Archives: Articles

By Patrick Martin

The US Congress took its first legislative action of the new congressional term on behalf of the corporate elite, as the Senate voted by 54-45 to pass a resolution rescinding the Stream Protection Rule adopted by the Department of the Interior in December. The rule restricts the dumping of waste by coal companies engaged in a technique known as “mountaintop removal.”

Four Democrats joined 51 Republicans to approve the resolution, which passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday, in a similar near-party-line vote, by a margin of 228-194. The resolution now goes to the White House, where President Trump will sign it, repealing the regulation.

The Stream Protection Rule was finalized by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement on December 20, 2016 after years of delaying tactics by the coal companies and their legislative allies, Democratic and Republican. The rule runs to thousands of pages in an effort to counteract the various methods employed by the coal companies to evade responsibility.

At the time of the rule’s enactment, the Department of the Interior said it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby waters. The rule also establishes stricter guidelines for exceptions to the rule banning mining within 100 feet of a waterway.

The regulation requires coal companies engaging in surface mining to set aside resources to clean up waste and prevent it from going into local rivers and streams. It requires companies to pay for the cleanup of waterways affected by the dumping of mine waste.

Prior to adoption of the rule, companies could engage in mountaintop removal while promising to remedy at some later time the environmental horrors that resulted. They could then file for bankruptcy and escape the financial consequences of the pollution disasters they created. At least 2,000 miles of waterways in coalfield regions have been devastated in this way.

The four Senate Democrats who backed repeal are from states with either significant coal industries or the headquarters of major coal companies: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Republicans portrayed the bill as a measure to liberate American industry from the stranglehold of misguided overregulation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday, “In my home state of Kentucky and others across the nation, the stream buffer rule will cause major damage to communities and threaten coal jobs.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, “The stream protection rule is really just a thinly veiled attempt to wipe out coal mining jobs.” He claimed, “The Department of Interior’s own reports show that mines are safe and the surrounding environment is well-protected.”

Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was more explicit about the ideological basis of the repeal, calling the rule part of “a radical leftist elitist agenda against carbon-based jobs.”

Environmental organizations condemned the congressional action. Brandi Colander of the National Wildlife Federation said that “the people of coal country deserve to have states empowered with regulatory certainty to implement these rules with confidence that their water is safe to drink and land will be left behind for future generations to enjoy.”

The congressional action takes place under the auspices of the Congressional Review Act, which allows a new Congress to repeal, by a simple majority vote of each house, any regulation enacted by a federal department during the last 60 legislative working days of the previous Congress. This makes quick congressional action possible, since the repeal requires only 51 votes in the Senate and cannot be filibustered.

The law has been used only once since its passage in 1996. In 2001, the Republican-controlled Congress voted to repeal a Labor Department regulation protecting workers from repetitive-motion injuries, adopted in the final days of the Clinton administration, and the new president, George W. Bush, signed the bill into law.

House and Senate Republican leaders have set out to employ this previously obscure law as a mechanism for the wholesale repeal of environmental, workplace and other regulations enacted toward the end of the Obama administration. Some congressional aides have argued that the timeframe could be expanded to include virtually any regulation enacted by the previous administration.

The repeal of the Stream Protection Rule was the first in a series of five House resolutions to repeal regulations enacted last year under the Obama administration. These measures demonstrate the priorities of the Republican-controlled Congress and the new Trump administration.

The second resolution to pass the House Wednesday, and awaiting a Senate vote Thursday night, will repeal a regulation enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Resource Extraction Rule requires energy companies to report payments they make to foreign governments for the right to extract oil, gas and minerals.

While seemingly arcane, the rule, authorized under the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulation law, is aimed at allowing the citizens of impoverished Third World countries to know what corporations are paying their governments to loot their countries’ resources. It has been fiercely opposed by the oil industry because it would shed light on their payoffs to foreign government officials.

The Reuters report on the House vote Wednesday to repeal the two regulations, the Stream Protection Rule and the Resource Extraction Rule, carried the unusually blunt headline “US House axes rules to prevent corruption, pollution.”

The other three regulations targeted for repeal include:

• The so-called “blacklisting” rule for federal contractors. This rule, finalized by the Department of Labor in August 2016, requires companies bidding on federal contracts to disclose any labor law violations in the previous three years, such as failure to pay the minimum wage, cheating workers out of overtime, and so on. A corporate lawsuit resulted in a court injunction temporarily blocking the rule, which would now be repealed.

• A rule enacted by the Social Security Administration requiring background checks before people who receive disability benefits because of mental illnesses are allowed to buy guns. This was opposed by right-wing politicians as an infringement of Second Amendment rights.

• The Methane Waste Rule, also established by the Department of the Interior, which requires oil and gas companies operating on federal or Native American tribal land to reduce methane leaks, capturing the methane instead of releasing it into the air. Methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gas emissions.

According to numerous press accounts, venting and flaring of methane from oil and gas drilling has led to the creation of a methane cloud the size of the state of Delaware, situated above the Four Corners area where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado come together. The cloud was first detected by NASA satellites.

The Congressional Review Act not only expedites the repeal of regulations, it makes it far more difficult to re-enact them later. Once a rule has been repealed, federal agencies are barred from ever again adopting new rules that are in “substantially the same form.” Such rules would have to be authorized by new legislation that would be subject to a Senate filibuster. Moreover, the law bars any judicial review of any “determination, finding, action, or omission” under the CRA.

Congressional Republicans are limited in how far they can proceed with the repeal of regulations using the CRA only by the law’s provision that each regulation requires a separate resolution, and each resolution requires 10 hours of debate in the House and the Senate.

There is not enough legislative time available to pass separate resolutions for all 200 of the regulations identified by the Congressional Research Service as eligible for repeal. On January 4, to address this difficulty, the House passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, which allows Congress to bundle an entire group of regulations into a single bill for up or down vote by a simple majority. This act, however, faces a likely filibuster in the Senate.

