Category: Russia

118°F (48°C) Above the Arctic Circle

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It happened in Verkhojansk, Eastern Siberia today.

Anthropogenic climate change is a bitch:

Newly published satellite imagery shows the ground temperature in at least one location in Siberia topped 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) going into the year’s longest day. It’s hot Siberia Earth summer, and it certainly won’t be the last.

………

The 118-degree-Fahrenheit temperature was measured on the ground in Verkhojansk, in Yakutia, Eastern Siberia, by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites. Other ground temperatures in the region included 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in Govorovo and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) in Saskylah, which had its highest temperatures since 1936. It’s important to note that the temperatures being discussed here are land surface temperatures, not air temperatures. The air temperature in Verkhojansk was 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius)—still anomalously hot, but not Arizona hot.

But the ground temperature being so warm is still very bad. Those temperatures beleaguer the permafrost—the frozen soil of yore, which holds in greenhouse gases and on which much of eastern Russia is built. As permafrost thaws, it sighs its methane back into the atmosphere, causing chasms in the Earth.

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The same region also suffered through a heat wave that led to a very un-Siberian air temperature reading of 100 degrees Fahrenheit(38 degrees Celsius) exactly a year ago to the day from the new freak heat. It’s the hottest temperature ever recorded in the region. It was also in the 90s last month in western Siberia, reflecting that the sweltering new abnormal is affecting just about everywhere. And it’s not just the permafrost suffering; wildfires last year in Siberia pumped a record amount of carbon dioxideinto the atmosphere, ensuring more summers like this are to come.

Even if we do all the right things, this is going to end up very poorly in the near to medium term, and we are doing NONE of the right things, so we are looking at a truly apocalyptic scenario.

Russians Test Pulse-Detonation Engine

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Russia’s United Engine has has successfully tested a low thrust pulse detonation engine.

The short version of what a PDE is is that it is a formed of pulsed propulsion where instead of just burning the fuel (subsonic combustion) it detonates the fuel (supersonic combustion) creating about 50% more specific thrust.  (Ratio to thrust to all mass flow through the engine)

Higher specific thrust engines are more efficient, thermodynamics favors constant volume combustion, particularly at higher speeds.

My guess would be that the first real-world application might be as an afterburner, but seeing as how this program is funded by Rostec, they clearly see space applications:

Russian powerplant specialist United Engine has carried out initial testing of a pulse-detonation rocket motor which has potential application to orbital spaceplanes or hypersonic aircraft.

Pulse-detonation propulsion combusts fuel and oxidizer using detonation waves, with relatively few mechanical moving parts, offering a more efficient thermodynamic cycle than conventional gas turbines.

United Engine’s Lyulka design bureau – part of its Ufa-based UMPO division – has established a specific development project for such powerplants.

Russian state technology firm Rostec says the bureau has completed the first stage of tests for a demonstrator engine.

“In some operating modes the powerplant demonstrated up to 50% increase in specific thrust compared with traditional engines,” it adds, enabling aircraft range and payload to rise by a factor of 1.3-1.5.

Rostec envisions the design being applied to orbital spaceplanes and other future-generation aircraft operating at supersonic and hypersonic speeds.

I think that this is some seriously neat tech, but much like fusion, its application always seems to be about 10 years away.

Russia Pulls Out of Iranian Air Base

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The airstrike from Iran was was intended to serve a diplomatic purpose, not a military one:

The Russian military said on Monday its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had completed their tasks, but left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Russia had stopped using the base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticized both by the White House and by some Iranian lawmakers.

“Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran’s Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks,” a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

“Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the prevailing circumstances in Syria,” Konashenkov said.

While the use of the recent use of the Hamedan air base in Iran  might be more convenient than flying from Russian bases, there is very little military utility for a one off deployment like this.

This was a demonstration by Iran and Russia of a changes in the Middle East order, and it certainly has folks at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom sitting up and noticing.

And the Middle East Gets Even More Pear Shaped………

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Today in an interview, Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the guy who got deposed by the guy that the House of Saud is supporting, just said that Russia can have access to all of Yemen’s facilities:

In a TV interview today, Yemen’s ex-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, appeared to invite Russian military intervention in the country’s conflict. He talked of reactivating old Yemeni agreements with the Soviet Union and offfered “all the facilities” of Yemen’s bases, ports and airports to Russia.

