Caucus held out for months in their attempt to get both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and social spending legislation passed together. President Biden was reluctant to step into the fray, and wound up attending two international summits in Europe without a win on either package. He returned to the U.S. just as Republicans were celebrating election victories in Virginia — a state Biden won by 10 points — and in other blue states. Biden concluded in public remarks the next day that “people want us to get things done.”
- On Friday evening, the president did something he hadn’t done throughout the many months of negotiations and in-party squabbles — he issued a public statement calling on all members to vote to pass the infrastructure bill “tonight” and advance the social spending bill with an eye on passing it later. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure package finally passed overnight, giving Biden a big win. But tensions in the party remain, and what happens next with the social spending legislation is critical. (WaPo)
Not Vaxxing Down
- Labor Secretary Seema Nanda said her department was “confident in its legal authority” to issue the Biden administration policy requiring workers at U.S. companies with at least 100 employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly. The rule is set to go into effect January 4, 2022, and would be enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
- The action on private-sector vaccinations was taken under OSHA’s emergency authority over workplace safety. Republican governors in over a dozen states vowed to challenge the rule. On Saturday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans acted on a joint petition from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah et al. The Court cited “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the rule and ordered a stay.
- The Biden administration has until 5 p.m. Monday to respond to the request for a permanent injunction. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis said: “The federal government can’t just unilaterally impose medical policy under the guise of workplace regulation;” Florida, Georgia, and Alabama have also jointly filed suit. (Reuters)
Additional USA News
- US citizens v FBI: Will the government face charges for illegal surveillance? (Guardian)
- Intense storm causes coastal flooding in the southeast (NBC)
- Republicans look for advantage as House Democrats opt for retirement over re-election (NBC)
- Retiring GOP lawmaker warns Trump will try to steal the next election (CNN)
- Travis Scott posts online video speaking about Astroworld Festival tragedy (CNN)
- Police say bomb threats at three elite U.S. universities not credible (Reuters)
- Granholm says Biden ‘looking at’ tapping strategic reserve as fuel prices rise (The Hill)
A Brush With Fluoride
- In a galaxy far, far away — more than 12 billion light-years away, actually — astronomers have detected, for the first time, an element found in our bodies. The element is fluorine, or as it’s called in our bones and teeth: fluoride. The elements found across our solar system, on Earth, and even in our own bodies originated inside the cores of stars, which released them in stellar explosions. But the mystery of how fluorine was created within these stars has persisted.
- Researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in Chile to detect fluorine in an incredibly distant star-forming galaxy that existed early on in the universe. A study detailing these findings was published Thursday in the journal Nature Astronomy. The study’s lead author is an astrophysics postdoctoral research fellow at the U.K.’s University of Hertfordshire. He said in a statement: “We all know about fluorine because the toothpaste we use every day contains it in the form of fluoride…[but we didn’t know] which type of stars produced the majority of fluorine in the Universe!”
- Fluorine was present as hydrogen fluoride in gas clouds of the NGP-190387 galaxy. The light from this galaxy has traveled over 12 billion years to reach Earth, so astronomers view the galaxy as it appeared when the universe was only about 1.4 billion years old. The stars that released fluorine throughout the universe likely lived fast and died young; the researchers pinpoint Wolf-Rayet stars as their likely origin. These evolved stars are incredibly massive — only one in a hundred million stars are massive enough to be Wolf-Rayets — but they only survive for a few million years, and can explode violently as they reach the end of their lives. The survival timeline is quite short, when compared with the 13.5 billion years our universe has existed. (CNN)
Additional Reads
- These Robots Follow You to Learn Where to Go (Ars Technica)
- 1.8 TB of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage Leaks Online (Wired)
- Florida considers ousting mockingbird from honorary perch (AP)
- A broken toilet on SpaceX capsule means astronauts will return to Earth in diapers (NPR)
- ‘Perfect’ James Webb telescope on track for launch (BBC)
- After ‘Rust’ shooting, attention turns to Georgia producers (LAT, $)
- The dark side of 21st Century TV comedy (BBC)