036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Two: Afghanistan

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Two: Afghanistan

I'm just going to take a minute or two for this because I am absolutely sure you have heard about it, but just as absolutely it has to be mentioned.

President Joe Blahden has directed that all remaining US forces be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September 11, ending America’s longest war 20 years after it started, in a decision supported even by veterans groups across the political landscape and from both Democrats and GOPpers in Congress.

NATO troops will also depart.

Despite the bipartisan support, there are still those urging that 20 years of war and $2 trillion in spending is not enough, that leaving has to be "conditions based" - in other words, the killing should continue until we win. The threat, they say, is civil war, as if that's not what Afghanistan has been experiencing all along.

Besides that obvious point, there is the argument that pulling out actually increases pressure on both the Taliban and the Afghan government to reach an agreement because neither can continue to hold the US hostage to political developments in the country - the government because it can no longer sit back and rely on the US to maintain it; the Taliban because it can no longer use the presence of foreign troops to build and hold popular support.

There is some wiggle room in the announcement, as the administration plans to leave “sufficient” forces in the region to conduct counterterrorism missions and keep a check on the Taliban, but how extensive those forces will be or where they will be stationed is unclear.

What's really odd, though, is that some are referring to it as a "surprise" announcement, even though the deadline is more than four months after the May 1 deadline agreed to by the Tweetie-pie administration last year.

I guess, like some of us sometimes, they just couldn't imagine it really ending.

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5

This episode:

- Some thoughts prompted by the Derek Chauvin conviction
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/20/watch-live-jury-delivers-verdict-in-derek-chauvin-murder-trial.html
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/15/22383392/adam-toledo-shooting-video-released-chicago-police-bodycam
https://theconversation.com/being-skeptical-of-sources-is-a-journalists-job-but-it-doesnt-always-happen-when-those-sources-are-the-police-159173
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/officer-who-fatally-shot-daunte-wright-police-chief-have-resigned-n1263949
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minnesota-police-chief-says-he-believes-officer-meant-grab-taser-n1263817
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-veteran-officer-could-have-mistaken-glock-taser-fatal-shooting-n1263976
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-similar-to-duante-wright-shooting-other-cops-have-claimed-gun-taser-mixup-20210412-7b34zo47kzhtpj4n3rxjl37mze-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/us/brooklyn-center-police-shooting-minnesota.html

- Afghanistan
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/04/us-nato-troops-withdraw-afghanistan-911-us-official-says/173326/
https://apnews.com/article/world-news-afghanistan-troop-withdrawals-islamabad-015703a459088547531a755819897040

- Noted in Passing
https://www.aol.com/news/ohio-republicans-aim-rename-state-174607622-163054145.html
-
https://www.aol.com/finance/romney-introduces-legislation-tackle-social-163327974.html
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
-
https://theintercept.com/2021/04/19/israel-aid-elizabeth-warren-j-street/
-
https://ncse.ngo/creationism-bill-advanced-arkansas
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html
-
https://www.aol.com/finance/poll-15-americans-worse-off-120630775-134039730.html - And Another Thing
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/12/100-years-on-eclipse-1919-picture-that-changed-universe-arthur-eddington-einstein-theory-gravity
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/black-hole/

The Erickson Report, Page 5: We Are Not Alone

The Erickson Report, Page 5: We Are Not Alone

Now for an occasional segment called We Are Not Alone, when we remind ourselves that we are not alone on this planet and newsworthy things happen in places beyond our borders.

First we go to India, which has seen weeks of protests which have resulted in over two dozen protesters killed by police. The protesters, mostly but not exclusively Muslim, are opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, which was passed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in December.

The CAA offers an accelerated pathway to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Christian immigrants in India claiming religious persecution. The claim is that it is protection for people facing such persecution in neighboring countries, but the law will not bear the weight of that claim.

First, for the first time in the history of India as an independent nation and apparently contrary to its constitution, it makes religious affiliation a basis for citizenship and what's more does it in a discriminatory way: You may have noticed that Muslim immigrants claiming religious persecution in their home countries are not covered by that law.

Second, it does not require proof of claims of religious persecution on the part of those it does cover.

Third, it only applies to certain neighboring countries, specifically Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (marked in red). It does not apply to other neighboring countries such as China, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka (marked in blue), in all three of which there is documented evidence of persecution of religious minorities: Christians, Buddhists, and Uighur - who are Muslim - in China, the Royhingya, who are majority Muslim, in Myanmar, and Muslims in Sri Lanka.

India and neighbors

The difference in those two sets of countries is not a coincidence, which becomes even clearer when you consider that those marked in red are majority Muslim with Muslim governments - while those marked in blue are neither.

The law is part of and reflects a wave of extremist Hindu nationalism which has swept over India, where it has become commonplace for senior political figures to refer to Muslim immigrant workers as “infiltrators” or “termites" and to move to create a National Register of Citizens, requiring the production of documents to prove you are a citizen, an obstacle that of course will leave out many. But don't worry: Amit Shah, the home minister of India, has promised that the CAA will help anyone who fails that requirement to reclaim their citizenhip - except, that is, for Muslims who, again, are not covered by that law.
The law has been challenged in the courts as well as in the streets. We'll have to see what happens.

=

Another place that has seen demonstrations for some months is Iraq.

For three months, protesters all across Iraq but particularly in the south have been demanding the fall of a government they consider corrupt and controlled by Iran. Between 600 and 700 protesters are believed to have been killed by security forces or militia gunmen in that time.
Despite the official violence, protests have been strong enough that Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi announced in November he would resign - but he is still in place as a caretaker because no one has been found to replace him, something I suspect Mahdi knew when he made the offer. Those who have come forward have been rejected by the protesters because of their various parties' ties to Iran and other foreign countries, which is pretty much exactly what is being protested.

Thousands of protesters have turned out every day in Baghdad, turning the central Tahrir Square into a sort of community - pitching tents and organizing meals, even having doctors and dentists providing services.

Iraq

On January 24, separately from the occupation in Tahrir Square, a huge throng turned out in Baghdad to demand the withdrawal of US forces from the country. Many came out in response to a call from powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political bloc controls the most seats in Parliament and who had been to that point supportive of the on-going protests.

