On a recent episode of “Intercepted,” Glenn Greenwald, James Risen, and Jeremy Scahill, three celebrity journalists employed by a billionaire to provide the masses with fearless, adversarial journalism, debated, for approximately fifty-seven minutes, whether Donald Trump might be guilty of treason. This debate was prompted by the negative response to Risen’s first investigative piece for The Intercept, “Is Donald Trump a Traitor?,” a lengthy rehashing of the official narrative the corporate ruling classes have been relentlessly disseminating for the last eighteen months. Dedicated readers of The Intercept had wondered aloud on social media how, exactly, this repetition of the evidence-free “Trump is a Putin Puppet” narrative qualified as fearlessly adversarial. Some had even gone so far as to suggest that Risen, a legend in the world of investigative and national security journalism,had been a bit reckless, ethically speaking, in throwing around words like “treason” and “traitor,” and in allowing his status as a journalistic legend to lend further credence to the most ridiculous official propaganda campaign since the “Saddam is stockpiling WMDs for al Qaeda to attack America with” hoax.
In any event, The Intercept, its brand identity under attack, sprang into action and arranged this debate. Scahill and Risen were live in New York, possibly at First Look’s Fifth Avenue studios, with Greenwald participating remotely from his home in the mountains above Rio de Janiero. Following a solemn introduction by Scahill, and after kowtowing to each other at considerable length, Greenwald and Risen get down to the work of defining the word “treason.” This takes twenty minutes. They then move on to ascertaining whether Greenwald believes, and will admit on camera, that “Russia intervened” in the 2016 elections. Mercilessly pressed on this point by Risen, he finally confesses that he probably believes that the Russians likely “did some things.” This takes up another twenty minutes. The rest of the episode is dedicated to establishing that Greenwald is not a Trump-loving pinko (despite his occasional appearances on FOX), and that Risen agrees that the general public (not to mention fearless, adversarial journalists) should not just accept whatever intelligence agencies tell them without supporting evidence. Scahill then wraps up the episode by joking about Greenwald getting paid in rubles and Risen getting paid by the CIA, and noting how “interesting” it is to be a fearless, adversarial journalist at a serious operation like The Intercept, where extremely affluent, award-winning colleagues are allowed to respectfully disagree about whether the President of the United States should be tried and executed for treason because some Russians bought some Facebook ads and said mean things about Hillary Clinton.
I realize you’ll probably want to break off now and go watch this thrilling debate yourself, but bear with me for just another few minutes, because this essay isn’t really about the debate, or The Intercept, or even First Look Media. Believe it or not, I’m a fan of Glenn Greenwald, who is one of the very few celebrity journalists who has had the guts to consistently challenge the ridiculous “Russiagate” narrative from the start. And just because The Intercept is owned by a neoliberal oligarch who backed a fascist coup in the Ukraine, micro-financed a few Indians to death, and employs a personal security detail of ex-Secret Service agents and State Department types who will fly him to safety in his private jet in the event of imminent zombie apocalpyse, that doesn’t mean The Intercept staff doesn’t publish important investigative journalism.
No, what struck me as I was suffering through this debate was how utterly divorced from reality it was, whatever “reality” might mean anymore. Watching Greenwald, Risen, and Scahill sitting there, like rational people, “debating” whether Donald Trump might be part of some convoluted Russian conspiracy to destroy America and Western democracy, I felt like I was finally having one of those apocryphal LSD flashbacks. It was as if I was watching these respected journalists debating whether the face of Jesus may have actually appeared on a breakfast taco at a daycare center in Beeville, Texas.
Now, I mean no offense to The Intercept, or Jesus, or even breakfast tacos. I’m simply trying to point out how, after eighteen months of relentless repetition, we have all been barraged with so much ridiculous “Russiagate” and “Collusion” propaganda that it is almost impossible to step back from it enough to recognize how ridiculous it is. Fundamentally. The basic premise of the narrative. Imagine for a moment, if you can, that you had never heard about “Russiagate,” and listen to the story concept as if you were hearing it for the very first time. Ready? OK, here it comes … “Donald Trump conspired with Putin to brainwash Americans with Internet ads into electing him President of the United States so he could help the Russians take over the world!” How is this story concept any more credible than the one where a radical Jewish prophet who’s been dead for over two thousand years, but who rules the universe with his omnipotent father, appeared on a taco in Beeville, Texas?
Well … OK, I’ll tell you how it’s more credible. It’s credible because “authoritative sources” say it is credible, over and over, and treat it as a “serious” story, in spite of how blatantly ridiculous it is. It’s not just the corporate media that does this. It’s also fearless, adversarial, “authoritative” organizations like The Intercept. I wish there were a more sophisticated theory I could set forth to explain this phenomenon, but, sadly, it really is that simple.
In any authoritarian society, social group, culture, or … cult, those with the power can make up pretty much any official narrative they want and get the members of the group to believe it, or at least conform their behavior to it. The social hierarchy does all the work. Cults provide the clearest example. The leaders come up with some ludicrous narrative (e.g., Helter Skelter, The House of David, Body Thetans from Outer Space, Transubstantiation, et cetera) which is reified by the “inner circle,” who conform their behavior and speech to this narrative, and then pressure the outer members to do likewise. Gradually, everyone gets the message: if you don’t want to be excommunicated, you had better believe, or pretend to believe, the official narrative of the cult. It isn’t a question of deception, belief, gullibility, or even intelligence. It is a question of power, social pressure, and fear of ostracization and exile. Anyone invested in any type of social group that functions along authoritarian lines is susceptible to this type of pressure, regardless of how savvy or intelligent they are.
Which brings me back to The Intercept and this debate about whether Trump is a traitor. If you have an hour to kill, try this experiment. Watch the debate, ignore what they’re saying, and pay attention to how they say it and the effect that is generated by how they say it. (You can also do this with any mainstream media political debate-type show, but assuming you’re as predisposed as I am to identify with The Intercept’s brand, it will be more instructive if you use this debate). What you’ll be watching is a simulation of “seriousness,” “authoritativeness,” and “credibility,” and a demonstration of how “respectable” journalists discuss a “legitimate, newsworthy” story (as opposed to, you know, a conspiracy theory).
In other words, you will be watching a performance … a performance intended to convince its audience that (a) the nonsense being “debated” is a “serious” story worthy of debate by serious, grown-up, authoritative journalists, (b) that there exists such a creature as a “serious, grown-up authoritative journalist,” and (c) that these serious, grown-up journalists, and the “authoritative sources” they rub elbows with, inhabit an exclusive “authoritative” realm populated by “serious people” deserving of our trust and deference.
As it just so happens, in this authoritative realm, where serious people (a/k/a “grown-ups”) are dealing with “real,” “adult” type matters that are none of our business, and which we wouldn’t understand, everyone is extremely well-paid. That’s one way you can tell they are serious. That, and various other hallmarks of “seriousness” and “respectability,” like their overuse of a certain type of adjective (i.e., the type I’ve been having fun with in this essay), important-sounding but meaningless adjectives like “major,” “serious,” “authoritative,” “well-respected,” “legitimate,” and so on. “Serious” people use these adjectives to refer to other “serious” people, or the views or statements of other “serious” people. The more ridiculous the propaganda they are pressuring you to take seriously is, the more they tend to overuse these words. Most of them do not do this consciously. They do it instinctively. They do it out of fear of being excommunicated from the Cult of Authority.
Which might explain why The Intercept has brought a legend like Risen on board to report the ridiculous Russiagate story from the viewpoint of serious, authoritative people, i.e., to balance out Greenwald’s “collusion rejectionism.” After all, at this point, the only people who continue to doubt that Donald Trump is somehow in league with Vladimir Putin and his plot to dominate the entire world by brainwashing folks with Facebook ads are Russian bots, Nazis, traitors, and other such non-authoritative persons. Given all the money they’re paying their journalists, First Look Media can hardly afford to allow them to be confused with that lot. Before too long, they would find themselves deranked, and would be reduced to writing for nothing. And who could possibly take them seriously then?
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | James Risen, Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept, United States |
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© Sputnik/ Michael Klimentyev
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia would use its nuclear weapon only as a response measure.
“As far as this issue is concerned, I should note that it’s extremely important and sensitive. I want to tell you so that the international community knew this. Our plan on the nuclear weapon is to use them as a response measure,” Putin said.
“The decision on the use of the nuclear weapon can be taken only if our air defense systems record not only the launch of missiles but their trajectory and the time they hit Russia’s territory,” Putin added.
“Yes, this will be a global catastrophe for the world, but as a Russian citizen, as the Russian president, I want to ask a question: who needs the world without Russia?” Putin said.
Speaking further, the Russian president said that Russia, unlike the US, has never used nuclear weapons against other countries.
“As far as the nuclear push-button is concerned, the issue is not quite correct. Foremost, we haven’t begun this ourselves. The first nuclear missile was built by the US. Secondly, we have never used a nuclear weapon, the US used it against Japan,” Putin noted.
The issue has also been commented on by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who said that the US was paving the way for future nuclear war.
“It is not clear why Berlin and other capitals have not yet been alarmed by Washington’s disproportionate approach to the use of nuclear weapons, which makes it possible to use them in case of extraordinary circumstances, as is written there, not limited to military scenarios. Such an understanding of its role as the guarantor of global security is fraught with delivering a nuclear strike on all whom the United States deems to be an aggressor,” Zakharova said.
“By reserving the right to a preventive nuclear strike, including with by means of low-power nuclear warheads, the United States creates dangerous prerequisites for the emergence of a missile and nuclear war even during a low-intensity conflict,” she told reporters.
Last week, Putin made his annual address to the country’s bicameral parliament, the Federal Assembly, which comprises the Federation Council and State Duma. The Russian leader announced his country’s development of new types of armaments, including intercontinental underwater drones, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, and a prospective hypersonic missile, and showed footage featuring tests of these weapons.
