(Al Jazeera) Russia tight-lipped on Syrian demand of al-Assad for military bases. Quoting,

Russia has declined to comment on reports that Syria has demanded the return of Bashar al-Assad in return for allowing Moscow to maintain its military bases in the Middle Eastern country.

There is a traditional face-saving solution: Assad assassinated in Moscow by radicals recruited by the KGB or GRU from central Asia.  The assassins never know who they are actually working for. Following the accomplishment, the assassins themselves are liquidated.

Similar action could be facilitated with Assad first receiving asylum in northern Cyprus, where the survival record of Russian traitors is notably poor.

An alternative is the “unfortunate accident”, such as a fall down the stairs, or defenestration, but this requires coordination with Assad’s security detail.

And, of course, there is always Novichok.

(The Independent)  CNN staffers blast ‘tone deaf’ CEO Mark Thomp son over layoffs as  Jim Acosta mulls move to midnight slot.

About the layoffs, Thompson appears at a loss for words for mere  personal tragedy. We have more consequential fish to fry than his vocabulary. Quoting,

…revealed all of the changes to the channel’s weekday lineup. Besides the new Blitzer and Brown program, which will air for two hours daily beginning at 10 a.m. ET, CNN This Morning will now be a one-hour show hosted by Cornish and air at 6 a.m. ET. Kasie Hunt, who currently helms CNN This Morning, is moving to afternoons to host The Arena…

…Jake Tapper’s The Lead will shift later in the day and air from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET. …Rahel Solomon will kick off the network’s weekday morning slate with the 5 a.m. show 5 Things… Kaitlan Collins’ primetime show is also now shifting primarily to Washington, D.C…

They are all extraordinary talent, but this shuffle will actually accelerate the decline. Quoting from Att: David Zaslav; Future of CNN,

…The effect on CNN has been strongly negative, intimately related to the transition of cable news to the phase of decline:

• • Demand for novelty is absent.
  • Retention is based on loyalty.
  • Loyalty abhors change.
  • In consequence, any change Licht could or did make resulted in viewer loss. The transition from maturity to decline is a programming  “game changer.” It rendered Licht’s  prior experience useless.

Quoting The Independent,

…critics wondered if burying Acosta – who the president despises – in late-night was an effort to curry favor with the new administration…Others…weren’t entirely sold…. “Honestly, this place is such a mess,” one CNN on-air personality told The Independent. “I’d actually be relieved if ANY decisions had a rationale behind them. Even one like that.”

Quoting from Intel9.us Up After a 4 Day Outage; Note to CNN & David Zaslav,

CNN, before you upend the lives of hundreds of faithful employees, you should seek both internal and EXTERNAL advice. Positive change can come fast: Though Rome wasn’t built in a day, Mark Zuckerberg wrote the original Facebook in a month.

This sketches the problem: Att David Zaslav; Warner Bros. Discovery signals rapid deterioration of television business, sending stock plummeting.   My telephone hasn’t noted any outreach, so here’s a  freebee. In the space of three weeks, CNN ran three front page stories about pee. Yeah, that stuff. The word actually appeared in the titles. They were placed in the right hand column, intended anodyne to the misery of the left hand column. I felt pissed off. All the years I had faithfully followed the advice, “Don’t eat yellow snow”,, and now this!

After their front page runs, the three P’s had a kind of afterlife, slapped into different layouts with  differing logic, until finally melting away with a swirling gurgle down the drain, a box labeled “search.”

I have lots of ideas but I shall restrict myself here to one bit that doesn’t require elaboration:

***Don’t run yellow snow.***

(CNN) Israeli foreign minister: Trump admin. didn’t force Israel into accepting ceasefire.

The strategies of Hezbollah and Hamas have been similar, with

• Quasi state attributes.
• Broad application of terror.
• Goals of conflict exceeding terror, at levels of conventional war necessary to destroy a state.

