Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
The announced “death by suicide” of Pedo-Pimp to the Powerful Jeffrey Epstein in Federal government custody while;
On a 24/7 suicide watch,
After his first “suicide attempt,” in late July, and
Before there was any time for a real autopsy…
…is such utter horse manure as to utterly destroy any shred of credibility of the Federal government.
That Federal Attorney General Barr first called for an FBI investigation of Epstein’s death — to deafening loud round of public rasp-berry’s.
Then he followed that credibility destroying knee jerk response near seconds later by saying the Department of Justice Inspector General would conduct the investigation — given the non-prosecution of so many in the DoJ & FBI after the IG caught them red handed leaking FISA surveillance sources and methods to the press — amounts to an “Eff-U” slap in the face to the General Public.
This is pure “Pravda Reporting on Chernobyl” territory. It’s all about elite posturing and “Face” while the radioactive pile burns.
America functions on the consent of the governed. This requires the government be credible through elite replacement by elections as well as the fair administration and enforcement of justice for both the powerful as well as the least of us.
The circumstances of Mr Epstein’s death are such that I’ve completely lost any faith in the concept of “Justice” that in any way involves the institutional FBI or Department of Justice.
I hate saying that because it leaves us here:
“Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”
That Rubicon has now been crossed. G-d help the people of these United States.
Please comment and tell me I’m wrong. I’m in the mood to be lied too.
There appears to be an on-going, unofficial, and secret war in Syria between Putin’s Russia and the Iranian Republican Guard Corps’ Quds Force involving do it yourself drones in the hands of Syrian Islamic Rebel “deniable assets” attacking Russian interests, particularly at the Khmeimim airbase.
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First, look at this photo:
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It comes from this 7-6-2019 www.aljazeera -dot- com story:
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Saudi-UAE coalition says it intercepted Houthi drones
The Houthi drones were destroyed in Saudi Arabia’s airspace according to the military coalition.
Both are identically produced drones made via a 3D laser scanned and 3D plastic body printed copy of a Russian Elevon Drone. The top drone photo was involved in the just reported attack on Saudi interests by Houthi rebels on 7-6-2019. The bottom photo is from my report on D-I-Y drone attack on Russia’s the Khmeimim airbase in Syria during January 2018.
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By way of comparison, the photo below is of a Russian Elevon drone downed over Syria by the rebels there. There is no 3D printing or duct tape on this drone:
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The common denominator for both D-I-Y drones is the presence of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps’ Quds Force in Syria and Yemen. And the Quds Force has launched drone attacks on Israel from Syria and on Saudi Arabia from Yemen.
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Strategypage is currently reporting from IDF sources that Russian GPS jamming in Syria is aimed at “Syrian Rebel” D-I-Y drones to defend Khmeimim airbase, and from anything else that might be in Syrian skies.
Israel has been accusing Russia of causing GPS signal disruption in northern Israel since early June. Russia denies any responsibility but it appears that Russian EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment in Syria causes intermittent disruption of commercial aircraft GPS navigation systems over Israel. While Russia has EW gear specifically for GPS jamming or spoofing (create false signals), that does not appear to be what is happening here.Israel believes the GPS disruption is an unintended side effect of Russia using EW equipment heavily to protect their bases from Islamic terrorists attack using explosives equipped commercial UAVs, as well as other EW equipment being tested against the American F-22 and Israeli F-35 stealth aircraft that regularly operate over Syria. Russia EW gear, even the impressive new stuff, still relies a lot on “brute force” solutions. That means sending out powerful, multi-frequency jamming signals rather than less intense but more focused signals (which Western EW gear favors). Russia depends on export sales of these new EW systems to pay for developing them. “Unfortunate side effects” are not what they want to be associated with their new EW equipment and would, as is their custom, prefer to believe the bad news does not exist or is propaganda spread by jealous Western rivals. Israel maintains good relations with Russia in Syria by not revealing flaws found in new Russian EW gear or any of the new systems Russia has used in Syria. But this Russian systems flaw is impossible to ignore or explain without going into detail about how Russian EW equipment works. Russian and Israeli negotiators are trying to work out a mutually acceptable solution, as they have done so many times before.
