Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[erik]

Well,

- today there was an assault of 60 gunmen on police headquarters in Mariupol. People were killed and wounded
- Ukraine's border with Russia is continuously eroded in Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts, separatists and weapons are likely to pour in soon
- a week ago Ukrainian forces had a half-day battle with 800-1,500 armed separatists, two helos were shot down
- in Moscow, during Russia's V-Day military parade, marines from Crimea flew the flag of separatist republic and all units carried that infamous Tzarist St. George's ribbon today

What we seem to have, is a full-fledged insurgency and Ukraine does not have 150,000 loyal troops to control provinces where Putin's 'green men' do their subversion practice.

[erik]

Just how many times have researchers said that it all is happening faster than they imagined?

Collapse of Antarctic ice sheet is underway and unstoppable but will take centuries

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2014/05/12/70c26750-da00-11e3-b745-87d39690c5c0_story.html?hpid=z1

The collapse of the giant West Antarctica ice sheet is underway, two groups of scientists said Monday. They described the melting as an unstoppable event that will cause global sea levels to rise higher than projected earlier.

Scientists said the rise in sea level, up to 12 feet, will take centuries to reach its peak and cannot be reversed. But they said a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions could slow the melt, while an increase could speed it slightly.

Warm, naturally occurring ocean water flowing under the glaciers is causing the melt. “We feel it is at the point that it is . . . a chain reaction that’s unstoppable,” regardless of any future cooling or warming of the global climate, said Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth science at the University of California at Irvine. He was the lead author of a NASA-funded study that was one of the two studies released Monday.

The only thing that might have stopped the ice from escaping into the ocean and filling it with more water “is a large hill or mountains,” Rignot said. But “there are no such hills that can slow down this retreat,” he added.

The peer-reviewed NASA study has been accepted by the journal Geophysical Research Letters and is expected to be published within days.

The NASA announcement coincided with the release of a University of Washington study that contained similar findings. It will be published Friday in the journal Science.

Both studies observed ice retreating from four massive glaciers in West Antarctica — Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler.

The Thwaites glacier alone holds enough water to increase sea level by two feet, the University of Washington study said. Together, the glaciers hold enough water to raise it by several feet.

Sea levels will not rise suddenly, in spite of what the word “collapse” implies, said a statement by the university announcing its report. “The fastest scenario is 200 years, and the longest is more than 1,000 years.”

The statement said university scientists used detailed maps and computer models to reach their conclusion “that a collapse appears to have already begun.”

“Scientists have been warning of its collapse, based on theories, but with few firm predictions or timelines,” the statement said.

The new projections of sea-level rise by both studies are higher and potentially more devastating than earlier projections by international scientists who authored an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last year and U.S. scientists who wrote the federal government’s National Climate Assessment, which was issued this month.

The findings probably will force the IPCC to increase its current estimate of up to three feet of sea-level rise by 2100, said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University.

The IPCC bases its results on reviews of earlier studies, and the recent observations on polar ice “are only now starting to come together,” said Anandakrishnan, who was not involved in the NASA study.

Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA’s Earth Science Division in Washington, said this is not the first time scientists have said West Antarctica ice will collapse.

“That idea that this is unstoppable has been around since the 1970s,” Wagner said. “We’ve finally hit this point where we have enough observation to put this together” and say it is happening.

Earlier projections of a collapse are one reason scientists criticized some IPCC projections as overly conservative.

In the National Climate Assessment, released last week, scientists already predicted a harsh scenario for the Chesapeake Bay. “As sea levels rise,” they said, “the Chesapeake Bay region is expected to experience an increase in coastal flooding and drowning of . . . wetlands” that protect against storm surge.

Sea-level rise would be made worse because the land is sinking in the lower bay region because of ancient geological forces.

[erik]

New Zealand refuses climate change refugees – mass action is now needed

New Zealand’s court of appeal has refused refugee status to a family from Kiribati, a Pacific island which is quickly sinking beneath the sea

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/12/new-zealand-refuses-climate-change-refugees-mass-action-is-now-needed

No refugees please, we’re New Zealanders. That’s the message from New Zealand’s court of appeal. In a decision released last week the court endorsed earlier rulings that Ioana Teitiota – a Kiribati national – is not a climate change refugee. Teitiota, his wife and their children will be deported to Kiribati, where the court believes they can “resume their prior subsistence life with dignity”.

