Earth’s Oceans Were Stressed Before Abrupt, Prehistoric Global Warming

TOPICS:Climate ChangeGeologyIsotopesNorthwestern UniversityOceanography

By NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY AUGUST 25, 2021

Scanning electron microscopy images of foraminifera from different angles. Credit: Northwestern University

Shelled organisms helped buffer ocean acidification by consuming less alkalinity from seawater.

• Third recent Northwestern study to detect calcification stress before and across ancient ocean acidification events
• Massive volcanic carbon dioxide inputs appear to cause ocean acidification
• New study focuses on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of sudden, intense climate warming 56 million years ago
• Researchers studied the shells of prehistoric unicellular organisms that dwelled at the ocean’s surface during the PETM
• Shells were extracted from marine sediments deposited in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

Gabriella Kitch filters water in the lab. Credit: International Ocean Discovery Program

Microscopic fossilized shells are helping geologists reconstruct Earth’s climate during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of abrupt global warming and ocean acidification that occurred 56 million years ago. Clues from these ancient shells can help scientists better predict future warming and ocean acidification driven by human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

Led by Northwestern University, the researchers analyzed shells from foraminifera, an ocean-dwelling unicellular organism with an external shell made of calcium carbonate. After analyzing the calcium isotope composition of the fossils, the researchers concluded that massive volcanic activity injected large amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth system, causing global warming and ocean acidification.

They also found that global warming and ocean acidification did not just passively affect foraminifera. The organisms also actively responded by reducing calcification rates when building their shells. As calcification slowed, the foraminifera consumed less alkalinity from seawater, which helped buffer increasing ocean acidity.

A drilled core of sediment from the ocean. Credit: International Ocean Discovery Program

“The formation and dissolution of calcium carbonate help regulate the acidity and alkalinity of seawater,” said Northwestern’s Andrew Jacobson, a senior author of the study. “Our calcium isotope data indicate that reduced foraminiferal calcification worked to dampen ocean acidification before and across the PETM.”

“This is a pretty new concept in the field,” added Gabriella Kitch, the study’s first author. “Previously, people thought that only the dissolution of carbonates at the sea floor could increase alkalinity of the ocean and buffer the effects of ocean acidification. But we are adding to existing studies that show decreased carbonate production has the same buffering effect.”

Scanning electron microscopy images of foraminifera from different angles. Credit: Northwestern University

The research was published recently in the journal Geology. This is the first study to examine the calcium isotope composition of foraminifera to reconstruct conditions before and across the PETM and the third recent Northwestern study to find that ocean acidification — due to volcanic carbon dioxide emissions — preceded major prehistoric environmental catastrophes, such as mass extinctions, oceanic anoxic events and periods of intense global warming.

Jacobson is a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Kitch is a Ph.D. candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Jacobson’s laboratory. Northwestern Earth science professors Bradley Sageman and Matthew Hurtgen, as well as collaborators from the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the University of Kansas, coauthored the paper with Jacobson and Kitch.

Sorting microscopic shells

To study oceanic conditions during the PETM, the researchers examined the calcium isotope composition of foraminiferal fossils collected from two sites — one in the southeast Atlantic Ocean and one in the Pacific Ocean — by the Ocean Drilling Program.

Because each fossilized shell is about the size of a single grain of sand, UCSC researchers physically collected the tiny specimens by first identifying them under a microscope. After sorting the shells from bulk sediments, the Northwestern team dissolved the samples and analyzed their calcium isotope composition using a thermal ionization mass spectrometer.

“The work is very challenging,” Jacobson said. “To manipulate these tiny materials, you have to pick them up, one by one, with a wet paintbrush tip under a microscope.”

Stress prior to PETM

As the shells formed more than 56 million years ago, they responded to oceanic conditions. By examining these shells, the Northwestern team found that calcium isotope ratios increased prior to the onset of the PETM.

A drilled core of sediment from the ocean. Credit: International Ocean Discovery Program

“We are looking at one group of organisms that built their shells in one part of the ocean, recording the seawater chemistry surrounding them,” Kitch said. “We think the calcium isotope data reveal potential stress prior to the well-known boundary.”

Other archives indicate that the atmosphere-ocean system experienced a massive carbon dioxide release immediately before the PETM. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, it forms a weak acid that can inhibit calcium carbonate formation. Although it is still undetermined, Earth scientists believe the carbon release most likely came from volcanic activity or cascading effects, such as a release of methane hydrates from the seafloor as a result of ocean warming.

Gabriella Kitch working with sediment samples in the lab. Credit: International Ocean Discovery Program

“My suspicion is that it’s both of these factors or some sort of combination,” Sageman said. “Most big events in Earth’s history represent a confluence of many actors coming together at the same time.”

Consistent pattern emerges

This is the third study led by Jacobson to find that ocean acidification precedes major environmental catastrophes that correlate with large igneous province eruptions. Last month, Jacobson’s team published results finding that volcanic activity triggered a biocalcification crisis prior to an ocean anoxic event that occurred 120 million years ago. Just over a year ago, Jacobson’s team published another study finding ocean acidification preceded the asteroid impact leading to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event 66 million years ago, which included the demise of dinosaurs.

In all three studies, Jacobson’s team used sophisticated tools in his laboratory to analyze the calcium isotope composition of calcium carbonate fossils and sediment. Jacobson said a clear pattern is emerging. Influxes of carbon dioxide led to global warming and ocean acidification and, ultimately, to massive environmental changes.

“In all of our studies, we consistently see an increase in calcium isotope ratios before the onset of major events or extinction horizons,” Jacobson said. “This seems to point to similar drivers and common responses.”

“Perhaps the calcium isotope system has a sensitivity to the earliest phases of these events,” Sageman added.

Predictor for future ocean stress

Many researchers study the PETM because it provides the best analog for current-day, human-caused global warming. The carbon influx during the PETM is similar to the amount of carbon released during the past two centuries. The timescales, however, differ significantly. Temperatures during the PETM increased by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius over 170,000 years. With human-caused climate change, the same level of warming is projected to occur in less than 200 years, if carbon dioxide emissions remain unabated.

Frighteningly, terrestrial and ocean stress, including a major decrease in foraminiferal calcification, accompanied the PETM.

“The PETM is a model for what happens during major large carbon cycle perturbations,” Jacobson said. “A lot of predictions for Earth’s future climate rely on understanding what happened during the PETM.”

Reference: “Calcium isotope composition of Morozovella over the Late Paleocene-early Eocene” by Gabriella D. Kitch, Andrew D. Jacobson, Dustin T. Harper, Matthew T. Hurtgen, Bradley B. Sageman and James C. Zachos, 4 March 2021, Geology.
DOI: 10.1130/G48619.1

The study was supported by a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (award number 2007-31757) and the National Science Foundation (award numbers NSF-EAR 0723151 and DGE-1842165).

