Post

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

May 13, 2019 • 38 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X

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1/ OPCW document entitled "Engineering Assessment of Two Cylinders Observed at the Douna Incident", Draft for Internal Review, Expanded Rev[ision] 1, dated 27 Feb 2019 syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers… is astounding. Totally undermines US and UK government statements. Also OPCW report.

2/ chlorine cylinders were observed in two Douma locations. "An engineering assessment has been conducted, using all available information, to evaluate the possible means by which these two cylinders arrived at their respective locations as observed". Just what was required.

2/ at both locations, the engineers fairly stated the two competing hypotheses:
A) that cylinders dropped from aircraft (helicopters) creating crater in roof
B) that cylinders manually placed, craters pre-existing (false flag)

3/ at Location 2 (cylinder on balcony of building where bodies located), engineers found that observed impact event could not be reproduced even with drop heights as low as 500 m (much lower than actual helicopter operating heights).

4/ simulations showed that a cylinder puncturing a concrete roof with steel rebar (as observed) would be marked by steel rebar, but "no traces" of such interaction in the balcony cylinder

5/ engineers point out that "observed appearance of cylinder and rebar not consistent". Front of cylinder shows "no signs" of impact with concrete slab or cylinder, while observed rebar "does not indicate" that it slowed cylinder to stop.

6/ New York Times postulated a theory in which cylinder bounced off a corner of terrace wall. Engineers pointed out that observed deformation "not consistent" with this theory and that supposed "cushioning" effect of wire netting "negligible" relative to energy of cylinder

7/ Engineers reported that observed crater on balcony "more consistent" with that expected from mortar or rocket artillery round than falling cylinder, and that this explanation supported by similar craters on nearby buildings

8/ Engineers dismissed another element of New York Times theory in which criss-cross pattern on cylinder postulated to have occurred as scratches from cylinder penetrating mesh. They observed that pattern "inconsistent" with postulated near-vertical trajectory.

9/ Engineers also dismissed New York Times theory that "mangled remains" of "mild steel framework and fins" located on balcony had ever been fitted to cylinder or (somehow) stripped from cylinder during impact

10/ their assessment of Location 4 (the bedroom cylinder) was just as savage. They observed that it "was not possible to establish a set of circumstances" where post-deformation cylinder could fit through crater with valve intact and fins deformed as observed.

11/ they observed that corrosion of damaged areas shows that cylinder had "spent some post-damage time being exposed to the elements", dryly adding that it "would most likely not have degraded to such an extent ... inside the bedroom".

12/ they observed that observed deflection of the shower frame in the bedroom was "not consistent" with direction of required movement of cylinder from crater to the bed.

13/ the engineers resoundingly dismissed the facially implausible theory that the cylinder "bounced onto the bed" as being contradicted by observed features of the bedroom

14/ the FFM engineering sub-team said that the "dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders and the surrounding scene of the incidents were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft".

15/ FFM engineering sub-team stated that "alternative hypothesis", manually placing" of cylinders, produced "only plausible explanation for observations", rejecting theory that cylinders had been "delivered from aircraft"

16/ this document is absolutely devastating both to intel assessments by US and other governments and to the OPCW report published on March 1, 2019, raising serious questions about the integrity of each.

17/ here is link to blog post by Paul McKeigue, David Miller and Piers Robinson breaking this story: syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers…

https://twitter.com/ScottLucas_EA/status/1127916482845765632

18/ Bellingcat and UK propaganda IntegrityInitiative have laughable response. Higgins linked to Scott Lucas tweet

https://twitter.com/ScottLucas_EA/status/1127916482845765632

which (falsely) claims to "dissect" "new engineering document"

19/ Lucas (part of "Integrity" Initiative) wrote Facebook post facebook.com/EAWorldView/ph…

