"Good Night, Moon"

January 26, 2020\

Waxing crescent

2.0 day old moon (after new moon)

4.2 percent lit

January 26, 2020

Ever since (click here) it made its historic landing on Jan. 3rd, 2019, the Chang’e-4 mission and its Yutu 2 rover have been busy exploring the lunar surface. Just recently, the mission passed its first year of operations and earned the distinction of being the first rover to travel a record 357.695 meters (1,173.5 ft) on the far side of the Moon. And in between all that, the mission has also provided some truly fascinating images of the lunar surface.

Thanks to a data release issued on Monday (Jan. 20th), the public can now peruse through all of the high-resolution images taken by the Chang’e-4 mission. The data, which was released by the Ground Research and Application System (GRAS) of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Project, includes images of the far side of the Moon that were taken with the lander’s terrain camera and the panoramic camera on the Yutu-2 rover....

The fruit is first noticed as a burr on the twigs of the tree. The burrs have many branched and hairy spines.

As it matures in autumn it will spit open and dries it breaks open to expose the three chestnuts inside.

The fruit is 2 to 2-1/2 inch in diameter.

The American Chestnut flowers in early summer. Both sexes are found in one flowering group. The males are 3/16 inch long and whitish in color. They are assembled on a catkin 6 to 8 inches long.

The female flowers are 3/8 inch, bigger than the male. There tends to be fewer female flowers than male. The flower is bordered by greenish scales on somewhat shorter catkins.

July 15, 2013
by Natasha Haverty

Todd and Nancy (click here) expect the tree to flower again at the end of June. 

American chestnuts (click here) once made up a quarter of all the forest between Maine and Georgia. Animals depended on the tree for its fruit and humans used the wood. But at the beginning of the last century, a blight wiped out almost all of the chestnut trees. A few survive, including one specimen in upstate New York. The family that planted that tree 27 years ago enjoys its blooms each year at this time.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

American chestnut trees once made up a quarter of the forest between Maine and Georgia, but at the beginning of the last century, a blight wiped out almost all of them, an estimated four billion. Still, a few remain today, and reporter Natasha Haverty has the story of one pair a family planted in northern New York, in the town of Russell.

NATASHA HAVERTY, BYLINE: To get to the trees, we have to walk up a forest path.

TODD ALESSI: When you go and stand under it, you'll understand.

HAVERTY: Twenty-eight years ago, Todd and Nancy Alessi planted a couple of American chestnut seedlings a friend gave them on a whim. They knew nothing about the chestnut's past or how high the odds were stacked against their little seedlings. Today, the trees stand 60 feet tall.

T. ALESSI: So isn't it cool how it's like an umbrella?

HAVERTY: Hardly any sunlight makes it through their low electric-green canopy. They're in bloom right now, covered in flowers that look like blond pipe cleaners. Hundreds of bees hover up in the branches, coating their legs with pollen. If you listen, you can hear a hum like the trees are vibrating. Todd says these are the only chestnuts for miles in any direction.

T. ALESSI: The sad part of the blight wiping out all the trees was the fact that instead of waiting to see if any tree survived, people just assumed that they were all going to die and they cut them all down....

Castanea dentata

The bark of the American Chestnut is dark green to brown with the younger trees being smooth. As the tree matures and is older the tree will develop furrows and flat ridges. 

To the left is a mature American Chestnut that is a smaller variety.






To the right is a young tree with smooth bark.

This American Chestnut to the left is a survivor and a large tree, which is one of two healthy large trees surviving off Dillingham Road near Asheville.

Buncombe Co., NC 7/8/06.

The moss growing on it is benign to it's survival.

This is what occurs when the Climate Crisis is denied.

When the efforts to combat the climate crisis is left to individual choices of consumers the entire scientific spectrum of influence is eliminated. This article is 2 and a half years ago. Has anyone heard of DROUGHT PREDICTABILITY LEADING TO WILDFIRES? 

No?

I didn't think so. The reason this information is not in the hands of consumers is because it is ignored. When LEGISLATION is attempted to limit greenhouse gases it is defeated and such studies become a threat to the political paradigm.

It is time the people have a profound say in the future of their lands, the use of those lands while minimizing the drilling and fracking of public lands. The emissions of greenhouse gases from these activities alone increase the methane levels in the troposphere enormously.