The following day, the House passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. This bill requires regulations that cost US corporations more than $100 million to be approved by a vote of both houses of Congress before they take effect. Passage of the REINS Act would effectively shut down all federal regulation of corporate business—the real goal of the Trump administration and its congressional allies.

While the House of Representatives has taken the lead in repealing regulations, the Senate is pushing ahead with the greatest gift to polluters, the installation of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. As attorney general of the state of Oklahoma, Pruitt was widely regarded as the best friend of the oil and gas industry, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against EPA anti-pollution regulations and even directly incorporating text provided by the corporations into his legal briefs.

Pruitt’s nomination was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by an 11-0 vote after the minority Democrats boycotted the hearing and the Republicans voted to suspend the rules and proceed to a vote. The nomination now goes to the floor of the Senate for a confirmation vote, expected next week, along party lines.

3 February 2017

By Gabriel Black

President Donald Trump threatened to revoke federal funding to the University of California at Berkeley, one of the top public research institutions in the United States, following a protest Wednesday night by thousands of students against Milo Yiannopoulos, the extreme right-wing editor of Breitbart News. Yiannopoulos had been invited by the campus Republicans to speak at the university.

The protest was peaceful, but a small, well-organized group of anarchists assaulted Trump supporters and vandalized stores and other property. The university police canceled Yiannopoulos’s appearance and ordered a lockdown of the campus, with students told to “shelter in place.”

The gratuitous violence carried out by the black-hooded ANTIFA group was a gift to the Trump administration, which seized on its actions to smear the students who demonstrated to express opposition to the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism and general contempt for democratic rights pushed by Breitbart News and Yiannopoulos. The former head of Breitbart, a media platform for the fascistic “alt-right,” is Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief White House adviser.

All three early morning network news programs led Thursday with the violence in Berkeley in reports designed to discredit the protesters and promote Yiannopoulos and his supporters as defenders of free speech and academic freedom. The viciously anti-Muslim Breitbart editor is touring mostly liberal US campuses in a well-organized provocation aimed precisely at inciting violent incidents that can be used as a pretext for the suppression of democratic and left-wing views.

Several other stops on Yiannopoulos’s tour have been canceled. At his speech at the University of Washington, one of his supporters shot and seriously injured a protester.

His speech Tuesday night at California Polytechnic University was a diatribe against the right to abortion. Yiannopoulos presented the world as a battle between Christian “Western civilization” and Islam. In another speech last year he said, “Islam, not radical Islam, is the problem.” Muslim immigrants, he added, “bring their delicacies with them: pork chops, yoghurt and gang-rape.”

Writing at 2 am Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, Trump tweeted, “If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view—NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”

Berkeley research relies on $370 million in annual funding from the federal government, a little more than half of its yearly research budget. The University of California system as a whole receives $1.6 billion in federal aid for students.

Protests on the campus began at around 5:30 pm on Wednesday, with some 2,000 students participating. Shortly after the protesters assembled, a section of anarchists began to shoot fireworks at police and event organizers and assault the few Trump supporters in the area. They attempted to break into the building where the event was scheduled by smashing the windows. The university police canceled the event and evacuated Yiannopoulos.

The police then fired tear gas, rubber bullets and noise grenades into the crowd. Some of the so-called “black bloc” protesters tore down a mobile floodlight and set its generator on fire.

After the event had been canceled, a smaller section of the protest took to the streets and marched around Berkeley. One teenager, not a student at UC Berkeley, was arrested. Two others were arrested earlier in the afternoon for allegedly assaulting a Trump supporter on campus.

Anarchist groups such as ANTIFA are politically reactionary. They represent demoralized sections of the middle class that are hostile to any struggle to politically educate and mobilize the working class and youth against the capitalist system. Their tactics, gratuitous violence and destruction of property, flow from and reflect their bankrupt politics.

Undercover police and paid provocateurs would act no differently at a mass demonstration than ANTIFA did Wednesday evening in Berkeley. In fact, such organizations are, by dint of their politics and the social forces they attract, magnets for police infiltration. There can be little doubt that significant numbers of the hooded anarchists who rioted in Berkeley were police agents or informants.

3 February 2017

By Mike Head

In what appears to have been a calculated leak from the highest echelons of the White House, US President Donald Trump reportedly “blasted” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a phone call last weekend and then abruptly cut off the call.

According to the details first published by the Washington Post yesterday, Trump fumed at Turnbull for asking him to honour an Obama administration refugee-swapping deal with Australia. In line with his demonisation of refugees, Trump labelled it “the worst deal ever” and accused Turnbull of trying to export the “next Boston bombers” to the US.

Trump went further, however, telling Turnbull that their conversation was the “worst by far” of the five phone calls he had that day with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. After 25 minutes, Trump suddenly ended the scheduled one-hour call “making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin,” the newspaper reported.

The leaked content of the conversation exposed Turnbull’s insistence that it “ended cordially” and the fraud of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s earlier claims that the call was “very warm” and “very engaging.” Turnbull yesterday said he was “very disappointed” that details of the call were leaked.

Clearly, however, this was not merely a personal slight to Turnbull. It was a deliberate warning shot to his government and the entire Australian political establishment about the future of its post-World War II military alliance with the US. Sitting in the Oval Office monitoring Trump’s call was his chief strategist, the fascistic Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s militarist national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Yesterday, Trump reiterated the wider bellicose “America First” message, to US allies and rivals alike. In a speech, he told a Washington audience that the world was in a mess, but he was “going to straighten it out.” He declared: “When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it… We have to be tough. It’s time we have to be a little tough, folks. We are taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore.”

