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Going Soft on Corporate Crime a Bipartisan Affair

By Russell Mokhiber | CounterPunch | July 31, 2017

Donald Trump is not a fan of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the law that says it’s illegal for any person — corporate or human — to bribe overseas.

Trump has called the FCPA “a horrible law” and has said that the law “puts us at a huge disadvantage.”

And you could argue that the Trump Justice Department’s first two FCPA enforcement cases reflect Trump’s point of view.

Both were declinations — despite the fact that the companies disclosed illegal overseas payments and agreed to disgorge illegally gained proceeds.

Some are using the cases to ask the question — is Trump soft on corporate crime?

As the lawyers say, let’s stipulate for the record that he is.

But let’s also remember that going soft on corporate crime was perfected by the Democrats.

The Obama Justice Department, for example, regularly used declinations — five in Obama’s last year in office — and non prosecution agreements — 22 over the eight years of his administration — to settle corporate FCPA matters.

And since September 2015, when the Obama administration put out the Yates memo calling for more prosecutions of individual executives, there have been 20 FCPA corporate prosecution agreements — yet not one individual has been charged in connection with those cases.

There are those in the get tough on corporate crime camp — like David Uhlmann, former head of the Environmental Crimes Section at the Justice Department and now a University of Michigan Law professor — who argue that if a corporation commits a serious crime, then a corporation should be convicted.

We’re talking guilt — as in guilty pleas.

For environmental crimes, that has been the practice.

Over the past fifteen years, 93 percent of major corporate criminal environmental cases ended with public companies pleading guilty to their crimes.

Same for antitrust corporate crimes.

Over the past fifteen years, 74 percent of major corporate criminal antitrust cases ended with public companies pleading guilty to their crimes.

But only 29 percent of corporate criminal FCPA cases were settled with guilty pleas.

And only 8 percent of securities fraud cases have been settled with guilty pleas.

Why?

You might ask — maybe these corporations weren’t guilty?

Not likely, because in almost every one of these cases — no matter the type of soft settlement — deferred prosecution, non prosecution, declination — the company admits to illegal wrongdoing.

The companies admit to their criminal wrongdoing in documents that are now publically available on a new web site — the Corporate Prosecution Registry — created by University of Virginia Law School Professor Brandon Garrett.

And what do we learn from this comprehensive corporate crime database?

That there is a two tier system of corporate criminal justice — one for the smaller, politically less well connected companies — which generally are forced to plead guilty to their crimes — and one for large, politically well connected public companies — which generally enter into softer alternative resolutions — declinations, non prosecution agreements and deferred prosecution agreements.

Or if they are forced to plead guilty, it’s not the parent forced to plead guilty but some unit that won’t be adversely affected by any debarment or other collateral sanction that might follow.

The dominant corporate narrative —  driven by the corporate crime defense law firms — is that big public companies — especially banks and financial institutions — even if they commit the crimes, can’t withstand the brunt force trauma of a guilty plea.

They say — the company will be driven out of business. Innocent shareholders will lose money and innocent workers lose their jobs. A corporate guilty plea is the equivalent of the corporate death penalty.

Not true.

Top corporate crime prosecutors and defense attorneys — they’re interchangeable and regularly swap places via the revolving door — are expert at crafting guilty pleas that avoid these consequences.

That’s why when prosecutors want to, they can get guilty pleas — even for big banks — who for years dodged any personal or corporate criminal liability for causing the 2008 financial collapse.

Burned by that public criticism, the Obama Justice Department in May 2015, thought it was necessary to throw the public a bone.

And they did just that by forcing Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, The Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Barclays to plead guilty to felonies in connection with a conspiracy to fix foreign exchange markets.

Why doesn’t the Justice Department demand felony guilty pleas from parents in more big corporate crime cases?

Power and money. The big companies don’t want to plead guilty even when they are guilty. They have corporate reputations to protect. And they have the power and money to hire the best corporate criminal defense law firms to get the job done.

The lawyers’ marching orders?

For the corporate parent, anything but a guilty plea.

Move down the corporate crime ladder from guilty plea to deferred prosecution to non prosecution to declination.

In the parallel Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) case, move down the ladder from admission to no admission with a neither admit nor deny consent decree.

In a World Bank proceeding, move down the ladder from a debarment to a reprimand or a conditional non-debarment agreement.

Some say that it was Obama’s slippery slide down the corporate crime ladder — he hit bottom with not one executive or bank criminally charged for the 2008 financial meltdown — that fueled the populist revolt that helped Trump take the White House.

We don’t want to become Brazil, a country battered by wave after wave of corporate crime and corruption.

It’s time to restore a modicum of corporate criminal justice that will deliver tangible deterrence.

Let’s start by moving back up the ladder of corporate justice.

If a company commits a felony, it should plead guilty to a felony.

No more deferrals, non prosecutions and declinations in major corporate crime cases.

Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter..

August 1, 2017 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

U.S. Murdering 1 Million Iraqis is Democracy, Iran Giving Yogurt to Iraq is “Domination”

By Ali Salaam | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2017

The New York Times, owned by the Zionist Jewish supremacist Ochs-Sulzberger family, has no problem with Iraqi suffering as long as Iran is not the one behind it.

The Iraq War was a genocide of the Iraqi people by Zionist supremacists in the Bush administration. Over 1 million innocent people were killed based on a lie. American soldiers died in an Israeli war and now an average of 22 soldiers commit suicide every day because their consciences cannot cope with the fact they committed crimes in an illegal war that served no purpose other than to benefit Israel, not America.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, once said “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”

Paul Wolfowitz had his sights on Iraq since his time in the first Bush administration. Former Israeli official and Bush administration official Richard Perle had his eyes on Iraq since at least his authorship of the Clean Break white paper. The Zionist regime had their eyes on Iraq since the 1980s when strategist Oded Yinon wrote his white paper in support of dividing the Arab-Muslim world along ethnic and sectarian lines. The global Zionist lobby has had their eyes on Iraq since Theodor Herzl stated that Eretz Israel’s true borders go from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq.

