Top 5 things Trump is doing to us Worse than insulting Mika

By Juan Cole | Jun. 30, 2017 |

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by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Yes, Trump’s gratuitous Twitter insult to newswoman Mika Brzezinski was horrible. But US cable news and even a lot of print news are falling down on the job by focusing on these clashes of personality that Trump provokes.

In contrast, corporate news is not doing a good job of covering Trump’s planned tax cuts for the rich at the expense of middle class Americans (Time Warner, Viacom, Comcast and the other media giants would benefit from the tax cuts). They won’t say a word about climate change, even though we only have two or three years to swing into very substantial action in order to prevent climate chaos. They do talk about health care, but their he said-she said model muddies the waters on how all our oxen are about to be gored by Mitch McConnell for the sake of his billionaire buddies.

So here’s what we ought to be talking about.

1. Trump and the GOP Congress are coming for Medicaid.

Anyone who tells you #Trumpcare isn’t cutting #Medicaid is full of it. pic.twitter.com/mBkoDDJN5R

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) June 29, 2017

Medicaid is for low-income and disabled patients. Trump and the GOP are going to kick 15 million people off it and cut $772 billion out of it over 10 years. That is, he is going to leave 15 million people without the care they need to give a tax break to the super-rich. Some of them will suffer. Some of them will die. (Yes.)

Plus they are going to kick 22 million people who have coverage under the ACA off of health insurance by ensuring it is too expensive. They are going to raise your deductibles. Again, hundreds of billions will instead go to the super-rich (I mean mainly to the 600 billionaires in the US. Most of what the GOP does is for those 600 people, and a handful of them don’t even want it). And, again, millions of people will be sicker than they need to be and some will die.

Trumpcare will kill 20,000 people a year by 2025.

Through summer of 2016, ISIL had killed 1200 people outside Syria and Iraq, i.e. in Europe and elsewhere in South Asia and the Middle East.

That is, Trumpcare is 20 times more dangerous in the West than the terror threat of ISIL.

2. Trump has literally taken away the right to clean water.. He is fine if it is full of mercury (a nerve poison released by burning coal) and lead (which causes permanent damage to IQ and attention span in children).

3. Not to mention that he is trying to roll back limitations on toxic carbon dioxide emissions, which because it is a greenhouse gas, are poisoning our planet. Climate change could reduce GDP by 3% a year and plunge the US into a permanent Great Recession. It will hit Texas and the southeast especially hard.

4. Trump would like to kill America’s scientific and technological advantages in the world by slashing funding for science and science research, reducing us to a fourth world country.

5. Trump has deeply endangered US national security by making us a laughingstock and reducing by orders of magnitude the likelihood that any other powers will partner with us in world affairs. The US needs allies and partners, but Trump has told them to jump in a lake, and anyway they can see how flaky he is. Imagine him calling up Emmanuel Macron in France and asking him to join in a military operation! Yet George H. W. Bush was able to call up the Socialist president of France, Francois Mitterand, and convince him to join in the Gulf War to rescue little Kuwait from the clutches of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When a president now cannot do things on the world stage a president could do only 27 years ago, that is a sign of deep and worrisome decline.

——

Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Health,Health Care,Plutocracy | No Responses | Print |

Freeing Fayza: A Journey to War-Torn Iraq to Rescue a Yazidi ISIL Slave Girl

By Juan Cole | Jun. 30, 2017 |

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By: Brian Glyn Williams and Christopher Natola | (Informed Comment) | – –

It began with an electrifying text message from a Yazidi member of a network dedicated to freeing Yazidis (an ancient people from Northern Iraq who adhere to a faith rooted in old Iranian religion and influenced by Sufi mysticism). The message was stark and simple, “We have a fourteen year old girl whose ISIL captor is willing to sell her for 17,000 dollars. Her name is Fayza Murad from the northern Iraqi town of Siber.” If we could get to Iraq with the required sum we could save one of the thousands of Yazidi girls who had been dragged off and sold into slavery by the ISIL fanatics who conquered their remote homeland in Northern Iraq in August of 2014. If we did not obtain the money there was a high probability that Fayza would never be seen again as the ISIL “Caliphate” was beginning to collapse under the assault of the Kurds, Iraqi Army and U.S coalition bombing.

