TBR News December 1, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. December 1, 2016:” “There is a serious, and growing, population problem on this planet and we see it manifested in growing acts of violence, random and without any logical cause.
In what is called ‘nature,’ whenever a species grows beyond its capacity to feed itself, it is suddenly reduced in size, usually by the eruption of a disease that hitherto had been considered harmless but which mutated fatal.
The birth rates are certainly dropping in some areas.
In this country, the forthcoming generation cleverly called ‘millenials,’ are badly educated, virtually unemployable, and frustrated because the concept called the ‘American Dream’ is nothing but a sham and a delusion.
They do not have children because of the costs involved.
Our print media, ever obedient to the commands from above, do not speak of this growing mass of potential revolutionaries but I note with humor that the defeat of the machine-supported Clinton machine came as a terrible shock to the servants of the Undeclared Empire.
Chalmers Johnson wrote a book, ‘Blowback” this is worth the read as is Eric Hoffer’s ‘True Believer.’
And the more restive the population becomes, the more frantic are the efforts on the part of the overlords to repress them.
This becomes an endless circle but one that always escalates.
Will there be guillotines set up in public squares as the mob reigns for a brief time?
And then a Fouché will appear and destroy the Robespierre-style fanatics and a new empire will arise from the wreckage of the old.
The depressing aspect of history is that we are condemned to repeat it.”
Exclusive: How Putin, Khamenei and Saudi prince got OPEC deal done
December 1, 2016
by Rania El Gamal, Parisa Hafezi and Dmitry Zhdannikov
Reuters
VIENNA-Russian President Vladimir Putin played a crucial role in helping OPEC rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia set aside differences to forge the cartel’s first deal with non-OPEC Russia in 15 years.
Interventions ahead of Wednesday’s OPEC meeting came at key moments from Putin, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, OPEC and non-OPEC sources said.
Putin’s role as intermediary between Riyadh and Tehran was pivotal, testament to the rising influence of Russia in the Middle East since its military intervention in the Syrian civil war just over a year ago.
It started when Putin met Saudi Prince Mohammed in September on the sidelines of a G20 gathering in China.
The two agreed to cooperate to help world oil markets clear a glut that had more than halved oil prices since 2014, pummeling Russian and Saudi government revenues. Oil prices are up 10 pct this week topping $53 a barrel.
The financial pain made a deal possible despite the huge political differences between Russia and Saudi over the civil war in Syria.
“Putin wants the deal. Full stop. Russian companies will have to cut production,” said a Russian energy source briefed on the discussions.
In September, OPEC agreed in principle at a meeting in Algiers to reduce output for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis.
But the individual country commitments required to finalize a deal at Wednesday’s Vienna meeting still required much diplomacy.
Recent OPEC meetings have failed because of arguments between de facto leader Saudi Arabia and third-largest producer Iran. Tehran has long argued OPEC should not prevent it restoring output lost during years of Western sanctions.
Proxy wars in Syria and Yemen have exacerbated decades of tensions between the Saudi Sunni kingdom and the Iranian Shi’ite Islamic republic.
BRINKMANSHIP
Heading into the meeting, the signs were not good. Oil markets went into reverse. Saudi Prince Mohammed had repeatedly demanded Iran participate in supply cuts. Saudi and Iranian OPEC negotiators had argued in circles in the run-up to the meeting.
And, then, just a few days beforehand, Riyadh appeared back away from a deal, threatening to boost production if Iran failed to contribute cuts.
But Putin established that the Saudis would shoulder the lion’s share of cuts, as long as Riyadh wasn’t seen to be making too large a concession to Iran. A deal was possible if Iran didn’t celebrate victory over the Saudis.
A phone call between Putin and Iranian President Rouhani smoothed the way. After the call, Rouhani and oil minister Bijan Zanganeh went to their supreme leader for approval, a source close to the Ayatollah said.
“During the meeting, the leader Khamenei underlined the importance of sticking to Iran’s red line, which was not yielding to political pressures and not to accept any cut in Vienna,” the source said.
“Zanganeh thoroughly explained his strategy … and got the leader’s approval. Also it was agreed that political lobbying was important, especially with Mr. Putin, and again the Leader approved it,” said the source.
On Wednesday, the Saudis agreed to cut production heavily, taking “a big hit” in the words of energy minister Khalid al-Falih – while Iran was allowed to slightly boost output.
Iran’s Zanganeh kept a low profile during the meeting, OPEC delegates said. Zanganeh had already agreed the deal the night before, with Algeria helping mediate, and he was careful not to make a fuss about it.
After the meeting, the usually combative Zanganeh avoided any comment that might be read as claiming victory over Riyadh.
“We were firm,” he told state television. “The call between Rouhani and Putin played a major role … After the call, Russia backed the cut.”
IRAQ LAST-MINUTE HITCH
But OPEC would not be OPEC without a last-minute quarrel threatening to derail the deal. Iraq became a problem.
As ministerial talks got underway, OPEC’s second-largest producer insisted it could not afford to cut output, given the cost of its war against Islamic State.
But, facing pressure from the rest of OPEC to contribute a cut, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi picked up the phone in front of his peers to call his prime minister, Haider al-Abadi.
“Abadi said: ‘Get the deal done’. And that was it,” one OPEC source said.
(additional reporting Alex Lawler and Ahmad Ghaddar; editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Richard Mably)
WikiLeaks releases new batch of leaked documents on US-German intel cooperation
December 1, 2016
RT
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has released nearly 2,500 sensitive documents over the cooperation between the German and the US spy agencies as well as data on Berlin’s inquiry into the matter.