But then al-Sadr reversed course and withdrew his support for the anti-government protests with the lame excuse of wanting to avoid “internal strife” - truly a strange sentiment coming immediately after a mass demonstration that he called for. It was not the first time in his political history that he has suddenly changed direction, but this one had immediate and violent consequences, as the very next day, January 25,  Iraqi security forces moved against the Tahrir Square protests.
They fired tear gas, they fired live ammunition, they burned tents as they stormed bridges, streets, and a highway interchange.
And not just in Baghdad: In the southern city of Nasriyah, at least three protesters were killed when security forces moved in to re-open a highway blocked by the demonstrations.

Altogether, at least 12 protesters were killed and 230 more were wounded by the assaults.
Without the support of al-Sadr, the broad-based and secular protest movement is likely to be crushed by government security forces and the Iran-backed militias ostensibly under government control.

But the protesters vowed not to give up and many said that would spend the night in Tahrir Square to try to hold it against government forces. As night fell, the Iraqi national anthem could be heard being sung there.

I'm sure more on this has happened since I recorded this. You should check it out.

=

Horn of Africa

Meanwhile, east Africa has gone Biblical: A plague of locusts has spread across Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya.

Over 100 billion of the insects, each of which consumes its own weight in food every day, are swarming through a region already reeling from a 2019 that started with drought and ended with deadly floods. The invasion is the biggest in Ethiopia and Somalia in 25 years, and the biggest in Kenya in 70 years.

Technically, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO, labels the current invasion an "upsurge." Only if it gets worse and cannot be contained over a year or more, does it become a "plague." But I doubt that matters to those affected as they see crops and pasture devastated in a region which is already one of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world.

And worse may be on the way. When rains arrive in March and bring new vegetation across much of the region, the numbers of the fast-breeding locusts could grow to 500 times what they are now before drier weather in June curbs their spread - which by then could include Uganda and South Sudan.

Locals have employed traditional means of fighting the onslaught: banging on cans, waving blankets, shaking trees, anything to keep the locusts moving and flying rather than eating. But the only effective means is aerial spraying of pesticides and it needs to be done before the March rains. Some is being done now, but not enough.

So what will it take to step up the spraying? According to the FAO, about $70 million in aid. Not billion, million. That's a little more than 1/3 of what Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have spent on TV ads. That's about 50 minutes worth of our military spending.

And the hungry of the world still need to beg.

By the way, does this have anything to do with climate change? Yes.

=

Epicenter of earthquake in Turkey

More bad news: A major earthquake hit eastern Turkey on January 24, leaving at least 38 dead and more than 1,600 injured.
At least 76 buildings were destroyed and hundreds more were heavily damaged.

The epicenter of the magnitude 6.7 quake was near the town of Sivrice, in eastern Elazig province about 565 kilometers (350 miles) east of the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Hundreds of aftershocks, one with a magnitude of 5.4, complicated relief efforts, which nonetheless saw dozens of people pulled from the rubble as 3500 rescue experts worked around the clock in sub-freezing temperatures.

This is neither the first nor the worst quake to hit Turkey; in fact, there was one in the same area ten years ago that killed 51 people and in 1999 two strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey, killing around 18,000. But I don't imagine that is any comfort to the families of those killed this time.

=

I'm going to end this segment with this and I have a particular reason for putting it here.

US Women's March

The fourth annual Women's March was on January 18. Thousands turned out in Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and a number of other places in what NPR called as "a smaller but passionate crowd" which AP described as "focused on issues such as climate change, pay equity, reproductive rights, and immigration."

Okay, so why is this under "We Are Not Alone?" To make the point that this is not a US issue, this is not a US campaign, this is not a US effort. This is a world issue, a world campaign, a world effort.

On January 18 there were over 200 marches covering 24 countries across six continents. This is a worldwide campaign for women's freedom - by which I mean women's rights, women's dignity, women's autonomy. The issues women face vary from place to place and I daresay in intensity from place to place. But it still comes under one banner, one umbrella, one headline, one non-negotiable, bottom-line principle: women as full and equal human beings.

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Noted in Passing

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Noted in Passing

Now we move on to Noted in Passing, where we spend a minute or two on items that are just interesting or which deserve more coverge than we have time for but which we can't let pass without mention.

First up, some good news in the form of one more little step : As of January 1, New Hampshire residents who don't identify as either male or female can have their driver's licenses indicate their sex as X instead of M or F.

At the same time, even as acceptance increases, there is still much ground to be gained, as can be seen in the fact that the United Methodist Church, the nation’s third-largest religious denomination, is expected to split, spinning off a "traditionalist" denomination as a home for the too-many church leaders and members who, even at this late date, refuse to accept same-sex marriage and refuse the ordination to LGBTQ clergy.

The plan is expected to be approved at the church's worldwide conference in May.

=

Meanwhile, on January 3, the American Dialect Society held its 30th annual “Word of the Year” vote, which this year also included a vote for “Word of the Decade.”

The winning word of the decade was "they," particularly as it applies to and is referenced by, people with nonbinary gender identities but also because of its increasing use and acceptance in referring to a single person of unknown gender.

Pronouns, along with conjunctions and prepositions, are generally considered a “closed class” - a group of words whose number rarely grows and whose meanings rarely change. So having "they" have an expanded meaning and use was a real treat for linguists.

=

This is kind of interesting: Tens of thousands of parking meters, thousands of cash registers, and even at least one video game are among computerized systems that have fallen foul of a computer glitch related to the notorious Y2K, or millennium, bug. Known, appropriately enough, as the Y2020 bug, it's a long-lurking side effect of attempts to avoid the Y2K bug.

Both bugs stem from the way computers store dates. To save memory, many older systems express years using two numbers - such as 98 for 1998. The Y2K bug was a fear that when the year rolled over to 2000, computers would treat it as 1900, rather than 2000.

Programmers wanting to avoid the Y2K bug had two broad options: entirely rewrite their code, or adopt a quick fix called “windowing,” which would treat all dates from 00 to 20 as being from the 2000s, rather than the 1900s. An estimated 80 per cent of computers fixed in 1999 used this quicker, cheaper option - but all it did was kick the problem down the road.

Coders chose 1920 to 2020 as the standard window because of the significance of the midpoint, 1970. Many programming languages and systems handle dates and times as measured by seconds since January 1, 1970, a method known as Unix time or "epoch time." It's seen as a standard because of the widespread use of Unix in various industries.