Thus began a frantic search for money that led myself and a brave group of multinational volunteers led by a fiery English woman named Anne Norona from the safety of our homes to the sprawling refugee camps in the burning deserts of Northern Iraq. For me it was to be the culmination of a long journey to explore the history of a dying people whose origins lay in the mists of time.

Lailish: An Entry into the World of a Dying People

My journey to comprehend this fascinating people that had endured on and off persecution for centuries by their Muslim neighbors who defined them as, “Devil worshippers” began while researching a history of America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (Counter Jihad: The American Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.). In the winter of 2016 I was invited by two prominent Kurdish generals leading the assault against ISIL, whose territory in Mosul and Northern Iraq lay perilously close to their own capital, Erbil, and their mountainous homeland known) as Kurdistan. As a platoon of brave Kurdish Peshmerga fighters (those who face death defined as a volunteer fighting force that defended the Kurdish sanctuary in the mountains of North Eastern Iraq. As we looked across the valley at ISIL positions facing them I was introduced to my first Yazidi.

He enthralled me with stories of the ancient rituals of his people who the world gravely misunderstood as “pagans” and brought to life the epic story of his long persecuted people. It was this fascinating narrative that inspired me to travel Northward from our fire base at the newly recaptured Mosul Dam to the ancient heart of the Yazidis, their remote mountain temple located dangerously close to ISIL’s frontlines in Iraq. There I was provided with a rare opportunity to access a stone temple built in a bygone era and see Yazidis solemnly praying, dipping their hands in a sacred pool of Azrael, the Death Angel, and even given the extraordinary opportunity to meet their second highest priest, Baba Chavush. As I sat with this holy man who blessed myself and my fellow companion, Adam Sulkowski, he spoke of centuries of genocide as well as his hopes for peace for his people and all of humanity. With a gold peacock next to him, the peacock being a figure that represents the Yazidi’s primary god, Malak Tawus (The Peacock Angel) he lamented the fate of thousands of Yazidi girls who had been dragged against their will from their families into ISIL captivity and forgotten by an uncaring world.

I flew back to my own safe home in Boston feeling both blessed for having been given such a rare entry into the mystical world of one of the most ancient traditions in existence, but at the same time troubled by the pain in Baba Chavush’s voice as he described the unimaginable and horrific fate of Yazidi slave girls living in the clutches of their fanatical ISIL captors. Their story moved me to write articles about the Yazidi plight, but there was not much more I could do, after all I was just one man living far away from the warzones of the Middle East.

Little did I know there was, however, another person on the planet far braver than myself, who had decided that she would make that difference. It was my discovery of Anne Norona that was to take me from Boston and once again launch me into the maelstrom of the Middle East just as ISIL’s greatest triumph, Mosul, collapsed under the assault of a vast array of armies and militias bent on revenge.

Anne Norona. Single Mother, Nurse, and “Angel of Sinjar.”

Following my field research in the embattled mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, I began to connect with a growing network of Yazidis who I had met on Facebook. They spoke of their dreams for the liberation of their homeland, a return from their refugee camps to their holy mountain haven, Mount Sinjar, and most painfully of the plight of thousands of daughters and sisters living as Sabbiya (Koran endorsed slave girls). I was even shown a horrific video some Yazidis had acquired of black clad, heavily armed, bearded ISIL fighters waving the black banner of Jihad and shouting “Allah u Akbar!” (God is Greatest) as they triumphantly dragged screaming girls as young as eleven from the pleading hands of their terrified mothers. I was nauseated when I heard that ISIL members considered raping “Pagan infidels,” to be an act of worship. I was moved by online interviews of members of this peaceful people who spoke of the horrors of enslavement by the men who had ritualistically slit the throats of their fathers and brothers, gunned down woman over the age of 40 in trenches and blown up their ancient temples with their priests still inside of them.

Some of the most impactful images I had ever seen in my life were of a Yazidi girl named Nadia Murad who had escaped captivity and told the world of the horrors she had endured during her time as an ISIL slave.