One of the reasons there the climate crisis has to be a national priority to the USA and other countries globally is so that scientific principles and practices can be applied to public policy to end the danger to human life and the land we value.

July 26, 2017

The next mega-droughts (click here) and subsequent active wildfire seasons for the western U.S. might be predictable a full year in advance, extending well beyond the current seasonal forecast and helping segments of the economy related to agriculture, water management and forestry.

The new model, developed by an international team of scientists from the U.S., South Korea and U.K., and led by Utah State University climate scientist Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, was reported in the July 26 edition of Scientific Reports.

The source of this improved predictability is based on a combination of factors, including tropical climate variability, global climate change and the natural filtering effects of soils. To mitigate drought-induced socioeconomic risks, water resource managers require detailed drought forecasts as far in advance as possible. Climate prediction centers generate and routinely disseminate seasonal drought outlooks. However, predicting multi-year droughts that reach well beyond seasonal timescales is challenging for climate scientists.

Over the past 15 years, parts of the western U.S. have experienced severe drought conditions and an increasing number of wildfires that take a toll on people and ecosystems. The team's research shows that in addition to contributions from natural forcings and global warming, temperature differences between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans play a role in causing drought and increasing wildfire risks. The new findings show that a warm Atlantic and a relatively cold Pacific enhance the risk for drought and wildfire in the southwestern U.S.

"According to our study, the Atlantic/Pacific temperature difference shows pronounced variations on timescales of more than 5 years," explained Chikamoto, USU associate professor in the department of Plants, Soils and Climate. "Like swings of a very slow pendulum, this implies that there is predictability in the large-scale atmosphere/ocean system, which we expect will have a substantial societal benefit."

Top to bottom:

Chestnut oak





Chinese hybrid





American Chestnut



The leaf of the American Chestnut is 5 to 9 inches in length, 1-1/2 to 3 inches in width, narrowly oblong, long - pointed tip that ends in a curved tooth. Main vein has many parallel veins off it. It is shiny yellow-green above with a paler green under color and a few hairs along the midrib. It turns yellow in autumn/fall.

The era of consumer vigilance is over, it is time Climate Conscience Economics is the standard.

26 January 2020
By Larry Elliot

What Davos didn’t face up to is that we can’t expect poor people to make all the sacrifices

...Later in the year (click here) there will be a much more important event than the World Economic Forum: the UN climate change summit (COP26) in Glasgow. In Davos it was hard to move without hearing the phrase “race against time”.

Almost 15 years ago Nick Stern, then head of the UK Government Economic Service, produced a report on the economics of climate change in which he called the failure to deal with a heating planet the greatest market failure of all time. He argued that the benefits of early action outweighed the costs.

Last week Prof Stern, now chair of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (click here) and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics (click here), said the threat was now being taken a lot more seriously. There were four reasons for that. First there was evidence, after a 1C increase in temperatures since pre-industrial times, of the failure to act. “We are seeing some pretty nasty stuff already,” he said.

Second, the scientific evidence was now clear that there was a big difference – for example, in the length of droughts – between a 1.5C and a 2C increase in temperatures. Third, the education system was producing a generation of young people across the world well versed in climate, sustainability and environmental issues, and they were putting pressure on their parents to act.

Young people wanted to know why the economics profession had been slow to include climate risks into their models, which was a justifiable criticism, Stern said. Only a tiny fraction of the papers published in economics journals have related to sustainability.

Finally, Stern noted, an awareness was growing that there is a more attractive way of doing things. The days of the internal combustion engine were numbered, the cost of solar energy had collapsed and there had been dramatic advances in battery-storage technology....

“Dry Times”: (click here) Feature-length film about statewide drought focuses on Tahoe Basin

The majority of American Chestnut trees are understory trees and not the canopy.

Height: 20 feet (formerly 60 to 100 feet)

Diameter: 4 inches (formerly 2 to 4 feet)

It is mostly found now in moist upland soils in mixed forests at elevations to 4000 feet.

It's range is from Southern Ontario to to Maine and then south to Georgia. The tree can be found west to Mississippi and north to Indiana.

Climate change is increasing the vulnerability of many U.S. forests through fire, insect infestations, drought, and disease outbreaks. Forests play an important role in absorbing and sto

Climate change (click here) is increasing the vulnerability of many U.S. forests thorugh fire, insect infestation, drought, and disease outbreaks. Forests play an important role in absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, but the rate of uptake is projected to decline.