Earlier in the day, gangster-like, Trump said he “loved Australia as a country” but had “a problem” with the refugee deal. His spokesman Spicer reiterated that Trump was “unbelievably disappointed” about the “horrible deal” and refugees would be allowed in the US only if they passed “extreme vetting.”

In reality, this draconian screening was already central to the agreement stuck with the Obama administration last year, which was designed to reinforce the reactionary anti-refugee policies on both sides of the Pacific. Not one of the more than 2,000 refugees incarcerated indefinitely by Australia on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island is guaranteed entry into the US.

Trump’s bullying treatment of Turnbull has thrown the Australian government and the media and political elite into turmoil because it makes brutally clear that the new administration’s belligerence has ominous implications. This is not least because Washington is reportedly pressing for a far greater military commitment from Canberra, particularly in the Middle East and the South China Sea.

In return for US military and strategic protection, Australian governments have sent troops to kill and die in every major US-instigated war for the past six decades—from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But much more is now being required as the Trump White House seeks to “make America Great again” against its rivals, including China and Germany.

Largely buried in the Australian media is what the White House has demanded of Turnbull’s government, or is soon likely to, in return for the refugee-swap arrangement. In today’s Australian, editor-at-large Paul Kelly noted: “If the deal proceeds Trump, as a transactional president, will seek a quid pro quo at some point on some issue. And Turnbull, aware he has used up his political capital, will agree.”

On Wednesday, citing unnamed “senior US sources,” the Australian reported that the Trump administration had agreed, after lobbying from Canberra, to amend its sweeping anti-immigrant executive order to allow for the “pre-existing” refugee-swap agreement.

But the White House was “not happy” and “made no secret that Australia would ultimately be expected to reciprocate.” One source said: “The favour won’t be called in straight away … but some sort of reciprocity will come eventually. And that is likely to come in the form of freedom-of-navigation exercises [in the South China Sea] or the deployment of special forces to Iraq.”

Under Turnbull’s ousted predecessor, Tony Abbott, the Liberal-National government sent war planes and other military forces to join the renewed US war in Iraq, under the guise of combatting the Islamic State. Dispatch of special forces to join US ground forces would signal a marked escalation of the ongoing US drive for hegemony over the resource-rich Middle East.

Until now, the Turnbull government, while carefully toeing Washington’s line, has not followed the US in sending warships or planes into the territorial zones around islets under China’s control in the South China Sea, under the bogus pretext of defending “freedom of navigation.” The Obama administration conducted three such provocative operations, which heightened tensions with Beijing and intensified the danger of a war between the US and China, two nuclear powers.

Trump and his newly-confirmed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have threatened to block China’s access to the islets, which would be an act of war. Such a conflict could have disastrous consequences for the Australian capitalist class, which relies heavily on China as its largest export market.

Trump is now taking to a new level pressure on Canberra that was initiated under Obama, as part of the US military and strategic “pivot to Asia” to combat and prepare for war against China. In mid-2010, when then Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed that the US make some accommodation to China’s economic growth and rising influence, he was deposed in a backroom Labor Party coup orchestrated by elements close to the US embassy, including current Labor leader Bill Shorten.

Barack Obama himself sent blunt warnings to Turnbull, who was initially somewhat critical of the “pivot” when Obama announced it on the floor of the Australian parliament in 2011. Last September, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported that Turnbull, because of his past business interests in China, was “not trusted” by Australian intelligence agencies. Two months later, media leaks revealed that during a one-on-one meeting in Manila, Obama had rebuked Turnbull for failing to consult Washington before a Chinese corporation was awarded a 99-year lease to operate Darwin’s commercial port.

Today, the Australian media is full of alarm and foreboding about the implications of Trump’s dressing down of Turnbull, including the impact it will have on the already falling public support for the US alliance.

AFR chief political correspondent Phillip Coorey wrote: “If Trump continues treating Australia like dirt, public support for doing anything to help the Americans, including letting them keep their troops based in Darwin, let alone following them on any frolic in the South China Sea, will quickly wane.”

Professor James Curran of the US Studies Centre at Sydney University—a centre dedicated to overcoming public hostility to the US after the 2003 Iraq invasion—voiced concerns of what lies ahead. “If you have this sort of tension this early in the life of the administration over relatively small beer, what will happen in the event of a major crisis?”

Others within the media and political establishment, while not calling for a break from the US alliance, are casting doubt on its reliability. Fairfax Media political editor Peter Hartcher today declared it was time to “wake up, Australia!” The “moment of alliance shock” could “jolt Australia into doing more for itself” and “the country might mature from a state of adolescent dependency on America into a more adult state.”

Such statements are part of efforts in the ruling elite to divert public opposition to the Trump administration in a reactionary nationalist direction by advocating a more “independent” foreign policy to assert the interests of the Australian ruling class.

3 February 2017

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Talks between the Syrian regime and opposition forces, held in Kazakhstan’s capital from 23 to 24 January, concluded with Russia, Turkey and Iran announcing their intention for a trilateral mechanism to monitor and enforce the ceasefire between regime forces and rebels. The talks aimed to build on the 30 December truce, which was brokered by Ankara and Moscow, and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. Delegations from armed opposition groups and the Syrian regime were meant to speak directly; however, this failed to materialise. The talks suggest the possibility of a diplomatic resolution for Syria in the future, but one which will favour the regime, and will not totally end the fighting.

The Astana talks highlighted the role of these three regional powers in Syria’s civil war, and the sidelining of the USA and Saudi Arabia; the former was invited as an observer, and the latter not at all. Astana did little to change the situation on the ground as regime forces continue attacking rebel fighters in Wadi Barada, near Damascus, while fighting between rebel groups broke out in Idlib, further weakening the opposition in the face of an assertive regime.

