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Yemen 2016 onwards: an intractable war?
Thread: Yemen 2016 onwards: an intractable war?
A new thread for 2016-2017. The current thread which started in 2011 has had 47k views and 222 posts:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=12784
Time for a new thread, as this war is very unlikely to end soon.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-31-2016 at 01:28 PM. Reason: Extended for 2017
Want to understand how sectarianism fits into the conflict in #Yemen? This by @almuslimi is a great place to start. http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=62375 …
How war, Gulf tension & identity politics are poisoning formerly live-&-let-live #Yemen with sectarianism
The new wave of sectarian rhetoric in #Yemen draws on many sources, but there has been a fascinating historical interplay between the rise of Sunni-chauvinist salafism in northern Yemen, pioneered by the #Saudi-trained salafi Muqbil Wadei, which fuelled the simultaneous rise of an #Iran-influenced counter-movement that "Shiafied" Zaydism—the Houthis. All of this took place among tribes that had fought plenty but never bothered much with otherizing people on religious grounds. Familiar story: fringe radicals weaponize sectarian shibboleths to increase polarization, gaining support while tearing the country apart.. Societies are brittle things
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-03-2016 at 04:24 PM.
CrowBat
Haxbach, Schnurliland
...here what I find a very interesting (if not outright 'ultimately important') feature on coming-into-being of one of most important legends about the ongoing Yemen War:
How False Stories of Iran Arming the Houthis Were Used to Justify War in Yemen
Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal that the story of the arms onboard the ship had been concocted by the government.
The government of the Republic of Yemen, then dominated by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, claimed that it had seized a vessel named Mahan 1 in Yemeni territorial waters on October 25, 2009, with a crew of five Iranians, and that it had found weapons onboard the ship. The UN expert panel report repeated the official story that authorities had confiscated the weapons and that the First Instance Court of Sana'a had convicted the crew of the Mahan 1 of smuggling arms from Iran to Yemen.
But diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Yemen released by WikiLeaks in 2010 reveal that, although the ship and crew were indeed Iranian, the story of the arms onboard the ship had been concocted by the government. On October 27, 2009, the US Embassy sent a cable to the State Department noting that the Embassy of Yemen in Washington had issued a press statement announcing the seizure of a "foreign vessel carrying a quantity of arms and other goods...." But another cable dated November 11, 2009, reported that the government had "failed to substantiate its extravagant public claims that an Iranian ship seized off its coast on October 25 was carrying military trainers, weapons and explosives destined for the Houthis."
A follow-up Embassy cable five days later reported that the government had already begun to revise its story in light of the US knowledge that no arms had been found on board. "The ship was apparently empty when it was seized," according to the cable. "However, echoing a claim by Yemen Ambassador al-Hajj, FM [Foreign Minister] Qaairbi told Pol Chief [chief of the US Embassy's political section] on 11/15 the fact that the ship was empty indicated the arms had already been delivered."
Unlike the government's story of the Mahan 1 and its phantom weapons, the official claim that a ship called the Jihan 1, seized on January 23, 2013, had arms onboard was true. But the totality of the evidence shows that the story of an Iranian arms shipment to the Houthis was false.
The ship was stopped in Yemeni waters by a joint patrol of the Yemeni Coast Guard and the US Navy, and an inspection found a cache of weapons and ammunition. The cargo including man-portable surface-to-air missiles, 122-millimeter rockets, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, C-4 plastic explosive blocks and equipment for improvised explosive devices.
Some weeks later, the UN expert panel inspected the weaponry said to have been found on board the Jihan 1 and found labels stuck on ammunition boxes with the legend "Ministry of Sepah" - the former name of the Iranian military logistics ministry. The panel report said the panel had determined that "all available information placed the Islamic Republic of Iran at the centre of the Jihan operation."
But except for those labels, which could have been affixed to the boxes after the government had taken possession of the arms, nothing about the ship or the weapons actually pointed to Iran. All of the crew and the businessmen said to have arranged the shipment were Yemenis, according to the report. And the expert panel cited no evidence that the ship was Iranian or that the weapons were manufactured in Iran.
Can the Saudi-led coalition win the war in Yemen?
An overview of the small war by a SME, Helen Lackner (who has resided in country for many years) and the sub-title helps:
Those deciding for war in March 2015 gave little thought to Yemeni realities, military, logistic, topographic, social or political, human cost, or an exit strategy. But questions are being raised.
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-a...n-war-in-yemen
The war IN Saudi Arabia
Following a Twitter alert a Western MSM (Reuters) report on the war inside Saudi Arabia and here is the relevant text (half of the report):
Mortars and rockets fired at Saudi Arabian towns and villages have killed 375 civilians, including 63 children, since the start of the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen in late March, Riyadh said on Monday....the Houthi militia and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh had fired more than 40,000 projectiles across the border since the war began. In a measure of how fierce the fighting on the frontier continues to be, nearly 130 mortars and 15 missiles were fired by the Houthis and Saleh's forces at Saudi border positions on Monday alone...
Link:http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0VA36T
A curious twist to the scene:
One of Australia's most decorated military soldiers, who is now serving as a senior advisor for the United Arab Emirates forces, is facing questions about his knowledge of civilian attacks in Yemen....The UAE Presidential Guard, the unit that General Hindmarsh is listed as commanding, is reported to be operating on the ground in Yemen.
Link:http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-0...dmarsh/7141638
The current situation in Yemen: causes and consequences
A former UK diplomat, Noel Brehony, an Arabist and expert on the Yemen has a long review of the situation, almost a briefing document:https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-a...1b7e-407365113
The sub-title:
The conflict will not lead to a clear victory: there will need to be some difficult compromises. Meanwhile, the destruction continues and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State terrorists are exploiting the situation.
One thing does seem to be working well in Aden: electricity.
A first-hand report from Aden:http://www.theguardian.com/cities/20...-qaida-jihadis
Aden: weakening the state AQAP & IS
From the latest Soufan Group briefing on the Yemen, well actually Aden and these two events are of note:
On February 17, 2016, a suicide bomber from the so-called Islamic State struck an anti-Houthi coalition training camp in Aden, killing at least 13 Yemeni troops. The day before, on February 16, suspected gunmen from AQAP attacked a convoy carrying the governor and the security director of the Yemeni city of Aden. For both men, the attack marked the second assassination attempt since the beginning of the year........The Islamic State assassinated the governor of Aden in December 2015, and attempted to assassinate his replacement a month later. In late January, the group even targeted the residence of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Link:http://soufangroup.com/tsg-intelbrie...haos-in-yemen/
I read such reports too, and then articles like this one by RUSI, trying to discuss potential RSAF role in Syria (quite vainly, then although providing quite a 'nice list' of RSAF-hardware, its author still missed some of most important pieces and capabilities in question), should it be deployed there.
Something is just not adding up here.
Firstly, while MSM is babbling a lot about 'AQAP in Aden this' and AQAP in Mukhalla that' - next to nobody reported not only an entire spate of anti-AQAP ops by this newly-established 'Yemen National Army' (a pro-Hadi force, recruited and paid for by KSA and UAE). Indeed, next to nobody reported the first major Saudi anti-AQAP operation.
Question is: why?
My standpoint is: 'credit (or critique) where credit (or critique) is due.
Therefore...
Since January, the AQAP launched a number of assassination attempts on various officials of Hadi's 'government' (I admit having a problem calling them that way; in essence, Hadi and his 'ministers' remain Saudi puppets) - primarily in Aden area. On 9 January, they killed a senior security official in the city; on 17 January they nearly killed another (that is: they killed four of his bodyguards, while the official in question survived the second attempt on his life) etc. Meanwhile, the AQAP consolidated its control of Zinjibar and established a number of checkpoints along the road from Aden to Abyan; sabotaged two pipelines connecting oil storage facilities to a refinery in Buraiqah (Aden); attacked a YNA checkpoint in Wadi Ser; and then took away all the heavy armament from a number of ex-YA bases they have overrun in this part of Yemen since March last year. By 5 February, even Daesh's Wilayat Hadramawt began publishing videos about wonderful life in Daesh-controlled parts of Yemen and similar PRBS...
USA, a party supposedly ah so very much concerned because - between others - it declared the AQAP for 'most dangerous single terrorist entity', reacted with a few of typical UCAV strikes: murderously precise but hopelessly ineffective. Yup, they assassinate 'three AQAP there' and 'four AQAP here', but otherwise US military is still not moving against the AQAP.
Things began to change on 19 January, when several USN warships imposed a de-facto blockade of the port of Mukhalla, AQAP's major stronghold in Yemen - and apparently a major source of income (then, at least according to Saudi reports, AQAP meanwhile became involved in very intensive - and lucrative - business of trafficking fuel, arms and supplies via Mukhalla to the Houthis in Sana'a).
Then, on 10 February, Saudi Marines - supported by RSGF Apaches and UAEAF Mirage 2000s - de-facto invaded Mukhalla and then heavily raided the local port, killing or arresting dozens of AQAP in the process. With them, the Saudis brought first units of the YNA and even some units of newly-established Yemeni police (first official police units present in this part of Yemen since nearly a year). ***See correction 23/3 on Post 18***
There are indications that a similar operation was meanwhile launched agaist the AQAP inside Aden too - and has already yielded first successes. Sure, Daesh suicide-bombed one of YNA's training camps there, three days ago. BUT, since that day (17 February) Saudi-led coalition is said to have flown about 50 highly effective air strikes on AQAP in Lahij and Abyan too.
Make no mistake: except some 'indication of movements in this direction' from Asharq al-Awsat (which is clearly 'in Saudi service'), I've found no beep in the MSM about any kind of Saudi-run anti-AQAP ops.
Somehow, I doubt this is so 'only' because most of that is pre-occuppied discussing US strikes on Libya or the situation in Syria. On the contrary: much of the MSM should have been bought by Saudis. So, why don't they do what they are supposed to do...?
Last edited by davidbfpo; 03-23-2016 at 10:41 AM. Reason: Correction pointer added.
AQAP gains HAM
From a previously unknown website, via Twitter, on the gains made in parts of the Yemen by AQAP and it's newly named local affiliates: https://elijahjm.wordpress.com/2016/...ing-new-names/