Is deep-sea mining a cure for the climate crisis or a curse?

Trillions of metallic nodules on the sea floor could help stop global heating, but mining them may damage ocean ecology

Deep-sea mining robot Patania II begins its descent to the Pacific ocean sea floor.  Photograph: GSR/Reuters

Observer special report

by Robin McKie
Supported by

Sun 29 Aug 2021 10.00 BST


In a display cabinet in the recently opened Our Broken Planet exhibition in London’s Natural History Museum, curators have placed a small nugget of dark material covered with faint indentations. The blackened lump could easily be mistaken for coal. Its true nature is much more intriguing, however.

The nugget is a polymetallic nodule and oceanographers have discovered trillions of them litter Earth’s ocean floors. Each is rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper, some of the most important ingredients for making the electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels that we need to replace the carbon-emitting lorries, power plants and factories now wrecking our climate.

These metallic morsels could therefore help humanity save itself from the ravages of global warming, argue mining companies who say their extraction should be rated an international priority. By dredging up nodules from the deep we can slow the scorching of our planet’s ravaged surface.

“We desperately need substantial amounts of manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper to build electric cars and power plants,” says Hans Smit, chief executive of Florida’s Oceans Minerals, which has announced plans to mine for nodules. “We cannot increase land supplies of these metals without having a significant environmental impact. The only alternative lies in the ocean.”

Other researchers disagree – vehemently. They say mining deep-sea nodules would be catastrophic for our already stressed, plastic-ridden, overheated oceans. Delicate, long-living denizens of the deep – polychaete worms, sea cucumbers, corals and squid – would be obliterated by dredging. At the same time, plumes of sediments, laced with toxic metals, would be sent spiralling upwards to poison marine food-chains.

“It is hard to imagine how seabed mines could feasibly operate without devastating species and ecosystems,” says UK marine biologist Helen Scales – a view shared by David Attenborough, who has called for a moratorium on all deep-sea mining plans. “Mining means destruction and in this case it means the destruction of an ecosystem about which we know pathetically little,” he says.

It is a highly polarised dispute. On one side, proponents of nodule extraction claim it could save the world, while opponents warn it could unleash fresh ecological mayhem. For better or worse, these mineral spheres are going to play a critical role in determining our future – either by extricating us from our current ecological woes or by triggering even more calamitous outcomes.

A field of manganese nodules in the deep waters next to Hawaii. 

Photograph: OAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

Polymetallic nodules were first discovered during the 1872-6 expedition of HMS Challenger, whose round-the-world voyage laid the foundations of modern oceanography. Hauled from seabeds more than 4,000 metres deep, they were initially thought to be formed from volcanic rocks and salts. Later it was shown they grow by absorbing metal compounds in seawater.

“Typically, a nodule takes shape around an object – like a clam shell – that has fallen onto the seabed,” says marine biologist Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum, London. “The one we have just put on display formed around the tooth of a megalodon, a species of giant shark that became extinct more than 3m years ago. That shows how long a nodule takes to grow on the seabed – about a centimetre every million years.”

Despite this aeons-long accretion rate, trillions of nodules now cover the ocean bed. Some regions are so densely packed with them they look like cobbled streets. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) – which stretches from Mexico to Hawaii and covers more than 4 million square kilometres of seabed – is particularly rich in nodules, with estimates suggesting there is six times more cobalt and three times more nickel there than in the world’s entire land-based reserves.

These riches have sparked the interest of mining and dredging companies, which are now lining up to get approval to explore the Clarion-Clipperton. To date, more than 20 exploration contracts have been awarded by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN body responsible for controlling mining on international waters.

Ultimately these companies hope to transform their exploration contracts into permits to extract the abyss’s mineral treasures and bring them to the surface. It will not be an easy task. On the dark ocean floor, pressure is 500 times greater than at the surface – the equivalent of lying underneath a stack of several dozen jumbo jets.

To get around these hurdles, huge surface ships will be needed – to lower pipelines attached to robot bulldozers, which would then trundle over the deep sea floor sucking up nodules, before pumping them back to the surface five kilometres overhead.

It sounds ambitious. Yet mining companies are upbeat. “We have built robot craft that run over the seabed to search for diamonds off the coast of Namibia and to build deep-sea pipeline trenches,” said Laurens de Jonge, manager of marine mining at Royal IHC, the Dutch supplier of maritime technology for dredging, offshore energy and mining.
Extraction on this scale makes marine biologists blanch – for its likely effect on deep-sea life could be profound and widespread

“The abyss means working at greater depths and pressures which will certainly involve new challenges, including our main focus: to limit the environmental impact as much as possible. However, we do not expect major differences occurring between past operations and future nodule mining. I would anticipate that once a company has decided to commit to a seabed mining operation and has been given an extraction licence, it could probably get under way in around three years.”

As part of its plans, Royal IHC has designed a 16-metre-wide robot and built a three-metre test vehicle – called Apollo II – which would be able to gather about 400 tonnes of nodules in an hour and pump them aloft. Over two weeks’ operation, more than 100,000 tonnes could be removed this way. And after operating for 25 to 30 years – the anticipated limit for an ISA extraction licence – about 10,000 square kilometres of the seabed could be strip-mined.

Extraction on this scale makes many marine biologists blanch – for its likely effect on deep-sea life could be profound and widespread, a point stressed by marine biologist Callum Roberts, of York University. “Nodules provide the only hard substrates in the thousands of square kilometres of the fine sedimentary ooze that covers the abyssal plain,” he says. “They are critical attachment points for a variety of creatures that cannot live directly in mud.”

These residents include anemones, sponges, corals, nematode worms, and microscopic creatures called tardigrades – as well as octopuses, which have recently been found to lay eggs in sponges attached to nodules. “The biomass of the animals in the sediment is very low,” says ocean biologist Cindy van Dover, of Duke University. “However, the diversity is very high.”

In fact, vast numbers of species still remain to be discovered in the abyss, say scientists, and many would be obliterated by deep-sea mining before they have been identified. “As the mining machines thunder across the seabed, they would kick up fine, muddy clouds that would hang in the water, because no strong currents are there to disperse them,” says Scales in her recent book, The Brilliant Abyss. “Delicate animals caught in these clouds and unable to swim away, like corals and sponges, would be smothered and choked.”

Red-lined sea cucumber at Moyo Island, Sumbawa, Indonesia. 

