Ya mean the Doomsday Bug is a fungus?

Well well, three wells make a river, close your mouth Pundita you'll catch flies. But I can't help but be open-jawed; all these decades scanning the horizon for a freepin' supervirus then get a tap on the shoulder: 'Hi, how are ya? I'm a fungus.'

The good news is that the fungus Candida auris only kills about 45 percent of the people it infects, and most of those are just babies and old people. Oh right, and others with weak immune systems like diabetics and there are only 500 million or so cases of diabetes worldwide although this number is projected to skyrocket as more people in the 'developing' world get fat. 

The bad news is that the fungus seems to operate on the principle that whatever doesn't kill it makes it stronger. In other words, not only is it resistant to the top treatments for fungal infections, it thrives on them. 

Now before we ask how a garden-variety fungus morphed into a killer with global reach, we need to get our priorities in order. First and foremost, who can we blame? 

Right now it looks like a tie between (a) the CDC/WHO for not sounding the alarm earlier and wider; (b) hospitals that got hit by C. auris but kept their mouths shut so as not to scare off patients; and (c) the agriculture industry with emphasis on Big Ag, although this wouldn't absolve the little guys. From the bombshell April 6 report from The New York Times, A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy, which has already gone, uh, viral (c) may have the edge when it comes to parceling blame:

There are different theories as to what happened with C. auris. Dr. Meis, the Dutch researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops.

Dr. Meis became intrigued by resistant fungi when he heard about the case of a 63-year-old patient in the Netherlands who died in 2005 from a fungus called Aspergillus. It proved resistant to a front-line antifungal treatment called itraconazole. That drug is a virtual copy of the azole pesticides that are used to dust crops the world over and account for more than one-third of all fungicide sales.

A 2013 paper in Plos Pathogens said that it appeared to be no coincidence that drug-resistant Aspergillus was showing up in the environment where the azole fungicides were used.

The fungus appeared in 12 percent of Dutch soil samples, for example, but also in “flower beds, compost, leaves, plant seeds, soil samples of tea gardens, paddy fields, hospital surroundings, and aerial samples of hospitals.”

Dr. Meis visited the C.D.C. last summer to share research and theorize that the same thing is happening with C. auris, which is also found in the soil: Azoles have created an environment so hostile that the fungi are evolving, with resistant strains surviving.

This is similar to concerns that resistant bacteria are growing because of excessive use of antibiotics in livestock for health and growth promotion. As with antibiotics in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops.

“On everything — potatoes, beans, wheat, anything you can think of, tomatoes, onions,” said Dr. Rhodes, the infectious disease specialist who worked on the London outbreak. “We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops.”

Dr. Chiller [yes, that's his real name] theorizes that C. auris may have benefited from the heavy use of fungicides. His idea is that C. auris actually has existed for thousands of years, hidden in the world’s crevices, a not particularly aggressive bug. But as azoles began destroying more prevalent fungi, an opportunity arrived for C. auris to enter the breach, a germ that had the ability to readily resist fungicides now suitable for a world in which fungi less able to resist are under attack.

On the other hand, I can't see Big Ag taking the fall for this; if push comes to shove they'll take an actuarial tack, arguing that many more people will die of starvation than would be killed by a germ if crops aren't blanketed with fungicides. If worst comes to worst they can always point the finger at Big Chem: Look, we just spray the stuff; we're not to blame if these companies make fungicides that make fungi stronger.

So the biggest blame might land on (b) and there is already an indication of how the winds are blowing in this regard. To return to the NYT report:

“Why the heck are we reading about an outbreak almost a year and a half later — and not have it front-page news the day after it happens?” said Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, a physician in Kentucky and board chairman of Health Watch USA, a nonprofit patient advocacy group. “You wouldn’t tolerate this at a restaurant with a food poisoning outbreak.”

He does have a point. There is no question that health care providers have to be more forthright with the public about outbreaks of all types of lethal infections in their facilities. The point would hold doubly true for dealing with killer fungi. Scientists are concerned that C. auris could make the jump from people with weak immune systems to a healthy population. The places ripe for this opportunity are health care facilities that provide services for healthy people in addition to caring for the sick, which covers just about all medical facilities.  

Another reason to fear C. auris in the medical-care setting is that the thing is well-nigh impossible to kill off even with extreme decontamination measures -- as you will see if you read the NYT report.

From here on out, medical clinics and hospitals must take special pains to keep reasonably healthy patients separated from the sick ones. At the least, they have to start issuing an alert to the public the moment they discover an outbreak of  C. auris in their facility.

Aso to whether C. auris or another fungus could become a doomsday bug -- I think there are too many variables, too many unknowns, to make a stab at the answer at this time. Much is still unknown about C. auris, which made its first known appearance in the USA in 2013, although it had probably been loose here before that. To return once more to the NYT report:

The C.D.C. investigators theorized that C. auris started in Asia and spread across the globe. But when the agency compared the entire genome of auris samples from India and Pakistan, Venezuela, South Africa and Japan, it found that its origin was not a single place, and there was not a single auris strain.