Even if the Teitiota’s can reclaim some dignity, climate change will take it from them. The IPCC projects that the Pacific ocean will swallow most Kiribati by the end of this century. Life in Kiribati is life against the clock. There’s little dignity in that.

But before Kiribati sinks beneath the sea, ocean creep will make the islands uninhabitable. Sea level rise – coupled with more intense storm cycles – will contaminate the water table, pollute the small pockets of agricultural land and destroy homes and businesses. Tarawa, the main atoll, is a tiny sandstrip some six square miles in size. There is, quite literally, no escaping the misery climate change will cause.


An abandoned house that is affected by seawater during high-tides stands next to a small lagoon near the village of Tangintebu. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

The conditions for social unrest are manifest and the I-Kiribati know it. Density means disease and unrest spread quickly. There are 50,000 people tightly packed on Tarawa. The president, Anote Tong, is exploring options for mass migration.

The idealist in me hoped the court of appeal would create an option for that mass migration. The realists on the court wouldn’t have a bar of that. Teitiota was not a refugee under 1A(2) of the refugee convention. The court conceded Teitiota was a refugee under a “sociological definition”, but not the legal definition.

The court approached the case as a threshold question: was “there a real chance of the refugee claimant being persecuted” and, if so, was “there a convention reason for that persecution”? Teitiota couldn’t satisfy the test.

The court took the orthodox position that persecution is primarily political and internal. There had to be a “violation” of human rights and a “failure” of state protection. Teitiota’s claim turned that definition on its head.

In essence, his claim held that the violation and failure was on the part of the international community. The persecution was external, not internal, and environmental, not political.

The decision reveals – in all its misery - the protection deficit in international law. A judicial decision is an uncodified statement of power relations. Never could there be a more unequal power relationship than here: on one side, the I-Kiribati and their sinking home, on the other the rigid machinery of international law. If Lord Diplock is right, then “law is about man’s duty to his neighbour”. That principle should underpin our approach to climate change and forced migration.

But the law doesn’t encompass all of our moral obligations. It’s clear that the international system isn’t fit for purpose. Let’s look past it to social resistance and political solutions. Science, as Naomi Klein argues, “is telling us to revolt”. Ordinary people need to put pressure on their governments to deal with climate change displacement. The missing link isn’t some new legal rule, but mass action.

The history of the Pacific is a history of isolation, both physical and political. It’s that isolation that allowed the great powers to commit economic and military misadventures in the region, from depleting phosphate stocks in Kiribati and Naura to nuclear testing in French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands.

The social history of the Pacific is one of migration, from the early Austronesian and Polynesian expansions to the recent European settler migration. How can we say no to refugees when we are all migrants ourselves?

[erik]

...European powers marched into World War I. Today, exactly hundred years ago Russia and Germany declared war on each other. A few years later Russian Empire ceased to exist. These events were mind boggling and beyond belief. In 1914 the dominant expectation in all great powers was of a short war and of inevitable victory.

WW I turned out to be like no war before it. Close to 10 million people were killed on a front that was less than 1,000 km long. In the opening 22 minutes of the Battle of Somme British lost 5,000 men. By the end of the day 63,000 men were killed, wounded and put out of action. The average life span of a British officer on the front was 2 months, of a solider - 4 months. it was beyond anything most people could imagine. There were also those who were quite on the spot regarding what was to come, but they were not listened to - as usual.

Anyhow, Russian Empire fell to pieces in 1917.

Today, hundred years later, Russians are firing openly across Ukrainian border at Ukrainian troops. They are delivering dozens of tanks, artillery pieces, armoured vehicles, etc., to Russian mercenaries fighting in Ukraine.

At the same time, Ukrainians are growing stronger and stronger. Nationalism is on the rise among 40 million Ukrainians and their forces are moving closer and closer to the border. In a few weeks, they will be facing Russian troops at the very border. Putin's Russia is being put under massive pressure through sanctions. Russian militrary issues one warning after another to NATO and Russia will be calling up millions of reservists in the fall.

Putin has been cornered. The monster of ultra nationalism that he has unleashed threatens to engulf him and his billionaire friends. Is he in charge of mercenaries he sent to Ukraine? Who knows? The mercs are talking about treason and betrayal by Kremlin. They are cursing Putin while dying under fire of Ukrainians who are increasingly united and driven by fight for their people and country.