While Hezbollah prepared meticulously for undated future action, Hamas took bold, précipité action, intending to establish a new reality,  perhaps  to drag other belligerents into active conflict.

When the early predictions of pundits were that Israeli intervention into Gaza would be surgically informed by precise intelligence, I knew the opposite. I chose not to share this because, despite whatever misgivings I may have, I am not an impartial observer. Rather than mislead, I simply chose not to write about it at all.

The near total physical destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza was mandated by the inability of Israeli forces to successfully implement a surgical approach with these goals:

• Combat losses minimized to a level sustainable for the duration of the conflict.
• Sufficiently complete destruction  of Hamas so as to impede regeneration.
• Creation of a political vacuum in which a new civil authority can be created.
• Destruction of the myth that with enough stockpiling, digging, training, and waiting, the Intifada could achieve asymmetric parity with Israel.

What remains of political Hamas cannot spin the result of this conflict as a conditional or partial victory. In consequence, a certain percentage of Gazans, an as yet unknown but very important number, will resist the attempts of Hamas to resume.  Whether this creates a political vacuum remains to be seen.

Hezbollah was seen as the far more formidable adversary. Their undoing began as a technological masterstroke; see Israel’s Sabotage Coup; How to Make an Exploding Pager.  While the highly acceptable result has not been so nearly complete as with Hamas, the loss to Iran of Syria as a support land bridge has amplified the achievement.

These twin results, as pleasant as they may be to contemplate in the short term, are seeds of future conflict, abetted by the cultural myths and memes prevalent in the region. Quoting from In the New Year; The False God of Expertise; What to do on New Years Eve?,

Histories of mankind have various perspectives: politics, culture, technology,  and conflict.  But one slant of human history is so concisely describable, and so negative, it has been neglected by historians as the driver of so much: “Destruction of life and wealth in the service of mythology.”

The victors of conflict tend toward the error of permanence, viewing shattered dreams as shattered glass. Societies driven by mythology behave more like distributed systems, carrying with incredible resilience a cultural and mythological payload. Everyone who has seen a particular Hollywood movie has received a quick introduction to distributed systems, courtesy of a former Governor of California: (YouTube) Come with me if you want to live.

The first resource of  prediction is extrapolation of the current trend, which may appear to be a lull.  It denies the dynamic nature of adversaries, which are in the early stages of

• post conflict assessment.
• political reorganization.
• accumulation of resources.
• revision of strategy.
• resumption of conflict.

The state actor. Iran’s attempt at empire has left it with an excess of management structure. Previously occupied with administering elements in  Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, only Iraq is left. One doesn’t waste that kind of talent, so it is likely to be put to work in Iraq, elevating near-term risk to that country.

Both sides of this conflict incorporate religious/mythological elements, though the proportions differ. The West, and Israel still, are reliant, post WW2, on a modern legacy of secular thought. This manifests in our astonishment of Russian casualties in Ukraine in a totally optional war. It was preceded in the Iran-Iraq war by Iran’s use of child martyrs; see Child Soldiers in Iran.

Non-state-actors. Our continual astonishment at barbarities could result in lack of consideration of the more dire modalities should this conflict resume.  The actions of non-state actors seem to defy the restraint of any form of logic. The failure of the intifada will cause these actors to explore more extreme strategies, without apparent limit to self-harm.

One of our secular givens is that these terror groups are basically fighting for a life on earth. This implies that the land of Israel must be regained as a habitable place. This negates the possibility of a completely religious motivation, the land now a mere symbol of possession, regained as a completely sterile wasteland, incapable of human habitation. The reservoir is Syria; see After Assad; a Terror Nation-State.

This implies that non-state actors will attempt the use of weapons of mass destruction without regard for the populations for which they presumably advocate. The use of Gazans as human shields is an early form of this meme, which will evolve with greater virulence.