It was as I burned with a sense of helplessness, fury and desire to help that I received an unusual Facebook message from someone identifying herself as Anne Norona. Her initial messages were guarded and she wanted to know where my interests in the Yazidis came from. When I explained I was a Welshman/American who had dedicated his life to performing fieldwork amongst various persecuted ethnic minorities ranging from the isolated Kalash Pagan’s on the Afghan Pakistan border, to the embattled Chechen highlanders of the Russian Caucasus, to the dying Crimean Tatars of Ukraine/Russia, to the Kosovo Albanians and Bosnians she began to open up to me and ,in the process, I got to know someone whose life dream was to “grow flowers in my garden and save Yazidis.”

It soon became apparent that Anne was a fascinating English globe roamer of the sort that had marched out and conquered much of the world and provided us such names as Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Bell (wonderfully played in a recent movie starring Nicole Kidman), and Dr. David Livingston (who disappeared in the depths of Africa in the 19^th century). Anne similarly burned with the desire to get out into the world and help others, but instead of writing books and articles, as I did, she put boots on the ground and worked as a volunteer nurse in places ranging from Haiti to the Greek Island, Lesbos, located just off the Turkish coast. Having myself spent thirteen summers in Turkey living South of Lesbos with my ex-wife Feyza’s family in the beautiful costal village of Cesme, I had myself witnessed the flow of desperate Iraqi and Syrian refugees fleeing through Turkey in a desperate attempt to reach the Greek Isles and obtain asylum in the European Union. Lesbos was the frontline on the largest immigration of humans since World War II and tens of thousands of refugees were living in squalor in makeshift refugee camps on the island.

It was while Anne and a team of volunteers working as Health Point Foundation under Dr. Hadia Aslam in the medical tent in the city of Moria, in Lesbos that she came across her first Yazidis. Much of the volunteers work consisted of online communication between an amazing group of core humanitarians from around the world who worked tirelessly and remotely to ensure the refuges received help in every way, from legal to medical to boat rescue to basic assistance and supplies of food and clothes. These volunteers were doing the job that the big NGO’s were so negligently failing to do.

For Anne, a single mother who had run away from home as a rebellious teenager and explored much of the world from Africa to the Orient, her meeting with the Yazidis was in many ways a fulfillment of what the Arabs call kismet, “Fate.”

The Yazidis Anne encountered were different from all of the other Muslim Arab refugees in the Lesbos camps. They were physically smaller, were more shy, were often embarrassed to receive assistance and sadly faced continued persecution from Arab /Muslim refugees who mocked them by chanting “Allah u Akbar’’ or even attacked them. They had in many ways been deprived of much of the assistance going to the Arab /Muslim refugees as a result of their shyness and continued persecution. It was while working that it became obvious to Anne and her medical team, who she dubbed, “The Mosquitos” that the Yazidis needed special care and that is how Anne’s life was changed forever.

Anne and her then Yazidi counterpart and friend Shaker Jeffery became involved in the personal cases of Yazidis, realizing that they had the best of both worlds, Anne having all the contacts in Greece and Shaker all the Yazidi contacts. It was the perfect match. With this combination they were able to help cases, such as a young woman who urgently needed an eye operation to save her from certain blindness to finding emergency rescuers to help Yazidis petrified and surrounded by violent smugglers in Macedonia, to alerting the Greek coastguards when Yazidi boats were crossing the Mediterranean Sea and encountering difficulties.

Anne’s instinct to side with the underdog and to fight in their corner propelled her determination to defend these much persecuted people. Ultimately, this burning sense of mission drove her to Iraq itself where she and a trusted team of Yazidi key workers and doctors who joined with her to provide emergency support to the most vulnerable in any given situation. She soon became known throughout the Yazidi community as someone to be contacted in moments of need and remained available 24 hours a day online. She would utilize ‘Crowd funders’ on Facebook to raise money for desperate cases, providing emergency assistance, for ISIL survivors, orphans and medical cases.

When Anne made her way back home to Britain, to her self constructed home which she calls “The Shed” situated in a flower covered field near the cliffs of Penzance in remote Cornwall, England, she continued her work to assist Yazidis in obtaining passports, supporting survivors and orphans, providing access to medical treatments, and on occasion even helping to free one of the poor Yazidi girls trapped in ISIL slavery.

While Anne would make desperate pleas for help online and among her local community her mission to provide multifaceted assistance to a people that found itself scattered in refugee camps far from their home and facing extinction went largely unnoticed by an uncaring world that was more interested in things like Donald Trump’s latest Twitter storm or Kim Kardashian’s weight gain.