January 24, 2020
By Emily Holden and Jimmy Tobias

An aerial view (click here) of a neighborhood destroyed by the Camp Fire on November 15, 2018 in Paradise, California.

'Blatant manipulation' (click here)

Political appointees at the interior department have sought to play up climate pollution from California wildfires while downplaying emissions from fossil fuels as a way of promoting more logging in the nation’s forests, internal emails obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The messaging plan was crafted in support of Donald Trump’s pro-industry arguments for harvesting more timber in California, which he says would thin forests and prevent fires – a point experts refute.

The emails show officials seeking to estimate the carbon emissions from devastating 2018 fires in California so they could compare them to the carbon footprint of the state’s electricity sector and then publish statements encouraging cutting down trees....

...James Reilly, a former petroleum geologist and astronaut who is the director of the US Geological Survey, in a series of emails in 2018 asked scientists to “gin up” emissions figures for him. He also said the numbers would make a “decent sound bite”, and acknowledged that wildfire emissions estimates could vary based on what kind of trees were burning but picked the ones that he said would make “a good story”.

Scientists who reviewed the exchanges said that at best Reilly used unfortunate language and the department cherry-picked data to help achieve their pro-industry policy goals; at worst he and others exploited a disaster and manipulated the data....

November 16, 2019
By Umair Irfan

Fire authorities (click here) have officially determined that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. was responsible for last year’s deadly Camp Fire in Paradise, California.

...Camp is alarmingly reminiscent of the Carr Fire, (click here) which burned more than 229,000 acres near Redding, California in August. Many of the same factors that made the Carr Fire so calamitous are fueling the Camp Fire right now. In particular, it’s hot, it’s dry, it’s windy, there’s been little rain, and just about all the vegetation around is flammable.

As climate change pushes temperatures up, vegetation like grasses and trees are dying out. This creates ample fuel to burn. Outside of Chico, where the Camp Fire began burning, the flames were then fanned by northern California’s Diablo Winds with gusts topping 70 mph. The fire at one point gained about a football field in area per second.

Though the Camp Fire resulted from a perfect set of extreme fire conditions that all coincidentally came together at the same time, some of those conditions were years in the making.

It’s an example of how forces in the climate that build up over decades can act on the scale of days, even hours, creating a terrifying scenario the likes of which we have never experienced before: The largest, deadliest, and most destructive fires in California history were all within three months of each other this year. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has seen almost double the acres burned across its service territory compared to the same time last year.

Though climate change will never cause any individual event, scientists reported in 2016 that about 55 percent of the dryness in western forests between 1979 and 2015 could be attributed to warming due to human activity. This ongoing warming converges with seasonal variations in temperature and rainfall. “Climate change is increasing the vulnerability of many US forests through fire, insect infestations, drought, and disease outbreaks,” according to the US government’s National Climate Assessment....

A blighted Virginia forest. It’s estimated that up to four billion American chestnut trees died

..Then, in less than 50 years, (click here) the trees were gone. An exotic blight, accidentally carried over on an Asian chestnut variety, began infecting American chestnuts as the 20th century dawned. By 1950, up to four billion trees had died, two million of them in Ontario, wiping out 99.9 per cent of the species and radically reshaping the forests it once dominated.

Now, a century later, an American research team has an equally unprecedented solution: a genetically modified American chestnut. By splicing a single gene from wheat into the tree’s genome, scientists from the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) have engineered blight-resistant saplings.

This year, the team plans to apply for approval from U.S. and Canadian regulators to distribute the plant. If they are successful, the tree would be the first genetically modified organism released with the goal of reintroducing an endangered species to the wild, rather than producing a commercial agricultural crop.

The SUNY-ESF team, led by William Powell, a professor and director of the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project, expects the regulatory review to take between two and four years. But because no one has ever done this before, there could be unexpected hurdles or accelerants — including the response of the public.

“I think many of the values and perceptions of people about genetically modified organisms are based around issues of commercial interest,” like profits and patents, says Sally Aitken, a professor who studies forest and conservation genetics at the University of British Columbia, who is not involved in the research.

“The case of the chestnut and chestnut blight really makes us reconsider some of the concerns, perhaps, but it also raises additional concerns about working with genetic manipulations of native wild species.”...

Women are the real leaders of the 21st Century.

