Jul 21

Today’s News 21st July 2018

  • Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex Is Still Running The Show With Russia

    Authored by Bruce Fein via The American Conservative,

    As the media fulminates, they fail to see how Trump has kept the usual machinery running…

    President Donald Trump has strengthened, not weakened, American military and economic opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. That fact has been mostly unreported and it is of the utmost importance. Irrespective of what Trump harrumphs about NATO or Vladimir Putin, the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex (MICC) rules American-Russian relations as it has for seven decades. And the nightmare of the MICC is not to lose a friend, but to lose an enemy.

    Fake news is fixated on personalities. Authentic news understands that nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. The executive branch in particular has a permanent interest in exaggerating threats to augment its own power and to order up more superfluous military spending.

    President Barack Obama, in opposing Russian designs, refused to provide military assistance to Ukraine. Trump has authorized the transfer of defensive military weapons.

    Obama limited the U.S. military mission in Syria to defeating ISIS. Trump has expanded the mission to remain in Syria indefinitely and influence the outcome of that country’s protracted civil war.

    Trump is also planning a $1.2 trillion upgrade of our nuclear arsenal, including low-yield tactical weapons, largely targeting Russia. His most recent National Security Strategy paper elaborates:

    The United States will respond to the growing political, economic, and military competitions we face around the world. China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.

    Trump has supported NATO’s 30,000-strong rapid response force in case of a Russian attack. He has exhorted NATO members to spike their military spending against Russia from 2 percent or less of GDP to 4 percent.

    Trump has affirmed that he will treat an attack on any NATO member as an attack on the United States and will respond with military force without a constitutionally required declaration of war. He has not withdrawn even one soldier of more than 50,000 on the ground in NATO countries.

    Trump has maintained economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea and further military encroachments into eastern Ukraine. He signed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which the Russian prime minister assailed as a “full-scale trade war.”

    Last April, the Trump administration’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in consultation with the Department of State, designated seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank. A designee’s assets in the United States are frozen and business dealings with Americans are prohibited.

    “The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.

    “The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”

    Trump supported the addition of Montenegro to NATO despite its self-evident irrelevance to the national security of the United States.

    Trump’s detractors moan that he swoons over Putin, a proven assassin (the Litvinenko polonium 210 poisoning), international terrorist (the missile strike on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine), and serial liar (denying that he controls the GRU). They deplore the absurdly positive things he’s said about Russia’s cruel dictatorship and meddling in American politics (as we meddle in theirs). But they cannot point to a single thing the Trump administration has done that has diminished our overwhelming military and economic superiority over Russia or deterrence of Russian aggression.

    Trump is only background noise.

    Our enduring national security libretto is composed by the MICC with the acquiescence of the American people. And its armored knight gratifies them as always with the vicarious thrill of power and domination.

  • A Brief History Of US Covert Action In Syria – Part 2

    In part 2 of this corrective history of the Syrian proxy war which notable Middle East experts have lately urged is important and essential reading, William Van Wagenen demonstrates the direct US-al Qaeda relationship during the heart of the war, resulting in genocide against religious minorities. Part 1 is available here. 

    Part 2: The Myth of US ‘Inaction’ in Syria, by William Van Wagenen via The Libertarian Institute

    Member of the US-backed FSA, Aleppo, Syria. Image source: Wiki Commons

    In March of 2015, rebels from the Jaish al-Fatah coalition, which included Nusra and the jihadist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, launched a coordinated assault along with brigades from the FSA on Idlib province, leading to the capture of the province as a whole from Syrian government forces two months later.

    Rebels captured Idlib city itself on March 29. Al-Jazeera quoted the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) as declaring “Al-Nusra Front and its allies have captured all of Idlib,” in a battle that led to some 130 deaths. Al-Jazeera also quoted representatives of the Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC) as declaring the capture of Idlib city as “an important victory on the road to the full liberation of Syrian soil from the Assad regime and its allies,” showing the close relationship between the US-supported Syrian political opposition in exile and al-Qaeda affiliated militants on the ground in Syria. Rebels captured the last major Syrian army base in the province on March 19 near the town of Mastouma. Rebel control of Idlib was completed with the ouster of the Syrian army from the town of Ariha at the end of May, causing government forces to retreat to bases on the coast in Latakia.

    The US-led Operations Room

    The rebel offensive in Idlib succeeded largely due to the lethal combination of Nusra suicide bombers and US-provided TOW anti-tank missiles. FSA commander Fares Bayoush from the Fursan al-Haq brigade explained to the LA Times “that his group’s TOW missiles played an important role in repelling government tanks during a March offensive in Idlib province spearheaded by an Islamist coalition called the Army of Conquest, which includes Al Nusra Front.” It was during this period that Syria analyst Hassan Hassan observed in Foreign Policy that, “The Syrian rebels are on a roll,” and that “the recent offensives in Idlib have been strikingly swift — thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles,” as well as that,“For the first time since the conflict began, Assad’s heartlands in the Western region [Latakia] seemed exposed.”

    The close cooperation between FSA brigades and rebels from the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front in Idlib was encouraged by US planners. Syria analyst Charles Lister, also writing in Foreign Policy, observed that “The involvement of FSA groups, in fact, reveals how the factions’ backers have changed their tune regarding coordination with Islamists. Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards. That operations room — along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria’s south — also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks [emphasis mine].”

    Lister, who has testified several times before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee to make policy proscriptions for US planners in Syria, argued at that time that US cooperation with al-Qaeda (Nusra) is the best option: “[T]here still remains no better alternative to cooperating with al Qaeda, and thus facilitating its prominence. If the West wants a better solution, it must broaden and intensify its engagement with Syria’s insurgent groups and considerably expand its provision of assistance to a wider set of acceptable groups” echoing a popular view among Western and Gulf think tank analysts that al-Qaeda was worthy of US support.

    Civilians Flee Foreign Fighters

    Predictably, US efforts to help al-Qaeda conquer Idlib had grim consequences for many of its residents, large numbers of whom fled after rebels took control of the city and province.

    The Guardian reported that while under Syrian government control, Idlib city, with a population of some 165,000 before the war, “had been swollen by hundreds of thousands of displaced people, who had fled there to escape fighting elsewhere.” In contrast, when the rebels came, many civilians fled. The New York Times reported that although “some Idlib residents celebrated Saturday, cheering as fighters ripped down posters of Mr. Assad or embracing insurgent relatives who returned to the city for the first time in years, others streamed out of the city, with convoys of loaded cars and trucks blocking roads.” Citing the United Nations, the NYT reported that already by April 1, just two days after the rebel arrival, at least 30,000 residents had fled the city.

    One Idlib resident who fled when the rebels arrived explained that “The rebels that attacked Idlib at the end of March 2015 came from all sorts of countries. I even saw children carrying weapons. The rebels had a list of names of people who were to be killed, in the majority of cases because they held pro government views. One of my friends, a teacher, was on the list and was shot. . . . I left Idlib with my cousin who had a car. Afterwards, my house was occupied and looted by the rebels. I had planned to sell my house to enable my daughter to study medicine. Now it’s too late. I also worry about our old Christian neighbors. I am a Muslim but the religion of these rebels is not my Islam. I detest Salafism, and do not want to live under it.”

