Thursday, December 29, 2016
Ледниковый период. Татьяна Навка и Андрей Бурковский — «Beautiful That Way». (26.11.2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3FsrjBASNY
Bernie Delegates ASSAULTED By Hillary Supporters at Michigan Democratic Meeting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng5tQ5Q2XKQ&list=TLGGoxvEjTryntwyOTEyMjAxNg
Rhetorical Battles Over Settlements Overshadow US Military Protection of Israel at the UN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmLDzNJwOlg
North Pole 50 Degrees Warmer Than Normal in December
By Gaius
Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United
States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked
Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. Originally published at at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here. Originally
published at DownWithTyranny
Temperatures over the Arctic
ocean are as much as 50 degrees F (30 Celsius) above normal. It’s above
freezing in places that are normally 20 below zero in degrees F. Arctic sea ice
collapse on the Atlantic side has allowed warm storms to penetrate the central
Arctic. This extreme heat is destabilizing the northern hemisphere’s
atmospheric circulation all the way up to the top of the stratosphere.
(Full-size image here.)
No, this is not a Season of
Merry and Bright post, despite the phrase “North Pole” in the headline. It’s a
climate post, to keep you up on the news.
Nick Visser writing at the Huffington Post:
North Pole Forecast To Be 50
Degrees Warmer Than Normal This Week
For the second year in a row,
the Arctic is way hotter than it’s supposed to be.
Temperatures in the Arctic are
predicted to soar nearly 50 degrees above normal on Thursday [December 22] in a
pre-Christmas heat wave that will bring the frozen tundra scarily close to the
melting point.
It’s the second year in a row
the North Pole ― now in perpetual darkness after saying goodbye to the sun
in late October ― has seen abnormally high temperatures around the Christmas
holiday. It’s also the second time this year. In November, temperatures in the
region skyrocketed 36 degrees above normal.
The weather forecast adds to a
string of climate change-related indicators setting off serious warning bells
in 2016. Polar sea ice is at record lows, and during last month’s heat wave, the
region lost 19,000 square miles of it in just five days. The National Snow and
Ice Data Center called the melt an “almost unprecedented occurrence.”
And it’s not just the North
Pole: “The World Meteorological Organization has said it expects 2016 likely will surpass last year as the hottest year in
recorded history.”
Changes in the Jet Stream
If you’re thinking, “Well, we
don’t live in the Arctic, so it doesn’t affect us … yet,” you’d be wrong. All
of these changes to atmospheric temperature in the Arctic are affecting global
air circulation, including the jet stream.
From a highly technical post
at Daily Kos by “FishOutOfWater,” a geochemist by profession (emphasis
mine):
The lack of sea ice has
dramatically affected the northern hemisphere’s atmospheric circulation for
months. The heat this fall has formed a warm dome over the Arctic ocean and
provided moisture for deep, early Siberian snow. A record deep Siberian snow
pack for October pushed south of normal developing a deep pool of cold air over
central Siberia.
The much larger than normal
temperature contrasts (gradients) across Central Eurasia have intensified
the polar jet stream across Asia and the north Pacific Ocean. This is a
predicted consequence of intense early snowfall in Siberia associated with warm
water entering the Arctic seas. This fall has had all time record minimum sea
ice extent in the seas north of Eurasia and this unprecedented weather pattern
is the atmospheric response to these warm waters so deep into the Arctic.
Intense atmospheric waves,
associated with intense storms have whipped across both the Pacific and
Atlantic. When intense storms approached the Arctic from both the Pacific and
Atlantic in late October the stratospheric polar vortex was pinched from both
sides, a 2 wave pattern, and split in two.
This stratospheric polar
vortex split is unprecedented for so early in the Arctic winter season as far
as I know. The stratospheric polar vortex is now unstable and may
undergo a major midwinter warming in the next ten days [posted in
mid-November]. It may be the earliest major midwinter warming ever seen.