The genome sequencing showed that there were four distinctive versions of the fungus, with differences so profound that they suggested that these strains had diverged thousands of years ago and emerged as resistant pathogens from harmless environmental strains in four different places at the same time.

“Somehow, it made a jump almost seemingly simultaneously, and seemed to spread and it is drug resistant, which is really mind-boggling,” Dr. Vallabhaneni said.

But while much remains unknown about the fungus, I think it can be said with certainty that it doesn't bode well for humanity if our immune systems are becoming weaker; there is the concern that this is happening as we become cleaner. Discussion has been going on for years about what's been dubbed the "hygiene hypothesis."  See this 2015 BBC report for an overview of the discussion.

And there is concern that bottle-fed babies have weaker immune systems than breast-fed ones. 

We could be backing ourselves into a situation not unlike the one portrayed in "War of the Worlds," where invaders from a technologically advanced alien civilization were felled by ordinary germs on our planet.

All right; I've chopped up the New York Times report enough;  I think you'd be wise to go to their site and read the whole thing from start to finish.  The lead author of the report, Matt Richtel, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who specializes in translating some pretty dry subjects into a whale of a tale, and that's certainly the case with C. auris.

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Russiagate was a hoax. Was it also a criminal offense?

[...]Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in these matters. These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. The men and women of our intelligence community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare.

Above from a Washington Examiner op-ed, published April 5, by Rep. Devin Nunes, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

During his conversation last night with John Batchelor of the  John Batchelor Show, Rep. Nunes mentioned that the criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice will be for about 24 Americans. And he elaborated on what a criminal referral from Congress means, how it works.  

Podcast Part 1 (from the 4:44 minute mark). Part 2 deals with the controversy surrounding the Mueller Report ginned up by the Democratic Party.

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Extent of US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, UAE not easy to spot. Here's why..

Excellent detective work. Fascinating report:

REVEALED: The full extent of US arms deals with Saudi Arabia and UAE
Commercial deals tracked by arms monitor prove the US is far more involved in the Yemen war than suspected
By Frank Andrews
April 4, 2019
Middle East Eye

The United States has struck at least $68.2bn worth of deals for firearms, bombs, weapons systems, and military training with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since the start of their war in Yemen – billions more than previously reported – according to data collected by an American think tank.

That colossal sum includes, for the first time, both commercial and governmental arms deals and indicates that US involvement in the disastrous war may be greater than suspected. In fact, the weapons expenditure could have funded the United Nations’s 2019 humanitarian appeal for Yemen – which totalled $4bn – 17 times over.

According to the data collected by arms trade watchdog Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) and reported here for the first time, American companies have made deals worth at least $14bn with the Emiratis and Saudis since March 2015, when the coalition intervened in the conflict.

Government sales tend to be for major systems, like combat aircraft, tanks, bombs, and ships, some of which are more likely than others to be used in Yemen – partly because it can take years to finalise such deals, which frequently grab headlines.

But it’s the smaller weapons like firearms and bombs sold in commercial sales that experts say are disproportionately likely to be used in the conflict and inflict significant damage.

William Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy, a progressive think tank in Washington, DC, which houses SAM, said the commercial data shows the US footprint in Yemen is "dramatically understated” because commercial sales are “so rarely discussed, compared to big glitzy deals like the fighter planes”. 

SAM’s estimate was all but confirmed by a US state department official, speaking on background, who said the overall value of American weapons deals to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen since March 2015 totalled about $67.4bn.

New details about the arms deals come amid a continued push in the US Congress to end Washington’s involvement in the war in Yemen, which has displaced millions and led to widespread disease and malnutrition.

[...]

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"Saudi Arabia nears completion of its first nuclear reactor"

SouthFront report today with pix (Google Earth images) of the nearly completed reactor site. Why am I not jumping for joy about Saudi move into nuclear energy? 

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Syrian War in Last 24 Hours

See also:

"SYRIAN WAR REPORT – APRIL 5, 2019: RUSSIAN JETS POUND IDLIB TERRORISTS, KURDISH REBELS ATTACK TURKISH PROXIES," April 5, SouthFront

"MILITARY SITUATION IN SYRIA ON APRIL 6, 2019 (MAP UPDATE) [and summary], April 6, SouthFront
"Tens of families who have been taken hostage by the occupying US forces and their affiliated militants in al-Rukban in al-Tanf region escaped from the camp."

Syrian Army Pounds Tahrir Al-Sham's Positions, Movements in Idlib, Hama
April 6, 2019
FARS

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Damascus Army destroyed the key strongholds of Tahrir al-Sham al-Hay'at (the Levant Liberation Board or the Al-Nusra Front) in response to the terrorist group's attacks from the demilitarized zone on safe areas and military points in Hama and Idlib over the past 24 hours.

