During the first hour after the atrocity in Boston, journalists and others were quick to exercise what I would call zealous caution: don’t talk about bombs — all we know is that these were explosions.

Sure, we didn’t know. But anyone could reasonably talk about what appeared to be explosions caused by bombs.

I understand the reason for the caution. Speculation itself is combustible and we all know in which direction the speculation would immediately run: towards the Middle East, Muslims and global terrorism.

But it’s not actually speculation that’s the problem — it’s knee-jerk reactions which are not speculative. On the contrary, they are the unreflective act of jumping to conclusions.

Speculation, on the other hand, means exercising the imagination while piecing together existing information and seeing what kinds of reasonable inferences might be drawn.

Professional investigators will already be doing this. They will not restrict themselves purely to the gathering of evidence since the pursuit of such information does itself require fanning out in multiple speculative directions looking for new clues to determine who did this and why.

A Wall Street Journal report begins:

Two deadly explosions ripped through a crowd at the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing at least two people and injuring more than 110, once again raising the specter of terrorism on American soil.

“The specter of terrorism on American soil” is the cliched language that journalists can produce while asleep, but it also comes loaded with symbolism — that of American being attacked from the outside and a sense that this could have happened anywhere in America and thus this was an attack on America.

In 1995, straight after the Oklahoma bombing, the media was quick to push the foreign angle.

Within hours of the bombing, most network news reports featured comments from experts on Middle Eastern terrorism who said the blast was similar to the World Trade Center explosion two years earlier. Newspapers relied on many of those same experts and stressed the possibility of a Middle East connection.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, called it a “Beirut-style car bombing” in the first sentence of its story. The New York Post quoted Israeli terrorism experts in its opening paragraph, saying the explosion “mimicked three recent attacks on targets abroad.”

“We were, as usual, following the lead of public officials, assuming that public officials are telling us the truth,” says John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s magazine and author of a book on coverage of the Persian Gulf War. He believes the media overemphasized the possible Middle Eastern link and ignored domestic suspects because initially the police were not giving that angle much thought.

“Reporters can’t think without a cop telling them what to think,” MacArthur says. “If you are going to speculate wildly, why not say this is the anniversary of the Waco siege? Why isn’t that as plausible as bearded Arabs fleeing the scene?”

Most news organizations did mention other possible culprits. They noted the bombing took place on the second anniversary of the government raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, suggesting that homegrown terrorists might be responsible. But that angle was buried in most stories.

This Friday marks the tenth anniversary of Waco.

That coincidence, along with a number of other details (such as Monday being Patriots’ Day and Tax Day) give the Boston bombings at least the aroma of terrorism made in America.

Terrorism by its nature always appears misanthropic, yet its political significance and symbolism can be more or less explicit. The 9/11 attacks left few in doubt that these were conceived as attacks on America, yet domestic terrorism often seems to have a more introverted character.

Eric Rudolph‘s Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 was his attempt to stand up against “the ideals of global socialism.”

Timothy McVeigh suggested that he was highlighting American hypocrisy: “Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign targets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivalent to the bombing in Oklahoma City.”

Meanwhile, as it did in 1995 after the Oklahoma bombing, the Wall Street Journal is fixing its attention on a foreign threat:

The Boston bombing is above all a reminder of the continuing need for heightened defenses against terror threats. As the years since 9/11 without a successful homeland attack increased, the temptation was to forget how vulnerable the U.S. is, and to conclude that the worst is over.

In particular an anti-antiterror media and legal industry has developed in recent years claiming that police tactics like pre-emptive surveillance are no longer necessary. Al Qaeda is all but defeated, they say, so we can relax. But as New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly points out, the NYPD has helped to foil 16 plots against the city. Many of them involved homegrown terrorists like Shahzad, who often won’t be detected without surveillance or informants in communities that might produce killers.

Boston shows that the terror threat continues to be real, and that the price of even a peaceful marathon is constant vigilance.

As it invokes fear of “communities that might produce killers,” the Journal‘s Islamophobia is transparent.

For some Americans, constant vigilance against the terror threat meant supporting a war in Iraq, yet Saddam Hussein’s connection to Al Qaeda was a neoconservative fabrication. Anyone who still imagines that war did anything to make America safer is delusional.

On the other hand, there has always been a danger that the war would create its own Timothy McVeigh: someone embittered by the price the military has paid while the rest of America, untouched by the effects of war, has enjoyed the freedom to work and play — as though living in a nation that shares equally the rewards of peace.

