Category Archives: Analysis

A guide to Russia’s high tech tool box for subverting U.S. democracy

Garrett M Graff writes: A dead dog in Moscow. A dead dissident in London. Twitter trolls run by the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency. Denial of service attacks and ransomware deployed across Ukraine. News reports from the DC offices of Sputnik and RT. Spies hidden in the heart of Wall Street. The hacking of John Podesta’s creamy risotto recipe. And a century-old fabricated staple of anti-Semitic hate literature.

At first glance these disparate phenomena might seem only vaguely connected. Sure, they can all be traced back to Russia. But is there any method to their badness? The definitive answer, according to Russia experts inside and outside the US government, is most certainly yes. In fact, they are part of an increasingly digital intelligence playbook known as “active measures,” a wide-ranging set of techniques and strategies that Russian military and intelligence services deploy to influence the affairs of nations across the globe.

As the investigation into Russia’s influence on the 2016 election—and the Trump campaign’s potential participation in that effort—has intensified this summer, the Putin regime’s systematic effort to undermine and destabilize democracies has become the subject of urgent focus in the West. According to interviews with more than a dozen US and European intelligence officials and diplomats, Russian active measures represent perhaps the biggest challenge to the Western order since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The consensus: Vladimir Putin, playing a poor hand economically and demographically at home, is seeking to destabilize the multilateral institutions, partnerships, and Western democracies that have kept the peace during the past seven decades.

The coordinated and multifaceted Russia efforts in the 2016 election—from the attacks on the DNC and John Podesta’s email to a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. that bears all the hallmarks of an intelligence mission—likely involved every major Russian intelligence service: the foreign intelligence service (known as the SVR) as well as the state security service (the FSB, the successor to the KGB), and the military intelligence (the GRU), both of which separately penetrated servers at the DNC.

Understanding just how extensive and coordinated Russia’s operations against the West are represents the first step in confronting—and defeating—Putin’s increased aggression, particularly as it becomes clear that the 2016 election interference was just a starting point. “If there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system, this episode is it,” former director of national intelligence James Clapper said this spring. “I hope the American people recognize the severity of this threat and that we collectively counter it before it further erodes the fabric of our democracy.”

Indeed, Western intelligence leaders have warned throughout the spring that they expect Russia to use similar tricks in German parliamentary election this fall, as well as in the 2018 US congressional midterms and the 2020 presidential race. “Russia is not constrained by a rule of law or a sense of ethics—same with ISIS, same with China,” says Chris Donnelly, director of the UK-based Institute for Statecraft. “They’re trying to change the rules of the game, which they’ve seen us set in our favor.” [Continue reading…]

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Trump reveals the most when he says the least

The New York Times reports: President Trump is rarely reluctant to express his opinion, but he is often seized by caution when addressing the violence and vitriol of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and alt-right activists, some of whom are his supporters.

After days of genially bombastic interactions with the news media on North Korea and the shortcomings of congressional Republicans, Mr. Trump on Saturday condemned the bloody protests in Charlottesville, Va., in what critics in both parties saw as muted, equivocal terms.

During a brief and uncomfortable address to reporters at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., he called for an end to the violence. But he was the only national political figure to spread blame for the “hatred, bigotry and violence” that resulted in the death of one person to “many sides.”

For the most part, Republican leaders and other allies have kept quiet over several months about Mr. Trump’s outbursts and angry Twitter posts. But recently they have stopped averting their gazes and on Saturday a handful criticized his reaction to Charlottesville as insufficient.

“Mr. President — we must call evil by its name,” tweeted Senator Cory Gardner, Republican from Colorado, who oversees the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate Republicans.

“These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism,” he added, a description several of his colleagues used.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and the father of the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, did not dispute Mr. Trump’s comments directly, but he called the behavior of white nationalists in Charlottesville “evil.”

Democrats have suggested that Mr. Trump is simply unwilling to alienate the segment of his white electoral base that embraces bigotry. [Continue reading…]

Cheri Jacobus writes: President Trump is not known for holding back his rage and venom when he’s angered or feels threatened, or for struggling to “counter punch.” Typically, the easily triggered leader of the free world, his finger seemingly perpetually poised in hover position over the nuclear button, uses a cannon when a BB gun will do. But, curiously, he seems to lose his voice and his nerve when it comes to taking on Russian President Vladmir Putin for intervening in U.S. elections, or the white nationalists and Nazis — domestic terrorists — who marched with torches in Charlottesville, Va.