The idea was that these windowed systems would be outmoded and replaced by the time 2020 arrived - which was the same thing the programmers of the 1960s thought about the year 2000.

Those systems that used the quick fix have now reached the end of that window, and have rolled back to 1920 with the attending glitches.

Fixes have been issued but exactly how long these will last is unknown, as companies haven’t disclosed details about them. If the window has simply been pushed back again, the error may well crop up again.

And there's another date storage problem, one which faces us in the year 2038. The issue again stems from Unix’s epoch time: The data is stored as a 32-bit integer, which will run out of capacity at 3:14 am on January 19, 2038.

Something to look forward to.

=

Now we come to a trio of things that I won't do more on at least now because frankly they hurt my heart.

Monday, January 6: A 5.8 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico.
Tuesday, January 7: A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico; it's the largest one in a century.
Three hours later: An aftershock of 6.0 magnitude hits
Saturday, January 11: A 5.9 magnitude earthquake hits Puerto Rico

Hundreds of millions in damage, at least one dead, hundreds losing their homes, thousands in shelters, hundreds of thousands more without power.

And don't forget, Puerto Rico is still waiting for $18B in federal aid for relief and repair work related to the disasters of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

Next: An outbreak of measles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which began early last year has lead - so far - to over 6,000 dead and a total of an estimated 310,000 cases. The death toll was more than double that from a concurrent outbreak of Ebola.

This past year saw a huge measles outbreak across the planet. Madagascar saw over 1,200 people die. Places like Somalia, Ukraine, Brazil, and Bangladesh reported thousands of cases.

Here in the US we also had an outbreak of measles. While the numbers were smaller - nearly 1300 cases and no deaths - it was still the worst outbreak since 2000, when measles had been declared by the WHO to have been eliminated in the US.

And yet we still have these idiot anti-vaxxers spewing their bullshit about vaccines. It really hurts my heart.

And if you're still not depressed, here's number three: The active Taal Volcano in the Philippines violently erupted on January 12, launching ash and steam several km into the atmosphere and causing ash to fall in surrounding heavily populated areas.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the status of the Taal Volcano to Alert Level 4, indicating a strong likelihood of more violent eruptions within the next couple of days. The agency is calling for everyone within 14km - a little less than 9 miles - from the volcano to evacuate. That's about 500,000 people.

Taal is located about 70 km, about 45 miles, south of Manila.

Oh, and by the way, in case you'd forgotten: Australia is still on fire.

=

Finally, to cheer myself up a bit, here's something I find interesting and in fact rather encouraging.

Benjamin Bergen is a Professor of Cognitive Science at UCal San Diego. Every fall since 2010, he has surveyed about 100 undergraduates in his introductory language class, asking them how offensive various words are.

What he has found is that among young adults today, vulgarities of various sorts are significantly less offensive than they were thought to be back in 1972, when George Carlin did his now-famous routine about the "seven dirty words you can't say on television."

At the same time, various slurs are found considerably more offensive. So various vulgarities that used to generate gasps of shock are now met with a shrug while various racial, ethnic, sexual, and other sorts of slurs that used to be part of everyday conversation are now found offensive.

I find that to be a very good thing.

38.4 - We Are Not Alone: Malaysia, Vietnam, India

We Are Not Alone: Malaysia, Vietnam, India

Next, it's We Are Not Alone, our weekly reminder that just because some event does not affect us, it does not mean it is unworthy of notice. We are not alone on this planet and "It affects us" is not the only measure of importance.

To start this time Malaysia has been hit with unprecedented flooding in the wake of a major storm on November 5 with intense rain that left nearly 80 per cent of Penang state flooded, with some areas under three feet of water.

Authorities have confirmed seven deaths and around 10,000 people have been evacuated in Penang and Kedah states.

The government says it's now prepared to spend the equivalent of over $1 billion on flood mitigation projects over the next few months.

The storms and flooding may have been worsened by an indirect effect from Typhoon Damrey, which smashed into southern Vietnam on December 4. It was the worst storm to hit the area in 16 years.

As of November 7, there were 69 known dead with 30 more missing. More than 100,000 houses were still under water.

The typhoon is the latest in a string of major storms to hit Vietnam this year. In September, Typhoon Doksuri tore through the central part of the country, killing 11 people and last month, more than 70 people we killed in flooding and landslides in the nation's northern and central regions.

Moving on to a non-natural disaster, around this time every year, the city of Delhi, India is covered with smog - thick, acrid fog, a combination of vehicle emissions, smoke from burning of crops in neighboring states and from fireworks from Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.

his year has been so bad that on December 7, the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency in the city, and people have been advised to avoid any outdoor activity.

To give you an idea of how bad it is, the Air Quality Index goes from "excellent" at a score of 0-50 up through increasing levels up to "severely polluted" at 300. The index in New Delhi on Tuesday was 316.

It's even worse in Punjab, some distance to the north: The index in that state is 462.

Punjab banned crop burning in 2013 in an attempt to alleviate the problem but the law is largely ignored. Even so, Punjab officials insist crop burning and the associated smoke has been cut by 30%. That reduction, however, doesn't seem to be having a major impact on the smog either there or in Delhi - in fact, the trend of recent years has been for it to get worse.

What's Left #38

What's Left
for the week of November 10 - 16, 2017

This week:

Hero Award: Brennon Jones and Sean Johnson
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/6/1713224/-Barber-who-has-been-giving-free-haircuts-to-homeless-is-gifted-barbershop-by-stranger
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/01/stranger-gifts-barbershop-to-man-behind-haircuts-for-homeless.html

Clown Award: unnamed man who went to a Halloween party dressed as a suicide bomber
https://splinternews.com/louisiana-supreme-court-rules-that-a-man-who-asked-for-1820085946
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/11/02/the-suspect-told-police-give-me-a-lawyer-dog-the-court-says-he-wasnt-asking-for-a-lawyer/
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/357985-roy-moore-impeach-judge-blocking-transgender-military-ban
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/the-lawlessness-of-roy-moore/541467/
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysia-arrests-man-who-dressed-as-suicide-bomber-for-halloween-9384492