Depleted uranium chemical weapons used by America have been causing massive birth defects. Corporate colonialism of Iraq has decimated its once vibrant agriculture industry. The vacuum of power left by the ousting of Saddam Hussein enabled al-Qaeda in Iraq to form into ISI. ISI would later merge with the various factions of the Free Syrian Army and the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in Syria), both backed by the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Turkey, to become ISIS. The U.S. airdropped weapons to ISIS, which was no accident. These weapons were anti-aircraft missiles. Does ISIS have aircraft? No, but the Iraqi Army does.

With occupation comes resistance. If a robber breaks into your home, you have a right to shoot that robber. The U.S. broke into Iraq’s home quite violently, and thus it is a universally accepted right and natural cause-effect consequence for the homeowners to shoot back. If you are an American soldier reading this, don’t get mad at me or Iraqis. Instead, get mad at the traitors in the U.S. government, the dual-citizen Israeli-Americans in the Bush administration who sent you to this fruitless genocidal war of aggression to have you fight on behalf of Israel, not America. The Iranian-backed Iraqis that resisted America’s invasion into their homeland were deemed “terrorists,” all the while the U.S. helped to create ethnic and sectarian division in Iraq.

So, who do the intrepid reporters at the New York Times vilify for the destruction of Iraq? Iran.

That’s right. Iran. The New York Times wrote a shameful propaganda piece on behalf of the Zionist regime and the U.S. war machine on post-Mosul Iraq.

Who didn’t kill a million innocent people in a war of aggression based on a lie, who only helped local Iraqis exercise their human right of resistance and self-defense, is somehow the one who is “dominating” Iraq. Not the war criminal puppet presidents George Bush and Barack Obama, along with the Zionist deep state that controls them.

Americas forces are the ones who have been committing war crimes in Iraq in the fight against ISIS. The CIA & Mossad created ISIS after all through its funding of rebels in Syria, who would merge with Iraq’s ISI. So of course they would kill mostly civilians instead of their intended target, whereas the Popular Mobilization Units, Kataib Hezbollah, and other grassroots Iraqi militias, made up of Muslims (Sunni & Shi’a) and Christians alike, sent ISIS to hell where they belong with very little civilian casualties. It can’t be said that they have a 100% spotless record, it is war after all and human beings are prone to mistakes, but the PMU and Iraqi Hezbollah are extremely popular among the Iraqi people of all religious sects and ethnic makeups, whereas polls have been conducted showing how many Iraqis believe America and Israel created ISIS.

Amnesty International served officially as a front for the Israeli foreign ministry in the 1970s, and the way their “humanitarian” propaganda has benefited the expansionist agenda of the Zionist entity shows that they still serve the cause of world Zionism on an unofficial basis, fooling the world by tugging at their heart strings with crocodile tears about human rights. Similarly, Human Rights Watch is funded by Zionist Jewish supremacist billionaire George Soros. They have it in for the Axis of Resistance, which is non-sectarian, albeit mostly Shi’a led. They issue dubious reports about the conduct of Hezbollah, Iran, and various grassroots Iraqi resistance groups to slander them, but not only did Sunnis fight alongside Shi’as and Christians among the Iranian-backed resistance groups, but they welcomed the defeat of ISIS and thanked the PMU for standing for an independent, united Iraq, free of terrorism and imperialism.

Iran has the right to export its revolutionary ideals to Iraq to help free it of U.S. occupation and the scourge of Wahabbi terrorism financed by Gulf monarchies, Israel, the U.S., and Europe.

That is not dominance, that is liberation.

They don’t intend to impose an Islamic government based on the Shi’a school of thought, that works in Iran because the majority population are Shi’a Muslims and they respect the religious minorities. What they do intend is to spread an ideology of independence, self-determination, dignity, resistance, and the end to American-Israeli-Saudi hegemony in the region.

Additionally, Iran not only has supported the resistance in Iraq, they have also supported Iraq economically. Is exporting yogurt to Iraqis who live in the pit of abject poverty “dominance”? I’ve been to Iraq during the Arbaeen processions in 2015. I had so many little kids beg from me for charity. I gave as much as I could. While America and Israel sadistically intend to destroy Iraq, it is not a crime for Iran to help people who are suffering so badly from economic destruction. The New York Times admits in the first sentence of their shameful Zionist propaganda piece: “Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are filled with goods from Iran — milk, yogurt, chicken.”

The New York Times doesn’t seem to have a problem with American war crimes and do not view that as dominance. But threaten the genocidal Zionist entity’s power structure, and the NYT will view that as “dominance.”

These are not journalists. If and when the Zionist regime and the traitors within the American government are held accountable for war crimes in Iraq, and crimes against humanity around the world for that matter, these presstitutes who call themselves “journalists” should also stand trial for their complicity in promoting and whitewashing the murdering of innocent babies, women, children, non-combatant men, and resistance fighters acting within their legal and moral right to defend their homeland.

 

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

New generation nuclear power project scrapped in SC amid soaring costs

RT | July 31, 2017

Two South Carolina utilities have abandoned a pair of next generation nuclear reactors that would have been America’s first new atomic reactors in almost 40 years. The facilities were expected to be safer and cheaper.

SCANA Corp and state-owned utility Santee Cooper, the two utilities which own the VC Summer twin-reactor project, announced Monday that they were scrapping the multi-billion dollar project due to construction problems and cost overruns.

“We arrived at this very difficult but necessary decision following months of evaluating the project from all perspectives to determine the most prudent path forward,” said the head of SCANA Corp, Kevin Marsh.

The designer and primary contractor of the new generation reactors, Westinghouse Electric Co., was expected to deliver last year, but the project is now less than 40 percent complete. In addition, costs have soared 75 percent and the reactors would not begin to produce power until 2023, Reuters reported.

In March, Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy. However, the company was mentioned in a June White House fact sheet which stated: “The United States and India are committed to realizing commercial civil nuclear cooperation, in particular through a contract for six Westinghouse Electric AP-1000 nuclear reactors to be built in Andhra Pradesh, India.”

Nine billion dollars has been spent on the now-abandoned South Carolina project and the state’s utility customers have already been billed for some of the reactors’ early costs. They could also be forced to pay for the rest of the failed project, the Charlotte Business Journal reported.

The US has not built new nuclear reactors since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania which saw a partial meltdown of a reactor, Reuters reported.

