'Toontime: Individual I

credit: Rick McKee

Now that he has been named in court documents with an official alias, it is reasonable to conclude that "Individual I" is the central person of interest in the Russian Connection investigation.  He is portrayed in Robert Mueller's court filings as the central figure involved in efforts to make a deal on a Moscow tower development well beyond the date in which he publicly stated during his campaign that he had "no business dealings with Russia." He kept in close contacts with his agents who were reaching out to Moscow, and to Wikileaks, all the way up to the day before Wikileaks released the DNC emails hacked by Russian agents.

Two bombshells went off this week: Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was back in federal court to plead guilty to more federal crimes, Thursday. Those crimes included lying to Congress about his business contacts with Russians on behalf of Trump. He kept Trump family members and “Individual I” informed of his negotiations. "Individual I" responded to the damaging development by attacking Cohen as a “weak individual”, and “not very smart”. Cohen has now agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. His previous pleas were made without benefit of such an agreement. Cohen has sat for 70 hours of interrogation by investigators, and he represents a politically existential threat to Individual I, who was also contact with right-wing Trump supporter, Roger Stone. Stone was told by Jerome Corsi, who knows co-founder Julian Assange, that Wikileaks planned to release stolen emails in an “October surprise”. Corsi also knew Stone was in regular contact with Individual 1. According to the WaPo, Stone spoke to Individual I the day after he got the inside information from Corsi.

The second bombshell: Paul Manafort was supposed to be cooperating with the Special Counsel pursuant to an agreement. However, Robert Mueller filed court papers Friday alleging that Manfort repeatedly lied to investigators since he entered into the plea deal. Prosecutors at a court hearing said they are weighing charging Manafort with new crimes, as well as retrying him on federal charges that resulted in a hung jury this summer.  Manafort was convicted of tax and bank fraud charges in August. The federal district court judge presiding over Manafort’s sentencing set a tentative court date of March 5^th. Investigators will file a detailed explanation of Manafort’s mendacity on December 7th.

The revelations from Cohen and Corsi come significantly after Individual I provided written answers to interrogatories submitted to the White House by Mr. Mueller. The potential for contradiction is obvious, but his latest front man, Rudi ‘Gouly’ Gouliani told reporters Trump's answers are consistent with Cohen’s testimony.  Supporters claim all of these developments are just smoke, with no hard evidence of criminal offenses committed by Individual I, but this new information definitely provides context and motive for the widespread allegations of lying, money laundering, and illegal campaign activity. As one House Democrat put it, they want to "cross the Ts and dot the Is" on Trump's continued obfuscation of his lucrative Russian connection, and his obstruction of justice. Certainly, a president beholding to the authoritarian leader of the country’s most dangerous competitor is no security risk in which to be allegedly framed. Enemies of Trump may not be able to muster 67 votes in the Senate for his conviction--unless he fires Robert Mueller--but it may become politically untenable for continuing his regime. After all 'Tricky" Dick, impeached by the House, was not convicted in the Senate, either.

Wackydoodle sez: Must be kin folks!

BC Idowanna sez: Orange man fake fascist!

Spider Zombies

Spiders are not usually considered social creatures.  Usually you find them alone--spinning their webs or searching for food. But there are about twenty-five social spider species worldwide. One, Anelosimus eximius [photo below] lives in the Ecuadorian Amazon where it lives in large colonies sharing prey and parental duties with colony members. That is until a colony member is victimized by the newly discovered Zatypota wasp. This wasp has a uniquely gruesome method of reproduction: an adult female lays an egg on the spider's abdomen where the larvae hatches and feeds on the spider's body fluids growing larger and slowly taking over the spider's body and controlling its behavior. The zombie-spider leaves its colony--something a normal Anelosimus would never do--to weave a completely unusual cocoon-like web. There it obliviously waits to be killed and consumed by the larvae. The wasp larvae then enters the cocoon built by its deceased slave were it metamorphoses into a fully grown wasp. Gruesome is perhaps an understatement.

There are other examples of wasp parasites on spiders, but these usually involve a solitary species like orb spiders, and the parasitically induced behavior are within the normal behavioral repertoire. But Zaytypota causes spider behavior completely outside the normal. Researchers do not know how the wasp hijacks the spider's brain and body, but suspect that hormones are injected into the spider's system causing it to function differently.  Zaytypota has been observed victimizing large spider colonies where it can be assured of a stable supply of potential zombies.  Nature can be unforgiving in the struggle for survival.

COTW: The Sixth Extinction

There have been six great extinction events in the Earth's 4.5 billion year history.  The most renowned is the extinction of the dinosaurs at 66 million years ago. Scientists think this was the result of a massive asteroid strike and its aftermath.  Another occurred more recently at the end of the Pleistocene 13,000 to 8,000 BCE, when the Earth lost most of its megafauna such as mammoths, probably due to climate change and human predation.  In terms of the number of organisms lost, the greatest extinction is the Permian-Triassic, or the Great Dying, that affected primarily marine organisms and terrestrial invertibrates, 252 million years ago. During this extinction event ocean surface temperatures reached 40℃; it was simply too hot for anything to survive.  Earth lost some 90% of it's species.

Extinction is not just ancient history.  There is another great extinction taking place right now, and this chart from the Center for Biological Diversity shows the grim fact:

The current crisis in the natural world is fundamentally different because this event is almost entirely caused by human activity that is driving habitat loss and global warming.  In the past 500 years there have been known extinctions of 1000 species from passenger pigeons to woodland bison.  The truth is no one knows exactly how many species have been lost.  Many have disappeared before science was able to identify them.  In the US alone a leading wildlife expert estimates there are 14 to 35 thousand endangered species.  