The Syrian army units on Friday responded to the terrorists' missile strikes on residential areas in the town of Mahradeh in Northern Hama which killed and wounded several civilians, with artillery and missile fire, smashing Tahrir al-Sham strongholds in the towns of Kafr Zita and al-Hawir in the Northern parts of Sahl al-Ghab in Northern and Northwestern Hama and leaving several militants dead.

The army troops also launched artillery attacks on terrorists' movements and positions in al-Tah, al-Tamane'ah, al-Khuwain, al-Zarzour and Khan Sheikhoun in Southeastern Idlib, destroying several positions of the terrorists.

Meantime, the Syrian army continued its military advances in other parts of Syria over the past 24 hours.

Tens of terrorists were killed and dozens more were injured during the Syrian army's operations in provinces across Syria.

Hama-Idlib

The Syrian army destroyed the key strongholds of Tahrir al-Sham al-Hay'at in response to the terrorist group's attacks from the demilitarized zone on safe areas and military points in Hama and Idlib.

The Syrian army units on Friday responded to the terrorists' missile strikes on residential areas in the town of Mahradeh in Northern Hama which killed and wounded several civilians, with artillery and missile fire, smashing Tahrir al-Sham strongholds in the towns of Kafr Zita and al-Hawir in the Northern parts of Sahl al-Ghab in Northern and Northwestern Hama and leaving several militants dead.

Meantime, the Arabic-language service of Sputnik reported that the army troops launched artillery attacks on terrorists' moves and positions in al-Tah, al-Tamane'ah, al-Khuwain, al-Zarzour and Khan Sheikhoun in Southeastern Idlib, destroying several positions of the terrorists.

It added that 5 Syrian army soldiers had been killed during Horras al-Din terrorist group's guided missile attacks on the town of Sham al-Haqa in Southeastern Idlib on Thursday.

Raqqa

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) suppressed a protest rally held by civilians in Raqqa as Washington sent a military convoy to the province.

Local sources reported on Friday that a large number of people from Raqqa city gathered in Seif al-Dolah district on Thursday against the SDF measures in the region.

They added that the SDF militants fired at the protestors to disperse them and detained over 20 people.

The sources said that the civilians in the Western parts of Raqqa city hoisted the Syrian government's flags over the electricity pylons and wrote graffiti on the walls near al-Ba'ath dam in the village of Kadiran, calling for Raqqa's liberation from the SDF occupation.

Meantime, the Arabic-language al-Manar news channel reported that a US military convoy, accompanied by the SDF, is moving from Northern Deir Ezzur towards Raqqa province.

Homs

Tens of families who have been taken hostage by the occupying US forces and their affiliated militants in al-Rukban in al-Tanf region escaped from the camp.

The Arabic-language service of SANA news agency reported that the Syrian refugees have left al-Rukban camp for Jaliqam corridor in Badiyeh (desert areas) of Syria in the Eastern parts of Zaza region in Eastern Homs to be transferred to their hometowns which have been liberated from the terrorists' occupation by the Syrian army.

It added that tens of children and women need urgent medical care given the hard conditions in the al-Rukban camp.

The families who have escaped al-Rukban have confirmed lack of food and hygiene possibilities in the camp, adding that the US-backed terrorists keep people hungry and prevent their evacuation.

Hundreds of people fled and a number of others have so far been killed in the ill-famed Rukban refugee camp in the al-Tanf region of Homs which has been occupied by the US and its affiliated militants at the borders with Iraq.

Hasaka

Several other children were killed in al-Houl camp occupied by the SDF in Southern Hasaka.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Friday that 11 children have recently been killed in al-Houl camp for an acute lack of medicine, foodstuff and hygiene possibilities.

It added that at least 218 children have been killed in the camp since last December.

The SOHR had reported in March that 71,000 people are residing in the camp.

Meantime, field sources reported that civilians in the camp held protest rallies against the SDF for hard living conditions in al-Houl, adding that the US-backed forces fired at the protestors.

[END REPORT]

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How serious are disagreements between Washington and Berlin?

Before delving into the weighty question we turn to an educational Pundita quiz:  What are two instant ways to tell if you're one of the Kremlin's useful idiots? 

1.  You think this photo is funny.

Associated Press/Even Vucci

2. You saw the photo at Sputnik, which is the only place you're going to see it outside the AP photo archives.

If you want to know why Chancellor Merkel is deciding what she'll have for dinner while President Trump makes a goldfish face at her, you'll just have to read Sputnik to find out. Oh all right; from Sputnik March 21:

US-Germany Rift Set To Blow

OPINION

By Finian Cunningham

This is going to get very ugly. Germany is openly defying US President Trump's demands to spend more on its NATO budget. Already the American ambassador to the country is crying foul, prompting German calls for his expulsion.