    On April 25, rebels from the Jaish al-Fatah coalition, which included the jihadist rebel groups Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and Jund al-Aqsa, captured the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour, which lies on the highway connecting Latakia to Aleppo. The rebel capture of the town came one month after the capture of Idlib city. The Guardian quoted one senior opposition member who had supplied weapons to the rebels taking Jisr al-Shughour as noting, “I would put the advances down to one word . . .Tow,” referring to missiles made in the US and purchased by Saudi Arabia for supply to the rebels.

    The US-Saudi Rat Line

    The opposition member noted as well that “Saudi is not as concerned as it was by who among the rebel groups is winning, as long as it’s not [Isis]. They’ve convinced everyone involved in Syria that the real enemy is Iran,” suggesting Saudi comfort in militarily supplying jihadist rebels from al-Qaeda. Rebel media posted video of civilians fleeing Jisr al-Shughour after its capture, claiming they wished to escape in anticipation of a pending regime bombardment now that the city had fallen.

    The Guardian also quoted one resident as noting that FSA groups participated alongside the Nusra-led Jaish al-Fatah coalition in taking the city, in accordance with the familiar pattern: “There were people from the normal opposition there. They were strong too, but the jihadists were stronger.”

    Though the city fell on April 25, hundreds of Syrian army soldiers and some women and children fled to the National Hospital complex, which remained under siege by rebels for the next month. The soldiers managed to repel multiple suicide car bombs, targeting them with rocket propelled grenades. Rebels then began preparing to detonate a large tunnel bomb below the hospital to destroy it and kill the soldiers inside. The soldiers then attempted to flee the hospital under air cover from the Syrian air force.

    Of this incident, the Telegraph reports, “Syrian rebel leaders have described massacres of hundreds of Assad troops and fighters in grim detail as the regime’s defenses begin to crumble in the face of revived attacks on several fronts. President Bashar al-Assad had promised to rescue hundreds of his men who were surrounded in a last stand at a hospital in the key north-western town of Jisr al-Shughour. Eventually, the men tried to run for it under the cover of a regime aerial attack, pre-empting a final assault by rebels including Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and other Islamist groups. Instead, many of the soldiers were shot down as they were cornered in orchards on the edge of town, a rebel spokesman said.”

    Rebels claimed to have killed 208 Syrian soldiers, including several high ranking officers, while pro-government sources claimed up to 80 soldiers managed to escape. One soldier who managed to escape alive described the ordeal to Chinese state media, adding that a number of civilians escaped with the soldiers.

    Jisr al-Shughour fell four years after rebels initially attempted to take the city in June 2011, just three months after the beginning of anti-government protests. Several hundred rebels attacked the local police station with dynamite, killing a number of soldiers inside, and then ambushed and killed as many as 120 Syrian army soldiers sent as reinforcements. This event was known as the “massacre” of Jisr al-Shughour. The killings were widely attributed to the Syrian army itself at the time, as activists implausibly blamed the Syrian army for the killing of its own soldiers.

    The story of government responsibility for the killings was widely believed, and reported as such in the Western press, as the rebel attacks took place at a time before armed rebel activity in Syria was widely acknowledged. This was despite correct reporting on the killings at the time by Syria expert and University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis. Rebel responsibility for the killings was later confirmed by journalist Rania Abouzeid, who was able to return to Jisr al-Shughour years later and interview witnesses who confirmed rebels had killed the soldiers, as recounted in her book, “No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (pages 55-60).”

    Threat of Genocide in Latakia

    The defeat of government forces in Idlib, in particular in Jisr al-Shughour, allowed rebels to then push on toward Latakia province on the Western coast of Syria, and to threaten the massacre of the large Alawite population there, as discussed above. A representative from the rebel group Ahrar al-Sham explained to Reuters that “Jisr al-Shughour is more important than Idlib itself, it is very close to the coastal area which is a regime area [Latakia], the coast now is within our fire reach.”

    Alawites, which comprised some 50% of the population in Latakia, faced the prospect of being massacred if rebels from Nusra had been able to capture the city, due to the virulently anti-Alawite views of Nusra members, who draw on the writings of the fringe 14th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya in order to deem Alawites “infidels” deserving of death.

    Syrian analyst Sam Heller cites the views of the supreme Nusra religious official Sami al-Oreidi to show that Nusra promotes “toxic — even genocidal – sectarianism” against Syria’s Alawite population. Heller writes that “[T]he verdict on Syria’s Alawites, Oreidi makes clear, is death. Oreidi cites medieval Islamic jurist Imam al-Ghazali, who wrote, ‘Proceed with [the Alawites] as you would with apostates…. The land must be purged of them.’ He also quotes Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, himself Syrian and among the formative influences on modern Salafism: This people called the ‘Nuseiriyyah [Alawites] . . . are more infidels than the Jews and the Nasara [Christians]; more infidels, in fact, than many polytheists. Their harm to the nation of Muhammad, peace be upon him, is greater than the infidels waging war on it.’”

    But it was not only jihadist fighters from the Nusra Front that held strongly sectarian, anti-Alawite views, but also many fighters from the FSA as well, due to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) roots of many FSA battalions. Thanks to the influence of Brotherhood ideologue Said Hawwa, the Syrian MB promoted the anti-Alawite sectarian views of Ibn Taymiyya from the 1960’s until the 1980’s.

    Islam scholar Itzchak Weismann of the University of Haifa writes that “In defining his attitude toward the ‘Alawis, Hawwa alludes to a fatwa of Ibn Taymiya, which although it concerns a particular Ismal’ili sect can be applied, in his opinion, to any analogous sect in the Muslim world. According to this fatwa jihad against this sect precedes jihad against polytheists (musbrikun) or against ahl al-kitab, as it belongs to the category of jihad against murtaddun [apostates]. Thus, in Hawwa’s view, Syria is a unique case of a Muslim state that is ruled by a heretical batini government, and in such a case he sees no escape from a violent confrontation. The Sunni majority, led by the Islamic movement, must wage an uncompromising war against Assad’s regime and against ‘Alawi dominance in Syria.”

    Revisiting the 1980’s Muslim Brotherhood Insurrection  

    This view helped inspire some Brotherhood members, such as Marwan Hadid, to split from the broader Syrian MB organization and initiate an armed insurrection against the Syrian government in Hama in 1964. Upon Hadid’s death in government custody in 1976, his followers, known as the Fighting Vanguard, initiated an assassination campaign targeting Alawite members of the Syrian government bureaucracy and security forces.

    As part of this campaign, Fighting Vanguard militants massacred 83 Alawite army cadets in Aleppo in June 1979, while attempting to assassinate President Hafez al-Assad himself in June 1980. In response, Assad ordered the massacre of some 500 MB members then being held in Tadmur prison. The Syrian MB joined the Fighting Vanguard in launching an armed insurrection (which they called a jihad) against the Syrian government in Hama in 1982.

    Islamist militants attacked police stations, Ba’ath party offices and Syrian army units, forcing the army to withdraw from the city. The army regrouped however, and (in)famously suppressed the insurrection, with the use of considerable violence, leaving thousands dead and much of the city in ruins (for a review of this period, see “Ashes of Hama” by Rafael Lefevre and “The Struggle for Power in Syria” by Nikolaos van Dam).