Elijah J Mangier is another major PR-tool of the Assadist regime in Syria - of similar 'quality' like 'al-Masdar News'.
His blog is at least 2, perhaps more years 'old', and sometimes posting Iranian PRBS about Yemen.
In the case of the 'article' you linked above, David, he's babbling about 'Saudi-led Op Decisive Storm helping al-Qaida'.
To make few things clear here: yes, this is one of results of the Op Decisive Storm, but was never intended. What happened is that the advance during that operation was so quick, that the total of about 40,000 involved Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini etc. troops de-facto created a 'power vacuum' behind them: because of total collapse of Yemeni Army and police, there was nobody left behind them to control the 'liberated' areas.
This is what the AQAP exploited in order to establish itself in control of a number of places, foremost in Mukalla area. As mentioned above, Saudis are already neck-deep in fighting them.
Anyway, crucial result of the Op Decisive Storm was to stop such 'blitz' operations. Instead, Saudis and their intergalactic allies decided to spend the next 6-8 months with building a new Yemeni National Army (YNA), and new police. That's why no other major operation was undertaken ever since, i.e. why this war appears to be 'stagnating/going nowhere' ever since September last year. That's also why there were so many reports about graduation of new YNA units etc., the last two months or so.
This period is meanwhile nearly over, the YNA has a strenght of about 20,000; there is a new police too.
Obviously, the AQAP wasn't sitting iddle either, and thus it's not as easy to kick them out of Mukalla now. On the contrary, they are active in Aden too, and there is hardly a day without report about another assassination of some of Hadi's officials.
Mangier's babbling about 'nervousnes reaching its peak' in regards of that video showing a Hezbollah/Lebanon advisor talking to a group of Houthis is nonsense.
Actually it is so that Saudi special forces run a minor op in Sa'ada Governorate, back in early February, and smashed one of Houthi HQs there, capturing loads of documentation in the process - including that video. The video in question - see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NmLhAzRj8o - is very important, because it's the first-ever 'firm' evidence for Hezbollah presence on Houthi side in Yemen (i.e. it began convincing 'even' such cynical and sarcastic thugs like me that Saudis might be right after all, especially if combined with a review of how many of Yemenis that originally sided with Houthis have meanwhile turned against them).
Means: that video is surely no reason for Saudis to get 'nervous'. Rather something that made them very happy. And that's a good indication for 'quality' of the rest of Mangier's 'literature'...
Last edited by CrowBat; 03-06-2016 at 07:37 AM.
...and 'BTW': another indication that Saudi (and allied) reporting about what are they intending to do and/or doing in such places like Yemen remains diletantic - and this despite them bribing dozens and hundreds of media-platforms and journalists - is their complete failure to report about developments on the ground.
For example, almost completely ignored by the media is the fact that after days long air strikes, Saudi, Emirati and YNA troops have captured the Camp Arqoob - a major military base in southern outskirts of Sana'a - early the last week.
Since last weekend, they are battling Houthis and YA in Bani Faraj, which is an eastern suburb of Sana'a.
What is also unknown is that one of first reactions of YA troops inside the city (a concentration of about 15 different brigades) was for an entire brigade of the Presidential Guard (exact designation unknown yet, but apparently the T-80-equipped 3rd Armoured) - to defect to the Saudi-led side.
Although enjoying something like 10:1 quantitative advantage over Saudi/Emirati-led ground troops, all the Houthis/YA were able to do 'against' this was to fire a single SS-21 at Marib, on 3 March.
...all of which means that the 'Battle of Sana'a' is already in full swing, and very few people outside the Middle East know about this.
The YNA - apparently in cooperation with Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini and Sudanese troops - has broken the siege of Ta'iz, yesterday.
After losing the 'Base 35' (apparently the main base of the former 35th Armoured Brigade YA), Houthis and YA have retreated into north-eastern part of Ta'iz, and are still controlling the local airport plus parts of theuniversity. The latter is besieged though, with Houthis entrenched inside the Medical Faculty and in the Deanship Building, while the Engineering School and Main Building have already been secured.
Today, the YNA captured as-Saleh Parks and is advancing into the ad-Dhabab Valley.
Saudi-led intergalactic coalition heavily bombed all the roads connecting the city with Sana'a and other Houthi-controlled areas, effectively preventing any reinforcements from reaching the area.
Two days ago, Saudis & CO launched a major offensive on AQAP in Mansoura District of Aden. This was supported by at least 30 air strikes.
AQAP appears to have been completely destroyed there: the place is reported as 'secured' even by southern Yemeni separatists.
While returning from related operations, an UAEAF Mirage 2000 two-seater crashed into a mountain, killing a crew of two. Exact reasons remain unknown (as usually).
The loss of that UAEAF Mirage 2000 was not in vain: reports from Aden indicate that the Saudis and allies have completely destroyed the AQAP in Mansoura district, and this is now secure.
Indeed, and to make things 'better' I guess: Al-Qaeda militants battle each other in Zinjibar...
...The clashes broke out in the southern city of Zinjibar late Sunday, leaving at least seven militants dead and another nine wounded, according to Yemeni officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
The rival factions are led by local commander known as Abu Anas al-Sanani and another known as Ossan Baliedy, the brother of Jalal Baliedy, the leader who was killed along with three others in a drone strike on Thursday.
The late Baliedy headed al-Qaeda in Abyan province, of which Zinjibar is the capital, and was known for brutality, including the beheading of 16 soldiers in August 2014. He was believed to be ideologically closer to ISIS, which is locked in a bitter rivalry with al-Qaeda and has a branch in Yemen.
...but, on the other side... sigh... Airstrikes on Yemen market killed 41 civilians and wounded 75: senior health official
...Saudi-led warplanes on Tuesday launched two airstrikes on a busy market in a northern Yemeni region controlled by Houthi rebels, killing and wounding dozens of people, witnesses and medics said.
The state-run news agency SABA, which is controlled by the Houthis, said at least 65 people were killed and 55 wounded.
But Dr. Ayman Mathkour, the director of the Haja health department, told Reuters that the airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen's Haja province killed 41 civilians and wounded 75 others.
Relatives gathered the bodies and transported the wounded to Abs hospital and Mustaba District Hospital in Haja city.
Three witnesses described a scene of carnage, with dozens wounded or killed, but had no precise figures.
The market in the city of Mastaba, in Haja province, serves tens of thousands of people and was struck during a busy time. Witnesses said there were no military targets nearby. A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Houthis on behalf of the internationally recognized government for a year now.
Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman Malak Shaher told The Associated Press that at least 40 of the wounded were transferred to a nearby hospital, three of whom were in critical condition.
The Houthis' TV network al-Masirah showed graphic footage of dead children and charred bodies next to sacks of flour and twisted metal. Witnesses said houses, shops and restaurants were also damaged, while cars caught on fire.
"The scene was terrifying," Showei Hamoud told The Associated Press by phone from Mastaba. "Blood and body parts everywhere." Many of the dead are children who work stalls or carry goods in return for tips, he said.
"People collected the torn limbs in bags and blankets," he said, adding that he could count up to 40 motionless bodies.
A second witness, Mazahem Khedr, said "dozens were killed" and that he saw wounded people screaming for help. Mohammed Mustafa said people were afraid to help the wounded, fearing a third airstrike.
Haja is northwest of the capital, Sanaa, which fell to the Houthis in September 2014.
Let me guess: Saudis are going to 'investigate and publish all results'...
Ever since that air strike on Mostaba in northern Hajjah Province from 15 March is 'news of the day' about Yemen in all of the Western MSM. Now, one of ironic things about this tragedy is that the Western media can't stop increasing the number of fatalities, from over 100, perhaps as many as 119 - of whom up to 22 should have been children.
As usually, Saudis are reacting in idiotic fashion: Saudis say it might not be them... enough said...
However, some of local sources - or at least Western MSM citing local sources - are indicating that this strike actually did target Houthis or YA/Salleh forces - but went wrong (with undeniably tragic consequences): Saudi-led Yemen market strike killed 33 rebels: tribal chief. Interestingly, such sources are usually citing much lower casualty figures too:
A Yemeni tribal chief said Wednesday that 33 of the 41 people killed in a Saudi-led air strike on a market in a northern province were rebel fighters, not civilians as first reported.
Medics and tribal sources said that the Tuesday strike in the rebel-held Hajja province killed 41 people and wounded 35.
A health official in Hajja said the dead were civilians.
But on Wednesday a tribal chief close to Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels said that 33 of those were "fighters".
"The fighters were riding in three vehicles at a military camp that was hit by three air raids," the chief told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He added that Saudi-led warplanes then hit the market when the Huthis arrived there.
An official at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday the facility had received the bodies of 41 people killed in the raids.
But the charity disputed the claim on Wednesday.
"MSF's hospital in the region received 44 people wounded in the incident, two of whom died," the group's Yemen project coordinator Juan Prieto said.
The rebel-run sabanews.net website said on Tuesday that the coalition carried out two raids targeting the market and a restaurant in the area and gave a toll of 65 civilians dead and 55 wounded.
Meanwhile, in reaction to international uproar over that strike on market in Mostaba Saudis have announced a draw-down of their air strikes in Yemen. What do they mean with a 'drawdown' is unclear though, then air strikes continue: on 17 March, Saudi-led coalition bombed al-Hafa military base outside Sana'a (closest air strikes to Sana'a since 10 March), while Saudi and/or Emirati AH-64s destroyed an entire AQAP convoy underway between Aden and Zinjibar. Last night (i.e. this morning) they flew seven air strikes against targets in Sana'a area.
In Ta'iz... After shelling Ta'iz for nearly a full day yesterday (and killing at least six civilians), Houthis and YA have launched a counteroffensive there. It seems they are attempting to re-take the western side of the city.
Saudi-led coalition launched about a dozen of air strikes yesterday afternoon, and is continuing air strikes this morning. According to Saudi sources, air strikes are now largely guided by YNA FACs, but I have my doubts about this: although the YNA should now have two brigades in the city (the 22nd and an unknown one), there are still Saudi and Emirati FACs with them.
That said, no major Saudi, Emirati or 'allied' unit is involved in this battle: most of fighting is done by the YNA, local 'Popular Resistance Committees' - and the AQAP.
Ironically... there is an equivalent of some 4-5 brigades of the latter sitting in Aden and doing nothing. Reason: they are Southern Separatists that fought against Houthis when that city was besieged, and who insist to get paid for that, but refuse to continue fighting against Houthis in Ta'iz and similar places now. Instead, they are causing plenty of trouble for Hadi and his foreign allies.