“Today, 1 December 2016, WikiLeaks releases 90 GB of information relating to the German parliamentary inquiry into the surveillance activities of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and its cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA),” as statement on the website reads.
Among the 2,420 documents leaked by WikiLeaks are print-screens of the papers from the BND itself, the German military intelligence (MAD), the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and other key ministries.
The revelations come amid an ongoing parliamentary inquiry in Germany into BND’s support of NSA global spying program. According to one particular document (Page 15) the German intelligence even mulled that one of its employees was to learn writing of the US spy software XKeyscore, which was used by the NSA for mass surveillance.
“[The issue of] a positive cooperation and secondly the dispatching of a BND employee for the programming and the handling of the XKeyScore for a period of two years have been addressed,” it reads.
“What’s new is that German intelligence not only used the NSA spy tools, but has also been involved in its programming for years,” said Alexander Sander, from the Digital Community, which advocates for the people’s privacy rights in the Internet, in response to the leak, according to Suedkurier. Among other data leaked by the whistleblowing website, there is one that hints at the cooperation between the BND and a European subsidiary of the US cyber giant “Computer Sciences Corporation” (CSC).
The issue is discussed in a letter (Page 20) from the German intelligence to the Chancellor’s Bureau (Kanzleramt) dated November 2013, which was a response to a parliamentary question by Green MP Hans-Christian Ströbele.
While in the part called the “public answer” the BND merely admits the cooperation, more details are provided in the “for internal use” section. According to it, the German intelligence signed contracts with the CSC subsidiary back in 2002 with the value of €17.5 million and did not cut the ties.
Similar sections “for public answer” and “for internal use” can be found in numerous documents leaked by the WikiLeaks on December 1.
The NSA and BND ties came to light back in 2013 following the revelations by a former NSA employee, Edward Snowden. The leaked documents pointed to the fact that the US intelligence widely spied on Americans as well as foreign leaders and officials.
They have also shown that the BND acted on behalf of the NSA while spying at home and abroad, spurring outrage among the German public and many local officials. With the investigation into the matter still ongoing, the German parliament passed a bill in October, aimed at reforming the BND.
The legislation has put additional control measures on the work of its intelligence, yet also gave it wider powers with regard to the internal data monitoring and also justified spying on EU facilities if German security was in danger. The bill has also envisioned no complete wrap-up of the cooperation with the NSA.
A setback for the critics of the cooperation came just last month. Back then Germany’s highest court rejected the opposition parties’ bid to make the government reveal to a parliamentary commission investigating the activities of the NSA in Germany, the actual spy targets they had jointly worked on.
Maine police using a controversial tool to monitor what you say online
November 30, 2016
by Jake Bleiberg
bangordailynews
PORTLAND, Maine — Maine police have been using a controversial computer program developed to monitor the public’s social media posts.
The program, known as Geofeedia, works by pinpointing the location of people who are posting publicly on social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook.
Geofeedia was developed with financial support from the CIA. As it has gained traction with police who use it to track protests and look for danger signs like the word “gun” online, it has also become the center of a national debate over privacy and government surveillance.
“People don’t realize that the government is monitoring the personal information they share,” said Zachary Heiden, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. “This isn’t just the police standing in a public square. This is the police standing in our bedrooms and living rooms.”
Police say that they are merely listening in on public statements. But privacy and free speech advocates contend that people shouldn’t have to worry about government surveillance when speaking their minds online. Perhaps as a result of such criticism, last month Facebook, Twitter and Instagram cut Geofeedia off from their data.
The South Portland Police Department began using Geofeedia in 2014 and recently renewed its subscription for a third year, said officer Kevin Gerrish, who coordinates the program for Maine’s fourth most populated city. The Maine State Police also purchased a license for the program, according to Gerrish and State Police officer Kyle Willette, although neither could provide details.
But thousands of dollars later, the South Portland police say that, at least for their department, the high-tech surveillance hasn’t led to any arrests.
Geofeedia has cost the South Portland department $13,500, which was mostly paid for through a grant, according to the department.
But the program mostly returns false hits.
“Most of the hits we get are someone going hunting and talking about their shotgun, so we get some nice pictures of a freshly killed deer,” said Gerrish. “We haven’t had very much success. I think it’s a program that a bigger city might benefit more from it.”
The Maine State Police would not answer questions about Geofeedia. Doing so would “disclose investigative techniques and procedures (or the lack thereof) … not known by the general public,” State Police lawyer Christopher Parr wrote in an email.
Geofeedia lets users continuously monitor a given area — as small as a city block — for use of specific phrases for posts on several social media platforms through the GPS technology built into smartphones. It works by aggregating data from public posts, including background information — like location — that may be public even if some user doesn’t realize it. (Whether social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and others broadcast your location depends on your phone and application settings.)
“Some people misunderstand and think that we’re prying into people’s personal accounts, but it has nothing to do with that,” Gerrish said.
In South Portland, the police have been using the program to scan for keywords that might signal a public safety risk. For instance, the department has monitored for phrases associated with suicide or self-harm around schools during stressful periods like final exams, or looks out for words like “gun” or “fight” during large public events.
The department doesn’t keep an archive of social media posts it has monitored, according to Gerrish, although Geofeedia advertises this function.
Another South Portland officer, who works with the the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force, and the officer assigned to South Portland schools are the primary users of the program, according to Gerrish. The program once alerted the school resource officer to someone thought to be potentially suicidal based on social media posts, but “nothing came of it,” Gerrish said.
