Monthly Archives: March 2017

Climate change-fueled jet stream linked to brutal floods and heatwaves, says study

InsideClimate News reports: When Michael Mann goes before Congress Wednesday to testify on global warming, he’ll be armed with one more piece of evidence that greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning are fundamentally altering the climate and leading to life-threatening and costly extreme weather.

Mann is the lead author of a new study showing that the greenhouse gas buildup is slowing down planetary atmospheric waves, which results in regional summer climate extremes. That includes a deadly 2003 European heat wave, as well as extensive wildfires in Siberia and severe flooding in Pakistan that took place simultaneously in 2010.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Mann said he and his fellow scientists discovered, by studying extensive climate data, “a particular type of jet stream pattern that is associated with many of the extreme events we’ve seen in recent years.” He added that there is every reason to expect “these persistent weather events to become more prominent over time…with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.”

Mann is a high-profile scientist whose advocacy of climate action has made him a lightning rod for criticism from the right. He will testify Wednesday before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, led by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, in a hearing that is stacked with climate change skeptics.

The study, published March 27 in the journal Scientific Reports, examines temperature data related to the jet stream and winds that flow around the Northern Hemisphere from west to east and that loop from north to south between the tropics and the Arctic. The pattern is called Rossby waves.

“We identified particular temperature patterns that occur when these large planetary waves slow down, and we found that, in the course of the past 100 years, this pattern is becoming more frequent,” said study co-author Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. [Continue reading…]

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Boris Epshteyn named in July FISA application; did Nunes obstruct justice?

Louise Mensch writes: On November 7th, I reported at Heat Street that the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant covering the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

I reported that the FISA warrant had been granted after an earlier, failed application to the court in the summer named Trump and “at least three other men, who have either formed part of his campaign or acted as his media surrogates“.

Those names, sources said, were Donald Trump, with Paul Manafort and Carter Page (two men that had formed part of Trump’s campaign) and Boris Epshteyn, who at the time I reported, the eve of the election itself, had only acted as Mr. Trump’s media surrogate.

Since that time, Mr. Epshteyn has become a part of government as a Transition Team official and now at the White House and I feel able to be explicit as to the names sources gave me as forming part of the summer application to the court. [Continue reading…]

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House Democrats ask Devin Nunes to recuse himself from Russia inquiry

The New York Times reports: Top House Democrats on Monday called on the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to recuse himself from the panel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, thrusting the entire inquiry into jeopardy amid what they described as mounting evidence he was too close to President Trump.

The calls by Representatives Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, came after revelations that the committee’s chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, had met on the White House grounds with a source who showed him secret American intelligence reports. The next day he revealed Mr. Trump or his closest associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

Mr. Schiff suggested that Mr. Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, was simply too close to the White House to run an independent and thorough inquiry. [Continue reading…]

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What Russia’s latest protests mean for Putin

Julia Ioffe writes: It’s not a rare sight in this city to see tens of thousands of people pour into the streets to express their opposition to the government that makes its home here. Moscow was the epicenter of the massive pro-democracy protests of 2011-2012, and many others since, including rallies to commemorate slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. This is the city where Vladimir Putin lives, along with the tens of thousands of people who make his machine of state hum. But given its wealth and cosmopolitanism, Moscow is also the most oppositional city in Russia. In 2013, it nearly forced the Kremlin-installed mayor into a run-off with a charismatic young opposition leader, Alexey Navalny. So in some ways, it was not surprising to see thousands heed his call to come out and protest here on Sunday.

But Sunday’s protest was different. Unlike the rallies in Nemtsov’s memory or even the 2011-2012 protests, this one did not have a permit from the Moscow city authorities. Over the weekend, the mayor’s office warned people that protestors alone would bear the responsibility for any consequences of attending what they deemed an illegal demonstration. But despite those warnings and despite the fresh memory of some three dozen people being charged—many of whom did prison time—for a protest in May 2012 that turned violent, thousands came out in Moscow. The police estimated attendance at 8,000, but given officials’ predilection for artificially deflating the numbers of those gathered at such events to make them seem less of a threat, the number could easily have been double that. People clogged the length of Tverskaya Street, one of the city’s main drags. The iconic Pushkin Square was packed, and people clung to the lampposts, chanting “Russia will be free!”