Operation Fayza: A Mission to Free One Slave

The mission to free Fayza actually began in May of this year when I was carrying out fieldwork in Bosnia for the defense in a Federal terrorism case. It was at this time that Christopher Natola, one of my brightest students who had assisted me in writing my book Counter Jihad, suggested that I actually go to scenic Cornwall, England to meet Anne while I was in Europe. Spurred on by his words, I took a flight from Sarajevo to London (sadly arriving on the night of the terrorist attack on the pop concert in Manchester) and took a wonderful five hour train ride across England, down to the cliff side town of Penzance to meet the woman who so fascinated me.

I was welcomed at the train station overlooking a scenic bay and was driven by Anne to the famous “Shed” in her amazing garden. For a few days I did an “embed” with Anne and got to see her in action. Living with Anne was like being in the center of a one person global enterprise that saw her communicating via Facebook with Yazidis who had found asylum in Germany, members of her network in Iraqi Kurdistan trying to free a sex slave, hosting fundraisers in her local community, and in between taking time to tell me personal stories and showing me pictures of all of the Yazidis her and her network of “Mosquitos” ( As her team were called in their secret Facebook group) had helped.

Anne did all of this while single handedly raising a wonderful son and working as a nurse in a doctors surgery. I was in awe of her. Anne, a single English mother was making a difference in a world dominated by war, fanaticism, cynicism and apathy. Her story was almost Hollywoodesque in its beauty. Anne demonstrated that nothing is impossible, that one person can make a tremendous difference.

I flew home back to Boston inspired to tell her story and it was at this time that the now famous text message arrived, “We have a girl named Fayza, her ISIL captor is asking 17,000 dollars for her release or she will disappear into the burning black hole that is Mosul, Iraq.”

We needed money and we needed to get it to a smuggler, who would take most of the profits for going into the heart of darkness, to evacuate Fayza out of besieged Mosul. I was deeply touched by the fact that a young Yazidi girl who had the chance to be liberated had the same name as my former wife Feyza. I lost no time in contacting Feyza and she instantly offered her support to our cause. Together we collected funds to assist and with Feyza’s blessing and prayers for protection, I decided to join Anne and her team which included; K.P. a Canadian Sikh optometrist, Juliet an English woman from Devon and Baderkhan and Khairi, Yazidi friends and members of The Mosquitos.

In early June I flew from Boston to Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan with the raised funds. There I reunited with Anne, who by now I had dubbed the “Angel of Sinjar” (Sinjar being the Yazidi’s sacred mountain). With Baderkhan and Khairi as our local guides, we drove northward parallel to the frontlines of the ongoing war with ISIL towards the northern town of Duhok. As Anne’s contact kept us updated by the hour, we waited anxiously to see if the money we delivered would actually free Fayza and reunite her with her family.

While we waited for news in 110 degree heat we visited various Yazidi refugee camps where we met with girls who had been recently liberated from slavery. There I watched as Anne, Juliet, and K.P. gave each girl several hundred dollars (A small fortune for these, the poorest and most traumatized of refugees who had returned from slavery with only the clothes on their backs).

Apart from those whom we met who had literally just escaped captivity, Anne knew all of her cases and their families intimately and was greeted with hugs and tears as she met with one Yazidi woman who had the sad fate of having lost her husband to ISIL and had suffered for 3 years with a prolapsed/herniated disc in her back with 11 children to care for and no way of making a living stuck in a tented camp in Kurdistan. Anne and her team went from tent to tent reuniting with people who had become well known to them. In the process, money was given to a woman who needed surgery, toys were given to children of a former ISIL slave, Anne met with UN High Commission for Refugees representatives to discuss a Canadian resettlement program and we all awaited anxiously for word on Fayza.

Then came the news we had been waiting for; the smuggler sent a triumphant cell phone photo of himself driving Fayza, who we had only seen in ISIL photographs nervously wearing a headscarf, being driven from Mosul to her parents in the refugee camp. At the last minute, the ISIL captor had lowered his demands and we had rescued Fayza from certain death in Mosul and reunited her with her family.