The Russian president stressed that Russia’s efforts toward enhancing its defense capabilities were being carried out within the framework of existing international accords. According to Putin, Russia is creating advanced weapon systems in response to the deployment of US missile defense systems, and these arms present no threat to other states.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Russia, United States |
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With presidential elections announced in Venezuela, the US State Department moved quickly to declare that the contest was illegitimate and that its results would not be recognised. But less than a year ago the tune was quite different, as a cursory look through State Dept. briefings and press releases will show. We also examine how political developments from the past year have led to the current scenario, and how US demands for “free and fair” elections are not only arrogant and hypocritical but also misleading.
We begin by taking a look at what the US State Department was constantly saying less than a year ago. We could equally document the statements of the OAS and its secretary Luis Almagro, the Venezuelan opposition, US-allied regional governments, or the mainstream media. But it is easier to just go to the source. Sadly, when it comes to Venezuela, none of the mainstream actors and media will deviate from the State Department.
As violent opposition protests raged on in the Spring of 2017, there were repeated calls for immediate elections:
“President Maduro […] should hold elections as soon as possible.” (March 29)
“We call for the government of Venezuela to […] hold elections as soon as possible” (March 30)
“We […] echo the Venezuelan people’s calls for prompt elections” (April 10)
“We call again upon the Government of Venezuela to […] hold prompt elections” (April 18)
“It’s the Venezuelan people who should decide Venezuela’s future, which is why we once again call on the Venezuelan authorities to promptly hold free, fair, and transparent elections.” (May 2)
“…what people are asking for today, which is for national presidential elections to restore legitimacy to whomever might rule Venezuela moving forward.” (May 30)
“The United States has joined with a growing number of courageous democracies in our region to urge the Venezuelan Government to hold free elections” (June 20) (1)
US officials were adamant that elections were the only legitimate way forward.
“How is legitimacy defined in a democracy? Through elections.” (May 30)
“At the end of the day, it’s all about consensus. It’s about finding a way forward for Venezuelans to depolarize their situation, and the best way to do that is through elections.” (May 30)
“Venezuela needs consensus. It needs a genuine consensus or at least a legitimate path forward. That’s what elections provide.” (June 19)
So what happened since then to make the US no longer believe that elections should be held tomorrow? Maduro made a bold gambit of calling elections for a Constituent Assembly to solve the country’s problems. The Venezuelan opposition decided not to participate and vowed to stop those elections from taking place. They miserably failed, and on July 30 over 8 million people voted in what was a remarkable show of strength by chavismo.
From that point both the opposition and the US were trapped, unable to move on from their blunder. And soon cracks started to open. After months of violent protests claiming that the “dictatorship” was about to be overthrown, the opposition then turned to its supporters and asked them to go and vote in regional elections. The result was a disaster, with chavismo winning 18 out of 23 states. The opposition could not muster more than the usual vacuous claims of fraud, and then (mostly) boycotted the December municipal elections, which resulted in a chavista sweep of over 90% of the municipalities.
With the political momentum on its side, the government decided to schedule presidential elections for April 22. According to Jorge Rodríguez, head of the government’s delegation in the Dominican Republic dialogue, this date was agreed with the opposition MUD representatives. But with opposition figures more discredited than ever the US decided to pre-emptively unrecognise the vote, simply because an opposition victory is far from guaranteed.
In the end the main opposition parties followed suit in boycotting the election, but former Lara governor Henri Falcón broke ranks and registered as a candidate. The MUD promptly expelled him, and the US allegedly threatened him with sanctions to stop him from running. Ironically, as a former chavista, Falcón might be the ideal “moderate” opposition candidate to attract the votes of disaffected chavistas. But the imperial masters are past hedging their bets, they are all-in for regime change.
After talks with Falcón and the forces backing him, the vote was postponed to May 20. The MUD doubled down on their position that “there are no opposition candidates” in this election, and up to now there has been no reaction from the State Dept.. At the same time it is hard to read this as anything but a move to further sideline the MUD after they backed out of the dialogue to stick to the hardline coming from Washington.
“Free and fair” elections
We should also take a moment to refute the US assertions about elections not being “free and fair” and the presence of international observers. The “free and fair” demand means to discredit all previous electoral processes, whose results did not please the US. Nevertheless, as many people outside the mainstream media have explained, the Venezuelan voting system is as hard to fool as it gets. In all the elections where the opposition decided to take part they got to place their observers in every voting centre. Tens of thousands of audits took place to match the electronic and paper tallies, witnessed and approved by these opposition observers, and there has not been a single allegation of tampering with the vote count (2).
We could argue that the government makes use of state resources in its political campaigns. While this would hardly be exclusive to Venezuela, we should contend that the opposition has also made use of government resources, they just happened to come from the US government through its array of NED and USAID “democracy promoting”, “civil society building” programs, and that is just the overt part of it. Complaints about media coverage are also absurd when private media has the largest share of viewership and circulation and is overwhelmingly against the government, to say nothing about international media.
The demand for international monitoring is, at best, very dishonest from the State Department. First of all, despite the opposition walking away at the 11th hour, Maduro vowed to implement what had been agreed in the Dominican Republic dialogue, which included an open invitation for international observers to come to Venezuela for the upcoming election.
But that is not to say that previous elections did not have international observers. Organisations such as the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) have been present and endorsed the procedures, as well as other observers from multiple countries, Latin American and otherwise. The problem is that they do not dance to the tune of the US State Department.
It is absurd to claim that the presence of the OAS is a boost for fairness and transparency. We do not even have to look very far, just take the recent elections in Honduras. Massive, documented fraud allowed Juan Orlando Hernández to revert what was an irreversible trend in favour of his opponent. Having the US empire on your side will allow you to overrule statistics. This was so blatant that even the OAS and EU missions had to raise questions. But in the end Hernández was declared the winner, the State Dept. gave its approval and all these champions of democracy fell in line.
An even more shameful event took place in the Haiti presidential election of 2011. After the first round, the US (through the OAS), simply ordered the Haitian authorities to advance Michel Martelly to the second round, despite him not being one of the two most voted in the first round. They threatened to cut off all aid if this did not happen. So when these officials talk about the OAS as some guarantor of decency, not even they believe it themselves.
Democracy and elections
A small digression: we do not mean to equate democracy with elections like US officials constantly do in the above statements. The Venezuelan leaders have on occasion also fallen for this reductionism. Whether they believe it or not, it is the most obvious way to expose the western hypocrisy on the matter.
This reduction of democracy to voting has been one of the biggest triumphs of capitalist hegemony. People are effectively convinced that their entire political participation should be the single act of marking a cross on a ballot every 4 or 5 years. Politics is thus detached from the rest of society and “commodified” like everything else in capitalism, with campaigns becoming mere advertising shows and the wealthiest literally buying their influence.
The Bolivarian Revolution is revolutionary precisely because it challenged the inevitability of representative politics and opened new spaces for protagonist, participatory democratic experiments. From the communes to workers councils, even to the constituent processes, and despite the natural contradictions that have emerged, we have seen an expansion of democracy in its literal sense – popular power.
Hands Off Venezuela!
In the end it seems like the ideal scenario for the US would be something like the Yemeni model: a single, US-backed candidate on the ballot. With elections coming up this year in key US allied countries (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico), all of which have the potential to bring to power someone less friendly to US interests, the US cannot afford a defeat in Venezuela.
These arrogant, imperial demands that the Venezuelan elections should satisfy are just meant to provide cover for the growing threats and aggression against Venezuela, and the uncritical echo chamber that the media has become on this matter is a crucial asset. With suggestions of an upcoming oil embargo against Venezuela, at this point the goal is clearly to impose as much suffering as possible on the Venezuelans in order to topple the government.
For all its lofty rhetoric, the State Department is not looking out for the well-being of the Venezuelan people. Neither are its Venezuelan and regional puppets, nor the mainstream media, whose positions are simply State Dept. communiques with make-up. Standing up to these shameless imperialist attacks is essential if we wish to stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan poor and working-class, allowing them to freely choose their path, both in the upcoming elections and beyond.
Notes
(1) “Courageous” is not the first adjective that comes to mind regarding lapdogs
(2) A possible exception is the gubernatorial race in the state of Bolívar last October, where some electoral acts were circulated on social media showing a mismatch with regard to the electronic totals in the CNE website. But, perhaps because it would undermine the other constant claims of fraud, the opposition did not press the case.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Latin America, United States, Venezuela |
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As you may have noticed from the title, I’m cutting to the chase on this one. Context is everything these days when attempting to understand major geopolitical events.
Sergei Skripal is a former Russian army colonel who worked for Soviet military intelligence during the Cold War. In the late 1990s he was recruited by MI6 as a double agent. In December 2004, Skripal was arrested and charged with “high treason in the form of espionage”, convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison. In July 2010, he was released as part of a spy exchange for ten Russian agents who had been arrested in the United States as part of the ‘Illegals Program’. Skripal was then settled in the UK by MI6 in the town of Salisbury. Yesterday he was found on a public bench with his 33 year old daughter, Yulia. Both were incoherent and/or incapacitated. When medical personnel arrived, some of them also allegedly became ill.
Within a few hours of the discovery of the pair, the British media and politicians had decided that they had been poisoned at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself, with some as yet “unknown substance”. British newspapers said it, so it must be true. British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, threatened fresh sanctions against Russia if it is proven to have poisoned a Russian double agent and branded the country “a malign and disruptive force”. No evidence was cited to back up any of these allegations, because everyone ‘knows’ that Putin is a ruthless dictator who just loves to bump off people that he doesn’t like. British newspapers and politicians said it, so it must be true.