More about the “polar vortex”
and the jet stream:
When the vortex of the arctic
is strong it is well defined, there is a single vortex and the arctic air is
well contained; when weaker, which it generally is, it will break into two or
more vortices; when very weak, the flow of arctic air becomes more disorganized
and masses of cold arctic air can push equatorward, bringing with it a
rapid and sharp temperature drop….
When the polar vortex is weak,
high pressure zones of the mid latitudes may push poleward, moving the polar
vortex, jet stream, and polar front equatorward. The jet stream is seen to
“buckle” and deviate south. This rapidly brings cold dry air into contact with
the warm, moist air of the mid latitudes, resulting in a rapid and dramatic
change of weather known as a “cold snap”.[3]
This is what happens when the
jet stream is destabilized and wanders (“meanders”) due to a weak Arctic polar
vortex.
Meanders of the northern hemisphere‘s jet stream developing (a, b) and finally detaching
a “drop” of cold air (c); orange: warmer masses of air; pink: jet stream (click
to enlarge; source)
It’s beyond doubt that changes in the jet stream are changing our weather. And a
“meandering jet stream” is more and more in our future, perhaps a permanent
addition. Welcome to the anteroom of the Palace of Climate Chaos.
Is it an emergency
yet? (Click the link for something you can do about it.)
A Sour Holiday Season for Neocons
December 27, 2016
Exclusive: For the past
couple of decades, the neocons have ruled the roost of American foreign policy,
but they have now suffered some stunning reversals that have left them fuming,
reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
America’s extended Christmas
holiday season, stretching through much of November and all of December, has
not been a happy time for Official Washington’s dominant neoconservatives and
their liberal-interventionist sidekicks.
First, they had to lick their
wounds over the defeat of their
preferred U.S. presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton; then they had to
watch as their “moderate”
Syrian rebel proxies and their Al Qaeda allies were routed from east
Aleppo; and finally they watched in disbelief as the Obama administration
permitted passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning
Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian lands.
To say that the neocons and
liberal hawks have not taken these reversals well would be an understatement.
They have pretty much blamed Clinton’s defeat on everyone but themselves and
Clinton herself. They have been apoplectic over Aleppo and their lost dream of
“regime change” in Syria. And they have sputtered in outrage over President
Obama’s failure to veto the Israeli anti-settlement resolution.
Regarding Clinton’s defeat,
her embrace of the neocon/liberal-hawk “regime change” obsessions siphoned off
enthusiasm among the peace faction of the Democratic Party, a significant and
activist part of the progressive movement.
Clinton’s alignment with the
neocon/liberal hawks may have helped her with the mainstream media, but the MSM
has lost much of its credibility by making itself a handmaiden in leading the
nation to wars and more wars.
Average Americans also could
feel the contempt that these elites had for the rest of us. The neocons and
liberal hawks had come to believe in the CIA’s
concept of “perception management,” feeling that the American people were
items to be controlled, not the nation’s sovereigns to be informed and
respected. Instead of “We the People,” Official Washington’s elites treated us
like “Us the Sheep.”
Though this “perception
management” idea took hold during the Reagan administration – largely in
reaction to the public’s distrust of U.S. foreign policy following the Vietnam
War – it became a bipartisan practice, extending through George W. Bush’s WMD
sham about Iraq and into the behavior of the Obama administration in
manipulating public opinion about Syria, Libya, Ukraine and Russia, pretty much
any country targeted for “regime change.”
So, when this establishment
tried to force Hillary Clinton’s coronation down the nation’s throat, enough
Americans choked at the idea – even to the extent of voting for the eminently
unqualified Donald Trump – to deny Clinton the White House. Indeed, many
Americans who reluctantly did vote for Clinton did so only because they
considered Trump even more unfit to lead the nation. The two candidates were in
a fierce competition for who would arouse the most public revulsion.
No Self-Reflection
But the neocons and liberal
hawks are not ones for self-reflection and self-criticism. They move from one
disaster to the next, finding others to blame and justifying their own failures
by publishing self-apologias in the editorial pages of The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
Thus, for the past several
weeks, we have witnessed daily meltdowns across the mainstream media as neocons
and liberal interventionists fume about all the forces that conspired to deny
them their God-given right to select who runs America.