Ah yes, and AQAP keeps on spreading. On 15 March they have captured Raydah in Hadramawt governorate, and clashed with YNA units near al-Anad AB.
Overall, I expect the AQAP to continue causing ever more problems. Namely, Saudis and allies are going to continue their withdrawal and hand over ever more of frontlines to the YNA: they're not only not curious to involve more of their ground forces, but now also under increasing international pressure. But, the YNA is still much too small but to bring all of 'liberated' Yemen under control...
Plenty of things happening in Yemen the last two days - all at once.
As first, Israel flew in 19 Yemeni Jews, ending immigration mission. Between others, one of Rabbis flown out took with him a 500-years old Torah scroll.
According to Israelis, with this, they have evacuated all the Jews from Yemen, bringing related airlift operations 'to conclusion'. That said, about 50 Yemeni Jews decided to stay (40 of them are living in a compound near the US embassy in Sana'a).
'Best' of all is: Yemeni social media is full of reports about this operation being run in cooperation between Israelis and Houthis, i.e. there being a secret deal. With other words, Houthis are now defamed as 'traitors' and 'Israeli agents':
..."Not only did the agents of the Zionist occupation collaborate with Israel and the United States in the covert operation to airlift Yemenite Jews to Israel, they also allowed these Jews to steal our heritage," a Yemenite activist wrote on his Twitter page, referring to the ancient Torah scroll the Rabbi brought with him.
"After Houthis ignited war in different provinces in Yemen under the slogan "Death to Israel," the truth about them is revealed," read another popular remark regarding the ostensible "Israel-Houthi collaboration."
The official Twitter account of one of the well-known Yemenite daily newspapers, Yemen Now, went even further, claiming that "Houthis stipulated their collaboration with Israel on its support for them in international forums."
In Ta'iz area, the Houthis/YA have brought in the 11th Brigade, the last intact major unit of the YA left. This launched a counterattack on the YNA's positions at Jabal Han and Maqahwiyah, and overrun these, thus putting the city under siege again. Meanwhile, they should have captured the central prison too.
This is obviously a major setback for Hadi, who clearly failed to deploy reinforcements to Ta'iz: locals are complaining they feel 'abandoned by the government'. That said, plenty of such complaints are based on typical lack of patience: in essence, the locals expected everything would get better 'instantly' - which is impossible, of course. On the contrary, alone the situation with thousands of mines left behind by Houthis/YA is terrible: dozens of civilians were killed by these the last few days - foremost various merchants that rushed to Ta'iz in attempt to sell food to people there, but also at least two kids.
Of course, this is no good news for the Saudi-led coalition either: their heavy bombardment of the 11th Brigade as this advanced for Ta'iz appears to have been ineffective. Reasons are unknown, but possibly related to feint movement of several other YA units. Guess, without them deploying their ground troops to this area too, not much is going to change.
I have to correct one of my earlier reports: namely, sometimes in late February I reported a Saudi attack on Mukhalla, a port in southern Yemen controlled by the AQAP. It turned out this was a 'mere' raid. That is: Saudi Marines landed east of this town, destroyed a major ammo depot there, and then withdrew. They also landed inside the port, destroyed several depots there (probably related to ammo), and then withdrew too.
Means: Mukhalla remains under AQAP control (i.e. their branch calling itself 'Sonst of Hadramawt').
Sorry for this: was my misunderstanding of related reports.
**Moderator has added correction pointer to Post 10**.
Talking about AQAP: the US flew a major air strike on AQAP training camp outside Mukhalla, and there are claims about dozens of KIA:
...Tribal sources in the area told AFP that a series of airstrikes hit the camp and that wounded militants were taken to a hospital in Mukalla.
Witnesses there reported seeing around nine vehicles carrying casualties from the area.
Dozens of Al-Qaeda militants were meanwhile seen rushing to the hospital to donate blood, according to residents.
The Pentagon claims up to '200 KIA in two air strikes'.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 03-23-2016 at 10:42 AM. Reason: Add Mod's note
Finally a sane analysis of military aspects of this war - by Michael Knights from WINEP:
Gulf Coalition Operations in Yemen (Part 1): The Ground War
Gulf Coalition Operations in Yemen (Part 2): The Air War
Gulf Coalition Operations in Yemen (Part 3): Maritime and Aerial Blockade
Disclaimer: any relations to certain posters of this forum are fully intentional.
Plenty of news from Yemen today.
Firstly, it turns out the AQAP learned what to do with that strange stick of long, green, heavy tubes they've captured from the 190th Air Defense Brigade (Yemen Air Force) at Riyan AB (outsie Mukhalla), on 25 April 2015:
Yemen conflict: Al-Qaeda 'used surface-to-air missile' to bring down Emirati fighter jet
...A French-made Mirage jet, flying in the air force of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), crashed into a mountain side just outside the southern port city of Aden on 14 March. Authorities claimed that the crash was "the result of a technical malfunction", but sources dispute this, claiming that the jet was shot down with Russian munitions.
Two pilots flying the jet were killed in the crash and locals reported seeing Apache helicopters and the jet engaged in an attack on AQAP forces dug into a district to the west of Aden. Security sources have estimated that some 300 jihadist fighters were under attack at the time the jet came down.
A source in Yemen told The Independent that the surface-to-air missile was a Russian-manufactured SA-7 or "Strela". The SA-7 is a shoulder held heat-seeking missile. It has a "kill zone" range of between 15 and 1,500 metres in altitude, suggesting that the Mirage was flying low in a strafing run on the AQAP positions when it was hit.
A second source, who has close links with the Saudi intelligence service, said that the missile which brought down the Emirati jet this month was acquired by AQAP in raids on military bases that have occurred over the past year.
"Al Qaeda has confiscated huge amounts of weapons from bases in Yemen," he said. He cited two such bases, one at al-Aryan along the southern coast east of Aden and another at Ataq, the capital of the southern governorate of Shabwah.
...and I was already wondering, how would Emiratis and Saudis know it was 'technical malfunction' - just minutes after that poor Mirage crashed.
Though, if they call every MANPAD-hit on their fighter-bombers a 'technical malfunction' (which, hand on heart, is the case: things that blow up when hitting combat aircraft tend to cause multiple technical malfunctions), then now we at least know what happened to that Moroccan F-16, and that Bahraini F-16, and those Saudi and Emirati AH-64s...
Ah, I'm drifting away... This is interesting too:
Yemeni forces make key gains in Jawf
...Yemen army forces and allied tribesmen in the northern province of Jawf said on Saturday they had taken complete control of the district of Al Metoun after Iran-backed Al Houthi militants pulled out of their positions.
"Al Houthis preferred to withdraw ahead of (the) arrival of a large (number of) troops on the edges of the district," Abdullah Al Ashraf, a spokesperson for resistance militants in the province, told Gulf News on Saturday.
Unlike other front lines where government forces are struggling to break Al Houthis' military lines, Yemeni forces have seized large swathes of land from the militants including the province's capital, Hazem, since late last year.
Al Ashraf, who also returned to his house in the same city, said: "People came back home when Al Houthis left the city without fighting."
After clearing militants out of Al Metoun and recently the district of Al Masloub, Al Ashraf said that only two districts are still under Al Houthis' control in the province.
"If we manage to (take) control (of) these districts, we would be on the border with Saada." Saada is an Al Houthi stronghold in the northwest of the country.
Military analysts say that the government forces are pushing their advance into the remaining regions in the province as to surround the militants in Saada.
In the province of Sana'a, Yemeni forces said on Friday they had seized some mountainous areas outside the capital after fierce fighting with Al Houthis and army units loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Abdullah Al Shandagi, Sana'a resistance spokesperson, said on Friday that the government forces pushed Al Houthis out of the mountain of Sulta and a small village called Al Houl.
A year after the beginning of the military operation against Al Houthis, government forces are now less than 30km from the Yemeni capital.
Local media reports recently said that Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar, the deputy chief commander of armed forces, met with the leaders of some of these tribes in the central province of Marib where they assured him their support to the advancing government forces in Sana'a province.
Hm... Houthis running away without giving a battle? That's news...
Even better news from battles against the AQAP. One of Hadi's officials is very happy to announce:
..."This morning, airstrikes targeted a stronghold of the terrorist group on the outskirts of Aden province, in Al Fyoush area," a source in Aden's interior ministry told The National, without providing details of casualties.
"Raids also struck a crowd of terrorists in Abyan province's Ja'ar district, close to a factory."
Well, Abyan was actually hit by a US UAV strike
Air raids killed 14 men suspected of belonging to al Qaeda in southern Yemen on Sunday, medics and local residents said, in one of the largest U.S.-led assaults on the group since a civil war broke out a year ago.
Residents in southern Yemen said an aircraft bombed buildings used by al Qaeda in the southern coastal Abyan province and destroyed a government intelligence headquarters in the provincial capital Zinjibar that the militants had captured and were using as a base. Medics said six people were killed.
Earlier on Sunday a suspected U.S. drone attack killed eight militants gathered in courtyards in the villages of al-Hudhn and Naqeel al-Hayala in Abyan, residents told Reuters by phone.
...while the Saudis (or their allies) then bombed Zinjibar too:
Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out a series of raids in southern Yemen on Sunday targeting Al-Qaeda positions that killed five suspected militants, a Yemeni military official said.
The official, who requested anonymity, said the jihadists were killed in air strikes that targeted buildings in the city of Zinjibar, including an intelligence and special forces headquarters occupied by the militants.
Several people were also wounded and taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Jaar, the official said.
An abandoned army weapons factory in Jaar which the jihadists had taken over was also hit, the official added, but was unable to say if there were any casualties.
Other raids carried out by the Saudi-led coalition struck suspected Al-Qaeda positions in second city Aden at dawn, according to the same official.
Hm... interesting to hear there's still AQAP in Aden area: the last report cited something like 'all destroyed'. But then, nobody said that a massive improvement in combat effectiveness and -performance of several major Arab militaries must mean that the PR-skills of their governments experienced a similar improvement...
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Palanquin, a covered litter (used in India and other Eastern countries) with poles fitted to it before and behind, so that it is borne on the shoulders of two, four, or six bearers. It is generally constructed to hold one, being a box about eight feet long and half as wide and high, with shutters like light Florentine shutters. The Japanese palanquin or norimond has one pole fixed along the top.