For the unfortunate cretins who still refuse to swallow the anti-Russia narrative, the British government and media duly require you to remember the case of Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian intelligence agent who became a British intelligence asset. Litvinenko was, ‘everyone knows’ murdered in 2006 by polonium that was given to him by two Russian spies on the ‘direct orders of Putin’. The problem is that there was, and is today, no hard evidence for this claim. But who needs evidence when you have a propaganda bullhorn to addle the public brain. Mush-for-brains are highly averse to evidence anyway. It’s much better to quote the words of people like Alexander Goldfarb, long term anti-Putin activist, author of Litvinenko’s death bed testimony accusing Putin, and promoter of the activities of ‘Pussy Riot’. On the Skripal situation, Goldfarb, who was (coincidentally) a close friend of Skripal, said:
“Any reasonable person would think immediately that Russia had the opportunity, motive and a prior history of this kind of crime so it is reasonable to think it was involved in this attack. This is the Kremlin’s modus operandi. There are plenty of precedents. ‘What’s interesting now is that this happens just before Russia’s presidential election.”
The Skripal event, and the way it is being reported, cannot be understood except in the context of the vicious and persistent defamation and slander campaign that Western governments and media have waged against Russia over the past several years. To put it another way, the Skripal event is simply one more chapter in that defamation campaign. The reasons for the West’s anti-Russia hysteria have everything to do with the fact that, over the past 10-15 years, Russia has re-emerged as a powerful independent player on the world stage, capable of pushing back long-standing Anglo-American designs on global control. Exceptional nations with a serious megalomaniacal streak (and their lackeys) don’t like being pushed back, not even an inch. When they don’t get their way, and lack the cojones to engage in a fair fight, they resort to dirty tricks and smear campaigns, at which they are very adept.
But really, is there NO evidence? Well, the UK Independent informed its readers today that, while there is still no word on any toxicology reports, ‘some experts’ suggest that Skirpal and his daughter may have been poisoned by ‘nerve agents’ because a witness described Mr Skripal and his daughter vomiting, twitching and unable to move. The Indy hacks then informed us that among the most powerful nerve agents is VX, “a toxin developed at the British Ministry of Defence Porton Down facility, which was used to assassinate Kim Jong-nam – the brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February 2017″.
Without a hint of irony, Salisbury MP John Glen told the BBC today: “Fortunately just down the road in my constituency at Porton Down defence, science and technology labs exist and they will have taken the substance and will be trying to evaluate what they can, no doubt.” Indeed, Porton Down is about 5 miles from the bench where Skripal and his daughter were found. Very fortunate indeed, and more than a little coincidental.
The name of the research facility at Porton Down has undergone many changes over the years, although the words “chemical” and “defence” have been consistently used, giving the impression that…well….that it is used only for research into “defence” against “chemical” weapons. In 1991, however, the UK “Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research” moved to the Porton Down facility and its name was changed to the “Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment”, reflecting the addition of biological warfare agent research to the list of “services” that Porton Down offered. In 2004, with PC culture in full bloom in Western nations, the name was sanitized somewhat to ‘Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’.
Some of the known highlights of the Porton Down facility include:
When the foot-and-mouth virus ravaged British cattle in 2002, it was later revealed that the outbreak was likely caused when a phial of the virus ‘went missing’ from the facility.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, 20,000 ‘volunteers’ were unwittingly involved in a chemical and biological weapons trials at Porton Down that left them with long-term ill health.
Ronald Maddison
20-year-old Ronald Maddison died 45 minutes after 200mg of the deadly nerve agent sarin was dripped onto a patch of uniform taped to his arm at Porton Down. He was told he was testing a flu vaccine.
Thousands of British orphans who were regarded as “feeble-minded” were allegedly used for trialing drugs for use in the Cold War
While no official source has confirmed it (for obvious reasons) it’s highly likely that Skirpal was settled by MI5 in Salisbury because his new job was five miles away at Porton Down. Perhaps the most dangerous part of working for Western intelligence agencies in the 21st century, particularly if you are a Russian double agent, is that your life is implicitly forfeit in service to the West’s new great game of ‘stop Russia at all costs’. Litvinenko and now (most likely) Skirpal and his daughter found that out a little too late.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | MI5, Sergei Skripal, UK |
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There is $120 million in funding for “countering Russian propaganda” stashed somewhere in the State Department. There are “Russia experts” willing to blame Russia for everything. The two are meant to be together.
The $120 million, of which Rex Tillerson’s diplomatic corps has failed to spend a cent, is funding for the Global Engagement Center – a task force originally meant to counter jihadist propaganda online. In the late days of the Obama administration, it was tasked with countering “Russian and Chinese propaganda” aimed against America’s democratic institutions. The State Department is yet to spend any of that money.
The State Department was granted $120 million to fight Russian meddling. It has spent $0.https://t.co/JT1Jmnd7po
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 6, 2018
For people failing to read past the New York Times headline, the failure to spend these funds would appear to be a clear indicator that Tillerson and the rest if the Trump administration have no interest in doing anything against Russia. There are memes about it, and people crying “Treason!” on Twitter.
Those who do read the story will discover the small print. For instance, the Pentagon and the State Department have been wrangling for the first annual installment of $60 million for months, and have agreed on $40 million, which is not expected until April. The US military previously lead online counterpropaganda – a coordinated effort by several departments – because they also fought jihadists with more tangible means like drones. The inclusion of Russia and China put the diplomats in charge.
Also, this money is just a tiny portion of what the US government spends on its own soft power, including promoting narratives that counter those favored by Moscow. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, the parent body for outlets like Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, requested over $685 million of taxpayers’ money for FY2018. The Trump administration also wants to allocate $527 million this year for the State Department’s assistance to Europe, which is meant to strengthen “European resilience to Russian meddling,” according to the NYT. This is significantly lower than the $1.3 billion last year, set aside under the Obama administration, but can hardly be considered petty cash.
Still, there is that pile of anti-Russian money that the State Department has not spent, and there are always people who would offer their services in spending Uncle Sam’s millions. One former diplomat has already come up with a public offer.
Is the @StateDept wants to contract out its assignment to spend $120 million to combat Russian propaganda, Im sure I could put together a great team ! (& I speak Russian!)
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 7, 2018
“Is [sic] the @StateDept wants to contract out its assignment to spend $120 million to combat Russian propaganda, I’m sure I could put together a great team! (& I speak Russian!)” tweeted Michael McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia under the Obama administration.
McFaul’s tenure in Moscow was somewhat awkward. He infamously invited Russian opposition leaders to the embassy in one of his first moves, more or less ensuring their reputation as American stooges in the eyes of many Russians. After returning to academia, he wrote a book on Russia, available from Amazon.com on May 8.
An avid social network poster, he recently pledged to never share anything in Russian – after he showed his audience a video clip of mass protests with a caption in Russian inciting people to kill security officials. Even worse, the video was shot in Bahrain and erroneously claimed by the original poster to be from the latest mass protest in Iran.
Fair point Dmitry ! Ill change that on my CV. I haven’t used Russian for over four years now, since I left in 2/14. Getting a little rusty. https://t.co/FKutqSWquU
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 7, 2018
Good question. I just did a live tv interview in Russian. But Im sure listeners would poke holes in all of my grammatical mistakes (forgetting that hardly any Americans show respect for Russian language/history/culture & dare do interviews in Russian.) https://t.co/jTlalo2E9I
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 7, 2018
Of course, there are many other people in the West who wrote books about Russia and are willing to offer their expert opinions on why it poses such a danger to the US, and how it can be stopped. So there will be quite a competition for this $120 million stash, if State Department chooses to spend it.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | CIA, New York Times, United States |
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The Principal Assistant Secretary of State in the US state department’s Bureau of South & Central Asian Affairs, Alice Wells gave an extraordinary briefing in Washington on March 5 on the Trump administration’s outlook on the Afghan peace talks and reconciliation. The fact that the briefing was on record is itself of significance, underscoring the cautious optimism that the 4-way contacts and below-the-radar discussions between Washington, Islamabad, Kabul and the Afghan Taliban have gained traction.
Wells has touched on all aspects of the situation and they are almost entirely in consonance with my own assessments contained in the opinion piece, which appeared in The Tribune newspaper on March 5. (Joint gains from Afghan Peace, The Tribune, March 5, 2018 )
The most significant thing will be that Wells has forcefully, unequivocally – even euphorically – backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s peace offer on February 27 to the Taliban, and has pledged that Washington intends to promote the process, no matter what it takes. Equally, Washington estimates that the Taliban has not yet “officially responded”, various media reports attributed to Taliban spokesmen notwithstanding. Wells pointedly urged the Taliban to accept the peace offer.
The Trump administration expects Pakistan too to put its weight behind the Taliban leadership to bring them to the negotiating table. The Pakistani Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua arrived in Washington on March 5 for talks. Pakistan is confident of taking the process forward. Wells said,
- We’re certainly not walking away from Pakistan. There will be very intensive dialogue through both our military and our civilian channels to discuss how we can work together. I mean, Pakistan has an important role to play in helping to stabilize Afghanistan.
Second, the Afghan peace process is not taking place in isolation but forms part of the broad framework of Pakistan-US strategic relationship.
From the Indian perspective, the salience of Well’s briefing lies in the US’ acknowledgement of Pakistan’s centrality in the Afghan peace process and, notably, Pakistan’s “legitimate concerns”, which Washington intends to address. This is how Wells framed the US policy:
- Pakistan has a very important role to play in a peace process. We believe that Pakistan can certainly help to facilitate talks and to take actions that will put pressure on and encourage the Taliban to move forward towards a politically negotiated settlement. And our engagement with Pakistan is on how we can work together, on how we can address Pakistan’s legitimate concerns and Afghanistan’s stability through a negotiated process as well. Obviously, as Pakistani officials have underscored, they see a variety of issues, whether it’s border management or refugees or terrorism that emanates from ungoverned space in Afghanistan, as important issues, and we would agree that all of these need to be resolved during the course of a reconciliation process.
Two vectors that are going to shape the agenda of the forthcoming peace talks are: a) Washington accepts that Taliban has “legitimate grievances… (that) will have to be addressed at the negotiating table”, and, b) the US does not “preordain” any factions or elements within the Afghan Taliban movement to be “irreconcilable.” The latter means, plainly put, that it is entirely up to the Haqqani network to bid farewell to arms and join the peace talks and reconciliation. Wells chose her words carefully:
- I think there are always going to be elements and factions that do not participate – the irreconcilable, so to speak. I think a political process defines who is reconcilable, who is prepared to come to the negotiating table, who is prepared to adhere to an agreement that is negotiated through a political process. And so rather than preordain who is irreconcilable, let the process determine that. But certainly, we would anticipate that there will continue to be elements, not just Taliban elements, that will pose a terrorism threat and will need to be taken care of by the Government of Afghanistan with the support of its partners.