There is no off-switch:

***Come with me if you want to live.***

The media concentrates on the human tragedy of the here and now. The big,  obvious, unspoken fact  is permanent change. There can be no going back to  the past of only a few days prior, when LA residents  lived in stressed disharmony with nature. In LA, the hostility of the planet manifests in all four of the ancient elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Far below lie earthquake faults;  on the surface,  red shale cliffs formed of incompletely metamorphosed clay and vulnerable to water; above, wind and fire,  preceded by atmospheric rivers.

No one  is calling   this a hundred year event; it’s the new normal. Some migration will occur, slowed by the national shortage of housing stock.  Some rebuilding will be attempted, with houses constructed of nonflammable materials, such as concrete,cinder block, and steel or tile roofs. Homeowners will still have to evacuate.

This doesn’t answer the bigger  question: How can the core city be protected from mass conflagration exceeding the great urban fires of the 19th century? If the current event were juxtaposed with a major earthquake that disrupted the water supply, millions could die.

Los Angeles is the only city in the world — in the broad sense of Los Angeles County — divided by a mountain range, the Santa Monica Mountains.  Vegetation is required to hold the land in place, land where people have chosen to build.  Vegetation burns. Walking along the unpaved portion of Muholland Drive in early fall, one is struck at how simple a thing as a dropped match could cause a conflagration. In an environment  where vigilance is required of everyone, all the time, bad things happen. The Griffith Peak blaze was caused by a sleepy bum with a cigarette.

We can take a lesson from the Mound Builders of pre-Columbian   America.  Although most mounds appear to have been built for cultural reasons, some of the earliest seem to have been  artificial islands, refuges from Mississippi floods. Los Angeles needs islands of habitability,  walkable sub-cities, constructed of nonflammable materials, with carefully minimal vegetation.

The requisite size of these mini-Manhattans is determined by their function as fire breaks, with breadth greater than an ember can travel. They don’t have to be ugly. Embrace nature at the risk of your life, or distance, living safely in hopefully attractive artifice. One of these is manifest disharmony, the other tolerable.

If this sounds like an unpleasant dream, you won’t have to wait a hundred  years for a repetition. Fire season beckons. There will be a natural demand for fire-proof communities.

You can still experience  the striking natural beauty of LA. You just can’t nestle  in its embrace.

***Koyaanisqatsi***

(NBC) Rare explosive found in New Orleans attack. Quoting,

Federal investigators examining the ISIS-inspired terror attack that killed 14 in New Orleans report that Jabbar used a very rare explosive compound in the two functional IEDs placed prior to the vehicle-ramming attack…

Start here: Forensic analytical aspects of homemade explosives containing grocery powders and hydrogen peroxide.  Quoting,

Homemade explosives become a significant challenge for forensic scientists and investigators. In addition to well-known materials such as … perpetrators often produce more exotic and less recognized Homemade Explosives (HMEs). … Interestingly, similar explosive properties are found in mixtures of numerous solid materials with H2O2. Notably, powdered groceries, such as coffee, tea, grounded spices, and flour, are particularly interesting…

Coffee appears to be the most powerful. Start your day with a bang. How would the New Orleans bomber become familiar with the chemistry?  A secret cabal is unnecessary. Quoting,

Non-professional pyrotechnics and chemistry enthusiasts form a distinct group of HME producers. Modern technologies provide these individuals with unlimited access to diverse sources, such as scientific papers, books, manuals, patents, government reports, web tutorials, and discussion boards, contributing to the growing diversity and complexity of HMEs and IEDs.

Some readers may associate H202 (hydrogen peroxide) with the notoriously unstable TATP.  But it can also be used to produce relatively stable and powerful explosives from uncontrolled substances available at grocery stores.

I’ll take mine with cream.

Although these bombings might appear to incorporate elements of sophistication, they manifest deficiencies:

• Lack of technical expertise in manufacturing IEDs.

• Deficient planning skills.

• Limited resources of lone wolf operators.