20/ Bellingcat ally Lucas confirmed "investigation undertaken by engineering sub-team of FFM, beginning with on-site inspections in April-May 2018, followed by a detailed engineering analysis" and that "report of this investigation was excluded from the published Final Report"

21/ remarkably, the chronology of events in OPCW report did NOT cite this original work by engineering sub-team of FFM, instead citing only the much later (Oct-Dec) work commissioned from "unidentified 'engineering experts'"

22/ Bellingcat ally Lucas observed that Ian Henderson, a named assessor in report, is identified as "OPCW Inspection Team Leader" in Feb 2018 OPCW Scientific Advisory Board report opcw.org/sites/default/…

23/ to give an idea of Lucas' sloppiness, he says that Henderson stated that "'the alternative hypothesis' provides the only explanation for both cylinders", but that Henderson did "not delineate that hypothesis"

24/ however, a few pages earlier in relatively short document, Henderson clearly set out "alternative hypothesis" L2-2 for Location 2 (balcony) and L4-3 for Location 4 (bedroom) - that persons placed the cylinders manually.

25/ against many inconsistencies in Henderson report, Lucas offered single "explanation": that, per OPCW report, balcony cylinder first hit roof decreasing speed, so that it "hit concrete floor of balcony causing a hole in it, but without sufficient energy to fall through it".

26/ more on this after dinner

27/ Lucas falsely reduced the many FFM engineering sub-team issues to a single Location 2 issue: that "deformation of part of cylinder but not of rest is not consistent with an “intermediate impact”", also falsely claiming that sub-team failed to "refer" to roof damage.

28/ Lucas claims that "apparently", this argument was "rejected by the OPCW Fact Finding Mission before Henderson submitted his assessment, or in the 48 hours before publication of the final report."

29/ in reply to Lucas' skimpy argument, first an obvious point. Engineering Sub-team presented contradictions at two locations: Location 2 (balcony) and Location 4 (bedroom). Lucas totally ignored the Sub-Team's devastating critique of implausible bedroom scene. Zero discussion

30/ before turning to Lucas' single point, take note of huge contrast between Engineering Sub-Team (Feb 27) and OPCW Report (Mar 1) on whether balcony crater could be due to incoming mortar fire (explosive).

31/ Sub-Team stated that appearance of balcony crater "more consistent" with "mortar or rocket artillery round" (explosive) than "impact from falling object". They gave multiple reasons: deformed rebar splayed out and concrete spalling underside of crater (no photo in report);

32/ Sub-Team observed that mortar explanation supported by "more than one crater of very similar appearance in concrete slabs on top of nearby buildings". An example of such "very similar" crater is shown in OPCW Report Figure A.6.3; balcony crater also shown to compare.

33/ Sub-Team: also supporting mortar/rocket artillery attribution was "fragmentation pattern on upper walls" (while noting unusually elevated), concrete spalling and "black scorching" (also noting fire in corner of room)

34/ despite Engineering Sub-Team finding that crater "more consistent" with mortar/artillery, OPCW report stated that FFM "analysed the damage" and found that "this hypothesis is unlikely" "given the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristic of an explosion"

35/ so, on Feb 27, OPCW Engineering Sub-Team said "fragmentation pattern on upper walls" supported likely attribution of crater to mortar/artillery. On Mar 1, OPCW Report stated opposite: that attribution to mortar unlikely because of "absence of fragmentation". Who to believe?

36/ Engineering Sub-Team cited "black scorching" underside of crater as support for attribution to mortar/artillry, while also noting post-crater fire in room. Skeptics earlier cited fire as evidence that crater long preceded Apr 7. OPCW weakly said that fire to "detoxify".

37/ seems odd that White Helmets would set a fire in this upstairs room on April 8 when so many dead bodies being removed from house. On April 9 afternoon, Russians inspected.

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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Apr 13

New thread on new information from redactions.