Anne Norona

The images of Fayza being embraced by her weeping father and her mother were for me in many ways a rare image of joy in a land defined by death, misery, fanaticism and slavery. Our team did not probe Fayza on her personal details or the horrors she experienced, it was not our place to do so. Sadly, there is rarely consistent psychological counselling for Yazidi girls or child soldiers freed from ISIL. Depression and post traumatic stress syndrome are sadly extremely common. We knew that their lives had been shattered and picking up the pieces would take many years, but we all took consolation in the fact that our small group had made a difference. One beautiful young Yazidi girl now had something that so many other sex slaves did not have, freedom and a chance to live her life. Although Fayza is now out of the reach of her ISIL tormentors, her future is still vaguely uncertain as she is living in tent 16 of the Chem Misko refugee camp amongst tens of thousands of fellow refugees in the town of Zacho. While it is difficult to know what sort of demons, nightmares or PTSD Fayza is suffering from, I took some consolation from the last imagine I saw of Anne enveloping Fayza in her loving arms and saving one more of her “Children”.

I am now safely back in Boston once more, and I guess some of my own demons and sense of guilt that long haunted me have been exorcised by the freeing of just one fourteen year old girl from the horrors of slavery at the hands of brutal terrorists. But I, like Anne, have been touched to my soul by the plight of the Yazidis, and particularly of those young girls still languishing in captivity. I cannot help but wonder how much more we Americans or Europeans would care if we had saved one American or British girl from slavery.

It is the images of Fayza sitting in Anne’s arms smiling at the camera, still in shock, that inspire me now to make this plea. If you have long felt that you cannot make a difference in the world, overcome your apathy and doubt in order to believe that you can. And you can start by reaching out to Anne and assisting her in her mission through funds, online activism, or who knows perhaps traveling to the wind swept deserts of sun blasted Northern Iraq to help one determined English woman save Yazidis… one person at a time.

To assist Anne please be sure to visit the following Facebook group page –Y.E.S – Yazidi Emergency Support group.

Brian Glyn Williams Full Professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and former lecturer at the University of London; http://www.brianglynwilliams.com

Christopher Natola Masters Degree in Education and currently studying for a Masters Degree in Homeland Security at Boston’s Northeastern University; https://twitter.com/Cnato14

Posted in Iraq,Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,Slavery and Trafficking,women,Yezidis | No Responses | Print |

Syria: Russians alarmed, Washington Befuddled, by White House threats

By Juan Cole | Jun. 29, 2017 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The unusual statement from the “White House” on Monday saying that there were indications that the Syrian regime was preparing to use poison gas has provoked much head-scratching both inside the Trump administration and around the world. Why would the “White House” say this? Is it preparing the way for another missile strike on a Syrian military target? Why? Who? It is sort of like a sordid murder in a pulp mystery novel. Who had means, motive and opportunity?

It should be said that the Russian pundits can be forgiven for being confused. Trump’s statement apparently came as a huge shock to the Department of Defense and senior officers in the military and also to the State Department.

Although the top, more political levels of the Department of Defense swung into action to support the White House charge, apparently the officers who would have known if the allegation had been true were taken by surprise.

Who at the White House put this meme out? It wasn’t Trump, since he would have tweeted, and he hasn’t said anything about it. Apparently Jared Kushner is in actual charge of foreign policy, so maybe it is he. Kushner is alleged to be behind Trump’s support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in their kerfuffle with Qatar, to the extreme annoyance of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. Tillerson has about had it with the White House insiders who keep over-ruling him and frankly humiliating him, and is said to have exploded at them on Friday, with Reince Priebus and Jared Kushner in the room.

Then it was alleged yesterday that the late-Monday White House announcement had already deterred Syria from use of poison gas. . The ghost ended up haunting itself.

As for the Russian press, BBC Monitoring has a round up.

The popular Moskovsky Komsomolets suspects that Trump is gearing up for another missile strike on the al-Assad regime. It says that such interference by the US will just prolong the civil war in Syria. Hitting the regime, the paper says, would show that the US doesn’t actually care about terrorism, but is committed to regime change. Boris Dolgov is quoted with some further speculation. The US, he says, wants to get rid of al-Assad and thus deprive Russia of a key ally in the Middle East. The added bonus for Washington, he alleged, was that once the Syrian regime collapses, radical Muslim fundamentalists will sweep into power in Damascus and then pursue terrorism against Russia in the Caucasus, as among the Chechens.