Using Occam’s razor regards the origin of these drones, the simplest explanation is the Quds Force provided the same drone to both the Syrian Rebels that are fighting Assad and Russia and to the Yemen’s Houthi Rebels fighting the American supported Saudi Arabian Coalition in Yemen.
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It appears that Iran’s Quds Force and Russia are fighting a secret war in Syria and all the reports of heavy GPS jamming by Russia in Syria -ARE NOT- aimed primarily at Israel or the USA. It is aimed at IRGC facilities/forces in Syria.
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Photographic evidence says some of the D-I-Y drones attacking Khmeimim airbase are Iranian.
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QED.
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VALIDATING THE QED OF A QUDS FORCE/RUSSIA SECRET WAR
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There are two tests that Western and particularly Israeli intelligence agencies can do to validate there is in fact a secret war between Russia and Iran’s Quds Force, and both involve electronic intelligence (ELINT).
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The first test is to determine if the Russians in Syria are jamming & spoofing their own GLOSNASS satellite navigation system as well as GPS. The Russians jamming their own system is a solid indication they think someone with knowledge of how to weaponize GLOSNASS satellite navigation signals is behind the D-I-Y drones in Syria.
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While this is a possible intelligence indicator for Iran, since the Russians have sold Glonass guided weapons to Iran. It is not proof positive. A lot of commodity GPS receivers are “dual mode” i.e. they have embedded GLOSNASS capability. Cheap Taiwanese made GPS receivers have had dual capability for years and some of the more expensive models also attempt to get a best solution by using both GPS/GLOSNASS C/A codes. So jamming/spoofing against GLOSNASS exploitation by D-I-Y drone might simply be a case of through due diligence by the Russian Armed Forces in Syria.
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The second and definitive test involves mapping the jamming and spoofing signal strength of Russian anti-drone electronic warfare and then geo-locate Iranian Quds Force within that signal pattern. If there is a close match of the strongest jamming/spoofing signal patterns to Quds Force. It’s definitive.
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Invasive ELINT platforms — IDF F-35 and USAF F-22 mentioned in the Strategy page piece plus drones — can do this inside Syrian air space. However, it will not be as easy as a few flights in and out. Mapping Russian radiated signal patterns will be tricky as radio signal ground bounce distorts what you see from an airborne platform.
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The Israeli Defense Forces are in the best position to accomplish this second ELINT test as their suite of drone capability likely includes more than a few multi-copter drones that can land disposable radio listening devices and other sensors near IRGC Quds Force facilities in Syria.
Back in January 2015 I wrote the column “Ukraine’s Viking Revival” on the shape of the emerging Ukrainian Nationalism caused by the Putin regime’s invasions of Crimea and the Donbas. It is a phenomena that will be seen in coming decades as one of the formative event of the 21st Century.
Ukraine’s “Viking Revival” complete with top knots, war cats and Tartar warriors.
For reasons best known to my writing muse, I revisited it Sunday for the lyrics and video of “100 BIYTSIV.” (100 Warriors)
Translated to English Lyrics:
Flowing / like blood from a blade across the steppe / in a fine line: left-handed battle / and the right fight, death awaits / in the distant blue . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . Day by day, who knows where orders take us and the hundred go. . Through the fire / and bullets flying through coal / and through granite . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And every day, over and over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . With every turn / and crossroads every fork in the road / so far So far / your beloved is waiting back home / you with her . By chance / yesterday our destiny fell upon us / today, and tomorrow who knows / what will come … For the Fatherland / I give my life … . Tomorrow I, then you Who knows how, and when we go to battle we arm ourselves, death to the enemy! No rest for my feet … . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . My love, do listen, and do not cry! He did not die / for our homeland! Let the enemy die / for our Donbass, A long road / awaits us. . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order.
I ran down and updated the video link address in my old post:
…and from there spent time looking across the latest music video markers of Ukrainian Nationalism.
There is quite a bit with really good production values and story telling. Some are from the ATO & Right Sector, but many other artists are now drawing upon these same Viking/Vanagarian/Tartar national symbols, complete with sword dancing and shield maidens, to forge a unique Ukrainian National Identity apart from Russia.