Saleh seemed to be advocating something similar to what happened in Syria, where Russia and Iran joined the conflict on the Assad regime’s side under the guise of fighting terrorism. A video of the interview is here, with a transcript in Arabic here.

Saleh, who was ousted from the presidency in 2012, is allied to the Houthis who currently control the Yemeni capital and large parts of the country, especially in the north. For more than a year Saudi-led forces, who back Saleh’s exiled successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, have been bombing Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. Meanwhile the Houthis, who have some Iranian backing, have attacked Saudi territory in the border area.

………

“We extend our hands to Russia. We have agreements with the Russian Federation which were with the Soviet Union. The legitimate heir to the Soviet Union is the Russian Federation, we are ready to activate these treaties and agreements that were between us and the Soviet Union.

“We agree on a principle, which is the struggle against terrorism … We extend our hands and offer all the facililties, and the conventions and treaties … We offer them in our bases, in our airports and in our ports – ready to provide all facilities to the Russian Federation.”

The most recent negotiations broke down, which is not a surprise, since the only offer on the table was unconditional and complete surrender by the Houthis.

I don’t expect Russia to take up this offer, but once again, our “Allies” in the Middle East find a way to make a conflict a complete cock up.

Well, Our Adventure in Syria is Working So Well

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In addition to flying missions from the Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia, Russia is now flying missions from against Isis from Syria as well:

Russian warplanes on Tuesday flew out from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes against jihadist groups in war-torn Syria, the defense ministry in Moscow said.

The raids are the first Russia has reported carrying out from a base in Iran since the Kremlin launched its Syrian bombing campaign in support of long-time ally Bashar Assad last September.

“On August 16 Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 frontline bombers, flying with a full bomb load from the Hamedan air base (Islamic Republic of Iran), conducted a group air strike against targets of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib,” the ministry said in a statement.

The strikes resulted in the destruction of “five large warehouses with weapons, ammunition and fuel” and jihadist training camps near Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, the village of Saraqeb in the Idlib region and Al-Bab, an IS-held town in Aleppo province, the statement said.

First, this means that Iran and Russia military ties have become significantly tighter.

What this also means is that Iraq allowed their aircraft to transit their airspace, which also says something about the direction of that nation’s foreign policy.

Yeah, that whole Syrian adventure of ours is bearing such wonderful fruit.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? The Clinton Campaign is now Trying to Red Bait Trump?

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It appears that the Clinton campaign is now trying to claim that the DNC hacked emails are a campaign by the Russian FSB to benefit Donald Trump’s campaign.

The idea of casting Trump as some sort of Manchurian Muscovite Candidate is completely nonsensical, and the claims in this article has claims from anonymous experts who present no concrete proof for their accusations:

An unusual question is capturing the attention of cyberspecialists, Russia experts and Democratic Party leaders in Philadelphia: Is Vladimir V. Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election?

 Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J. Trump, has been only whispered.

 But the release on Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has intensified discussion of the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign.

As an aside here, I would note that it’s right for people to be shocked here, because the US never meddles in other nations elections. (And, as Sir William Schwenck Gilbert wrote, “Married men never flirt.”)

The emails, released first by a supposed hacker and later by WikiLeaks, exposed the degree to which the Democratic apparatus favored Hillary Clinton over her primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and triggered the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party chairwoman, on the eve of the convention’s first day.

 Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, which were the same attackers behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. And metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Though a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Mr. Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyone’s guess.

 On Sunday morning, the issue erupted, as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, argued on ABC’s “This Week” that the emails were leaked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump” citing “experts” but offering no other evidence. Mr. Mook also suggested that the Russians might have good reason to support Mr. Trump: The Republican nominee indicated in an interview with The New York Times last week that he might not back NATO nations if they came under attack from Russia — unless he was first convinced that the countries had made sufficient contributions to the Atlantic alliance.

The accusations are repulsive, and they reek of desperation, and they are every bit as offensive as Donald Trump’s suggestion that Ted Cruz’ dad was involved in the assassination of JFK.

This is not the image that the Clinton campaign wants to promulgate.

I would also note that if the folks at the DNC were doing their job properly the emails would have been rather anodyne.

This really is the equivalent of the unmasked villain at the end of a Scooby Doo episode saying, “I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for your meddling kids.”

