World War 111 headlines

Russia Moves Cruise Missiles Sends Fears Through NATO

Israeli News Live

Stephen Cohen on the Flynn resination and the New Cold War

Kremlin-Baiting Trump: Allegations So Far.

Kremlin-Baiting Trump: Allegations So Far. Stephen F. Cohen, @nyu @princeton.

What We Don’t Know

■ It is not clear whether Mr. Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador were directed by, or carried out with the knowledge of, the president-elect or any of his other senior advisers, including the chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon. It is also not clear why the White House did not act earlier on the information given to it by the Justice Department.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/mike-flynn-resign-pence-russia.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

____________

WASHINGTON 
— Russia has secretly deployed a new cruise missile that American officials say violates a landmark arms control treaty, posing a major test for President Trump as his administration is facing a crisis over its ties to Moscow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/world/europe/russia-cruise-missile-arms-control-treaty.html?_r=0

__________

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear he expects Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine and reduce violence in Ukraine, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Tuesday.

"President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to de-escalate violence in the Ukraine and return Crimea," Spicer said at a daily news briefing. "At the same time, he fully expects to and wants to get along with Russia."

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-02-14/trump-expects-russia-to-return-crimea-to-ukraine-white-house

________________

What the Russians are doing by stealing documents, spending unlimited amounts of money and creating and distributing “fake news” has the potential to corrupt our political system to its core, if it hasn’t already. If Russia invades the Baltic states, could US assistance to them die in Congress because elected officials fear Russian retaliation? It sounds unbelievable, but we saw the GOP mysteriously change its platform this summer, removing aid to Ukraine – and that was before Putin proved his influence over the election.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/07/russia-hacked-us-election-democracy-vladimir-putin

The Duran: Gen. Flynn's resignation "a heavy blow for president Trump"

The folks over at the Duran (Mercouris, Lavelle et al) have not so much been wrong as naïve in thinking that this could possibly have anything other than tragic results.

First big defeat for Donald Trump as Michael Flynn exits

Alexander Mercouris

the Duran,

14 February, 2017

The scandal that has ousted General Michael Flynn from the post of National Security Adviser is absurd and concocted. Though there were probably other reasons for his going - including his apparently poor performance in the post of National Security Adviser - his resignation is nonetheless a heavy blow for President Trump.

General Michael Flynn’s resignation as National Security Adviser is by far the biggest blow President Trump has suffered since his inauguration.

As I have written previously, this is a completely concocted scandal. The most General Flynn is accused of is telling Russian ambassador Kislyak that Russia should not overreact to the sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia during the height of the Clinton leaks hysteria in December. Even the ‘anonymous officials’ who claim to have seen the transcript of the tapes of his conversations with Kislyak admit that he did not tell Kislyak that President Trump would cancel the sanctions. Instead all Flynn did was call for was restraint.

I cannot see how this could possibly have threatened US national security. Nor do I see how – just three weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration – it could be considered to be ‘undermining’ President Obama’s foreign policy, which Donald Trump was publicly criticising anyway.

It seems that back in January that was also the FBI’s view, and that it was reporting that after checking the transcripts of Flynn’s telephone conversations with Kislyak, that it could find nothing illicit in them. That is obviously right, and in any sane world that would have been the end of the whole affair.

Yet on the strength of these calls Sally Yates as Acting Attorney General apparently advised the White House that General Flynn might have committed an offence under the Logan Act and initiated an FBI investigation of General Flynn’s actions, saying he might have opened himself up to blackmail by the Russian government.

It should be said clearly that this is totally absurd. Town Hall has provided a comprehensive refutation of the claim that there has been an offence under the Logan Act and as I cannot improve on it I here reproduce it

[T]he Logan Act dates to 1799, when a state legislator with no ties to any administration tried to assert himself as personal negotiator for final peace with France. The anti-Jefferson Federalists did not like this private initiative, so passed the Logan Act to make private ventures intent on negotiating personal treaties over international feuds a crime. The bill was whipped out in days.

And in the 200 years since, not a single individual has ever been prosecuted under the act, not one. And its constitutionality is widely doubted in any event, even by Democrat legal scholars. Funny how precedent and constitutionality matter when they work for a party, and not at all when they work against it.