Of course, it is unthinkable that the Haqqanis will defy the Pakistani diktat and continue to pose a terrorism threat. It is hugely significant that at one point, Wells went out of the way to openly acknowledge without caveats as to what is it that distinguishes the Taliban from the ISIS – simply put, Taliban is a legitimate Afghan entity:
- I think all of us recognize that while the Taliban may be – represent an insurgency, they stand for and are Afghan nationalists of one type. ISIS is a nihilistic force that is bent on the very destruction of Afghanistan. And so there is a seriousness, an extreme seriousness of effort, in defeating ISIS.
Then, there is the tantalizing question of the fate of the US military bases in Afghanistan. Here, Wells parried, pleading evasively that it is entirely up to the future government in Kabul to decide whether continued US military presence is needed or not. But then, en passé, she added meaningfully, “No one is precluding any formula…” To my mind, there is going to be some sort of trade off.
Indeed, it may suit Pakistan too that there is continued US military presence in Afghanistan. For one thing, there is the searing experience of the Mujahideen takeover in Kabul in 1992 and the ensuing anarchy. Fundamentally, Pakistan has always sought that Taliban enjoyed US recognition, and, in the given situation, it is in Pakistan’s interests too that the US remains a stakeholder in the post-settlement era in Afghanistan. For, that would inevitably translate as US/NATO dependence on Pakistani cooperation, resuscitation of Pakistan’s role as a “non-NATO ally”, US interest in strengthening the strategic partnership with Pakistan, a US mediatory role in India-Pakistan issues, and, most importantly, the US as a guarantor that what has been shored up by way of an Afghan settlement doesn’t get undermined by other regional states that might harbor revisionist tendencies. The bottom line is that the Pakistani elite cannot think of a future for their country without an enduring strategic partnership with the US.
Unsurprisingly, Wells singled out Russia in almost adversarial terms. What emerges is that the US approach is to try to forge a regional consensus at the forthcoming Tashkent conference this month, which would pile pressure on Russia to fall in line. Evidently, Washington proposes to bypass Moscow and deal directly with the Central Asian capitals to create a regional consensus and support system for the peace process leading to a settlement.
Finally, Washington is still keeping its fingers crossed that Pakistan rises to its expectations, which is not surprising, given the backlog of distrust. Wells said,
- We’ve not seen decisive and sustained changes yet in Pakistan’s behavior, but certainly we are continuing to engage with Pakistan over areas where we think they can play a helpful role in changing the calculus of the Taliban.
Once bitten, twice shy? At any rate, the Trump administration has no alternative but to take Pakistan at its word. Despite the bravado about the US military strategy making headway, Pentagon would know that the Taliban cannot be defeated through air strikes and this is a hopeless stalemate what needs to be addressed on the political and diplomatic track. Wells said,
- We’re certainly not walking away from Pakistan. There will be very intensive dialogue through both our military and our civilian channels to discuss how we can work together. I mean, Pakistan has an important role to play in helping to stabilize Afghanistan.
All in all, Wells’ briefing augurs the opening of a new page in the chronicle of the Afghan war. It signifies that that the war is most likely drawing to a close and the ending is going to be like how all insurgencies in history rooted in native soil finally ended – via reconciliation with the insurgents. The full transcript of Wells’ briefing is here.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, India, ISIS, Pakistan, Russia, Taliban |
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Who is interfering with American democracy?
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is back in Washington for its annual summit. Or at least it used to be called a summit but now it is referred to as a policy conference, which is perhaps a bit of very welcome transparency as if there is one thing that AIPAC is good at it is using its $100 million budget and 300 employees to harass lawmakers on Capitol Hill and generate policy for the United States to adhere to. Eighteen thousand supporters have gathered at the city’s Convention Center to hear speeches by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Vice President Mike Pence, plus Senators Marco Rubio, Robert Menendez, Tom Cotton and Ben Cardin. My personal favorite is Maryland Congressman and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer who has visited Israel so many times he might as well move there and who can be relied on to deliver a loud sucking noise as he enthuses over the many wonders of the Jewish state. And for a little foreign flair there is the disheveled French “philosopher” Bernard-Henri Levy, who has described the brutal Israeli Army of occupation as the “most moral in the world.”
If you want to get some idea of the money and political power represented at AIPAC this year I would recommend going through the speakers’ list, a dazzling display of precisely why the United States is in bondage to Israel and its interests. The heavyweight speakers and other attendees will be joined by hundreds more Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, and senior government officials as well as a heavy dose of “experts” from the usual Jewish-dominated pro-Israel think tanks that have sprouted up like mushrooms along K Street, including luminaries like John Bolton, Victoria Nuland, Bill Kristol, Elliot Abrams and Eric Cantor. Those participants coming from the government will, of course, be ignoring their oaths of office in which they swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against “all enemies domestic and foreign,” but it doesn’t matter as everyone performs proskynesis for Israel.
The slogan of this year’s gather is “Choose to Lead,” an interesting objective for an organization that has led successive presidents since Bill Clinton by their respective noses. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing indictment back home, will also be in town and will meet with President Donald Trump. He might just decide to stay awhile as one thing that Israel is particularly good at is trying, convicting and imprisoning its corrupt leaders.
There has been some informed speculation that Trump will unveil during their meeting a “two state solution” peace plan for Israel-Palestine, but as it will possibly require Israel to withdraw from much of the large chunks of the West Bank that it has “settled,” it will not be received favorably by Netanyahu. Israel is certainly vulnerable to possible pressure coming from the White House to impose a solution, but as Trump has proven unable or unwilling to punish an out-of-control Netanyahu in any way up until this point, it has to be considered unlikely that he will change course this time around.
AIPAC must be particularly pleased since Israel has had a sweet ride with the Trump Administration in place in Washington. The greatest gift to Netanyahu has been the Administration’s recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital together with a commitment to move the U.S. Embassy to that city. No other country currently has its embassy in an internationally disputed Jerusalem though Guatemala has followed Washington’s lead and has stated that it also intends to physically move its diplomatic facility.
The original State Department relocation plan was to phase the embassy move while a new building is being constructed, but the White House recently accelerated the process, reportedly under pressure from Jewish billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, and will open a temporary facility in May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding. Netanyahu has asked Trump to appear at the embassy opening ceremony and also to assist in the celebration of the founding.
Israel has also benefited from a Trump Middle East team that is all Jewish and committed to Israel. It is headed by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and includes former bankruptcy attorney Ambassador David Friedman, who has financially supported Israel’s illegal settlements, and Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization corporate lawyer, as Special Representative for International Negotiations. In addition, Kushner is reportedly personally advised by a group of Orthodox Jews that he knows from his Synagogue and through his business interests.
The outcome deriving from the all-Jewish team determining Middle Eastern policy combined with a benign White House is predictable, and it just as clearly does not include any benefits for the United States. Israel has been able to dramatically expand its settlements on stolen Palestinian land and is instigating several new wars in its region without any pushback coming from Washington. Quite the contrary as the United States has proven to be an enabler for new conflicts with Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Several Senators who have recently returned from Israel claim that an invasion of Lebanon is coming because of allegations that Hezbollah is constructing an Iranian-supplied factory to build sophisticated missiles, yet another phony narrative depicting Israel as the perpetual victim of its brutal and threatening neighbors when in reality the reverse is true. This animosity towards Iran and its allies is particularly dangerous as it could produce a new war that might spin dangerously out of control as third countries like Russia and China get involved to protect their own interests.
The reality is that it is a militarily dominant Israel that has been regularly bombing targets alleged to be Iranian or Hezbollah in Syria as well as Syrian military installations. It has threatened to bomb Lebanon back into the “stone age,” which leads one to ask what have those nations done to provoke the wrath of Zion? Close to nothing. An alleged Iranian drone reportedly launched from Syria wandered into the airspace over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights before being shot down. How many Israeli drones have flown over Lebanon and Syria? Hundreds if not thousands.
And when Israeli planes flew deep into Syria to bomb what was claimed to be the base that the drone flew from, one was shot down by a Syrian air defense missile. Israel then launched a major bombing campaign against Syrian military targets and was only dissuaded from doing far, far worse by Vladimir Putin, who warned Netanyahu against broadening the conflict. Note that it was Russia that made Bibi back down, not Washington. The United States was meanwhile busy in trying to justify its continued presence in Syria, also at the urging of Israel and AIPAC.
Every American president has to bow before Jewish power in the United State and you better believe that both AIPAC and the hundreds of other Jewish and Christian-Zionist organizations that exist at least in part to nurture and protect Israel know it. Even Barack Obama, who had an openly frosty relationship with Netanyahu knew the score and gave the Jewish state $38 billion. He opposed Israel’s expansion into the formerly Palestinian West Bank but never did one thing to stop it until the end of his final term in office when he had the U.S. abstain on a U.N. vote condemning the illegal settlements, a pointless gesture.
Demands that AIPAC, an echo chamber for Israeli interests, should be required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 have been ignored by various Attorneys General since the time of John F. Kennedy, who tried to get AIPAC’s predecessor organization the American Zionist Council to comply. He was killed soon after, though I am not necessarily trying to imply anything even though Jack Ruby does come to mind.
Here at home “The Lobby” has also been successful in 2017, with 23 states having now passed laws making it illegal to boycott Israel if one wishes to have dealings with the local or state government. Three months ago, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was approved by the House of Representatives with 402 affirmative votes and only two libertarian-leaning congressmen voting “no.” The Israel Anti-Boycott Act that is also currently making its way through a Senate committee would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, the Senate bill was drafted with the assistance of AIPAC.