For obvious reasons, I will not elaborate. Even as failures relative to grand ambitions, these events provide inspiration to would-be terrorists, some of which will have more ability.

Since the advent of social media, we have seen the legitimization of violence in cryptic subcultures. The trend continues to expand into other cultures, now as an alternative to political process. Lone wolves will expand into cells.

The precedent is 19th century anarchism. Within the last month alone, we have seen three instances of propaganda of the deed.

The estimate is that, powered by social media, this trend will continue to escalate, gaining resources, frequency and effect.

(CNN) Why this bandage should be in your first aid kit.

The sole voice, narrator, and information source of this video is Brad Greer, CEO of DrySee.

No additions, commentary, enlargement, context, or critique are provided by any other source. Nice music, CNN.

It’s an infomercial!

In 2013, I joined “Forecasting World Events”, an intelligence  crowdsourcing  project of the U.S. intelligence community. FWE ran for just one year, killed off by budget sequestration, and perhaps the conclusion of the sponsors that the depths of the concept had been adequately plumbed. I began with anticipation  of a harmless game, which transitioned to a deeply introspective journey of self-examination, as I attempted to systematize the thought-process of prediction. I learned some things. Scroll past Spaceman. who, as ever, balances his existence between the cosmic consciousness and a black hole.

(click to enlarge)

One of the sins of the media is to promote reportage based on the claims of “experts”, viz. “Expert says crisis looms in __________”,  “Expert solution to the problem of _____________”,  or “Expert says we must do this to avoid that.”  And, of course, “Famous gut doctor begs you to stop eating chocolate mousse or tiramisu, do this immediately, it’s genius.” Like hell I will! This headline hyperbole is not harmless. 

Expertise exists. There really are expert surgeons, oncologists, epidemiologists, climatologists, environmentalists, plumbers, chefs, builders, planners, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, and spies. Despite the criticisms of Bird Flu, Part 2, public health remains, at least for a few more weeks, in the hands of genuine experts.

When applied to the larger problems of the world, which include government, political science, foreign policy,  criminology, and the general  unsuitability of man for the environment of the Anthropocene, expertise is a false god. All of these fall under the rubric of social sciences.

Actual  experts exist, but so rarely, we discount their existence in favor of criteria other than ability. Pseudo-experts compete frantically for validation  on a media stage incapable of discrimination. The nonexistence of recognized expertise in the above categories follows from several arguments.

If you randomly select “experts” with disregard for their political bias, the ensemble of their opinions will cancel out. To choose, you have to be the meta-expert. How do you choose between them? By how many books they have written? By how well they speak?   By what you would like to believe anyway? How do you feel about experts in tee-shirts and Bermuda shorts?

Provided an “expert” comports attractively, the mantle of expertise is often conveyed by the media according to rare, unrepeated success, such as timing the last recession. Post the Korean War, the U.S.  had every conceivable  economic advantage, now squandered. If “experts” had acquired reputations based on true expertise, would our economic history have been such a chronicle of lurching horrors? Surely, expertise, if it widely existed, would have mitigated this.

The defense,  which runs along the lines of “If you had only followed my advice…” is negated by the expertise marketplace, where you can shop for any opinion you want.  You have to think you’re smart enough to smoke out the real experts. History says you’re not.

The “experts” are legitimate subject matter  specialists, which dispenses with the implied assumption they can actually solve problems. A minority of them may have special, valuable insight, but they cannot be distinguished from the run-of-the-mill noisemaker who has written seven books. We choose expertise based on what we want to believe. We use this biased choice  of “experts” to validate governance. Pseudo-experts occupy a nether-space that lubricates the propagation of policy, by numbers and reputation frequently acquired by circular reference.

Since we choose experts according to what we want to believe, another unpleasant corollary, my own Occam’s Razor, raises its ugly head: The more universally something is believed, the less likely it is  to be true. Since time immemorial, this has been the source of narcissistic national mythology — and war.