Deep Thought

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I was at my doctor for a check up, and he told me a Russian proverb that says, “A Husband is a head of the family, but the wife is the neck of the family.”

The head is in charge, but the neck moves the head right, and the neck moves the head left, and the neck moves the head up, and the neck moves the head down.

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But Where is the Money in That?

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It is obvious that Russia has been much more aggressive in its dealings with the west lately, and the west has responded by calls for rearmament and massive military exercises near Russia’s border.

Russia has responded by moving military resources to the borders of Poland and the Baltic states.

Turn of events has the father of Glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev, saying that the US war on Russia never ended.

Well here is a revolutionary proposal, how about trying diplomacy?

From a military standpoint, Western planners’ biggest headache is the defense of the Baltic states, located at the edge of NATO territory and hopelessly outnumbered by Russian troops. Indeed, the need to deter Russia will top the agenda when alliance leaders meet next month in Warsaw. But as they contemplate what military means might stop a swift, Crimea-type land grab, they should also review what they know about Moscow’s beliefs and motivations — and choose a path that might defuse, rather than elevate, regional tensions.

NATO’s fears are not unfounded. In Ukraine, Moscow achieved surprising success with unorthodox tactics that included the use of “voluntary battalions” and unidentified troops. President Putin has made it clear that Russia sees itself as the protective power for all Russians. Theoretically, this also includes the large Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia.

Thus, the alliance is currently doing what can be expected from a collective defensive organization: it is ramping up defenses. In addition to the decisions at the last summit in Wales, Washington is sending a continually rotating brigade (about 5,000 men) to Eastern Europe. Furthermore, NATO is planning to station a multinational battalion in each of the Baltic States and Poland (altogether about 4,000 men). Romania recently reported the completion of a part of the European ballistic missile defense system. NATO is thus on track to better defend its easternmost allies.

But alliance leaders need a better approach, for even the planned measures are inadequate to mount a military defense. A recent RAND study found that available troops could hold off a Russian attack for a maximum of three days. For serious resistance, about 35,000 soldiers would be needed — and this imbalance is about to get worse. Rushing ahead of the anticipated Warsaw decisions, Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu recently announced the stationing of three new divisions (up to 30,000 men) on Russia’s western and southern borders.

………

In fact, Russia has accepted the expansion of NATO, however reluctantly. Moscow is also clear-eyed about the ultimate consequences of an attack on an alliance member: war, and possibly with nuclear weapons. What Russia does not accept is further expansion into the post-Soviet space. To Moscow, therefore, NATO’s activism looks like hysteria and a pretext for an offensive rearmament.

 ………

To prevent such a scenario and, in the absence of a fundamentally new approach, the Warsaw meeting should lead NATO back to a Cold War strategy that mixes deterrence and cooperation. What became known in the 1960s as the Harmel Doctrine – that is, the combination of stronger defense and the offer of dialogue with the Soviets – was ultimately implemented in NATO’s dual-track decision of 1979. Today, NATO needs a new dual-track strategy adapted to 21st-century needs.

………

The proponents of deterrence are right: The Kremlin must be shown the limits. But deterrence alone is simply not enough. In order to better gauge Russia’s intentions and prevent a costly decade of mutual rearmament, the alliance must re-discover diplomacy — starting in Warsaw.

With the end the Cold War, the policy of the US and the NATO alliance the past 25 years its policy has been to try to reduce Russia to a 3rd world vassal state, now that Russia has the inclination, and the wherewithal, to resist this, we are back into an arms race.

The only people who win are the the defense contractors.

Corruption, Baby, Corruption

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And the Clinton Crime Family™ continues apace.
You may recall that Hillary Clinton criticized Bernie Sanders for not raising money for the state parties while she did.

Not so much. It was money laundering:

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The setup allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

………

But it is perhaps more notable that the arrangement has prompted concerns among some participating state party officials and their allies. They grumble privately that Clinton is merely using them to subsidize her own operation, while her allies overstate her support for their parties and knock Sanders for not doing enough to help the party.

“It’s a one-sided benefit,” said an official with one participating state party. The official, like those with several other state parties, declined to talk about the arrangement on the record for fear of drawing the ire of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

In fact, the DNC, which has pushed back aggressively on charges that it is boosting Clinton at the expense of other Democrats, has advised state party officials on how to answer media inquiries about the arrangement, multiple sources familiar with the interactions told POLITICO.