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Oregon, New Mexico order lockdowns as other states resist
Michelle R. Smith, Carla K. Johnson and Lisa Marie Pane/AP
Posted: Nov 14, 2020 / 02:30 AM CST | Updated: Nov 14, 2020 / 02:30 AM CST
Shoppers comply with the mask regulations to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus at Bridgton Books, Friday, Nov. 13, 2020, in Bridgton, Maine. With the coronavirus coming back with a vengeance across the country and the U.S. facing a long, dark winter, governors and other elected officials are showing little appetite for reimposing the kind of lockdowns and large-scale business closings seen last spring. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The governors of Oregon and New Mexico ordered near-lockdowns Friday in the most aggressive response yet to the latest wave of coronavirus infections shattering records across the U.S., even as many of their counterparts in other states show little appetite for reimposing the hard-line restrictions of last spring.
"We are in a life-or-death situation, and if we don't act right now, we cannot preserve the lives, we can't keep saving lives, and we will absolutely crush our current health care system and infrastructure," Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said in imposing a two-week stay-at-home order.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown ordered a two-week "freeze" starting Wednesday, under which all businesses will be required to close their offices to the public and mandate work-from-home "to the greatest extent possible."
While most Oregon stores will remain open, gyms, museums, pools, movie theaters and zoos will be forced to close, and restaurants and bars will be limited to takeout. Social gatherings will be restricted to six people.
Global coronavirus case total tops 50 million
The Democratic governor warned that violators could face fines or arrest.
"For the last eight months, I have been asking Oregonians to follow to the letter and the spirit of the law, and we have not chosen to engage law enforcement," Brown said. "At this point in time, unfortunately, we have no other option."
FILE – In this Nov. 12, 2020, file photo, a man walks past a coffee shop as the store displays information signs in Chicago. With the coronavirus coming back with a vengeance across the country and the U.S. facing a long, dark winter, governors and other elected officials are showing little appetite for reimposing the kind of lockdowns and large-scale business closings seen last spring. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
Both states had lockdowns earlier in the year, but the coronavirus is coming back with a vengeance across the country, and the U.S. is facing a long, dark winter. The scourge is blamed for 10.7 million confirmed infections and almost a quarter-million deaths in the U.S., with the closely watched University of Washington model projecting nearly 439,000 dead by March 1.
Deaths have climbed to about 1,000 a day on average. New cases per day are soaring, reaching another all-time high on Thursday of more than 153,000. Hospitals are getting swamped.
Still, there is little will among many governors and other elected officials for going back to the kind of lockdowns and large-scale business closings seen last spring. Some governors also continue to resist issuing statewide mask rules.
CDC: Wearing a mask could keep you from catching coronavirus
Among the reasons given: public fatigue, fear of doing more damage to already-crippled businesses, lack of support from Washington, and the way efforts to tame the virus have become fiercely politicized.
"I think that governors and mayors are, again, in a really tough spot. The American population is emotionally and economically exhausted," Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
President Donald Trump asked all Americans to remain "vigilant" but ruled out a nationwide "lockdown."
"Hopefully, whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown," Trump said in his first public remarks since his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden.
Governors in many states, such as New York, Maryland, Virginia and Minnesota, have taken largely incremental measures over the past few days, such as limiting the size of gatherings, making businesses close early, restricting capacity or cutting off alcohol sales earlier in the evening.
Gov. Cuomo imposes new COVID-19 restrictions in New York
Starting Saturday, most people in North Dakota will be ordered to wear masks at indoor public spaces and outdoors where social distancing isn't possible, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum ordered late Friday. Businesses will also have restrictions on capacity and hours of operation, according to the executive order.
Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak has repeatedly argued that containing the virus is largely up to individuals.
"Some people are going to ask, 'Why not limit retail, or casino resorts, or restaurants right now?' That's a fair question," he said. "That is the tightrope of trying to balance controlling the COVID-19 spread, protecting our hospitals from surges, and at the same time, not destroying and shutting down our economy."
Texas woman loses 5 family members to COVID-19
In Texas, which this week became the first state to surpass 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has emphasized new treatments and vaccines that are expected to become available soon.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken an even harder line against new restrictions, suing after El Paso closed nonessential businesses because of a surge so severe that mobile morgues are being brought in. An appeals court Thursday temporarily lifted the shutdown. On Friday, the appeals court sent the case back to a state district judge with instructions to halt the shutdown.
In a statement that Paxton's office tweeted, he called the appeals court's Friday decision "outstanding," adding that "I will not let rogue political subdivisions try to kill small businesses and holiday gatherings through unlawful executive orders."
Officials have gotten pushback from some constituents, especially business owners who fear for their livelihoods.
In Ohio, Bahram Akradi, founder, chairman and CEO of Life Time health clubs, objected when the governor added gyms to a list of businesses that could be shuttered if cases continue to rise.
"Another shutdown would just be completely devastating and simply unjust," Akradi said. He added: "The damage of not allowing people to have healthy activity is much more than the gain."
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In Montana, where cases are up more than 16% in the past week, Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock said he is wary of imposing tougher statewide restrictions without additional federal aid to unemployed individuals and small businesses.
"I never wanted to punish the businesses that are doing right in this pandemic to keep their employees and customers safe. Shutting down those businesses would do just that," he said.
The political perils of statewide mandates have been on display in Wisconsin. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers issued a "safer at home" order in March that was challenged by Republican lawmakers and struck down by the conservative-controlled state Supreme Court in May.
The result has been a hodgepodge of local limits across the state, with some of the strictest in places like Milwaukee, which is moving forward with imposing steep fines of between $500 and $5,000 for violations of local health orders.
Dr. Birx on rise in coronavirus infections across US, future of White House Task Force
Other governors have likewise relied on local and county officials to tackle the crisis, creating a patchwork of restrictions around the country. But that strategy has its limits against a virus.
In Tennessee, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said he doesn't plan on reinstating restrictions on the city's honky-tonks and other businesses. He said shutting down just one county would probably be ineffective against the virus because the surrounding areas wouldn't be following the same guidelines.
FILE – In this Nov. 12, 2020, file photo, a woman wearing a face mask walks along the street in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. With the coronavirus coming back with a vengeance across the country and the U.S. facing a long, dark winter, governors and other elected officials are showing little appetite for reimposing the kind of lockdowns and large-scale business closings seen last spring. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
"We are also subject to what goes on in our state, and we can't keep just our county safe," Cooper said.
Some economists say the crisis has been falsely portrayed as a choice between the economy and public health. Instead, they argue that the economy cannot recover until the virus is brought under control and people are confident enough to go shopping, eat at restaurants and do other things again.
Business owners express concern as coronavirus cases rise across the country
Experts have argued, too, that strict but relatively short lockdowns could ultimately result in less economic pain than the half-measures employed now, which have only succeeded in dragging out the crisis.
Dr. Michael Fine, former director of Rhode Island's Health Department, said the outbreak requires more aggressive strategies. Closing bars earlier in the evening, he said, "might have worked in July, but there's not a chance they'll work now. It's like taking an eyedropper to a forest fire."
"Short of very profound lockdowns, I don't think we have a chance of slowing the spread," Fine said.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Towards the top of the world there were 11 suicide attempts in a single day. Though the causes and conditions will vary with each individual, the signal remains; a signal of meaninglessness. When youth are involved, as in this case, it speaks loud and clear: 'there is no future for us.' Such a stark message is hard to hear in its simplicity. It is our loving nature that seeks to nurture our children and inspires us to work hard creating environments conductive to their thriving. The young suicide has failed to find any space for themselves in the future in which they can imagine a life less filled with pain and suffering than the one they know right now.
A compassionate response wants to know what it is that makes them suffer so? We send mental health professionals and counselors but what if what ails them is structural, traditional institutional social arrangements that no longer serve the needs of the present? If that is the case all the talk in the world isn't going to help much. I will venture to bet they don't want a handout, hot-air, or heroin. I bet what these young people want is to not be faceless, to have a chance to do something meaningful about all the things going to hell today. Hang in there. We hear you. We need you. You just might look back on your long life amazed; the youth of today just might have front row seats for the greatest show on earth. Regardless, for those who care about the earth there is a lot of work to do.
When a monk emmolates themselves to help free Tibet they are hoping other people in their compassion will feel the depth of pain that must have been in their hearts to cause them to sacrifice what is valuable above all else, a precious human life. The Karmapa has recognized as much when he asked for such events to cease because people are not responding compassionately. The suicides and murder-suicides we have been looking at in these posts lack the clarity of purpose these monastics bring to bear but shouldn't we still try to feel the flesh they lay on the line?
Indigenous people the world over have been warning us that without respecting the natural environment no good future can come our way. This remnant of non-consumer culture up north, not far from the Arctic where climate change rages, reaches out to us with a cry from broken hearts. We should listen.
Do our current arrangements serve the needs of the present or have we gone off course? Is business as usual adaptive or maladaptive for our time?
Over the next 15 to 20 years the world's most infamous computer model is going to have its final day in court. In the early 1970s when the Limits to Growth (LtG) model was first published it predicted that if society proceeded with business as usual it would lead to a collapse of modern industrialized civilization sometime around the middle of the twenty-first century. Immediately on its publication a cart load of economists cast aspersions on the Models of Doom and before long it was time to make America Great Again under Ronald Reagan's long presidency, and we never looked back.
That mid twenty-first century point no longer looks quite as far down the road as it once did and there is that troubling Australian research that has shown more up-to-date data is still conforming to the predicted trends. Take a look at the graphic where the additional data has been added and you will see it is a very close fit but so what? So far each data set simply enforces the rather obvious fact that everything wonderful about our globalized industrial civilization is still growing. Industrial output per capita, services per capita and food per capita have all accompanied a steady increase in human population since 1970. Pollution has increased and the stock of non-renewable resources has decreased, which to be sure are troubling but, well climate change and oscillating oil prices are not considered by most people to be the first rumblings of a much larger set of crisis yet to come.
Now look again at that graphic. Locate the position mid-way between the year 2000 and the arrow indicating 2030 when population decline had been predicted. That mid-point would be just about now, 2015 or so. Here's the point, the thing we need to get very clear about: between 2015 and 2030 just about all those growth trends we just enumerated turn down, they reach inflection points.
The question is not does the evidence continue to follow their historical trajectories, the question is will the trends turn as predicted by the model. That is the test. That is when the rubber hits the road. And that, dear reader is what most of us alive today are going to find out. In the battle of incompatible worldviews between the economists and the ecologists only one picture about the future can be right. Time, as we say, will tell. This is specifically Our Time – the Age of Inflections, the Age of Limits.