Question: why has the left dropped military spending as an issue?
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/house-senate-negotiators-land-on-700-billion-deal-for-pentagon/
http://fair.org/home/outlets-that-scolded-sanders-over-deficits-uniformly-silent-on-700b-pentagon-handout/
http://www.pogoarchives.org/straus/dm/defense_monitor_jan_may_2017.pdf
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1190216/dod-releases-fiscal-year-2018-budget-proposal/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/opinion/americas-forever-wars.html

We Are Not Alone: Malaysia, Vietnam, India
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysia-to-roll-out-more-than-us-1b-worth-of-flood-mitigation-9378508
http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/7-killed-10000-evacuated-penang-and-kedah-floods-worsen
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysia-to-roll-out-more-than-us-1b-worth-of-flood-mitigation-9378508
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2017/11/299593/penang-floods-meteorological-dept-explains-what-triggered-heavy-rainfall
http://news.iafrica.com/worldnews/1056471.html
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2017/11/07/death-toll-from-vietnam-typhoon-rises-to-69/
http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Blanketed-in-toxic-haze-New-Delhi-has-become-12338697.php
http://abcnews.go.com/International/severe-air-pollution-declared-public-health-emergency-delhi/story?id=50987745

Outrage of the Week: sexism, the cause of sexual harassment and assault
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/10/22/women-of-the-senate-share-their-metoo-stories-of-harassment/23251721/
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/one-common-denominator-all-sexual-harassers-seem-share
https://hbr.org/2017/10/a-study-used-sensors-to-show-that-men-and-women-are-treated-differently-at-work
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/03/gender-pay-gap-facts/
https://womenintheworkplace.com/

RIP: "Fats" Domino
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fats-domino-rock-pioneer-behind-143021193.html
https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2017/10/25/legendary-new-orleans-musician-fats-domino-dead-at-89/23255560/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6JZW7zMDfY

37.8 - On the push for war with North Korea

On the push for war with North Korea

We end this week with a warming, a heads-up if you will: 2017 heading into 2018 is shaping up a lot like 2002.

That's because 2002 was the year of an on-going campaign to get the public to embrace a war against Iraq - and as time went on the public resistance to the idea continued, the claims became more and more intense, the dangers being claimed more and more extreme.

We are seeing much the same now - with, I strongly suspect, the same ultimate goal: war, as the claims get more extreme.

On October 25, we had testimony to the House Committee on Homeland Security from the chair and chief of staff of something called the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack about a hypothetical North Korean EMP attack on the US.

"EMP" is "electromagnetic pulse" and it's a by-product of nuclear explosions. It's a burst of intense electromagnetic energy that can disrupt power grids along with phone lines and internet services and more; it can even fry delicate electronics.

The report claims that such an attack would wipe out the US's technological infrastructure for an indefinite period, resulting in, it claims, 90% of us starving to death inside of a year.

Scared yet? No?

Well, the next day, October 26, a report from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University breathlessly told us that North Korea has an advanced, dangerous, biological weapons program with the ability to douse thousands of people with lethal doses of anthrax, smallpox, viral hemorrhagic fever, or any one of 10 other germ warfare agents.

And two days after that, on October 28, Secretary of War Jim Mattis declared during a visit to South Korea that the threat of nuclear missile attack from North Korea "has accelerated" and that "I cannot imagine a condition under which the United States would accept North Korea as a nuclear power."

But just in case you still can't be stampeded, there is a back-up: Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 30, both Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refused to rule out a US nuclear first-strike on North Korea. Y'know, just in case.

Tillerson noted that "no president, Republican or Democrat, has ever forsworn the first-strike capability." That, unfortunately, is true - but then again, while some of those presidents brandished those nukes, I don't recall any of them before now ever being quoted something to the effect of "What's the point of having nuclear weapons if you're not going to use them?"

Hang on tight.

As a footnote to that, new reports say that Mount Mantap, the 7,200-foot-high peak under which North Korea detonates its nuclear bomb tests, is suffering from "tired mountain syndrome," where it has been so weakened by repeated tests that the area around the facility is no longer stable.

During the last nuclear test at the facility known as Punggye-ri on 9/3, the mountain visibly shifted, with a 6.3 magnitude artificial earthquake created by the test followed within minutes by a 4.1 magnitude natural quake with an 85-acre area visibly subsiding. Since then, the area, not known for natural seismic activity, has had three more quakes.

It's bad enough that Chinese scientists have already warned that further nuclear tests could cause the mountain to collapse and release the radiation from the blast.

In fact, the weakening was significant enough that when an underground tunnel was being constructed sometime in October, it collapsed, trapping 100 workers - and when another 100 were sent in to rescue them, the tunnel completely collapsed, killing all 200.

This doesn't mean the facility would have to be abandoned and North Korea is unlikely to do so, there being, it seems, few places in the country fit for such a nuclear test site. But it does mean that new tunnels would have to be drilled in another part of the mountain.

Which marks this news as clearly a setback to North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions. Not an end to them by any means, but a setback.

The thing is, between satellite imagery and seismic observations, US intelligence services doubtless knew about these events - the weakening of the mountain, the subsequent earthquakes, the collapse of the tunnels - pretty much as soon as they happened. So I find it interesting that it was not long after the tunnel collapse that Mattis insisting on an "accelerating" threat of attack, since it would seem odd to claim an increased threat just as your adversary has suffered a setback - unless your intent is not to deter an opponent but to promote a war.

Like I said, hang on tight.

37.6 - We Are Not Alone: Kenya, Kiribati

We Are Not Alone: Kenya, Kiribati

Now for our first-after-the-break feature, We Are Not Alone, a weekly reminder that there are events in the world that are of importance even if they don't affect us.

First we have Kenya, which is in the midst of a crisis of democracy as questions about its elections and their integrity drag on.

Incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta was elected for a second term on August 8 with 54% of the vote. But the opposition challenged the outcome and on September 1 the nation's Supreme Court nullified the results on the grounds of "irregularities and illegalities" by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the IEBC, the body that oversees Kenyan elections. The court had never overturned a presidential election before.

It ordered a new election for October 17 which due to delays was held on October 26.

But before that could happen, the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, announced he would refuse to participate in the election, saying it would not be conducted fairly, and urged his supporters to not vote.

What's more, in the period before the election some areas of the country were hit by ethnic tensions, violent protests, sporadic arson and looting, and deadly police gunfire during clashes. Police put the death toll at 19; human rights groups say it is more than 70.