Mountain Gorillas Increase

it's all about family, credit WWF

Conservation success stories are becoming fewer in the age of the Sixth Great Extinction. But there are stories that bring hope and spur more efforts to save animals endangered by man's abuse of his only home in the universe. One of these is the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) living in the highlands of central Africa. After years of effort midst warfare and violent poaching--six rangers were killed in April--the population of these peaceful, intelligent primates has increased by 25% since 2010 in the Virunga Massif.

Conservationist and UN Ambassador,Sir Richard Attenborough, who first visited the gorillas in 1979, said of his first encounter, “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know-–they are so like us.” He praised the work of conservation groups which have succeeded in bringing our relative back from the brink of extinction. The new survey was undertaken in difficult terrain conditions by 12 teams of surveyors covering 2,000 km² of mountainous forest in Uganda, Rwanda and Congo. Virunga's population has risen to 604 from 480 counted in the previous survey of 2010. Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable national park contains the remaining mountain gorilla population; in 2012 over 400 gorillas were counted there. The increase in numbers can be directly attributed to human protection and care, but wire snares set by locals to capture bush meat still pose a deadly threat to gorillas. The survey team destroyed 380 snares including one that contained a dead gorilla--truly a horrible and painful death.

Another recent survey found that there are double the number of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) than previously estimated. There are now estimated to be 360,000 of this subspecies, or 99% of all extant gorillas. This population has fallen by 20% in eight years due to threats summarized by researchers as guns, germs and greed.

Three Countries Block Antarctic Sanctuary

China, Russia and Norway have blocked an effort to create the world's largest wildlife sanctuary in Antartica. Twenty-two other countries were ready to approve the designation, but it needed unanimous approval in talks at Hobart, Tasmania. The sanctuary would have been the size of Sudan or 1.8 million km² giving all of Antarctica's unique wildlife a chance to survive. WWF says that 70% of the world's remaining wilderness exists in just five countries. The designation would have also helped soak up some of the carbon dioxide produced by combustion that is warming our planet catastrophically. A spokesperson for Greenpeace says that thirty percent of our oceans need to be protected to insure habitat, and thereby protect food sources. Less than 10% is now protected from damage. Unfortunately the historic opportunity to reverse this deadly trend was lost to filibustering and obstruction intended only to prevent unanimity. These countries appear to be more interested in expanding exploitative commercial fishing than giving the planet a change to recover from 300 years of industrial pollution according to observers.The Antarctic Ocean Commission under Russia's chairmanship in 2016 made progress when the Commission declared the Ross Sea would be protected, but Russia has failed to enforce the agreement pursuing instead opportunities to expand fishing in the Southern Ocean. The failed deal would have protected the Weddell and parts of the biologically rich Antarctic Peninsula. The next chance to protect Antarctica's seas will come at the UN which is negotiating a global ocean treaty. Those negotiation could reach a conclusion by 2020

Taylor Energy Order to Clean Up Act

US Person posted recently about an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that has the potential to be bigger than the Deepwater Horizon disaster. {30.10.18}A production platform that capsized after a submarine landslide has been leaking for fourteen years. The Coast Guard has now demanded that Taylor Energy Co., owner of the OCS lease, to clean up the spill or face fines of $40,000 day according to the Washington Post. The platform was destroyed during Hurricane Ivan in 2004; it has been leaking oil at an estimated rate of 700 barrels a day since then. That estimate is based on analysis by independent experts hired by the Justice Department for pending litigation against the Interior Department. Previous government estimates based on company supplied data put the amount at 55 barrels per day. Deepwater Horizon which was destroy by a blowout and subsequent fire spewed an estimated 4 million barrel of crude into the Gulf. The spill so far from the Taylor Energy ruins is now estimated at 1.5 to 3.5 million barrels.

Taylor was instructed to present a clean up plan by November 9th. It presented a plan on the 8th, but it was rejected by Interior in favor of a plan submitted by another contractor. Taylor has plugged eight of the 28 wells once connected to the platform that was pushed off its moorings by a landslide. Oil sheens are visible on the surface for miles. At one point they were mistaken as emanating from the Deepwater Horizon site to the north by disaster monitors. It was these oil slicks that lead environmentalists to the re-discovery of the leaks Taylor Energy sought to conceal or minimize. As reported by the Post, "[the] spill was hidden for years as the company and the Coast Guard declined to inform the public that it existed. Environmental groups that monitor the gulf were unaware that the broken wells were leaking for six years — until the catastrophic BP Deepwater oil spill in April 2010." Environmental groups brought suit against the government and Taylor for the concealment, which they allege is inconsistent with the provisions of the Clean Water Act, which provides for citizen participation in water policy.

'Toontime: An Alternative Modernity?

credit: Jeffery Koterba
Wackydoodle sez: Too much leftover turkey.

Another minion of the malodorous misrule that is the Trump regime is prepared to cut a deal with Robert Mueller's unending quest to lay bare the Russian Connection. Jerome Corsi, a confidant of Robert Stone, the right-wing operative and Trump supporter, told the AP Friday that he is in plea negotiations with the Special Counsel. Investigators are zeroing in on Stone's connections to Wikileaks, which published the DNC's hacked emails.  The material was provided by Russian intelligence, according to US intelligence's assessment of what occurred during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Stone, and other campaign associates of Trump, are alleged to have had advanced knowledge of Wikileaks' plan to publicly leak the private communications. Stone, however, has publicly denied any insider knowledge of the release. Corsi recently said his plea negotiations have "blown-up", so that he fully expects to be indicted by the Special Counsel.

credit: John Day
BC Idonwanna sez: Me like'm high on hog, no turkey.