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    While the Syrian MB has espoused more moderate positions after the group was defeated in Hama, anti-Alawite sectarianism which colored its conflict with the Syrian government in the 1980’s re-emerged in some segments of the Syrian opposition at the outset of anti-government protests in 2011, and was taken up by some FSA rebel groups.

    Calls for Ethnic Cleansing Began in Spring 2011

    In some anti-government protests in the spring of 2011, protestors chanted the slogan “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave,” while in June 2011, Syrian opposition cleric and FSA supporter Adnan Arour threatened to put Alawites supporting the government in “meat grinders” and “feed their flesh to the dogs.”

    In the summer of 2011, Lebanese Sunnis from the city of Tripoli were entering Syria to fight for the FSA-affiliated Farouq Brigade in Homs, with encouragement from Lebanese cleric Masen al-Mohammed, who insisted that “Assad is an infidel,” because he is a member of the Alawite faith and that “It is the duty of every Muslim, every Arab to fight the infidels.”

    FSA groups inquired of Islamic scholars in March 2012 whether it was allowed to raid Alawite villages and kill their women and children in response to alleged crimes committed by the Syrian army.

    On April 10, 2011, just weeks after the first anti-government protests in Syria, anti-government activists loyal to local Salafi cleric and protest leader Anas Ayrout murdered an Alawite farmer in Banias named Nidal Janoud. Video emerged of the activists stabbing Nidal to death in the street. In July 2013, Ayrout, by then a rebel commander and member of the Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC) told Reuters that “We have to drive them [Alawites] out of their homes like they drove us out. They have to feel pain like we feel pain,” and that “(Alawites) are relaxed while areas that have slipped out of regime control are always under shelling (by government forces), always in pain. . . If you do not create a balance of terror, the battle will not be decided.”

    Similarly, in September 2013, Zahran Alloush, a Salafi preacher and founder of the Saudi-supported opposition rebel group Jaish al-Islam, called for “cleansing Damascus” of all Alawites, while calling Shiite Muslims, of which Alawites are considered an offshoot, “unclean” and threating to “destroy your skulls” and “make you taste the worst torture in life before Allah makes you taste the worst torture on judgment day.” Proof that Jaish al-Islam was welcomed by the mainstream and Western-backed political opposition became clear when Zahran’s cousin and co-founder of Jaish al-Islam, Mohammad Alloush, was appointed as the lead negotiator for the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace negotiations in January 2016.

    The anti-Alawite incitement promoted by opposition clerics such as Alloush, al-Mohammed, Arour, and Ayrout was at times translated into action. In December 2012, FSA battalions carried out a mass kidnapping of Alawite civilians in the town of Aqrab. Alex Thomsen of Channel 4 News reported that according to residents of the town who had escaped, “rebels wanted to take the women and children to al-Houla to use them as human shields against bombardment from government forces, and they believed they would kill the remaining men.”

    Whitewashing ISIS

    In August 2013, one month after Ayrout’s threats against Alawites, fighters under the command of FSA head Salim Idriss participated alongside Nusra and ISIS in the massacre and kidnapping of Alawite civilians in 10 villages in Latakia, according to the BBC. Human Rights Watch (HRC) investigated the massacre further, and reported that on August 4, rebels overran a Syrian army position, killing some 30 Syrian soldiers. Rebels then massacred 190 civilians, including 57 women and 18 children and 14 elderly men. Rebels also kidnapped and held hostage some 200 additional civilians, the majority women and children. Many of the hostages were released 9 months later as part of a ceasefire deal to end fighting between the Syrian army and rebels in Homs, and victims were able to recount horrific details of their captivity to the pro-Syrian government Lebanese newspaper, al-Akhbar.

    The massacre came as part of a rebel offensive, led by ISIS, to capture Tartous, a port town crucial for the Syrian army receiving weapons shipments by sea from its Iranian allies. The Telegraph reported that Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC) denied that rebels were targeting civilians based on their religious identity, but that the SNC nevertheless “praised” the ISIS led-offensive “stating that the villages had been used as launching posts from which pro-government militias had shelled rebel held villages in the north of the province.” At the same time, the Telegraph reported that “Video footage posted showed rebel groups indiscriminately launching rockets in the direction of Qardaha, the Assad village, and many of the comments made in the footage were clearly sectarian.”

    In November 2015, Jaish al-Islam placed Alawite prisoners, both kidnapped civilians and captured Syrian soldiers, in metal cages in public squares. The Telegraph cited SOHR reporting that “Jaish al-Islam is using these captives and kidnapped people – including whole families – as human shields,” allegedly in an effort to prevent Syrian government bombing.

    Christians on the Coast

    Christians in Latakia also feared the rebels. In March 2014, the Armenian Christian village of Kassab in northern Latakia province was overrun by rebels crossing the Syrian border from Turkey. Saudi owned al-Arabia reports that “Kassab’s residents fled after rebels seized their village on March 23, as part of a rebel offensive in the coastal Syrian province of Latakia, Assad’s ancestral heartland.” One resident who fled when the rebels came told al-Jazeera that “There was no obvious reason to invade, no heavy Syrian military presence. . . But that morning, shelling was pouring down like hail.” Once the residents fled, rebels looted their homes and farm equipment. “They have taken the televisions, radios and microwaves to Kassab Square, and they’ve gathered all the tractors at the Kassab Tourist Resort,” a media representative for the Armenians in the town told al-Jazeera.

    The Washington Post reported that a “mother of three said that after she arrived in Latakia with her children, she called home, and a man who identified himself as a member of Jabhat al-Nusra answered” and told her “Come back, why did you leave your home? We have come here to protect you,” before also telling her “she should convert to Islam before returning.” The mother described how “I pleaded with him, ‘Eat and drink whatever you like, but please don’t destroy the house.’”

    American celebrity personality Kim Kardashian, herself Armenian, attempted to bring attention to the plight of Kassab’s residents and the danger they faced from al-Qaeda rebels. In response, the Daily Beast published an article making light of her concerns, suggesting Kardashian was simply an apologist for dictators.

    Despite rebel attacks on various villages in Latakia province as described above, Latakia city and its some 400,000 residents had largely been spared the violence engulfing much of the country, with some 200,000 displaced persons finding refuge in Latakia, many of whom were housed in tents and pre-fabricated homes in the city’s sports stadium complex.

    By the spring of 2015, however, rebels were encroaching closer and closer on Latakia city. In March 2015, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya reported that rebels had detonated a car bomb in Qardaha, President Assad’s hometown, located just 30 kilometers Latakia city, and that the Syrian army was conducting operations in an effort to “put to an end the frequent shelling of loyalist villages and towns on the coasts. Morale is reportedly cracking in the regime strongholds due to repeated artillery shelling.”

    When Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province fell to the rebels in April 2015, pro-opposition Orient News reported that the coming rebel advance on Latakia would be considerably more difficult and complicated, not just for military reasons, but due to demographic ones as well, as Latakia is primarily populated by supporters of the government. 