The new generation reactors were expected to be safer and less costly. With the project now scrapped, the future of large-scale nuclear power plant construction in the US is uncertain.

Many nuclear power plants across the country have struggled financially in the past few years amid falling oil and gas prices, making nuclear energy less competitive.

A number of states, including New York and Illinois, threw lifelines to their nuclear power plants in the form of subsidies, referred to as zero-emission credits. Nuclear energy is recognized as having a very low carbon-emission footprint.

A bill in Ohio would provide the zero-emission credit to its nuclear power plants that have described their financial situation as “urgent.”

Opponents of the subsidy, many of whom are the industry’s competitors, claim these schemes illegally interfere with power markets.

On June 29, President Donald Trump announced that nuclear energy should be “revived” and become part of America’s “global energy dominance.”

“A complete review of US nuclear energy policy will help us find new ways to revitalize this crucial energy resource,” Trump said.

Earlier, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry claimed the field was “strangled all too often because of government regulations.” However, Perry did not specifically say how the government was going to help nuclear energy producers.

A recent study by researchers from Princeton University and the Union of Concerned Scientists cautioned the US against underestimating the risks to nuclear safety, saying a single nuclear fuel fire could lead to fallout “much greater than Fukushima,” referring to the Japanese nuclear disaster caused by the massive tsunami in 2011.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

US Air Force won’t reimburse Colorado county for water pollution

RT | July 31, 2017

Colorado communities whose drinking water supply was contaminated by chemicals used at the Peterson Air Force Base are frustrated as the military is refusing to reimburse their cleanup costs and promising aid only after years of environmental studies.

Firefighting foam containing perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) has seeped into the Widefield Aquifer over the decades, making well water in southern El Paso County unsafe to drink, according to a recent US Air Force study.

The chemicals were detected at 88,000 parts per trillion near the fire training area at Peterson AFB, which is 1,257 times higher than the advisory level set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

So far, the water districts of Security, Widefield and the city of Fountain have spent $6 million dealing with the contamination, and the costs are expected to rise to $12.7 million by the end of 2018, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

“We really need financial help,” said Roy Heald, manager of the Security Water and Sanitation Districts. “We need to get going on those things before the 2020s.”

However, the USAF said it does not have the authority to reimburse communities for costs of dealing with environmental contamination.

“We don’t back pay – we cannot reimburse,” said Cornell Long, a chemist with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, according to AP.

The inspection report released last week cost $400,000 and local officials said it was limited in scope. The Air Force is funding another study this fall to better understand how the groundwater moves under the base, and plans another study in the spring of 2019 to explore options for fixing the contamination. Funding for those studies is yet to be approved by Congress.

While “interim measures” might come sooner, the Air Force does not expect to implement remediation plans until the 2020s, the Civil Engineer Center leaders said last week.

Most of the $4.3 million the Air Force has pledged in aid has not been delivered, according to the Gazette. Of that amount, only $1.7 million will go to pay the utility costs, while much of the rest will be spent on bottled water and filters.

Meanwhile, local residents are facing higher prices for drinking water. Fountain is planning to raise water rates by 5.3 percent. Widefield is planning to build a water treatment plant for the affected wells, at a cost of up to $12 million. Security is currently paying $1 million a year to Colorado Springs Utilities for clean water, and is considering a rate increase and a treatment plan.

By the time the Air Force finishes its studies, the local districts will have borne most of the costs, said El Paso County Commissioner Mark Waller, a former Air Force officer.

“That’s not an excuse, I think, that should be used in order to end up not paying for these things,” he told the Gazette.

State Senator Bob Gardner (R-Colorado Springs) says El Paso County has a “large reservoir of patience,” and is very supportive of the military, but that the Air Force risks that well running dry if the bills keep stacking up.

“That needs to be compensated,” he said. “And the military needs to go ahead and step up and not study and study and study.”

Communities around the Pease AFB in New Hampshire and Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan – both closed years ago – are also dealing with PFC pollution. Residents of Oscoda, Michigan who rely on private water wells were told to seek an alternative water supply, while a “do not eat” advisory is in effect for fish caught near the base.

Earlier this year, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) acknowledged “a national-scale problem” related to PFCs, but “we don’t have the authority and we don’t have the resources” to do much about it, director Pat Breysse said.

Read more:

Air Force says it can’t fund health study after poisoning water around its base

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Don’t be Fooled, the CIA was Only Half the Problem in Syria

By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 31.07.2017

The news that President Trump has halted the CIA program to arm and train rebel groups in Syria should be viewed with caution, as the CIA program only represented half of US involvement in Syria.  Even if we take this information as completely accurate, and the CIA will cease to be involved in any covert programs in Syria, there is still a giant arm of US imperialism that is going to be heavily involved in the Syrian conflict for the foreseeable future; namely, the Pentagon.

The notion that the CIA was the only branch of the US establishment involved in the destabilization of Syria is nonsense. The US has always had two operations running simultaneously in Syria, with one being run by the CIA, and other being ran by the Pentagon. As Reuters reported in an article in May of this year, titled: Syrian rebels say U.S., allies sending more arms to fend off Iran threat, military aid has been provided through “two separate channels:”

“Rebels said military aid has been boosted through two separate channels: a program backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known as the MOC, and regional states including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and one run by the Pentagon.”

These two programs have often clashed, as was the case last year, when militias armed by the CIA fought against militias armed by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has been as involved in the disastrous operation to arm and train rebels in Syria as the CIA has, and has contributed heavily to the mess on the ground.

In September 2015 for instance, it was reported that a Pentagon-armed group of rebels – named Division 30 – handed over their weapons to al-Qaeda in Syria, a scenario that was a common outcome from many CIA operations as well. The Pentagon, never shy to blow an obscene amount of taxpayers’ money on imperial matters, has already wasted hundreds of millions of dollars training and arming rebels in Syria, yet Trump only wants to increase the US war budget. 

Trump: The Man of the Military 

Trump’s decision to halt the CIA program was hardly surprising, considering the support Trump has received from large sections of the military. A look at the backgrounds of the individuals that Trump has given cabinet positions reveals Trump’s close relationship with the military.

