US supported weapons shipments to Syria sent via Saudi Arabia and Qatar go to hardcore Islamic terrorists. US says no way to vet groups getting weapons, groups temporarily modify behavior to appeal to weapons providers-NY Times, Oct. 14, 2012

US provides intelligence and other support for weapons shipments to Syria from Qatar and Saudi Arabia that go to Islamic terrorists.

 10/14/2012, “Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria,“ NY Times, David E. Sanger

“Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.

That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.

“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.

The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists….

American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. The officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them….

“We haven’t seen anyone step up to take a leadership role for what happens after Assad,” the diplomat said. “There’s not much of anything that’s encouraging. We should have lowered our expectations.”

The disorganization is strengthening the hand of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, some with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda, he said: “The longer this goes on, the more likely those groups will gain strength.”…

Moreover, the rebels often adapt their language and appearance in ways they hope will appeal to those distributing weapons. For instance, many rebels have grown the long, scraggly beards favored by hard-line Salafi Muslims after hearing that 

Qatar was more inclined to give weapons to Islamists.”…





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US officials find no clear link between Trump and Russia or even that Russia seeks to influence the US election. Behavior has been continuation of usual Russian Cold War methods and not aimed at tilting the election to Trump-NY Times, 11/1/16, page A21

10/31/16, "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia," NY Times, Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers 

"A version of this article appears in print on November 1, 2016, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: After Lengthy Inquiries, Officials Doubt Trump Has Direct Link to Russia."

"For much of the summer, the FBI pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank. 

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.... 

The F.B.I.’s inquiries into Russia’s possible role continue, as does the investigation into the emails involving Mrs. Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, on a computer she shared with her estranged husband, Anthony D. Weiner.... 

Still, they have said that Mr. Trump himself has not become a target. And no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia’s election operations.

At least one part of the investigation has involved Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s [former] campaign chairman....Mr. Manafort, a veteran Republican political strategist, has had extensive business ties in Russia and other former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, where he served as an adviser to that country’s ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.

But the focus in that case was on Mr. Manafort’s ties with a kleptocratic government in Ukraine and whether he had declared the income in the United States and not necessarily on any Russian influence over Mr. Trump’s campaign, one official said. 

In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin. 

F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 “look-up” messages — a first step for one system’s computers to talk to another — to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts....

Investigators, the officials said, have become increasingly confident, based on the evidence they have uncovered, that Russia’s direct goal is not to support the election of Mr. Trump, as many Democrats have asserted, but rather to disrupt the integrity of the political system and undermine America’s standing in the world more broadly. 

The [alleged] hacking, they said, reflected an intensification of spy-versus-spy operations that never entirely abated after the Cold War but that have become more aggressive in recent years as relations with Mr. Putin’s Russia have soured. 

A senior intelligence official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing national security investigation, said the Russians had become adept at exploiting computer vulnerabilities created by the relative openness of and reliance on the internet. Election officials in several states have reported what appeared to be cyberintrusions from Russia, and while many doubt that an Election Day hack could alter the outcome of the election, the F.B.I. agencies across the government are on alert for potential disruptions that could wreak havoc with the voting process itself."...

[Ed. note: On June 30, 2016, Obama, for whatever reason, requested foreign monitors for the November 2016 US presidential election. This was well before the time when Trump began speaking of his concerns about accuracy of various voting machines and procedures. By that date, however, the Democrat candidate and her media had already insisted without evidence that Russia was interfering in the election to Trump's advantage. This NY Times article refutes that notion entirely. US officials have found no evidence that Russia was interfering in the election, nor that they were trying to tilt the election to Trump].

(continuing): "“It isn’t about the election,” a second senior official said, referring to the aims of Russia’s interference. “It’s about a threat to democracy.” 

The investigation has treated it as a counterintelligence operation as much as a criminal one, though agents are also focusing on whether anyone in the United States was involved. The officials declined to discuss any individual targets of the investigation, even when assured of anonymity."...

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Added: On June 30, 2016, Obama, for whatever reason, requested foreign monitors for the November 2016 US presidential election, Miami Herald via Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

10/21/16,  "International monitors for a US election--just like in Haiti," Miami Herald, Andres Oppenheimer, columnist 

"For the first time ever, the Organization of American States will monitor the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, putting the United States in the same league as Haiti and other politically volatile Latin American countries.... 