    Orient News also acknowledged that many towns and cities in Latakia taken by the rebels would be depopulated, explaining that the “entry of the opposition to these regions will cause a large wave of displaced persons, as occurred when the opposition took control of the villages of Ishtabrak and al-Rasmania and Ghania, which are villages surrounding Jisr al-Shughour and whose residents support the government,” noting as well that the capture of these towns by the opposition “led to residents of these towns fleeing to areas under government control in the Sahel [Latakia].”

    Massive Depopulation

    In June 2015, one Latakia resident told Syria Deeply that, the “opposition’s proximity to Latakia is what everyone talks about these days. People expect that Latakia is next, after Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour. When the opposition took over Idlib, people in Latakia were disappointed, but when they took over Jisr al-Shughour, people were scared.”

    The resident noted that many young men from Latakia had already died fighting with the Syrian army against rebels elsewhere in Syria: “Many Latakians were killed fighting with the army and serving their country. More than 150 people from my neighborhood were killed in service. Their pictures are hung along the main street. All streets in Latakia are like this.” Despite the fear of a rebel takeover of Latakia, the resident suggested many were encouraged by the fact that prominent Syrian general Suhail al-Hassan, who had had considerable success in defeating rebels elsewhere, had been appointed to re-take Jisr al-Shughour. The resident concluded his comments by stating that “The army is our only hope that Syria would become peaceful again.”

    While the threat of the massacre of Alawite civilians in Latakia city loomed in the summer of 2015, Syria’s Alawite community had already suffered terrible losses at the hands of the rebels elsewhere. In April 2015 the Telegraph had noted that “The scale of the sect’s losses is staggering: with a population of around two million, a tenth of Syria’s population, the Alawites boast perhaps 250,000 men of fighting age. Today as many as one third are dead, local residents and Western diplomats say. Many Alawite villages nestled in the hills of their ancestral Latakia province are all but devoid of young men. The women dress only in mourning black [emphasis mine].”

    The Telegraph quotes a Latakia resident as explaining that “Every day there at least 30 men returned from the front lines in coffins. In the beginning of the war their deaths were celebrated with big funerals. Now they are quietly dumped in the back of pick-up trucks,” which caused some Alawite mothers to “set up ‘road blocks’ at the entrances to some of the mountain villages to prevent the army from forcibly taking their sons to the military draft” and to tell military commanders to “Go and bring the sons of the big shots to war and after that we will give you our children.”

    Resentment due to the high casualties among Alawite army conscripts had begun years before. The Telegraph reported in October 2012 that “as families see their young soldiers coming home in body bags ‘everyday’ that support [for Bashar al-Assad] is cracking” in his hometown of Qardaha, where “The walls are covered in posters showing the faces of the young men that have been killed.”

    BBC Excuses Terrorist Bombings

    On September 2, 2015 rebels detonated a car bomb outside a school in Latakia city, killing 12. In providing context for the bombing, the BBC noted that “Latakia has largely escaped the conflict that has devastated most of Syria and left 250,000 people dead. But a rebel alliance that includes al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, al-Nusra Front, has been advancing on the city and within its surrounding province after driving government forces out of much of neighboring Idlib province earlier this year.” 

    The BBC chose not acknowledge the threat to civilians of the rebel advance, characterizing it instead as simply “the latest in a series of setbacks for the president.” Al-Jazeera cited SOHR as reporting this was “the biggest car bomb attack in Latakia since the war began” and that “This is rare for Latakia city, which is usually hit by rockets.” Al-Jazeera added that “Rebel fighters entrenched in the hilly terrain around Latakia regularly fire rockets and other missiles into the city.”

    Robert Worth of the New York Times writes of this period that “the rebels were closing in on the Latakia city limits, and mortars were falling downtown. If the rebels had captured the area — where Alawites are the majority — a result would almost certainly have been sectarian mass murder. Many people in the region would have blamed the United States, which armed some of the rebels operating in the area… Andrew Exum, who worked in the Pentagon at the time, told me that the military drew up contingency plans for a rapid collapse of the regime. The planning sessions were talked about as ‘catastrophic success [emphasis mine].’”

    CIA Insider: Regime Change in Effect from early 2011

    The phrase “catastrophic success” is an odd one. Presumably, the rebel takeover of Latakia and possible collapse of the Syrian government would be catastrophic, given the large numbers of people that would have been massacred. Such an outcome would have nevertheless constituted a success, from the perspective of US planners, as the fall of the Syrian government was long a strategic US goal, due to the desire to weaken Syria’s close allies, Iran and Hezbollah.

    For example, Flynt Leverett, the former Middle East specialist for the State Department, CIA and National Security Council during the Bush Administration described how,“The unrest in Syria started in March 2011. . . . and by April of 2011, just one month into this the Obama administration was backgrounding David Sanger from the New York Times and other sympathetic reporters that they were looking at the situation in Syria as a way of pushing back and undermining Iran. That if you could bring about regime change in [Syria] the argument was that this would really weaken Iran’s regional position and reignite the Green Movement and produce regime change in Iran. . . This has been very much the real strategic driver for American policy toward the situation.”

    * * *

    In part 3 we will chart ISIS’ rapid advance into central Syria and inroads into the Damascus suburbs, as well as Russian intervention and the resulting failure of US regime change plans. 

  • Solomon: Climb Down From The Summit Of Hostile Propaganda

    Authored by Norman Solomon via TruthDig.com,

    Throughout the day before the summit in Helsinki, the lead story on the New York Times home page stayed the same: “Just by Meeting With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead.” The Sunday headline was in harmony with the tone of U.S. news coverage overall. As for media commentary, the Washington Post was in the dominant groove as it editorialized that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is “an implacably hostile foreign adversary.”

    Contempt for diplomacy with Russia is now extreme. Mainline U.S. journalists and top Democrats often bait President Donald Trump in zero-sum terms. No doubt Hillary Clinton thought she was sending out an applause line in her tweet Sunday night: “Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?”

    A bellicose stance toward Russia has become so routine and widespread that we might not give it a second thought—and that makes it all the more hazardous. After President George W. Bush declared “You’re either with us or against us,” many Americans gradually realized what was wrong with a Manichean view of the world. Such an outlook is even more dangerous today.

    Since early 2017, the U.S. mass media have laid it on thick with the rough political equivalent of a painting technique known as chiaroscuro—“the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition,” in the words of Wikipedia. The Russiagate frenzy is largely about punching up contrasts between the United States (angelic and victimized) and Russia (sinister and victimizer).

    Countless stories with selective facts are being told that way. But other selectively fact-based stories could also be told to portray the United States as a sinister victimizer and Russia as an angelic victim. Those governments and their conformist media outlets are relentless in telling it either way. As the great journalist I.F. Stone observed long ago, “All governments lie, and nothing they say should be believed.” In other words: don’t trust, verify.

    Often the biggest lies involve what remains unsaid. For instance, U.S. media rarely mention such key matters as the promise-breaking huge expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders since the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the brazen U.S. intervention in Russia’s pivotal 1996 presidential election, or the U.S. government’s 2002 withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, or the more than 800 U.S. military bases overseas—in contrast to Russia’s nine.

    For human survival on this planet, an overarching truth appears in an open letter published last week by The Nation magazine:

    “No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange. The tacit pretense that the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations does not worsen the odds of survival for the next generations is profoundly false.”