The nature of the Syrian civil war, with the involvement of a number of states supporting a range of actors, and the role of the Islamic State group (IS), has led to the failure of several UN-mandated peace talks. The organisers positioned the Astana talks as a basis for upcoming UN talks in Geneva, intended to cement the ceasefire while establishing a trajectory for future negotiations. The fall of Aleppo in December was a turning point in the conflict, and allowed the Syrian president, Bashar al-Asad, to claim victory and rubbish any attempts to exclude him from any transition process. Since Turkish and Russian support led to Asad’s success in Aleppo, they also took the diplomatic initiative. Their ceasefire deal was signed by Syria and seven major opposition groups. It was active in all areas not under IS control, and excluded UN-designated ‘terrorist’ groups, particularly IS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly al-Qa’ida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra). When the parties decided early January that the ceasefire was substantially holding, Russia and Turkey began preparations to host talks between the regime and opposition forces.

Differing expectations of the Astana talks threatened to collapse the dialogue before it has started. Asad expressed hope that the armed rebel groups will disarm in exchange for an amnesty deal. Opposition groups expected to the talks only to strengthen the ceasefire, leaving any discussion of Syria’s political future to Geneva. The ceasefire agreement between Russia and Turkey has been more successful than previous agreements between Russia and the USA, and the organisers hoped that excluding the USA from a pivotal role may invoke greater trust between participants. Washington’s involvement in the Syrian peace process has decreased not only due to Asad’s ascendency with Russian support or Iran wishing to exclude them from the process, but also as Obama’s presidency ended. Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem also spoke highly of the chance of success due to ‘strong guarantees’ from Moscow, calling the ceasefire a potential starting point for a political process.

Although all opposition groups that had signed the 30 December ceasefire had received invitations to Astana, the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, one of the larger rebel groups, did not attend, citing the fighting in Wadi Barada. The USA had insisted that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD, the largest group in the US-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces) be involved; Moscow remained silent while Ankara refused to consider the inclusion of either the PYD or its armed wing, the YPG, due to their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The SDF responded by announcing its rejection any decisions that would be made in Astana. Opposition groups are divided, and the loss of eastern Aleppo highlighted their weakened position. Turkey is the opposition’s major state ally; however, Ankara’s rapprochement with Moscow forces opposition groups to question the usefulness of a diplomatic route that constrains their offensive options and increases tensions with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The current fighting between Fateh al-Sham and allies against Ahrar al-Sham and allies in Idlib highlights this tension among rebel factions.

The Astana talks were largely unproductive, and their primary impact emerged from discussions on the sidelines between Russia, Turkey and Iran on strengthening the ceasefire. In their agreement to set up a trilateral mechanism to monitor the ceasefire, the parties agreed there could be no military solution in Syria, and that the conflict could only be resolved through compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254. Neither the Syrian regime nor the rebel delegation appeared satisfied by the outcome of the talks. The opposition protested Iran’s inclusion in monitoring the ceasefire and mediating the conflict, and refused to sign any agreement. The government, meanwhile, announced the continuation of an offensive in Wadi Barada despite the ceasefire and had recaptured all rebel villages within a week.

An agreement to extend the ceasefire is a shaky foundation for the UN-mandated talks in Geneva starting on 20 February. Further, the exclusion of up to two thirds of opposition groups does not provide the rebel delegation with a popular mandate. The exclusion of armed groups with alleged al-Qa’ida links has further divided the opposition while providing the regime with an excuse for violating the ceasefire. Iran’s commitment to the ceasefire is a positive step towards freezing the conflict. Ultimately, it seems that a diplomatic solution is on the horizon, with the main drivers being Russia, Turkey and Iran. It will likely be a resolution that sees the co-option of certain sections of the opposition into the government, and an agreement that Asad will remain in power until the next election, when he will gracefully exit.

2 February, 2017

By Juan Cole

I told this story back in 2005 but it is a good story, has held up, and bears repeating now that President Trump is again promoting torture as “effective.” Torture is a good way to get people to tell you what they think you want to hear so that you will stop torturing them. That is, torture may occasionally turn up some good information if it is applied to someone not very clever or not very committed. But it is an excellent way to be trolled by a seasoned operative, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Before the Iraq War, the U.S. government had captured a handful of important al-Qaeda figures and applied torture to them.

One of these was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan terrorist whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri. Under torture, he “confessed” that that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was training al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical weapons.

The Defense Intelligence Agency and other high-level intelligence operatives dismissed this information as unreliable.

It should be noted that no money traces showed al-Qaeda funds coming from Iraq. No captured al-Qaeda fighters had been trained in Iraq. There was no intelligence that in any way corroborated al-Libi’s story. And, it was directly contradicted by two of his superiors.

The information from KSM and Abu Zubaydah circulated widely among intelligence officials.

I still remember Fox News in late 2002 droning on almost nightly about a chemical weapons facility at Salman Pak in Iraq where, its anchors alleged, Saddam was training al-Qaeda agents. It was, like most of the stories told about Iraq in that period, fake news.

There was also a phony story, retailed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other members of the administration, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian extremist who had spent time in Afghanistan, had ties to Saddam Hussein once he relocated to Iraq in 2002. But later on the U.S. army released a document from the Baath Party secret police showing that an APB was put out on al-Zarqawi immediately on his entering Iraq, and local police were ordered to shake down the Jordanian expatriates in Iraq to find out where he was and arrest him immediately, since he was dangerous and had ties to “the Saudi terrorist Usama Bin Laden.”

Top al-Qaeda operative and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and al-Qaeda travel agent and marginal personality Abu Zubayda revealed to interrogators that Usamah Bin Laden had prohibited al-Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the secular Arab nationalist, Saddam Hussein, according to a 9/11 commission report.

This crucial information was withheld from Congress and from the American people by the Bush/Cheney administration in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Although KSM was captured only shortly before the war, surely the connection to Saddam was the first thing they asked him about. His answer was not shared with us, to say the least:

The report on Zubaydah’s debriefing was circulated among U.S. intelligence officers, but his statements were not included in public discussions by Administration officials about the evidence of al-Qaeda ties. “I remember reading the Abu Zubaydah debriefing last year, while the Administration was talking about all of these other reports and thinking that they were only putting out what they wanted,” one official said.