Of all the countries in the European Union, it is Germany that's been mostly on the receiving end of Trump's wrath since he entered the White House. In two years, bilateral relations between Washington and Berlin have plummeted under the weight of Trump's withering verbal attacks.

The American president has assailed Germany for unfair trading practices over its lucrative auto exports; and he has virtually accused Berlin of treason in its dealings with Russia for natural gas supply, threatening to slap economic sanctions on German firms over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project under the Baltic Sea.

Germany has vehemently rejected Trump's accusations, saying its auto industry is a big investor in creating American jobs, and that its energy policies are a sovereign matter based on objective market principles.

But above all his complaints, Trump has continually rebuked Germany for not spending enough on NATO commitments, sniping that the country is freeloading on American military protection. At a NATO summit last year, Trump hectored German Chancellor Angela Merkel to raise her country's annual military budget to the designated NATO target of 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

For many years, especially after the end of the Cold War, German military spending has lagged at around 1 percent of GDP. Trump contends that, as Europe's largest national economy, Berlin should at least double its defence budget.

Latest figures, however, show that German military spending is nowhere near reaching the 2 percent target that Trump has been fulminating about. Indeed, the trend appears to be one of declining expenditure by Berlin on the military, not increasing.

That caused earlier this week US ambassador Richard Grenell to decry Germany's "failure" to live up to its NATO commitments.

Grenell is something of a Trump cypher. It is not the first time the envoy has harangued Germany in terms that his boss in the White House could have almost written for him. Grenell has been slamming Berlin over the Nord Stream 2 gas project with Russia and in its dealings with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

His condemnations this week regarding Germany's military budget have again sparked furore among the country's politicians and media, eliciting further public calls for the envoy to be expelled owing to his alleged gross interference in Berlin's internal affairs. 

"An ambassador is not supposed to act like the spokesman of an occupying power," said Wolfgang Kubicki, the deputy leader of the Free Democrat Party.

The New York Times this week reported "the timing couldn't be worse" for US-German relations. Next month marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the NATO alliance. A major celebration is due to take place in Washington DC for the occasion. The atmosphere will be severely chilled by Germany's truculent defiance of Trump to boost its commitment to NATO.

Out of some 30 members in the US-led NATO bloc, only seven countries have managed to raise their military budgets to the 2 percent of GDP target that Trump has clamoured for. That target figure predates Trump's presidency. But since the end of the Cold War, many European members of NATO have reduced military spending.

[...]

****

From that point on Finian Cunningham -- a Kremlin useful idiot if there ever was one -- engages in outright anti-US propagandizing. Well, Sputnik was established by a news agency owned by the Russian government, so one has to be prepared for propaganda along with the news, especially when it's clearly labeled "OPINION."

But American readers need to ask themselves this: Have they seen any mainstream U.S. news outlets in the past week headlining the latest furor in Germany's political establishment about American actions in the country?  

So the best answer to the question I asked in the title of this post is that you'll be the last to know if you get your news from only one side of a serious matter. 

Looked at from both sides, Germany and the U.S. will likely patch things over for the 70th-anniversary celebration of NATO's founding. Beyond that, the worst of the disagreements between the German and American government is rooted in Washington's not-unrealistic concern that Berlin and Moscow will draw closer together on key issues. The concern arose during the Obama administration's ham-handed meddling in Ukraine, which gave Berlin a not-unrealistic fright.  

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Brexit Status March 28, 2023

PM Theresa May has again agreed to step down if MPs still can't agree on any one of the 200 proposed Brexit deals that have resulted in 58 motions already shot down at Westminster. 

"I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party," Mrs May said during an impromptu press conference outside No. 10.

For the status of Brexit proposals circa March 2019, see this helpful scorecard, courtesy The Sun:

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Why not find you guilty of a crime that might never happen? Russiagate Hoax, Continued

Of all the attorneys who've studied Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation of President Trump's relations with the Russian government, Andrew McCarthy, a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has been the most careful, the most cautious, in his criticism of the Special Counsel. But last night on the John Batchelor Show McCarthy, in his explanation of a "novel" interpretation of the legal term "obstruction," made explicit what has only been implicit in Mueller's approach to the investigation. 

What McCarthy revealed harks to the 'pre-crime' legal system in Philip K. Dick's 1956 science fiction story, "The Minority Report," in which it's routine to arrest a person who hasn't committed a crime on the suspicion that he might commit a postulated crime.  

This dystopian concept of a criminal justice system goes further than Franz Kafka's horrific tale of a man found guilty of an unspecified crime. It can be argued that the whole of civilization, and certainly the whole of Western law, is to ward off humanity's descent into the darkest, most irrational, concept of justice. But here is just that irrationality, put into practice by Robert Mueller, a man who at least on cursory inspection represents the best of the American criminal justice system. Put into practice against a sitting U.S. President.  

How did this happen in today's America? How did we end up back at the Salem Witch Trials? Listen to McCarthy's careful summary of the Mueller probe's findings to date. Listen as if your life depended on it. Here's the podcast.