    The initial 26 signers of the open letter “Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security” included Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, writer and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem, former UN ambassador Gov. Bill Richardson, political analyst Noam Chomsky, former covert CIA operations officer Valerie Plame, activist leader Rev. Dr. William Barber II, filmmaker Michael Moore, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, former U.S. ambassador to the USSR Jack F. Matlock Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Alice Walker and Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, former senator Adlai Stevenson III, and former longtime House Armed Services Committee member Patricia Schroeder. (I was also one of the initial signers.)

    Since its release five days ago, the open letter has gained support from a petition already signed by 45,000 people. The petition campaign aims to amplify the call for protecting the digital infrastructure of the electoral process that is now “vulnerable to would-be hackers based anywhere”—and for taking “concrete steps… to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers.”

    We need a major shift in the U.S. approach toward Russia. Clearly the needed shift won’t be initiated by the Republican or Democratic leaders in Congress; it must come from Americans who make their voices heard. The lives—and even existence—of future generations are at stake in the relationship between Washington and Moscow.

    Many of the petition’s grassroots signers have posted comments along with their names. Here are a few of my favorites:

    *  From Nevada: “We all share the same planet! We better learn how to do it safely or face the consequences of blowing ourselves up!”

    *  From New Mexico: “The earth will not survive a nuclear war. The weapons we have today are able to cause much more destruction than those of previous eras. We must find a way to common ground.”

    *  From Massachusetts: “It is imperative that we take steps to protect the sanctity of our elections and to prevent nuclear war anywhere on the earth.”

    *  From Kentucky: “Secure elections are a fundamental part of a democratic system. But this could become meaningless in the event of thermonuclear war.”

    *  From California: “There is only madness and hubris in talk of belligerence toward others, especially when we have such dangerous weapons and human error has almost led to our annihilation already more than once in the past half-century.”

    Yet a wide array of media outlets, notably the “Russiagate”-obsessed network MSNBC, keeps egging on progressives to climb toward peaks of anti-Russian jingoism. The line of march is often in virtual lockstep with GOP hyper-hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The incessant drumbeat is in sync with what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”

    Meanwhile, as Dr. King said, “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.”

  • Michael Cohen Secretly Taped Trump Discussing Playboy Model Payoff

    Update: The Wall Street Journal adds some interesting color to the story – reporting that Cohen taped the conversation in person, that they discussed acquiring the rights to McDougal’s story which was previously sold to the National Enquirer’s parent company, and that the recording, which was under two minutes long, cuts out before the conversation ended. 

    *****

    President Trump’s former longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, secretly recorded Trump two months before the 2016 US election discussing payments to a former Playboy model who said she and Trump had an affair, according to the New York Times, citing lawyers and others familiar with the recording which was seized during an FBI raid on Cohen’s office.

    The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them. –NYT

    The existence of the recording will undoubtedly kick open the door to tactics Trump and his associates have used to keep aspects of his business dealings and personal life secret, posits the Times, while it also highlights the potential legal and political danger that Cohen poses to Trump. 

    Cast outside of Trump’s inner circle, Cohen recently lawyered up with longtime Clinton pal Lanny Davis, who suggested two weeks ago that Cohen cooperating with prosecutors might not work out so well for Trump.

    “We have nothing to say on this matter,” said Davis when asked about the tape. 

    Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told the Times that the recording existed, however the payment to McDougal was never made.

    Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed in a telephone conversation on Friday that Mr. Trump had discussed the payments with Mr. Cohen on the tape but said the payment was ultimately never made. He said the recording was less than two minutes and demonstrated that the president had done nothing wrong. –NYT

    “Nothing in that conversation suggests that he had any knowledge of it in advance,” said Giuliani, adding that Trump had previously told Cohen that if he were to make a payment related to the woman, to write a check instead of sending cash so that the transaction could be properly documented. “In the big scheme of things, it’s powerful exculpatory evidence,” Giuliani added.

    The former model, Karen McDougal, claims to have had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump in 2006, right before Melania Trump gave birth to their son Barron. McDougal sold her story to the National Enquirer for $150,000 as the 2016 presidential campaign was in its final months, however the tabloid sat on the story which kept it from becoming public in a practice known as “catch and kill.” 

    The Enquirer’s chairman, David J. Pecker, is a personal friend of Trump’s, and McDougal has accused Cohen of taking part in the deal. 

    Cohen made a similar payment of $130,000 to porn star and stripper Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Cohen said at the time “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford.”

    Clifford is suing Trump over a nondisclosure agreement so that she can “tell her story” (in the form of a book, we imagine), while she is also suing both Trump and Cohen for libel after Trump called her statements “fraud” over Twitter, while claiming that Clifford fabricated a story that she was threatened by a man after she went to journalists with the story of her affair.

    Shortly before the 2016 election, former Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that McDougal’s allegations were “totally untrue.”

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  • Watch: Drone Flies Dangerously "Feet Away" From An Airbus A380

    Fresh off the internet, an incredible video shows the moment an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flies into the path of the world’s largest passenger airliner.

    Video of the incident was first reported by HelicoMicro, which has since circulated many drone and photography forums. The video shows just how stupid someone can be while operating a recreational drone near an airport.

    According to Oliver Kmia, a photo analyst for Fstoppers, he confirms the A380 airliner belongs to the Dubai-based company Emirates, which took off from runway 14 at Plaine Magnien Airport located on the Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean. As the jumbo jet gains altitude, “the pre-positioned drone films the plane passing dangerously close at about 200 feet from the tip of the left wing,” Kmia said.

    The A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by Airbus. It is the world’s largest passenger airliner, and can carry more than 500 passengers in a typical three-class seat configuration and up to 850 passengers in a densified all-economy cabin version.

    Kmia mentions that there is no information about the identity of the pilot. However, he did indicate the video was initially posted on Facebook by Thierry Paris who describes himself as an A380 captain for Air France.

    Paris wrote in the video caption: “That’s what a little crazy guy managed to do with a drone in Mauritius. Hello flight safety!!!”

    The Airbus A380 of Emirates flight EK702 gaining altitude after takeoff from runway 14 in Mauritius Island. (Source: Facebook video)

    The Airbus A380 of Emirates flight EK702 comes “feet away” from the drone. (Source: Facebook video)

    The Airbus A380 of Emirates flight EK702 passing the drone as it was on route to Dubai airport. (Source: Facebook video)

    While the drone pilot and drone manufacture of the craft is unknown, Kmia speculates the pilot used a Parrot Anafi.

    “Unlike DJI, the Parrot drones are not equipped with geofencing capabilities. However, the DJI no-fly zone in the area is very small (see the map below) and the drone was flying just outside this perimeter anyway. Finally, flight restrictions can easily be hacked on consumer drones,” he said.

    Note the approximate position of the drone (X) and the trajectory of the A380 taking off from runway 14 and heading to the south-east. The red circle indicates the no-fly zone as seen on the DJI system but we don’t know what drone was used to film this video. (Source: Oliver Kmia/Fstoppers)

    And, of course, law-abiding drone pilots erupted in anger over the video on social media: 

    It seems like the unknown drone operator could have severely violated the Government Gazette of Mauritius’s Civil Aviation Act.