Notice whom Trump tiptoes around to understand to whom he feels beholden.

It’s becoming increasingly harder to deny that Trump’s actions and words make it appear as if he’s reluctant to cross a benefactor or those who comprise a disturbingly influential portion of what we must, if we are to be intellectually honest, accept and admit is his base.

His tepid, tardy response to the shameful group of Americans (and it hurts to call them Americans) was stunning, coming on the heels of his knee-jerk “fire and fury” threat to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un after yet another missile test — and his equally reckless, violent follow-up threats about military action.

The gentler, vaguer “diplomatic” language used by Trump on alt-right white nationalists proudly using the Nazi salute and sporting swastikas is chilling. He didn’t name them or even blame them, in fact said “hatred, bigotry and violence” had been going on “for a long, long time” and came from “many sides.”

It was reminiscent of candidate Trump in Feburary 2016 finding it difficult to denounce former KKK leader David Duke for telling his followers it would be “treason to your heritage” to vote for anyone but Trump. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper he simply didn’t know enough about Duke and the KKK to condemn them.

In Charlottesville, Duke said on camera that the white supremacists were marching on behalf of President Trump, and that they viewed this as fulfilling the promises of Trump’s candidacy.

Trump gave him legitimacy by placing the KKK, Nazis and other white supremacists on par with, well, everyone else.

He’s “normalizing” them. [Continue reading…]


Trump’s unwillingness to single out white supremacists for explicit condemnation does nothing less than signal to them that he remains a fascist-friendly president — and have no doubt, these are self-declared fascists.

This is how Vanguard America articulates its vision of “American Fascism” in its “Vanguard Manifesto”:

A Nation For Our People – An America based on the immutable truths of Blood and Soil. A multicultural nation is no nation at all, but a collection of smaller ethnic nations ruled over by an overbearing tyrannical state. Our America is to be a nation exclusively for the White American peoples who out of the barren hills, empty plains, and vast mountains forged the most powerful nation to ever have existed. Vanguard America stands indomitably opposed to the tyranny of globalism and capitalism, a system under which nations are stripped of their heritage and their people are turned into nothing more than units of cheap, expendable labor. Vanguard America, and our nationalist allies across the Western world, see a world of nations ruled by their own people, for their own people.

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Charlottesville and the bigotocracy

Michael Eric Dyson writes: The late, great Gore Vidal said that we live in “The United States of Amnesia.” Our fatal forgetfulness flares when white bigots come out of their closets, emboldened by the tacit cover they’re given by our president. We cannot pretend that the ugly bigotry unleashed in the streets of Charlottesville, Va., this weekend has nothing to do with the election of Donald Trump.

In attendance was white separatist David Duke, who declared that the alt-right unity fiasco “fulfills the promises of Donald Trump.” In the meantime, Mr. Trump responded by offering false equivalencies between white bigots and their protesters. His soft denunciations of hate ring hollow when he has white nationalist advisers like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller whispering in his ear.

Such an ungainly assembly of white supremacists rides herd on political memory. Their resentment of the removal of public symbols of the Confederate past — the genesis of this weekend’s rally — is fueled by revisionist history. They fancy themselves the victims of the so-called politically correct assault on American democracy, a false narrative that helped propel Mr. Trump to victory. Each feeds on the same demented lies about race and justice that corrupt true democracy and erode real liberty. Together they constitute the repulsive resurgence of a virulent bigotocracy. [Continue reading…]

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The disastrous consequences of basing politics on what you are against, not what you are for

David Miliband writes: For many years Britons and Americans have been proud of the quality of their governance. Yet today our politics and government are setting new standards for dysfunction. Rather than stability and global leadership there is confusion.

The US is suffering from a serious inability to legislate. There is a genuine risk of the country defaulting on its debts. Jeb Bush called Donald Trump the “chaos candidate”, but as the American writer Jonathan Rauch has pointed out the Trump candidacy was the product of political chaos – in campaign finance, for example – not its cause.