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John Batchelor and Matt Taibbi dissect the corpse of US journalism. Russiagate Hoax, Continued

"The liberal media Russiagate failure and what is to be done?" with Matt Taibbi. The John Batchelor Show, March 25. Podcast, Part 1 and Part 2.

For background to the discussion, read Matt's It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD - "The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it."

The article, actually a chapter from a self-published book (Hatc, Inc.: "How the Press Makes Us Hate One Another"), has been the shot heard round the news media world since it was published on March 23. It's provoked any number of defenses of the news media's handling of Russiagate and at least one thinly-disguised rant against Matt. (Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's Morning Joe.)

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Russiagate's winding road started from Barack Obama's desk

Yesterday morning Washington legal legend Joseph DiGenova spelled it out in plain English for the Inside the Beltway crowd that listens to WMAL radio's Mornings on the Mall broadcasting from Washington, DC. (Podcast) 

DiGenova mentioned President Obama's key role in perpetuating Russiagate almost in passing because everyone who's closely followed the story most assuredly believes it was Obama who cooked up the hoax, which was designed to put a crimp in Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency and if worst came to worst, eject him from White House if he won the election.

But Americans would want to listen closely to DiGenova's discussion of fallout from the Attorney General's summary of the Special Counsel's report, which has dominated the news in the United States since it was released on March 24. In a few words, DiGenova conveyed the scope of the rot that has eaten away at the American justice system. The rot was there even before Barack Obama took office; all Obama did was take advantage of the rot, which under his watch also ate away at the top echelon at the FBI.

So where do we go from here?

We await the publication of the Special Counsel's full report, which several congressional Democrats and Republicans are calling for, although it's iffy whether this will include all the documentation, including grand jury testimony, that Robert Mueller's team collected. (At the moment the Senate majority leader is blocking a nonbinding resolution calling for the immediate release of the full report, citing national security concerns.) But the AG's summary of the report has already made clear that conspiracy and collusion charges against Trump are off the table, meaning the Democrats can kiss goodbye to their hope of impeaching Trump. 

All the Democrats are left with is the straw of cooking up an obstruction of justice charge against Trump. But this straw is more a ghost of a straw, given that there is no underlying crime to obstruct and that Trump was acting well within his authority when he fired FBI Director James Comey.  

The best the Democrats can do is use their control of the U.S. House of Representatives to launch investigations that will lead nowhere but will give the Democratic Party-controlled news media yet more fodder with which to continue crapping up the U.S. news cycle with Russiagate stories. This could continue all the way up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond if voters return Trump to the White House.

The Republicans for their part are waiting for the next report from the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General. From an op-ed for Fox News, March 25, by a former FBI Assistant Director, Chris Swecker:

Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated report on Russian collusion is complete, it is time to focus on the other half of the equation: Did members of the intelligence community [more to the point, the domestic justice community] “weaponize” their powers for the purpose of discrediting a political campaign and a sitting president? Fortunately, there is an ongoing Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation that addresses this and other important questions.

It is critical for this country to know if a small cadre of Justice Department and FBI executives abused and violated U.S. laws and guidelines on the conduct of investigations when former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe rushed to open an investigation into a sitting president for obstruction of justice.

McCabe was angry and reacting to the president’s firing of his boss, former FBI Director James Comey, for insubordination and violating well-established DOJ procedures and possibly U.S. laws in exonerating Hillary Clinton in a grandstanding press conference in July 2016.

The OIG is also looking at the role played by a seedy “dossier” [the Steele Dossier] containing opposition research that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. That unsubstantiated document found its way into an FBI FISA warrant application to spy on the Trump campaign, which was granted just weeks before the 2016 election.

Rather than conduct more kangaroo investigations, as House Democrats seem intent to do, Congress should spend our taxpayer dollars designing remedial legislation to fix the systemic problems within the Department of Justice that we have seen play out over the last two years.

There is plenty of material to work with, as the DOJ OIG has already completed and published two extremely thorough investigations. The results of a third significant inquiry will soon be released, which may well be the most important and potentially impactful.

[...]

Is the Democrats' sturm and drang in the wake of the AG's summary of the Special Counsel's findings an attempt to distract national public attention from the OIG's next report? That could be part of it. But they could always say that Barr is a Trump go-fer and that Barr tainted the Justice Department's OIG.  (Different federal agencies have their own OIGs to handle complaints of misconduct.)

However, the Republicans could also launch counter-investigations in response to Democratic-led investigations, including naming another Special Counsel to investigate the role of Hillary Clinton and other top officials in the Obama administration in instigating and sustaining Russiagate, which was already been shown to be nothing more than a political hoax. The hoax turned on what's called in the political industry "opposition research," in this case famously constructed by a 'former' British MI6 operative named Christopher Steele. 