The Secretary of Homeland Security for instance, John Kelly, is a retired Marine Corps General and former Commander of US Southern Command. Trump’s pick for the Director of the CIA is even more telling, as Mike Pompeo has his roots in the military, graduating from West Point in the 1980s:

“Mr. Pompeo graduated first in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1986 and served as a cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He also served with the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry in the US Army’s Fourth Infantry Division.”

Undoubtedly, there are many good forces in the US military (as in any other large organization), and there is nothing wrong with having a military background. But equally, there are also many nefarious forces in the military, and the influence of military-industrial complex is pervasive, constantly agitating for more imperial wars.

With this context in mind, it is hardly surprising that Trump favours the Pentagon program over the CIA one, especially considering the power struggle taking place between the CIA and the military within the US. It should be highlighted that Trump has notcompletely halted all US programs to arm and train militias in Syria, he has merely shutdown one channel.

Pentagon Using Kurds to Balkanize Syria 

The Pentagon has been heavily involved in arming Kurdish forces in Syria, using them as a tool to attempt to Balkanize and fracture Syria into micro-states. In May of this year, President Trump approved a plan – supported by many in the Pentagon – to arm the People’s Protection Unit (YPG), a Kurdish militia operating predominantly in northern Syria.

The YPG is also the controlling militia in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes an array of other militias. In addition to providing arms to the YPG, US special forces have been pictured on the ground in northern Syria working in conjunction with YPG fighters.

When most of the public was distracted by the story of Trump halting the CIA program, footage surfaced showing US armed military vehicles passing through Qamishli – a city in northern Syria on the Turkish border – reportedly on route to Raqqa. The recipients of the vehicles are believed to be either the SDF or US forces directly, who are involved in the battle against ISIS in Raqqa.

If (or when) ISIS is defeated in Raqqa, it will be very interesting to see who ends up controlling the city. It is possible that the Pentagon wants to defeat ISIS in Raqqa, and then hand Raqqa to the Kurds – a scenario that many Kurds would only be too happy with. In March of this year, Saleh Muslim, the co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) – the political affiliate of the YPG – said that once ISIS is defeated in Raqqa, the city should be incorporated into a Kurdish state in northern Syria. 

The Pentagon’s support for Kurdish forces is clearly part of a strategy to break the northern part of the country away from control of the Syrian government in Damascus. A subservient Kurdish state in northern Syria (which would probably join with Kurdish zones in Iraq and other countries in the future) would allow the US to have a permanent military presence in Syria, and easy access to the natural resources in the Kurdish region.

The creation of a Kurdish state in northern Syria would of course cause a severe breakdown in relations with NATO member Turkey, given the views of the current Turkish leadership that is. Turkey considers the YPG to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group Ankara views as a terrorist organization. Turkey has repeatedly denounced US support for Kurdish groups in Syria, with this being a major source of disagreement between the US and Turkey. It is no coincidence that Turkish state media recently published a list of classified US military bases and outposts in northern Syria, with this information revealing the extent to which the US military is embedded in Kurdish-controlled regions in Syria.

The plan to Balkanize Syria is well on its way, and the Pentagon is leading the charge. How Russia positions herself in the coming months will be crucial for the future of Syria.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Sabotaging Russia-US Relations for Good

By Federico PIERACCINI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 31.07.2017

The strategy that the American deep state intends to employ to sabotage once and for all the possibilities of a rapprochement between the United States and Russia has been revealed.

After months of debate over the bad state of relations between the United States and Russia, the G20 offered the stage for the two leaders to meet and start discussing the various problems facing the two countries. In the days following the summit in Hamburg, the Kremlin and the White House revealed that Putin and Trump met three times in bilateral talks to discuss how to improve relations between the two nations. The ceasefire reached in southern Syria is therefore intended as the first step in a new direction set for Washington and Moscow.

As was easy to foresee, the deep state did not like this prospect of cooperation, immediately unleashing the mainstream media on Trump, because repeated meetings with Putin at the G20 were apparently suggestive of some sort of collusion, as if the leaders of two nuclear powers cannot even speak with each other. Obviously uncomfortable with these meetings, the sabotaging of relations between Russia and the US has taken a new turn. The previous ceasefire in Syria, reached by Kerry and Lavrov during the previous administration a year ago, was sabotaged by the US Air Force’s bombing of Syrian troops at Deir ez-Zor, which killed and injured more than a hundred Syrian soldiers. This served to favor Daesh’s assault on government positions, hinting at some sort of cooperation between Washington and the terrorists. Moscow immediately interrupted any military-to-military communication with Washington, which included the ceasefire reached between Lavrov and Kerry.

This time the strategy seems more refined and certainly does not lend itself to military action. Following the incident in Deir ez-Zor, the bombing of the Syrian base, and the downing of the Syrian Su-22, any further US military provocation would be met with a harsh response from the Russian side, risking an escalation that even the US military does not seem willing to to risk. For this reason, it seems that an approach that relies more on legislative means than military power has been chosen.

The Senate has overwhelmingly voted to impose new sanctions, the primary purpose of which is to deny the US President the ability to end sanctions on Russia without Moscow first demonstrating good will to resolve points of friction between the two countries. The areas of disagreement include the situation in Ukraine and Syria, nuclear weapons, an end to the alleged hacking of US elections, and the supposed intention of Moscow to invade the Baltic states. Obfuscation, lies and misinformation seem to be the driving force behind the Senate vote. The bill will end up on Trump’s desk, and at that point he will have to decide whether to sign it or not. If he signs it, it will obvioulsy limit his autonomy.

With Trump’s latest move, it is difficult to know whether he directly ordered the CIA to stop funding jihadists fighting Assad in Syria, or whether it was an independent choice of the CIA connected with other plans of which we are not aware. In any case, it seems to have particularly agitated the deep state, which now sees its destabilization plans for Syria hampered, with Moscow left in full control of the Syrian state and its fate.

The role of the deep state, in addition to enriching its components through the military-industrial complex, is based on the continued need for the United States to have enemies (read my complete series in parts 1, 2, 3 and 4), which requires major investments in armaments and intelligence agencies, two of the fundamental components of the deep state.