“The DNC has given us some guidance on what they’re saying, but it’s not clear what we should be saying,” said the official. “I don’t think anyone wants to get crosswise with the national party because we do need their resources. But everyone who entered into these agreements was doing it because they were asked to, not because there are immediately clear benefits.”

Some fundraisers who work for state parties predict that the arrangement could actually hurt participating state parties. They worry that participating states that aren’t presidential battlegrounds and lack competitive Senate races could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton’s campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them. And for party committees in contested states, there’s another risk: They might find themselves unable to accept cash from rich donors whose checks to the victory fund counted toward their $10,000 donation limit to the state party in question — even if that party never got to spend the cash because it was transferred to the DNC.

But it gets even better: It turns out that The Clinton Foundation set up a dummy corporation in Canada to conceal its finances:

Aides to former President Bill Clinton helped start a Canadian charity that effectively shielded the identities of donors who gave more than $33 million that went to his foundation, despite a pledge of transparency when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state.

 The nonprofit, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada), operates in parallel to a Clinton Foundation project called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is expressly covered by an agreement Mrs. Clinton signed to make all donors public while she led the State Department. However, the foundation maintains that the Canadian partnership is not bound by that agreement and that under Canadian law contributors’ names cannot be made public.

 The foundation cited that restriction last weekend in explaining why it did not disclose $2.35 million in donations from the chairman of Uranium One, the subject of an article in The New York Times last week. The article examined how company executives and shareholders had sold a majority stake in the company — and with it a significant portion of American uranium reserves — to an arm of the Russian government in a deal that required the approval of the United States government.

 “This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency,” said Maura Pally, acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation.

 Instead, the foundation said that the partnership was created by the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to allow Canadian donors to get a tax benefit for supporting his work with Mr. Clinton — a benefit that came with the price of respecting Canada’s privacy laws. On Wednesday, the partnership issued a statement citing a legal opinion that “charitable donors have an expectation and right of privacy.”

 However, interviews with tax lawyers and officials in Canada cast doubt on assertions that the partnership was necessary to confer a tax benefit; an examination shows that for many donors it was not needed, and in any event, since 2010, Canadians could have donated to the foundation directly and received the same tax break. Also, it is not at all clear that privacy laws prohibit the partnership from disclosing its donors, the tax lawyers and officials in Canada said.

 The partnership, established in 2007, effectively shielded the identities of its donors — and the amount they gave — by allowing them to bundle their money together in the offshoot Canadian partnership before it was passed along to Clinton Foundation programs. The foundation, in turn, names only the partnership as the source of those funds.

BTW, one of the things that this appears to have covered up is donations associated with a rather smelly deal involving Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, taking over a large Canadian uranium concern.

In addition to donations to the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton got paid a lot to give a talk to Russia bankers as well.

OK, so they are money laundering. I get it. You could do this in Delaware, or Nevada, or Wyoming, or Panama, or the Seychelles, or the Bahamas, but Canada? Laundering money through Canada?

Seriously?

That is just perverse, or as Eric Oram said so famously, “Seriously, I don’t even like working here. They are so weird.”

Not Enough Bullets

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A Russian Oligarch just spent $1 Billion on his son’s wedding:

Russian energy tycoon Mikhail Gutseriev’s son Said married his girlfriend Khadija Uzhakhovs during the weekend in a lavish ceremony that reportedly cost $1bn (£700m). The wedding, at Moscow’s upscale Safisa restaurant, was attended by around 600 guests and saw Sting, Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias among others perform.

The bride reportedly wore a $374,000 gown, which was bedecked with precious stones, imported from Paris and weighed in at 25kg. Her pricey wedding gown was matched with a handbag, diamond tiara and pendant.

Gutseriev, who was ranked the 38th richest person in Russia by Forbes in 2015, flew in the who’s who of the music world to perform at his son’s wedding. Gutseriev is estimated to be worth $6.2bn, and his assets include oil company Russneft besides K Neftisa, OAO Russian Coal and others.

This is simply obscene.

This is a Big F%$# You to Turkey

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Russia may be reducing its military presence in Syria, but they have started shipping weapons to the Kurds.