And there’s lots more to come in 2018. Lindsey Graham and Chris Coons were two of the senators who have just returned from the taxpayer funded “fact finding” trip to Israel and warned about a new war breaking out. And beyond that, what other “fact” did they find? Apparently that Israel needs more money from the U.S. taxpayer. Here is what was reported:
“… they considered the provision of $38 billion over 10 years, ‘a floor.’ Graham [also] said during a meeting with reporters that he thought provisions in the agreement phasing out an arrangement in which Israel could spend U.S. funds on its own defense industry and the provision of just $500 million in missile defense funding were ‘short-sighted.’ Coons said tensions in the broader region supported the idea of more funding for Israel, citing the ongoing war in Syria and Iran’s recent use of a stealth drone.”
So, we can look forward to Congress voting another half billion or so for Israel and the money can be spent on building up Israel’s own defense industry, which competes with that of the U.S. Currently most of the largess has to be spent on U.S.-made weapons, but clearly that will be changed to benefit Israel. You can always count on Congress pretending to do the right thing by the American people and it is good to know that the folks at AIPAC, gathered in their thousands this week and including both Senators Graham and Coons, are smiling.
March 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, United States |
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By Jonathan Cook | The National | March 5, 2018
It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying.
A child horrifically injured by soldiers was arrested and terrified into signing a false confession that he was hurt in a bicycle accident. A man who, it was claimed, had died of tear-gas inhalation was actually shot at point-blank range, then savagely beaten by a mob of soldiers and left to die. And soldiers threw a tear gas canister at a Palestinian couple, baby in arms, as they fled for safety during a military invasion of their village.
In the early 2000s, at the dawn of the social media revolution, Israelis used to dismiss filmed evidence of brutality by their soldiers as fakery. It was what they called “Pallywood” – a conflation of Palestinian and Hollywood.
In truth, however, it was the Israeli military, not the Palestinians, that needed to manufacture a more convenient version of reality.
Last week, it emerged, Israeli officials had conceded to a military court that the army had beaten and locked up a group of Palestinian reporters as part of an explicit policy of stopping journalists from covering abuses by its soldiers.
Israel’s deceptions have a long history. Back in the 1970s, a young Juliano Meir-Khamis, later to become one of Israel’s most celebrated actors, was assigned the job of carrying a weapons bag on operations in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. When Palestinian women or children were killed, he placed a weapon next to the body.
In one incident, when soldiers playing around with a shoulder-launcher fired a missile at a donkey, and the 12-year-old girl riding it, Meir-Khamis was ordered to put explosives on their remains.
That occurred before the Palestinians’ first mass uprising against the occupation erupted in the late 1980s. Then, the defence minister Yitzhak Rabin – later given a Hollywood-style makeover himself as a peacemaker – urged troops to “break the bones” of Palestinians to stop their liberation struggle.
The desperate, and sometimes self-sabotaging, lengths Israel takes to try to salvage its image were underscored last week when 15-year-old Mohammed Tamimi was grabbed from his bed in a night raid.
Back in December he was shot in the face by soldiers during an invasion of his village of Nabi Saleh. Doctors saved his life, but he was left with a misshapen head and a section of skull missing.
Mohammed’s suffering made headlines because he was a bit-player in a larger drama. Shortly after he was shot, a video recorded his cousin, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, slapping a soldier nearby after he entered her home.
Ahed, who is in jail awaiting trial, was already a Palestinian resistance icon. Now she has become a symbol too of Israel’s victimisation of children.
So, Israel began work on recrafting the narrative: of Ahed as a terrorist and provocateur.
It emerged that a government minister, Michael Oren, had even set up a secret committee to try to prove that Ahed and her family were really paid actors, not Palestinians, there to “make Israel look bad”. The Pallywood delusion had gone into overdrive.
Last week events took a new turn as Mohammed and other relatives were seized, even though he is still gravely ill. Dragged off to an interrogation cell, he was denied access to a lawyer or parent.
Shortly afterwards, Israel produced a signed confession stating that Mohammed’s horrific injuries were not Israel’s responsibility but wounds inflicted in a bicycle crash.
Yoav Mordechai, the occupation’s top official, trumpeted proof of a Palestinian “culture of lies and incitement”. Mohammed’s injuries were “fake news”, the Israeli media dutifully reported.
Deprived of a justification for slapping an occupation soldier, Ahed can now be locked away by military judges. Except that witnesses, phone records and hospital documentation, including brain scans, all prove that Mohammed was shot.
This was simply another of Israellywood’s endless productions to automatically confer guilt on Palestinians. The hundreds of children on Israel’s incarceration production line each year have to sign confessions – or plea bargains – to win jail-sentence reductions from courts with near-100% conviction rates.
It is more Franz Kafka than Hollywood.
A second army narrative unravelled last week. CCTV showed Yasin Saradih, 35, being shot at point-blank range during an invasion of Jericho, then savagely beaten by soldiers as he lay wounded, and left to bleed to death.
It was an unexceptional incident. A report by Amnesty International last month noted that many of the dozens of Palestinians killed in 2017 appeared to be victims of extra-judicial executions.
Before footage of Saradih’s killing surfaced, the army issued a series of false statements, including that he died from tear-gas inhalation, received first-aid treatment and was armed with a knife. The video disproves all of that.
Over the past two years, dozens of Palestinians, including women and children, have been shot in similarly suspicious circumstances. Invariably the army concludes that they were killed while attacking soldiers with a knife – Israel even named this period of unrest a “knife intifada”.
Are soldiers today carrying a “knife bag”, just as Meir-Khamis once carried a weapons bag?
A half-century of occupation has not only corrupted generations of teenage Israeli soldiers who have been allowed to lord it over Palestinians. It has also needed an industry of lies and self-deceptions to make sure the consciences of Israelis are never clouded by a moment of doubt – that maybe their army is not so moral after all.
March 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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On 22 January, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen unveiled a new plan to deliver “unprecedented relief to the people of Yemen”.
The Yemen Comprehensive Humanitarian Operations (YCHO) is a new “aid” programme with the ostensible aim of “addressing immediate aid shortfalls while simultaneously building capacity for long-term improvement of humanitarian aid and commercial goods imports to Yemen”.
This will primarily be done through increasing the “capacities of Yemeni ports to receive humanitarian as well as commercial imports” – and all sealed with a whopping $1.5bn in aid contributions. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Starvation politics
The problem here is not only that the funding required to meet the needs created by the Saudi-led coalition is estimated by the UN to be twice that amount. The real problem is that the plan will not, in fact, increase the imports on which Yemen is utterly dependent, but reduce them still further.
This is because the much-vaunted “improvements in port capacity” will apply solely to “coalition-controlled ports”, excluding the ports outside their control – Hodeidah and Saleef – which, between them, handle about 80 percent of Yemen’s imports.
For these, absolutely critical, ports, the plan explicitly states that it wants a reduction in the flow of cargo they handle: by around 200 metric tons per month, compared to mid-2017 levels. Yes, you heard correctly: cargo levels in mid-2017 – when 130 children were dying each day from malnutrition and other preventable diseases largely caused by the limits on imports already in place – are now deemed in need of further, major, reductions.
This plan is nothing less than a systematisation of the starvation politics of which the Saudis were accused by the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen in relation to their closure of Hodeidah and Saleef in November.
Back then, noted the panel’s final report, all Yemen’s ports had been closed following a Houthi missile attack on Riyadh airport. But while coalition-controlled ports were quickly reopened, Hodeidah and Saleef remained closed for weeks.
“This had the effect,” said the panel, “of using the threat of starvation as an instrument of war.” Today, the “Comprehensive Operations” plan envisages making permanent the juxtaposition of wilful starvation of Houthi-controlled territory (in which the vast majority of Yemenis live) and “generous” aid deliveries into coalition-controlled territories.
Spin masters
These are the same “methods of barbarism” as were employed by the British in the Boer war – when Boer-controlled territories were subjected to scorched earth policies of torching farms and destroying livestock – and then revived for Britain’s colonial wars in Malaya, Kenya and, indeed, Yemen in the 1950s-60s. Small wonder Britain is so deeply involved today.
But such a strategy will surely be hard to sell in this day and age. Certainly, the Saudis seem to think so, which is presumably why they have employed a plethora of PR agencies to help them do so.
An exceptional investigation by the IRIN news agency reported that “the press release journalists received announcing the [YCHO] plan came neither from the coalition itself nor from Saudi aid officials”.
It came, along with an invitation to visit Yemen, straight from a British PR agency. The investigation also revealed that the PowerPoint presentation used to introduce the YCHO to high-level UN officials was authored by Nicholas Nahas, of Booz Allen Hamilton, a US management consultancy with long-established links to the US government (including involvement in the illegal SWIFT and PRISM mass surveillance programmes). The consultancy currently has, says IRIN, “35 job listings in Riyadh on its website, including ‘military planner'”.
This role requires the applicant to: “Provide military and planning advice and expertise to support the coordination of joint counter threat operations executed by coalition member nations and facilitate resourcing to enable operations.”
Another PR company involved in “selling” the YCHO, long on the Saudi payroll, is Washington DC-based Qorvis MSLGroup. According to IRIN’s report, the company “booked US revenue of more than $6m from the Saudi Arabian embassy [in the US] over a 12-month period up to September 2017”.
These masters of spin have certainly been busy: their work on the plan has been delivered to “the offices of major INGOs in the UK as well as to members of the UK parliament”, and YCHO accounts have been set up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Gmail.
The YCHO Twitter account has around 10,000 followers; but, says the IRIN investigation, “almost half of YCHO’s followers have less than 10 followers themselves, while some 1,000 followers were accounts created on the same day in 2016 – signs that a significant number of bots or fakes are inflating YCHO’s popularity”.
“All of this,” concludes IRIN, “has fed suspicions that rather than a genuine attempt to help the people of Yemen, the plan is really intended more to gloss over the Hodeidah issue and improve Saudi Arabia’s battered image, or at least a bit of both.”