The head of the OAS observation mission to the U.S. election, former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, told me in an interview that the outside scrutiny was requested by the U.S. government on June 30.

The OAS has been monitoring elections in Latin America and the Caribbean for the past 50 years, most recently in Haiti, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru. Usually, governments request these missions to generate domestic and foreign confidence in the electoral process and to help prevent post-electoral violence. 

In this case, the OAS will deploy election observers in up to 15 U.S. states, including New York, California, Ohio, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Florida will not be included because of a state law that prohibits such outside election missions, she said. 

Chinchilla told me that the OAS is more than happy to conduct its U.S. observation mission, among other things because it will help debunk a frequent excuse by Latin American authoritarian regimes for not accepting outside electoral monitoring missions. 

“Many of them say, ‘If the United States doesn’t allow observers, why should we?’ ” she explained."...

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For the record, as of 2015, John Kerry still thinks the 2004 election was rigged by the Bush campaign. In particular, Kerry thinks they rigged the vote in Ohio.
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Too cold for NY City school kids to go out for recess for 40th day in 2015 winter. In Anchorage, Alaska, kids play outside as long as it's 10 below zero or above-NY Times

3/6/15, "A Casualty of a Frigid New York Winter: Outdoor School Recess," NY Times, Ginia Bellafante

"Midmorning on Tuesday, several hours before snow would return in a ritual that now seems as consistent as receiving the mail, temperatures in New York were cold but not abusive. It was the kind of day, unlike so many others recently, in which forgetting your gloves did not necessarily mean you would feel as if you needed treatment at an urgent-care clinic before you got to work. And yet with the temperature in the 20s, under skies vaguely the color of moleskin, it was neither objectively comfortable nor pleasant.

Despite the relatively mild weather, Tuesday was by rough estimate the 40th day that students at Public School 126 were unable to play outside. Actually, no one can remember the last time the children were able to be outdoors, but speculation landed on sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

P.S. 126 houses an elementary and a middle school in the neighborhood just southeast of Chinatown known as Two Bridges. Many of the students come from the surrounding housing projects that line the East River Drive. P.S. 126 does not have its own playground, which means it relies on equipment in an adjacent park that has been slathered in ice all winter. The parks department hasn’t maintained it, the school’s administrators told me, and as a result children have had to spend recess inside.

In Finland, held out as an international model for educational excellence, where outdoor recess is considered nearly as crucial to academic success as literacy, something like this might ignite a national furor. New York City’s Education Department does not mandate recess; it “encourages” principals to provide elementary school students with at least 20 minutes of outdoor play and activity each day (in Finland a first-grader will receive an hour and a half). But during the past few months, even that standard has been difficult to maintain. Although department policy states that temperature alone should not be a barrier to outdoor play, it discourages schools from sending children outside if it is snowing, if there is ice in the playground or if the wind chill creates an effective temperature of zero degrees or below.

In the past, some parents have complained that these guidelines are too wimpy, leaving schools to cancel recess merely when the temperature falls below 32 or at any sign of light rain. Elsewhere the average 6-year-old is bred for a more extreme hardiness. In the Anchorage, Alaska, school district, children play outside on any day that the temperature exceeds 10 below zero. In Toronto, the threshold for consideration of indoor play is about 13 degrees. In a suburban Minneapolis school district, the cutoff for outdoor play is a wind chill of 10 degrees below zero.

Two years ago, a study from the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that recess played an essential role in children’s intellectual, social and emotional development and that optimal cognitive processing was reliant on periods of unstructured interruption. At P.S. 126 and other schools in poor neighborhoods, it isn’t simply weather that can impede recess, but inadequate space and resources; the school often uses hallways for recreation. About the time the academy’s report was released, the Y.M.C.A. began programs at P.S. 126 and seven other city schools, at no cost to them, to promote and manage recess.