Photograph: ifish/Getty Images

Nor would there be any chance of a quick recovery from the onslaught. At these depths, where food and energy are limited, life proceeds at an extraordinarily slow rate. Populations could take centuries to recover.

These dangers were summed up in a recent report by the international conservation charity Fauna and Flora International. “Deep seabed mining will result in large-scale habitat removal,” it states. “It will also produce sediment plumes which will disrupt ecological function and behavioural ecology of deep-ocean species, smothering fundamental ecological processes over vast areas.”

For their part, mining companies stress they do not plan to start nodule dredging until full environmental assessments of their proposals are completed. These are now being worked on by ecologists, marine biologists and oceanographers.

In addition, companies such as Ocean Minerals point to the damage done by mines on land, which create sinkholes, trigger biodiversity loss, and cause widespread contamination of soil and surface water. “In our considered opinion, the impact of nodule mining will be magnitudes less than the equivalent impact of the mining on land for the volumes of metals we will need in future,” says Smit.

Pressure to obtain these metals in sufficient volumes is certainly going to become intense, analysts agree. One estimate, by the World Bank, suggests there will have to be a 500% growth in cobalt production by 2050 if demands for electric vehicle batteries and turbine manufacture are to be met. Nevertheless, deep-mining opponents say such forecasts still do not justify ploughing up the abyssal plain and point to two other approaches – metal recycling and alternative green technologies – that could reduce the need to mine for cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper.

In the first case, these elements could be extracted from old electric-car batteries and used to make new ones. This recycling would limit the need to mine for fresh supplies of metal ores. And the concept is a useful one, acknowledges Professor Richard Herrington, head of earth sciences at the Natural History Museum, London. “Recycling is going to be important but it will not be enough on its own. By 2035, we might have about 35 to 40% of these metals from recycling – if we can get our act together now.

“Where we get the other 60 to 65% is a different issue and a museum like ours has a real role to pay here – to get people to think about where we should extract the metals we need to save the world. These issues are going to shape our lives in the next few decades, after all.”
The world cannot wait for much longer for new battery technologies to emerge. It needs to eliminate fossil-fuel burning urgently.

Not everyone agrees with the claim that cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper are necessarily vitally important, however. “There are a whole range of viable alternative battery technologies that could avoid using these metals,” says Matthew Gianni, of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a Dutch-based alliance of international green groups. For example, lithium iron phosphate batteries are now looking very promising.”

The current rush to extract nodules is therefore misplaced, say green groups who argue that engineers and entrepreneurs should be given a time to develop new battery and power plant technologies – like lithium iron phosphate batteries. Hence their calls for a deep-sea mining moratorium.

The problem is that the timetable for reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gases is now so tight. The world cannot wait for much longer for new battery technologies to emerge. It needs to eliminate fossil-fuel burning urgently.

Mining companies also deny they are rushing ahead with their plans. “We are still gathering in the science and I would say commercial operations are unlikely to start until the end of the decade,” says Chris Williams, managing director of UK Seabed Resources, which has its own plans to extract nodules from the Clipperton-Clarion Zone.

“I am confident we will be able to show that extracting polymetallic nodules will have a lower impact on the environment than will be the case with the opening of new mines on land or the expansion of existing ones.”

However, the notion that nodule-mining negotiations are going to proceed smoothly with agreement about strict extraction rules eventually being reached by the International Seabed Authority was thrown into disarray several weeks ago.

The Pacific Island state of Nauru – one of ISA’s 167 member states – activated an obscure sub-clause in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that allows countries to pull a two-year trigger if they feel negotiations are going too slow. The ISA now has two years to agree regulations governing deep-sea mining – if they don’t, mining contractors will be allowed to begin work regardless.

Nauru is partnered with a mining company called DeepGreen and says it fears being overwhelmed by rising ocean levels and wants to speed up the exploitation of abyssal nodules as a way of promoting green technologies that might save it from inundation. Its activation of the ISA’s two-year clause has caused some consternation in the industry – and among deep-sea mining opponents who fear attempts are being made to stampede the world into deep-sea mining before its consequences can be properly assessed.

For its part, ISA has played down the implications of Nauru’s move. Others are less sanguine. “This could really open the floodgates,” says Gianni.

Polymetallic nodules recovered for research. 

Photograph: UK Seabed Resources

Such prospects only strengthen the urgency of assessing the likely effects of deep-sea mining, say scientists. It is a point stressed by Andrew Sweetman, professor of deep-sea ecology at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, who has been involved in carrying out deep-sea mining impact assessments for governments and mining companies.

“We are living in a world where more and more people want to have the latest cellphones as well as electric vehicles and wind and solar power plants that will help in achieving net zero emissions. And these require metals like cobalt and manganese.

“On its own, recycling these metals is unlikely to provide the ingredients we need for these devices, so mining is going to be important. On land it is associated with all sorts of problems and eventually there will be a push for deep-sea mining – and in the end it will happen. That means we need to get as much information about its impact so we are best placed to limit the damage.”
Precious metals

The world’s appetite for copper, manganese, cobalt, nickel and other elements needed for green technology is rocketing.

Lucid Motors’ Air luxury electric car. Photograph: AP

Copper

Global use jumped from 17.8m tonnes in 2009 to 24.5 million in 2019, driven by demands from manufacturers of renewable energy plants and electric vehicles. Copper’s high electrical conductivity, durability and malleability make it invaluable.

Manganese
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Manganese compounds have been used by humans for millennia, with traces found in pigments used in cave paintings and Roman glassmaking. Today it is used in the form of electrolytic manganese dioxide, a key ingredient of lithium-ion and alkaline batteries.

Nickel

This vital ingredient of guitar strings is resistant to corrosion and oxidation, and easily forms alloys with other metals. More recently, it has become a main component for electric vehicle batteries.

Cobalt

This is the most controversial metal that is powering green technology. Used to make batteries, and solar and wind power plants, more than half the world’s supply is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where small independent mines have used children as young as seven to dig cobalt ores.


Deep-sea ‘gold rush’: secretive plans to carve up the seabed decried


Mineral sources

Three key sources are being explored in the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans.

The ocean off Green Island, Australia.

 Photograph: nudiblue/Getty Images

Hydrothermal vents

These are underwater volcanoes that spew sulphur compounds that include sulphides of silver, gold, manganese, cobalt, and zinc.

Sea mounts

Many of these underwater peaks are known to be rich in cobalt chemicals and have sparked the interest of mining companies.

Polymetallic nodules

These litter the bottom of the deep ocean. Mining companies have shown most interest in this source because of the relative ease of extraction. Most plans have earmarked the Clarion-Clipperton Zone as the target for mining, although some have pinpointed other areas. Florida’s Ocean Minerals wants to mine off the Cook Islands in the Pacific, for example.