This lie by omission was repeated over and over again by Bush and his cronies:

“Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.”
– Bush in his January 2003 State of the Union address.

“Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.”
– Bush in February 2003.

Al-Fakheri / Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi had a last laugh on the people of the United States. Yes, they captured and tortured him. But he misdirected them toward his enemy, the secularist Baath government of Iraq and arranged for the Americans to overthrow it.

Al-Zarqawi’s branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq, thus freed from Baath surveillance, went from strength to strength, morphed into Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) and by 2014 took over 40% of Iraqi territory.

So beware of the information you get from torture. Your victim may be setting you up. And the psychopaths in the White House will be perfectly happy to run with the fake news gained from torture and use it to bamboozle the public for their own nefarious purposes.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His new book, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East(Simon and Schuster), will officially be published July 1st. He is also the author of Engaging the Muslim World and Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (both Palgrave Macmillan). He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.

29 January 2017

By David Korten

On Friday, Jan. 20, Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office before a crowd best described as puny compared to the estimated 1.8 million people who attended Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. The following day, the world erupted as millions of people joined demonstrations in major cities across the United States and the world to express their commitment to opposing the agenda of the man who now holds the world’s most powerful office. Some cities drew more people than were in Washington for the inauguration.

Does it matter that so many people turned out? A march in itself does not effect change. But as one marcher in Seattle observed, “It provides the foundation for action.”

Saturday’s marches energized millions of people with the assurance they are not alone. And those people affirmed our belief that the power of love can trump the power of hate. This sets the stage for future popular action in defense of the well-being of all.

How do we best characterize the spirit of these marches? Are they protests? Are they demonstrations of resistance?

I have been struck by the wisdom of the Native American tribes at Standing Rock who reject the “protestor” label. They instead call themselves “protectors”—protectors of the waters.

It seems to me that those who marched on Saturday are also best characterized as protectors. Protectors of the vulnerable, protectors of the Constitution, protectors of women’s bodies, protectors of Earth, protectors of democracy.

The difference in language, though subtle, is profound. Resistance and protest are reactions against an unjust act or regime. Protection is a positive affirmation of what we value, what we hold sacred.

When we call ourselves protectors, we cast our role as fulfilling our responsibility to the community that sustains us—not for our personal benefit, but for the benefit of all.

The indigenous protectors of Standing Rock put their lives on the line to protect the sacred waters on which we all depend. They showed us the way of nonviolence in the face of violence. And they offered us a gift—a powerful unifying frame for our activism as we move forward from Saturday’s marches.

Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of the failed system that divides us into a world of winners and losers and threatens the Earth mother on which the well-being of all depends. In the bigger picture, an excessive focus on opposing him is a diversion from the deeper work at hand.

The solution is a better system—a system that protects and supports the healing and health of our Earth Mother, protects the rights and dignity of all humans, spreads the benefits of work equitably to protect the well-being of all, protects real democracy, and encourages us to stand together as protectors of each other in times of crisis.

So, the new president has brought us together. He has helped us rise as protectors of what we value. The marches he provoked enabled us to feel the strength of our numbers and our resolve. In his inaugural address, he said, “Together we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come.” We—a globally inclusive “we,” united as protectors of Earth, justice, and democracy—may do just that. We will claim and shape our common human future in ways far beyond his intention or understanding.

David Korten wrote this opinion piece for YES! Magazine as part of his series of biweekly columns on “A Living Earth Economy.” David is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, and the author of influential books, including When Corporations Rule the World and Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. His work builds on lessons from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty. Follow him on Twitter @dkorten and on Facebook. As do all YES! columnists, he writes here in his personal voice.

28 January 2017

By Rob Hopkins

I want to share a story with you today that I’ve not shared before on this blog.  I was moved by something I saw on Twitter to the effect that the future will not remember Trump, but the future will remember the remarkable things done by those mobilising to oppose him.  It really resonated with me.  I wanted to share a very personal story from my own life which, for me, illustrates that this is possible.

I lived in Ireland from 1996 until 2004. It was wonderful. From 2002 onwards, Emma and I built a home for our family, what was the first new cob house built in Ireland for over 100 years.  Building this house was the culmination of a 10 year plan, something Emma (pictured below laying our limecrete floor)  and I had dreamt of for many years.  The process of construction involved the input of many people

People came on courses to learn how to make rubble trench, lime and stone foundations, how to mix cob with diggers, how to build masonry stoves, how to make clay plasters.  Hundreds of people came as volunteers to work on the house, picking up the skills necessary to then head away and build their own (as some did).

It was a beautiful house, not a right angle in it, beautiful soft light, wood, stone, clay and hemp.  A roof like an upturned boat.  I loved it.  I was so proud of it. We told the story in an online diary. It was in the papers, on the TV.  We were at the stage of fitting doors and windows, the gorgeous, curvaceous clay plasters nearly complete.  Although we weren’t living in it yet, it was starting to feel like home.  Then, one clear, cold night in October 2004, someone set it on fire.

We never found out who.  Or why.  But by the time we saw the fire, the house was lost.  All we could do was sit on the damp grass and watch the whole thing go up in flames.  Two years worth of work.  Most of our money too, as the building was uninsured – in Ireland it was impossible to insure any building project not made exclusively from concrete blocks.

It was deeply traumatic.  It felt like the end of everything.  It felt as though the violent, deluded, criminal act of one or two people had torn up our family’s future and thrown in back in our face.  Our future, which had seemed to be laid out enticingly in front of us, was now an unknown blur.  It was horrible.