Three weeks ago, Navalny, who became famous as an anti-corruption blogger, posted an hour-long video exposé (with English subtitles) on his blog and YouTube channel. It showed, in great detail and using drone footage, what he said were the vast real-estate holdings of prime minister and former president Dmitry Medvedev, a man who talked of fighting corruption during his presidency and who in May told the residents of recently annexed Crimea, who are suffering from electricity and fuel shortages, “We don’t have the money now. … But you hang in there!” The money, Navalny alleged, was all bundled up in palaces, some costing hundreds of millions of dollars, all over the country. It was strange to attack Medvedev, now a widely ridiculed has-been in Russian politics, and many doubted that Navalny telling people to go out and protest Medvedev would have any resonance. And yet, when he named the day—March 26—people across 11 time zones answered his call and came out. [Continue reading…]

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‘Putin’s revenge’ drags protesters to court and into jail

The Daily Beast reports: On Monday morning hundreds of Russians across the country awaited their hearings in court. After the biggest protests in years against Russian President Vladimir Putin, the country was watching a massive crackdown. Some called it “Putin’s revenge.”

Mass detentions, fines, or incarceration were the Kremlin’s response to the series of anti-corruption demonstrations which had rolled through 82 Russian cities on Sunday.

In Moscow alone, Aleksei Navalny, the organizer of the nation-wide protest movement, was quickly sentenced to 15 days behind bars, but there were 1,300 other detainees in the Russian capital as well, including 46 teenagers. Many people were injured by club-swinging police.

Lawyers and volunteers of a Moscow NGO, or nongovernmental organization, Russia Behind Bars, spent Sunday night and all of Monday providing free legal assistance for detainees of all ages, including many teenagers and their parents. [Continue reading…]

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Devin Nunes’ clandestine operation at the White House

CNN reports: It has been something of a mystery, the whereabouts of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes on the day before his announcement that he saw information suggesting that communications of then-President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers may have been swept up in surveillance of other foreign nationals.

The California Republican confirmed to CNN in a phone interview Monday he was on the White House grounds that day — but he said he was not in the White House itself. (Other buildings, including the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, are on the same grounds.)

Nunes went to the building because he needed a secure area to view the information, he told CNN. He said he didn’t believe the President nor any of his West Wing team were aware he was there, and the White House said Monday it learned of Nunes’ visit through media reports and directed any questions to the congressman.

A former government intelligence official told CNN on Monday that members of Congress, like the general public, must be cleared and escorted into facilities on White House grounds.

“Every non-White House staffer must be cleared in by a current White House staffer,” the official said. “So it’s just not possible that the White House was unaware or uninvolved.”

Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, refused to rule out Monday whether Nunes’ source came from the White House but did say during the daily press briefing that “it doesn’t really pass the smell test.”

“I did not sit in on that briefing,” Spicer said. “I’m not — it just doesn’t — so I don’t know why he would brief the speaker and then come down here to brief us on something that we would have briefed him on. It doesn’t really seem to make a ton of sense. So I’m not aware of it, but it doesn’t really pass the smell test.”

Nunes said he was there for additional meetings “to confirm what I already knew” but said he wouldn’t comment further so as to not “compromise sources and methods.” [Continue reading…]

The only smell test relevant here is the one that applies to Spicer’s statements. They emit a strong odor of bullshit.

Why would Nunes come down to the White House to brief Trump when the White House was in fact Nunes’ source? Precisely, as Spicer understands full well, in order to conceal the fact that the White House was instrumental in providing Nunes with his “revelations.”

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Senate committee to question Jared Kushner over meetings with Russians

The New York Times reports: Senate investigators plan to question Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a close adviser, as part of their broad inquiry into ties between Trump associates and Russian officials or others linked to the Kremlin, according to administration and congressional officials.