Could a new Special Counsel reach as high as investigating Obama himself? On paper, yes, but somehow I don't envision him having to answer questions from the FBI or any Special Counsel or congressional committee. Obama is untouchable, although this might change if he decides to put his wife into the running for the Democratic Party's nominee for U.S. President in 2020.   

In short, we now have what Americans call a Mexican Standoff, with Democrats and Republicans making threats, calling each other bad names, and challenging each other to shoot first.  

As to whether the standoff will continue after the publication of some version of the Special Counsel's report, due maybe sometime in April, cooler heads on both sides are saying, 'Can we just please move on from Russiagate and focus on the business of governing?'

The problem with this commonsense suggestion is that for two years the Americans who believed Trump must have somehow stolen the presidency from Hillary Clinton were strung along by Democratic Members of Congress and the Democratic Party-controlled news media. These kept holding out the hope to Americans devastated by Clinton's loss that any day now Trump would be charged with treason for helping Vladimir Putin throw the American presidential election in his favor -- an impossibility, by the way, given that the election is governed the Electoral College, which is a state-by-state process.

The vast majority of such Americans remain to this day completely unaware that Donald Trump won the presidency because his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, orchestrated an absolutely brilliant "ground game" as it's called in the political industry, and Trump had the intelligence to appreciate that Kushner was on the right track. 

Hillary Clinton either ignored Kushner's ground game or discounted it. She and her closest aides were living in a bubble; they were certain she had the presidency locked in. 

As to why the majority of Americans don't know about the brilliant ground game, because it was only reported to the public once to my knowledge, in one publication, a financial magazine, and the Democratic National Party and its media flunkies refused to discuss the report. They and Clinton preferred to blame a conspiracy between Trump and Putin for her loss.      

What might resolve the standoff is if Democratic Party bosses concede that keeping Russiagate limping along is not a winning strategy for the 2020 election.

As to the rest, namely trying to ward off a repeat of a massive political hoax, house-cleaning is needed in key American federal agencies. With regard to Russiagate, the rot was pretty much confined to the top floors of the FBI and Justice Department as Swecker's op-ed indicated, and the CIA. The lower echelons are filled with many 'lifers' -- people who make careers out of staying with one U.S. agency and take pride in avoiding political partisanship in their jobs. But the top slots are political appointees. There are regulations governing all U.S. federal agencies that are designed to guard against the worst abuses of these positions but clearly, these collapsed during the Obama years.

In any case, it will be up to Barr in his role as Attorney General to get control of the upper echelon of the Justice Department, which he's already given evidence he's doing. 

And as Joe DiGenova pointed out yesterday, it will also be up to Barr to get control of the U.S. District Federal Courts, which have long been run like duchies, and with the Southern District of New York Court seemingly functioning as Obama's go-fer. Barr can do this by strongly reminding these district courts that they are not local and they're under the jurisdiction of the federal U.S. Department of Justice.   

As to cleaning up the 'secret' FISA court, which played a key role in getting Russiagate off the ground by accepting as evidence the Steele Dossier in signing off on at least one warrant to secretly surveil Trump's campaign -- I don't know whether the AG's authority extends to that court; if not, it might take an Act of Congress or even the Supreme Court stepping in if only to publicly wag a finger at the court. 

As to shutting down the FISA Court entirely, there have been calls to do this ever since Edward Snowden blew the lid off secret surveillance of American citizens in the USA. I think all we can know at this time is that some kind of action will be taken to rein in the FSIA Court in the wake of the Special Counsel's Russiagate findings, although this might occur behind closed doors if the court remains.

Regarding the CIA, if what happened at the U.S. Department of State when Trump first came to the White House is any guide, my assumption is that he put Mike Pompeo in charge at the CIA to gut departments and/or factions at the division levels that had confused loyalty to Barack Obama with loyalty to the United States of America. In any case, when Trump transferred Pompeo to State, he replaced him at the CIA with a tough-minded woman who by all accounts (so far) does things "by the book."

Regarding the FBI -- the worst offenders in the top echelon are already gone from the agency, leaving the demoralized lower echelons to pick up the pieces. But they are doing this under the AG's watchful eye; the FBI reports directly to the Department of Justice. As to the present FBI director, I will assume he was chosen because he also does things by the book and doesn't bump into the furniture.

To sum, Barack Obama famously said in October 2008, in the closing days of his first run for the White House, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  

Although he backed away from the statement in 2014 in reply to a direct question from a Fox News TV host, only Americans who wend their way through a "wilderness of mirrors" to study Russiagate will ever know how close Obama came to keeping his word.

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Turks rat out American help to Islamic State in E. Syria. Hah!

No honor among scoundrels, that's for sure. Israeli, French and British special services are reportedly also involved, according to state-controlled Turkish media. 

 "An interesting observation is that the [Turkish regime] ... which in the previous years of war conspired with ISIS, allowing its foreign recruits to enter Syria and buying smuggled oil from the terrorists, has now become one of the most active exposers of alleged US ties with ISIS elements."