I just noticed that the information in Binder on Trump briefing in Aug 2016 was previously published by Grassley in July 2020, a few days after identification of Steele Primary Sub-source (and thus we, in this corner, were otherwise preoccupied).
grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

The new version sheds light on a previous redaction. Katrina, Norm, Ted, John and Amir were mentioned. Just noting this for future reference.

something else that I'm noticing in the less redacted documents: Kevin Clinesmith was much more prominent in Crossfire Hurricane operation than we previously realized.

In real time, Hans, myself and others had vehemently and savagely criticized Durham's useless plea agreement with Clinesmith that had failed to use their leverage over Clinesmith to obtain a road map of the Russiagate hoax operation. Compare for example Mueller's use of leverage over Rick Gates to interview him about 20 times, If anything, there was more leverage over Clinesmith.

Durham's failure to lever Clinesmith looks worse and worse as we now see Clinesmith's name in multiple Crossfire documents that had previously been redacted.

For example, here is Clinesmith on August 30, 2016 - early days of Russiagate hoax - approving the reporting of FBI surveillance of Trump and Flynn while they were supposedly providing a counterintelligence briefing.

In this briefing, they failed to give Trump and Flynn the same warning about Turkey that they had previously given Clinton's lawyers.

here's an example where the "declassified" Binder contains a redaction not made in the version published by Grassley almost five years ago. the name of Edward (Ted) Gistaro of ODNI

Read 19 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Apr 12

The "Binder"

I've long predicted that the "Binder" would NOT be anything remotely approximating a comprehensive collection of documents pertaining to the Russia collusion hoax, but would be a re-hash of documents already available, very few of which shed any light on the FBI's role in the metastasis of a Clintonista campign dirty trick into the national flesh-eating disease that undermined and threatened to consume the first Trump administration.

To fully appreciate why the Binder is so uninformative, one needs to consider the circumstances of its construction - illustrated below by the insolent FBI response in Tab #14 (shown in the FOIA release at FBI vault vault.fbi.gov/crossfire-hurr…, but NOT in the present release.)

On December 22, 2020, in response to a request for "all FBI documents concerning contacts between those agencies and [Marc Elias, Michael Sussmann] or other lawyers from Perkins Coie", the FBI insolently stated that "the FBI is not able to search its holdings for 'Perkins Coie' without more information such as FBI custodians and a time period. If the Department of Justice is able to provide additional information, please contact the FBI Office of Congressional Affairs... Thank you".

This exchange shows that the compilation of the Binder was done late in the transition period after Trump had already lost the election and that the FBI was being uncooperative (to say the least) in responding to the request from an outgoing administration. Given the uncooperativeness of the FBI in regard to the Perkins Coie request, the base case has to be that it was uncooperative elsewhere.

This is indeed the case. Much of the Binder is recycled material already available (e.g. from HGSAC in December 2020) or already published by Solomon in early 2021.

Prior to its release, I published a projection of the contents of the Binder based on the considerable available information on its contents available at the FBI Vault and in litigation (see stephenmcintyre.substack.com/p/the-binder).

This projection was almost exactly correct.
Almost everything that I predicted to be in the Binder release was in the release with one major exception. The FBI Vault version of the binder included a heavily redacted version of the third renewal of the Carter Page FISA warrant. The new release not only doesn't contain an unredacted or lesser redacted version of this document, but omits it entirely.

Another interesting omission: the insolent FBI refusal of information regarding Perkins Coie which was part of the FBI Vault version of the dossier is omitted from the 2025 version.

In my prediction, I had observed that there were 815 pages in the Bates index of the FOIA Vault version, of which 569 pages were published (mostly highly redacted) in the Vault version and 246 pages withheld. There were two major withheld blocks in the Vault version (74 pages from Bates 150 to 223 and 94 pages from Bates 592 to 685.) These can now be identified as FBI administrative documents for Halper (new) and the (already available) 94-page FBI spreadsheet on Steele dossier "corroboration".

The new version has varying degrees of redaction. Here and there, there's a new detail from an unredaction. Conversely, there are occasional instances in which a previously unredacted detail is redacted.