The White House Counsel’s Office was informed this month that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wanted to question Mr. Kushner about meetings he arranged with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, according to the government officials. The meetings, which took place during the transition, included a previously unreported sit-down with the head of Russia’s state-owned development bank.

Until now, the White House had acknowledged only an early December meeting between Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Kushner, which occurred at Trump Tower and was also attended by Michael T. Flynn, who would briefly serve as the national security adviser.

Later that month, though, Mr. Kislyak requested a second meeting, which Mr. Kushner asked a deputy to attend in his stead, officials said. At Mr. Kislyak’s request, Mr. Kushner later met with Sergey N. Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, which the United States placed on its sanctions list after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed Crimea and began meddling in Ukraine. [Continue reading…]

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Trump to sign executive order undoing Obama’s clean power plan

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump will on Tuesday sign an executive order to unravel Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Sunday, claiming the move would be “pro-growth and pro-environment”.

“The president is keeping his promise to the American people,” said Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who has questioned accepted climate science, in an appearance on ABC’s This Week. During the interview, Pruitt also called the Paris climate accord a “bad deal” and said Obama-era standards on auto emissions were “counter-helpful to the environment”.

Pruitt said the Trump order would undo the Obama administration’s clean power plan, which restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants.

“With respect to this executive order that’s coming out on Tuesday,” he said, “this is about making sure that we have a pro-growth and pro-environment approach to how we do regulation in this country.”

Earlier this month, Pruitt told CNBC he did not believe the release of carbon dioxide, a gas produced by the burning of fossil fuels, was pushing global temperatures upward – as scientists have known for decades. [Continue reading…]

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Steve Bannon’s man in the Middle East

McClatchy reports: When Donald Trump named Steve Bannon his chief strategist, backlash from Jewish leaders was swift amid fears that the ex-Breitbart News boss would bring white nationalist sympathies to the White House.

So in one of his first interviews on the new job, Bannon tried to quiet those concerns by invoking something most people had never heard of: “Breitbart Jerusalem.”

“Breitbart is the most pro-Israel site in the United States of America,” Bannon told The Wall Street Journal. “I have Breitbart Jerusalem, which I have Aaron Klein run with about 10 reporters there.”

It’s a line that Bannon and his allies have used repeatedly since his appointment, turning to the fledgling media operation as a shield against suggestions that he, and the administration by extension, are tolerant of anti-Semitism. It’s an accusation rooted in Bannon’s praise for the so-called “alt-right,” a movement associated with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. [Continue reading…]

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Shell-shocked Mosul survivors tell of intense airstrikes

The Guardian reports: Covered in dust, their hands raw from digging, Ali Assad and his cousin made a desperate choice – to leave their family under the rubble of their west Mosul home and flee while they still could.

The two men were among hundreds to be evacuated on Sunday, during a lull in the fighting prompted by outrage over the high civilian toll caused by multiple airstrikes that have battered the city and its trapped population over the past eight days.

With the ground war now suspended as a result, families that have sheltered in ruins or taken their chances in what is left of their homes have been leaving Mosul in droves, many arriving shell shocked and starving at refugee processing centres on its southern outskirts, where they spoke of more than a week of terror.

“There are six of my family still under our house,” said Assad, 32, cupping his raw hands. “My father, I saw him die in front of me, my brother, two sisters and two cousins. My mother survived, but then she was hit by some other explosion and a concrete slab fell on her. She’s badly hurt.” [Continue reading…]

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The Bolsheviks versus the Deep State

Anne O’Donnell writes: Vacant offices. Barren corridors. The hush of work not being done settles across the capital city, a silence of memos untyped, papers unpushed, file cabinets sealed shut. The machine of state is not in use. This is not Washington today; it is Petrograd, Russia, 100 years earlier, where after the Bolsheviks seized power in late October, the bureaucrats of the Russian state — tens of thousands of them — locked their desks and pocketed the keys on their way out the door. They declared themselves on strike, protesting what they viewed as the Bolsheviks’ shocking and illegitimate violation of the public trust.