But then, in the days and weeks following the fire, something remarkable happened.  Dozens of people, some of whom we didn’t even know, turned up to help clear the site up and make it safe (see photo below). Neighbours came together to offer whatever support they could.  Some friends started to organise a fundraiser in our name. People sent in cards containing cheques, or cash, often people we’d never met, or even heard of.

They wrote things like “In the end, good does always seem to come from terrible events, though it must be impossible to see that now”, before ending “don’t write back. You have enough to do”.  One couple wrote “please know that we hold you in our hearts, thoughts and prayers, and if there is any help or support we can offer, we would be happy to do so”.  Another wrote: “we read about you in the Times, and wanted to say we thing it is an evil thing to do to burn down a house on anyone, least of all children coming up to Christmas”.

A blacksmith wrote to say “if you have the heart to start again, I will gladly offer any work I can as a blacksmith (or in any other capacity) for free”.  It wasn’t just local people, it was people across Ireland.  People we’d never met wrote to tell us “the house has been a source of inspiration not only for ourselves, but many others”.

One woman from Limerick wrote “Stay with your dream.  Your dream is a good one and most people see that.  I hope things work out now”.  A letter from Dublin said “we are pensioners, but wanted to convey our sympathy in a constructive way, so please accept enclosed cheque for a very small amount as a token in this regard”.

One order of nuns sent us a cheque for €5,000.  One schoolboy invited his friends to play football in his garden, charged them each €5 and sent it to us.  There were benefit gigs, pub quizzes.  It was amazing.

People were happy to offer help, but with no expectation of what we would do with it.  One letter which accompanied a €50 note, ended “a little something enclosed to help with whatever is right for you”.  Another said “just a wee note to let you know there’s loads of people thinking of you at this time.  Take comfort in the love of friends”.  One long letter ended “you are not alone.  This has horrified us all into action, and I know many of us are now working to turn this situation to the light with all the speed we can muster”.

Local gardening clubs sent donations.  Local associations wrote to us to let us know that our situation had been discussed at their board meeting and they had unanimously passed a resolution condemning what had happened to us, and offering their support.  The local university’s Environment Society held a benefit event.  One woman wrote from London to say “if you need volunteers to help with reconstruction, send out the word – my partner is a newly qualified electrician and could do with experience!”  Our friend Greg wrote “whatever you choose in the coming year, you will have a community of support from around the island”.

In the end, we decided not to rebuild the house.  In time we decided to move on, and our path took us to Totnes, where we started this thing called Transition.  But for me, once the initial trauma had subsided, the thing that I hold onto now, the thing that I took away from the whole experience, was just how very, very kind and amazing people are, rather than holding onto the actions of one of two people.

I looked back at a folder of clippings and stuff I kept from that time.  Among them was this piece from the Cork Examiner with a photo of me where I look more heartbroken and washed out from crying than in any photo I know.  I imagine as Trump (you won’t hear the term ‘President Trump’ from these lips) settles into the Oval Office, many millions of people are feeling similarly bruised, lost and bewildered.

But I want to tell you that you are surrounded by oceans of goodness, oceans of caring people.  Networks of people who are connected that just need to be activated.  Get off Facebook, get off media that pours out trolls and hateful poison, and strengthen your connections to real, actual people.

The Women’s March last weekend was a beautiful, and deeply moving example that we are here, and we are here for each other.  As was the ‘Resist’ banner unfurled just behind the White House yesterday. They reaffirm that values of care, kindness, connection and reciprocity haven’t gone away.  They may sometimes need a disturbance to form around, an infection around which that immune system can kick in.

But when people ask me why I don’t feel that Trump represents the beginning of the end, some inevitable slide away from connection and human values, it’s because rather than some kind of new normal, his approach represents the aberration to the norm.  Never forget that.

Rob Hopkins is the cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. He is a serial blogger, and author of The Power of Just Doing Stuff , The Transition Handbook and The Transition Companion. He has been awarded a PhD by the University of Plymouth and an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the West of England. In 2012 he was voted one of the Independent’s top 100 environmentalists and one of ‘Britain’s 50 New Radicals’. He is an Ashoka Fellow, a keen gardener and one of the founders of New Lion Brewery in Totnes and a Director of Atmos Totnes, a very ambitious community-led development project.

28 January 2017

By Tom Eley

During a visit to the Pentagon on Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive action calling for stepped up violence in Syria and a vast expansion of the US military, including its nuclear arsenal, to prepare for war with “near-peer competitors”—a reference to nuclear-armed China and Russia—and “regional challengers,” such as Iran.

“I’m signing an executive action to begin a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States,” Trump said during the signing of the document, entitled “Rebuilding the US Armed Forces.”

During the visit, his first to the Pentagon, Trump signed a second order, “Protecting the US from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals,” that freezes visa and immigration applications from predominantly Muslim countries. The order threatens to block refugees from finding sanctuary, workers from taking jobs, students from attending school, and the unification of families (See, “White House to issue executive order on ‘safe zones’ in Syria, ban on Muslim immigrants and refugees”)

The military order directs Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was sworn in at the ceremony, to complete a 30-day “readiness review” designed to prepare for the destruction of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, along with “other forms of Islamic terror.” Last week, Mattis was confirmed by the Senate in a 98-1 vote.

The order further instructs Mattis, in the words of the Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the order prior to its formal release, “to examine how to carry out operations against unnamed ‘near-peer’ competitors, a group which US officials typically identify as China and Russia.” And it commands the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget to develop a “military readiness emergency budget amendment” that would increase military spending in the current year and increase the budget for 2018 and thereafter—increases to be offset by cuts to social spending.

The Presidential Memorandum, only three pages in length, is the blueprint for world war.

The order unmistakably threatens the use of nuclear weapons. Section 3 calls for a nuclear force “to deter 21st century threats” and, menacingly, to “achieve Presidential objectives should deterrence fail.”