Intelligent speculation about what happened yesterday is a good thing if for no other reason than that it lubricates minds that might otherwise form rigid views, but ultimately the biggest challenge for those called on to proffer expert opinion is to underline how little they know.

The search for swift answers, more than anything else, reflects the need we all have to live in a predictable world — a world in which we do not remain hypervigilant, grasped by an ever-present fear that violence might suddenly be unleashed from any direction.

Here’s a glimpse of how dangerous one of the detainees at Guantánamo can be: A 2008 Department of Defense report on Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel (who was claimed to have been one of Osama bin Laden’s body guards) described the kind of trouble he had caused while under detention:

He currently has 19 Reports of Disciplinary Infraction listed in DIMS [Detainee Information Management System] with the most recent occuring on 24 November 2007, when he passed a water bottle through the fence during recreation. He has three Reports of Disciplinary Infraction for assault with the most recent occurring on 13 December 2003, when he threw water mixed with toothpaste on a guard.

A nation that is afraid of men like Moqbel isn’t worth defending. It is instead the embodiment of monumental cowardice. There are snails invading Florida that pose a bigger threat to the U.S. than most of the inmates at Guantánamo and yet the president who made a theatrical pledge to close a prison that should by now be seen as a national embarrassment, has, instead of living up to his commitment, implemented a policy that through drone warfare favors murder over imprisonment.

And still the prospect of the closure of Guantánamo is nowhere in sight.

Shame on Obama and shame on America.

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel writes: One man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel (photo attached to 2008 DoD report)

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.

Anyone who’s bothered reading the small-print warnings on a can of paint will have come across lines like these:

“Contains solvents which can cause permanent brain and nervous system damage… This product contains chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”

You have been warned and thus — hopefully — take appropriate caution when handling such products.

But these kinds of warnings have an insidious effect. They create the impression that if no such warning is provided then there must be no dangerous chemicals in the product or its packaging. Wrong!

For instance, if canned goods were marked appropriately, virtually every canned food you find in the supermarket would carry a warning like this: this product contains chemicals which may increase your risk of cancer, cause birth defects or other reproductive problems, cause brain damage and disrupt the endocrine system.

The cause of the risk is bisphenol A, known as BPA, which is used as a can lining. Alert consumers are on the lookout for labeling that says “BPA-free”, but since many people don’t know what BPA is, they likewise have little reason to steer clear of every can that lacks such a declaration.

Back in 2010, Canada became the first country to identify BPA as a toxin, but two years later walked back on that position by declaring that the chemical’s use in food packaging does not pose a health risk.

Thus, predictably, runs the standard defense strategy through which industry repeatedly responds to what it perceives as commercial threats. First comes the denial — our product is harmless. Then, after research makes the danger undeniable, comes minimization — yes it’s dangerous, but not at these levels of exposure. Only after decades of harm and copious epidemiological evidence comes the mea culpa, with a small fraction of earlier profits used to cover the cost of legal settlements.

In the U.S. the FDA colluded in a PR charade by last year banning the use of BPA in baby bottles. It did so at the request of industry which had long ceased using BPA in such products. Manufacturers clearly felt that the FDA ban would serve their own marketing interests.

The New York Times reports: Unlike pharmaceuticals or pesticides, industrial chemicals do not have to be tested before they are put on the market. Under the law regulating chemicals, producers are only rarely required to provide the federal government with the information necessary to assess safety.

Regulators, doctors, environmentalists and the chemical industry agree that the country’s main chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, needs fixing. It is the only major environmental statute whose core provisions have not been reauthorized or substantively updated since its adoption in the 1970s. They do not agree, however, on who should have to prove that a chemical is safe.

Currently this burden rests almost entirely on the federal government. Companies have to alert the Environmental Protection Agency before manufacturing or importing new chemicals. But then it is the E.P.A.’s job to review academic or industry data, or use computer modeling, to determine whether a new chemical poses risks. Companies are not required to provide any safety data when they notify the agency about a new chemical, and they rarely do it voluntarily, although the E.P.A. can later request data if it can show there is a potential risk. If the E.P.A. does not take steps to block the new chemical within 90 days or suspend review until a company provides any requested data, the chemical is by default given a green light.

The law puts federal authorities in a bind. “It’s the worst kind of Catch-22,” said Dr. Richard Denison, senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. “Under this law, the E.P.A. can’t even require testing to determine whether a risk exists without first showing a risk is likely.”

As a result, the overwhelming majority of chemicals in use today have never been independently tested for safety. [Continue reading…]