January 26, 2020

By Tucker Higgins

Louise Linton, (click here) the wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, deleted a post on Instagram on Saturday in which she had expressed support for the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has been publicly sparring with Mnuchin over whether the U.S. should divest from fossil fuels.

Mnuchin had dismissed the Swedish activist’s call for the U.S. to divest from the sector on Thursday, saying that the 17-year-old should study economics in college, and then “she can come back and explain that to us.”

Thunberg had called for the divestment at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Her address followed the hottest year on record for the world’s oceans, and the second hottest year on record for global average temperatures.

Linton wrote in her post, which tagged both Thunberg and Mnuchin, that she was sympathetic to Thunberg....

April 16, 2019

By Erik Pedersen

EXCLUSIVE: (click here) We have the first photo from Me, You, Madness, the indie film starring first-time writer-director Louise Linton. Have a look below, along with an image of Linton in helmer mode.

She stars along with Ed Westwick in the comedy about a young thief (Westwick) who, while casing a secluded mansion in Malibu, discovers he is robbing the home of a serial killer. The movie 2018 shoot in Malibu was interrupted by last year’s Woolsey Fire before resuming after the danger had passed.

“Thanks to my killer crew and cast, the movie is every bit the playful 80’s homage I dreamed of when I wrote it,” said Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary and Wonder Woman executive producer Steven Mnuchin. “It was a joyful set, even under pressure. Ed Westwick is a phenomenal actor, collaborator, friend and creative force who became my co-pilot on many creative aspects of the film.”

Stormchaser Films’ Linton and Kristen Ruhlin are producing Me, You, Madness, which is being shopped to distributors. The Edinburgh-born Linton’s acting credits include Rules Don’t Apply, Cabin Fever and Serial Daters Anonymous. She was an executive producer on the recent features Odious, 6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain and The Midnight Man....

The once majestic American Chestnut tree is now an understory tree more so than a canopy tree.

March 5, 2019
By Kayla Walden

Many people (click here) today typically associate chestnuts with the familiar tune about roasting them over an open fire. But before disease wiped out the majority of the chestnut tree population, the species ruled America’s eastern forests.

“American chestnuts used to dominate the Appalachian forest,” says Dennis Fulbright, professor emeritus at Michigan State University. “But in the early 20th century, a fungal disease called chestnut blight made its way through the country and destroyed 4 billion mature American chestnut trees.”

The Redwoods of the East

Before the chestnut blight, these trees blanketed 200 million acres of forests from Maine to Mississippi. The largest ever recorded measured 27 feet across the stump, earning them the nickname redwoods of the East. People used the trees for traditional purposes like lumber and firewood, but also stripped and soaked the bark to create tanning liquid for hides and leather. Not to mention, the trees produced delicious edible chestnuts.

The tree even had a tendency to sprout right back up from its roots, meaning farmers didn’t need to replant after chopping one down. A 400-year-old root could quickly push up several young trees to replace the old.

“I’m not sure our generation can truly understand how tied to a tree people could be,” Fulbright says. “The American chestnut was the tree that surpassed all others.”...

A little off topic.

Bubba has been having a good time developing a global militia from the impoverished. What is your life worth?

May 8, 2018

Erik Prince, (click here) the brain behind the infamous private military firm Blackwater, is now in China training security forces.

Prince is partially responsible for modernizing the private army for the post 9/11 world, outsourcing militaries to cheap, specialized labor pools and skirting traditional regulations meant to ensure accountability for armed forces.

His journey from hiring mercenaries to help bolster the U.S. occupation in Iraq to China is long, dizzying and includes stops around the world to train Colombian mercenaries to help make a private army for the U.A.E. and outfitting crop duster planes with missiles to be fired at Armenians....

Just to provide perspective to the undisturbed nature of the forests in the Eastern USA at the turn of the 20th Century (early 1900s).

This particular Cypress was named "Senator."

There are occassional postcards that will turn up, like this one, which shows the majesty of the once huge forests of the USA. I own another one of these postcards I found it in a museum store in Charleston, South Carolina about eight years ago.

The West Coast learned the mistakes of cutting down every last large tree and preserved the Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) (click here) and Coastal Redwoods (sequoia sempervirens) (click here).

The American Chestnut tree was once part of the forests of New York State Oak-Hickory forest.

This picture, (click here) taken in the mid- to late 19th century, gives an idea of just how large and profuse the American chestnut tree was in Eastern U.S. forests. There are now only 100 or so that remain.