The mainstream media ranted
about a few
incidents of “fake news” – concocted stories designed to get lots of clicks
from Trump supporters – despite its own long history of publishing false and
misleading stories. The MSM then tried to tar with that “fake news” broad brush
serious independent Web sites that simply displayed
professional skepticism toward propaganda emanating from the U.S. State
Department.
The smear blurred the “fake
news scandal” with what was deemed “Russian propaganda.” Anyone who wouldn’t
march in lockstep with the State Department’s messaging must be a “Kremlin
stooge.” Mainstream media outlets even began
demanding that major technology companies, such as Facebook and Google,
join in establishing a modern-age Ministry of Truth for the Internet that would
punish independent Web sites that didn’t toe the Official Line.
Then, there was the hysteria
over the CIA’s still-unproven claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin
oversaw a scheme to hack into Democratic emails and expose embarrassing facts,
such as the Democratic National Committee’s tilting the primary playing field
to favor Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders, the contents of Clinton’s paid
speeches to her Wall Street benefactors, and pay-to-play features of the
Clinton money machine.
Though this information all
appeared to be true — and revealed dubious or improper actions by Democratic
officials and the Democratic presidential nominee — this truth-telling was also
mixed in with the “fake news scandal” and other excuse-making for why Clinton
lost. Her defeat was Putin’s fault. It was also FBI Director James Comey’s
fault for chastising Clinton for her “extremely careless” handling of U.S.
government secrets because she insisted on using a private email server as
Secretary of State. And, of course, there was the supposed over-reaction to
Clinton calling many Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.”
In other words, the Clinton
campaign appears to have been done in by various people telling the truth about
a variety of unsavory aspects of Hillary Clinton’s behavior and
decision-making. If none of these facts had come out before the election, the
thinking was that Clinton would have won and the neocons/liberal hawks could
have continued and even expanded their dominion over U.S. foreign policy.
Yet, to me, the biggest
head-scratcher about Clinton’s disastrous campaign was why – after she left the
State Department in 2013 – did she jump into the sleazy business of collecting
hundreds of thousands of dollars for brief speeches to Wall Street and other
special interests.
Her prospective presidency was
crucial to the Clinton business model of soliciting huge donations and fees
from corporations and foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation and to
allied consulting firms, such as the Podesta Group. These corporate and foreign
leaders were pre-paying for “access” to the future U.S. president. However,
instead of shielding Clinton from the grubby business of collecting the money
herself, she was dispatched to join in the money grabbing.
This greed or hubris left
millions of Americans troubled by what a restoration of Clinton control of the
Executive Branch might mean. Whether Trump was sincere or not, he hit a nerve
when he talked about “draining the swamp.”
‘Regime Change’ Reversals
The neocons and liberal hawks
also watched their “regime change” plans for Syria – something that has been on
their agenda since the mid-1990s – collapse with this month’s fall of east
Aleppo to Syrian government troops, backed by Russia and Iran.
In the battle for Syria, the
Obama administration, other Western governments and Persian Gulf states
illegally armed a melange of rebels and terrorists. But the West and its
allies also deployed state-of-the-art propaganda techniques in which government
agencies and like-thinking private foundations invested tens of millions of
dollars in training Syrian activists to use social media to rally international
support.
This propaganda strategy
reached its apex in Aleppo, which was portrayed in Western media as a case of
the Syrian government and its allies willfully slaughtering helpless children.
The fact that the “moderate” rebels were operating
under the command structure of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, such as
Ahrar al-Sham, was almost blacked out from the West’s mainstream media
coverage.
The last piece of coal in the
neocon/liberal-hawk stocking came last week with the U.N. Security Council’s
repudiation of Israel’s illegal settlement building on Palestinian lands.
Though the Obama administration only abstained from the vote, the lack of a
U.S. veto enabled the resolution to pass unanimously, 14-0.