The centrist Nezavisimaya Gazeta said that Russian experts doubt that Trump is planning another strike on Syria. It worries, though, that Iran may encourage the al-Assad forces to use gas. This action would in turn result in a US strike, which would sour relations between Russia and Trump and so forestall a US-Russia rapprochement. Tehran, it implies, prefers that the superpowers be at odds with one another and is conniving at that outcome.

So there you have it. The whole thing is an American plot to hand Syria to al-Qaeda, expel Russia from the Middle East, and embroil the Russian Federation in massive and debilitating terrorist attacks by Muslim radicals encouraged behind the scenes by the USA. That’s dark.

Or, Trump is being successfully trolled by a Machiavellian Iran conniving to keep tensions high between Washington and Moscow, so that Iran remains a valuable asset to Russia.

Needless to say, none of these allegations is true. The main force backed by the US in Syria at the moment is leftist Kurds, not al-Qaeda in Syria (The “Syrian Conquest Front”). There is no reason to think the US wants radical extremists to take over Syria or wants them to destabilize Russia. Well, the Neocons might want that, but they are to say the least not in power.

Iran has a moral objection to the use of gas and is certainly not encouraging al-Assad in that direction (Iranian troops suffered from Saddam Hussein’s gas attacks in the 1980s). Indeed, the Iranian opposition blames the ruling ayatollahs for their shameful support of the secular, dictatorial Baath regime in Syria, in general, and many Iranians consider it a national humiliation, given the ideals of the 1979 revolution. On the other hand, it is true that Iran is afraid that Trump will steal Putin from them.

So, I conclude that nobody has the slightest idea what is going on here, but a lot of people are afraid it could lead to dire consequences.

——-

Why it Matters that the World thinks US under Trump is Laughingstock

By Juan Cole | Jun. 28, 2017 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Pew Research Center has found that the confidence of the world public in the US willingness to do the right thing has plummeted in just the few months Trump has been at our helm. Last fall, 62 percent of people throughout the world said they trusted Obama to do the right thing, and 64 percent had a favorable view of the US. (US favorability ratings were even higher before Bush invaded Iraq; nobody likes aggressors).

Now, 22 percent trust Trump to do the right thing (which means a fifth of humankind are nincompoops).

And US favorability has fallen to 49%, though 58% still like Americans. That’s only fair of them. A relatively small proportion of us just made a fateful mistake.\

In fact, as much as Americans like a cold brew in the summer, a majority of them say they would give up alcohol if only Trump could be impeached! (See the full study here).

So the question all this raises is, does it matter if the rest of the world has a low opinion of the United States?

You betcha.

Despite the go it alone cowboy tough guy rhetoric that plays so well to the Republican base, the world system is not a frontier town and one sheriff can’t clean it up. 7.4 billion people are an incredibly complex puzzle to solve. The US can project influence and power only if it has powerful allies. It is only 5% of the world population, and while its GDP is 22% of the world’s, that still means that nearly 80% of the global economy is in the hands of others. The US has more high-tech weapons than others, but those haven’t done it much good; it hasn’t won a war since 1945.

Ironically, the recent president who perhaps best demonstrated the value of diplomacy was a Republican, George H. W. Bush, who orchestrated an enormous global coalition (it included Argentina, Syria and France) to kick Iraqi occupation troops back out of Kuwait in the Gulf War.

Exhibit A is what George W. Bush did to American prestige with his gotten-up war on Iraq, which involved a great deal of lying about intelligence findings to allies. Although the Bush crew often maintained that that the rest of their allies’ intelligence was the same as that of the US, this is not true. First, the French tried to tell them they were wrong and they would not listen. Second, it is a phony excuse because most allies of the US at least used to take their lead from US intelligence, so Washington was shaping the narrative of what was plausible, biasing e.g. German intelligence.