July 3, 2019

Sometimes reaching (click here) a height of more than 100 feet tall with trunk diameters often well over 10 feet, the American chestnut was the giant of the eastern U.S. forests. There were once billions of them and their range stretched from Georgia and Alabama to Michigan, but the majestic tree was gone before forest science existed to document its role in the ecosystem.

Notes left by early foresters including Gifford Pinchot, the founder and first chief of the USDA Forest Service, suggest that its ecological role was as impressive as the tree’s size (PDF, 1.3 MB).

Mature American chestnuts have been virtually extinct for decades. The tree’s demise started with something called ink disease in the early 1800s, which steadily killed chestnut in the southern portion of its range. The final blow happened at the turn of the 20th century when a disease called chestnut blight swept through Eastern forests.

The disappearance of the chestnut launched a profound change in the structure and composition of eastern forests.

But, after decades of work breeding trees, The American Chestnut Foundation (click here) , a partner in the Forest Service’s effort to restore the tree, is close to being able to make a blight-resistant American chestnut available. However, the opportunity to restore the tree to its native range creates a question for scientists and foresters: What conditions are necessary for the American chestnut to grow and regenerate on a landscape scale?...

It's Sunday Afternoon

The official website of Bruce Piephoff (click here)

...When Piephoff hinted (click here) he might be nearing the end of the set, Dodd, a restaurant server by trade, badgered him to play a few more.

“More coleslaw for that table,” Piephoff shot back.

Then he paused to assess the situation.

“I’ve gotten so used to playing these with other people, it’s kind of freaking me out,” he said. “When I get to a break I’m expecting a saxophone solo or Scott Sawyer on guitar. Oh well, it’s probably good for me.”

For his March 21 album release party at the Sharp Nine Gallery in Durham, Piephoff had been joined by many of the musicians who performed on the new record. Now, for the launch party in his hometown of Greensboro at Common Grounds coffeehouse, just around the corner from his place in Lindley Park, Piephoff was armed only with an acoustic guitar and his voice, a dusty instrument with occasional glints of loveliness....

The Chestnut Tree

In the period of over two years (6 July 1942 to 4 August 1944) (click here) that Anne Frank spent in hiding in the Secret Annex, nature and her longing for freedom played an ever greater role. Through a window in the attic that was not blacked out, Anne could see the sky, birds and the chestnut tree. She wrote about the tree in her diary three times, the last time on 13 May 1944.

Thought of the freedom of nature

During a speech in 1968 Otto Frank described his thoughts when he read Anne’s diary for the first time: 'How could I have known how much it meant to Anne to see a patch of blue sky, to observe the seagulls as they flew, and how important the chestnut tree was for her, when I think that she never showed any interest in nature. Still, she longed for it when she felt like a bird in a cage. Only the thought of the freedom of nature gave her comfort. But she kept all those feelings to herself.'...

The Crowned Prince of Saudi Arabia seems to have standing orders to retrieve those that criticize him back to the kingdom for quite possibly death sentences.

There are others speaking out about fear for their lives. Some in the UK. The USA will never consent to human rights abuses and freedom of speech is a foundation to Western democracy. There is no sense in the Crowned Prince stating otherwise, he has already carried out one atrocity against a Western Journalist.

January 24, 2020

Jamal Khashoggi and Hatice Cengiz during the summer of 2018. (click here)

A Saudi dissident living in the US (click here) has claimed that the FBI saved him from suffering a similar fate to that of Jamal Khashoggi. Twenty-seven-year-old Abdulrahman Almutairi, a former student at the University of San Diego, spoke of his ordeal with the Daily Beast.

Almutairi, a YouTuber with hundreds of thousands of followers, attracted the attention of the Saudis after he criticised Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman over the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi. “The Saudi government realized I was a threat,” Almutairi told The Daily Beast.

According to Almutairi an unidentified Saudi man accompanied his father on a flight to collect him against his will and bring him back to Saudi Arabia. The FBI foiled the plot and it was only due to their timely intervention that Almutairi was rescued....

...Critics are not the only ones to be targeted by the kingdom. As the alleged hacking of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos shows, anyone deemed a threat to the kingdom’s interest are at risk. Similarly Saudi dissidents living in the UK revealed details of the risk they face on a daily basis. Spyware developed in Israel is used to track them down.

Khasoggi's words in 2018.