The Binder originated with the 40 items listed by John Solomon - see below justthenews.com/accountability….

This will be a long thread correlating sections of the Binder to the Solomon requests and to previous versions, commenting in particular on redactions.

1.Documents showing all the requests made by Obama administration officials to unmask the overseas phone calls of Trump campaign, transition and family members from the beginning of the 2016 election through Inauguration Day 2017. These records have been declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe but have been awaiting Attorney General William Barr's permission for release, officials told Just the News.
2.The FBI interview reports of Igor Danchenko, the man identified as the primary sub-source for the Christopher Steele dossier, and any intelligence community documents raising concerns since 2008 that Danchenko had contacts with Russian intelligence.
3.Any and all documents gathered during the Justice Department inspector general's office interviews with Christopher Steele, including any notes or documents he turned over concerning his interactions with the FBI and any interview reports, synopses or transcripts.
4.All FBI 302 interview reports, confidential human source validation reports and CHS contact reports for Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper from May 2016 to December 2018.
5.All records showing whether and why Steele or Halper were ever discontinued as confidential human sources for the FBI and CIA.
6.All FBI text messages about the Russia investigation between former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Assistant Director Bill Priestap, FBI attorney Lisa Page or agent Peter Strzok.
7.The 2018 classified report of referral from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to the CIA concerning spy tradecraft failures in the Russia Intelligence Community Assessment.
8.The classified appendix to the DOJ inspector general's report on the FBI Mid-Year Exam investigation, which has been sought by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) for more than a year.
9.All threat assessment and risk assessment documents produced in connection with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review and approval of the Uranium One transaction to Rosatom's ArmZ subsidiary in 2010.
10. An FBI email chain from the early days of Crossfire Hurricane that was identified by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
11.The final spreadsheet created by FBI analysts that assesses the accuracy and substantiation for all allegations contained in the Steele dossier.
12.The Defense Intelligence Agency documents concerning former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russia requested by Grassley more than a year ago, including any records of a defensive briefing and tasking orders given to Flynn or debriefings provided by Flynn in connection with his attendance at a Russia Today dinner in Moscow in 2015.
13.All copies of FBI 302 reports created in connection with Flynn from December 2016 and January 2017
14.All emails, text messages and memos from January 2017 concerning discussions about the Flynn probe between former Comey, Priestap and McCabe.
15.All emails between Comey and former NSA Director Mike Rogers regarding involvement of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
16.All FBI 302 interview reports of former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr and any evidence Ohr provided to the FBI or DOJ, including thumbdrives from his wife Nellie Ohr, in 2016 or 2017 concerning Russia or the Trump campaign.
17.All records of defensive briefings given in the 2015-16 election cycle to then-candidate Clinton or her campaign and any records of defensive briefings given to Trump or his campaign during the same time frame.
18.All records related to the State Department's July 26, 2016 meeting with an Australian government official concerning George Papadopoulos, Alexander Downer, Russia collusion, DNC hacking or related topics.
19.All records related to the State Department official providing that Australian government information to the FBI or any other member of the U.S. Intelligence Community from May 2016 to August 2016.
20.All State, CIA and FBI records related to the State Department and Australian government contacts between May 2016 and August 2016 concerning Papadopoulos, Downer, Russia collusion, DNC hacking or related topics.
21.All FBI records concerning Bill Priestap's trip to London in May 2016 and Peter Strzok's July 2016 trip to London.
22.All records related to Christopher Steele's contact with State Department officials, including Victoria Nuland, Kathleen Kavalec and Jonathan Winer.
23.All records related to meetings or communications between Glenn Simpson and any State Department, Justice Department, CIA or FBI official between April 2016 and July 2019.
24.All records from 2016 through 2017 related to communications between former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott or any other employee of the Brookings Institution and any then-current State Department official about Christopher Steele or the Trump campaign.
25.All records from 2016 through 2017 related to communications between Sidney Blumenthal or Cody Shearer and the State Department, FBI, CIA or DOJ concerning matters related to Russia or the Trump campaign.
26.All intelligence reports and memos that Christopher Steele provided the State Department between 2013 and 2017.
27.Any FBI 302 interview reports in 2016 or 2017 with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
28.Any correspondence to or from the U.S. Embassy in London about the FBI sending any official or affiliated person to the United Kingdom to gather information about Trump campaign or Trump family associates.
29.All FBI 302 interview reports with former Senate Intelligence Security chief James Wolfe and any copies of documents he leaked to reporters, including 87 text messages transmitted to a reporter on one day in March 2017.
30.All FBI documents that describe the source of the leak of Michael Flynn's intercepted calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak or the source of the leak of the Carter Page FISA warrant.
31.All CIA and FBI documents concerning contacts between those agencies and Marc Elias, William Sussmann or other lawyers from Perkins Coie.
32.All FBI 302 reports of any interviews with former NSA Director Rogers concerning Russia and the Trump campaign/transition.
33.The unredacted version of a May 10, 2017 email from NSC staffer Eric Ciaramella and NSC Strategic Communications official William Kelly referenced in the Mueller report volume II and recently released as fully redacted to the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
34.All FBI 302 reports of interviews with professor Joseph Mifsud between January 2016 and September 2020.
35.All FBI, DOJ or CIA documents concerning the Party of Regions "black ledger" document discovered in 2016 in Ukraine, including any assessments about its accuracy, any interview reports and any analysis of handwriting.
36.All FBI and DOJ records of an August 2016 meeting with FBI officials, Bruce Ohr, Bruce Schwartz, and/or Andrew Weissman concerning Russia or Trump.
37.All FBI and DOJ records concerning an April 2017 meeting between editors and reporters of the Associated Press and FBI and DOJ officials, including Agent Karen Greenaway and DOJ prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
38.The fully unredacted version of the fourth and final FISA warrant application targeting Carter Page.
39.The CIA communications in 2016 and 2017 to the FBI concerning Carter Page's relationship with the Agency and possible disinformation fed by Russia to Steele's dossier.
40.Any correspondence between the British national security advisor or his deputy during the transition in January 2017 to Michael Flynn or K. T. McFarland concerning the issue of Russia.