The folly of casting anyone – let alone General Flynn, an incoming National Security Advisor – as violator of this important-sounding, but utterly obsolete and toothless Logan Act would be funny enough, if it were not being dressed up in congressional outrage, with somber questions like – yes – “what did he know, and when did he know it?” Watergate already, really?

To compound the absurdity, if General Flynn violated the Logan Act by talking to the Russian ambassador, then Barack Obama as a candidate in 2008 did so on a far greater scale. As Town Hall also says

In July 2008, independent of any policy conversations by staff, candidate Obama went to the Middle East and Europe and spoke extensively, one-on-one, about policy with leaders from Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, France, Germany and Britain. As a candidate, not as a president-elect.

Without thought of violating the Logan Act, Mr. Obama conducted substantive conversations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Jordan’s King Abdullah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s Prime Minister Elud Olmert, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his predecessor Tony Blair and opposition leader David Cameron. In short, in an effort to transparently promote his presidential candidacy, with all manner of topics, candidate Obama flew straight into the Logan Act…..

To cap the irony and Obama counter-example, before assuming office and not president-elect, Mr. Obama spoke of peace and how to end world conflicts on July 24, 2008, in a speech at the Victory Column in Berlin, before an estimated 200,000 people. But no talk of Logan Act. None.

It has been suggested rather portentously that the true reason General Flynn resigned was not because of the conversations he had with Kislyak but because he lied about these conversations to Vice-President Pence, and that a furious Pence has taken umbrage and has insisted that Flynn must go.

This is only marginally less absurd.

Firstly since General Flynn did nothing remotely wrong either by holding the conversations with Kislyak or by what he is reported to have said during them, what he said about them to Vice-President Pence really shouldn’t matter.

Secondly, it is overwhelmingly likely that General Flynn – as he says – simply made a mistake.

As a former intelligence officer General Flynn surely knows that Kislyak’s telephone conversations are monitored by US intelligence. Indeed it is a virtual certainty that as the former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency he has actually seen transcripts of Kislyak’s conversations and of those of other Russian officials.

Given that that is so Flynn would surely have known when he reported to Pence that US intelligence had been listening in to his conversations with Kislyak and that any lie he said to Pence would be quickly discovered. Since he didn’t in fact say any remotely improper to Kislyak he wouldn’t have had any reason to lie anyway.

Most likely Flynn thought he was being asked whether he had told Kislyak that the Trump administration would lift the sanctions, which he denied doing because he didn’t do so. In the confusion this was mistaken for a denial that the subject of the sanctions was even discussed, when it was in fact touched on, though only in the most innocuous way.

In the rush of events this sort of thing occasionally happens, and in his resignation statement Flynn all but says that this is what happened. It is by far the most plausible explanation for the whole affair, and no-one who is not completely paranoid or who is not pursuing an agenda would think otherwise.

Why then has Flynn been forced to resign?

There is a possibility that, disproportionate though that would be, Vice-President Pence might indeed have been genuinely angry about the mix-up, and might – despite receiving an apology from Flynn – have been so angry with Flynn that he insisted that Flynn should go. It is becoming increasingly clear that Pence is a key figure within the Trump administration, and if he is indeed as angry with Flynn as some reports suggest, then Trump may have felt that he had no option but to let Flynn go.

I have to say however that my own view is that the explanation that Flynn was forced to go because he lied to Pence looks to me like a cover story to hide the true reasons why Flynn had to go.

I suspect these are (1) that Flynn is still the subject of the FBI probe launched by Sally Yates; and (2) that there were increasing doubts about Flynn’s fitness for the role of National Security Adviser.

Turning first to the FBI probe, Sally Yates’s warnings to the White House that Flynn might be blackmailed by the Russian government because of what he said to Kislyak on the telephone, and the claim that he might have violated the Logan Act, are for the reasons I have discussed previously absurd. As I have said media reports that circulated in January were saying that the FBI after checking the transcripts of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak could find nothing illicit in them. Nonetheless it seems the probe Sally Yates ordered is still continuing.

In passing I should say that I find it impossible to believe that Sally Yates herself genuinely believes that the warnings she is supposed to have given the White House about Flynn are anything other than absurd. What they in fact show is not that there is a serious case against Flynn but – as was also shown by Yates’s refusal to defend the ‘travel ban’ Executive Order in the courts – that as Acting Attorney General Yates was actively working against the President and the administration she was supposed to be serving, in this case by making farfetched claims against one of the President’s advisers.