Where is this going? Nobody knows. All we know is that Russia has cornered itself and it will be pressed harder and harder. We know how it ended after an ultra-nationalist dive into war in 1914...

[Michael]

An interesting aspect of this conflict, is the enormous pressure being put on the European ans US leaders to go 'soft' on Putin and Russia, by the big business and capitalist world. They fear if Russia is economically damaged, it will trigger a renewal of the world meltdown after the GFC. Amazing how complex the world has become. I didn't read the whole article on this, but I gather it is about energy and the fragile recovery from the GFC.

[erik]

An interesting aspect of this conflict, is the enormous pressure being put on the European ans US leaders to go 'soft' on Putin and Russia, by the big business and capitalist world. They fear if Russia is economically damaged, it will trigger a renewal of the world meltdown after the GFC. Amazing how complex the world has become. I didn't read the whole article on this, but I gather it is about energy and the fragile recovery from the GFC.

Well, Russians fighting in Ukraine managed to shoot down Malaisian Airlines' plane with close to 300 passengers. All died. Of them 140 were Dutch citizens and about 40 Aussies. After that the EU and US began to talk about sanctions against Russia even if "they damage our economies".

[Michael]

Yes, that does appear to have been a game changer ... perhaps.

[Michael]

Ukraine has reached tipping point.

It's hard to interpret Putin's actions. Why has he dallied so long, if he always intended to invade more territory, as I predicted?

We have here a man, and a popular support within Russia, that quite simply doesn't accept Western values - sees them as pathetic. This is all about the law of the jungle - the strong take what they want, and the week should scarpa. He has exemplified that mythic stance, in his personal symbolism, and now he has to back it up, or be humiliated.

He has allowed the West to prepare - I think that was a mistake for him. They are now more ready to apply further crippling sanctions, than they were previously, and yet, the window of opportunity is still open. Primarily because no country wants to engage in war with Russia, and Putin knows that.

Especially, in the US, there is no will to deploy military assets of any kind, considering they already have to find some response to Islamic State. I'd say, get out of Ukraine while you can, if you have any political connections. Otherwise, turn to business - profit is acceptable in all languages. But seriously, there appears to be serious violence afoot in Ukraine in the near future.

[Michael]

When I was in the Army, in Townsville, I recall a battle that played out within the Australian Military. I say a battle for my own purposes, but they would call it a strategic reassessment.

They were exiting the Vietnam war, where the unexpected became the norm. During that phase, the military found it necessary to fight in unconventional ways, for which they required unconventional soldiers, if that's not an oxymoron.

Once the Vietnam war was over, strategic assessments concluded that type of war was an exception unlikely to be repeated with any anticipated consistency. Thus the Australian Military reverted to Conventional Warfare preparation, which meant the end of opportunity for those kind of people who did not fit with the hierarchical mindset.

You can argue with this, but they were probably correct, or maybe not - it meant a huge shift in capital expenditure, where assets that fitted within the conventional warfare paradigm were purchased - I won't go into that.

What no longer was required, except perhaps within a sub-set of special forces, were the kind of people who thought for themselves - were not geared by character, to accept what higher ranks told them. Curiously, and historically, militaries have always needed such people, but they always caused trouble, despite making good subjects for movies. They are anathema to the primary military mindset.

It's my view, that the bulk of the Australian Military officer core, was very unhappy with the demands of the Vietnam war. So they grasped the opportunity to reassert their conventional world view once that war was over. Because that was their essential nature - conventional.

But they represent the bulk of humanity. The few who buck the system are always a small minority in this world of the White Root Race. The White's all march together - that is their power.

In Iraq the US did the same thing, until it was obviously failing, then with enormous reluctance, they called back in those few irregular mind-set people, who saved the day for them. But within the Military and Society, they were never loved - even the main officer was later damned for having an affair outside his marriage (only in the US could that happen).

For our purposes, it is absolutely essential to belong to that small irregular mind-set group. Don't expect to be loved for it.

[erik]

Ukraine has reached tipping point.

It's hard to interpret Putin's actions. Why has he dallied so long, if he always intended to invade more territory, as I predicted?

We have here a man, and a popular support within Russia, that quite simply doesn't accept Western values - sees them as pathetic. This is all about the law of the jungle - the strong take what they want, and the week should scarpa. He has exemplified that mythic stance, in his personal symbolism, and now he has to back it up, or be humiliated.