Nothing in Binder responsive to:
1. Documents showing all the requests made by Obama administration officials to unmask the overseas phone calls of Trump campaign, transition and family members from the beginning of the 2016 election through Inauguration Day 2017. These records have been declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe but have been awaiting Attorney General William Barr's permission for release, officials told Just the News.

Nothing in Binder responsive to "The FBI interview reports of Igor Danchenko, the man identified as the primary sub-source for the Christopher Steele dossier, and any intelligence community documents raising concerns since 2008 that Danchenko had contacts with Russian intelligence."

A redacted version of Danchenko January 2017 interview was published in July 2020 by Senate Judiciary Committee, but nothing is published on his subsequent interviews. At the time of Solomon's question, it wasn't known that Danchenko had been granted CHS status, a tactic which concealed Danchenko from scrutiny. At this time, the better request would be for all documents and correspondence pertaining to (1) the granting of CHS status to Danchenko; and (2) the internal reporting of Danchenko's information within the FBI.

Read 40 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Feb 13

Climate United Fund, into which Biden EPA appears to have parked $6.97 billion, is a coalition of three 501(c)(3): Calvert Impact Capital, Community Preservation Corporation and Self-Help Credit Union.

The grant was originally announced by Kamala Harris youtube.com/watch?v=-NZqTJ…

Their EPA work plan here:
epa.gov/system/files/d…. Their work plan says that they have managed more than $30 billion in private and institutional capital.

I looked very quickly at the financial statements for each of the three participants.