The problem is that absurd though the FBI probe Sally Yates launched is, once launched it cannot be stopped by Presidential order, since doing so would be an abuse of Presidential power.

The result is that Flynn and the whole administration risked being distracted for weeks or months by constant sniping by the Democrats and the administration’s enemies within the US bureaucracy whilst the probe was underway. It is therefore understandable that Trump’s two closest political advisers – Preibus and Bannon – apparently both concluded that the administration simply could not afford this, and decided that Flynn would have to go.

I would add that the recent media attacks on Flynn are grounded on the fact that an FBI investigation is underway. Had there not been such an investigation it is difficult to see how the media attacks on Flynn could have gained traction. Indeed it is doubtful they would have happened at all. Given that were it not for these media attacks Flynn would still be President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Flynn’s ouster is Sally Yates’s parting gift to an administration she clearly deeply opposes and was working against.

Having said all this, Donald Trump and his team would probably have stuck with Flynn had there not also been serious concerns about his performance as National Security Adviser.

By most accounts Flynn is an abrasive personality, who makes enemies easily, and there have been numerous reports of his poor management skills in a job where such skills are essential. The fact that he obviously failed to take proper notes of his conversations with Kislyak – relying instead on his memory – is just one example of his sloppy approach to paperwork, something which incidentally must have dismayed Pence the lawyer.

Flynn also clearly has an obsessive streak, as shown by his pathological hostility to Iran, which is obviously inappropriate for someone who is the President’s most important adviser on national security questions.

There is also another possible problem with Flynn, which may have worked against him. This is his habit of self-promotion as shown by his extraordinary appearance in the White House briefing room to read out his statement about Iran.

In the 1970s, in the age of Kissinger and Brzezinski, the President’s National Security Adviser ran US foreign policy, ousting the Secretary of State and the State Department from that role. Unsurprisingly Kissinger and Brzezinsky were media stars, far outshining the Secretaries of State of the period (William Rogers, Cyrus Vance and Edward Muskie).

In the 1980s under Ronald Reagan a successful effort was made to re-establish the Secretary of State’s and the State Department’s primacy in managing the nation’s foreign policy, with the National Security Adviser once again relegated to an advisory role. Since then no National Security Adviser has achieved anything like the power or prominence that Kissinger and Brzezinski once had.

It is not impossible that the very public role Flynn was carving out for himself alarmed some people within the foreign policy and national security bureaucracy, with fears that Flynn was seeking to make himself Donald Trump’s Kissinger or Brzezinski. If so it would not be surprising if the bureaucracy united against him to see off the challenge, with even senior officials like Tillerson and Mattis in that case probably wanting Flynn to go.

Whatever the reasons for his going, Flynn’s departure is however a serious blow for Donald Trump.

It is a much more serious blow than the court decisions on the ‘travel ban’ Executive Order, which I expect the administration to reverse or overcome.

Losing Flynn by contrast shows weakness, and has given Donald Trump’s many enemies – including those in the bureaucracy – their first blood. They will now be hungering for more.

Trump and his advisers presumably calculated that the damage that would have been done by holding on to Flynn would have been greater than the damage that was done by letting him go. Time will show whether they are right. Much will depend on who Trump choses to replace him.

Dennis Kucinich blam intel community for Flynn leak

Kucinich Pins Flynn Leak on Intel Community, Warns of Another Cold War

During an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Mornings with Maria, former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said the intelligence community was responsible for leaking information that Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Flynn, had secretly discussed sanctions with Russian officials before the inauguration and argued their goal was to spoil the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

“What’s at the core of this is an effort by some in the intelligence community to upend any positive relationship between the U.S. and Russia,” Kucinich said.

And in his opinion, there is a big money motive behind it.

“And I tell you there's a marching band and Chowder Society out there. There's gold in them there hills,” he said. “There are people trying to separate the U.S. and Russia so that this military industrial intel axis can cash in.”

Kucinich added the intelligence community could start a war to succeed.

“There’s a game going on inside the intelligence community where there are those who want to separate the U.S. from Russia in a way that would reignite the Cold War,” he said.

The counter- counter-coup has begun

The Saker hits the nail on the head:

"I see very dark clouds on the horizon."

The Neocons and the “deep state” have neutered the Trump Presidency, it’s over folks!