Police officers in Portland, Lewiston and Bangor said that their departments do not use Geofeedia nor similar programs. But law enforcement in many of America’s largest cities do, and its use to target protesters has drawn harsh criticism from civil libertarians, who argue that such surveillance has a chilling effect on the constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
The Boston City Council is slated to question the city’s police next week about its planned use of similar technology.
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram stopped sharing data with Geofeedia after the ACLU of Northern California obtained documents that suggested the company had been accessing data in a way prohibited by its developer agreement. Losing the dominant social media sites has been a blow to the Chicago-based company, and for police the “power of the program has dwindled,” Gerrish said.
There are, however, a variety of other programs similar to Geofeedia. The ACLU of Maine warned that people need to be aware that the government is increasingly watching what they do online.
“As government surveillance technology evolves, we all have to be smarter about how we communicate,” Heiden said.
Homeless man ‘froze to death’ in Birmingham on coldest night
December 1, 2016
RT
A homeless man ‘froze to death’ on the streets of Birmingham just a day before UK charity Shelter warned more than 250,000 people in England will be homeless this Christmas as high rents, benefit cuts, and a worsening housing crisis create the perfect storm.
The body of the unknown man was found in the West Midlands city at 11.30pm GMT on Wednesday, the coldest night of the year.
It is understood the body, found in John Bright Street, is that of a 30-year-old man with no fixed address.
Figures compiled by Shelter reveal that 255,000 people across the country are forced to live in hostels and other types of temporary accommodation, or to sleep rough on the streets.
London has the highest rate of homelessness. As many as one in 25 residents of the central London borough of Westminster are without a home.
Shelter published the figures to mark its 50th anniversary. The charity warned that the number is a conservative estimate.
Des Wilson, one of the charity’s founders, told the BBC the country must come together “with the same combination of anger and compassion with which it supported our work all those years ago.”
Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb said the charity’s “founding shone a light on hidden homelessness in the 1960s slums. But while those troubled times have faded into memory, 50 years on a modern-day housing crisis is tightening its grip on our country.
“Hundreds of thousands of people will face the trauma of waking up homeless this Christmas.
“Decades in the making, this is the tragic result of a nation struggling under the weight of sky-high rents, a lack of affordable homes and cuts to welfare support.”
Shelter says the new figures – obtained by analyzing government data – do not include the “hidden homeless” who have nowhere to live, are refused housing assistance, and end up “sofa surfing” in friends’ homes.
Evictions by private landlords are the biggest single cause of recorded homelessness. Ministry of Justice data revealed last month that more than 100 households are evicted every day in England.
Homelessness hotspots outside of the capital include Luton, Brighton, Birmingham, Bristol, Slough, and Reading.
The Department for Communities and Local Government disputed the figures, claiming homelessness is down on 2003 figures.
“However, we know that one person without a home is one too many,” the department said.
“That is why the government is investing over £500 million ($632 million) during the course of this parliament to tackle homelessness. This includes protecting £315 million for local authority homelessness prevention funding and £149 million for central government funding.”
Local Government Association spokesman Martin Tett told the BBC that councils across England are stretched by funding cuts and struggling to cope with rising homelessness.
“Councils need powers and funding to address the widening gap between incomes and rents, resume their historic role as a major builder of new affordable homes and join up all local services – such as health, justice and skills. This is the only way to deliver our ambition to end homelessness.”
U.S. veterans head to pipeline protest camp in North Dakota
December 1, 2016
by Terray Sylvester
Reuters
U.S. military veterans were set to arrive at a camp to join thousands of activists braving snow and freezing temperatures to protest a pipeline project near a Native American reservation in North Dakota.
Protesters have spent months rallying against plans to route the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, saying it poses a threat to water resources and sacred Native American sites.
State officials had issued an order on Monday for activists to vacate the Oceti Sakowin camp, located on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, citing harsh weather conditions. Officials said on Wednesday they will not actively enforce that order.
The Standing Rock Sioux, in a statement on Wednesday, scoffed at the state order, noting that because “the Governor of North Dakota and Sheriff of Morton County are relative newcomers” to the land, “it is understandable they would be concerned about severe winter weather.”
They said the camp has adequate shelter to handle the cold weather, adding that the Great Sioux Nation has survived “in this region for millennia without the concerns of state or county governments.”
The temperature in Cannon Ball is expected to fall to 6 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 Celsius) by the middle of next week, according to Weather.com forecasts.
The 1,172-mile (1,885 km) pipeline project, owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, is mostly complete, except for a segment planned to run under Lake Oahe, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Missouri River.
Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, a contingent of more than 2,000 U.S. military veterans, intends to reach North Dakota by this weekend and form a human wall in front of police, protest organizers said on a Facebook page.
Protesters, who refer to themselves as “water protectors,” have been gearing up for the winter while they await the Army Corps decision on whether to allow Energy Transfer Partners to tunnel under the river. That decision has been delayed twice by the Army Corps.
(Reporting by Terray Sylvester; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
Trump’s shadow looms over Austrian election
The world has changed since Austria’s first presidential run-off election – which candidate will that benefit this time around?
December 1, 2016
DW
If there is anything that dominates the Viennese fast-food restaurant “End of the Line” more that the smell of greasy frying fat, it is a sense of resignation and anger. Christa Kantor, 67, hands a customer at the bar a beer as she turns over a sausage.