Calvert Impact assets.ctfassets.net/4oaw9man1yeu/6… shows a 2023 balance sheet with $520 million in portfolio investments and $154 million in cash.

Calvert Impact streams money into a large number of smaller (mostly) non-profits, including for example Artspace boutique homes illustrated below.

Community Preservation Corporation 2023 balance sheet shows $847 million invested in mortgage loans; cash and restricted cash of $342 million, $370 million invested in hedge funds, $101 million in unconsolidated subsidiaries for overall assets of $1.8 billion.

Self-Help Corporation has loans of $3.42 billion, with total assets of $4.49 billion.

All three participants are substantial 501(c)(3) corporations, all three are in the lending business. But their total is nowhere near the $30 billion mentioned in their application. I wonder where the $30 billion comes from.

The business to date of the three participants has been loans. Someone is going to benefit from the infusion of $6.97 billion into these three companies. How will that work? Maybe Kamala Harris can explain.

One-quarter of the Climate United Fund will be spent on "electric transportation" - a topic on which the leader of DOGE is well informed.

They propose "Electric and/or plug-in
hybrid electric passenger vehicles replacing existing ICE cars" - 25,000 – 35,000 passenger vehicles electrified. They also propose "Electric medium duty vans
and trucks replacing existing
ICE fleets" - 500-750 vehicles.

What isn't explained is why three Democrat 501(c)(3)'s have any useful role to play in the acquisition of electric vehicles by ICE? Surely that's something that ICA can administer themselves.

Similarly they propose "Electric heavy-duty trucks replacing diesel trucks" and "Electric school buses replacing diesel buses". Whatever the merits of the scheme, how do the 501(c)(3)'s add value?

Read 7 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Dec 2, 2024

Victoria Nuland was appointed to Board of Directors of National Endowment of Democracy, the primary US funding agency for overseas NGOs involved in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.
One can scarcely help wondering what Nuland's input has been in connection with recent NGO activity in Georgia and Syria.

for people unfamiliar with Victoria Nuland, she has been mentioned dozens of times in previous threads here.
x.com/search?q=nulan…

reupping a link to Nuland's notorious conversation with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014, while Maidan insurrection reaching crescendo in Ukraine (precisely as Putin and Russia preoccupied with Sochi Olympics). On February 22, 2014, Yats (Yatsenyuk) Nuland's choice was installed as Prime Minister; Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the neo-Nazi party, was given a key role in post-coup government, while Klitschko remained mayor of Kyiv, a position that he retained. Precisely as Nuland and Pyatt agreed. Nuland said that Biden would be running point on the operation, which he did, becoming the de facto US regent in Ukraine from 2014-Jan 2017. Worth listening to again. 📷youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6s…… Earlier CA link here x.com/ClimateAudit/s…

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Oct 24, 2024

Some readers have probably noticed that Microsoft has recently become one of the leading retailers of lurid allegations about "Russian influence operations targeting U.S. elections".

What is being overlooked is the lead author of the Microsoft articles is none other than Clint Watts, the founder (fpri.org/news/2017/08/f…) of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard, which was exposed by @mtaibbi in #TwitterFiles 15 (x.com/mtaibbi/status…) as the "next great media fraud".

Taibbi comprehensively exposed the total sham of the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Nonetheless, Clint Watts, the main proponent of the sham Hamilton 68 dashboard, has risen to a more lucrative and more prominent platform at Microsoft, where he continues to propagate the same warmonging claims as he has for more than a decade.