That sound you hear is the sound of Turkish heads exploding:

Russia delivered the first of five planned shipments of anti-aircraft weapons to Kurdish troops in northern Iraq. According to Russian experts, Moscow officially revealed this fact for the first time with the intention to change its Middle East policy and emphasize the importance of the Kurds in the region.

In Iraq arrived first shipment of Russian weapons to Kurdish volunteer movement “Peshmerga”, who fight against the “Islamic state” terrorist organization in the region. Senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over anti-aircraft weapons ZU-23-2 (23 mm caliber) to the forces of resistance.

„Shipment of weapons arrived on March 14. It is intended for Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the handover of weapons was held with the presense of Ambassador and Consul General of Russia in Iraq, and Deputy Chief of Staff of “Peshmerga”, RIA Novosti quoted Artjomova Grigorjan, attaché of the Russian general consulate in the Iraqi city of Erbil.

According to him, the parties discuss the further delivery of the weapons. “After the handover of weapons Russian ambassador said that this is not the last delivery. He stressed that Russia hopes “Peshmerga” and the Iraqi armed forces will use this weapon to win against “Islamic state”, said the Russian attaché.

Do not confuse the ZU-23-2 with the ZSU23-4 radar guided self-propelled antiaircraft system.

The ZU is optically guided towed system.

In a modern battlefield, its antiaircraft capabilities are limited, but it is relative mobile and capable in a surface to surface mode.

More importantly, it implies that the Russians might be willing to send more capable surface to air systems, such as the ZSU, or surplus SA-6 or SA-8 systems, which they could  use against Turkish air strikes.

Let the shrieks or outrage from Ankara begin.

Russia Begins Pullout, Declares Syrian Goals Achieved

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When was the last time that the US military declared a victory that actually involved removing troops from a theater>

I’m thinking that it was 1918, because, we are still in Germany, Japan, Korea, etc.

The only place where we’ve actually gotten all the way out in my lifetime is Southeast Asia, and that weren’t no victory.

The Russians had limited goals in Syrian, and the announcement of this move appears to be a part of achieving its goals, maintaining a stable ally in the region, and preventing the return of South Caucuses Jihadis to Russia:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday ordered the withdrawal of the “main part” of Russian forces in Syria, a surprise move that reflected what he called the Kremlin’s achievement of nearly all its objectives in the war-torn country.

The news upended expectations in Western capitals and among ordinary Syrians, setting off fevered speculation about Russia’s intentions, much as Mr. Putin’s unexpected military plunge into the Syrian battlefield five months ago changed the course of the war.

Perhaps the most urgent questions were how the move would affect the war’s outcome and what it meant for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose rule had been increasingly threatened by a string of military losses before Russian forces backed him up.

The Russian decision could signal a new confidence in Mr. Assad’s stability or an effort to pressure him to negotiate with his political adversaries — or both.

Mr. Putin has made his move at a particularly critical moment, as the upheaval in Syria enters its sixth year and a United Nations mediator in Geneva tries to revive peace talks to stop the war, which has displaced millions and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

A Russian military pullback will not leave Mr. Assad’s forces completely alone, because he also has support from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Kremlin made clear it was keeping its new air base in the coastal Mediterranean province of Latakia, in addition to the naval refueling station it has kept nearby in Tartus since Soviet times.

And we are still hip deep in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and creating more terrorists around the world by our aggressive, and not particularly discriminant, drone war.

A Lesson That We Should Learn from Russia

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They know how to properly hate on mercenaries:

On Jan. 28, the Duma began discussing the possibility of legalizing private military companies in Russia. The law, which counts influential vice prime minister Dmitry Rogozin as a supporter, has one major goal — to ensure that Iraqi oil fields where Russian firms Rosneft and Gazprom operate no longer come under the protection of British or American security companies.

Back in April 2012, Russian president Vladimir Putin pointed out the need for Russia to pass contractor-friendly legislation. Putin praised private military companies as “instruments to further national interests without the direct involvement of the government.”

The center-left A Just Russia Party proposed a draft of the PMC bill in November 2014, but the Duma defense committee rejected it. Members of parliament returned with a revised text in December 2014, which the committee again turned down, deeming it “inarticulate,” “useless” and “irrelevant.” The FSB security agency and the Ministry of Defense both voiced concern of one day seeing “tens of thousands of uncontrollable Rambos turning their weapons against the government.”