Chinese university appears to ask for lists of LGBTQ+ students for ‘investigation’

Survey by Shanghai University that asked colleges to research the political stance and ‘state of mind’ of members of LGBTQ+ communities has sparked alarm

Chin’a authorities have a worsening intolerance for gender and sexual minority groups, particularly those engaged in activism. 

Photograph: How Hwee Young/EPA

Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent, and Helen Davidson
Sun 29 Aug 2021 

A well-known Chinese university appears to have asked its colleges to make lists of their LGBTQ+ students and report on their “state of mind”, according to a purported internal directive published online on both Chinese and foreign social media platforms.

Shanghai University has not confirmed the request or responded to queries about its intention, but it has sparked alarm among young Chinese people, coming after a crackdown on campus groups and organisations supporting LGBTQ+ and feminist communities.

The “Campus Survey”, citing “relevant requirements”, asked colleges to “investigate [and] research” students identified as LGBTQ+. It also requested information on the students’ state of mind and psychological condition, including political stance, social contacts, and mental health status. The questionnaire did not explain what “relevant requirements” it was referring to.


Outrage over shutdown of LGBTQ WeChat accounts in China

Students and activists have expressed concern that the information-gathering exercise could signal further targeting of students. Some legal experts on Weibo are questioning whether such a practice would violate China’s new data privacy law.

Shanghai University’s communications department could not be reached for comment. Other departments referred the Guardian to the communications department.

The original Weibo post with a screenshot of the document was shared or liked tens of thousands of times. According to the Weibo user who first posted the document, the post has now been taken down. Attempts by the Guardian to access the original post also returned an error message.

The screenshot of the questionnaire was also shared on western social media including Twitter, generating a heated discussion about China’s ongoing crackdowns on the country’s sexual minorities.

The incident comes amid Chinese authorities’ worsening intolerance for gender and sexual minority groups, particularly those engaged in activism. It has recently targeted feminist groups and individuals who have sought to resist discrimination.

Until recent years, China had a growing and vibrant LGBTQ+ community on its university campuses.

But as the political and social dynamics have changed in China in the past few years, the LGBTQ+ community has become increasingly marginalised. Shanghai Pride, China’s sole major annual celebration of sexual minorities, announced its shutdown last year.

The organisers of the event said that the move meant “the end of the rainbow” for them. “It’s been a great 12-year ride, and we are honoured and proud to have traveled this journey of raising awareness and promoting diversity for the LGBTQ community,” they wrote in an open letter.

In July, dozens of social media accounts run by LGBTQ+ university students were blocked and then deleted without warning. The accounts were a mix of registered student clubs and unofficial grassroots groups, and some had operated for years as safe spaces for China’s LGBTQ+ youth, with tens of thousands of followers. The move sparked outrage among some university students and activists.

Overseas China watchers were divided over the Shanghai University move. “Hoping this is just a misguided demographic study,” said Eric Hundman, an assistant professor at NYU Shanghai.

James Palmer, deputy editor of Foreign Policy and author of several books on Chinese politics, said it was “not great, to say the least”.

“But my guess is that this isn’t going to be about homophobic persecution as much as it about the system’s constant need to identify and monitor – especially potential activists,” he said.


Additional reporting by Chi Hui Lin

Cardinal Richelieu and the ghosts of empires past
Spectacle at Kabul Airport will serve as a warning that it is dangerous to be a friend of the United States
By SPENGLER (DAVID P. GOLDMAN) 

AUGUST 16, 2021

Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of La Rochelle, 1628, by Henri Paul Motte. Photo: Wikipedia

I nursed a Calvados at a café across from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, disconsolate after a vain attempt to gain access to the sewers of Paris. The Musée des Égouts de Paris, the Paris Sewers Museum, provided the only access to the secret passageways that led into the secret ossarium of the Carthusian monks where once I conjured the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu.

Under Richelieu, the evil genius of the Thirty Years’ War, France defeated the Austrian and Spanish Empires with twice its population and many times its wealth, killing two-fifths of the population of Central Europe.

But the museum was shut due to the pandemic, as was most of the city. I had no problem finding a table opposite the cathedral. But how to find the Cardinal? My assignation would have taken me past centuries-old brickwork through narrow winding staircases to the ancient rock until I reached the small chamber where the bones of the Carthusian dead sat arrayed in pyramids. But the path was blocked.

My reverie soon was interrupted. “I hope you haven’t forgotten me,” said a voice that sounded like a 78-rpm recording of Maurice Chevalier. I would have recognized it anywhere: It was the Cardinal! But I saw nothing

.

Triple portrait of Cardinal Richelieux by Philippe de Champaigne, completed 1642. 

Photo: Wikipedia

“Do not be alarmed,” the Cardinal said. “If you will be so kind as to provide an appropriate libation, I shall become visible presently.”

“Waiter,” I cried, “A magnum of Chateau Petrus!”

“Oui, Monsieur,” the waiter stood to. “With one or two glasses?”

“A spittoon, if you please,” said I.

The waiter looked at me doubtfully.

“An empty ice bucket, then.”

Demanding and receiving payment in advance, he bustled off.

I poured the aromatic Bordeaux into the ice bucket and a gurgling sound presently arose. The old necromantic rite still worked. Starting with the tips of his boots, and rising through his legs, doublet, beard and hat, the Cardinal turned visible by degrees.

He still looked like the portrait by Philippe de Champaigne at the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Strasbourg, at least in profile – but when he turned towards me he seemed more like Charlton Heston in The Three Musketeers.

“Are you pressed for time?” I asked. In the ossarium the necromancy had kept him materialized for barely 10 minutes.

“I have the whole evening free,” the Cardinal replied.

“But how did you escape your old haunts?” I asked.

“Ghosts walk abroad tonight,” replied the Cardinal. “The ghosts of empires past.”

It was true; the twilight had descended suddenly, and at the next table I discerned the translucent outline of General Gamelin, the commander of the French forces when they fell to Germany in only six weeks of the spring of 1940. Napoleon the Third turned circles on roller skates.

The statue of Pope John Paul in front of the Cathedral changed into a figure that I took to be Nicias, the Athenian commander at the Syracuse debacle of 413 BCE

.

Defeat of Nacias’s Athenians at Syracuse. 

Image: Encyclopedia of World History

Across the street, the shade of Anthony Eden, Britain’s prime minister during the Suez disaster, walked his dog Nipper. Admiral Rozhestvensky, the Russian commander at the Battle of the Tsushima Strait in 1905, sat motionless on a park bench.