The 4+1 theory, in military terms, refers to the four major challenges facing the United States, plus a fifth, namely: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, plus terrorism. Having four powerful enemies – regional if not global powers – such as China and Russia, creates the necessary conditions for the United States to continue to justify its presence in volatile regions like the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. In all these areas, US attention is directed at one of these four challenges. The fifth danger, terrorism, acts as a corrosive that slowly erodes individual freedoms within the United States and its allies, justifying their continued presence in historically hostile territories like the Middle East under the guise of fighting terrorism, when in actual fact advancing their own geopolitical objectives. The bottom line remains the need for Washington to expand its own war machine over the whole planet, hoping to be able to influence every single issue with political, economic and military power or pressure. The end game is to prolong as long as possible the agony of a unipolar, American-dominated world order that is rapidly fading in the place of a fairer and more just multipolar world order.

American allies push for sabotage

With this latest Senate proposal, the deep state wants to eliminate the danger that Trump can exercise his own initiative to remove sanctions against Moscow and pursue the path of peace with Russia. A reconciliation with Moscow is viewed with particular suspicion by two main allies of the US in the region, that is to say, Israel and Saudi Arabia. There are no two other capitals that have more influential lobbies in Washington then Riyad and Tel Aviv. It is not surprising, then, that the American deep state, made up of many who are sympathetic to the Saudis and Israelis, views positively the sabotage of relations between Washington and Moscow. It is very likely that the Israeli and Saudi lobbies have spent considerable sums of money to push senators and congressmen to support this proposal.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have invested enormous amounts of money and political weight to the overthrow Assad, and the direction that the war in Syria is taking is likely to turn violently against them. Israel finds a Syrian state strengthened by alliances with Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, Lebanon and Iraq likely to render the Israeli hopes of controlled chaos in the region vain. Saudi Arabia, like Israel, is afraid of seeing the rebuilding of the Shiite axis extending from Iran to the Mediterranean through Iraq and Syria. It is a nightmare for those who hoped to oust Assad, control Iraq and ultimately subdue under their own power all of the Middle East region. With Moscow’s intervention almost two years ago, Syria’s Assad resumed a triumphant march against Daesh and jihadist terrorism, cleaning up much of the nation and reversing the negative trend that threatened to break down the Baathist republic.

A rapprochement between Moscow and Washington is seen as a danger by Tel Aviv and Riyadh, which is why hostile relations between Russia and the US has become a rallying point for an alliance between liberals and neoconservatives in the United States, along with takfiris in Saudi Arabia and Zionists in Israel.

Conclusions

This axis opposed to any kind of rapprochement between Moscow and Washington has found many sponsors in the European political system; that is until the consequences of these new sanctions were made clear. Trump reiterated that the US objective is to sell LNG to European partners by becoming an energy-exporting nation. One of the direct effects of sanctions on Russia is the prevention of Europeans from collaborating with Russian energy companies, thereby sabotaging the plan for the North Stream 2 link and probably even the Turkish Stream integrating into the European pipeline network. Political reactions in Europe have not been missed, and understandably irritation has reached boiling point (including Moscow’s). It would also seem that schizophrenia seems to be a distinctive feature of the politicians of the old continent. The Baltic states fear a non-existent threat of a Russian invasion, while Germany and Austria complain of American interference in their strategic energy plans, considering it unacceptable.

A divided and inconsistent West drowns in its own discordant decisions. Trump, stupidly, initially tried to placate the deep state by offering Flynn’s head to the highest bidder. This only served to worsen the situation, bringing Trump to admit an unwavering attempt to hack US elections on the Russian side. To complete this disaster, missiles were launched against the Shayrat Airbase in Syria on the basis of fictitious evidence of a chemical attack on Syrian civilians by the Syrian Arab Air Force.

All of these choices have worsened the initial situation of the presidency, which now finds no more cartridges to fire in order to withstand the pressure of its senators to approve new sanctions. Trump decided to bend the knee and obey in hope of obtaining some kind of concessions from the deep state. This did not work, and now Trump is struggling for political survival.

It seems clear now that the Republican senators are in some way blackmailing Trump: so long as he does not fully give up on Russian rapprochement, the huge electoral promise of eliminating and replacing Obamacare will remain just a dream, causing him major damage. In this context, Trump seemed less prepared for the Washington hawks, and seems to have lost this important political battle.

It remains to be seen how effective the deep state will be in sabotaging these attempts of rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. The effects may be exactly the opposite, as already seen in the many failures of Washington’s strategic plans. The neocons/liberals and their regional allies in the Middle East continue to weaken American security by renouncing a partnership against terrorism, which would certainly benefit American citizens in the first place as well as calm the situation in the region. But then again, chaos is always the first choice of the American deep state for the purpose influencing events by fomenting violence and thereby advancing strategic goals and objectives. We can only hope that this time they have overplayed their hand and that European allies, or the Trump administration, will try to survive this new sabotage attempt.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia adjusts to realities in US politics

“Trump has nothing to do with the anti-Russia campaign and the public remains indifferent, while an improbable coalition of the Congress and the jeering media is orchestrating the chorus.”

By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | July 30, 2017

An instance of such monumental patience is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, in Russian diplomacy: Moscow took 179 days to retaliate against former US President Barack Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats on December 30, 2016, ostensibly to show rancour at alleged Russian efforts to interfere with the US presidential election.

The 35 Russian diplomats were “intelligence operatives”, Obama said. He gave them 72 hours to leave American soil, and he impounded two Russian diplomatic compounds as well.

In Moscow, though, President Vladimir Putin responded that Russia wouldn’t retaliate but would decide on further steps only after considering the actions of the incoming new president, Donald Trump.

Putin went on invite the children of American diplomats posted in Russia to a Christmas party in the Kremlin. But he had a master plan.

Putin preferred to start Russia’s discourse with the Trump administration on a creative note. Trump had raised high expectations in Moscow that a brave new world of partnership between Russia and the US might be approaching.

In the months that followed, however, such hopes began dimming even as Russia became a toxic subject in the Washington Beltway.

Nonetheless, residual hope lingered, as Trump deputed state secretary Rex Tillerson to travel to Moscow for talks in April and within the month also received the visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office.

The Russian spirits certainly soared when Trump and Putin held an extraordinary 126-minute meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg where they discussed a range of issues complicating the relationship and yet managed to stay in their positions.