If the economists are correct this will not happen. Engineering ingenuity will find substitutions for depleted resources and geo-engineering solutions for our pollution problems. We just need to stay the course and grow our economies faster.
If these ecologists are correct over the next fifteen years or so we will pass through the most fundamental changes imaginable as the centuries long productive growth in food, goods and services comes to an end.
Ours is the population that finds itself in the cross-hairs of what ecologists have been warning the world about for nigh on fifty years now. The shifts being proposed are seismic; as pervasive and powerful as any that turned the wheels of history in the past. Isis gunning for the apocalypse and Trump gunning for Caesar's job are just kicking the wheel along.
In our hubris it is hard for us to fully comprehend that the outcome of the contest between the neo-liberal economists and the ecologists will not be determined by anything we humans do at this point. The model in question includes social inertia and its concomitant time lags. This is one of the major reasons why the trend curves take the shape they do. What that means for us, the people alive today after half a century of pursuing the business as usual scenario, is that the outcome, whatever it turns out to be, is already baked in at this point.
We were once in a world mostly empty of humanity, full of unexplored frontiers and unclaimed bounties of nature's abundance. This is no longer the case. Now there is no productive place on earth not already being exploited and the frontiers have disappeared under the feet of our relentless expansion. To understand the world we find ourselves in it is vital to comprehend this. The ethic of growth and expansion must give way to an ethic of well being found by living well within our means. There is not enough fertile farm land, unpolluted fresh water and climate stabilized atmosphere remaining to serve our ever expanding numbers, let alone the exponential curves of economic growth. Our books, theater and politics; our religions, sciences and educational traditions; our languages, migratory patterns and the food we eat – nothing will remain unaffected as we march towards whatever the peak of human population proves to be. Does that help you sense, at least to some degree, just how pervasive the forces of change we are talking about really are?
It is easy to get caught up in the personal ramifications of those curves. It is certainly understandable as our lives depend quite directly on the food, goods and services our society offers. We should take what practical lessons we can from all this and learn to adapt. Once we have our house in order, however, I suggest we turn our attention to that population curve and shift our concern away from our individual well being to the state of our species facing an evolutionary phenomenon. The curve in the LtG model tracking population turns down. Human biomass, the model predicts, is soon to reach its maximum and then begin an inexorable descent to some lower plateau. Just where that might be on a world of ecosystems suffering damage from our consumer excesses no one knows.
Today ecologists warn us that if we continue with business as usual by 2100 the likely global temperature will have risen by six degrees or more; tragically redrawing coastlines, disrupting food harvests and driving the mass migration of plants and animals all taking place against a backdrop of unprecedented mass extinction. Of course this week we really are too busy to be bothered by all that. We find ourselves here, in the business as usual scenario of the LtG model facing the Age of Inflections because we were too busy last week, and the week before too. I'd ask you to think about this over the next decade or two as things unfold. If we harvest bitter fruits, as I believe we most probably will, consider the degree of commitment to changing your own lifestyle you might be willing to make in light of these further predictions from our ecologists.
Last week we defined our time, the Age of Limits, as the 50 year window or so in which the curves of the limits to growth (LtG) model run through their inflection points. To put it in Richard Heinberg's memorable phrase, it is the age of Peak Everything. The graphic reproduced in that post was first widely disseminated among the reading public when it was published by the National Geographic magazine. It remains iconic in my mind, a laser focused representation of the ecological critique of industrial civilization.
The form the presentation takes is as iconic as the message itself for characterizing our time. Such a mathematical graphic weave numerous strands from the western history of ideas together seamlessly. I am quite sure most Nat Geo readers were able to immediately interpret those curves to understand their message, yet doing so represents a wide array of skills and assumptions unique to the modern mind. The algebraic curve as an expression of a mathematical function comes from Descartes in the 1600s but the idea that we can rationally ask about the future and expect it to unfold in a wholly natural way from the causes and conditions of the past and present is much older. Lucretius is our standard bearer in the western tradition here. The curves were generated using the calculus invented by Newton and Leibniz also in the 1600s but the use it is put to by the MIT team to interpolate trends and sketch out future conditions is only meaningful in the context of statistics and probability as they have been understood since the 1950s or so. These three; the calculus, statistics and probability, are the heavy lifters for most all the mathematical sciences which have so transformed our modern world.
The LtG graphic is iconic also in the sense of a stand-in, a symbol for something else. The actual World3-03 model which embodied the MIT team's theoretical constructs is not in itself the only model or data set being considered when concerns about collapse are being aired. We will return to this point. That said, for the curious one presentation of the World3-03 model design can be found here and for the curious and computer savvy the full Vensim model can be found here.
What you see is a system science design which captures flows from sources towards sinks at various rates. The spaghetti looking aspect are the interactions between the various systems, the feedback loops that create the overall non-linear behavior the model exhibits. By changing the numeric value of the parameters we ask how the model will perform under different sets of assumptions. The rates and values set according to historic precedent creates the business as usual scenario, what is called scenario 1 in the quote above.
In the books Limits to Growth and Limits to Growth, the 30-Year Update a number of other scenarios are explored which ask questions such as what happens if there is twice the amount of resources available than initially assumed, or what happens if dramatic policy changes are put in place. In general such alternate LtG scenarios adjust the timelines, and the initial drivers sometimes fluctuate between a source crisis (not enough) and a sink crisis (too much) but nothing avoids a collapse once society is in a state of overshoot. This is the "general behavior mode" of the model. I encourage my readers who have not read the source material in these two books to do so. The careful consideration of objections and alternatives conveys the system science reasoning very well. It is not enough to dismiss the critique with hand waving.
Still, by itself the LtG study stands as a single piece of evidence. The question whether or not our existing civilization is sustainable over the next generation or two is the most important question the human species faces. Every person alive today not isolated from world affairs cannot help but wondering about the same question at some level or another. Everyone wonders where this Juggernaut is heading. The 30-Year Update put World3's core question this way: "How may the expanding global population and material economy interact with and adapt to the earth's limited carrying capacity over the coming decades?" Such an important question deserves as much careful thinking as we can give it. That requires us to gather more evidence.
Did you catch the important caveat in the quote that started this post? It's been 12 years since the 30-Year Update was published and looking back it seems clear that neither the "policies" nor the "technologies and values" dominating our societies changed much from those which shaped the "last part of the twentieth century." That is two of the three ifs mentioned. The final if, on the other hand, remains as relevant as ever; namely, are the numbers used in the model to represent aggregates and facts for which we have little data and are highly uncertain roughly correct?
This is the voice of science. It remains open to new information and correction. Science speaks in P-values, confidence intervals and error ranges when using mathematical data analysis.
The fate of humankind and the ecosphere is sufficiently fundamental that we should be willing to set aside whatever might interfere with clearly and correctly integrating and discussing the evidence. Impassioned political speeches and psychologically manipulative marketing techniques have no proper place in this discussion.
We are not trying to score points, as if this were nothing more than a clash of ideas taken up by a debating team. Our children's lives hang in the balance. The emotionally manipulative and deliberately disingenuous is, frankly, pathetic and unacceptable and will not be considered any further. This is an adult conversation and they are not invited to a place at the table. Which leaves the seriously concerned to wrestle with the evidence.
The useful engagement with something like the LtG model is using it to sharpen our thinking about the real world. System science models have places of leverage, places where a small force applied can have results far out of proportion to its magnitude; much like the current from a 1.5 volt battery can control the electronic governor of a large industrial manufacturing process. Finding where in the system such points of leverage exist and experimenting with them when they lead to more positive outcomes or protecting them and monitoring them as critical trigger points when they threaten negative outcomes is one way of taking the evidence seriously.
Another is to examine an item such as topsoil loss and work to lower its rate by building up productive soil. The model gives some parameters around what might and might not actually be helpful.
Of course the LtG is only one model on the table. The climate change ecologists are running supercomputers day in and day out. The IPCC models are also on the table, right next to biodiversity graphs, ocean toxicity and all the rest. Those people seated around this table are engaged in a multi-model comparison, a meta-model study. Each model comes with its own uncertainties and the combination of models can potentially introduce more. In fact the greatest uncertainties typically cluster around questions about how one weakened system might react to another system which is slowly failing which itself depends on a system in crisis. All too often that is the state of the real world in all its complexity.
In the heads of every participant another model of sorts is guiding each of them to whatever beliefs they hold about what is really and truly going on. It is the nature of the mind to experience some things as more likely to be real and true than other things. The only question becomes how our convictions were arrived at, whether or not they remain open to new information, and what role reasoning about evidence has played in their formation.
Lovecraft touches on something very profound here. Plenty to chew on from a contemplative point of view but the surface meaning is important to everyone waking up in the Age of Limits. It is interesting to ask ourselves within our contemplation just how willing we really are to sit at this table.
Take a mind. Send it hour after hour of highly charged emotional content all the while making irrational claims like, "Subaru is love." Take that exact same medium that delivers this cognitive quicksand and use it to also communicate the most important news of our time. Result? People can be forgiven for being a little bit confused about what is real and important these days and what is not.
I don't think we can make any headway towards clear thinking without recognizing the cognitive dissonance and confusion that has been deliberately sewn inside our minds. The manipulation manifests in a number of ways, not the least of which is the general atmosphere it fosters in which anything goes: every side of every argument is given equal weight – regardless of the evidence.
Lots of people talk about the rosy high-tech future business as usual will deliver; politicians work with the corporate elite and their bankers to assure that the opinion pieces, TV and radio are full of the same monotone rhetoric. The only group who consistently refuses to join the optimist crowd, who insist on making dire predictions, are the scientists and engineers; those whom we expect to continue delivering the consumer cornucopia we have come to feel we deserve. Those who crunch the numbers and make the most careful models are of one accord – very, very worried. This should, in turn, worry us.
As a nation we sure do like our stories. Hollywood movies regularly attract masses of people as titles regularly achieve blockbuster status. Even blockbusters are not enough to satisfy our need and longing to tell one another stories. We rely on TV and radio to broadcast thousands of stories a day, non-stop. So enamored are we with the stories we tell, that as a society we lavish our highest awards of money and fame on the actors and musicians who master these arts of theatrical pretending.
So when events are cast into the context of a story that conforms well to our highly trained expectations, we are extremely susceptible to bypassing critical thought because the explanation just 'feels right'.