“We all get a day pass when a great empire falls,” Richelieu said cheerfully. This was my fourth séance with his spirit and I had never before seen him in such an expansive mood.

“You are talking about the fall of Kabul,” said I.

“Bingueaux!,” said the shade. “It is America’s Tsushima Strait, its Syracuse, its Fall of France.”

The informality of our meeting on a café terrace emboldened me. Deep down in the Paris catacombs, I would have shown more reverence. “But Afghanistan is of no strategic importance to the United States,” I protested. “It’s a humiliation to be sure, but surely it looks worse than it is. The American public wrote off Afghanistan when it elected Donald Trump years ago.”

“You are as dense as always, Spengler,” Richelieu replied. “What use have you made of the advice I gave you at our last encounter? An intact empire can come back even from the greatest disaster. Russia recovered from its initial defeats in 1941 to crush Germany after Stalingrad. Rome raised new armies after Cannae and crushed the Carthaginians. The Protestants in the Thirty Years War – with more than a little help from me – arose from 14 years of Imperial victories to defeat Wallenstein at Lützen and turn the tide.”

“But why can’t America do the same now?” I demanded.

“What the fall of Kabul revealed is that the American military, and the political institutions behind it, are thoroughly rotten – as rotten as France in 1940. America set out to create a modern democracy out of a tribal society, an enterprise as likely to succeed as the attempt to breed a griffin by mating a lion with an eagle. It poured US$2 trillion into Afghanistan, or one hundred times the country’s gross domestic product. It paid Afghani politicians, generals and warlords to play-act at democracy in a revolting, silly masquerade.

“Whatever was not corrupt before America came in became corrupt in the maelstrom of American money. Meanwhile, American soldiers and bureaucrats made fortunes as consultants, contractors, sutlers and armorers to the dream palace of Afghan democracy.

“Because the entire project was a monstrous hoax to begin with, everyone associated with the project lied – lied about the state of Afghan government forces, lied about the disposition of the Taliban, lied about the robustness of supplies to Afghan troops, lied about their dependence on airpower.

“Afghan officials lied to their American paymasters, American commanders on the ground lied to their superiors and American generals lied to the politicians. The key to promotion, and to wealth, lay in perpetuating the ridiculous fiction that motivated the occupation of the country in the first place.

“Where did $2 trillion go? The Taliban offensive began in April after the Americans announced their intent to depart. No one fought for Afghanistan because there was no Afghanistan to fight for. Within weeks the Afghan army had no ammunition, no food and no air support. Whoever could steal from the Americans did so. The Afghanistan government collapsed in a matter of days because it was never there to begin with.

“Empires, mon ami, fall not because they suffer setbacks – even terrible ones – but because no one cares whether they survive or not. It is not only the Afghan army that panicked and ran before a rag-tag militia, but all of America’s critical institutions starting with the military itself.”

I listened in silence to the Cardinal’s diatribe. “What will happen now, Eminence?” I asked when he paused.

Afghans crowd the tarmac of the Kabul airport on August 16, 2021, to flee the country as the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and conceded the insurgents had won the 20-year war. Photo: AFP

“America has no strategy, no direction, no strategic purpose,” he said. “The revolting spectacle at the Kabul Airport will serve as a warning that it is dangerous to be a friend of the United States. China and Russia will pick up the pieces in Central Asia. India will quietly make its accommodation with China. The Germans will do whatever they must to avoid conflict with Russia. The Saudis will rely more on Russia for their own security – after all, Moscow hates the idea of a Muslim Brotherhood government in Riyadh as much as do the Saudi monarchs.”

The last rays of sunlight disappeared beneath the horizon. Rozhestvensky banged the table and demanded vodka. General Gamelin began to shout at Napoleon the Third. Nipper slipped his leash and Eden chased madly after him. Nicias jumped down from his pedestal and ran madly around the little plaza. Richelieu began to sing, “Thank heaven for little girls,” and the street filled suddenly with spooks – Thracians, Phrygians, Mauryas, Guptas, Hellenes, Babylonians – as well as generals and statesmen of defunct civilizations whose names are lost beneath the sands of time.

A terrible dread came over me, and I stood up to leave, but the crowd of defeated spirits was closing in around me.

I woke up just before dawn next to an empty Calvados bottle and a copy of Gibbon.

SCOTUS END'S EVICTION MORATORIUM

US rent hikes will explode consumer inflation in 2022

CPI reflects renters’ existing leases but new lease figures predict surging rent inflation as old leases expire

By DAVID P. GOLDMAN

AUGUST 27, 2021




NEW YORK – How come the shelter component of the US Consumer Price Index is rising at just 2% a year while all the private-sector gauges of rent inflation show rent hikes of close to 10%?

Shown in the Chart of the Day is a comparison of the Zillow Rent Index with the Consumer Price Index rent component. Shelter is two-fifths of the total index, so the question of whether inflation is “transitory” or not depends on rents.

This question has a simple answer: It takes the Bureau of Labor Statistics about a year to catch up with rent inflation. What the government reported as rent inflation in July reflects the economy of a year ago and more.

That’s because renters’ leases take a year or two to expire. The Zillow, Apartmentlist.com and CoreLogic reports reflect the average rent on a new lease, not the rent on leases signed in the past. As old leases expire and renters have to pay the higher market rate, rent inflation will surge.

The Fed can continue its Groucho Marx impression (“Who are you going to believe –me, or your own eyes?”) only until the inflation now in the pipeline shows up in the official numbers. Perhaps America’s monetary officials will find themselves at Dulles Airport this time next year surrounded by murderous mobs of renters waiting for rescue flights to Davos.

But the blame for all this will land on the desk of beleaguered President Biden, who has to answer to Americans who have seen their real incomes eroded by inflation during every one of the past twelve months.

The chart below shows that today’s reading of the Consumer Price Index for shelter lines up with past changes in the Zillow Rent Index. That is, past values of the Zillow Index correlate closely with today’s value of the Consumer Price Index, for the reasons I cited above.

The table shows the correlation between, respectively, the rent component of CPI and the Zillow Rent Index (in terms of year-on-year change), with lags. So the first bar (starting from the bottom and going up) is the correlation of this month’s value of each variable with the previous month’s; the next bar is the correlation of this month’s value with the value two months ago, etc.

What this cross-correlogram shows is that there is a very high correlation between this month’s CPI shelter number, and lagged values of the Zillow index going back 12 months.  

Using the lagged relationship between the shelter component of CPI and the Zillow Index, I forecast next year’s change in the CPI shelter index from this year’s change in the Zillow Index. The result is shown in the chart below:

The model forecast lines up quite well with ten years of history of the CPI shelter component. Projected into the middle of 2022, the model forecasts a 5% annual rate of increase in CPI shelter. That’s far in excess of the Federal Reserve’s threshold of pain.