CIA IS TURNING REFUGEE CAMPS IN EASTERN SYRIA INTO ISIS HOTBEDS
March 16, 2019
SouthFront (March 13 video report)

[TRANSCRIPT]

The CIA is conspiring with ISIS commanders in northeastern Syria supplying them with fake documents and then transferring them to Iraq, according to reports in Turkish pro-government media.

About 2,000 ISIS members were questioned in the areas of Kesra, Buseira, al-Omar and Suwayr in Deir Ezzor province and at least 140 of them then received fake documents. Some of the questioned terrorists were then moved to the camps of al-Hol, Hasakah and Rukban, which are controlled by US-backed forces. The CIA also reportedly created a special facility near Abu Khashab with the same purpose.

Israeli, French and British special services are reportedly involved.

An interesting observation is that the media of the country, which in the previous years of war, used to conspire with ISIS allowing its foreign recruits to enter Syria and buying smuggled oil from the terrorists, has now become one of the most active exposers of the alleged US ties with ISIS elements.

Another issue often raised in Turkish media is the poor humanitarian situation in the refugee camps controlled by US-backed forces. These reports come in the course of other revelations. According to the International Rescue Committee, about 100 people, mostly children, died in combat zones or in the al-Hol camp controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces just recently.

In its turn, the Russian Defense Ministry released a series of satellite images revealing the horrifying conditions in the al-Rukban camp. The imagery released on March 12 shows at least 670 graves, many of them fresh, close to the camp’s living area. The tents and light constructions used to settle refugees are also located in close proximity to large waste deposits.

A joint statement by the Russian and Syrian Joint Coordination Committees for Repatriation of Syrian Refugees said that refugees in al-Rukban are suffering from a lack of water, food, medication and warm clothing, which is especially important during winter. According to the statement, members of the US-backed armed group Maghawir al-Thawra disrupt water deliveries to the camp, using this as a bargaining chip for blackmailing and profiteering purposes.

Tensions are once again growing between Syria and Israel. Earlier in March, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad submitted an official letter to the head of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) Kristin Lund that Damascus ”will not hesitate to confront Israel” if it continues refusing to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

Israeli media and officials responded with a new round of allegations that Hezbollah is entrenching in southern Syria, therefore justifying a further militarization of the Golan Heights.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

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Assad to the West: Take your reconstruction money and stuff it!

March 18, 2019, Sputnik:

DAMASCUS (Sputnik) - The Syrian Foreign Ministry responded to the statement issued by the US-led coalition partners that refused to take part in the reconstruction of Syria noting that these states are not invited to contribute to the reconstruction after war crimes they committed against the Syrian people.

"These countries that killed and destroyed have never been interested in the reconstruction [of Syria] and they are not invited to contribute to the reconstruction. These states should only pay compensations for the killing and destruction committed as a result of their heinous crimes and stop their blatant interference in internal affairs", the statement obtained by Sputnik read.

The ministry noted that counterterrorism methods of the US-led coalition constitute war crimes and violations of international law.

The United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom said in a joint statement on Friday that they will not consider providing reconstruction assistance to Syria until a credible political process is underway in the country.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called this statement historical evidence of "lies, hypocrisy, deception, and falsification".

As the armed conflict in Syria seems to be nearing its end and Damascus has regained control over the vast territories that were previously controlled by terrorist groups and rebels, Syria has already launched the reconstruction process and started welcoming back refugees.

The US-led international coalition of more than 70 members has been engaged in counterterrorism operations in Syria since 2014 without the permission of Syrian authorities or the UN Security Council. The United States has, in particular, supported the Kurdish-led militia controlling the territories to the east of the Euphrates River.

US President Donald Trump announced last December that the US troops would leave Syria. However, no exact deadline for the withdrawal of US soldiers has been unveiled yet.  [Pundita note: The deadline is when pigs fly]

[END REPORT]

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May you be in Heaven a full half hour before the Devil knows you're dead!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone! 

What? I can't wish you Happy St. Patrick's Day at 10:30 at night? Does this mean the next 90 minutes doesn't belong to the Irish?

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It seems God is not terribly fond of locust hors d'oeuvres

"Also, a Midrash in Shemot Rabba describes how God is so annoyed with the Egyptians for responding to the plague of locusts by whetting their appetites, He sends a magical wind which blows away every single tasty morsel, even those already salted and pickled."

DELICIOUS LOCUSTS: WITH SWARMS IMMINENT, ONE RABBI OFFERS A TASTY SOLUTION

By HAGAY HACOHEN

MARCH 4, 2019

The Jerusalem Post

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that an infestation of desert locusts in Sudan and Eritrea is rapidly swarming along both sides of the Red Sea towards Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

According to an agency press release, heavy rains triggered two generations of breeding since October, leading to a substantial increase in the locust population.