    Earlier this year, we covered another drone incident, where someone dive-bombed a US passenger jet landing in Vegas.

    Kmia concludes by offering an opinion on the drone industry and warns that new “regulations and restrictions won’t stop stupid people from” flying recreational drones into the flight paths of commercial airlines. So we ask the question: How long until a major incident occurs between a drone and jumbo jet?

    “As usual, this type of story will surely fuel the fire of the anti-drone crowd. However, adding new regulations and restrictions won’t stop stupid people from doing this kind of things. Likes car and guns, drone are just objects that can be diverted by irresponsible people. All the homicide and DUI regulations don’t prevent certain people to commit murders and drive over the limits. Drones are here to stay and any attempt to ground them will fail. The main point is to work on the drone detection capabilities and the integration of these unmanned aircrafts in the national airspace. The business of drone detection is tricky but several companies are already offering solutions like the DJI AeroScope. Beyond that, drones will have to be properly identified and equipped with position reporting equipment such as miniature ADS-B and TCAS system (or based on GPS and cellular network). In the USA, the FAA is working on the issue but the federal government is not known for its decision speed. Hopefully, the official remote ID requirement system won’t be plagued by bureaucratic and technical non-sense otherwise, some drone pilots will continue to fly illegally. Let’s hope that the decision makers find the right balance between liberty and security.”

  • "It's Dire!" – Aussie Farmers Face Worst Drought In 100 Years

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Farmers are saying the situation they’ve been presented with is “dire.” As they battle the worst drought they’ve faced in 100 years, farming families in central-western New South Wales in Australia are facing ruin.

    According to The Guardian, the farmers in the affected region of central and western New South Wales continue to battle a crippling drought that many locals are calling the worst since 1902. In Warrumbungle Shire, where sharp peaks fall away to once fertile farmland, the small town of Coonabarabran is running out of water. The town dam has fallen to 23% of its capacity and residents are living with level-six water restrictions.

    There are real fears the town will run dry. Unable to provide food would not only mean financial ruin for the farmers but also less food for those who need it.

    “It’s a pretty tough old time,” says Coonabarabran farmer Ambrose Doolan. “But if you’re working with your family and everyone is looking out for each other, you count your blessings.”

    Last year, the Doolan family recorded their fourth-lowest average rainfall and that poor year has been followed by even drier conditions this year. The family has begun selling whatever stock they can and spends their whole day at feeding the cattle that remain because the pastures have dried up.

    Farmers in this part of NSW are importing almost all food for their livestock from as far away as South Australia as prices rise with demand. The continued cost of buying feed is causing many to question their future on the land. The NSW government recently approved an emergency drought relief package of $600m, at least $250m of which will cover low-interest loans to assist eligible farm businesses to recover. The package has been welcomed but, in the words of a local farmer, “it barely touches the sides”. With the prospect of a dry El Niño weather pattern hitting the state in spring, the longer-term outlook is dire. –The Guardian

    As the cost of trucking in food for cattle and sheep increases, so will the cost of the products created from them, hitting consumers’ wallets hard. 

    Charities such as Buy a Bale, where people can purchase hay bales for local farmers, have been some assistance, but rain would offer the biggest relief.  While much of NSW experienced a wet start to winter, the darker skies over Coonabarabran have yet to deliver said relief.

    And many farmers say they will reject the government’s offer of a loan simply because they are already in a dire amount of debt.

  • Trump Slams Door On Putin's Offer For Referendum In Eastern Ukraine

    Perhaps Putin didn’t get the memo that democratic referendums don’t count unless the people can be counted on to vote “the right way”? And perhaps Trump is not actually doing Putin’s bidding? 

    A day after President Vladimir Putin told Russian diplomats in a closed door meeting that he set a proposal before Donald Trump during their Helsinki summit that a resolution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine could be reached by holding an internationally monitored referendum in contested separatist regions, the White House has for the first time acknowledged it.

    In comments reported Friday by Bloomberg, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council indicated Trump has rejected the plan, saying “The administration is not considering supporting a referendum in the eastern Ukraine.” 

    “The Minsk Agreements are the process for resolving the conflict in the Donbas, and these agreements do not include any option for referendum,” the White House spokesman said in reference to the 2015 European-brokered truce deal which ultimately calls for full Ukrainian government restoration of control over the state border and throughout the conflict zone. And added, “Furthermore, to organize a so-called referendum in a part of Ukraine which is not under government control would have no legitimacy.”

    Rebel coalitions in Donetsk and Luhansk held referendums on independence in May of 2014 which resulted in many towns coming under the control of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics; however the vote was rejected internationally with Kiev dismissing the move as a “farce”. Kiev has pushed a compromise of offering the war-torn region some degree of autonomy while remaining under the Ukrainian state. 

    Four years of fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government troops have resulted in over 10,000 people killed and more than one-and-a-half million displaced. 

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    Thus far, much of the policy content that is rumored to have been discussed between Trump and Putin during their two hour one-on-one session in Helsinki on Monday has been kept tightly under wraps, with more description of what was considered coming from the Russian side. 

    On Thursday when news first broke of the proposal, which reportedly involved Putin agreeing not to publicly disclose the plan in order to give Trump time to consider it, The Hill summarized what little that could be gleaned as follows:

    The proposal reportedly calls for a vote in separatist regions of the country that would allow the areas to decide their own status as a way to resolve the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

    …Such a referendum would almost certainly face intense pushback from Kiev and the European Union, which remain supportive of the 2015 Minsk II agreement to halt the fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

    It would also mark a change in Washington’s position, which calls for Russia to live up to its commitments under the Minsk agreement.

    Or we could translate this more simply as given that some three quarters of the Donbas region identify Russian as their main language, and with Western media reports long acknowledging the multiple polls suggesting the majority in the region reject the EU/US-backed government in Kiev, a referendum on the future of the contested remains unconscionable for the Western alliance.

    On Thursday Trump tweeted that his meeting with Putin was “a great success” and separately cited Ukraine among the areas discussed, but without providing details. Since Monday’s summit, Putin has warned of “serious risks of an escalation” in fighting in eastern Ukraine while also telling Russian state television he and Trump discussed “new ideas about ways of regulating the conflict in Ukraine”. 

    “We agreed to work on this for now on the expert level. In my view, this is a positive element of movement forward,” Putin said.

    Kiev has this week also been seeking clarification of what was discussed at Helsinki. Western and NATO leaders have shown heightened concern over potential future White House policy after last month Trump reportedly told fellow G7 leaders that the Crimean peninsula was part of Russia “because everyone there speaks Russian” (in reference to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea).

    Though President Trump has been hounded by accusations of “treason” and “collusion” more than ever before in the wake of his controversial closed door meeting with his Russian counterpart, NPR on Friday seems to have deflated one of the key ‘Russiagate’ talking points bolstering this narrative.

    In a rare moment of honest mainstream media commentary in response to Trump’s telling reporters on Wednesday, “There’s never been a president as tough on Russia as I have been,” NPR pointed out an obvious truth that’s long been missing in the mainstream: 

    That might sound like hyperbole, but in this case, there’s actually some basis for the president’s boast.