For example, when an economist tells us the developing world is adopting car based lifestyles at an accelerating rate, we tend to pull out our comfortable story – progress through industrial technology – and file away the claim as further evidence that supports one of our society's core narratives. Business news being what it is, this datum about accelerated adoption of cars was probably presented as a sign of great progress because the poor of the world are finally catching on to how to become just like us. It's possible, though considerably less likely, that the factoid was presented in the voice of a concerned environmentalist instead. In that case we will likely interpret it as a story of progressive problem solving through grand engineering achievements, which again allows us to file away the claim as further evidence supporting one of our society's core narratives. That pretty much covers the spectrum of acceptable mainstream interpretations of facts related to growth and overshoot.
To be fair to all the people involved with the Paris Accords, we should be grateful their tireless work has managed to bring the conversation this far. That John Kerry's granddaughter made an appearance at the UN signing was also very encouraging; we need reminders of what all these abstractions are really about. Still, to avoid being tragically disappointed, we should recognize that the need to conform to these core progress narratives acts as a constraint on what we can realistically expect from such efforts.
LtG is its own narrative, one not in harmony with the narrative of material progress through economic growth. Because of this it is not, today, a core narrative within our society's business or religious communities. None the less, this fringe interpretation of events grows more useful as the evidence of a very real Eco-crisis continues to pour in. In my mind the LtG narrative is the most viable alternative to the up and coming blame game coming out of the progress narrative.
We are already seeing the beginning of that dangerous shift in the mainstream narrative about a bright shiny future. It is being replaced by its shadow: someone stole that bright shiny future from us, the one that was rightfully ours, and the one we deserve. That scapegoating keeps the sanctity of the core narrative inviolate. That is the utility of the story of evil villains among us. What other cause could there be for all our troubles, if the ideal of progress is going to be retained?
The only alternative we have for blaming someone else would seem to be blaming ourselves. We have already mentioned the strange religious inversion of our times. At some level western religious traditions have been co-opted by the powers that be. These religions have traditions of standing up against injustice and I believe they will play an increasingly important role in the coming century but today when David is confronted by Homo Colossus, or as we say the 'gas and oil giants,' their quivers are all but empty. Their assigned role seems to be an elaborate excuse mechanism, a theology of the 'devil made me do it' variety. You know the routine: humans are selfish, greedy and filled with uncontrollable lust, a pile of excrement lightly covered in snow (to use an image from the Lutheran tradition) so don't blame me for doing everything I had to in getting to the top. What do you expect from our pitiful, fallen nature? Of course the world can only end in the ultimate violence of Armageddon and it is a lack of faith to work for any other outcome. Where the God of love who created the earth out of love and "saw that it was good" is in all that it is hard to say.
Let's return to our example. I have mentioned before a projection I once came across that the number of cars on the road worldwide is expected to double by 2030. Just imagine that really happening; you think traffic is bad now. . . That is in about fifteen years, the slightest click of history's clock. Indisputably transportation is one of the largest causes of the complex system of interactions we call climate change, yet business as usual is unable to envision the world of 2030 as anything other than one in which there are more cars and more highways.
Those who see no problem with the projections because these will all be self-driving electric vehicles from Google are simply ignorant of a number of facts, not the least of which is that the adoption period for new transportation technology is on the order of 20 years. Many people do not have an intuitive understanding or factual exposure to sociological and technological lag times working against us this way, but it is hardly worth arguing the point. What we want to ask such people is how do they see the world of 2050? Another doubling again of cars, highways, parking spaces, gas stations, fuel supplies, refineries and delivery infrastructures? Just how far down this road from our time into bizzaro-land, as it is revealed by exponential growth, do we need to go before we turn around and notice something quite fundamental is amiss?
This is what numeric facts can do; quickly winnow the astronomically improbable futures from the set of those most probable.
The number of cars is an example of how clearly the evidence speaks of a necessary discontinuity arriving among the many features of existing arrangements that are wholly dependent on exponential economic and material growth. The institutions and infrastructures we have built to take advantage of oil in the age of exuberance are now frozen cages, no longer serving our current needs well. They are frozen because they are stuck in narratives that do not work. Much of this precious inheritance might eventually serve a more localized lifestyle but that would mean they have become animated by a different set of values.
Last week's post mentioned the need for meta-model analysis in which the value of multiple models is weighed against one another. As benefits a world in which it is turtles all the way down, there is a model for this too. Though the model is mathematical, what it captures is a process we immediately understand: as evidence accumulates some of our ideas about what is really going on fail, become less useful or are restrained to restricted domains, while other ideas are strengthened with an increasing explanatory power. Newtonian mechanics in an Einstein universe is the classic case of restriction, Ptolemy's astronomy a well known case of a set of ideas that fared less well.
We like to tell stories. If this analysis is valid, the story of progress which has guided western civilization for centuries no longer offers a functionally useful interpretation of events. It can only point the finger of blame as the long descent throws sand in the gears.
LtG offers an alternative model of why what is happening is happening and, importantly, it entails an alternate conception of our role as human beings in our relationship with all that is not human. It seems such a tiny thing compared to the grand narratives of progress. It is a tiny thing if we ask ourselves how much real influence the LtG model has had in shaping our affairs. Still, the battle of models is early yet. Who knows, an epidemic outbreak of sanity just might be heading our way. Sure it will likely be after some seriously brutal missteps but in every individual mind the evidence accumulates, drop by drop. Though the stories never cease, they do change.
When people recognize that business as usual is making false promises about the future there is a tendency to lose perspective, as if the end of an existing social system and the end of the world were more or less the same. It's good to remind ourselves that in a universe of interdependence, every ending is also a beginning and that's as true for the ending of a civilization as it is for the ending of a pregnancy. In the process of winnowing the astronomically unlikely futures from those most probable, we are well served by lessons about how life actually works. We see through the fog of false promises by insisting on evidence.
We are examining ecological models to find clues to the forces shaping our times. Among the babies being born right now there will be some fortunate enough to live to see the coming of the next century. What will the world of our children be like? What inheritance are we preparing for them?
The year 2100 has gathered around itself a cluster of troubling numbers. Standard scenarios expect there to be a population of 10 billion people living in a climate changed world 2 – 6 degrees warmer, or worse. These numbers imply others, equally bleak if we ask how all these people are going to be fed, clothed, housed and where all the waste they will generate is going to be put. Add the fact that they are unlikely to be able to continue using the astronomical amounts of oil we depend on to fuel doing all this and it promises to be a difficult time, without doubt. Some degree of that difficulty could be alleviated by skillful activities undertaken now but that means talking about it.
In my experience if a conversation pushes people to realistically consider these things, it is not long before someone throws their hands up and says something along the lines of, 'well we are all going to die by then anyway' – which I think really means 'it is all so dismal, let's not talk about it.' It's as if our imaginations have been entranced by a mashup of the weird and all we see when we peek into tomorrow is a zombie Apocalypse in a Mad Max world.
This is not very useful.
Here is where the ecological models we have been studying can act as cognitive dental floss. Turning our contemplative attention to their meaning, we train in the revaluation of values true sustainability entails. What we need to learn we are learning from models of food webs, predator-prey relationships, overshoot and collapse dynamics, atmospheric response to pollution forcing, and peak resource use and waste production in the LtG scenarios. This scientifically valid foraging into ecological reality provides us with an opportunity to participate with our understanding in the great, ongoing flows of life.
The imagination that thinks Mad Max represents the most probable future, whether we want it to be or not, is poverty stricken. It fails to account for the biological resiliency that characterizes the ecosphere. Ecosystems can flip between collapse and complexity, often times surprisingly rapidly. What the ecological models provide us with are tools for thinking about what makes for healthy, thriving ecosystems, as well as what can harm them beyond repair. With this understanding human beings have opened up a path of partnering with our environment. We can heal the damage done; even as we shrink our ecological footprints so fulfilling our needs no longer causes irreparable damage to our one and only home. As the collapsing financial and industrial process continues in the coming decades, the harmful effects of those processes on ecosystems will diminish. In this gap opportunities for conservation and restoration will continue to provide a meaningful alternative to blind and reckless consumerism. We are talking about real world opportunities to do real world work that makes a real world difference. Psychotic dystopias like Mad Max simply fail to account for how man's will for meaning acts as a limiting factor on our social madness.
When we study how the biological and ecological systems we are emerged in actually work, we come to trust that limiting factors will come into play to counteract any extreme imbalances. Note that this is not the same as saying nature will continue to provide an environment conducive to our species thriving. What we learn from this Gaian wisdom is that both growth and limits to growth are required for the healthy functioning of all living things, at whatever scale we wish to investigate.
At the cellular scale cancer is the exemplar. Cells want to multiply endlessly; it is what cells 'like' to do. Healthy tissue is only possible because there is an active suppression of this biochemical pathway that leads to cellular reproduction by another biochemical pathway that acts as a limit to its growth. Biochemical homeostasis in general is maintained using the same types of paired regulators. Another elegant example is the fine tuning of neurotransmitters in the brain's synaptic clefts. As the number of molecules produced increases, the target sites become saturated which in turn changes the configuration of that productive apparatus, shutting down further production. Consciousness riding a nervous system is, in some mysterious way, related to just this dynamic.
Or consider a population of herbivores. Their numbers depend on the plant growth their environment provides. The plants act as a bottom-up control. But then, as Lawrence Slobodkin once asked, "why is the world green?" If the herbivores want to reproduce as much as possible and there are still plenty of leafy green foodstuffs at hand, what else is acting to produce the population that we actually encounter? Predators, parasites, and pathogens are acting as top-down controls on population numbers. Here, on the scale of ecosystems, we again we find pairs of regulators at work; growth and limits to growth.
Another word for limit is regulation, and in living things everything is regulated.
This is what life is all about: stoking the fires and then cooling down, expanding differentiations followed by gathering integrations. You are able to read this right now because the level of oxygen in your blood, neurotransmitters in your brain, and thousands of other substances are all actively being shepherded into fairly narrow bands of goldilocks densities. Perhaps stranger yet is programmed cell death, cellular suicide, which seems to turn everything we know about life upside down until we learn to truly appreciate the necessity of limits to growth. It's a very odd world we uncover when we stick to the evidence.
One last point about this push-me, pull-me world. Last week's post mentioned there are levers within system science models; places where small changes can have large effects. Many times this is because it only takes a small force to change the behavior of one of these regulatory mechanisms; a difference that makes a difference. It is something worth considering when surveying the severely restricted landscape of our time's realistic options.