You would think a strategy aimed at starving the world’s most starved population still further would be a hard sell. But, then, money not only talks, it silences. And $1.5bn is a lot of money.
The UN response
The UN’s own Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen, issued just two days before the YCHO, on 20 January, had noted that: “Al Hudaydah port, which accounts for 70-80 per cent of commercial imports in Yemen, remains a critical lifeline, despite operating at reduced capacity after being hit by an air strike in August 2015.”
The UN statement added that “the extended blockade imposed on Al Hudaydah and Salif ports on 6 November 2017 significantly threatened this lifeline of Yemenis” and that “only a sustained flow of imports of essential basic goods can avert further catastrophe”.
Yet the cash-strapped UN, facing dramatic budget cuts from the Trump administration, and presumably nervous of saying anything that might jeopardise Saudi-Emirati money as well, officially welcomed the announcement, despite its clear commitment to essentially tightening the very blockade of Hodeidah and Saleef ports which the UN had denounced just days earlier.
Politicising humanitarian aid
Thankfully, the aid agencies do not seem to have been fooled. A joint statement on the YCHO by a number of international NGOs, including Oxfam and Save the Children, stated that:
“We remain concerned that the blockade on Red Sea ports has still not been fully lifted and about the insufficient volume of fuel reaching these, which has led to an increase in the price of basic goods across the country.
“As a result, we are seeing families pushed into preventable disease and starvation because they cannot afford to buy food and clean water. Hodeidah port handles the majority of the country’s imports and cannot be substituted. It is vital that the warring parties commit to keep Hodeidah port fully open and functioning, including unfettered access for both humanitarian and commercial supplies.”
Save the Children’s Caroline Anning explained that the plan “is a misconception – in the publicity around this new plan they say the blockade around Hodeida port has been fully lifted but actually what we’re seeing is that fuel is still being blocked coming into that port which is having a really horrendous knock-on effect around the country.”
And the International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s scathing response – issued with the title “Yemen: Saudi ‘aid’ plan is war tactic” – is worth quoting at length:
“The Yemen Comprehensive Humanitarian Operations (YCHO), announced on January 22, 2018, is neither comprehensive, nor reflective of clear, shared humanitarian priorities… The YCHO politicizes aid by attempting to consolidate control over access and transit points. Rather than endorsing a parallel plan, which was created without broad input from humanitarian actors, the Saudi Led Coalition (SLC) and its supporters, notably the US and UK, should work to ensure the full implementation of the existing UN humanitarian response plan.
“A meaningful response to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis requires more access – not less. At best, this plan would shrink access and introduce new inefficiencies that would slow the response and keep aid from the neediest Yemenis, including the over eight million on the brink of starvation,” said Catanzano.
“At worst, it would dangerously politicize humanitarian aid by placing far too much control over the response in the hands of an active party to the conflict.”
Essentially, this is a plan to tighten the blockade while monopolising access to aid in the hands of the aggressors, presented as a great humanitarian effort, and unveiled just as the coalition begins an attack on the country’s “vital lifeline” which will lead to “a complete horror show” and “near-certain famine”.
Tighten the blockade
On 9 February, the UN announced that 85,000 people had been displaced in 10 weeks due to “surging violence”, particularly on the Red Sea coast, where the coalition have mounted a new campaign to capture the country’s strategically important Hodeidah port.
With the Hodeidah campaign now entering a new phase, this war on the Yemeni population is set to escalate still further. Since it launched in early December, the coalition and its Yemeni assets have taken several towns and villages in Hodeidah province, and are now poised to take the battle to the city itself.
On 20 February, Emirati newspaper The National reported that, in the coming days, “more forces will be committed to Hodeidah as a new front is to be opened in the next few days by Maj Gen Tariq Mohammed Abdullah,” nephew of the deceased former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
This attack would put the almost completely import dependent country’s most essential port out of action for months, leaving millions unable to survive. “If this attack goes ahead,” Oxfam chief executive, Mark Goldring, told the press when a similar attack was proposed earlier last year, “this will be a deliberate act that will disrupt vital supplies – the Saudi-led coalition will not only breach International Humanitarian Law, they will be complicit in near certain famine.”
His colleague Suze Vanmeegan added that “any attack on Hodeidah has the potential to blast an already alarming crisis into a complete horror show – and I’m not using hyperbole.”
The Yemen Quartet
There is no doubt the war’s British and American overseers have given their blessing to this escalation. In late 2016, the “Yemen Quartet” was formed by the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to co-ordinate strategy between the the war’s four main aggressors.
Throughout 2017, they met sporadically, but since the end of the year their meetings have become more frequent and higher-level.
At the end of November, just before the launch of operations in Hodeidah province, British Foreign minister Boris Johnson hosted a meeting of the Quartet in London as British Prime Minister Theresa May simultaneously met with King Salman in Riyadh, presumably to give the go-ahead to this new round of devastation for Yemen’s beleaguered population.
They met again two weeks later, and then too on 23 January, also at Johnson’s instigation, where the meeting was attended, for the first time, by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The “economic quartet” – also attended by officials from the IMF and World Bank – convened on 2 February in Saudi Arabia, while Johnson and Tillerson once again met with their Saudi and Emirati counterparts to discuss Yemen in Bonn on 15 February.
Of course, these meetings do not carry out the nitty-gritty of strategic war planning – civil servants in the military and intelligence services do that. The purpose of such high level forums is rather for each side to demonstrate to the other that any strategic developments carry the blessing of each respective government at the highest level.
That the “quartet” met just days before an announcement that the long-planned attack on Hodeidah port was imminent, then, speaks volumes about US-UK complicity in this coming new premeditated war crime.
In the twisted minds of men like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Rex Tillerson and Boris Johnson – for whom even the liquidation of an entire people is apparently a noble cause in the pursuit of containing Iran – this is what passes for humanitarianism today.
– Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and editor of stopstarvingyemen.org. He is author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis and blogs at danglazebrook.com.
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.
READ MORE:
The starvation plan for Yemen
Culture of concealment: The UK government’s brazen duplicity in Yemen
March 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Saudi Arabia, UK, United States, Yemen |
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The Trump administration is launching yet another offensive aimed primarily at Russia, this time adding tens of millions of dollars to a State Department budget to undertake a major disinformation campaign.
It will be doing the very thing it has accused the Russian government – without any convincing evidence to date – of doing in an attempt to sway opinions of American citizens most recently in the 2016 US presidential elections.
The allegation has led to US indictments of 13 Russians supposedly for using nothing more than social media without any evidence of tampering with the election process. To launch this offensive disinformation effort, the Defense Department will provide some $40 million to the State Department’s budget for its so-called Global Engagement Center, or GEC.
The GEC originally was created during the Obama administration to counter foreign terrorist and extremist group propaganda. However, the GEC’s mandate has been expanded to counter what the State Department perceives to be calculated disinformation initiatives of foreign state and non-state actors and individuals.
The GEC will award millions of dollars in grants from its Information Access Fund to yet unspecified public and private outlets, which will include “society groups, media content providers, non-governmental organizations, federally-funded research and development centers, private companies and academic institutions,” according to a State Department statement.
The effort will have all the appearances of an aggressive disinformation campaign of its own without public oversight, launched by a myriad of unidentified entities that undoubtedly will be aimed at the internal affairs of other countries.
“The funding is critical to ensuring that we continue to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley and other partners in this fight,” said. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Steve Goldstein. “It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take. We also need to be on the offensive.”
The US government will be conducting disinformation warfare, doing what it accuses others of doing, presumably under the auspices of the American intelligence services. In effect, the GEC could become a front for funneling funds to the intelligence community to orchestrate a massive disinformation initiative through private entities without any public oversight.
Such an effort would constitute an aggressive form of not only disinformation but also cyberwarfare that the US accuses others of doing.
Interfering in US elections isn’t the same as the US doing it in other countries, according to Ashton Carter, a former secretary of defense during the Obama administration. Really?
Carter was speaking at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He tried to make a far-fetched distinction between the US launching disinformation and cyberattacks on other countries, and others doing it to the US.
“We conduct espionage on the internet,” Carter tried to explain. “And when we’re spied on, I don’t complain. I am unhappy with it because I wish we had not had our secrets stolen. But I put it into a different category. Covert action… is not espionage. It has the effect of harming.”
However, examples of overt and covert US disinformation and cyberattacks on other countries are legion.
The US intervened in the internal affairs of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, during the administration of Bill Clinton.
During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, the US sent advisers into Russia acting as being “nothing less than missionary – a virtual crusade to transform post-communist Russia into some facsimile of the American democratic and capitalistic system,” according to American scholar Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University.
“Political missionaries and evangelists, usually called ‘advisers,’ spread across Russia in the early 1990s,” Cohen said, adding that it was all funded by the US government.
The effort was a bust, making Yeltsin very unpopular.
This isn’t the only example of US intervention in the internal affairs of another country, even fledgling democracies.
At the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US upset Italian elections, such as the one in 1948.
The CIA also was instrumental in the 1953 coup of Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddeq, “carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy,” the agency now admits.
Then there is the 1973 overthrow of democratically-elected Chilean President Salvador Allende and establishment of the ruthless dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
In 2015, the US initiated the violent overthrow of democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The US can’t have it both ways by waging what is a double standard. The increased funding of the GEC with the intelligence services going on a new offensive of disinformation and cyberattacks will only exasperate an already geopolitically tumultuous world.
F. Michael Maloof is a former Pentagon official and security analyst.
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March 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Global Engagement Center, Steve Goldstein, United States |
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This month marks the 15th anniversary of the US war on Iraq. The “shock and awe” attack was launched based on “stove-piped” intelligence fed from the CIA and Pentagon through an uncritical and compliant US mainstream media. The US media was a willing accomplice to this crime of aggression committed by the George W. Bush Administration.
Despite the lies we were constantly bombarded with, Iraq never presented a threat to the United States. Iraq never had the weapons of mass destruction that the neocons used to frighten Americans into supporting the war. How many of them knew all along that there were no WMDs? We’ll never know. Attacking Iraq and overthrowing its leader was long a plan in the neocon playbook and they used the 9/11 attack on the US as an excuse to pull the plan off the shelf and put it into action.