    “When you actually look at the substance of what this administration has done, not the rhetoric but the substance, this administration has been much tougher on Russia than any in the post-Cold War era,” said Daniel Vajdich, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

    This of course includes Trump’s consistently ramping up arms sales to Ukraine, increased sanctions on Russia, and aggressively lobbying NATO member countries to increase defense spending, among other measures. 

  • The Schizophrenic Deep State Is A Symptom, Not The Disease

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    If we understand the profound political disunity fracturing the nation and its Imperial Project, we understand the Deep State must also fracture along the same fault lines.

    If we consider the state of the nation from 40,000 feet, several key indicators of profound political disunity within the elites pop out:

    1. The overt politicization of the central state’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies: it is now commonplace to find former top officials of the CIA et al. accusing a sitting president of treason in the mainstream media. What was supposed to be above politics is now nothing but politics.

    2. The overt politicization of the centralized (corporate) media: evidence that would stand up in a court of law is essentially non-existent but the interpretations and exaggerations that fit the chosen narrative are ceaselessly promoted–the classic definition of desperate propaganda by those who have lost the consent of the governed.

    The nation’s elites are not just divided–they’re exhibiting signs of schizophrenic breakdown: disassociation and a loss of the ability to discern the difference between reality and their internal fantasies.

    I’ve been writing about the divided Deep State for a number of years, for example, The Conflict within the Deep State Just Broke into Open Warfare. The topic appears to be one of widespread interest, as this essay drew over 300,000 views.

    It’s impossible to understand the divided Deep State unless we situate it in the larger context of profound political disunity, a concept I learned from historian Michael Grant, whose slim but insightful volume The Fall of the Roman Empire I have been recommending since 2009.

    As I noted in my 2009 book Survival+, this was a key feature of the Roman Empire in its final slide to collapse. The shared values and consensus which had held the Empire’s core together dissolved, leaving petty fiefdoms to war among themselves for what power and swag remained.

    A funny thing happens when a nation allows itself to be ruled by Imperial kleptocrats: such rule is intrinsically destabilizing, as there is no longer any moral or political center to bind the nation together. The public sees the value system at the top is maximize my personal profit by whatever means are available, i.e. complicity, corruption, monopoly and rentier rackets, and they follow suit by pursuing whatever petty frauds and rackets are within reach: tax avoidance, cheating on entrance exams, gaming the disability system, lying on mortgage and job applications, and so on.

    But the scope of the rentier rackets is so large, the bottom 95% cannot possibly keep up with the expanding wealth and income of the top .1% and their army of technocrats and enablers, so a rising sense of injustice widens the already yawning fissures in the body politic.

    Meanwhile, diverting the national income into a few power centers is also destabilizing, as Central Planning and Market Manipulation (a.k.a. the Federal Reserve) are intrinsically unstable as price can no longer be discovered by unfettered markets. As a result, imbalances grow until some seemingly tiny incident or disruption triggers a cascading collapse, a.k.a. a phase shift or system re-set.

    As the Power Elites squabble over the dwindling crumbs left by the various rentier rackets, there’s no one left to fight for the national interest because the entire Status Quo of self-interested fiefdoms and cartels has been co-opted and is now wedded to the Imperial Oligarchy as their guarantor of financial security.

    The divided Deep State is a symptom of this larger systemic political disunity. I have characterized the divide as between the Wall Street-Neocon-Globalist Neoliberal camp–currently the dominant public face of the Deep State, the one desperately attempting to exploit the “Russia hacked our elections and is trying to destroy us” narrative–and a much less public, less organized “rogue Progressive” camp, largely based in the military services and fringes of the Deep State, that sees the dangers of a runaway expansionist Empire and the resulting decay of the nation’s moral/political center.

    What few observers seem to understand is that concentrating power in centralized nodes is intrinsically unstable. Contrast a system in which power, control and wealth is extremely concentrated in a few nodes (the current U.S. Imperial Project) and a decentralized network of numerous dynamic nodes.

    The disruption of any of the few centralized nodes quickly destabilizes the entire system because each centralized node is highly dependent on the others. This is in effect what happened in the 2008-09 Financial Meltdown: the Wall Street node failed and that quickly imperiled the entire economy and thus the entire political order, up to and including the Global Imperial Project.

    Historian Peter Turchin has proposed that the dynamics of profound political disunity (i.e. social, financial and political disintegration) can be quantified in a Political Stress Index, a concept he describes in his new book Ages of Discord.

    If we understand the profound political disunity fracturing the nation and its Imperial Project, we understand the Deep State must also fracture along the same fault lines. There is no other possible output of a system of highly concentrated nodes of power, wealth and control and the competing rentier rackets of these dependent, increasingly fragile centralized nodes.

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  • Global Warming Hysteria: Record Heat, Vanishing Sunspots, CO2, & Lawsuits

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    There’s record heat, but why? How do we measure it? What’s going on with sunspots? Blame the US? Answers below…

    Record Heat

    ​

    Yes, there’s “record heat” thanks to the nonsensical way we measure temperatures.

    Mann-Made Warming

    Watts Up With That provides a humorous, but accurate, summation in Friday Funny: Josh on Mann-Made Warming.

    In the last couple of weeks, record highs have been set around the U.S., particularly in the Los Angeles area, which I did a lengthy debunking of. Records were also set in Scotland, then denied by an errant Ice Cream truck, and also questioned in Africa. Josh is on the case to illustrate the one common denominator to all these high temperature records we’ve discussed here on WUWT.

    For people who don’t believe this, or think we are just “making stuff up”…Here’s the official weather station at the airport in Rome, Italy. I wonder if the Pope has seen this?

    ​

    WUWT provides more examples including some in the US including LA and Burbank. Here’s Burbank.

    ​

    Yes, the weather station is virtually surrounded by asphalt runways, taxiways, and aircraft parking ramps. The likelihood for the station to get in the middle of a 400F jetwash is almost a certainty, being so close to taxiways with turns. This is a ridiculous place to measure for high temperatures.

    Heat Islands

    NASA notes Satellites Pinpoint Drivers of Urban Heat Islands in the Northeast.

    Cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston are prominent centers of political power. Less known: Their size, background ecology, and development patterns also combine to make them unusually warm, according to NASA scientists who presented new research recently at an American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

    Summer land surface temperature of cities in the Northeast were an average of 7 °C to 9 °C (13°F to 16 °F) warmer than surrounding rural areas over a three year period, the new research shows. The complex phenomenon that drives up temperatures is called the urban heat island effect.

    Measurement Bias?

    You bet

    Reporting Bias?

    You bet

    Nonsensical Lawsuits

    Clearly, we are not accurately measuring the rise in temperatures but that does not stop nonsense lawsuits.

    Today a NY District Judge Tossed NYC’s Climate Change Lawsuit Against Five Oil Companies.

    NYC said BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips. Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell should compensate the city for the cost of mitigating the effects of global warming.

    Judge Keenan wrote “Climate change is a fact of life, as is not contested by Defendants. But the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”

    Last month, a federal judge dismissed climate change cases against oil companies brought by Oakland and San Francisco based on similar grounds.

    This case was so asinine that I wonder why it was filed in the first place. The judge should have made the city pay all of the defendants’ legal costs.