In just a few days, a repeat of the run-off election for federal president will take place in Austria. The election is gaining international attention for it may answer the question of whether the international success of rightwing populism will continue: Brexit – Trump – Hofer? No one is in doubt here at “End of the Line.” That’s why no one here talks about the election. “They’re all voting for Hofer anyway,” says Kantor, in a croaking voice. The man at the bar nods.
Few undecided voters
According to polls, nine in ten Austrians have already made up their minds about who they will vote for on December 4: Rightwing nationalist Norbert Hofer from the Austrian Freedom Party or Alexander van der Bellen of the Green Party , who is officially running as an independent. So far, polls indicate that it will once again be close – but they indicate no more than that.
In the May 22 run-off election, Alexander van der Bellen had the advantage by about 30,000 votes. But the result became a historical footnote on July 1: too many and too obvious were the improprieties that took place during the vote count.
The Constitutional Court upheld a challenge from the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and annulled the election result.
Not only was the original date for a repeat election postponed, since then, the world has also lurched to the right of the political spectrum. And now Austria is asking itself: Will there be a Trump effect? And if so: who will benefit from it?
Parallels with the USA
Comparisons with the USA have been prevalent since November 9. And they are not unfounded, Salzburg University political scientist Reinhard Heinisch told Deutsche Welle. “As in the USA, one voting block – those supporting Hofer – are very emotionalized and know exactly why they are voting for him. On the other hand, many of those voting for van der Bellen are just voting against Hofer.”
The public opinion institute OGM has the numbers to back that statement: According to its survey, some 57 percent of Hofer voters are doing so because they are convinced about the candidate, only 39 percent of those voting for van der Bellen feel the same way about their candidate. Heinisch says that will make it difficult for van der Bellen to get people to the voting booth.
Heinisch lived in the USA for 13 years and rattles off a number of parallels: “The cry for change, and against the establishment – that’s comparable. We see a similar split between urban and rural voters, between educated and non-educated voters, as well as between men and women.” All that suggests an advantage for the rightwing populist. Of course there are also a lot of “forgotten men and women,” as Trump calls them, in Austria, too. In areas where people are dissatisfied, they vote FPÖ. “The people are fed up,” says Christa Kantor. “At least Hofer will fight for Austrians.”
Status quo vs. anger
“The Austrians have a deep need for harmony,” says political scientist Heinisch. “Brexit and Trump have brought about enough change in the world.” That is exactly why 72-year-old van der Bellen is pushing a message of integrity and respectability. “In my opinion that is the only thing that van der Bellen has going for him. Overall, when the subject is immigration, Turkey, or criticism of the EU, things are easier for Hofer.”
None of that bothers Barbara Neuroth, she is out campaigning for van der Bellen. And she is confident that he will be victorious in the repeat election. She says she has seen none of the voter apathy that the media is reporting on. It will be hard to top the 73 percent voter participation of the May run-off, “but people know what’s at stake – especially after Trump.”
New elections this spring?
Is that just the unconditional optimism of a woman who is politically active for the Greens on a local level, or a counter-narrative to the rightward shift that many see as having arrived in Austria?
For the last two years, the FPÖ has led the SPÖ (Social Democratic Party of Austria) and ÖVP (Austrian Peoples’ Party) by large margins in weekly opinion polls, has been winning state elections, and is even in a governing coalition with the SPÖ in the Burgenland region.
The current SPÖ-ÖVP grand coalition in Austria is about as popular as German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in Bavaria’s state government (not very). Heinisch says the only reason that it is holding is because both parties would do so poorly in new elections. But, “a President Hofer could hurt the FPÖ’s chances of gaining the chancellorship,” he notes. “Power demands control, if one party has both the presidency and the chancellorship.”
Regardless of who wins on Sunday: Heinisch suspects party strategists will be checking in January just how tired Austrians are of voting – and then send them back to the polls for the next vote. “I think we’ll have new elections this spring.”
Kremlin asks Turkey to explain Erdogan’s remark about toppling Assad
November 30, 2016
by Andrew Osborn;
Reuters
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that his forces in Syria were there to topple President Bashar al-Assad had come as a surprise to Moscow and that it expected an explanation from Ankara.
In a speech on Tuesday, Erdogan condemned what he said was the failure of the United Nations in Syria and cast Turkey’s incursion in August, when it sent tanks, fighter jets and special forces over the border, as an act of exasperation.
“We are there to bring justice. We are there to end the rule of the cruel Assad, who has been spreading state terror,” Erdogan said.
“The announcement really came as news to us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.
“It is a very serious statement and one which differs from previous ones and with our understanding of the situation. We hope that our Turkish partners will provide us with some kind of explanation about this.”
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Maria Kiselyova)
A Wrenching Choice for Alaska Towns in the Path of Climate Change
December 1, 2016
by Erica Goode
New York Times
SHAKTOOLIK, Alaska — In the dream, a storm came and Betsy Bekoalok watched the river rise on one side of the village and the ocean on the other, the water swallowing up the brightly colored houses, the fishing boats and the four-wheelers, the school and the clinic.
She dived into the floodwaters, frantically searching for her son. Bodies drifted past her in the half-darkness. When she finally found the boy, he, too, was lifeless.
“I picked him up and brought him back from the ocean’s bottom,” Ms. Bekoalok remembered.
The Inupiat people who for centuries have hunted and fished on Alaska’s western coast believe that some dreams are portents of things to come.
But here in Shaktoolik, one need not be a prophet to predict flooding, especially during the fall storms.
Laid out on a narrow spit of sand between the Tagoomenik River and the Bering Sea, the village of 250 or so people is facing an imminent threat from increased flooding and erosion, signs of a changing climate.