On Tuesday morning, approximately 40 first graders gathered, in a room that was temporarily being used to store supplies, to engage in a half-hour of physical output. Under the direction of a Y.M.C.A. counselor, the children immersed themselves in a gambit of creative visualization. They couldn’t be outdoors, so they would pretend they were, executing yoga poses as they imagined the wilds. “We’re going to see some trees,” the instructor told them. “We’re going to see some grass, and you guys are going to be the things we see on these nature walks.” The children, standing in rows, began marching in place. “The first thing we’re going to see on our nature walk is some mountains,” the instructor continued. “The next thing we’re going to see is some grass in the wind.” Tree poses and plank positions followed.

Because of the Y.M.C.A. program, children at P.S. 126 receive 30 minutes of recess a day and don’t seem to mind that they are indoors, a few blocks from the F.D.R., merely simulating Lake Tahoe. I asked one little girl whether she would prefer if the sessions were held outside, and she affirmatively said no.

Presumably they are crying only in Helsinki."

Image caption: "Lucas Lin and other first graders at Public School 126 near Chinatown have not had any outdoor time for 40 days. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times"

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Super Bowl weather questions have upstaged even the point spread. 11 pro football championship games in NY winters 1934-2001 have ranged from pleasant to arctic-Dave Anderson, NY Times

The 48th Super Bowl will be played in the NY area but there have been 11 pro football championship games in the NY area in Decembers and Januaries from 1934-2001:

1/25/14, "New York Area Weather Has a History with the Super Bowl," NY Times, Dave Anderson

"In the countdowns to each of the previous 47 Super Bowls, the primary question was, quite simply, Which team will win?

But as Denver and Seattle await XLVIII next Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., questions about the weather for the first outdoor cold-climate Super Bowl have upstaged even the point spread.

How cold will it be? How windy? If it snows or rains, how much and when? Before the game? During the game?...

 
For the 11 professional football championship games at the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Giants Stadium over the last eight decades, the weather has ranged from relatively pleasant to arctic. 

DEC. 9, 1934 The Sneakers Game. With the Polo Grounds field frozen by 16-degree cold, the Giants, wearing rubber-soled sneakers borrowed at halftime from Manhattan College, rallied for 27 points in the fourth quarter to dethrone the Chicago Bears for the N.F.L. title, 30-13. Ken Strong rushed for touchdowns of 42 and 11 yards and kicked a 38-yard field goal before 35,059. “They were able to cut back,” the Bears star Bronko Nagurski said, “and we couldn’t.”

DEC. 13, 1936 Although the Boston Redskins won the Eastern Division title, their home attendance had been so low that the team owner, George Preston Marshall, transferred the N.F.L. championship game to the Polo Grounds, where it attracted 29,595 in bright, clear weather with temperatures around freezing. The Green Bay Packers won, 21-6, as Arnie Herber threw two touchdown passes. The next season, the Redskins moved to Washington.

DEC. 11, 1938 The day before, the Polo Grounds field was so muddy from days of steady rain, the Giants practiced in the vacant lot next to the ballpark. Ed Danowski passed for two touchdowns in a 23-17 victory over the Packers before 48,120 in 40-degree weather. In The New York Times, Arthur J. Daley nicknamed the title game the Cash Bowl. Each Giant’s bonanza was $504, each Packer’s $369.

DEC. 17, 1944 In sunny, mid-40s weather, the Packers defeated the Giants, 14-7, before 46,016 at the Polo Grounds. Ted Fritsch scored two touchdowns as the Packers mostly used the star receiver Don Hutson as a decoy. Al Blozis, a Giants star tackle recently commissioned an Army lieutenant, was permitted to play before World War II duty in Europe; five weeks later, he was killed in action in France.

DEC. 15, 1946 The day before, the police questioned Giants tailback Frank Filchock and fullback Merle Hapes about an offer of a $2,500 bribe and a $1,000 bet from the gambler Alvin Paris to throw the N.F.L. title game against Chicago. Hapes was ruled ineligible by Commissioner Bert Bell for not reporting the offer to Giants officials. Filchock, who denied the offer (he later acknowledged it in court) was allowed to play; he threw two touchdown passes as the Bears won, 24-14, before 58,346 at the Polo Grounds in 30-degree weather. Filchock and Hapes were later suspended indefinitely.