    That would stop the nonsense.

    Sound the CO2 Alarm

    Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That’s the sound of my CO2 bullshit detector.

    Mark Perry noted the USA alarmist nonsense.

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    Daniel LaCalle also rang the bell.

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    Last year the United States had the largest decline in CO2 emissions *in the entire world* for the 9th time this century.

    In Climate Agreement, Hypocrisy and Summits, LaCalle accurately writes “Decarbonization is unstoppable . Not thanks to a summit or due to politicians, quite the opposite. Thanks to competition, technology and research. Thanks to human ingenuity. Coal has been disappearing from the global energy mix for decades, despite – not to thanks to – governments. And the same is happening with oil.”

    Rising Oceans

    But wait, what about the sea rise from melting ice in the antarctic?

    I’m glad you asked.

    Please consider The “Alarmist Gone Wild” Perspective of the Increase in Antarctic Snowfall.

    A new study published in the journal Climate of the Past has some (small) good news as far as snowfall is concerned: it’s going up. Since the 19th century, snowfall across Antarctica has increased by about 10 percent. It isn’t nearly enough to offset sea level rise from ice melting, but the numbers are still impressive. As a press releasepoints out, the continent is packing on about two Dead Sea’s worth of new ice each year.

    Since it’s unclear as to whether or not Antarctica is currently losing or gaining ice, largely due to glacial isostatic adjustment uncertainties, two Dead Seas worth of additional ice (on top of the 19th century accumulation rate) is a lot of fracking ice… If two Dead Seas worth of ice per year were disappearing from Greenland, it would be catastrophic according to the alarmists. We know this because Greenland is currently losing an estimated 186-375 billion tons of ice per year and this is described as catastrophic, despite its insignificance to the overall mass and volume of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). In Greenland, our friends at Skeptical Sciencedescribe this as “ominous”…

    ​WUWT blasted the claim “Several millimeters a year of sea level rise coming from Antarctica’s melting ice each year”

    “On what planet?,” asked WUWT.

    “The best recent estimate is that Antarctica is somewhere between gaining enough ice to lower sea level by as much as 0.14 mm/yr and losing enough ice to raise sea level by 0.55 mm/yr. So… Several millimeters a year of sea level rise are *not* coming from Antarctica’s melting ice each year.”

    Sea Level Math

    ​

    At the current rate, the sea level will rise by 1.6 inches over the next 100 years if we stay on this path.

    Mercy! We need a plan.

    Al Gore’s $90 Trillion Plan

    In order to combat the devastating impact of a global sea rise, new global commission says World Needs a $90 Trillion Infrastructure Overhaul.

    I am quite certain that spending $90 trillion on nearly anything would actually do opposite of whatever the intention was.

    With that thought, let’s move on to sunspots.

    ​Sunspots Vanish at Alarming Rate

    Sunspots are vanishing at an alarming rate. Let’s investigate some possible implications.​

    Quiet Sun: No sunspots

    ​

    “Watts Up With That?” reports Quiet Sun: More than 3 months without a sunspot*.​

    The title is very wrong, it’s more like five days. But there have been about 100 days this year. Here are some details.

    2 July 2018 – “The Belgian department of solar physics research (SIDC) says we are about to touch 100; that is, a hundred days in which we do not see spots on our sun,” says Italian meteorologist Dr. Carlo Testa.

    During a time of few or no sunspots (a solar minimum) the Sun emits less energy than usual, says Dr. Testa. “According to some scholars, this situation could lead to climatic upheavals.”

    Suffice it to recall, says Testa, that between 1645 and 1715 the most significant solar minimum of history, the Little Ice Age, occurred, bringing years and years marked by very strict winters that lasted until June.

    Now several studies indicate that we’re headed into another Great Solar Minimum, says Testa. For some scholars, this is only a hypothesis, but we are seeing small signals that support this idea: namely, the most powerful strat-warming ever recorded in mid-February, the very very unstable Spring, and finally this summer that continues to limp along.

    “What if the worst is to come?” asks Testa.

    NASA: Sunspots Vanishing Faster than Expected

    Also consider NASA: Sunspots Vanishing Faster than Expected

    Sunspots are becoming scarce. Very scarce. So far in 2018 the sun has been blank almost 60% of the time, with whole weeks going by without sunspots. Today’s sun, shown here in an image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, is typical of the featureless solar disk.

    Beware, the Ice Age Cometh

    Damn. If the sunspot theory holds up, we will have wasted $90 trillion to stop global warming when we need global warming!

    Role of CO2

    I am willing to concede – and always have – that man is responsible for a percentage of global warming (assuming global warming is actually happening).

    Here is a better way of stating things: Man-made CO2, in isolation, all things being equal, would tend to raise temperatures. That statement should not be in dispute, by anyone.

    But assuming there is global warming, does it account for less than 1%, 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 40%, 50%, or more?

    And assuming it is happening, what percentages does one want to assign to natural cycles, sunspots or other solar activity like solar flares, volcanoes, changes in the earth’s core, changes in wind patterns, ocean current changes, changes in earth’s magnetic field, etc, etc, but also “man-made” global warming.

    I do not pretend to know all the factors. No one else does either. And I highly doubt every factor has been tracked (or even can be!)

    Correlation is not causation. Even if CO2 models correlate to change, are there more important factors (even natural cycles) that are coincidental to man-made CO2?

    Magnetic Fields

    Where’s the discussion on this?

    Earth’s Magnetic Field Flip Could Happen Sooner Than Expected

    Changes measured by the Swarm satellite show that our magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than originally predicted, especially over the Western Hemisphere

    Earth’s magnetic field acts like a giant invisible bubble that shields the planet from the dangerous cosmic radiation spewing from the sun in the form of solar winds. The field exists because Earth has a giant ball of iron at its core surrounded by an outer layer of molten metal. Changes in the core’s temperature and Earth’s rotation boil and swirl the liquid metal around in the outer core, creating magnetic field lines.

    Complex Systems

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Cloud Mystery

    That is a lengthy video, but a very important one. Henrik Svensmark’s documentary on climate change and cosmic rays is one of the best believable explanations of global warming that I have seen.

    Svensmark looks at background radiation coming from space, based on the earth’s position in the Milky Way galaxy. His model accurately predicted prior ice ages and warming cycles.

    I recommend watching the entire video. It is fascinating. One can also skip to the 30 minute mark or so for a shorter version.

    His believable thesis is background radiation, or lack thereof causes warming and cooling cycles.

    The video should give everyone pause to think about the simple models the alarmists project.

    Final Thoughts

    Climate changes – ice ages and warming – have occurred over millions of years whether man was even alive.

    It is beyond idiotic to map two variables, CO2 and temperature change (one of them extremely inaccurately), in an enormously complex system of thousands of variables evolving over hundreds of millions of years, to make a determination we need to spend $90 trillion to do something about it based on data from the last 100 years.

    But that is precisely what the alarmists have done.

    The sad thing about this discussion is that I am in favor of reducing pollution. Millions of people in China are suffering from both air and water pollution.

    Acid rain is real. It has killed forests on the East coast.

    It’s the hype on global warming and idiotic proposals to stop it that I cannot stand.

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