(UPDATED 2x)

the Vineyard of the Saker,

14 February, 2017

Less than a month ago I warned that a ‘color revolution ‘ was taking place in the USA.  My first element of proof was the so-called “investigation” which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump’s candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn.  Tonight, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation.  Trump accepted it.

Now let’s immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world.  That he was not.  However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump’s national security policy.  For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed.  Flynn also tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via the National Security Council.  Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and subordinate them back to the White House.  Flynn also wanted to work with Russia. Not because he was a Russia lover, the notion of a Director of the DIA as a Putin-fan is ridiculous, but Flynn was rational, he understood that Russia was no threat to the USA or to Europe and that Russia had the West had common interests.  That is another absolutely unforgivable crimethink in Washington DC.

The Neocon run ‘deep state’ has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador.

And Trump accepted this resignation.

Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking “stars” and even from European politicians.  And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back.  Nowhere was his famous “you are fired!” to be seen.  But I still had hope.  I wanted to hope.  I felt that it was my duty to hope.

But now Trump has betrayed us all.

Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.?  Today, Trump has shown us his true face.  Instead of refusing Flynn’s resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation.  This is not only an act of abject cowardice, it is also an amazingly stupid and self-defeating betrayal because now Trump will be alone, completely alone, facing the likes of Mattis and Pence – hard Cold Warrior types, ideological to the core, folks who want war and simply don’t care about reality.

Again, Flynn was not my hero.  But he was, by all accounts, Trump’s hero.  And Trump betrayed him.

The consequences of this will be immense.  For one thing, Trump is now clearly broken. It took the ‘deep state’ only weeks to castrate Trump and to make him bow to the powers that be.  Those who would have stood behind Trump will now feel that he will not stand behind them and they will all move back away from him.  The Neocons will feel elated by the elimination of their worst enemy and emboldened by this victory they will push on, doubling-down over and over and over again.

It’s over, folks, the deep state has won.

From now on, Trump will become the proverbial shabbos-goy, the errand boy of the Israel lobby.  Hassan Nasrallah was right when he called him ‘an idiot‘.

The Chinese and Iranian will openly laugh.  The Russians won’t – they will be polite, they will smile, and try to see if some common sense policies can still be salvaged from this disaster.  Some might. But any dream of a partnership between Russia and the United States has died tonight.

The EU leaders will, of course, celebrate.  Trump was nowhere the scary bogeyman they feared.  Turns out that he is a doormat – very good for the EU.

Where does all this leave us – the millions of anonymous ‘deplorables’ who try as best we can to resist imperialism, war, violence and injustice?

I think that we were right in our hopes because that is all we had – hopes.  No expectations, just hopes.  But now we objectively have very little reasons left to hope.  For one thing, the Washington ‘swamp’ will not be drained.  If anything, the swamp has triumphed.  We can only find some degree of solace in two undeniable facts:

1. Hillary would have been far worse than any version of a Trump Presidency.
2. In order to defeat Trump, the US deep state has had to terribly weaken the US and the AngloZionist Empire.  Just like Erdogan’ purges have left the Turkish military in shambles, the anti-Trump ‘color revolution’ has inflicted terrible damage on the reputation, authority and even credibility of the USA.

The first one is obvious.  So let me clarify the second one.  In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka “the basket of deplorables”) the Neocons have had to show they true face.  By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people.  In other words, just like Israel, the USA has no legitimacy left.  And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce.  So yes, the Neocons have won.  But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse.

Trump, for all his faults, did favor the US, as a country, over the global Empire.  Trump was also acutely aware that ‘more of the same’ was not an option.  He wanted policies commensurate with the actual capabilities of the USA.  With Flynn gone and the Neocons back in full control – this is over.  Now we are going to be right back to ideology over reality.

Trump probably could have made America, well, maybe not “great again”, but at least stronger, a major world power which could negotiate and use its leverage to get the best deal possible from the others.  That’s over now.  With Trump broken, Russia and China will go right back to their pre-Trump stance: a firm resistance backed by a willingness and capability to confront and defeat the USA at any level.

I am quite sure that nobody today is celebrating in the Kremlin.  Putin, Lavrov and the others surely understand exactly what happened.  It is as if Khodorkovsy would have succeeded in breaking Putin in 2003.  In fact, I have to credit Russian analysts who for several weeks already have been comparing Trump to Yanukovich, who also was elected by a majority of the people and who failed to show the resolve needed to stop the ‘color revolution’ started against him.  But if Trump is the new Yanukovich, will the US become the next Ukraine?