‘Forever war’ benefiting Afghans? Follow the money

Whoever bought Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and other US defense stocks made a literal killing

INCLUDE 'CONTRACTORS'; HALLIBURTON, BECHTEL, SCHLUMBERGER,KKR, ETC.

By PEPE ESCOBAR 

AUGUST 23, 2021

A money changer shows afghani banknotes on a street in Kabul on June 30, 2021.

 Photo: AFP / Adel Berry

After 20 years and a staggering US$2.23 trillion spent in a “forever war” persistently spun as promoting democracy and benefiting the “Afghan people,” it’s legitimate to ask what the Empire of Chaos has to show for it.

The numbers are dire. Afghanistan remains the world’s 7th poorest nation: 47% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank. No less than 75% of the – dissolved – Kabul government’s budget was coming from international aid. According to the World Bank, that aid was responsible for the turnover of 43% of the economy – one that was mired in massive government corruption.

According to the terms of the Washington-Taliban agreement signed in Doha in February 2020, the US should continue to fund Afghanistan during and after its withdrawal.

Now, with the Fall of Kabul and the imminent return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it’s becoming clear that applying financial soft power tactics may be even more deadly than a mere NATO occupation.

Washington has frozen $9.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank reserves and the International Monetary Fund has canceled its lending to Afghanistan, including $460 million that’s part of a Covid-19 relief program.

These dollars pay for government salaries and imports. Their absence will lead to the “Afghan people” hurting even more, a direct consequence of inevitable currency depreciation, rising food prices and inflation.

A corollary to this economic tragedy is a classic “take the money and run” caper: Former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country after allegedly packing four cars with $169 million in cash, and leaving $5 million on the tarmac of Kabul airport.

That’s according to two witnesses: one of his own bodyguards and the Afghan ambassador in Tajikistan; Ghani has denied the looting allegations.

Ghani’s plane was denied landing in Tajikistan and also Uzbekistan, proceeding to Oman until Ghani was welcomed in the UAE – very close to Dubai, a global Mecca of smuggling, money laundering and racketeering.

The Taliban have already stated that a new government and a new political and economic framework will be announced only after NATO troops are definitively out of the country next month.

The complex negotiations to form an “inclusive” government, as repeatedly promised by Taliban spokesmen, are de facto led on the non-Taliban side by two members of a council of three: former President Hamid Karzai and Ghani’s eternal rival, the leader of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah. The third member, acting in the shadows, is warlord-turned-politician and two-time prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Abdullah Abdullah (right), chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), and former president Hamid Karzai (2nd from right) meet with Abdul Rahman Mansour (second from left), the acting Taliban governor of Kabul, in Kabul on August 21, 2021. Photo: AFP /Taliban handout via EyePress News

KARZAI IS PASHTUN SO ARE THE TALIBAN

Karzai and Abdullah, both vastly experienced, are regarded by the Americans as “acceptable,” so that may go a long way in terms of facilitating future, official Western recognition of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and restored multilateral institution funding.

Yet there are myriad problems including the very active role of Khalil Haqqani, who leads the Taliban Peace Council Commission while on a “terror watch list” and under UN sanctions. Not only is Haqqani in charge of Kabul’s security; he’s also side by side with Karzai and Abdullah in the discussions to form an inclusive government.

What makes the Taliban run

The Taliban have been operating outside of the Western banking system for two decades now. The bulk of their income comes from transit tax on trade routes (for instance, from Iran) and fuel levies. Profits from opium and heroin exports (domestic consumption not permitted) reportedly account for less than 10% of their income.

In countless villages across the deep Afghan countryside, the economy revolves around petty cash transactions and barter.

I received a copy of a high-level Pakistani academia-intelligence paper examining the challenges facing the new Afghan government.

The paper notes that “the standard route of development to be followed will be very pro-people. Taliban’s Islam is socialist. It has an aversion towards wealth being accumulated in fewer hands” – and, crucially, also an aversion to usury.

On the initial steps towards development projects, the paper expects them to come from Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Iranian and Pakistani companies – as well as a few government sectors. The Islamic Emirate “expects infrastructure development packages” at costs that are “affordable by the country’s existing GDP.”

Afghanistan’s nominal GDP in 2020 was $19.8 billion, according to World Bank figures.

New aid and investment packages are expected to come from Shanghai Cooperation Organization member nations (Russia, China, Pakistan) or SCO observers (Turkey and currently Iran – scheduled to become a full member at the SCO summit next month in Tajikistan). Inbuilt is the notion that Western recognition will be a Sisyphean task.

The paper admits that the Taliban have not had time to evaluate how the economy will be the key vector deciding Afghanistan’s future independence.

But this passage of the paper may hold the key: “In their consultations with the Chinese, they were advised to go slow and not rock the boat of the Western world system by talking too soon about state control of capitalism, interest-free economy, and de-linking from the IMF-based financial system. However, since the West has pulled back all the money from the Afghan exchequer, Afghanistan is likely to apply for short-term aid packages against their resource base.”

An Afghan currency exchanger counts money as dealers have been hit hard following the fall in value of the Afghani currency, leading to a rise in food prices in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 16, 2021. 

Photo: AFP via Anadolu Agency / Haroon Sabawoon

IMF-NATO as brothers in arms

I asked Michael Hudson, an economics professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City and Peking University, how he would recommend the new government to act. He answered, “For one thing, embarrass the hell out of the IMF for acting as an arm of NATO.”

Hudson referred to a Wall Street Journal article written by a former IMF advisor now with the Atlantic Council as saying that “now, since recognition is frozen, banks all over the world will hesitate to do business with Kabul. This move provides the US with leverage to negotiate with the Taliban.”

So this may be going the Venezuela way – with the IMF not “recognizing” a new government for months and even years. And on the seizure of Afghan gold by the New York Fed – actually a collection of private banks – we see echoes of the looting of Libya’s and seizure of Venezuela’s gold.

Hudson sees all of the above as “an abuse of the international monetary system – which is supposed to be a public utility – as an arm of NATO run by the US. IMF behavior, especially regarding the new drawing rights, should be presented as a litmus test” for the viability of a Taliban-led Afghanistan.