While most of the country was calm, the violence was enough that voting did not happen in 25 constituencies because, it was charged, opposition supporters prevented election officials from delivering voting material and engaged in running battles with police.

When the election did come, Uhuru of course was declared the winner since he didn't have an opponent. He received, the IEBC said, 98.3% of the vote in an election with a poor turnout of just under 39%.

The drama, of course, hasn't ended. Raila has planned another appeal to the courts to overturn this election as well, with the low turnout, the violence, and the failure of the IEBC to agree to any of the changes in election procedures he wanted no doubt all figuring in the appeal.

He also has talked of the possibility of a campaign of civil disobedience to pressure the government of Uhuru's Jubilee party and his own National Super Alliance party intends to establish a People's Assembly to challenge Uhuru's leadership - a development which could simply be a way to organize a nonviolent political protest movement or it could signal an intention or at least a dream of a parallel government.

This is not over.

Next up there is Kiribati (pronounced "kir-i-bas," the "ti" is used for the "s" sound).

Kiribati is a nation composed of a series of atolls straddling the equator, southwest of Hawaii, northeast of Australia. Rather remote, rarely visited - despite attempts to promote tourism, it sees only about 6000 visitors a year - and extremely poor, it is still described as strikingly beautiful.

And it is about to disappear. The highest points on the atolls are only two to three meters - about six and a-half to ten feet - above sea level and as climate change brings rising seas, those numbers will slowly drop.

But long before that happens the atolls will become unlivable.

What locals, who are called i-Kiribati, labeled a tsunami on the atoll of Tarawa was actually "just" a normal wave on a particularly strong spring tide - but that "just" a normal wave was enough to wash over one of the atoll's highest seawalls and drown part of the island's only hospital and overrun a lush coconut forest with sea water, leaving the trees to decay into a field of darkened stumps.

The residents of the islands continue to build and rebuild seawalls further and further inland - but they know it's a losing battle: 77% of i-Kiribati accept that migration will be the result of sea level rise, saying, in the words of a popular song from a few years ago, "the angry sea will kill us all."

35.6 - We Are Not Alone: Burma

We Are Not Alone: Burma

I have been meaning for some time to take a more internationalist view here. Too often we, not just me but all the political shows and podcasts and blogs and whatnot, tend to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues and address the rest of the world only when and only in terms of how events there affect us. We act like we are alone on the earth.

But we're not and so I've decided on a new weekly feature, called, appropriately enough, We Are Not Alone. The first thing back from break each week, we are going to spend at least a couple of minutes addressing some event or events beyond our borders even, perhaps especially, if they don't affect us.

This week, it's Burma, also known as Myanmar.

Rakhine province in southwest Burma has been the site of ethnic cleansing directed at the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim people. The UN human rights office has blamed the Myanmar military for brutally driving well over a half million Rohingya from northern Rakhine state into Bangladesh in the past several weeks, torching homes, crops, and villages to prevent those fleeing from returning.

There are survivor accounts of mass killing and rape as part of that ethnic cleansing.

Rohingya are not classified as an indigenous minority in Myanmar and so are denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity. That is, they are not just not citizens, they are specifically barred from becoming citizens.

This is part of what to means to be stateless: There is no place where they can say "we are part of this nation." By comparison, the Kurds, for example, don't have a Kurdistan, but they are not stateless: The Kurds in Iraq may want independence, they do want independence, but even so they are citizens of Iraq. The same is true in Iran and Turkey. In Turkey, the Kurds may be accused of being terrorists, but they still are a recognized group in Turkey.

Not so the Rohingya. Despite having lived in Rakhine province for generations, they are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They face restrictions and discrimination and are derided by much of the wider, largely Buddhist population of Burma, which has experienced a surge in Buddhist nationalism recently.

The Myanmar army's onslaught in Rakhine was triggered by a small-scale attack on clearly military targets in August by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which is demanding full citizenship rights and recognition of Rohingyas as an indigenous community. Even before the government offensive, the small, lightly armed ARSA was only capable of hit-and-run raids - which is why it would be a more accurate description to say the August raid "was used to justify" rather than "triggered" the army's brutal response.

By the way, a quick sidebar to explain the Burma-Myanmar thing. The formal name of the country is Myanmar, a name that was imposed by the ruling military junta in 1989. Burma is the historical name and the one used by the common people. You'll find both names used pretty interchangeably except in formal legal settings and, usually, in reference to the military.

Anyway, in what was billed as the first part of a major push for improved relations among followers of different faiths in Burma, mass interfaith rallies were held in several places on October 10, attended by Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian leaders calling for peace and understanding.

Which sounds good: pleas for amity and reconciliation including in Rakhine. Except for one thing: These rallies were organized by the National League for Democracy, which is the ruling political party in the country. These were government-sponsored, government-organized rallies intended to push back against the international condemnation of the government by a show of gushing, gooey appeals to "unity" and in some cases directly defending the government and attacking its critics as lacking "understanding."

They existed, that is, to promote a message equivalent to an event in the US responding to issues of racism by solemnly intoning the greeting-card sentimentality of "All lives matter." The insistence - there as here - is that the one thing you can't do is hold anyone responsible.

It's not good enough. The government - and particularly the army that despite the outward frame of democracy, still is effectively in charge - is responsible. And should be held accountable.

There is some talk, vague, but talk, along those lines: The European Union and the United States are supposedly considering targeted sanctions aimed specifically at top generals of the Myanmar military, sanctions that were not even on the table a month ago. There is also some talk of increased humanitarian aid to Rakhine province.

Which unfortunately will be hard to do because the government will not allow international observers or aid workers into the area. Which very likely in a good indication of what those observers and workers would find, including seeing who is to blame.

33.4 - And the wars drag on: Afghanistan, Syrian, Iraq, and Yemen

And the wars drag on: Afghanistan, Syrian, Iraq, and Yemen

Updated And we should be ready take any Good News we can find, because the world at large doesn't appear to be offering much of it.

On September 18, Secretary of War James Mattis announced that more than 3000 additional US troops are being sent to Afghanistan. He had already said two weeks ago that more would be going, but he hadn't said how many. This will bring the total US deployment in Afghanistan to at least 14,000.