With its proximity to the Arctic, Alaska is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the United States and the state is heading for the warmest year on record. The government has identified at least 31 Alaskan towns and cities at imminent risk of destruction, with Shaktoolik ranking among the top four. Some villages, climate change experts predict, will be uninhabitable by 2050, their residents joining a flow of climate refugees around the globe, in Bolivia, China, Niger and other countries.
These endangered Alaskan communities face a choice. They could move to higher ground, a wrenching prospect that for a small village could cost as much as $200 million. Or they could stand their ground and hope to find money to fortify their buildings and shore up their coastline.
At least two villages farther up the western coast, Shishmaref and Kivalina, have voted to relocate when and if they can find a suitable site and the money to do so. A third, Newtok, in the soggy Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta farther south, has taken the first steps toward a move.
But, after years of meetings that led nowhere and pleas for government financing that remained unmet, Shaktoolik has decided it will “stay and defend,” at least for the time being, the mayor, Eugene Asicksik, said.
“We are doing things on our own,” he said.
The Next Big Storm
The tiny Cessna carrying two visitors touches down lightly on the thin gravel strip that in Shaktoolik serves as an airport.
It is mid-September, and with the commercial fishing season over, the village is preparing for winter.
Moose meat simmers on the stove in the house of Matilda Hardy, president of the Native Village of Shaktoolik Council. Jean Mute, the pastor’s wife, stoops to pick cranberries for preserves in a field just outside town.
By the river, a fisherman works on his boat, preparing it to hunt beluga whales in the shallow waters of the Norton Sound. In the evening, a boy outside the snack shop where children drink fruit slushies and munch on Kit-Kat bars proudly holds up a fat goose he shot in the day’s hunting expedition.
The ocean is calm, but bad weather is already on people’s minds.
“I’m wondering what our fall storms will bring,” Ms. Hardy says. As of late November, there had been one high tide, but no severe storm.
In Shaktoolik, as in other villages around the state, residents say winter is arriving later than before and rushing prematurely into spring, a shift scientists tie to climate change. With rising ocean temperatures, the offshore ice and slush that normally buffer the village from storm surges and powerful ocean waves are decreasing. Last winter, for the first time elders here can remember, there was no offshore ice at all.
The battering delivered by the storms has eaten away at the land around the village, which occupies 1.1 square miles on a three-mile strip of land. According to one estimate, that strip is losing an average of 38,000 square feet — or almost an acre — a year. Flooding from the ocean and the swollen river waters has become so severe that the last big storm came close to turning Shaktoolik into an island.
“That was pretty scary,” said Agnes Takak, the administrative assistant for the village’s school. “It seemed like the waves would wash right over and cover us, but thankfully they didn’t.”
To Stay or to Go?
As Shaktoolik and other threatened villages have discovered, both staying and moving have their perils.
The process of relocation can take years or even decades. In the meantime, residents still need to send their children to school, go to the doctor when they are sick, have functioning water lines and fuel tanks and a safe place to go when a severe storm comes.
But few government agencies are willing to invest in maintaining villages that are menaced by erosion and flooding, especially when the communities are planning to pull up stakes and go elsewhere.
“It’s a real Catch-22 situation,” said Sally Cox, the state’s coordinator for the native villages.
Even announcing the intention to relocate can scuttle a community’s request for financing. Some years ago, when Shaktoolik indicated on a grant proposal that it was hoping to move, it lost funds for its clinic, said Isabel Jackson, the city clerk.
Shaktoolik’s leaders have identified a potential relocation site 11 miles southeast, near the foothills. But some residents say they fear that their culture, dependent on fishing and hunting, will suffer if they move. And Edgar Jackson Sr., a former mayor, said that the government turned down applications for money to build a road that would serve both as a way to get building materials to their new home and as an evacuation route. Residents currently have no reliable way to escape quickly in an emergency.
“We called it an ‘evacuation’ road, a ‘relocation’ road,” Mr. Jackson said. “The state and federal government didn’t like those two words.”
Tight Vote Decides Village’s Fate
Shaktoolik — the name means “scattered things” in a native language — has been forced to move twice before in its history. The Eskimo tribes that traveled from the north into the region in the mid-1800s found an Eden of berry fields, tundra where moose and herds of caribou grazed and waters where salmon, seals and beluga flourished.
By the early 1900s, they had settled into a site six miles up the Shaktoolik River. But in the 1930s, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, responsible for providing educational services to Native Americans, built a two-room schoolhouse on the coastal sand spit, and the residents were compelled to move there if their children were to go to school.
The “old site,” as village residents call it, was where many elders in Shaktoolik grew up; the skeletal remains of the buildings are still standing, a ghost town that sits three miles from the village.
But that location, chosen by the federal government, put Shaktoolik at the mercy of the fierce storms that barreled into the sound from the Aleutian Islands.
After a series of close calls in the 1960s — one severe storm destroyed boats and left the airport littered with driftwood, making it impossible for planes to land — another move seemed inevitable.
Two new sites were proposed, one on higher ground near the foothills, the other the spot the village now occupies.
At a series of three public meetings, the residents debated the choices.
Mr. Jackson, who was mayor at the time, recalled that he and his wife were in favor of moving to higher ground.
”That would have solved our problems,” he said. “But majority ruled. We were short three votes.”
An Undeniable Link
When the fall storms come, they almost always come at night, the waves hurling giant driftwood logs onto the beach like toothpicks, the river rising, the wind shaking the windows of the houses that sit in two orderly rows along Shaktoolik’s single road.