text:
American Jazz Trombonists, including: Glenn Miller, Kid Ory, J. J. Johnson, Emile Christian, Tommy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, George Brunies, Eddie Edwards (musician), Tom Brown (trombonist), Joseph Salemi, Kai Winding, Billy Eckstine, Bob Brookmeyer by Hephaestus Books
American Jazz Trombonists, including: Glenn Miller, Kid Ory, J. J. Johnson, Emile Christian, Tommy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, George Brunies, Eddie Edwards (musician), Tom Brown (trombonist), Joseph Salemi, Kai Winding, Billy Eckstine, Bob Brookmeyer
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive,MorePlease note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Hephaestus Books continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge. This particular book is a collaboration focused on American jazz trombonists. American Jazz Trombonists, including: Glenn Miller, Kid Ory, J. J. Johnson, Emile Christian, Tommy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, George Brunies, Eddie Edwards (musician), Tom Brown (trombonist), Joseph Salemi, Kai Winding, Billy Eckstine, Bob Brookmeyer by Hephaestus Books
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Far Cry from Kensington
A First Level Trigger Approach for the Cbm Experiment
Christ the Husband
The Kids Guide to Magic Tricks
Shards (Starfire Angels: Revelations 2.1)
Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating Systemic Change in Organizations and Communities
SLEEP- Sleep Healthy, Sleep Like A Baby -The 15 Step Pre Sleep Ritual To Increase Energy, Health And