Flynn was very much the cornerstone of the hoped-for Trump foreign policy.  There was a real chance that he would reign in the huge, bloated and all-powerful three letter agencies and that he would focus US power against the real enemy of the West: the Wahabis.  With Flynn gone, this entire conceptual edifice has now come down.  We are going to be left with the likes of Mattis and his anti-Iranian statements.  Clowns who only impress other clowns.

Today Neocon victory is a huge event and it will probably be completely misrepresented by the official media.  Ironically, Trump supporters will also try minimize it all.  But the reality is that barring a most unlikely last-minute miracle, it’s over for Trump and the hopes of millions of people in the USA and the rest of the world who had hoped that the Neocons could be booted out of power by means of a peaceful election.  That is clearly not going to happen.

I see very dark clouds on the horizon.

The Saker

UPDATE1: Just to stress an important point: the disaster is not so much that Flynn is out but what Trump’s caving in to the Neocon tells us about Trump’s character (or lack thereof).  Ask yourself – after what happened to Flynn, would you stick your neck out for Trump?

UPDATE2: Just as predicted – the Neocons are celebrating and, of course, doubling-down:

Ukraine uses tactical missiles in Donbass

Ukraine uses WMD's on Donbass civilians - Russian Investigative Committee (VIDEO)

February 13, 2017 - Fort Russ News - 

RIA Novosti - translated by J. Arnoldski - 

The Investigative Committee of Russia has established evidence of the use of Tochka-U tactical missiles against the population of Donbass by the armed forces of Ukraine. This has been announced by the department’s spokeswoman, Svetlana Petrenko. 

“We have acquired professionally documented and irrefutable evidence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s use of a weapon of mass destruction - the Tochka-U tactical rocket system - against the civilian population over the course of the armed conflict,” Petrenko stated.

The Big Australian Heat

Australian Heat Wave Raises Concern for Country's New, Sizzling Normal

Temperatures spiked over 100 degrees in Sydney, bringing extreme heat to the most populated areas of an already hot continent.

BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS

A summer heatwave scorched the most populated parts of Australia over the weekend, with temperatures topping 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Sydney and 96 degrees in Melbourne, with readings up to 117 degrees farther inland.

As wildfires raged and several weather stations reported all-time and monthly record highs, climate scientists warned that the this summer's extreme heat, super-charged by climate change, is becoming Australia's new normal.

Nearly every week has brought extreme heat this summer, but the latest surge was exceptional by encompassing nearly all of New South Wales, home to the capital Sydney and 7.5 million people. The average maximum temperature hit 111.2 degrees Fahrenheit Saturday across about 300,000 square miles, similar to an area the size of the southeastern U.S.

Temperatures were even hotter during the Great Heat Wave of 2013, but those extreme readings were concentrated in the less-populated, central area of the country.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported that a weather station at White Cliffs, in the Southeast, recorded the warmest-ever nighttime low temperature in Australia, at 94.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Overnight temperatures are especially important in terms of human health impacts, because if nights don't cool down, people don't have a chance to recover from the extreme daytime temperatures.

Some spots in Queensland, in the Northeast, broke the 40 degree Celsius mark (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time ever—another sign that heatwaves are broaching new frontiers, according to Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of Australia's Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales.

The heat has helped fuel large wildfires and as of late Sunday, 48 fires were burning out of control in New South Wales. Tens of thousands of people were being evacuated in some rural areas, with officials saying the conditions are worse than during the deadly Black Sunday fires that killed 173 people in 2009, Australian media  reported. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology expects above-average heat to persist through February and into March.

The state of New South Wales was 6 degrees Fahrenheit above average in January, making it the third-warmest January  record. Several towns west of Sydney had record-setting streaks of temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit, with the trend continuing into February, according to a recent post on NOAA's Climate.gov website.

Based on records going back to the late 1800s, there's no question that heatwaves have become more frequent, with some regional nuances, Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.

"In Canberra, Australia's capital, the number of heat wave days has doubled in the past 60 years. In that same time, the beginning of the heatwave season in Sydney has advanced by three weeks, and in Melbourne, heatwaves are hotter," she said.

The buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere means things will get much worse. By the end of the century, Australia's tropics will see an additional 40-50 heatwave days, while Sydney and Melbourne will see 2030 more days of extreme heat annually.