However, the pendulum has now swung to the other extreme with the US Congress passing legislation on further sanctions against Russia. What stunned Moscow is the near-unanimity with which the US lawmakers voted for the bill.

Moscow has drawn two conclusions. First, an intensification of US pressure against Russia is on the cards even as Russophobia has morphed into an anti-Russian mindset. A hardening of the US stance on Ukraine is likely. In Syria, too, Russia is far from a commanding position since several players are, pursuing their own agenda.

The sanctions encompass areas where Russia has the capacity to offer cooperation – energy, defense, mining, railway transport, etc. Curiously, the bill seeks to arm-twist third countries that may be inclined toward developing cooperation with Russia – countries such as India, Vietnam, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Again, real pressure will come if the US begins to tamper with the strategic balance with Russia.

Second, the legislation virtually takes the Russia policies out of Trump’s hands. Moscow trusted Trump’s instincts to improve relations with Russia and hoped that he’d call the shots ultimately.

But that may be about to change. Congress is reducing Trump to a subaltern role. Russia has no means to leverage influence in the US Congress. Trump may find a way to strike back at the Congress but it is small comfort if political tensions consequently rise in Washington.

All in all, therefore, Moscow sees that a normalization of Russia-US relations can be ruled out for a foreseeable future. The Congress can be expected to determine the US policy towards Russia through the Trump presidency – and this will be a policy of strangling Russia.

This grim prospect leaves Russia with no alternative but to recognise the US as a strategic and key challenge to its security.

Thus, Moscow’s decision on July 28 to curb the US diplomatic presence in Russia may seem a timid response. After all, Moscow is only responding to Obama’s harsh decision and is merely seeking reciprocity with a ceiling of 455 diplomats for both countries (which is where Russian tally currently stands.)

But on close examination, Washington has been made to look foolish. While Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats, Putin’s order to slash the number of US diplomatic staff to 455 will affect a few hundred US personnel currently assigned to Russia.

Moscow is signalling that bilateral cooperation has become pointless. Indeed, Trump has nothing to do with the anti-Russia campaign and the American public remains indifferent, while an improbable coalition of the Congress and the jeering media is orchestrating the chorus. But the realities cannot be ignored.

The triumphalism on the Hill will be short-lived, because the potential strategic consequences for US’ core interests and vital interests are yet to sink in. The West’s policy on Russia now onward becomes a point of discord between Washington and the EU.

China, no doubt, gets a huge strategic windfall, since Moscow will seek closer rapprochement with Beijing, especially on security. A Russian observer noted wryly, “we can easily imagine them (Russia and China) holding military drills in the Straits of Florida near Cuba.”

Knowing Putin, Russia’s response will be calibrated. He implied in remarks while visiting Helsinki on Tuesday that Russia will play the long game.

After all, it is not only in the US’ relations with Russia, but also with allies in Europe and Asia – Germany and Japan, in particular – that fault lines have appeared. Russian diplomacy can be trusted to exploit what Germans call the “zeitgeist” – the spirit of our times – as the US’ global influence inexorably declines.

Russia’s cooperation can be crucial to US interests, and Moscow now has an option to cherry pick. Make no mistake, Moscow will exercise its option highly selectively.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Iran sanctions simply don’t add up

By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | July 31, 2017

The new legislation by the venerable lawmakers in the United States, imposing sanctions against Iran (along with Russia and North Korea), has an air of inevitability. But what is inevitable doesn’t always have to be logical.

The base line is how effective these sanctions are going to be. Iran is not new to US sanctions and its economy does not depend on trade or investment from the US. In sum, the US lawmakers are hoping to impose the sanctions via the international community.

But the main difference this time as compared to previous US sanctions is that the POTUS happens to be Donald Trump and the international community regards him with profound scepticism bordering on bewilderment. The world opinion is unlikely to rally behind Trump in an enterprise to punish Iran – or on any issue.

There is a big contradiction in the Trump administration’s approach to Iran because it is legislating sanctions while also certifying that Iran’s compliance with the 15 July 2015 nuclear deal [JCPOA] is satisfactory. And for the world community, JCPOA is a vital platform in international security and is the top priority.

Trump doesn’t have the ghost of a chance to get the UN Security Council to sanctify new sanctions against Iran (on whatever pretext). And in the absence of UN mandate, this becomes an issue of his “America First” foreign policy.

Things will be different if Iran retaliates against these sanctions by exiting the JCPOA, pleading that Washington is backing out from the deal. But Tehran is instead playing an astute game. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif said yesterday that Iran will not give a “gift” to Trump.

Zarif signalled that: a) Iran can live with Trump’s sanctions; b) Iran stands to gain more by complying with the JCPOA and earn international goodwill (especially among the world powers); and, c) Iran is utterly free anyway to pursue its missile program (which is indigenous and does not depend on Western technology).

What matters to Iran is that its successful (re)integration with the international community does not suffer any setback. So long as Iran can sell its oil and gas in the world market and so long as there is no sanctions regime with a cutting edge such as the one Barack Obama brilliantly succeeded in imposing (by getting even China and Russia on board), Iran can advance its development agenda.

In fact, Russia’s Gazprom just signed an agreement with Iran’s Oil Industries’ Engineering and Construction to develop Azar and Changuleh oil fields, Iran’s most recent discoveries located in the western province of Lorestan, which are believed to hold an in-place reserve of about 3.5 billion barrels of oil. (Azar is a joint field Iran shares with Iraq.)

Clearly, in the developing global scenario with the US-Russia relations nose diving – and no improvement possible in a foreseeable future – Russian military technology reaches Iran more freely than ever before. Iran’s strategic defiance of the US matters to the Russian strategy.

Equally, China views Iran as the regional hub in its Belt and Road Initiative. Only last week, China agreed to provide $1.5 billion as funding for the upgrade of the Tehran-Meshaad trunk railway line which connects Central Asia.

Suffice to say, if Iran can sell oil in the world market to generate income and with full-throttle cooperation with Russian and Chinese (and even some EU countries), Tehran will be doing reasonably well against Trump’s best-laid plans to “isolate” it.