Meanwhile, Britain is suffering its own governability crisis. Leaving the EU was mis-sold as a quick fix. Now it looks like a decade-long process of unscrambling the eggs of national and European legislation. Ministers cannot even agree among themselves the destination, the route map or the vehicles to get us there.

This transatlantic malaise has a common root: politics based on what you are against, not what you are for. Look at the campaigns against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and against the EU. There is a common trope: the politics of grievance.

Complaints about individual policies became attacks against a whole institutional architecture. There were outright lies in both campaigns. And there was a complete (and effective) refusal to describe, never mind debate, what would replace the status quo. [Continue reading…]

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When does a fringe movement stop being fringe?

Vann R. Newkirk II writes: Suddenly, the “far right” doesn’t seem so far. On Friday night, hundreds of protesters descended on a statue of Confederate hero Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. Carrying tiki torches, waving Confederate battle flags, and sometimes armed with clubs and shields and flanked by self-styled militiamen with heavier arms, the protesters, described by many as “white nationalists,” brawled with counter-protesters in Charlottesville streets, a situation that led Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to declare a state of emergency Saturday.

Still, the fallout, the latest in a year-long series of growing protests centered around that statue in Emancipation Park, sprawled into Saturday afternoon. A car plowed through a group of counter-protesters, who’d taken the streets to celebrate their perceived victory against the white-supremacist protesters. So far, reports indicate at least one person has died, and many more are injured. Officials have not yet said if they think the incident was deliberate.

Even before that most deadly incident, politicians responded to the crisis in Charlottesville. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Twitter that “the views fueling the spectacle in Charlottesville are repugnant,” and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted that “the hate and bigotry witnessed in Charlottesville does not reflect American values.” In a statement Saturday morning, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe stated that he was “disgusted by the hatred, bigotry, and violence these protesters have brought to our state.” President Donald Trump has tweeted multiple times about the protests, and in a statement after the deadly car incident condemned violence “on many sides.”

These reactions, after a year of burgeoning demonstrations in the park, are remarkable both in their alarm and their vagueness.

Trump’s statements call out “many sides” for their contribution to violence. McAuliffe’s statement, especially, reads as if there’s something alien or novel about violent white pro-Confederate protest in Virginia—which, it can be said with confidence, is simply not true. Few notable statements from public officials put a name to the general “bigotry” that most leaders cited.

Journalists have also struggled with categorizing what’s happening in Charlottesville. Ever since the alt-right leader Richard Spencer first led groups of protesters in Emancipation Park against the prospective removal of the Lee statue, outlets have adopted his “white nationalist” label—one often used by members of his particular portion of the alt-right movement as a way to avoid the negative connotations of “white supremacist”—as a descriptor for the protests.

But the protesters, which now boast the endorsement of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and the participation of Klansmen and Neo-Nazis—some armed and chanting “Jews will not replace us”—appear to be exactly the kind of mob that the term “white supremacist” evokes in its most commonly used connotation. [Continue reading…]

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These are your people, President Trump

Colbert I. King writes: President Trump’s mealy-mouthed mutterings on the terrorism let loose in Charlottesville on Saturday are worthy of the hypocrite and instigator of hate that he has proved himself to be. Trump knows what was at work on those streets and who was behind it. As well he should. They are some of the same forces that helped to put him in the White House.

On hand giving the clan of white nationalists a verbal boost was former Ku Klux Klan leader and preeminent white nationalist David Duke. Just as the bigoted Duke was on hand on election night exclaiming on social media that Trump’s victory was “one of the most exciting nights of my life.” Duke tweeted at the time, “Make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump.”

And Duke’s people — Trump’s people, also — were out in force in Charlottesville with their hate-filled minds, their guns, and a weaponized automobile. [Continue reading…]

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Trump threats are wild card in showdown with North Korea

The New York Times reports: After a four-day fusillade of apocalyptic threats against North Korea, President Trump left many in Washington and capitals throughout the Pacific wondering whether it was more method or madness. Among those wondering were members of Mr. Trump’s own administration.