Children who in summer play outside long after dark hunker down with their parents, listening to the CB radio announcements that serve as the village’s central form of communication.
Big storms on Alaska’s west coast are different from those that threaten Miami or New Orleans. They can carry the force of a Category 1 hurricane, but their diameter is five to 10 times greater, meaning that they affect a larger area and last longer, said Robert E. Jensen, research hydraulic engineer at the Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center.
“They’re huge,” he said.
Some residents here say that the storms are becoming more frequent and more intense, although scientists do not have data to confirm this. But there is no question that higher ocean temperatures have resulted in less offshore ice, allowing storm surges and waves to hit with greater force and bringing more flooding and erosion.
The loss of sea ice, said David Atkinson, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, is “undeniably linked” to a warming climate, as is the rising level of the sea as a result of melting glaciers, the increased volume of water lending even more strength to the ocean’s assault.
Fifty years ago, when the beach was a quarter of a mile away, the increasing violence of the ocean might not have bothered Shaktoolik’s residents. But now the sea is almost at their doorsteps.
Stopgaps, Not Solutions
At one time, Ms. Hardy, the council president, could see the beach from her window.
Now she looks out instead on a berm, a mile-long, seven-foot-high mound of driftwood and gravel built by the village as a barrier against an angry ocean.
Two state engineers came up with the idea, but they ran out of money before they produced a design.
Mayor Asicksik decided to go ahead anyway. Local men hauled the gravel from the mouth of the river in old military trucks bought for $9,000 each and finished the project in less than four months.
Residents here are proud of the berm: It is a symbol of their determination to fix their own problems without help from the government.
But most also realize that the makeshift barricade is only a stopgap; some question whether it will last even through one big storm.
“It hasn’t been tested yet,” Ms. Hardy said.
Shaktoolik faces other threats that will be difficult or impossible to ward off without assistance.
Erosion is threatening the village’s fuel tanks, its airport and its drinking water supply, which is pumped from the Tagoomenik River. The boundary between river and sea has been so thinned by erosion in some spots that salt water from the ocean, normally a benign source of sustenance, briefly overtopped the bank and poured into the river during a recent storm.
The land continues to disintegrate. The Army Corps of Engineers assessment, while cautioning that its conclusions were based on limited data, estimated that the spit that Shaktoolik sits on could lose 45 acres by 2057, with rising water threatening fuel tanks, commercial buildings and the air strip.
But the most urgent challenge is keeping village residents safe in the event of a disaster.
Shaktoolik’s current emergency plan calls for people to gather inside the school. But the school building, which sits on the ocean side of the road, is itself likely to be flooded and is not large enough to comfortably accommodate everyone, even if it stays dry.
Some families have said that in a severe storm they would flee up the Shaktoolik River. They keep their boats stocked with supplies. But the river, Mayor Asicksik and others said, would almost certainly be ice-filled and treacherous, and any attempt to escape would likely end in a search and rescue operation.
Even the airport is risky. Carven Scott, Alaska regional director for the National Weather Service, who recently visited Shaktoolik, said that after Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast in 2011, the service conducted an assessment for future storms and concluded that the several million people who lived in vulnerable areas of the Northeast could be evacuated in about 12 hours.
A similar evacuation in Shaktoolik, Mr. Scott said, might take five days.
With bad weather conditions and low light, “the chances are we could not get a sizable aircraft in there far enough in advance to evacuate,” he said. “You’d have to take people out in groups of 10 or less.”
Yet if it is to stay put, the village must find a way to prevent loss of life, if not the loss of property.
“They do not want to move and I have to accept that,” said David Williams, a project engineer for the Alaska division of the Corps of Engineers and a member of an interagency group that is helping endangered villages plan for the future.
“But if they want to live here,” Mr. Williams said, “they have to have a way to get out of Dodge when getting out is required.”
A $100 Million Wish List
Kirby Sookiayak, the village’s community coordinator, sits in his office and ticks off the community’s wish list: an evacuation road; improvements to the water system and the fuel tank farm; increased fortification of the berm; floodlights and lighted buoys for the river; a new health clinic; a fortified shelter for residents in a storm.
The estimated price tag for these improvements? Well over $100 million, according to Shaktoolik’s recently completed strategic management plan. And while state and federal agencies will finance some routine work, it will not even be close to what is needed.
No one knows where the additional money will come from. Despite years of government reports calling for action, sporadic bursts of financing and a visit to the region by President Obama last year, the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take for Alaska’s threatened villages to stay where they are — or to move elsewhere — have not materialized.
In Kivalina and Shishmaref, the Corps of Engineers was able to build sturdy rock revetments to armor the villages, authorized by Congress in 2005 to do so at federal expense. But the law was rescinded four years later, and the corps can do nothing more without the villages coming up with matching funds of their own.
The state of Alaska — which in the past provided some funds to Newtok, allowing the Yupik community to begin its move across the river to safety — is in a fiscal crisis, its economic health tied to oil revenues. And a federal lawsuit filed by one village against oil and coal companies, seeking relocation money as compensation for their air pollution, went nowhere.
Shaktoolik is scheduled to receive $1 million from the Denali Commission, an independent federal agency created in 1998 to help provide services to rural Alaskan communities. But the money will not go far: some will help pay for a new design to fortify the berm, while the rest is intended to help protect the village’s fuel tank storage.
Perhaps the largest potential contribution is the $400 million allocated for relocating threatened villages in the Obama administration’s proposed 2017 budget. But with a new administration, the fate of that allocation is at best uncertain.