It further calls for a plan “to achieve readiness objectives” for the use of the nuclear arsenal “by 2022.” This would include the “modernization” of the US nuclear force, a greatly expanded missile defense system, and increased emphasis on cyber warfare, which aims to cripple the retaliatory capacity of major adversaries by targeting their digital and telecommunication command structures prior to an American strike.

These actions follow on a move by the Obama administration to implement a $1 trillion upgrade in the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The executive action did not put a price tag on new military spending, but media speculation indicates that the figure could approach an additional $100 billion per year. Trump’s military plans hew closely to a Heritage Foundation proposal that calls for the revamping of the nuclear force, the expansion of the Navy to 350 ships, the Air Force to 1,200 fighter and attack jets, the Marine Corps from 24 to 36 divisions, and the Army to more than a half a million soldiers.

The US currently spends approximately $600 billion on its military annually—excluding expenditures on the intelligence agencies and Veterans Administration— more than the next nine largest military spenders combined. American “defense” spending accounts for, by itself, over one third of all global military spending, and it consumes the great majority of the federal discretionary budget.

Increases in military spending, coupled with Trump’s promises to drastically lower taxes on corporations and the rich, must inevitably be paid for by cuts to education, health care and infrastructure, and by plundering Social Security and Medicare.

In securing the presidency, Trump capitalized on popular hostility toward Hillary Clinton’s interventionist stance on Syria and her saber-rattling against Russia. But his executive order’s demand for escalation in Syria increases the likelihood of war with both regional power Iran and nuclear-armed Russia. Russia maintains its only significant foreign military base in Syria and has so far preserved the regime of Bashar al-Assad in a war for regime change orchestrated by the Obama administration.

Trump’s order for a plan to destroy ISIS and “radical Islam,” which he declared in his Inaugural Address he would “eradicate completely from the face of the Earth,” will be drawn up by Mattis, responsible for numerous war crimes in the US occupation of Iraq, including the killing of untold thousands of civilians in the 2004 attack on Fallujah.

While the US now makes war on ISIS, it has funded and directed Al Qaeda affiliates in the regime change operations in Libya and Syria. Yet in remarks made last summer, prior to his nomination to defense secretary, Mattis claimed that, in his view, ISIS was nothing more than a stalking horse for Iran to extend its influence throughout the Middle East. It is widely rumored that Mattis left command in the Obama administration because he favored a more bellicose approach toward Iran.

Even before Trump’s order became public, figures in and around the military speculated that Mattis would propose a dramatic escalation in Syria.

Scott Murray, a retired Air Force colonel involved with previous aerial bombardment of ISIS, told NPR that this could be done by lifting rules preventing the targeting of civilians.

“Commanders could … re-examine limits on the number of civilian casualties that the military risks when it hits ISIL targets,” NPR reported. “Known as the ‘non-combatant value,’ the rule restricts the number of civilians who can be put at risk in an airstrike.”

Officers who spoke with the US government’s overseas broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) complained of the Obama administration “micro-approving” actions in Syria. “Every single person had to be approved,” an unnamed Defense Department official said of a contingent of 203 Special Forces soldiers sent into Syria last year.

A high-ranking Army general, Lt. Gen. David Barno, told NPR’s Morning Edition that, in lieu of local proxies, far more US soldiers will be deployed into Syria. “I think President Trump might be looking for something with some quicker results and that could put some new options on the table,” Barno said. “He could elect to put American boots on the ground in larger numbers.”

Currently most of the 6,000 US military personnel in the region are concentrated in Iraq, where, joined by Iraqi forces, they are subjecting the city of Mosul to a massive attack. Trump’s order will likely lift the fiction that there are separate war theaters in the neighboring countries.

There was also speculation that the US could bolster the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). This would heighten tensions with NATO ally Turkey, which views the YPG as a proxy of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), against which it has waged a nearly four-decade counterinsurgency war to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdistan.

An escalation in Syria is also prefigured by Trump’s anti-immigrant executive order, which, with the express aim of blocking refugees from fleeing the crisis, envisages the creation of “safe zones” run by the US military—in blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty and international law. Under the plan, Syria’s refugees would be placed in what would be, in all but name, US-administered camps, overseen by the US military.

28 January 2017

By Rashid Khalidi

With the advent in Washington of an Administration with radical new priorities regarding Israel, and a disdain for Palestinian rights, Palestine is facing a daunting reality. In recent years, ascendant political currents in America and Israel had already begun to merge. We have now reached the point where envoys from one country to the other could almost switch places: the Israeli Ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, who grew up in Florida, could just as easily be the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, while Donald Trump’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, David Friedman, who has intimate ties to the Israeli settler movement, would make a fine Ambassador in Washington for the pro-settler government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Whereas America’s solicitous concern for Israel and its disregard for the Palestinians were once cloaked behind evenhandedness, under Trump we are set to see a more complete convergence between America’s political leadership and the most chauvinistic, religious, and right-wing government in Israel’s history. It will be this Israeli government and its new American soul mates who will call the tune in Palestine for at least the next several years.

The entire Palestinian political and economic structure set up since the 1993 Oslo Accords was predicated on the idea that it would evolve into a genuine, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state. That illusion, held by many Palestinians, has by now been dispelled. This flawed structure was also based on the premise, a naïve one at best, that the United States had a national interest in moderating Israeli behavior and achieving a modicum of justice in the Middle East. That premise, too, has been demolished.

For Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, set up by the Oslo Accords ostensibly as part of an interim arrangement for Palestinian self-rule, will continue to do more harm than good. Few people understand that the colonization of Palestinian land and the nearly fifty-year-old Israeli military occupation—among the longest in modern history—would not be sustainable today without American and Israeli sponsorship of the P.A. and its U.S.-trained security forces. The P.A.’s criminalization of any form of resistance to dispossession, discrimination, and Israel’s permanent military control have made it, in effect, a tool of collaboration with the occupation. Even bloggers and peaceful demonstrators are subject to arrest and harassment by P.A. forces. The way this institution operates against its own people provides a preview of the future that both American and Israeli officials will now foresee for Palestinians in the occupied territories: a future that is constricted, controlled, and void of sovereignty and self-determination.