Again, the neocons erupted in
fury. Rather than acknowledge that Israel had brought this condemnation on
itself by its illegal actions, the neocons lashed out at Obama and the world
for not taking Israel’s side. The neocon editors of The Washington Post decried
Obama’s decision as “a dangerous parting shot at Israel.”
“It will encourage
Palestinians to pursue more international sanctions against Israel rather than
seriously consider the concessions necessary for statehood, and it will give a
boost to the international boycott and divestment movement against the Jewish
state, which has become a rallying cause for anti-Zionists,” the Post lamented.
“At the same time, it will
almost certainly not stop Israeli construction in the West Bank, much less in
East Jerusalem, where Jewish housing was also deemed by the resolution to be ‘a
flagrant violation under international law.’”
Similarly, the neocon editors
of the Wall Street Journal labeled Obama’s abstention his “Anti-Israeli
Tantrum,” claiming that the non-vote was simply an extension of his “personal
pique at adversaries,” in this case toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Like virtually all neocons,
the Post’s and Journal’s editors insist that the U.S. government always stand
shoulder to shoulder with Israel though that usually means that Netanyahu
stands wherever he wants and U.S. officials sidle up to him.
Though neocons always blame
the Palestinians for not making the concessions that Israel demands – and thus
holding them at fault for the moribund peace process – the reality is that the
Israeli leadership has no intention of reaching a reasonable two-state solution
with the Palestinians and hasn’t for at least two decades.
A Fig Leaf
The mirage of a two-state
solution has simply been a fig leaf for neocons and their liberal allies to
cite as an excuse for allowing Israel’s steady gobbling up of Palestinian land
to continue apace.
The reality is that Israel is
on a steady march to become a full-scale apartheid state in which Palestinians
are kept as either stateless or second-class citizens indefinitely. When these
facts on the ground can no longer to obfuscated or denied, then the world will
have little choice but to engage in the sort of moral and economic pressure
that confronted racist South Africa in the 1980s.
At that point, peaceful
pressure, such as boycott and divestiture, will be the most reasonable steps to
convince Israel that it has veered off onto a dangerously racist course that
can’t be justified simply by mystical allusions to ancient biblical text.
But the American neocons and
their liberal-interventionist junior partners seem more committed to defending
Israeli interests than American interests. So, they denounce any international
criticism of Israel as “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic,” a smear that has for
years terrified politicians and journalists in Official Washington but may now
be so overused and abused that it is no longer taken seriously.
The other grave danger from
this neocon manipulation of America on behalf of Israeli interests is that this
behavior will revive the historical evil of actual anti-Semitism, a threat that
could be avoided now by convincing Israel to act like a responsible global
partner, not a racist rogue state.
There is some hope among
hardline pro-Israeli Americans that Donald Trump will support Israel as it
encroaches more and more onto Palestinian lands. But the neocons and liberal
hawks recognize that Trump’s “America First” rhetoric is implicitly critical
of undertaking more “regime change” projects against governments on
Israel’s enemies list.
By appointing a pro-settler
American lawyer, David Friedman, as ambassador to Israel, Trump also may be, in
effect, giving Netanyahu encouragement to cast aside the “two-state” fig leaf
and reveal his territorial ambitions in all their nakedness.
The neocons, of course, would
still find arguments to defend Israeli apartheid – we’d hear about what animals
the Palestinians are, much as we heard about the savagery of South Africa’s
blacks from defenders of white supremacy – but that might finally be pushing
beyond what the modern world could tolerate.
Thus, 2016 is ending on a
decidedly sour note for the neocons and liberal interventionists. They had high
hopes that 2017 would mark the beginning of an escalated “regime change”
adventure in Syria and the start of their “mother of all regime change” schemes
for destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia and somehow staging a “color revolution”
in Moscow, all while Hillary Clinton took the relationship with Israel “to the
next level” as she promised in her speech to the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee.
Now, the neocons and liberal
hawks find themselves on the outside looking in and one can expect their anger
to be voiced at increasing decibels across the mainstream media. But whether
anyone still takes them seriously is another question.
Investigative reporter Robert
Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and
Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative,
either in print
here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com).