This comes in the wake of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's statement on August 22 that "this entire effort was intended to put pressure on the Taliban, to have the Taliban understand that you will not win a battlefield victory. We may not win one, but neither will you."

Which if it means anything at all, it means a literally unending war stretching unknown years into the future of military stalemate. And so what had been Bush's War and became Obama's War is now undeniably TheRump's War. And nothing changes except the length of the list of the dead.

And speaking of wars, oh yeah, there's still one in Syria, isn't there?

Deir Ezzor is the largest city in the eastern reaches of Syria. It sits on the southern (or western) shore of the Euphrates River, a river which serves as a convenient demarcation line between what is informally considered southern (and western) Syria on the one side and northern (and eastern) Syria on the other. The city had been under siege from Daesh - that is, ISIS, but I prefer the insulting name Daesh - but while the siege has been broken on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by Iranian forces backed by Russian air cover, fighting around the area, still a Daesh stronghold, continues.

And continues on more than one front: US forces and allied militias are also closing in on Daesh from the other side - the eastern side - of the Euphrates River, bringing into uncomfortably close proximity Russian and Russian-backed forces on the one hand and US and the US-backed SDF, or Syrian Democratic Forces, a militia made up mostly of Kurdish fighters, on the other.

So we shouldn't be surprised at competing claims of being attacked. On September 16, the SDF said its positions had been attacked by Syrian or Russian aircraft, injuring six. There were US troops present at the time; none were hurt.

On September 18, the SDF said that any further attempts to advance on the eastern Euphrates would be met with retaliation.

On September 21, Russia claimed that its forces had twice come under mortar attacks from the SDF and threatened that further attacks "will be immediately suppressed with all military means."

And of course, the Russians deny any involvement in the September 16 attacks and the SDF denies that any mortar attacks have been launched.

This had lead to a highly-unusual face-to-face meeting between high-ranking Russian and American military officers to try to keep this from getting completely out of control - but the tensions will remain and very likely increase.

That's because for one thing, political credit for defeating ISIS in the area is at stake. But the underlying and even more important issue is the one of ultimate influence and control in eastern and northern Syria, with Assad wanting it all back under his direct noxious control and the Syrian Kurds unwilling to give up the relative autonomy they have gained as a result of the civil war, as indicated by the fact that they are holding elections as part of a plan to set up a federal system in Syria.

So bluntly, it's hard to see how direct US-Russian conflict can be avoided forever, unless the two were to agree to let Assad and the Kurds fight it out on their own for control of eastern and northern Syria - which of course isn't really a solution for anyone except the Russian and American soldiers who would not die.

And which probably wouldn't be possible anyway because Turkey is sending troops into Idlib, supposedly as part of a "de-escalation" agreement for Syria but is really about suppressing Kurdish forces, who Turkey regards as "terrorists" amid fears that any autonomy for Syrian Kurds would increase calls for Turkish Kurds to have the same rights.

So let's see, Afghanistan, Syria, and um - oh yeah, Iraq. Even as our traditional national amnesia mixes with our short attention span, there is still fighting in Iraq:

US and "coalition" airstrikes continue in Iraq, including one along the Syria-Iraq border in western al-Anbar province on September 18 that according to the journalistic monitoring group Airwars killed at least six civilians and wounded up to two dozen more.

Meanwhile the Iraqi military says it is beginning an offensive to retake Hawija, one of two remaining  ISIS bastions in the country.

And as it loses ground, ISIS turns more to suicide attacks, including one on September 15 that killed more than 80 people in an attack on a restaurant frequented by Shia Muslim pilgrims in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq is planning on a September 25 non-binding referendum on independence, a move which has gotten opposition from multiple fronts, each for their own reasons: The central government just doesn't like the idea of independence - to be fair, central governments never do - but also because any such state would be in possession of some of what are now Iraq's oil fields; Iran and Turkey, each because they fear it could promote ideas of autonomy or even independence among their own Kurdish populations; the US, for fear it would hurt Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's re-election chances; and even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who says it will "distract" from the battle against ISIS.

It is to the point where Turkey, Iran, and Iraq - who could hardly be considered mutual friends - have jointly agreed to consider unspecified "countermeasures" against Kurdish northern Iraq over the referendum.

The upshot is that on September 18 Iraq's Supreme Court ordered the suspension of all preparations for the referendum "until it examines the complaints it has received over this plebiscite being unconstitutional."

Which leaves Massoud Barzani, president of the KRG, in what one analyst called a "very delicate position" politically because if he's going to back down on this referendum, he needs to get something in return. The question is what that could be beyond vague assurances of the sort that the US, for one, has given the Kurds for years about how we really really do support greater Kurdish autonomy - someday, just not now. I don't think that would be good enough.


One last quick reminder on the "Yes, there are still wars" front:

On September 12 Human Rights Watch charged the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen with war crimes, with airstrikes on civilian targets carried out deliberately or recklessly in violation of international law. The group called on the UN to immediately return the coalition to its annual "list of shame" for violations against children in armed conflict.

And as I pointed out in July, the US is directly complicit in these war crimes, which Saudi Arabia would be unable to carry out without US assistance.

And so to slightly paraphrase what folksinger Mick Softley said of Vietnam in 1964, "and the wars drag on."

Updated with the the news that the Kurdish referendum took place as scheduled on September 25 in defiance of the Iraqi Supreme Court and the international pressure. Despite some earlier claims that holding the referendum was controversial even among the Kurds, turnout was estimated at 76% with (at that time) an hour of voting still to go. Turkey is now threatening to block the export of oil from northern Iraq (the pipeline passes through Turkey) and the Iraqi army has started "major maneuvers" with the Turkish army at the border, suggesting the possibility of a coordinated retaliation against the Kurds.

23.10 - Only 36% could find North Korea on a map of Asia

Only 36% could find North Korea on a map of Asia

Here's something I found interesting.

Blank map

In an experiment led by Kyle Dropp of Morning Consult, nearly 1800 people were shown a blank map of Asia and asked to point out North Korea, focus of enough of our media attention of late that in surveys people have rated in our biggest threat, bigger than terrorism, bigger than anything.

People guessed over 20 different countries on that map. Only 36% got it right.