“I wish they’d come and spend one day in one of our storms,” Axel Jackson, who sits on the village council, said of politicians in Washington. The federal government spends billions on wars in foreign countries, he said. ”But they still treat us like we’re a third world country.”
Produced by Craig Allen, Gray Beltran, Hannah Fairfield, David Furst, Taige Jensen, Meaghan Looram and Jeremy White.
American Military Interventions 1890-2003
December 1, 2016
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
SOUTH DAKOTA
1890 (-?)
Troops
300 Lakota Indians massacred at Wounded Knee.
ARGENTINA
1890
Troops
Buenos Aires interests protected.
CHILE
1891
Troops
Marines clash with nationalist rebels.
HAITI
1891
Troops
Black workers revolt on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island defeated.
IDAHO
1892
Troops
Army suppresses silver miners’ strike.
HAWAII
1893 (-?)
Naval, troops
Independent kingdom overthrown, annexed.
CHICAGO
1894
Troops
Breaking of rail strike, 34 killed.
NICARAGUA
1894
Troops
Month-long occupation of Bluefields.
CHINA
1894-95
Naval, troops
Marines land in Sino-Japanese War.
KOREA
1894-96
Troops
Marines kept in Seoul during war.
PANAMA
1895
Troops, naval
Marines land in Colombian province.
NICARAGUA
1896
Troops
Marines land in port of Corinto.
CHINA
1898-1900
Troops
Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.
PHILIPPINES
1898-1910(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, killed 600,000 Filipinos.
CUBA
1898-1902(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, still hold Navy base.
PUERTO RICO
1898(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, occupation continues.
GUAM
1898(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, still in use as base.
MINNESOTA
1898(-?)
Troops
Army battles Chippewa at Leech Lake.
NICARAGUA
1898
Troops
Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.
SAMOA
1899(-?)
Troops
Battle over succession to throne.
NICARAGUA
1899
Troops
Marines land at port of Bluefields.
IDAHO
1899-1901
Troops
Army occupies Coeur d’Alene mining region.
OKLAHOMA
1901
Troops
Army battles Creek Indian revolt.
PANAMA
1901-14
Naval, troops
Broke off from Colombia 1903, annexed Canal Zone 1914-99.
HONDURAS
1903
Troops
Marines intervene in revolution.
DOMINICAN REP.
1903-04
Troops
U.S. interests protected in Revolution.
KOREA
1904-05
Troops
Marines land in Russo-Japanese War.
CUBA
1906-09
Troops
Marines land in democratic election.
NICARAGUA
1907
Troops
“Dollar Diplomacy” protectorate set up.
HONDURAS
1907
Troops
Marines land during war with Nicaragua.
PANAMA
1908
Troops
Marines intervene in election contest.
NICARAGUA
1910
Troops
Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.
HONDURAS
1911
Troops
U.S. interests protected in civil war.
CHINA
1911-41
Naval, troops
Continuous occupation with flare-ups.
CUBA
1912
Troops
U.S. interests protected in Havana.
PANAMA
19l2
Troops
Marines land during heated election.
HONDURAS
19l2
Troops
Marines protect U.S. economic interests.
NICARAGUA
1912-33
Troops, bombing
20-year occupation, fought guerrillas.
MEXICO
19l3
Naval
Americans evacuated during revolution.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1914
Naval
Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.
COLORADO
1914
Troops
Breaking of miners’ strike by Army.
MEXICO
1914-18
Naval, troops
Series of interventions against nationalists.
HAITI
1914-34
Troops, bombing
19-year occupation after revolts.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1916-24
Troops
8-year Marine occupation.
CUBA
1917-33
Troops
Military occupation, economic protectorate.
WORLD WAR I
19l7-18
Naval, troops
Ships sunk, fought Germany and Austria-Hungary
RUSSIA
1918-22
Naval, troops
Five landings to fight Bolsheviks.
PANAMA
1918-20
Troops
“Police duty” during unrest after elections.
YUGOSLAVIA
1919
Troops
Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia.
HONDURAS
1919
Troops
Marines land during election campaign.
GUATEMALA
1920
Troops
2-week intervention against unionists.
WEST VIRGINIA
1920-21
Troops, bombing
Army intervenes against mineworkers.
TURKEY
1922
Troops
Fought nationalists in Smyrna (Izmir).
CHINA
1922-27
Naval, troops
Deployment during nationalist revolt.
HONDURAS
1924-25
Troops
Landed twice during election strife.
PANAMA
1925
Troops
Marines suppress general strike.
CHINA
1927-34
Troops
Marines stationed throughout the country.
EL SALVADOR
1932
Naval
Warships sent during Faribundo Marti revolt.
WASHINGTON DC
1932
Troops
Army stops WWI vet bonus protest.
WORLD WAR II
1941-45
Naval,troops, bombing, nuclear
Fought Axis for 3
years; 1st nuclear war.
DETROIT
1943
Troops
Army puts down Black rebellion.
IRAN
1946
Nuclear threat
Soviet troops told to leave north (Iranian Azerbaijan).
YUGOSLAVIA
1946
Naval
Response to shooting-down of U.S. plane.
URUGUAY
1947
Nuclear threat
Bombers deployed as show of strength.
GREECE
1947-49
Command operation
U.S. directs extreme-right in civil war.
CHINA
1948-49
Troops
Marines evacuate Americans before Communist victory.
GERMANY
1948
Nuclear threat
Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin Airlift.
PHILIPPINES
1948-54
Command operation
CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO
1950
Command operation
Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce.
KOREA
1950-53
Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats
U.S.&
South Korea fight China & North Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in 1950, & vs. China in 1953. Still have bases.