Histories of mankind have various perspectives: politics, culture, technology,  and conflict.  But one slant of human history is so concisely describable, and so negative, it has been neglected by historians as the driver of so much: “Destruction of life and wealth in the service of mythology.” It was addressed tangentially by Vilfredo Pareto. The current exemplar is the bloody dream of Russian nationalists,  promoted by Russian “experts”. We could hope this carnage will deter others, at least for the memory of a generation or two. But, as the saying goes, history marches on.

So we have a prediction for the new year. History will continue. There will be bright spots and sieges.  Bloody world leaders will continue slaughter in the service of their misbegotten dreams. They won’t be reasonable with us. We can’t be reasonable with them.

Now, because I am an expert, I am going to tell you how I’m going to deal with this  evening. I have a whole chocolate mousse pie in the fridge. I’m thin anyway, so I’m going to nibble at it.  If it streams, I might watch some of Anderson Cooper as he plays straight man to Andy Cohen. Or I might sleep through the ball drop.

Some of the jollity might be forced, drowning sorrows with merriment. We might wish there were some way to stop the ball from dropping, so we could live in the sunshine of the eternal present.

But, as they say, history marches on.

(Portrait of a Spaceman. 36×24″, oil on canvas.)

Mediocre at practical politics, his superlatives were unbending moral imperatives, practically applied.  Some presidents receive a boost with the cards. Fate dealt Carter a difficult hand, Oil and Iran. His presidency was marked by the first appearance of limits to the American dream of unlimited growth. It fell to Carter to deliver this message while we waited in the gas lines of the 1979 oil crisis.

As well, the humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis underlined limits to American power.  Americans felt demeaned by helpless unpreparedness. Invisibly, the Carter administration, under the supervision of national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, initiated the long term development of special ops capability, something which simply did not exist at the time.

A significant part of the electorate tends to grade a presidency on the prompt delivery of entitlements such as prosperity and respect among nations. To these voters, unwilling or unable to understand that this fulmination of events would require years of effort in response, the Carter presidency was poorly regarded.

The political naivete of the “Plains Mafia” reinforced the above, resulting in a one-term presidency. I never shared this view. Historians continue to  revise his score upwards, with the delayed realization that he was the right man for the jam we were in.

Regardless of what you think of Carter’s presidency, he doesn’t need our charity. He made his own.

(CNN) More than 170 killed after South Korean jet crash-lands at airport. Here’s what we know. 

The crash is reported to be subsequent to a bird strike. In advance of technical details, there is an explanation with some plausibility. In what follows, supposition is stated as fact:

Ground-to-air photography shows the thrust reversal door open on the right engine. This is not the result of pilot action to a engage thrust reverser. The open door is the result of uncontained engine failure. Consequent to the bird strike, the engine containment structure failed, due to the high centrifugal acceleration of rapidly rotating engine components.

The right engine ejected shards of metal which impacted the right wing, severing hydraulic lines of multiple  redundant systems. These lines incorporate hydraulic fuses. When a hydraulic line ruptures, a fuse acts to isolate the ruptured section. Failure of a hydraulic fuse to perform this function may have contributed to severity.

The ejected metal also severed the manual cable backup for lowering the right landing gear. To avoid asymmetric friction on the runway, this left the pilot with no choice but to leave the left wing and nose landing gear retracted.

The above also explain the failure to  extend the flaps, which resulted in high approach speed, with touchdown further down the runway than would result from a normal glide path. Despite these difficulties, the pilots managed to control the plane to what could have been a successful belly landing.

As remarked by 737 pilot Denys in  (YouTube) Pilot Blog | Airline Pilot about Crash of Jeju B737 at Muan | No gear | Bird Skrike | Concrete wall, the ultimate cause of the tragedy was the decision of airport administration to place a completely unnecessary concrete wall at the end of the runway.