less well known is that Watts also had a curious role in the original Russiagate hoax. Christopher Steele had met Kathleen Kavalec, a senior State Department official on October 11, 2016, where he spun an even more lurid fantasy than the "dossier" itself, adding in Sussmann's false Alfa Bank hoax and naming Millian as a supposed source (notwithstanding his supposed reluctance to identify sources because of "danger".) Kavalec later met with Bruce Ohr, who became Steele's conduit to FBI after November 1, 2016.
Kavalec read Watts' lurid November 6, 2016 article entitled "Trolling for Trump" and, after meeting with Ohr et al on Nov 21, 2016, called Watts in for a meeting on December 7, 2016. warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolli…
Kavalec was so impressed with Watts that she sent a copy of "Trolling for Trump" to Victoria Nuland and other high-level State Department officials including Daniel Fried, John Heffern, Athena Katsoulos, Naz Durakoglu, Jonathan Cohen, Bridget Brink, Eric Green, Christopher Robinson, Conrad Tribble. Earlier in 2016, Brink and Nuland had been involved in the Biden/State Department putsch to remove Shokin as Ukrainian Prosecutor General.

Clint Watts' "Trolling for Trump" article warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolli…, which had so enthralled senior State Department official Kavalec and her associates, said that their interest in "trolls" had arisen as follows: "When experts published content criticizing the Russian-supported Bashar al Assad regime, organized hordes of trolls would appear to attack the authors on Twitter and Facebook."

So who were the "experts" whose feelings had been hurt by online criticism? It turned out to be January 2014 article foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria… co-authored by Watts himself entitled "The Good and Bad of Ahrar al-Sham: An al Qaeda–Linked Group Worth Befriending."

At the time of Watts' article, ISIS was still very new. It was written in the same month as Obama had called ISIS the "jayvee". At the time, U.S. (through separate CIA and DoD operations) and Gulf States allies were funneling cash and weapons to jihadis of every persuasion as the Obama administration attempted to implement its regime change coup in Syria.

But despite Beltway support for arming Al Qaeda and its allies (including Ahrar al-Sham as advocated by Clint Watts), the larger public has never entirely understood the higher purpose supposedly served by arming Al Qaeda and its allies to carry out regime change in Syria. Mostly, they find it hard to believe that U.S. would carry out such an iniquitous policy. So Watts ought to have expected some blowback to his advocacy of arming AlQaeda allies, but instead, Watts blamed "Russia" for online criticism, ultimately falsely accusing simple opponents of US allying with AlQaeda allies as Russian agents or dupes.

Read 5 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Oct 2, 2024

actually, the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted.

In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them.

The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren't constructed due to local opposition.

Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change, the success of the flood control dams in other sectors of the Tennessee Valley illustrates the success of the TVA flood control program where it is implemented.

Hurricane Helene did not show the effect of climate change, but what happens to settlements in Tennessee Valley tributaries under "natural" flooding (i.e. where flood control dams have been rejected.)

I should add that, in its first 40 years, the TVA built 49 flood control dams, of which 29 were power-generating. In the subsequent 50 years, TVA built 0 flood control dams,
However, in the 1980s, they established the Carbon Dioxide Information Centre (CDIAC) under their nuclear division, which sponsored much influential climate research, including the CRU temperature data (Phil Jones) and Michael Mann's fellowship from which Mann et al 1998 derived.
In 1990, the parents of Crowdstrike's Dmitri Alperovich moved from Russia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where his father was a TVA nuclear engineer. Dmitri moved to Tennessee a few years later.
One can't help but wonder whether TVA's original mandate for flood control got lost in the executive offices, attracted by more glamorous issues, such as climate change research.
If so, one could reasonably say that a factor in the seeming abandonment of TVA efforts to complete its original flood control mandate (e.g. to French Broad River which inundated Asheville) was partly attributable to diversion of TVA interest to climate change research, as opposed to its mandate of flood control.

another thought. As soon as the point is made, it is obvious that flood control dams have reduced flooding. Not just in Appalachia. I've looked at long data for water levels in Great Lakes and the amount of fluctuation (flooding) after dams installed is much reduced.
And yet my recollection of public reporting of climate is that weather extremes, including flooding, is getting worse. But in areas with flood control dams, it obviously //isn't// getting worse than before. It's better. Note to self: check IPCC reports for their specific findings on flooding.

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