It seemed Russian authorities had not forgotten the chaotic 1990s, a time when countless unpaid military officers sold their services to the highest bidder.

For some reason, the US government, and our poodles in London, continue to be all in on employing mercenaries, even though the corrosive effects of their activities both on our military and on the countries where they operate.

The House of Saud Surrenders………

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Russia and Saudi Arabil have cut a deal to limit the supply of oil.

Unfortunately, the ball is still rolling downhill:

Several top OPEC producers made headlines with Russia on Tuesday, revealing that a secret meeting between their respective energy ministers led to a deal to “freeze” production in an effort to boost oil prices.

The agreement is monumental in the sense that OPEC and Russia are poised to agree to cooperate, the first OPEC and non-OPEC deal in 15 years. At the same time, the deal is a half-measure and will likely be inadequate to substantially rescue oil prices from their rock bottom lows.

………

The real problem for this deal, though, is with Iran, who is unlikely to sign on to a production freeze when its output is still close to sanctions-era levels. With substantial gains in production expected for this year, the deal would be harder to swallow than it would for other OPEC members. Saudi Arabia would be willing to freeze its output if it meant burdening its rival Iran. As a result, Iran’s acquiescence is an open question. “We have not yet reached our level of pre-sanctions production. So when we get there, we will be on an equal level, then we can talk,” a senior source told Reuters, pouring cold water on the deal. Venezuelan officials believe they can bring Iran on board, but that remains to be seen.

In short, despite Tuesday’s announcement, implementing the deal will be trickier than it sounds.

The current low oil prices are largely an artifact of a Saudi decision to overproduce in an attempt to drive more expensive fracked oil off the market.

Unfortunately for them, with interest rates being near zero, the frackers can still make payments on their loans, and now we have any number of oil producer nations who continue to overproduce because they are too dependent on oil revenues.

It’s a vicious circle.

What it Means to Have Meaningful and Achievable Goals

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Notwithstanding all the reports from western that the Russians are somehow or other are immersing themselves into a quagmire, a military analysis of the Russian campaign in Syria has concluded that their campaign is well conceived and likely to achieve its goals at a relatively low cost:

Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts say.

That assessment comes despite public assertions by President Barack Obama and top aides that Putin has embarked on an ill-conceived mission in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it will struggle to afford and that will likely fail.

“I think it’s indisputable that the Assad regime, with Russian military support, is probably in a safer position than it was,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity. Five other U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters concurred with the view that the Russian mission has been mostly successful so far and is facing relatively low costs.

………

Yet since its campaign began on Sept. 30, Russia has suffered minimal casualties and, despite domestic fiscal woes, is handily covering the operation’s cost, which analysts estimate at $1-2 billion a year. The war is being funded from Russia’s regular annual defense budget of about $54 billion, a U.S. intelligence official said.

………

Putin has said his intervention is aimed at stabilizing the Assad government and helping it fight the Islamic State group, though Western officials and Syrian opposition groups say its air strikes mostly have targeted moderate rebels.

The western response to the Russian intervention, which, BTW, is actually legal under international law because the sovereign government of Syria has requested the aid, is completely incoherent.

Case in point, the absurd and self contradictory statements by the head of Human Rights Watch: On December 25 of this year he said that the killing of Zahran Alloush is an attempt to eliminate any moderate opposition, while on December 30 of this year, he claimed that the initial release of Alloush from prison in 2011 was an attempt to taint the opposition with a jihadist brush.

Note that the Russians are also supporting the Kurds, while the NATO forces are both supporting the Kurds (most of NATO) and bombing them (our NATO “allies”the Turks)

The Russian strategy appears to be effective because their goals are limited, and not self-contradictory:

Rather than pushing back the opposition, Russia may be settling for defending Assad’s grip on key population centers that include the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, said the U.S. intelligence official.

Russia is taking advantage of the operation to test new weapons in battlefield conditions and integrate them into its tactics, the intelligence official said. It is refining its use of unarmed surveillance drones, the official added.

“The Russians didn’t go blindly into this,” said the U.S. intelligence official, adding that they “are getting some benefit out of the cost.”

………

Vasily Kashin, a Moscow-based analyst, said the war is not financially stressing Russia.