Some held out a month, some lasted two, with the longest — the bankers in the former Ministry of Finance — standing firm until mid-March. In these five months, ordinary accountants, lawyers and administrators demonstrated great civic courage at significant personal cost. They either lived with the threat of arrest or were arrested, then handed over to the capricious Extraordinary Commission for the Battle to Combat Sabotage and Counterrevolution — known as the Cheka, forerunner to the K.G.B. — which shot people in basements and which was created in December 1917 with the express purpose of suppressing the “sabotage of government employees,” as the new regime called the strike.

Compared to the events the revolutionaries wanted to commemorate, the strike is mostly forgotten. This is in part because it ultimately had little effect, or rather, it had an effect profoundly contrary to what its participants intended. Truth be told, their intentions hardly mattered. But the decisions they faced and the choices they made are worth remembering today, as we approach the centenary of the October Revolution amid reports of a “deep state” protest in the United States. [Continue reading…]

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Wonders of the deep ocean

The New York Times reports: One of the great treasures in ocean preserves is the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, established in 2009 and expanded in 2014 to cover about 370,000 square miles.

That’s a lot of water to explore, and this year the research vessel Okeanos Explorer has been doing just that, collecting data and videos on the ocean and some of the astonishing creatures that live there.

The ship is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which studies oceans and climate change, among other subjects. Scientists on board the most recent cruise — southwest of Hawaii — used a remotely operated vehicle, the Deep Discoverer, which can descend almost 20,000 feet, to take video of remarkable creatures like the deep water siphonophore. [Continue reading…]

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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in court after arrest

The Guardian reports: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has appeared in a Moscow court a day after some of the biggest anti-government protests in years swept Russia.

Navalny faces up to 15 days in jail for organising protests across Russia on Sunday, which led to more than a thousand people being detained. He has declared his intention to run for president next year, an election in which Vladimir Putin is expected to stand and win a new six-year term.

A defiant Navalny posted a selfie from court on Twitter: “The time will come when we will put them on trial (but this time, honestly)” he wrote. He was upbeat during his hearing, asking the judge to summon [prime minister] Medvedev as a witness to “explain why so many people protested”. [Continue reading…]

NBC News reports: The United States said it was monitoring developments and called on Russia to release all of the protesters. Mark Toner, acting spokesman for the U.S. State Department, called the arrests “an affront to core democratic values.”

“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve a government that supports an open marketplace of ideas, transparent and accountable governance, equal treatment under the law and the ability to exercise their rights without fear of retribution,” Toner said. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: Anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has cemented his status as leader of Russia’s opposition movement by organising the largest unauthorised protest in recent years against President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

The clean-cut lawyer, 40, who was arrested at Sunday’s demonstration in Moscow, is no stranger to clashes with the Kremlin.

He has spent time under house arrest and seen his brother jailed in a string of cases he has denounced as retribution for his challenging authorities and exposing the vast wealth of the president’s inner circle.

Late last year, in his most ambitious move yet, he announced he would run for president in 2018, an election that Putin is expected to dominate.

This month he posted a YouTube video tracing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s links to mansions, yachts and vineyards that has been viewed 12 million times. [Continue reading…]

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Trump administration weighs deeper involvement in Yemen war

The Washington Post reports: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has asked the White House to lift Obama-era restrictions on U.S. military support for Persian Gulf states engaged in a protracted civil war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to senior Trump administration officials.

In a memo this month to national security adviser H.R. ­McMaster, Mattis said that “limited support” for Yemen operations being conducted by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — including a planned Emirati offensive to retake a key Red Sea port — would help combat a “common threat.”

Approval of the request would mark a significant policy shift. U.S. military activity in Yemen until now has been confined mainly to counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda’s affiliate there, with limited indirect backing for gulf state efforts in a two-year-old war that has yielded significant civilian casualties.