DEC. 30, 1956 In windy, 20-degree cold, 56,836 fans watched the Giants rout the Bears, 47-7, at Yankee Stadium with snow on the sidelines. Anticipating a frozen field, Giants defensive end Andy Robustelli brought four dozen pairs of sneakers from his Stamford, Conn., sporting goods store. Gene Filipski ran back the opening kickoff 53 yards to the Bears’ 39, and the Giants rolled. Alex Webster scored two touchdowns, and the Giants’ defense, led by the rookie linebacker Sam Huff, stuffed the Bears. They wore sneakers, too, but their coach, Paddy Driscoll, said, the Giants’ “soles were thicker.”

1962 NFL Chp.at Yankee Stad. w. dust, getty

DEC. 28, 1958 The N.F.L. championship game that came to be known as the Greatest Game Ever Played went into the league’s first overtime in perhaps the greatest possible weather: 47 degrees at the 2 p.m. kickoff, 49 at 4 p.m. with little wind. The Giants led the Baltimore Colts, 17-14, on Charlie Conerly’s 15-yard touchdown pass to Frank Gifford with two minutes remaining at Yankee Stadium. But Johnny Unitas drove the Colts 73 yards to position Steve Myhra’s tying 20-yard field goal with seven seconds on the clock. In overtime, Unitas, completing passes to Raymond Berry for 25, 16 and 21 yards, set up Alan Ameche’s 1-yard touchdown for the Colts’ 23-17 victory.

DEC. 30, 1962 As if the 17-degree temperature for the second-half kickoff of the N.F.L. title game at Yankee Stadium wasn’t frigid enough for the Giants and the Packers, swirling wind as wild as 40 miles per hour blunted their passing. Y. A. Tittle, who threw for 33 regular-season touchdowns for the Giants, completed 18 of 41 passes for 197 yards. “When the ball hit the wind,” he said, “it swerved like a dying duck.” Bart Starr hit 9 of 21 for only 85 yards for the Packers. In a duel of 13 punts, Jim Taylor rushed for 85 yards, including a 7-yard touchdown, and Jerry Kramer kicked three field goals in the Packers’ 16-7 victory. The Giants’ score resulted from a blocked punt. [image above]

DEC. 29, 1968 Early arrivals for the American Football League championship game at Shea Stadium stared. On orders from Al Davis, the Oakland major-domo, carpenters had erected a wooden chicken-coop-like structure on the Raiders’ sideline to shield his players from the frigid upper 30s cold with swirling 15-m.p.h. wind that gusted to 25 to 30 m.p.h. League officials quickly ordered the enclosure dismantled before the kickoff. In the wind, Joe Namath completed only 19 of 49 passes for 266 yards, but three were for touchdowns. The Jets won, 27-23, before 62,627 to qualify for Super Bowl III in Miami, where they upset the Colts, 16-7.

JAN. 11, 1987 When the Giants won the coin toss, Coach Bill Parcells opted to kick off in 30-degree cold at Giants Stadium with gusts in excess of 30 m.p.h. at their back. As the defense pinned the Redskins’ offense, the Giants jumped to a 10-0 lead on Raul Allegre’s 47-yard field goal and Phil Simms’s 11-yard touchdown pass to Lionel Manuel. Joe Morris added a 1-yard run for a 17-0 halftime lead. In the scoreless second half, the defense, led by Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson, completed the shutout. In a blizzard of torn paper, 76,633 celebrated the N.F.C. champions’ first trip to the Super Bowl, a 39-20 win over the Broncos. 

JAN. 14, 2001 With the temperature in the mid-40s and not much wind, the Giants routed the Minnesota Vikings, 41-0, for their third N.F.C. title in one of the franchise’s most dominant postseason performances. Quarterback Kerry Collins completed 28 of 39 passes for 381 yards and 5 touchdowns. Ike Hilliard caught 10 passes, two for touchdowns, for 155 yards. Coach Jim Fassel’s offense amassed 518 yards and 31 first downs. The defense limited the Vikings to 114 yards and 9 first downs as 79,310 at Giants Stadium looked forward to the franchise’s third Super Bowl, a 34-7 loss to the Baltimore Ravens in Tampa, Fla.

But now, with the Broncos and the Seahawks about to arrive, the primary Super Bowl XLVIII question remains to be answered: What will the weather be and how will it affect the game?"

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