text:
Q: How to add basic preemptive authorization with SSL keystore for apache HttpClient? Following is the code that I am currently using to set HttpClient. But for some webservice endpoints I also need to add Basic preemptive authorization with username and password. I tried to implement the code found here or similar to this one: http://www.baeldung.com/httpclient-4-basic-authentication. But it was not successful, because none of the examples I found included SSL Keystore part. Could anybody help me to enhance this code? Thanks in advance!
public static HttpClient getHttpsClient(final String strWSEndPoint) throws Exception {

    HttpClient client = null;
    if (strWSEndPoint.contains("https://")) {

        final SSLContext sslcontext = getSSLContext();

        final SSLConnectionSocketFactory factory = new SSLConnectionSocketFactory(sslcontext, new String[] { "TLSv1.2" }, null, SSLConnectionSocketFactory.ALLOW_ALL_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);

        client = HttpClients.custom().setSSLSocketFactory(factory).setHostnameVerifier(SSLConnectionSocketFactory.ALLOW_ALL_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER).build();
        return client;
    } else {
        client = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();
        return client;
    }

}

private static SSLContext getSSLContext() throws Exception {
    final KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.getDefaultType());
    final FileInputStream instreamkey = new FileInputStream(new File("whatever.jks"));
    try {
        keyStore.load(instreamkey, "password".toCharArray());
    } finally {
        instreamkey.close();
    }
    final org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLContextBuilder objSSLContextBuilder = SSLContexts.custom().loadKeyMaterial(keyStore, "password".toCharArray());
    if (true) {
        final KeyStore trustStore = KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.getDefaultType());
        final FileInputStream instreamtrust = new FileInputStream(new File("whatever.jks"));
        try {
            trustStore.load(instreamtrust, "whatever".toCharArray());
        } finally {
            instreamtrust.close();
        }
        objSSLContextBuilder.loadTrustMaterial(trustStore);
    }
    return objSSLContextBuilder.useTLS().build();
}

If it will help, attaching an image of how it would look like in SOAP UI.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: Regular expression to match last item without delimiter I have a string of names like this "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry"
I can match all but the last name with
\w+.*?;

Is there a regular expression that will match all the names, including the last one?

A: This does it here:
\w+.*?(?:;|$)

A: don't have to use regex. it seems like between your names ,you have ";" as delimiter, so use that to split on the string. eg Python
>>> mystring = "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry"
>>> mystring.split(";")
['J. Smith', ' B. Jones', ' O. Henry']

A: This is simple enough if you want a regex:
\w[^;]+

Perl example:
@names = "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry" =~ /\w[^;]+/g;
# ("J. Smith","B. Jones","O. Henry")

Or if you want a split I'd use \s*;\s* (\s* to remove the spaces):
@names = split /\s*;\s*/, "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry";
# ("J. Smith","B. Jones","O. Henry")


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text:
Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World
by Gillian Gill
Houghton Harcourt. Dec. 2019. 432p. photos. bibliog. index. ISBN 9781328683953. $30; ebk. ISBN 9781328694485. LIT
Gill (We Two: Victoria and Albert) presents the life of Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) within the social and literary context of her time, expounding on the influence of the women with whom she was exceptionally close, including her mother, sisters, aunt, and niece. Moreover, Gill demonstrates the extent to which women were hampered by social constraints, and how Woolf's relatives provided the impetus for her own achievements. Woolf resented the limitations imposed by the male-dominated culture that denied her the education her brothers received and failed to protect her from their sexual abuse. Always aware of the significance of gender, Woolf identified as a feminist while enjoying a happy marriage to author Leonard Woolf. Gill additionally examines Woolf's mental health issues, which resulted in periods of depression and several suicide attempts, the last of which was fatal. The Bloomsbury Group, consisting primarily of Cambridge intellectuals, writers, and artists, also figures prominently, with its libertine reaction against Victorianism.
VERDICT Despite the occasionally gossipy tone and casual language that detracts from the work's overall scholarly perspective, this volume will be welcomed by readers and students curious about the cultural aspects of Woolf's development as a writer.
Reviewed by Denise J. Stankovics, Vernon, CT , Oct 01, 2019
Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses
Coleridge, the Wordsworths, and Their Year of Marvels: The Making of Poetry
by Nicolson, Adam
The Criminal Child: Selected Essays
by Genet, Jean
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
by Palahniuk, Chuck
These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson
by Ackmann, Martha
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
by Leduc, Amanda


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