“All the available data shows us that the current level of military effort is completely insignificant for the Russian economy and Russian budget,” said Kashin, of the Center for Analyses of Strategies and Technologies.

“It can be carried on at the same level year after year after year,” he said.

Compare this to the US policy:

  • Support regime change in Syria with a goal of a democratic and secular replacement.
  • Support for Saudi and Turkish efforts supporting Sunni Salafist Jihadi forces,which included the creation of ISIS.
  • Opposition to ISIS, the declaration that they are of a significant threat to the US, and supporting a massive air campaign against them.
  • Support of Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.
  • Allowing Turkish attacks against those same Kurdish forces by Turkey.
  • Supporting “moderate” rebels that collapse as soon as they end up in conflict with Jihadi rebels.  (Said support ends up in ISIS hands)
  • Demanding the removal of the Assad regime.
  • Demanding that government remains intact in some form.

This is the stupidest big of mind f%$#ery since Johnson and Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest” believed that they could win the war in Vietnam.

Basically, the Russians are following Barack Obama’s stated policy, “Don’t do stupid sh%$,” and Barack Obama is ignoring ignoring this policy, which is why their strategy appears to be gaining traction, and ours does not.

H/t Moon of Alabama.

Putin Wins Troll of the Day Award

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Vladimir Putin handed out a couple of ringing—if not entirely official—endorsements to two of this year’s most notorious men: Donald Trump and suspended FIFA President Sepp Blatter. During his annual press conference on Thursday, the Russian president praised Donald Trump, calling the frontrunner in the Republican primary race a “bright and talented person,” according to the Associated Press. He also welcomed Trump’s calls for improved U.S-Russia relations.

A recurring theme among GOP presidential candidates is whether they possess the negotiating chops to deal with the Russian strongman. It appears Trump and Putin would be bosom buddies. (Trump has previously said he thinks he’d get along with Putin “very well.”)

Putin also handed out praise to Sepp Blatter, who’s facing a criminal investigation in Switzerland for allegations of corruption. Blatter, Putin said, is “a very well respected person.”

“He has always tried to treat football not as a sport but as an element of cooperation between countries and peoples,” Putin added. “He is the one who must be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

 Seriously, he is just poking us with a stick for his personal amusement.

I Think that We Just Had an Outbreak of Sanity at Foggy Bottom

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In a major policy shift Secretary of State John Kerry has just specifically stated that regime change in Syria the US is not seeking regime change in Syria:

Secretary of State John Kerry pressed ahead on Tuesday in the effort to organize a new round of talks aimed at ending the Syrian civil war that could also align the United States and Russia more closely in strategies for fighting the Islamic State.

After an extended trip to Paris for climate talks, Mr. Kerry met for nearly four hours on Tuesday evening with President Vladimir V. Putin in the Kremlin, in talks intended to smooth differences over a planned round of Syria negotiations scheduled to take place in New York on Friday.

The United States and Russia have long been at odds over Syria, with Russia standing firmly by President Bashar al-Assad and the United States backing the rebels seeking his ouster. A previous attempt to broker a solution to the conflict failed, and it remains unclear whether the two sides will reach a compromise this time.

Among the issues to be decided in the run-up to the proposed talks is which of the dozens of militias fighting in Syria should speak for the Syrian opposition, and which should be designated as terrorist organizations.

On Tuesday, the diplomats said they had narrowed a gap on defining which Syrian militias belonged on a terrorist list. A final list may be ready Friday, Mr. Kerry said.

………

Mr. Kerry appeared, more carefully than on previous occasions, to couch America’s insistence that Mr. Assad leave office as a recondition of any settlement.

The United States, he said, was not seeking Mr. Assad’s ouster per se, but rather considers it unlikely that he could preside over a successful settlement.

“The United States and our partners are not seeking regime change in Syria,” Mr. Kerry said. Syrian opposition groups arriving for talks Friday in New York should not demand as a condition of sitting down that Mr. Assad depart immediately, Mr. Kerry said, a position Russia calls a nonstarter for negotiations.

“We see Syria fundamentally very similarly,” Mr. Kerry said. “We want the same outcomes, we see the same dangers, we understand the same challenges.” He added that the countries are “honest with differences.”

(Emphasis mine)

It’s nice that the US is finally distancing itself from the destructive and dangerous agenda of the House of Saud and the rest of the petty Persian Gulf monarchs, if only a bit.