Donald John Trump stated the soldiers injured in Iraq only suffered a severe headache. He disrespected the USA military and views them as potential to earn money instead of pay taxes.

Donald John Trump is lawless, has no respect for the USA military and seeks to diminish the USA's esteem in the world.

January 25, 2020
By Victoria Bekiempis

Veterans of Foreign Wars, (click here) a prominent organization advocating for US military veterans, has called for Donald Trump to apologize for remarks downplaying brain injuries recently suffered by nearly three dozen American service members in Iraq.

The group was joined by several other US veterans’ organizations, criticizing Trump’s remarks and saying they showed a lack of understanding of injuries and what US troops face in overseas conflicts.

The VFW’s statement stems from Trump’s remarks on injuries resulting from a 8 January Iranian missile strike on a US base in Iraq. Thirty-four US soldiers suffered from concussion or traumatic brain injury (TBI) after the strike, which was a reprisal for the US drone strike assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. Donald Trump had previously said that the US “suffered no casualties” from the attack.

“Veterans of Foreign Wars cannot stand idle on this matter,” William “Doc” Schmitz, VFW’s National Commander, said in a statement. “TBI is a serious injury and one that cannot be taken lightly. TBI is known to cause depression, memory loss, severe headaches, dizziness and fatigue – all injuries that come with both short- and long-term effects.”...

January 14, 2020
By Aaron Rupar

During an interview (click here) on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show Friday night, President Donald Trump made a stunning announcement: Saudi Arabia was paying the US $1 billion to send US troops to defend it from Iran.

“We’re sending more [troops] to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is paying us for it,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you have to pay us.’ They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”...

So, while Saudi Arabia is paying for the presence of the USA military, France is pleading for USA assistance.

January 25, 2020
By Dan DeLuce

Washington - France is appealing to President Donald Trump (click here) not to cut off U.S. military support to French forces fighting Islamist militants in Africa, warning that it could undermine efforts to counter a growing terrorist threat in the Sahel region.

Trump administration officials, however, are skeptical of the French counterterrorism mission's value and have refused so far to promise continued logistical and intelligence support that French forces rely on in their fight against al Qaeda and ISIS-linked groups, according to one current and one former U.S. official.

"We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a French force that has not been able to turn the tide," said a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record....

It would appear as though France and Iraq haven't paid enough to the bank as Saudi Arabia did in order to secure USA troops to assist in dire circumstances.

January 25, 2020

Beirut - Four Christian aid workers (click here) reportedly disappeared while driving to a meeting inside the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on Wednesday, the organization SOS Chretiens d’Orient announced on Friday.

“Monday, January 20, four of our collaborators disappeared in Baghdad. They had to drive to a meeting in the late afternoon. After several unsuccessful contact attempts throughout Tuesday, we noted their disappearance on Wednesday and therefore immediately alerted the French authorities. Today, the French and Iraqi authorities are coordinating to investigate and trace them,” the organization’s statement read.

According to SOS Chretiens d’Orient, three French and one Iraqi employee disappeared in Baghdad, but their identities were withheld for safety reasons.

SOS Chretiens d’Orient has been one of the most active aid organizations in the Middle East. The organization has provided aid to communities in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt.

It would seem as thought Eric Prince is too busy circumventing sanctions on Venezuela to be the real mercenary force from the USA.

January 16, 2020
By Stephanie Baker and Ben Bartenstein

When Erik Prince, (click here) a major Trump donor and private security mogul, traveled to Caracas in November for secret talks with Venezuela’s vice president, he was not, it turns out, the central figure orchestrating the meetings.

That person was a controversial British deal-maker by the name of Ian Hannam, according to people familiar with the situation. Hannam, a former JPMorgan banker, arranged the trip as part of his yearlong scouting effort for possible gold investments in the crisis-battered nation, the people said. Prince’s meeting with Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has been reported; Hannam’s role hasn’t.

The discussion of mining ventures with Rodriguez raises fresh questions about whether Prince, a Michigan native and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, violated U.S. law against doing business with sanctioned officials. Hannam is British and not subject to the same restrictions.

The trip is part of an intense behind-the-scenes scrimmage for Venezuela’s wealth and resources as it grapples with political gridlock, international sanctions and a humanitarian crisis. Juan Guaido, the opposition leader who’s recognized as interim head of state by the U.S. and more than 50 countries, is wrestling for control of the legislature with a lawmaker backed by President Nicolas Maduro and Russia....