It would also be a clear signal of the administration’s intention to move more aggressively against Iran. The Trump White House, in far stronger terms than its predecessor, has echoed Saudi and Emirati charges that Iran is training, arming and directing the Shiite Houthis in a proxy war to increase its regional clout against the Gulf’s Sunni monarchies. [Continue reading…]

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California upholds auto emissions standards, setting up face-off with Trump

The New York Times reports: California’s clean-air agency voted on Friday to push ahead with stricter emissions standards for cars and trucks, setting up a potential legal battle with the Trump administration over the state’s plan to reduce planet-warming gases.

The vote, by the California Air Resources Board, is the boldest indication yet of California’s plan to stand up to President Trump’s agenda. Leading politicians in the state, from the governor down to many mayors, have promised to lead the resistance to Mr. Trump’s policies.

Mr. Trump, backing industry over environmental concerns, said easing emissions rules would help stimulate auto manufacturing. He vowed last week to loosen the regulations. Automakers are aggressively pursuing those changes after years of supporting stricter standards.

But California can write its own standards because of a longstanding waiver granted under the Clean Air Act, giving the state — the country’s biggest auto market — major sway over the auto industry. Twelve other states, including New York and Pennsylvania, as well as Washington, D.C., follow California’s standards, a coalition that covers more than 130 million residents and more than a third of the vehicle market in the United States.

“All of the evidence — call it science, call it economics — shows that if anything, these standards should be even more aggressive,” said the board member Daniel Sperling, a transportation expert at the University of California, Davis. [Continue reading…]

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Russian youth from Moscow to Siberia slam ‘Putin the thief’

The Daily Beast reports: A wave of protests against corrupt Kremlin leaders rolled all across Russian cities, from Moscow and Saint Petersburg to Siberia and Far East on Sunday.

Authorities did not permit the rallies and warned that participants would be punished, but tens of thousands came out to demonstrate their anger with the country’s leaders’ overwhelming corruption.

In Moscow protesters were chanting: “Putin the thief, go away!” Thousands of people gathered on the Palace Square of Saint Petersburg in front of the Hermitage and shouted: “Down with the Tsar!” The scene was reminiscent of the famous images captured 100 years ago on the same square during Bolshevik revolution.

According to Echo of Moscow radio station, 60,000 people took part in anti-Kremlin rallies in 82 Russian cities. [Continue reading…]

Buzzfeed reports: Alexei Navalny, one of Russia’s most prominent critics of President Vladimir Putin, organized the gatherings to raise pressure on Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In March, Navalny accused Medvedev of accepting bribes that he used to purchase mansions and yachts.

Russian authorities, however, called these gatherings unauthorized and moved to disperse the crowd of thousands in Moscow’s Pushkin Square.

Neither the White House, State Department, or the US Embassy in Moscow had issued any statements by Sunday afternoon. As of 2 p.m. Eastern time, a State Department spokesperson was unable to provide any statements, or say if one was expected.

President Donald Trump has called for warming relations with Russia and more cooperation on counter-terrorism. In a February TV interview, Trump said he respects Putin and declined to criticize Russia’s human rights record, explaining: “What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?” [Continue reading…]

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Lukashenko, Putin’s dictatorship mentor, moves to crush the opposition

Anna Nemtsova reports: The gray asphalt streets of Minsk, Belarus, looked too clean and almost totally deserted on the eve of a major opposition rally against the country’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The words “arrest” and repression” traveled from mouth to mouth. Officials in uniforms and plain clothes grabbed people at their homes, offices and on the streets. By Friday up to 300 people were behind bars. The atmosphere felt as if the capital of Belarus was not in Europe but in North Korea.

Activists went underground before joining the protest on Saturday, where police detained 25 journalists. On Thursday, police had detained 17 activists, supporters of the opposition, and random bystanders. The KGB, the initials still used by the Belarusian security service, blocked cellphones and hacked the social media accounts of concrete opposition activists.

The key leader of the opposition and a veteran dissident, Mikola Statkevich, spoke with The Daily Beast on Friday from his secret underground flat about the chemistry of dictatorship and courage needed by people today not only in Belarus but in the West. The moment has come to stand up for democratic values and against atrocities. [Continue reading…]

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