It was not the first time in his unconventional presidency that Mr. Trump had unnerved friend and foe alike, but never before had it seemed so consequential. Unrestrained attacks on uncooperative members of his own party, the “dishonest media” and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” generally do not raise fears of nuclear war. But as with so much with Mr. Trump, the line between calculation and impulse can be blurry.

In the broadest sense, Mr. Trump’s “fire and fury” and “locked and loaded” warnings fit the strategic imperatives of the advisers who gave him classified briefings at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., over the last week. The president showed resolve in the face of Pyongyang’s defiance, as his aides had counseled, while increasing pressure on China to broker some kind of deal to denuclearize the tinderbox Korean Peninsula.

But Mr. Trump, who bridles at being stage-managed, ignored their advice to project dignified steadfastness. Carefully calibrated briefings for the president by Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis came out through a Trump bullhorn, magnified and maximized for effect. For perhaps the first time in generations, an American leader became the wild card in a conflict typically driven by a brutal, secretive despot in Pyongyang. [Continue reading…]

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Trump considers sanctions against China while seeking its help on North Korea

The New York Times reports: In a diplomatic gamble, President Trump is seeking to enlist China as a peacemaker in the bristling nuclear-edged dispute with North Korea at the very moment he plans to ratchet up conflict with Beijing over trade issues that have animated his political rise.

Mr. Trump spoke late Friday with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping of China, to press the Chinese to do more to rein in North Korea as it races toward development of long-range nuclear weapons that could reach the United States. Mr. Xi sought to lower the temperature after Mr. Trump’s vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea, urging restraint and a political solution.

But the conversation came as Mr. Trump’s administration was preparing new trade action against China that could inflame the relationship. Mr. Trump plans to return to Washington on Monday to sign a memo determining whether China should be investigated for intellectual property violations, accusing Beijing of failing to curb the theft of trade secrets and rampant online and physical piracy and counterfeiting. An investigation would be intended to lead to retaliatory measures.

The White House had planned to take action on intellectual property earlier but held off as it successfully lobbied China to vote at the United Nations Security Council for additional sanctions on North Korea a week ago. Even now, the extra step of determining whether to start the investigation is less than trade hawks might have wanted, but softens the blow to China and gives Mr. Trump a cudgel to hold over it if he does not get the cooperation he wants.

While past presidents have tried at least ostensibly to keep security and economic issues on separate tracks in their dealings with China, Mr. Trump has explicitly linked the two, suggesting he would back off from a trade war against Beijing if it does more to pressure North Korea. “If China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade, a lot differently toward trade,” he told reporters on Thursday. [Continue reading…]

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Talking to Syrian refugees

Robin Yassin-Kassab writes: Everyone talks about Syrians, but very few actually talk to them. Perhaps that’s why Syria’s revolution and war have been so badly misunderstood in the west – variously as a US-led regime-change plot, an ancient Sunni-Shia conflict or a struggle between secularism and jihadism.

We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled bucks the trend. Here the story is told entirely through the mouths of Wendy Pearlman’s Syrian interviewees, hundreds of them, from all social backgrounds, Christians and Muslims, Ismailis and Druze, rural and urban, middle class and poor. These best of all possible informants – the people who made the events, and who suffer the consequences – provide not only gripping eyewitness accounts but erudite analysis and sober reflection.

The introduction, alongside a concise overview of developments from 1970 to the present, describes Pearlman’s method. She interviewed refugees (who are therefore overwhelmingly anti-regime) in locations ranging from Jordan to Germany. And she interviewed them in Arabic, enabling “a connection that would have been impossible had I relied on an interpreter”. The result is testament both to Syrian expressive powers and the translation’s high literary standard.

These heart-stopping tales of torment and triumph are perfectly enchained, chronologically and thematically, to reflect the course of the crisis. They begin with life under Bashar al-Assad’s regime, “not a government but a mafia”, when children were trained to lie for their family’s security. “It was a state of terror,” says Ilyas, a dentist. “Every citizen was terrified. The regime was also terrified.” [Continue reading…]

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Here’s what the last common ancestor of apes and humans looked like

Charles Q. Choi writes: The most complete extinct-ape skull ever found reveals what the last common ancestor of all living apes and humans might have looked like, according to a new study.