"What's really interesting about this event is that all the physical mechanisms that drive heat waves are not in place," Perkins-Kirkpatrick said, explaining that normal climate cycles like El Niño and hemispheric wind patterns are not influencing Australia this summer.

"So we should have had average conditions, but what we have had is dominating high pressure systems keeping temperatures persistently hot."

Extreme heat has killed more Australians than any other type of natural disaster in the last 100 years, according to the Australian Climate Council.

Australia has always been prone to hot weather, but long-time researchers like forest and fire ecologist David Bowman said human-caused global warming is now having a noticeable effect.

"In the last few years it has crossed a line—the anomalous weather has become consistently anomalous. I am confident we are seeing climate change play out in bush fires," he said, citing a number of extreme and deadly fires that have blazed across Australia in the past 10 years.

"We are therefore in a period where talk about adaptation is moving from the academic futuristic realm to the real world of now. Unfortunately, individuals and societies are lagging in this adaptive process—there is a huge amount to do and we have frittered away precious time debating abstractions or missing the point entirely. Numerous extreme events, seem unfortunately, the only things to spur broader social change."

Australia's current heatwave is just the latest in a series of extreme heat events around the world that are increasingly being linked with the buildup of greenhouse gases in a world that has set a global temperature record three years in a row.

Parts of South America have also warmed to record levels this year, including Chile, where 12 different weather stations set all-time temperature records above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in late January, as the largest wildfires on record in that country swept across more than 300,000 acres, according to Weather Underground.

And 2016 ended with a record heat wave and drought in the Southeast, where conditions also contributed to unusually large and intense wildfires, in some cases in normally moist hardwood forests that don't see much fire.

Heatwave horror! Thousands of dead bats are dropping from trees after near 50C (122F) temperatures in Australia

Photo Northern Star

the Big Wobble,

13 February, 2017

Thousands of dead bats are dropping from trees after temperatures topped 47 degrees in parts of New South Wales.

The area worst affected was Casino in the Richmond Valley region of northern New South Wales, where more than 2,000 dead flying foxes have been found.

Richmond Valley Council general manager Vaughan Macdonald said many of the dead bats were difficult to access because they were scattered along riverbanks.

He said the council was working as fast as it could to dispose of the animals, but residents should brace themselves for the stench of deca.

"For the bats that remain in the trees they will start to decompose and as that happens they will drop," Mr Macdonald said.

"We will continue to monitor the area and pick them up as that happens.

"There may be some odours, so again people just report that to council and we will respond as soon as possible."

WIRES Northern Rivers Bat Coordinator Lib Ruytenberg said despite the high losses, volunteer wildlife carers had managed to save a few hundred bats in the Casino and Kyogle areas.

"We were using mist-spraying to hydrate the trees where the bats were roosting [in Casino] and the ones that came down low, we took them into care and hydrated them," she said.

Ms Ruytenberg said the heat stress would continue to affect bats throughout the week.

"Over the next few days we'll be seeing bats still coming down and falling into people's backyards," she said.

"Members of the public need to remember that they shouldn't touch the bats.
"They can throw a towel over the bat if it's on the ground, but then they need to call us [WIRES] to take it way."

More than 700 flying foxes also died in the Upper Hunter town of Singleton due to the extreme heat. The majority of the dead bats were found in Burdekin Park, which has been home to a large flying fox population.

Singleton experienced temperatures of 47 degrees over the weekend.

Jalla Presland, from Wildlife Aid in the Upper Hunter, said it was the worst heat stress-related deaths they had seen in the colony in more than 10 years.
"We are currently sitting at just under 700 and that's without having collected the ones from around the town," she said.

"Unfortunately we encounter it in much smaller numbers most summers.
"The worst one that we have encountered is this one since 2004."

North Coast Area Health Service spokesman Greg Bell warned people not to touch bats unless they were fully vaccinated against lyssavirus and trained to handle bats.

"Australian bats can carry the lyssavirus and that's very serious," he said.

"We've had three human cases of lyssavirus in Australia, in Queensland, and all three people died." Mr Bell said if anyone was bitten or scratched by a bat they must seek medical treatment.

"Don't panic.

Wash the site with good quality soap and water, apply a good quality disinfectant and then call your GP or present to the nearest emergency department," he said.
"There is no risk from the odour, faeces or urine."