He has allowed the West to prepare - I think that was a mistake for him. They are now more ready to apply further crippling sanctions, than they were previously, and yet, the window of opportunity is still open. Primarily because no country wants to engage in war with Russia, and Putin knows that.

Especially, in the US, there is no will to deploy military assets of any kind, considering they already have to find some response to Islamic State. I'd say, get out of Ukraine while you can, if you have any political connections. Otherwise, turn to business - profit is acceptable in all languages. But seriously, there appears to be serious violence afoot in Ukraine in the near future.

Russians have invaded with up to 10 battalion tactical groups. Ukrainians claim that yesterday there was a first air strike by Russians.
In discussions with Barroso, Putin threatened to take Kiev - if he wanted to. During off-the-record talks with Ukrainians Russians have threatened to use tactical nukes - unless Ukraine yields.

70% of Russians think Russia is fighting back US influence in Ukraine. 60% consider EU hostile and 74% think US is hostile. Putin has warned West that if they try something, Russia has got nukes. 43% of Russians think Russia has every right to annex foreign lands when Russians are treated badly there.

West does not have to interfere, but only to supply game-changing weapons (anti-tank missiles and artillery recce tools for counter battery fire). Ukrainians can do the killing job perfectly well.

Anyhow, Islamic State is peanuts in comparison with this.

Get ready, this world has only started to slide into complete darkness of the mind, and utter bloody madness.

[Michael]

And Estonia is also in the firing line.

It is hard to see how Europe and US can simply allow Russia to invade Ukraine. But how can they fight back? There is news now of Russian tanks involved.

[erik]

And Estonia is also in the firing line.

It is hard to see how Europe and US can simply allow Russia to invade Ukraine. But how can they fight back? There is news now of Russian tanks involved.

These tanks are based on a 40 years old concept ("72" in T-72 means a year), although modernised. They burn with a bright flame (like a torch) - when hit hard.


There are 40 million Ukrainians. It is not Iraq and not even Afghanistan. With modern anti-armour weapons Ukrainians will turn on hell for invaders. According to high-end assessments they have killed some 2,000 Russians already.

One shouldnot forget that ~30% of Soviet officer corps were Ukrainians.

[Michael]

Now Britain and the EU are talking about putting together a force to tackle Russian incursions - two separate propositions. To be honest, I doubt anything short of a military response will have any effect. But once you send in troops, who knows what will happen next. But Putin is definitely asking for a military response from Nato. Will they do it?

[erik]

Now Britain and the EU are talking about putting together a force to tackle Russian incursions - two separate propositions. To be honest, I doubt anything short of a military response will have any effect. But once you send in troops, who knows what will happen next. But Putin is definitely asking for a military response from Nato. Will they do it?

At best, indirectly: weapons (anti-tank, anti-arty, anti-air), intel, training, comms. The US seems much more willing to confront the modern day Hitler called Putin.

[erik]

And Estonia is also in the firing line.

So it seems to be.

According to the Internal Security Service (ISS), Estonia's national agency for counterintelligence and high-profile corruption investigations, one of their officials was abducted at gunpoint at Luhamaa border checkpoint this morning where he was discharging service duties, and taken to Russia.

Initially there was little indication it was necessarily more than an isolated criminal incident, but within several hours it had developed into a diplomatic row, with the Estonian and Russian intelligence agencies advancing cardinally opposite versions of the events.

The report of the abduction broke around 16:00, seven hours after it happened. At about 19:00, the FSB, the Russian security agency, was first to mention the name of the agent, Eston Kohver, which was later confirmed by the ISS. That was the only detail consistent in the versions, with the Russians putting forward a claim that Kohver was captured on the Russian side. However, Russian border guards said earlier in the day they had no knowledge of the incident.

The incident occurred at about 9:00 on the Estonian side of the border and was preceded by jamming of communications and use of a smoke grenade, the ISS said; the interference was said to originate from the Russia side.

The ISS said the official was in the process of interdiction of a cross-border crime.

The area is in Võru County, by Russian border post #121. The border lacks major fortifications; the area is thinly populated.

The whereabouts of the official were not known at first. Martin Arpo, deputy director of the ISS, told Delfi later in the evening that the official was alive and well and in the hands of the FSB [almighty Russian security service].

There was no immediate explanation on the late disclosure of the incident - more than six hours after it occurred - which comes during a period of more tense relations with Russia.