The 13-million-year-old infant skull, which its discoverers nicknamed “Alesi,” was unearthed in Kenya in 2014. It likely belonged to a fruit-eating, slow-climbing primate that resembled a baby gibbon, the researchers said.

Among the living primates, humans are most closely related to the apes, which include the lesser apes (gibbons) and the great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans). These so-called hominoids — that is, the gibbons, great apes and humans — emerged and diversified during the Miocene epoch, approximately 23 million to 5 million years ago. (The last common ancestor that humans had with chimpanzees lived about 6 million to 7 million years ago.)

Much remains unknown about the common ancestors of living apes and humans from the critical time when these branches diverged. Fossil evidence from this part of the primate family tree is scarce, and consists mostly of isolated teeth and broken jaw fragments. As such, researchers were not sure what the last common ancestors of living apes and humans might have looked like, and even whether they originated in Africa or Eurasia. [Continue reading…]

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‘Kim Jong-un is here to rule for decades, playing the long game’

The New York Times reports: In China, the man threatening to fire missiles at the United States is often derided as a chubby brat. In the United States, a senator recently referred to him as “this crazy fat kid.” President Trump once called him “a total nut job.”

But the target of all that scorn, Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old leader of North Korea, has long been underestimated.

Mr. Kim was the youngest of three sons yet leapfrogged his brothers to succeed his father, Kim Jong-il. Many analysts dismissed him as an inexperienced figurehead when he took power at 27; some predicted he would never last. But almost six years later, there is little doubt he is firmly in control.

Now, against long odds, Mr. Kim is on the verge of making his isolated, impoverished nation one of very few in the world that can hit the United States with a nuclear missile — defying not only the Trump administration but also international sanctions and North Korea’s traditional allies in Beijing.

Some have urged President Trump to open negotiations with him. But it is unclear whether Mr. Kim is interested in talking, or what if anything he might demand in exchange for freezing or abandoning his nuclear program. He has made building a nuclear arsenal a top priority, arguing that it is the only way the North can guarantee its security and develop its economy.

His ultimate motives, like many details of his life, are uncertain. Since taking power, Mr. Kim has yet to travel abroad or host a visit from another head of state. Only a few people outside North Korea have been allowed to meet him, among them the former basketball star Dennis Rodman, a Japanese sushi chef and the vice presidents of Cuba and China.

What little is known of Mr. Kim’s record suggests ruthlessness — and some ideological flexibility.

South Korean intelligence officials say Mr. Kim has executed scores of senior officials, including his own uncle, a wily power broker who had been seen as his mentor. He is also assumed to have ordered the assassination of his half brother, who was poisoned by VX nerve agent at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February.

Yet Mr. Kim is also credited with loosening state controls on the economy and engineering modest growth, and regaining some of the public confidence that the dynastic regime enjoyed under his grandfather and lost under his father, whose rule is remembered for a devastating famine.

“Smart, pragmatic, decisive,” Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, said of Mr. Kim. “But also capricious, moody and ready to kill easily.” [Continue reading…]

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Is it time to accept the reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea?

John Cassidy writes: In May of 2013, Terence Roehrig, the director of the Asia-Pacific Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, wrote a brief on the North Korean nuclear situation. “Given its rhetoric and continued testing of both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, Pyongyang will likely go beyond its current capability to pursue a small operational program, perhaps 20-40 warheads, though these figures are speculative,” the report, which was published by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, at Harvard, said. “Should the DPRK seek to develop a small operational nuclear weapons capability there may be little that can be done other than to make this a long and costly process.”

At the time, the Obama Administration—like the Bush and Clinton Administrations before it—was pursuing a policy of “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, which involved trying to persuade Kim Jong-un, the young dictatorial leader of North Korea, to give up on his nuclear program. Roehrig expressed skepticism about whether this policy would work, noting, “Some continue to hope that the DPRK may yet be willing to relinquish its nuclear weapons for a suitable package of incentives, but that outcome appears increasingly unlikely.” In the coming years, Roehrig went on, “deterrence on the Korean Peninsula is likely to have a new dimension—North Korea with nuclear weapons. Whether this reality is recognized by the international community or not, all countries will need to figure out how to deal with a nuclear North Korea while maintaining peace and security in the region.”