It is abundantly clear that the United States, in the age of Trump, and Israel, in the age of Netanyahu, will do nothing to change this picture. In this context, the Palestinians face stark choices. They can either submit to the dictates of the U.S. and Israel or they can fundamentally and urgently redefine their national movement, their objectives, and their modes of resistance to oppression. It is time for Palestinians to abandon the failed experiment of the P.A., and to abandon forms of violence that only harden the sway of the right wing over Israeli politics. It is time to mobilize the vast energies of the Palestinian diaspora and stop thinking of Palestine as just those fragments under Israeli occupation. And it is time to begin to imagine ways in which Palestinians and Israelis will finally be able to coexist in complete equality in the small country they will ultimately have to share, once it is free of the domination of one group over the other. These will be exceedingly hard tasks for the Palestinians, coming after they have suffered decades of war, dispossession, and occupation.

Despite all this, there are signs of hope, at least in the United States. The positions of both the Democratic and Republican Party establishments notwithstanding, American public opinion is shifting rapidly away from uncritical support for Israel. Americans are becoming increasingly sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian freedom. According to a poll released by the Brookings Institution in December, sixty per cent of Democrats, and forty-six per cent of all Americans, support sanctions or stronger action against Israel over its construction of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land. A recently released Pew poll shows that, for the first time, the percentage of Democrats who are sympathetic to the Palestinians is almost equal to those who sympathize with Israel, while liberal Democrats are much more sympathetic to Palestinians (thirty-eight per cent) than they are to Israel (twenty-six per cent).

Over time, perhaps, these changes will filter up to politicians and policymakers in Washington. In the meantime, it is up to individuals of conscience, including those who are resisting the wave of racism and right-wing extremism to be expected in the Trump era, to exert pressure on their elected representatives to live up to professed ideals of freedom and equality, and to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and denial of Palestinian national and human rights.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of “Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.”

19 January 2017

By Niles Niemuth

US President Donald Trump declared in an extended interview with ABC News broadcast Wednesday that he will sign an executive order directing authorities to implement US controlled “safe zones” in Syria. The order would also block the entry of refugees and immigrants from a number of majority Muslim countries, including Syria.

During the presidential campaign, Trump called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration into the US. He played up fears over the admittance of a few thousand Syrian refugees displaced by the years-long civil war in that country fueled by the Obama administration.

In the interview with David Muir, during which the president updated the tone of a mafia boss, Trump expounded on his planned immigration restrictions. “It’s going to be very hard to come in. Right now, it’s very easy to come in. It’s gonna be very, very hard.” Trump also declared that he plans to “absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people.”

Coinciding with Trump’s interview, a draft of the draconian and unconstitutional executive order, billed as a measure for “protecting the nation from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals,” was leaked to the media.

The order would suspend immigration to the US from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia for 30 days and suspend the admittance of individuals under the US Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days. The admission of refugees from Syria into the US will be suspended indefinitely.

Several caveats would allow for the entry of refugees from Syria and the other countries on a case by case basis as well as allow the processing and admittance of religious minorities, i.e. non-Muslims.

Other restrictive measures spelled out in the document include the full implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking system and new restrictions on the granting of non-immigrant travelers’ visas.

In line with Trump’s remarks, the draft order outlines a process for the establishment of “safe zones,” justified by the indefinite suspension of the admission of immigrants and refugees from Syria into the US: “Pursuant to the cessation of refugee processing for Syrian nationals, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Defense, is directed within 90 days of the date of this order to produce a plan to provide safe areas in Syria and in the surrounding region in which Syrian nationals displaced from their homeland can await firm settlement, such as repatriation or potential third-country resettlement.”

Moscow, which has intervened in the Syrian civil war to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, respond to Trump’s announcement of his plan to implement “safe zones” by denying that it had any input on the decision and warned of potential consequences.

“Our American partners did not consult with Russia [regarding the ‘safe zones’]. It is their sovereign decision,” Dimitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on Thursday. “It’s important to make sure that this does not further aggravate the situation with refugees. Evidently, all the possible consequences should be taken into account,” he warned.

Former President Barack Obama had resisted the imposition of safe zones in Syria, a policy fiercely advocated by Democratic advisers and war hawks like former Secretary of State and Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton. The protection of such areas with a no-fly zone could spark a clash between US and Russian jet fighters, leading to all-out war between the nuclear armed powers.

However, DEBKAfile, a website with ties to Israeli military intelligence, reported that an agreement has been worked out between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to carve Syria up into three separate spheres of influence divided between the US, Russia and Turkey. The deal also reportedly requires all Iranian military forces as well as associated forces belonging to Shiite militias and Hezbollah to leave the country.

The plan outlined by DEBKAfile would involve the US taking military control over the area of the country east of the Euphrates River, as well as a portion of the southeast boarding the Golan Heights and northern Jordan. Approximately 7,500 US Special Forces currently based in Jordan will reportedly deploy to southeast Syria.

The rest of the country would be divided between Russia and Turkey, with Moscow controlling all territory west of the Euphrates except for a narrow stretch of territory in northern Syria administered by Ankara.

While the alleged plan has not been confirmed by the Trump administration, it does line up with previous proposals made by Trump’s National Security Adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, to deploy large numbers of US troops to Syria under the pretense of defeating ISIS and other Islamist militia groups.

In a 2015 interview with Der Spiegel, Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, outlined his vision for an expanded US intervention in Syria and a Balkanization of the Middle East, carving the region into spheres of influence and military control.

“We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors,” Flynn stated. “The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector.”

27 January 2017