Earlier this year, the insects evoked biblical times when they showed up at holy sites in Mecca, covering some areas in darkness and sparking a thunderstorm of hail and fire on social media.

If the swarms reach Israel in time for Passover, one man is ready for them - Rabbi Natan Slifkin, director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History in Beit Shemesh.

Slifkin organized and led the Feast of Biblical Flora and Fauna in 2016, at which the tasty insects [dipped in chocolate and served with a handy toothpick] were served alongside the more traditional roasted whole venison.

The flesh of these small edibles is pareve (considered neither meat or dairy), which means they can be served with either cheese or meatballs, according to your preference. Some Jewish rabbis assert that it's permissible to eat them live, according to Breaking News Israel.

While Slifkin is not a Yemenite Jew [the only Jewish community with a tradition of eating locusts] he is famous for his passion for biblical history and slightly occult themes in Jewish culture. His 2007 book Sacred Monsters was featured in the 2017 film "I Kill Giants" as one of the books the protagonist is reading.

Jewish tradition doesn't seem to view eating locusts in an overly positive light. The author of Aruch HaShulchan points out that they were eaten by the poor as an option only slightly better than starvation.

Also, a Midrash in Shemot Rabba describes how God is so annoyed with the Egyptians for responding to the plague of locusts by whetting their appetites, He sends a magical wind which blows every single tasty morsel away, even those already salted and pickled.

Media Line contributed to this article

[END]

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Bravo, Richard Engel

America's NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel (very smart, very fluent in Arabic) interviewing captured Islamic State fighters

From his Twitter page, March 8:

Surrendering ISIS men tell me they were just cooks, cleaners and bottle-washers. I said, “With so many cooks you must have had great food.” Got No laughs.

Meanwhile, soon-to-retire General Joseph Votel, chief of U.S. Centcom, told Congress last Thursday that while Islamic State has suffered major defeats in Syria the survivors are  "unrepentant, unbroken," as they go underground. 

Translation: The U.S. will just have to stay on in Syria to ferret the rats from their tunnels.

[eyeroll]

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"Sometimes we outsmart ourselves"

Yes, that was something I pointed out on the first day of this blog's existence in November 2004. I put up three posts on that day: one of them a sendup of the Chinese military's new obsession with a college degree; one to contrast the morals-based American viewpoint with the amoral 'multipolar' foreign policy initiatives of the West Europeans; and one to warn Washington's Cold War holdovers that in this fishbowl era it was critically important to play it straight. 

One can indeed be too clever by half -- a warning that American defense strategists and administrations have ignored since the end of World War Two. As to where being that clever led, one place was Vietnam. The complete story of the Vietnam War is still not fully told but last week John Batchelor, with the help of a documentary producer and a man who had 'eyes on the ground' in the runup to Tet, presented some little-known history to John's radio show audience. ("Agents Unknown:" A Vietnam War military intelligence analyst, adviser, and operative for the U.S. Army, CIA, and South Vietnamese intelligence services tells his story.)

Their discussion does not make for easy listening. As John said about the documentary, "It's not a popcorn movie." But Americans, in particular, should steel themselves and take heed. (JB Show Podcast Part 1 and Part 2.)   

Turning to the mess in the Middle East made by smarty pants in several governments, on March 5 a Middle East old hand, Colonel Pat Lang, who also had eyes on the ground in Vietnam, wrote up some of his recollections for his Sic Semper Tyrannis website (What is HAMAS?) in response to a discussion at Al Masdar News:

I was the head of liaison between DoD (DIA) and IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] General Staff intelligence for nine years (1985-1994).  As such I was the "minder" for the IDF reps in Washington based in their embassy.  The CIA tried continuously to acquire this task but without success.  They were not content to nurture their longstanding relationship with Mossad, the Israeli civilian intelligence service.  In Israel, IDF intelligence is the senior service and the national estimator.

The brigadiers who seriatim were the chief military attache in the embassy spent a lot of time in my office consulting, being given guidance as to their sometimes arrogant and unacceptable behavior with regard to the DC police, and just chatting.  There were a lot of lunches and dinners with wives.  It was a very friendly set of relationships.  I used to take them to WBS battlefields both for the educational benefit for them concerning the US and to have a day in which to study them as individuals.

One day, sitting in my Pentagon office, the head man from the embassy began to tell me of his concern with regard to what was happening in the 2nd Intifada, then ongoing.  He told me that Israel had sponsored the growth of Hamas as a rival to the PLO, then in exile in Tunisia, believing that a religiously based resistance movement would attract many Palestinians, splitting them off from the PLO and generally weakening the Palestinian resistance.  Instead, the al-Qassem Brigades of Hamas were proving to be daunting opponents in the rebellion. "Sometimes we outsmart ourselves," he said with a sad smile.

He was a very skilled man.  He was one of a small number of IDF officers trained as an Arab affairs specialist from secondary school onward. At one point he was Military Governor of the occupied West Bank.  I believe him.  pl

[End]

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