Three and a half years later, Roehrig’s analysis looks prescient. [Continue reading…]

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If missiles are headed to Guam, here is what might stop them

The New York Times reports: North Korea’s threat to launch four intermediate-range ballistic missiles into the ocean near Guam could mark the first combat test of the sophisticated missile defense systems of the United States and its Asian allies.

The launches might not happen for any number of reasons. North Korea’s Hwasong-12 missiles might fail, or the United States or its allies could destroy them on the launchpad. Japan and the United States might also decide to do nothing and let the missiles splash harmlessly into the sea.

But if the four Hwasong-12s do make it off the ground, the options for stopping them mostly rely on hitting them on the way down — in their “terminal” phase.

On the Way Up

The Hwasong-12, a domestically developed liquid-fueled missile, has a maximum range of 3,000 miles, and hits an altitude of about 470 miles on the way to its destination. The velocities needed for those numbers mean that by the time the missile has been in the air one minute, it is already traveling several times the speed of sound.

At those speeds, a missile trying to chase and hit it from behind would have no chance during this part of the flight, called the “boost phase.” The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, several of which are now stationed in South Korea, could use its radar to track the launches of the North Korean missiles. But it is not designed to hit them as they climb into space.

At one point, the United States Air Force poured billions of dollars into a huge laser mounted on a Boeing 747 that was designed to destroy enemy ballistic missiles during the boost phase — and it worked. But it was so expensive, and required the laser-equipped aircraft to fly so close to enemy territory, that it was abandoned. [Continue reading…]

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Combative Trump pulls his punches for one man: Putin

The New York Times reports: The roster of villains in President Trump’s world is legion. The list of people he has been willing, even eager, to publicly attack includes not just Mitch McConnell, his latest target, but Jeff Sessions, Chuck Schumer, Paul D. Ryan, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

And don’t forget James B. Comey, Robert S. Mueller III, Andrew G. McCabe, Rod J. Rosenstein, John D. Podesta, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Murkowski, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rosie O’Donnell, Meryl Streep, the mayor of London and the cast of “Saturday Night Live.” The countries he has assailed include not just North Korea and Iran but also Germany, Canada, Mexico, China and Sweden.

But for all of that feistiness, for all of those verbal and online fisticuffs, there is one person who is definitely not on Mr. Trump’s target list: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Ever since Mr. Trump jumped into political life, Washington has scratched its collective head over his curious affinity for the strongman of the Kremlin. But the president’s determination to avoid saying anything even remotely critical of Mr. Putin was brought home in stark relief on Thursday when he twisted himself into a knot over a question about the Russian leader’s decision to order the United States Embassy to slash its staff by more than half. Rather than complain, Mr. Trump expressed gratitude. [Continue reading…]

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North Korea aside, Guam faces another threat: climate change

The New York Times reports: The island of Guam made rare headlines this week when North Korea, responding to blustery language from President Trump, threatened to fire four ballistic missiles into waters near the American territory’s shores. Some Guam residents told reporters that they worried what might happen if North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, were actually to follow through.

Scientists in Guam, however, say they have at least one other major threat in mind: climate change.

“We know that it’s serious,” said Austin J. Shelton III, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Center for Island Sustainability at the University of Guam. “Some of the impacts are here, and a lot more are coming.”

Like other Pacific islands, Guam may be affected in the coming decades as climate change prompts shifts in weather, temperature and oceanic acidity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Experts said in interviews that the primary consequences may include people suffering heat stress because of an increase in heat waves, a rise in the intensity of tropical storms, and the damage or destruction of Guam’s exceptionally biodiverse coral reefs.

A key concern is how reef damage could affect a $1.4 billion tourism sector that, according to the Guam Visitors Bureau, accounts for 60 percent of Guam’s annual business revenue and nearly a third of its nonfederal employment. [Continue reading…]

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How to slam dunk creationists when it comes to the theory of evolution

File 20170802 20062 1oq7c0h

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By Paul Braterman, University of Glasgow

The 2001 discovery of the seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus, the first known upright ape-like creatures, was yet more proof of humanity’s place among the great apes. And yet Mike Pence, then a representative and now US vice president, argues for the opposite conclusion.