What with Americans' known shortcomings on knowledge of geography, that perhaps isn't too surprising. But I did find two things interesting in the results:

One was that respondents who could correctly identify North Korea tended to view diplomatic and nonmilitary strategies more favorably, and military strategies less favorably, than those who could not.

Every dot is a guess

The other was that the clearest difference between those who could and could not find North Korea was that those who could were much more likely to disagree with the proposition that the United States should do nothing about North Korea.

That is, those who could find North Korea were less likely to favor military actions but more likely to say "Well, we have to do something." That latter attitude also seems prototypically American.

As a Footnote to that, there is a law on the books in Washington State that prevents planning for a nuclear attack. It allows for evacuation plans for every disaster scenario - except a nuclear bomb.

There is a move in the state legislature to change that because, yes, North Korea. The claim is "If it has a probability of happening, prepare for it."

A better view

What's driving this sort of concern is statements like the one in that same article that, quoting:

Military experts say North Korea is about three years away from actually being able to hit the west coast with a nuke.

Now, at the top, that seems a bit far-fetched to me: Having an effective ICBM is more than having a big missile and stuffing a nuke in the top of it. You have to have a nuclear weapon compact enough to fit on the missile and still be reliable enough and have enough explosive force to make it worth the effort, a missile powerful enough to cover the distance even with the extra weight of the bomb, and one with a good enough guidance system to actually point it at a target.

But leave that aside. The thing is, personally, I can't help but wonder if "North Korean ICBMs" are going to prove to be like "Iranian nuclear weapons."

Recall that before the deal that was cut with Iran, all the experts, all the intelligence agencies, and Israel in particular, kept telling us that Iran one to three to five years from getting nuclear weapons. Israel had been making that prediction since 1992 - which would make Iranian nukes at least 20 years overdue.

About the time the Iran deal was made, I remarked that the old riddle "What is always coming but never arrives" now has two answers: the classic one of "tomorrow" and the new one of "Iranian nuclear weapons."

It will be interesting over the next few years to see if "North Korean ICBMs" will become a third answer.

20.10 - Foreign policy and North Korea

Foreign policy and North Korea

The big foreign policy issue these days, at least if you judge by the headlines, is North Korea, so I wanted to offer some of my thoughts. A lot of this of course is speculation and interpretation, but I have learned over the years to trust my instincts on matters such as this and so that's what I'm going to do here.

So let me say at the beginning that I don't think this will result in war. I have no faith in the reasonableness or emotional stability of either Donald TheRump or Kim Jong-un, but in each case they have people around them who are at least somewhat grounded in military and political realities.

One such reality from our perspective is that North Korea is incapable of inflicting significant damage on the US. In the event of a conflict, it could sink a ship or two, which certainly would mean the deaths of soldiers and sailors, but in terms of the United States, it simply does not have the power or the means. However, with an army estimated to number 1.2 million, even with its obsolete weaponry it could inflict significant damage on South Korea, which we clearly would not want.

Meanwhile, the North Korean military knows, must know, if it doesn't know the Chinese would surely tell them, that going to war with the US amounts to national suicide. And China, which surely does not want to get into a war with the US, especially not over North Korea, still could feel obligated to come to the defense of its ally in the event of open fighting. So everyone has cause, good reason, to avoid a war.

So I think there will not be a war unless someone gets stupid. Skip the jokes, you thought of them, I thought of them, let them pass. By stupid, I am here talking about getting wrapped up in thinking about what you want, what your action can be, such that you don't think about what the reaction might be and so wind up facing unintended consequences.

With that in mind, there are a few recent events I think significant.

The first is that in a big break from tradition, Japan's largest warship, the Izumo, is escorting a US supply ship heading toward the Korean Peninsula as it passes through Japanese waters.

By its Constitution, Japan can only act militarily in self-defense, but a new law allows its ships to come to the defense of an ally that's protecting Japan, regarding that as self-defense. Which means that Japan is saying by accompanying the US ship that it regards the US fleet gathering off the Korean Peninsula as "protecting Japan" and therefore any attack on any of those ships potentially could be construed as an attack on Japan. Considering the history between Japan and Korea, that is likely to cause consternation in North Korea and raise there the specter of a reassertion of Japanese militarism. It can't help but make the North Korean military more on edge.

Then in what may be the most significant bit of news to come out of the region of late, on Wednesday, May 3, North Korea's state media publicly criticized China.

Chinese state media commentaries have been calling for Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program to be shut down and had been suggesting tougher sanctions against North Korea toward that end. A commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency called that "an undisguised threat" against the country.

The Korean commentary accused China's "People's Daily" and "Global Times" newspapers, regarded as reflecting official government stands, of "a string of absurd and reckless remarks" that "render the present bad situation tenser" and added that "China had better ponder" the "grave consequences" of "its reckless act of chopping down the pillar" of relations between the two countries.

What is interesting about this is that the US has been pressing China, which is North Korea's only major ally, to restrain Kim Jong-un's regime and this appears to be clear evidence that not only is China doing so but that North Korea is feeling the heat.

China had cut off all imports of coal from North Korea in mid-February, saying the ban would extend throughout 2017. While North Korean economists tried to shrug off the decision, saying other exports are more important, coal is the country's biggest export and China its biggest customer and the recent hostility toward China could be a sign that the ban is starting to pinch.

Which can seem like good news if your goal is to put the screws to North Korea and force it to do what we want, but this is actually right where you need to tread carefully.

The fact is, historically, when nations feel cornered, when they feel the choice has come down to war or humiliation, they have shown a depressingly consistent preference for the former. Similarly, when nations feel squeezed economically, when they face or at least believe they face the prospect of slow but certain strangulation, the risks of war, great though they may be, can look to be the better choice.

The bottom line is that if you do not want war, if you are not trying to provoke war, then when you have the upper hand, especially when you have the upper hand, you have to give the other side a way to back out without appearing to back down.

Which is why I'm concerned over what appears to be an unseemly rush to ratchet up the sanctions on North Korea just as existing sanctions appear to be having an effect. The House just passed by 419-1 a bill that would, if enacted, not only increase US sanctions on North Korea but would also sanction any nation that has certain dealings with the government. That bill is supposedly related to North Korea's use of slave labor, not its nuclear weapons program, but I doubt the leaders in Pyongyang will note that distinction or care about it if they do. Pushing too hard too fast is exactly the sort of stupidity I mentioned earlier that we need to avoid.