IRAN
1953
Command operation
CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.
VIETNAM
1954
Nuclear threat
Bombs offered to French to use against siege.
GUATEMALA
1954
Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat CIA directs exile invasion after new gov’t nationalizes U.S. company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.
EGYPT
1956
Nuclear threat, troops
Soviets told to keep out of Suez crisis; MArines evacuate foreigners
LEBANON
1958
Troops, naval
Marine occupation against rebels.
IRAQ
1958
Nuclear threat
Iraq warned against invading Kuwait.
CHINA
1958
Nuclear threat
China told not to move on Taiwan isles.
PANAMA
1958
Troops
Flag protests erupt into confrontation.
VIETNAM
1960-75
Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; 1-2 million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 1969.
CUBA
1961
Command operation CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY
1961
Nuclear threat Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
CUBA
1962
Nuclear threat
Naval
Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with USSR.
LAOS
1962
Command operation
Military buildup during guerrilla war.
PANAMA
1964
Troops
Panamanians shot for urging canal’s return.
INDONESIA
1965
Command operation Million killed in CIA-assisted army coup.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1965-66
Troops, bombing Marines land during election campaign.
GUATEMALA
1966-67
Command operation Green Berets intervene against rebels.
DETROIT
1967
Troops
Army battles Blacks, 43 killed.
UNITED STATES
1968
Troops
After King is shot; over 21,000 soldiers in cities.
CAMBODIA
1969-75
Bombing, troops, naval Up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, and political chaos.
OMAN
1970
Command operation U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.
LAOS
1971-73
Command operation, bombing U.S. directs South Vietnamese invasion; “carpet-bombs” countryside.
SOUTH DAKOTA
1973
Command operation Army directs Wounded Knee siege of Lakotas.
MIDEAST
1973
Nuclear threat World-wide alert during Mideast War.
CHILE
1973
Command operation CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist president.
CAMBODIA
1975
Troops, bombing Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash.
ANGOLA
1976-92
Command operation CIA assists South African-backed rebels.
IRAN
1980
Troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing Raid to rescue Embassy hostages; 8 troops die in copter-plane crash. Soviets warned not to get involved in revolution.
LIBYA
1981
Naval jets
Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.
EL SALVADOR
1981-92
Command operation, troops Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash.
NICARAGUA
1981-90
Command operation, naval CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution.
LEBANON
1982-84
Naval, bombing, troops Marines expel PLO and back Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim and Syrian positions.
HONDURAS
1983-89
Troops
Maneuvers help build bases near borders.
GRENADA
1983-84
Troops, bombing Invasion four years after revolution.
IRAN
1984
Jets
Two Iranian jets shot down over Persian Gulf.
LIBYA
1986
Bombing, naval Air strikes to topple nationalist gov’t.
BOLIVIA
1986
Troops Army assists raids on cocaine region.
IRAN
1987-88
Naval, bombing US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.
LIBYA
1989
Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down.
VIRGIN ISLANDS
1989
Troops
St. Croix Black unrest after storm.
PHILIPPINES
1989
Jets
Air cover provided for government against coup.
PANAMA
1989-90
Troops, bombing
Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ civilians killed.
LIBERIA
1990
Troops
Foreigners evacuated during civil war.
SAUDI ARABIA
1990-91
Troops, jets Iraq countered after invading Kuwait; 540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel.
IRAQ
1990-?
Bombing, troops, naval Blockade of Iraqi and Jordanian ports, air strikes; 200,000+ killed in invasion of Iraq and Kuwait; no-fly zone over Kurdish north, Shiite south, large-scale destruction of Iraqi military.
KUWAIT
1991
Naval, bombing, troops Kuwait royal family returned to throne.
LOS ANGELES
1992
Troops
Army, Marines deployed against anti-police uprising.
SOMALIA
1992-94
Troops, naval, bombing U.S.-led United Nations occupation during civil war; raids against one Mogadishu faction.
YUGOSLAVIA
1992-94
Naval
Nato blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
BOSNIA
1993-95
Jets, bombing No-fly zone patrolled in civil war; downed jets, bombed Serbs.
HAITI
1994-96
Troops, naval
Blockade against military government; troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup.
CROATIA
1995
Bombing
Krajina Serb airfields attacked before Croatian offensive.
ZAIRE (CONGO)
1996-97
Troops
Marines at Rwandan Hutu refuge camps, in area where Congo revolution begins.
LIBERIA
1997
Troops
Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.
ALBANIA
1997
Troops
Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.
SUDAN
1998
Missiles
Attack on pharmaceutical plant alleged to be “terrorist” nerve gas plant.
AFGHANISTAN
1998
Missiles
Attack on former CIA training camps used by Islamic fundamentalist groups alleged to have attacked embassies.
IRAQ
1998-?
Bombing, Missiles
Four days of intensive air strikes after weapons inspectors allege Iraqi obstructions.
YUGOSLAVIA
1999-?
Bombing, Missiles
Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to withdraw from Kosovo.
YEMEN
2000
Naval
Suicide bomb attack on USS Cole.
MACEDONIA
2001
Troops
NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.
UNITED STATES
2001
Jets, naval
Response to hijacking attacks.
AFGHANISTAN
2001
Massive U.S. mobilization to attack Taliban, Bin Laden. War could expand to Iraq, Sudan, and beyond.
IRAQ
2003
Massive U.S. invasion to secure Iraqi oil. Iraqi Resistance kills over 3,000 U.S. troops, injures 15,000. Civilian losses between 15 and 30,000.