Hudson is now working on a book about the collapse of antiquity. His research led him to find Cicero, in In Favor of the Manilian Law (Pro Lege Manilia), writing about Pompeus’s military campaign in Asia and its effects on the provinces in a passage that perfectly applies to the “forever war” in Afghanistan:

“Words cannot express, gentlemen, how bitterly hated we are among foreign nations because of the wanton and outrageous conduct of the men whom in recent years we have sent to govern them. For, in those countries, what temple do you suppose had been held sacred by our officers, what state inviolable, what home sufficiently guarded by its closed doors? Why, they look about for rich and flourishing cities that they may find an occasion for a war against them to satisfy their lust for plunder.”

Switching from the classics to a more pedestrian level, WikiLeaks has been replaying a sort of Afghanistan Greatest Hits , reminding public opinion, for instance, that as far back as 2008 there was already “no pre-defined end date” for the “forever war.”

Yet the most concise assessment may have come from Julian Assange himself:

“The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

The “forever war” may have been a disaster for the bombed, invaded and impoverished “Afghan people,” but it was an unmitigated success for what Ray McGovern so memorably defines as the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Counter-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank) complex. Anyone who bought stocks of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and the rest of that crowd made – literally – a killing.

Facts are indeed dire. Barack Obama – who presided over a hefty Afghan “kill list” – throws a birthday party and invites the woke nouveaux riches. Julian Assange suffers psychological torture imprisoned in Belmarsh. And Ashraf Ghani mulls how to spend $169 million in the Dubai rackets, funds some say were duly stolen from the “Afghan people.”

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‘Fight to the death’ looms in Panjshir Valley
Ahmad Massoud, leader of the defiant National Resistance Front, claims to have some 9,000 fighters

By DAVE MAKICHUK

AUGUST 26, 2021

The Panjshir Valley, in the Hindu Kush mountains north of Kabul, has long been the heart of military resistance in Afghanistan and looks like it is becoming the centre of a gathering of “resistance” forces against Taliban rule. Credit: AFP photo.

It’s only a matter of when the attack comes.

And when it does it could be the greatest battle, and possibly the bloodiest, that Afghanistan has ever seen.

You see, thirty-three of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces fell to the Taliban over the span of two weeks in early August.

But one region, has not.

The sole area that has resisted Taliban encroachment has been the province of Panjshir, located in a valley at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains.

The valley’s name translates to “five lions,” although other translations claim its name may refer to five mountain peaks located down the length of the valley.

Led by Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, he claims to have some 9,000 available fighters, as well as hundreds of military vehicles and five helicopters, Trevor Filseth of The National Interest reported.

And while Panjshir’s defenders have been strengthened by the arrival of thousands of soldiers from the now-defunct Afghan National Army, Massoud’s position appears to be militarily indefensible, analysts say.

The valley is fully surrounded by Taliban territory and they are greatly outnumbered.

The 32-year-old Massoud, who has dreams of following in his “father’s footsteps,” said his group is pushing for a new system of government in Afghanistan — an open and democratic system — but is prepared to fight if needed.

Without a comprehensive power-sharing agreement, Massoud has warned that a new and bloody civil war is inevitable.

“We confronted the Soviet Union, and we will be able to confront the Taliban,” a defiant Massoud told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya television channel.

While Taliban forces rolled over the country easily in just a couple weeks, they will likely encounter stiff, perhaps even fanatical, resistance.

An Agence France-Presse correspondent reported seeing “machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags” set up by the National Resistance Front to defend its positions in the Panjshir Valley.

In an op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post, Massoud said “America can still be a great arsenal of democracy” by supporting his fighters.

He said he has the forces to mount an effective resistance, but called on the United States to supply arms and ammunition to his militia.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” he said.

His father Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, led the strongest resistance against the Taliban from his stronghold in the valley northeast of Kabul until his assassination two days before Sept. 11, 2001.

Famed for its natural defences, the redoubt tucked into the Hindu Kush mountains never fell to the Taliban during the civil war of the 1990s, nor was it conquered by the Soviets a decade earlier, and is now Afghanistan’s last remaining holdout.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” wrote Ahmad Massoud in an op-ed published in the Washington Post. Credit: AFP photo.

T.E. Lawrence, the master of hit-and-run guerrilla warfare, would have been impressed.

The elder Massoud built his formidable reputation by holding out against repeated Soviet offensives in the 1980s, using his wits and the high mountain ranges.

He inflicted devastating ambushes on Russian supply convoys, even earning a grudging respect from several Soviet generals.

He would also warn the West about the threat of terrorism from al-Qaeda.

But while Massoud’s famous father could rely upon overland supply lines into Tajikistan, today, Ahmad Massoud has no method of resupplying except flights over Taliban territory.

The younger Massoud also has little military experience, though he was educated at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in Britain and King’s College, London, and earned a degree in war studies before returning to Afghanistan in 2016.

If and when, the Taliban launch a major offensive to take the region — and they will if talks do not succeed — they will also come up against many of the nation’s hardened, US-trained special-forces units, which did much of the hardest fighting against the Taliban during the conflict.

None of these guys are going to be laying down their arms anytime soon, for the basic reason they will be tortured and executed.

Sources say they are fierce, and will fight to the death if they have to.

As former UK prime minister Tony Blair said, it’s one thing to take Afghanistan, quite another to rule it.

Politically, Panjshir’s position was also strengthened with the arrival of Afghanistan’s former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who has since declared himself as the nation’s interim leader following the flight of President Ashraf Ghani to the United Arab Emirates.

In the following days, other Afghan leaders, such as Defense Minister Bismillah Khan and Ahmad Zia Massoud, Massoud’s uncle and a long-time leader within Panjshir, have gone to the valley.

Notorious Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum is also rumored to be present.

At 67, the greying Uzbek militia leader is not quite in the fighting shape of his youth — he has just returned from medical treatment in Turkey — but his desire to be on the frontline does not appear to have dimmed.

While some experts on Afghanistan have highlighted potential tensions between the leaders, Saleh and Massoud appear to be cooperating, and both men have resolved not to surrender to the Taliban.

“The Taliban will not last long if it continues on this path,” Massoud said, in a report from the UK’s Daily Mail.

In the face of superior forces and potential annihilation, Massoud spat: “We are ready to defend Afghanistan and we warn of a bloodshed.”

Inspired by past victories against the Soviets and the Taliban, Panjshiri soldiers have also spoken in recent days about “a fight to the death.”

But this time, the Taliban will be fully armed with new weapons secured from surrendering Afghan forces — guns, ammo, vehicles, helicopters and more.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that hundreds of Taliban fighters had traveled to Panjshir to suppress the anti-Taliban resistance with force, but did not offer any further details.

Both the Panjshir resistance and the Taliban initially committed to talks regarding Afghanistan’s future political system and the valley’s status, but these talks appear to have broken down.