For him, our ideas about our ancestors have changed, proving once more that evolution was a theory, and therefore we should be free to teach other theories alongside evolution in our classrooms.

A skull cast of Sahelanthropus, the first upright ape-like creatures which lived seven million years ago.
Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA

How to respond? The usual answer is that we should teach students the meaning of the word “theory” as used in science – that is, a hypothesis (or idea) that has stood up to repeated testing. Pence’s argument will then be exposed to be what philosophers call an equivocation – an argument that only seems to make sense because the same word is being used in two different senses.

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Gaming out the North Korea crisis: How the conflict might escalate

The Washington Post reports: A military confrontation with North Korea may now be “inevitable,” says Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) The United States is “done talking” about North Korea, tweets U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. President Trump threatens “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” then says maybe his language “wasn’t tough enough.”

The North Koreans return verbal fire, talking of using “absolute force” to hit the U.S. territory of Guam and even “turn the U.S. mainland into the theater of a nuclear war.”

In this moment of heated, belligerent rhetoric, planners in and out of government are diving into decades of plans and projections, playing out war games, engaging in the macabre semi-science of estimating death tolls and predicting how an adversary might behave. Inside Washington’s “what if?” industry, people at think tanks, universities, consultancies and defense businesses have spent four decades playing out scenarios that the Trump administration now faces anew.

The pathways that have been examined fall into four main categories: doing nothing, hitting Kim Jong Un’s regime with tougher sanctions, pushing for talks, and military confrontation. An armed conflict could take place in disparate spots thousands of miles apart, involving any number of nations and a wide variety of weapons, conventional or nuclear.

In hundreds of books, policy papers and roundtable discussions, experts have couched various shades of armageddon in the dry, emotion-stripped language of throw-weights and missile ranges. But the nightmare scenarios are simple enough: In a launch from North Korea, a nuclear-tipped missile could reach San Francisco in half an hour. A nuclear attack on Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 10 million people, could start and finish in three minutes. [Continue reading…]

It seems to me that the greatest danger of miscalculation by North Korea derives from Kim Jong Un’s assessment of Donald Trump’s capacity to trigger military action.

While North Koreans are acutely aware of the mismatch between the Hermit kingdom and the U.S. in terms of military strength, on a personal level Kim probably views Trump as a contemptible figure who is weak and lacking authority.

On one side is a leader who has zero tolerance for even a hint of dissent and who is presented to his people as a god-like figure whose ruling power is absolute, and on the other side is a man viewed by much of his own population as an unstable dunce — a man whose every utterance requires qualification from close aides whose most frequent message is that Trump should not be taken at his word.

Trump’s lack of credibility now poses a real threat to global security, because it risks triggering a sequence of actions resulting in nuclear war.

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North Korean threat to Guam tests credibility of Kim and Trump

The New York Times reports: North Korea’s vow to ignite an “enveloping fire” of test missiles near the American island of Guam is the first time it has specified a target with so much detail, escalating a showdown between Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and President Trump.

For Mr. Kim, failure of the plan announced on Thursday, which includes precise details like splashdown points and exact travel times for four test missiles, would be a potentially costly blunder that could subvert his authority.

For Mr. Trump, whose dire warnings to North Korea — which he further escalated on Thursday — have echoed Mr. Kim’s own screeds, a successful North Korean test would be an embarrassment that could force him into exceedingly difficult choices about military action.

But North Korea’s prospective test also includes some maneuvering room for a possible compromise, South Korean analysts said. North Korea said the missile launches were still in the planning phase and would not be finalized until later this month, raising the possibility of delay or cancellation.

The four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles to be aimed toward the vicinity of Guam, home to a strategic American base, would fly 2,085.7 miles in 17 minutes, 45 seconds, North Korea said in announcing the plan. The missiles would splash down 18.6 to 24.8 miles from Guam’s coast, the North said.

“By revealing this detailed plan, North Korea is trying to show that its Hwasong-12 missile is a reliable system and that it has capabilities of operating nuclear missiles,” said Shin Beom-chul, a security expert at the government-run Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul.

Even though North Korea has conducted 80 missile tests under Mr. Kim, it has never launched a missile toward a target as far as Guam and has never disclosed such precise flight data in advance. [Continue reading…]

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