The “Blood Lands” of Ukraine are rising. And the peoples of Ukraine are remaking themselves into a new, wild, Viking ethnic nationalist image, drawing on their past heritage, and their new hatreds, with all that entails.
Proud to be Ukrainian — This video starts with children in fields and flashes to Ukraine’s struggles in the past and with Putin’s Regime.
Ukrainian Army Anthem — This anthem is a repackaging of the OUN Anthem. The 1929 “March of Ukrainian Nationalists”, which is now the basis of the revised and rearranged “Mарш Hової Aрмії [March of the New Army]” Wikipedia has the English lyrics. Putin era Russians hate this song immensely.Ukrainian Army Anthem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdANpB9PnY
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Марш нової українÑької армії – This has the same Ukrainian Army Anthem set to the visuals of the 2018 Ukraine military parade celebrating the centennial of the brief 1918 Ukraine National Republic. Ukraine‘s first independent state since it was dismembered after the Battle of Poltava in 1709. That Republic was conquered and incorporated into the Russian dominated Soviet Union. The men above wears the uniforms of that Republic.
It’s become something of a regular occurrence for the American mainstream media to blow a foreign policy story because of their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yet they seem to have greatly sunk to new lows in missing the real importance of events leading to the 19 June 2019 Iranian shoot down of an American drone.
RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator)
President Trump has ended the 1980 Carter Doctrine!
The free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf is no longer a “Vital Interest,” thanks to frac’ing, for a near energy independent USA.
BACKGROUND
CENTCOM confirmed Last Wednesday night of 19 June 2019, in international air space over the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian surface to air missile (SAM) battery shot down a US Navy RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator) Global Hawk. The ~$120 million drone in question was a navalised version of the USAF Global Hawk, used as proof of concept for the production MQ-4C Triton. It was essentially an unarmed, jet powered, sail plane with the wing span of a 737 jet liner and several tons of sensors. The drone fills the mission of the U-2, at similar altitudes, without the risks of a human pilot in the event of a shoot down.
Pentagon RQ-4N Shoot Down Map with Drone and SAM launch battery location.
Iran has claimed it used it’s ‘Third of Khordad‘ domestically built SAM system, operated by the IRGC, to shoot down the drone. This SAM system is described as a copy or derivative of the Russian Buk M3 / SA-17 GRIZZLY that incorporates the Bavar 373 missile that, in turn, appears to be a derivative/copy of the Soviet 5V55/SA-10B with additional controls. If you think of it as a late model Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk medium-range surface-to-air missile battery firing an early version of the MIM-104 Patriot PAC 1 missile, you would not be far wrong.
Press TV Tweet of Iranian SAM
It was this lack of a human pilot, either as a death or a prisoner of war, that saw President Trump jump off Iran’s scripted “escalation ladder.” Instead of destroying a SAM battery and converting 150 odd IRGC missile operators into another “Martyr blood sacrifice” for the Mullah regime to celebrate. Pres. Trump responded with cyber-attacks on Iranian missile control systems to remind the Mullah’s of the West’s technological “Black Magic” and additional economic sanctions that will cause further payroll cuts to both the IRGC and it’s over seas terror networks. (Truth be told, the new economic sanctions threaten the Mullah’s power far more than any set of tit for tat military strikes.)
And in a move treated as an afterthought, if the MSM mentioned it at all, President Trump ended an era in American Middle Eastern Foreign Policy.
END OF AN ERA
It has been almost 39 & 1/2 years — 10 years before the Cold War ended — that President Carter pronounced access to Mid-East oil a “Vital Interest” that the United States would go to war to protect.
Our two wars in Iraq both have that date, and that policy, as their starting point.
Now that era is over.
Last week Pres. Trump forged a completely new Middle East Foreign policy for America. Specifically, Pres. Trump took the opportunity Iran’s military escalations leading to the shooting down of the RQ-4N to end the January 23, 1980 “Carter Doctrine” expressed as follows —
“…An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
This is how Vandana Hari at the Nikkei Asian Review put it:
“U.S. President Donald Trump says he might take military action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But he has indicated he won’t necessarily jump in to protect international oil supplies from the Middle East if they are under threat from the Islamic Republic.