While an early attempt to capture the province appeared to have been repelled by Massoud’s forces, with a loss of several hundred Taliban fighters, the Taliban remains in control of the surrounding areas, and appears to have retaken three villages near the entrance to the valley, according to BBC’s Yalda Hakim.

‘‘We’re waiting for some opportunity, some support,” Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army, and now a commander in Massoud’s resistance, told the New York Times by phone.

“Maybe some countries will be ready for this great work. So far, all countries we talked to are quiet. America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet.’’

Sources: The Daily Mail, The National Interest, BBC News, Hindustan Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Al Arabiya, Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera, France 24

BEST DAMNED KILLING MACHINE EVER

OBITUARY

Famed A-10 Warthog pioneer passes away
Pierre Spey was part of the Pentagon's 'Fighter Mafia' and a long-time opponent of the not-so-stealthy F-35

By STEPHEN BRYEN

AUGUST 24, 2021
Print

The A-10 Warthog has until recently been a mainstay of the US Air Force. 

Photo: US Air Force

Pierre Spey, one of the most interesting and controversial aircraft designers and a Pentagon nemesis, died this week at the age of 83. Spey was responsible for the design of the A-10 close support fighter and in part for the F-16 design.

And he was a longtime opponent of the super-expensive stealthy F-35.

Spey was born in 1937 in Nice, France. His parents, both Jewish, escaped the coming holocaust and made their way to the United States. Spey was admitted to Yale University at the age of 14 and later studied at Cornell University. He studied aeronautical engineering, mathematical statistics and operations research.

Starting out at Grumman Aircraft (where the A-10 was eventually built), he went to the Pentagon where he was part of what became known as the “Fighter Mafia” – teaming with John Boyd and Thomas P Christie. Robert Coram in his book on John Boyd has a good deal to say about Spey and Christie.

After his Pentagon career, Spey became a record producer focused on jazz. Some of his recordings were highly praised. The equipment for the recording studio was put together by Spey in his home in suburban Maryland, near Washington DC.

His recording with the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Choir singing Walk With Me appears in Kanye West’s 2004 hit Jesus Walks.

Spey was a highly successful Air Force and Pentagon infighter. Through his influence, the A-10 was chosen over the objections of Air Force brass and Pentagon leaders.

The A-10 is a unique close air support and ground attack aircraft that the US Air Force has been trying to get rid of for decades. Unfortunately for the Air Force, the A-10 has performed brilliantly in the two Iraq wars and in Afghanistan.

The A-10 was called the Warthog because from the outside it is an ugly aircraft. But the Warthog designation was also a term of affection from the pilots who flew the aircraft.

A 30mm cannon from an A-10 sits to the side as an aircraft mechanic works an A-10 Thunderbolt Warthog on December 20, 2017, at Hill Air Force base in Ogden, Utah. 

Photo: AFP / George Frey / Getty Images

Tom Christie said: “He was one of the most detested people by the United States Air Force because he was challenging a lot of sacred programs and strategies.”

The A-10 was originally designed to support NATO if there was a Soviet invasion of Europe. It was designed to knock out Russian armor, radars and command centers and support allied troops against Warsaw Pact forces.

The A-10 features a very unique design. It has two engines, mounted high on the upper rear which are designed to reduce the heat signature that infrared anti-aircraft missiles seek. It has self-sealing foamed fuel tanks that can take ground fire hits and not explode or burn and a titanium cocoon protecting the pilot.

The aircraft design allows the fighter to operate at low speeds and to be maneuverable. It carries a powerful GAU-8, 30mm hydraulically driven seven-barrel Gatling-style autocannon that can fire 3,900 rounds per minute.

It also carries Maverick (AGM-65) air-to-ground TV-guided missiles and bombs. In Operation Desert Storm in 1991, A-10s destroyed more than 900 Iraqi tanks, 2,000 other military vehicles and 1,200 artillery pieces.

On a single day, A-10s destroyed 65 Iraqi, mainly Russian-built heavy battle tanks (T-62s and T-72s).

In Afghanistan, the A-10 was primarily engaged in providing close air support against the Taliban and protecting US and Afghan troops. Most of the time this involved ferreting out Taliban fighters ensconced in mountainous areas surrounding friendly forces rather than performing an anti-armor role. Again the A-10 was tremendously successful.

Even so, the Air Force continues to try and rid itself of the A-10 and replace it with the F-35, something Spey believed was a mistake. The F-35 in a close support role, if it ever was used that way, would be extremely vulnerable to ground fire and in that scenario its stealth capability would be of no value.

Spey considered stealth as a scam because he said Russian radars (which China has copied) using longer-wave frequencies would be able to detect the F-35 and shoot them down. Spey also criticized the F-35 because it is not maneuverable, can’t fly slow and only carries a small weapons load, mostly because the F-35 to retain its stealthiness must carry weapons internally.

  

A US Air Force Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning not-so-stealth fighter. 

Photo: AFP / Yichuan Cao / NurPhoto

Moreover, the original F-35 did not have a gun system – it was put on the aircraft later after much criticism. Of course, the F-35 carries a smaller ammunition load and smaller caliber than the A-10, has a less effective range and isn’t of any use in ground support if the aircraft has to stay far from the conflicted area for safety reasons.

The F-35 is extremely expensive to operate and hard to maintain. The A-10 is far cheaper to operate and easy to maintain even at remote locations (something that can’t be done with the F-35).

Acquisition costs also are radically different. In current-day dollars, the A-10 would cost US$9.3 million (it is no longer manufactured and the plant where it was made is closed). By contrast, the F-35 costs in excess of $78 million and its sustainment costs could bleed the Air Force budget.

In Spey’s view, the F-35 is not a combat survivable aircraft because it can’t really provide close support and because its lack of maneuverability means it wouldn’t survive in any close encounter with enemy aircraft.

By contrast, the A-10 was built to take hits and keep flying. A number of A-10s were shot up in the Iraqi conflicts, but were able to return to base.

In the latest Biden-backed budget, 43 A-10s will be scrapped if the budget is approved by Congress.

American soldiers stand in front of an A-10 Thunderbolt at Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey.

 Photo: AFP / Ozge Elif Kizil / Anadolu Agency

A fitting tribute to Spey would be to give the 43 A-10s the Pentagon wants to scrap to Taiwan.

The A-10 would be a superb aircraft to destroy any attempt by China to launch an invasion of Taiwan, since the aircraft could slice up Chinese landing craft and destroy any armor that the Chinese might be able to get onto the island in an attack.

Supported by upgraded and new F-16s that can challenge China’s top combat aircraft, Taiwan would have a fighting chance to stop even a powerful China from a successful attack.

  

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