Syria is Confusing

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And now it appears that Russia and Israel will be expanding military coordination in Syria:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday praised bilateral efforts to prevent unintended clashes of their air forces operating in Syria and pledged to broaden so-called deconfliction measures to include forces operating from the ground as well.

Meeting in Paris less than a week after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian fighter that had allegedly entered Turkish airspace for a brief period of time, Putin characterized measures first proposed by Netanyahu as efficient and said both leaders were “satisfied with the progress of bilateral” ties.

“The mechanism … [that] presupposes contacts between the militaries to prevent incidents due to the dramatic developments in the region has been efficient,” Putin told Netanyahu.

Referencing Ankara’s downing of the Russian fighter, Netanyahu said to Putin: “The events of recent days prove the importance of our coordination, our deconfliction mechanisms, our attempts to cooperate with each other to prevent unnecessary accidents and tragedies, and I believe that we’ve been successful. It’s important.

“I hope that Israel and Russia can see eye to eye on all the strategic matter, but I want to assure you that we believe that it’s within our powers to have very good coordination on the ground and in the air so that we do not create the kind of problems that we’ve been experiencing,” Netanyahu said.

The policy makes good sense, but I cannot but conclude that its public announcement was intended as an enormous f%$# you to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Russian Shootdown Update

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First, it appears that Erdogan’s Son Bilal owned the oil trucks that were bombed by Russia on the day before the shootdown. Funny how that works:

The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdoğan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.

 Bilal Erdoğan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

 Gürsel Tekin vice-president of the Turkish Republican Peoples’ Party, CHP, declared in a recent Turkish media interview, “President Erdoğan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdoğan is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution.” Tekin adds that Bilal’s maritime company doing the oil trades for ISIS, BMZ Ltd, is “a family business and president Erdoğan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.

BTW, it now appears that between the Russians deploying a guided missile cruiser and S-400 long range SAMs, has created a no-fly zone in Syria, for the Turks:

The Turkish army has suspended flights over Syria as part of an ongoing joint military campaign with the United States against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after it shot down a Russian jetfighter, sparking an unprecedented crisis between Ankara and Moscow.

The decision was taken following the eruption of the crisis with Russia in which a Turkish F-16 downed a Russian warplane early Nov. 24 after it allegedly violated Turkish airspace, according to diplomatic sources.

Sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the suspension of the Turkish jetfighters’ participation in the U.S.-led military operations against ISIL was in fact a mutual decision taken with Russia, which also halted its aerial campaigns near the Turkish border. Both parties will continue to be as careful as possible in a bid to avoid a repetition of such incidents until they re-establish dialogue channels to reduce the tension.

Turkish and Russian military officials held initial talks on the incident on Nov. 25 as the office of the Chief of General Staff invited defense and military attachés from the Russian Embassy to military headquarters to inform them about how the incident took place. However, there is still a need for high-level political meetings to let the two parties reconcile and reduce the tension.

I would take the bit about Russia standing down, because we have numerous report of continued airstrikes by Russia against targets across Syria.

The important part of Turkey standing down in Syria is probably that the Kurds, who are now supported by both the Russians and the US are likely to have far greater freedom of operation, as they will not have to worry about Turkey bombing them.

Rather unsurprisingly, we now have a timeline, with the Russian jet in Turkish airspace for less than 18 seconds according to Turkish claims (how you warn an aircraft 10 times in 18 seconds is an activity I will leave as an exercise to the reader), which implies that this was not a timely response to a Russian provocation, but a predetermined and preplanned shootdown, which indicates that the (absurd) Turkish assertions that they did not know the plane was Russian are lies.

Meanwhile, the Russians have implemented a series of sanctions against Turkey.

Most significantly, it appears that this will involve the shutting down the tourist trade to Turkey, which is something like a quarter of Turkey’s tourism business, though it will also likely involve agricultural products and textiles.

Russia is not doing anything involving natural gas exports at this time.

I think that sanctions involving natural gas are highly unlikely:  Turkey actually pays for its gas, and were they to do so, it would spur alternate pipelines to Turkey, and perhaps to through Turkey to Europe.

It’s a mess, but in the short term, it appears, in the short term at least, that Turkey is coming out the worse on this, because they will be less able to prosecute their policies in Syria.