So it is still a touchy, tense, time but again, I believe that the leadership of everyone involved - even allowing for the fact that one leader is a sociopathic egomaniac and the other is a spoiled brat with delusions of grandeur and it really doesn't matter which is which - but the full scope of leadership of each party has good reasons to avoid war.

All we have to do is find a way to allow both Kim and TheRump to come out of this with their egos intact. Not easy, true, but certainly not impossible considering that both of them have in the past declared their failures to be great victories.

18.5 - Outrage of the Week: militarism unleashed as national policy

Outrage of the Week: militarism unleashed as national policy

Finally, we have our other regular feature; this is the Outrage of the Week.

This week it's a bit different in that it's not about a single issue or a particular event. Rather, it's on a broader question of a part of what I'll call our national ethos.

On April 13 in Afghanistan, the US dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat, a 22,000 pound device known as the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast or MOAB, which some have described as standing for "mother of all bombs." It's 10 times the size of the largest generally-used bombs in the US arsenal and has a yield of 11 tons.

Asked if he authorized the use of the bombs, TheRump said "Everybody knows exactly what happened. What I do is I authorize my military. We have given them total authorization and that’s what they’re doing, and frankly that’s why they’ve been so successful lately."

Some people, especially on the establishment, Democratric Party-oriented left, jumped on his use of the word "my," claiming he was acting like "a dictator or boy king." But that misses the real point, the important point, which was the statement "We have given them total authorization," which if it means anything, it means "I have told the military to do whatever they damn please and don't bother me with details."

The so-called MOAB provides a clear example: Why use it? Beyond insisting it was "the right weapon," the Pentagon won't say. What did it accomplish? Beyond referring to the claim that 36 insurgents were killed, they won't say that, either. They claim the target was the tunnels and caves used by Daesh in eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan.

GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast

But they also claim that over recent months Daesh has well over half its fighters and two-thirds of its territory in the country and Daesh is in fact a minor factor in Afghanistan compared to the Taliban. So why use your biggest weapon on your weakest opponent? More to the point, the MOAB is not a ground penetrator. It's not designed to take out things like "tunnels and caves." So it's clearly not "the right weapon," especially when we have ground-penetrating bombs in our arsenal.

So why use it? Because they could. Because they had an open area that they could try it out on. Remember it had never been used in combat and what good is a toy if you can't play with it?

That's what we're seeing: the military being told to do what it wants.

That's why Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, could casually tell the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that he needs "a few thousand" more coalition troops while allowing as how he supposed he could make do with 30,000 - 2.5 times the number there now.

That's why TheRump has witnessed - and I say witnessed, not directed, he just let it happen - a drone strike just about every day he has been in office, a rate five times that of Barack Obama, who was often and rightly condemned for his drone war on multiple Muslim nations.

That's why in Iraq, where despite the lies about it, we have had "boots on the ground" for some time - I suppose I could say back on the ground except that there never was a moment when we didn't have boots on the ground in Iraq - in Iraq the US has streamlined the process for calling in airstrikes, strikes that as Iraqi and other forces get near Mosul have killed an increasing number of civilians, so much so that casualties in March broke records for a single month, so much so that concerns have been raised by human rights organizations including Amensty International that US forces may be acting with an unprecedented disregard for lives of noncombatants.

That's why in Syria, US personnel have expanded their footprint, including a detachment of Marine artillerymen and a contingent of US Army Rangers both entering Syria in March.

That's why the US Air Force has expanded an air base in northern Syria intended to play a major role in the coming attack on Raqqa, Daesh's self-proclaimed capital, another target of increased airstrikes and increased civilian deaths.

What we are seeing here is an expansion of militarism. Contrary to what some have said, we are not seeing a "TheRumpian military policy" except to the extent that the "policy" consists of giving the military a free or at the minimum an increasingly-free hand, and like a horse given its head that may not take off at an immediate gallop but will surely build up to one, we can and should anticipate more airstrikes, more boots on the ground, more drone strikes, more death, more blood, more civilians and other more noncombatants killed, more homes destroyed, more refugees - and more attempts to keep it all just beyond our awareness, just beyond our field of vision, just beyond our sense of outrage.

And that in turn is why the Pentagon will now no longer disclose how many US personnel are deploying to Iraq and Syria and why TheRump has returned authority to conduct drone strikes to the CIA: Those moves allow for more secrecy, the better to keep the carnage we create out of our awareness.

It was said a few decades ago, around the start of the first Gulf War, that Americans would not object to military adventures so long as the number of American casualties was low - that, in effect, we didn't care how many people got killed so long none of us were among the dead. At the time it was thought a horrible moral judgment on Americans which could not be true - but history has shown otherwise and it is now a basic part of Pentagon military strategy. Even so, there is always the chance that our national conscience could be awakened - the way the civilian casualties in Mosul breached the headlines being a fleeting example - so all the more reason to keep even the number of soldiers involved hidden behind a PR smokescreen about "security."

At this point it's important to say no, no, no! Do not fall for the partisan ruse that this all has to do with TheRump, that it is all his doing. The issue, again, is not TheRump, it is militarism. This goes back far, far, before him.

Indeed, we need only go back one administration. Remember that Barack Obama came into office on the wings of optimism and hope and "yes we can" and promises to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He left office with "boots on the ground" in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and a legacy of an illegal war in Libya, the expansion of the militaristic surveillance state, and having bombed more countries than George Bush did.

The US - the Obama administration - dropped over 23,000 bombs on six nations in 2015 and over 26,000 bombs on seven nations in 2016, totals which are in both cases surely low because a "strike" can involve more than one bomb. And, it needs to be noted, we as a nation stood largely silent - because we weren't the ones doing the dying.

And yet it's not unfair to say that Obama was at least to some extent trying to hold the reins, trying to exert some counterforce, refusing to just turn the military loose. But he faced the same enemy that multiple presidents have faced, the same entrenched - it's become a cliche but that's only because it's accurate - that same Military-Industrial Complex with an appetite for arms and an aptitude for aggression.

So no, this militarism is not something new with TheRump and not his creation and not his doing. What is different here, what is threatening here, is that he is prepared to stand by and let it happen.

And the potential consequences that presents for unknown numbers of people around the world is a true moral outrage.