The US “regime change” war on Iraq has directly resulted in the death of at least a quarter of a million civilians, and indirectly perhaps a million Iraqis have been killed. The Iraqi infrastructure was destroyed and the country was set back many decades in development. Far from the democratization we were promised, Iraq has been turned into a hell on earth. Due to the US use of depleted uranium and other chemical weapons like white phosphorus, Iraqis will continue to suffer from birth defects and other related illnesses for generations.
How did we get there? War propaganda was essential in paving the way for the Iraq war. Americans are generally skeptical about launching new wars, so it takes a steady media bombardment about the alleged depravities of any targeted regime before public opinion begins to shift in favor of war.
Because the neocons who helped launch the war have never had to face the consequences of their actions, they continue to promote war with impunity. Just this past week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was pushing for a US attack on North Korea in which millions may be killed. He said this weekend, “All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security.” That’s just what they said before the US attacked Iraq, and how did that turn out? I find it disgusting that the media continues to give airtime almost exclusively to those who promote more US disasters like Iraq.
The Iraqi parliament did something extraordinary last week. A majority of elected Iraqi representatives voted to demand that their prime minister draw up a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from the country. President Obama had withdrawn US troops from Iraq in 2011, after a status of forces agreement could not be reached with the Iraqi government, but he returned the US military to Iraq under the auspices of fighting ISIS.
We had no business going into Iraq in the first place and we have no business remaining in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and ISIS emerged in Iraq because our attack and occupation of the country 15 years ago created fertile fields for extremism. Nothing will be achieved if we remain. Let’s listen to the Iraqis and just come home!
March 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Iraq, United States |
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A better accounting of natural groundwater discharge is needed to constrain the range of contributions to sea level rise. The greater the contribution from groundwater discharge, the smaller the adjustments used to amplify contributions from meltwater and thermal expansion.
In a 2002 paper, what is frequently referred to as “Munk’s enigma”, Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s senior researcher bemoaned the fact researchers could not fully account for the causes of sea level rise. He lamented, “the historic rise started too early, has too linear a trend, and is too large.” Early IPCC analyses noted about 25% of estimated sea level rise was unaccounted for. Accordingly, in 2012, an international team of prominent sea level researchers published, Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts? (henceforth Gregory 2012). They hoped to balance struggling sea level budgets by re-analyzing and adjusting estimates of the contributions from melting glaciers and ice caps, thermal expansion, and the effects of dam building and groundwater extraction. However, a natural contribution from any imbalance in groundwater re-charge vs discharge was never considered. Yet the volume of freshwater stored as groundwater, is second only to Antarctica’s frozen supply, and 3 to 8 times greater than Greenland’s.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the effects of groundwater storage can be differentiated between shallow-aquifer effects that modulate global sea level on year to year and decade to decade timeframes, versus deep aquifer effects that modulate sea level trends over centuries and millennia.
Researchers are increasingly aware of natural shallow groundwater dynamics. As noted by Reager (2016) in A Decade of Sea Level Rise Slowed by Climate-Driven Hydrology, researchers had determined the seasonal delay in the return of precipitation to the oceans causes sea levels to oscillate by 17 ± 4 mm [~0.7 inches] per year. Reager (2016) also argued decadal increases in terrestrial water storage driven by climate events such as La Nina, had reduced sea level rise by 0.71 mm/year. Likewise, Cazenave 2014 had published according to altimetry data, sea level had decelerated from 3.5 mm/yr in the 1990s to 2.5mm/yr during 2003-2011, and that deceleration could be explained by increased terrestrial water storage, and the pause in ocean warming reported by Argo data.
Improved observational data suggest during more frequent La Nina years a greater proportion of precipitation falls on the land globally and when routed through more slowly discharging aquifers, sea level rise decelerates. During periods of more frequent El Niños, more rain falls back onto the oceans, and sea level rise accelerates. In contrast to La Nina induced shallow-aquifer effects, deep aquifers have been filled with meltwater from the last Ice Age, and that water is slowly and steadily seeping back into the oceans today.
Munk’s “Too Linear Trend” Enigma and Deep Groundwater Discharge
Hydrologists concerned with sustainable groundwater supplies and drinking water contamination, have been in the forefront of analyzing the volume and ages of the world’s groundwater, providing greater insight into deep aquifer effects. Gleeson (2015) determined, “total groundwater volume in the upper 2 km of continental crust is approximately 22.6 million cubic kilometers, twice as much as earlier estimates. If all 22.6 million cubic kilometers of freshwater stored underground reached the oceans, sea level would rise 204 feet (62,430 millimeters). Via various isotope analyses and flow models, Jasechko (2017) estimated that between 42-85% of all groundwater stored in the upper 1 kilometer of the earth’s crust is water that had infiltrated the ground more than 11,000 years ago, during last Ice Age.
Clearly the earth’s groundwater has yet to reach an equilibrium with modern sea levels. With deep aquifer discharge primarily regulated by geological pore spaces (in addition to pressure heads), the slow and steady discharge of these older waters affects sea level rise on century and millennial timeframes. And, although freshwater discharge from deep aquifers may be locally insignificant relative to river runoff, deep aquifer discharge when integrated across the globe could account for the missing contribution to the sea level rise budgets.
Unfortunately, quantifying the groundwater discharge contribution to sea level rise is extremely difficult, suffering from a low signal to noise problem. That difficulty is why natural groundwater contributions are often ignored or brushed aside as insignificant. Although GRACE satellite monitoring of gravity changes offers great promise for detecting changes in terrestrial groundwater storage, GRACE cannot accurately separate the relatively small discharge of deep aquifers from large annual changes in shallow groundwater. In periods of heavy rains, groundwater increases will mask deep aquifer discharge. And during a drought, any deep groundwater discharge will likely be attributed to the lack of rain.
However, estimates of groundwater re-charge via isotope analyses can provide critical information regards rates of groundwater re-charge and discharge.
Using the abnormal levels of tritium released during nuclear testing in the 1950s, plus carbon14 dating, researchers have categorized the time since groundwater had last left the surface into 25, 50, 75 and 100-year old age classes. As expected, the youngest water is concentrated in the shallowest aquifer layers and the proportion of young water decreases with depth. The estimated volume of 25-year-old or younger groundwater suggests global groundwater is currently recharging at a rate that would reduce sea level by 21 mm/year (0.8 inches/year). Water cycle researchers (i.e. Dai and Trenberth) have made the dubious assumption that the amount of water transported via precipitation to the land from the ocean is balanced each year by river runoff. But if the tritium derived estimates are valid, balancing water cycle and sea level budgets becomes more enigmatic. Clearly a significant amount of precipitation does not return for decades and centuries.
Intriguingly, comparing the smaller volume of ground water aged 50 to 100-years-old versus the volume of water 50-years-old and younger suggests 2 possible scenarios. Either ground water recharge has increased in recent decades, or if recharge rates averaged over 50 years have remained steady, then as groundwater ages a significant portion seeps back to the ocean at rates approaching 1.7 mm/year, a rate that is very similar to 20th century IPCC estimates of sea level rise.
Groundwater discharge must balance recharge or else it directly alters global sea levels. When less than 21 mm/year seeps back to the ocean, then natural groundwater storage lowers sea level. When discharge is greater than 21 mm/year, then groundwater discharge is raising sea level. Without accounting for recharge vs discharge, the much smaller estimates of all the other factors contributing to sea level rise are simply not well constrained.
Higher rates of discharge could account for the enigmatic missing sea level contributions reported by the IPCC and other researchers (i.e. Gregory 2012). More problematic, if discharge proves to significantly exceed recharge, then estimates of contributions from other sources such as melting ice and thermal expansion may be too high. What is certain, the current estimates of contributions to sea level from melting ice and thermal expansion only range from 1.5 to 2.0 mm/year, and those factors by themselves cannot offset the tritium estimated 21 mm/year of groundwater recharge. So, what is missing in our current water cycle budgets?
The Importance of Submarine Groundwater Discharge (SGD)
The recharge-discharge imbalance can be reconciled if water cycle budgets included the difficult-to-measure rates of prolific submarine groundwater discharge (SGD). Freshwater springs bubbling up from coastal sea floors have long been observed. To reliably replenish drinking water, Roman fisherman mapped their occurrences throughout the Mediterranean. Moosdorf (2017) has reviewed the locations and many human uses of fresh submarine groundwater discharge around the world.
Recent ecological studies have measured local submarine groundwater seepages to determine contributions of solutes and nutrients to coastal ecosystems. But those sparse SGD measurements cannot yet be reliably integrated into a global estimate. Rodell (2015) notes that most water cycle budgets have ignored SGD due to its uncertainty, so Rodell’s water cycle budget included a rate of SGD equivalent to 6.5 millimeters/year (~0.25 inch/yr) of sea level rise. However, that estimate is still insufficient to balance current recharge estimates.
However, with improving techniques, researchers recently estimated total submarine groundwater (saline and fresh water combined) discharges suggesting a rate 3 to 4 times greater than the observed global river runoff, or a volume equivalent to 331 mm/year (13 inches) of sea level rise. Nonetheless more than 90% of that submarine discharge is saline sea water, most of which is likely recirculated sea water, and not likely to affect sea level. Only the fraction of entrained freshwater would raise sea level. To balance the 21 mm/year ground water recharge, between 6 and 7% of total SGD must be freshwater and that amount is very likely. Local estimates of the freshwater fraction of submarine discharge range from 1 to 35%, and on average just less than 10%. If fresh submarine groundwater discharge approaches just 7% of the total SGD, it would not only balance current groundwater recharge, but would steadily raise sea level by an additional 2 mm/year, even if there was no ocean warming and no melting glaciers.