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The position, articulated by Trump in an interview with Time magazine on June 17, should not come as a surprise, even if it appears to be at odds with the Pentagon beefing up aircraft carriers and troops in the Middle East in recent weeks, citing a threat from Iran.
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As Trump spelt out in the interview, the U.S. is no longer as dependent on oil from the Middle East as it was, thanks to burgeoning domestic production.
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Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized the message a day later, pointing out that China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea were heavily dependent on supplies moving through the Strait of Hormuz, and needed to protect their interests. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made similar comments.”
The pronouncement above was the full “Bell, Book and Candle” exorcism of American foreign policy — President, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. And please carefully note that it happened two days beforethe RQ-4N was destroyed.
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While “freedom of navigation” on the high seas over all and the Persian Gulf in particular remains a “major interest” of the United State of America. It is no longer one which America will automatically go to war over.
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In ending the Carter Doctrine, President Trump has fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise of “No More Iraq’s.”
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By changing the cost benefit calculations of Middle-Eastern oil — no more free riding on American protection of Persian Gulf Sea lanes — the only way a nation can “win” internationally now is by “getting close” to the American hyperpower.
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If you are functionally anti-American. You get nothing but higher insurance rates included in your price of oil to cover the political risk premiumof lacking American protection. China is now paying -defacto- and additional American oil tariff via much higher insurance rate on the VLCC tankers moving Mid-East crude oil to the Far East.
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Japan and South Korea could get lower insurance rates if they send naval forces to the Gulf to work with the US Navy. Or they can replace Mid-Eastern oil with exported US oil.
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China, not so much.
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As a correspondent put it in an e-mail to me when I mentioned the above to the list he and I are in —
“You all need to defend YOUR oil shipments through those NASTY Straits of Hormuz. The U.S. don’t need that filthy Middle East blood-oil no more. In fact, if you don’t want to spend the money and lives pounding sand in Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, we have some FINE Texas frackin’ goodness to sell at a SPECIAL price, just for YOU, our friends and allies for SO many years!”
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Snicker, choke, GASP….”
The American Left has finally gotten what it always wanted…no more “Blood for Oil“ in the Middle East.
Somehow, I don’t think President Trump delivering that reality to them will make them very happy.
The US Navy has caught the Iranian Revolutionary Guard removing a limpet mine from Japanese Merchant Vessel Kokuka Courageous. The crew abandoned ship after seeing the second — failed — limpet mine on its hull and was picked up by the Dutch tug Coastal Ace.
There was then a race between an Iranian Hendijan class patrol boat and a US destroyer to pick up the Kokuka Courageous crew from Coastal Ace. The destroyer, USS Bainbridge, won the race. The video below is of a IRGC Gashti class patrol boat that approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous afterwards. It is digital video recorded from USS Bainbridge or one of its aircraft showing the removal of the unexploded limpet mine from the M/T Kokuka Courageous.
The earlier tanker attack on the Norwegian Front Altair saw the IRGC take the crew hostage and transport them to Iran.
This Iranian behavior is the classic “Irrational regimes become more so under pressure” hypothesis in action.
The basic concept is that for certain unstable regimes (or even stable ones with no effective means of resolving internal disputes peacefully, particularly the succession of power) domestic power games are far more important than anything foreign, and that foreigners are only symbols to use in domestic factional fights.
What you are seeing here with the “Limpet Mine Tanker War” are the externals of the internal mullah factional power games of “Who can be more nutball than thou” to gain more short term power without regards to external reality.
(“Nutball” in this case meaning “Attack the Great Satan” to show you are more daring, militant, and blessed by Allah. Thus deserving of power, money and followers inside the Iranian mullahocracy.)
Now, as an exercise in pattern recognition, use this template and replace “foreigners” with “other political party”.
Hint — In political parties and other NGOs it’s all about being captured in a “patron-client” relationship by the narrow interests with the most money.
If you want to know why things are so crazy in world and domestic American politics, applying the “Irrational regimes become more so under pressure” hypothesis, which is driving Iran’s Limpet Mine Tanker War, will do much to answer the question.