The EU is giving an unmistakeable signal to Trump through the announcement on Saturday in Brussels that EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will be travelling to Tehran on August 5 to attend the inaugural ceremony of President Hassan Rouhani in her capacity as the head of the Iran-5+1 Joint Commission monitoring the JCPOA. (In addition to Mogherini, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has also announced his intention to participate in the event.

However, this is not to say that Trump will back off from his enterprise to punish Iran and bring about a ‘regime change’. Knowing Trump, he might well be planning to score a hat-trick by dumping the JCPOA sometime around September when the next certification on Iran’s compliance is due – thereby completing a trifecta of withdrawals from international agreements that he inherited from Obama (the other two being Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris accord on climate change.)

How does it all add up? By withdrawing from JCPOA, Trump will the isolating the US in international opinion. The political optic will be simply “disastrous” – to borrow Trump’s favourite idiom. The US will be the outlier.

Trump’s biggest challenge is that while the US’ allies support strict and verifiable implementation of the JCOPA by Iran, they disapprove of Trump’s game plan to create a pretext to collapse or renegotiate the deal. Even for proposing a renegotiation of the JCPOA, Washington needs five of the eight members of the Joint Commission (comprising US, UK, France, Britain, Germany, EU, Russia and China) to back the proposal.

Finally, as the Bible says, “Behold, a little cloud, like a man’s hand is rising” on the horizon – pressure is building over the release of Americans under detention in Iran. Some Iranian news reports recently mentioned the names of several Iranian citizens in jail in the US for sanctions violations.

Tehran could be signalling interest in a quiet conversation over a potential political prisoner exchange similar to what Obama administration once negotiated. Which, of course, requires the Trump administration to engage directly with the government of Iran.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

8 million Venezuelans vote for Constituent Assembly amid violence

Press TV – July 31, 2017

Over eight million Venezuelans have participated in the Sunday vote to elect a powerful new congress, which will be allowed to rewrite the constitution, with President Nicolas Maduro hailing the results as a victory for the country’s Bolivarian Revolution.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council said Monday that the turnout was 41.5 percent– more than double the estimates of both the government’s political opponents and independent experts.

“Peace has won. If peace has won, Venezuela has won,” said Tibisay Lucena, the council’s president, at a televised press conference, the pan–Latin American Telesur television network reported. “Despite the violence and threats, Venezuelans were able to express themselves.”

Speaking at a large gathering of government supporters, Maduro thanked the nation for supporting the vote and said it was one of the highest voter turnouts in the history of the Bolivarian Revolution, with 8,089, 320 casting ballots to select their representatives.

“It is the biggest vote the revolution has ever scored in its 18-year history,” he said, referring to the year his late predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, came to power.

“Eight million in the middle of threats, there were states where they crossed rivers and mountains, and they voted,” Maduro said.

He also hailed the Latin American and Caribbean countries for standing by Venezuela against “interventionist” moves by the United States.

“We don’t care what [US President Donald] Trump says, we care about what our people say,” said Maduro, referring to Trump’s promise that he would not accept the vote results.

The Venezuelan president said before the new legislative body begins the process to re-write the constitution, the government will in the first step call on the opposition to engage in dialog.

However, members of the opposition, which has boycotted the vote, reacted with mockery and anger to the count, which they say appears to be only two to three million.

The Sunday vote took place amid a wave of clashes and violence, which led to the deaths of ten people.

Anti-government protesters and security forces engaged in street battles across the country as voting got underway early Sunday morning. Those killed include a soldier and a regional opposition leader, according to prosecutors.

They also say one of the candidates running in the assembly election was also fatally shot by yet unknown gunmen.

Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino Lopez said none of the deaths that occurred in the setting of Sunday’s vote were “attributable to the Bolivarian National Armed Forces.”

The anti-government protesters took to the streets despite a ban on such gatherings, which took effect on Friday and will continue through Tuesday.

The government had deployed more than 200,000 military officers to maintain order in more than 1,000 voting stations across the country.

The roads to polling stations had been sealed off and only those with registration cards were allowed to pass.

Several attacks happened in the capital city of Caracas, where one remote explosion occurred around noon and injured at least six police officers.

The opposition has urged further protests on Monday.

“We do not recognize this fraudulent process,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Maduro wants to replace the current legislative body— the National Assembly— with a new institution called the Constituent Assembly. The new assembly will have the power to override an opposition-led congress and re-write the constitution.

The opposition says the new assembly is a power grab by Maduro.

The president, however, argues that it is the only way to restore peace after months of opposition-backed political unrest, which has fueled the country’s economic woes.

The latest casualties brought the death toll from the unrest ongoing since early April to 123, authorities said.

US urges ‘swift actions’

Meanwhile, the US State Department officially condemned the Venezuelan government for holding the vote, and once again promised to “continue to take strong and swift actions against the architects of authoritarianism in Venezuela.”

The department called Maduro’s measure as a move to “undermine the Venezuelan people’s right to self-determination.”

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley also took to Twitter on Sunday to offer Washington’s official response to the vote.

“Maduro’s sham election is another step toward dictatorship,” Haley tweeted. “We won’t accept an illegitimate govt. The Venezuelan ppl. [people] & democracy will prevail.”

The US and its allies, including the UK, Canada, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Panama and Paraguay, have said they would not recognize the vote results.

Washington also blamed Maduro for violence and urged regional and international governments to take strong action against his government.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Pence Talks with Opposition Leader Leopoldo Lopez over Venezuela’s ‘Dire Situation’

teleSUR | July 30, 2017

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence called Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez Friday “to address the dire situation in Venezuela,” as concern over U.S. interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs continues to grow.

In his phone conversation with Lopez, Pence praised “Mr. Lopez for his courage and outspoken defense of Venezuelan democracy,” according to the White House press statement.

Earlier this month, Lopez’s party Popular Will boycotted the dialogue process called by President Maduro to ease tensions between the government and the opposition.

Lopez also denounced Maduro’s call for the National Constituent Assembly, demanding the elections for the 545 representatives be canceled.

In the White House press statement, the vice president also reiterated, “President Trump’s pledge that if the Maduro regime imposes its Constituent Assembly on Sunday, July 30, the United States will respond with strong and swift economic actions.”

Lopez has a long and sordid history in Venezuelan politics, particularly for his involvement in the deadly “guarimba” protests. He gained prominence after becoming the mayor of the wealthy Caracas district of Chacao in Venezuela between 2000 and 2008.