A Sea Level Rise “Base-flow” and Paleo-climate Conundrums
Hydrologists seek to quantify the aquifer contributions to river flow, otherwise known as the “base flow”. During the rainy season or the season of melting snow, any groundwater contribution is masked by heavy surface runoff and shallow aquifer effects. However, during extended periods of drought hydrologists assume the low river flow that persists must be largely attributed to supplies from deeper aquifers. Streams that dry up during a drought are usually supported by small shallow aquifers, while reduced but persistent river and stream flows must be maintained by large aquifers. Using a similar conceptual approach, we can estimate a possible “base flow” contribution to sea level.
When the continental ice sheets began to melt as the earth transitioned from its Ice Age maximum to our present warm interglacial, sea level began to rise from depths ~130 meters lower than today (see graph below). Melting continental ice sheets drove much higher rates of sea level rise than seen today, ranging from 10 to 40+ mm/year. Approximately 6,000 years ago, a consensus suggests the last of the continental ice sheets had melted completely, the earth’s montane glaciers had disappeared, and Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets had shrunk to their minimums. The earth then entered a long-term 5000-year cooling trend dubbed the Neoglaciation. Although sea level models forced only by growing glaciers and cooling ocean temperatures would project falling sea levels, proxy evidence enigmatically suggests global sea level continued to rise. Albeit at reduced rates, global sea level continued to rise another 4 meters (Figure 1 below). Although there is some debate regards any continued contribution from Antarctica and “ocean siphoning”, according to Lambeck 2014 about 3 meters of sea level were added between 6.7–4.2 thousand years ago. That continued sea level rise could be explained by aquifer discharge, suggesting a minimal “base flow” of ~1.2 mm/year from groundwater discharge.
Similarly, during the Little Ice Age between 1300 and 1850 AD, montane glaciers as well as Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, grew and reached their largest extent in the last 7,000 years. Ocean temperatures cooled by about 1 degree. Yet inexplicably, most researchers estimate global sea level never dropped significantly. They report sea levels were “stable” during the Little Ice Age, fluctuating only by tenths of a millimeter. That stability contrasts greatly with the recent rising trend, that has led some to attribute the current rise to increasing CO2 concentrations. However Little Ice Age stability defies the physics of cooling temperatures and increasing water storage in growing glaciers that should have caused a significant sea level fall. However, that seeming paradox is consistent with a scenario in which a “base flow” from groundwater discharge would offset any transfer of waters to growing Little Ice Age glaciers.
Once the growth of Little Ice Age glaciers stopped, and groundwater base flow was no longer offset, we would expect sea levels to rise as witnessed during the 19th and 20th centuries. Such a scenario would also explain Munk’s enigma that sea level rise had started too early, before temperatures had risen significantly from any CO2-driven warming.
Interestingly, assuming a ballpark figure of a 1.2 mm/year groundwater base flow, unbalanced groundwater discharge could also explain the much higher sea levels estimated for the previous warm interglacial, the Eemian. Researchers estimate sea levels ~115,000 years ago were about 6 to 9 meters higher than today. That interglacial has also been estimated to have spanned 15,000 years before continental glaciation resumed. Compared to our present interglacial span of 11,700 years, an extra 3,300 years of groundwater discharge before being offset by resumed glacier growth, could account for 4 meters of the Eemian’s higher sea level.
Recent glacier meltwater contribution to sea level is likely overestimated?
In addition to a groundwater base flow driving the current steady rise in sea level, meltwater from retreating Little Ice Age glaciers undoubtedly contributed as well. But by how much? Researchers have estimated there was greater glacial retreat (and thus a greater flux of meltwater) in the early 1900s compared to now. So, current glacier retreat is unlikely to cause any acceleration of recent sea level rise. Furthermore, we cannot assume glacier meltwater rapidly enters the oceans. A large proportion of meltwater likely enters the ground, so it may take several hundred years for Little Ice Age glacier meltwater to affect sea level.
How fast can groundwater reach the ocean? Groundwater measured in the Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer can flow at a higher-than-average seepage rate of ~300 mm (~1 foot) in a day, or about the length of a football field in a year. For such “fast” moving groundwater to travel 1000 kilometers (620 miles) to the sea, it would require over 10,000 years! Most ground water travels much slower. The great weight of the continental glaciers during our last ice age, applied such great pressure that it forced meltwater to into the ground at much greater rates than currently observed recharge. And that Ice Age meltwater is still slowly moving through aquifers like the Ogallala.
(However, its release to the ocean has been sped up by human pumping. Recent estimates suggest that globally, human groundwater extraction currently exceeds rates of water capture from dam building, so that groundwater depletion is now accelerating sea level rise.)
How much of the current meltwater can we expect to transit to the ocean via a slow groundwater route? That’s a tough question to answer. However, thirteen percent of the earth’s ice-free land surface is covered by endorheic basins as illustrated by the gray areas shown in the illustration below. Endorheic basins have no direct outlets to the ocean. Water entering endorheic basins only return to the sea via evaporation, or by the extremely slow route of groundwater discharge. Any precipitation or glacial meltwater flowing into an endorheic basin could require centuries to thousands of years to flow back to the oceans.
For example, in 2010-2011, researchers reported that a La Nina event had caused global sea level to fall by the equivalent of 7mm/year (~0.3 inches/year). That dramatic drop happened despite concurrent extensive ice melt in Greenland and despite any base flow contribution. As described by Fasullo (2013), GRACE satellite observations detected increased groundwater storage caused by higher rates of rainwater falling on endorheic basins, primarily in Australia. Although satellite observations suggested much of the rainwater remained in the Australian basin, sea level resumed its unabated rise as groundwater base flow contribution would predict.
To balance their sea level budgets, researchers assert melting glaciers have added ~0.8 mm/year to recent sea level rise. The 20th century retreat of most glaciers is undeniable, but we cannot simply assume all 20th century glacier meltwater immediately reached the oceans. The greatest concentration of ice, outside of Greenland and Antarctica, resides in the regions north of India and Pakistan, in the Himalaya and Karakoram glaciers. Most melt water flowing northward enters the extensive Asian endorheic basins. Likewise, some of the Sierra Nevada meltwater flows into Nevada’s Great Basin, and some Andes meltwater flows into the endorheic basins of the Altiplano and Lake Titicaca as well as the Atacama Desert. It is very likely much of the current glacial meltwater will then take decades to millennia to reach the ocean and has yet to impact modern sea levels. If the glacial melt water contribution to sea level is overestimated, then, the unaccounted–for contribution to sea level rise becomes much larger than initially thought.
Accurate Attribution of Groundwater Discharge and Recharge Will Constrain Sea Level Contributions
Using a combination of GRACE gravity data that measured changes in ocean mass, altimetry data that measured changes in ocean volume and Argo data that measured heat content, Cazenave (2008) used 2 different methods and both estimated the contribution from increased ocean heat to be about 0.3 to 0.37 mm/year. Jevrejeva (2008) calculated a similar heat contribution. Other researchers suggest thermal expansion contributes 1.2 to 1.5 mm/year (i.e. Chambers 2016). Such large discrepancies reveal contributing factors to sea level rise are not yet reliably constrained.
One of the great uncertainties in sea level research are glacial isostatic adjustments.
Researchers have subjectively adopted various Glacio-isotatic adjustment models with recommended adjustments ranging from 1 to 2 mm/year. For example, although GRACE gravity estimates had not detected any added water mass to the oceans, Cazenave (2008) added a 2 mm/year adjustment, as illustrated from her Figure 1 below. Other researchers only added a 1 mm/yr adjustment.
In the Gregory (2012) paper Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts? researchers suggested the sea level budget could be balanced and the IPCC’s unaccounted for contribution to sea level rise could be explained by making 5 assumptions:
- Assume the contribution from glacier melting was greater than previously estimated.
But greater melting rates were documented for the 30s and 40s, and the likelihood that some glacier meltwater is still trapped as groundwater, suggests the glacier meltwater contribution has been overestimated.
- Assume an increased contribution from thermal expansion.
But ARGO data suggests the contribution from thermal expansion has been decreasing and plateauing.
- Assume Greenland positively contributed to sea level throughout the entire 20th century.
Greenland has undoubtedly contributed to episodes of accelerating and decelerating sea level changes, but the greatest rate of Greenland warming occurred during the 1920s and 30s. Previous researchers suggested Greenland glaciers have oscillated during the 20th century but had been stable from the 60s to 1990s. Although there was increased surface melt in the 21st century, culminating in 2012, that melt rate has since declined. And according to the Danish Meteorological Institute, Greenland gained about 50 billion tons of ice in 2017 which should have lowered sea level in 2017. Clearly Greenland cannot explain the enigmatic steady 20th century sea level rise.
- Assume reservoir water storage balanced groundwater extraction.
But net contributions from groundwater extraction vs water impoundments and other landscape changes are still being debated. For the period 2002–2014 landscape changes have been estimated to have reduced sea level by −0.40 mm/year versus IPCC estimates of contributing 0.38 mm/year from 1993–2010 to sea level rise.
- Assume the remaining unaccounted contribution to sea level rise is small enough to be attributed to melting in Antarctica.
Debatably, Antarctic melting is too often used as the catch-all fudge factor to explain the unexplainable. Furthermore, there is no consensus within the Antarctic research community if there have been any human effects on Antarctica’s ice balance. Regions that are losing ice are balanced by regions that are gaining ice. Claims of net ice loss have been countered by claims of net ice gain such as NASA 2015. Additionally, unadjusted GRACE gravity data has suggested no lost ice mass and all estimates of ice gains or loss depend on which Glacial Isostatic Adjustments modelers choose to use. We cannot dismiss the possibility that unaccounted for groundwater discharge has been mistakenly attributed to hypothetical Antarctic melting?
A better accounting of natural groundwater discharge is needed to constrain the range of contributions to sea level rise suggested by researchers such as Gregory 2012. The greater the contribution from groundwater discharge, the smaller the adjustments used to amplify contributions from meltwater and thermal expansion. Until a more complete accounting is determined, we can only appreciate Munk’s earnest concern. How can we predict future sea level rise if we don’t fully understand the present or the past?
March 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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