According to investigative journalist Eva Golinger, in 2002 Lopez began frequenting Washington, D.C., to “visit IRI (International Republican Institute) headquarters and meet with officials in the Bush administration.” The IRI is one of the three foundations of the National Endowment for Democracy, NED, and has been pumping tens of millions of dollars to the opposition groups in Venezuela, including Justice First.

In 2014, Lopez was convicted and charged with plotting and promoting the violent street blockades, also known as “guarimbas” in Venezuela. The widespread violence led to the death of 43 people while hundreds more were injured. The violence also cost billions of dollars worth of damage to public buildings and infrastructure.

Lopez was sent to jail in 2015 and given a 13-year nine-month jail sentence for his role in leading the violent protests. He was recently allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest after citing “health concerns.”

In a video published by NBC Miami Wednesday, Lopez urged the Venezuelans to continue protesting on the streets, stating that Venezuela is facing a “clear and imminent threat” to its democracy.

The phone call between the opposition leader and the U.S. vice president comes as the United States escalates its threats against Venezuela.

Earlier this week, Washington issued a travel warning telling the U.S. citizens to avoid travel to the South American country and also ordered the relatives of all its diplomats to leave Caracas.

July 31, 2017 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

US systematically targeting residential areas: Syria to UN

Press TV – July 31, 2017

Damascus has called on the UN to end the Washington’s crimes against Syrian civilians, while stressing that the US is systematically targeting residential areas.

On Sunday, the Syrian foreign ministry sent two letters to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the chairman of the UN Security Council, calling for the dissolving of the US-led coalition in Syria which is operating in the country without permission from Damascus.

“The US-led international coalition continues to commit massacres against Syrian innocent civilians through conducting systematic airstrikes on the provinces of Raqqah, Hasakah, Aleppo and Dayr al-Zawr on a daily basis,” reads the letter.

The letters were sent after at least six civilians lost their lives and nearly a dozen others sustained injuries when the US-led coalition, purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, conducted a series of airstrikes in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

The letters noted that the coalition’s member states continue to support terrorist groups such as Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.

“Those attacks contributed to the spread of creative chaos, the killing and destruction which fulfill goals of the coalition and the terrorist organizations in destabilizing security in the region, destroying Syria’s capabilities and prolonging the crisis in a way that serves the interests of the Israeli entity,” it adds.

Syria has been has been fighting different foreign-sponsored militant and terrorist groups since March 2011. UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimated last August that more than 400,000 people had been killed in the crisis until then.

July 30, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

In the fight between Rick Perry and climate scientists — He’s winning

By Ross McKitrick – The Hill – 07/27/17

Policy makers and the public need to understand the extent to which major scientific institutions like the American Meteorological Society have become biased and politicized on the climate issue. Convincing them of this becomes much easier when the organizations themselves supply the evidence.

This happened recently in response to a CNBC interview with Energy Secretary Rick Perry. He was asked “Do you believe CO2 [carbon dioxide] is the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate?”

It was an ambiguous question that defies a simple yes or no answer. Perry thought for moment then said, “No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment we live in.” He then went on to acknowledge the climate is changing and CO2 is having a role, but the issue is how much, and being skeptical about some of these things is “quite all right.”

Perry’s response prompted a letter of protest from Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. The letter admonished him for supposedly contradicting “indisputable findings” that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause of recent global warming, a topic for which Seitter insists there is no room for debate.

It is noteworthy that the meteorological society remained completely silent over the years when senior Democratic administration officials made multiple exaggerated and untrue statements in service of global warming alarmism.

When Secretary of State John Kerry falsely claimed in 2016 that “storms that used to happen once every 500 years are becoming relatively normal,” or when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy claimed in 2015 that green house gases are behind upward trends in “extreme heat, cold, storms, fires and floods,” the meteorological society said nothing, even though the evidence clearly contradicts these positions.

When President Obama tweeted in 2013 that “97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous” the meteorological society said nothing, even though no such survey existed and the meteorological society’s own membership survey the next year showed nearly half of its members doubted either that climate change was even happening or that CO2 played a dominant role.

But the meteorological society leapt to condemn Perry for a cautious response to an awkward question. Perry could not reasonably have agreed with the interviewer since the concept of a “control knob” for the Earth’s temperature wasn’t defined. Doubling CO2 might, according to models, cause a few degrees of warming. Doubling the size of the sun would burn up the planet. Doubling cloud cover might trigger an ice age. So which is the “primary control knob”? The meteorological society letter ignored the odd wording of the question, misrepresented Perry’s response and then summarily declared their position on climate “indisputable.” Perry’s cautious answer, by contrast, was perfectly reasonable in the context of a confusing question in a fast-moving TV interview.

Furthermore, Seitter’s letter invites skepticism. It pronounces confidently on causes of global warming “in recent decades” even though this is where the literature is most disputed and uncertain. Climate models have overestimated warming in recent decades for reasons that are not yet known. Key mechanisms of natural variability are not well understood, and measured climate sensitivity to CO2 appears to be lower than modelers assumed. Climate models tweaked to get recent Arctic sea ice changes right get overall warming even more wrong, adding to the list of puzzles. But to the meteorological society, the fact that these and many other questions are unresolved does not prevent them from insisting on uniformity of opinion.

The meteorological society letter is all about enforcing orthodoxy, which speaks ill of the leadership’s overall views on open scientific debate.

In an Orwellian twist, in 2015 the meteorological society commissioned Edward Maibach of George Mason University to undertake a new survey of its members’ views on climate, just after Maibach had helped organize a letter to President Obama and Attorney-General Loretta Lynch calling for a criminal racketeering investigation into climate skeptics. Even still, notwithstanding the potential risks of revealing one’s views on climate to Maibach, a third of respondents still indicated that they did not view CO2 and green house gases as dominant influences on climate.

On that point, it is ironic that Seitter tells Perry that American Meteorological Society members “stand ready” to help him. He meant it in a condescending way, but clearly there are many members who side with Perry. And by reminding these scientists that a little skepticism is “quite all right” perhaps it is Perry who will end up helping the meteorologists.

Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph and an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute.

July 30, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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