So Bush dragged Britain and Australia and Czechia into Iraq on false pretenses, and the British public really minded having been taken for a ride. British politics is somewhat less corrupt than that of the US, and many of their television journalists ask dogged questions of politicians with a tenacity and frankness that would get them fired at compliant corporate news channels in the US. The British public take their own soldiers’ atrocities ‘way more seriously than Americans typically do, and there were several embarrassing inquiries that hit the front pages. The British also seems less suggestible than Americans, who apparently will believe 24 impossible things before breakfast. This is not the fault of the American public. It appears to me that the wealthy and corporations have for decades deliberately been interfering in the quality of public education, in hopes of producing pliant dupes rather than citizens with a critical faculty. Betsy DeVos is a poster child for such ruination of good public education, and she now finally has a chance to screw over the entire country . The number of Americans who are unable to understand simple principles of science such as that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere produces a greenhouse effect is deeply embarrassing to this country. But that is exactly the sort of ‘citizen’ Exxon-Mobil and Big Gas want you to be.

In any case, the British were duped by Bush into a long national nightmare.

So then, remember that President Barack Obama established a red line that the Syrian regime should not use chemical weapons? And then the regime allegedly did. It isn’t important to the story I am telling you whether they did or not. Obama believed they did and a UN investigation backed him.

So Obama was in the position, in 2013, of being forced by his own rhetoric to consider bombing Syria. But he did not want such an act to be seen as another rogue American policy. He wanted a partner.

So he went to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and asked for support. He didn’t know that Cameron was the worst British leader since Ethelred the Unready. Cameron wanted a vote in parliament before committing to bombing Syria, which was itself a side-effect of the Bush lies, since parliament had felt badly used by Tony Blair.

And parliament voted the proposal down.

Obama was left hanging out their alone. And then the Republicans in Congress made it quite clear to him that they wanted a vote on any Syria action, and that also they did not intend to authorize one.

Obama was rescued by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who pointed out that Russia could sequester Syria’s chemical weapons. They did not 100% follow through on that pledge, but they also did not do nothing. Obama took the deal, having been left in the lurch by the Mother of Parliaments and by the US Congress.

Obama has been attacked ever since by the very Republicans who told him they would not authorize a Syrian bombing campaign. They jumped up and down for joy when Trump acted alone over the Shuayrat base in Syria and the alleged launching of chem from it. But they would have impeached Obama for the same thing. Both Obama and Trump are presidents. Gee, I wonder what the difference is between them, that causes the GOP to adore the one and abhor the other?

Anyway, folks, for anyone who cares about the American security position in the world, the Pew findings should be terrifying. Because as long as Trump is there, there won’t be any major joint initiatives, and if we need our allies, it isn’t clear that they will show up, since they think we were idiots to put a bull in a China shop in charge of the world’s most powerful country.

Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Foreign Policy | 14 Responses | Print |

Trump accuses Syria of Planning Gas attack as Haley attacks Russia, Iran

By Juan Cole | Jun. 27, 2017 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The Trump administration is making noise about striking Syria, on the grounds that Damascus is planning to use poison gas again.

Trump’s Neoconservative ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, tweeted:

Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.

— Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) June 27, 2017

The statement is said to be from “the White House” but is otherwise not characterized. Why does the White House think this? Why did Trump himself not tweet about it if it is coming from him?

The last time Syria stood accused of using poison gas on a rebel population, killing some 70 civilians, Trump fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the air base from which the poison-bearing aircraft took off, on April 6. It was a largely symbolic action, having no real impact on the regime or even the operation of the Shu`ayrat air base.

The odd thing about the breathless announcement late Monday was that earlier that day Secretary of State Rex Tillerson phoned his Russian opposite number, Sergei Lavrov to discuss tamping down the violence in Syria. They want to extend the current ceasefire in some areas, which did in fact lead to less violence in the “deconfliction zones.

As for the substance, it is true that the Syrian Arab Army sometimes uses chemical weapons on the battlefield. As I understand it, many units of the army have chem auxiliaries for those instances where they might be overrun by the enemy. The army at one point was down to 35,000 troops, from a peak of 300,000 before the civil war. It is evil and against international law, but some of their officers think the only way to level the playing field is to release some gas. The Syrian Conquest Front, formerly the Nusra Front, which held the territory where the early April incident took place, is not known (unlike ISIL) have a chem capacity. The Syrian government is.

But so far the chem use by the Syrian Army appears to be occasional and ad hoc and it isn’t the sort of thing the White House could have gained intelligence about beforehand.

It is almost as if there were a faction of hawks around Trump who wanted to derail any Tillerson-Lavrov cooperation and maintain a condition of undeclared war with Russia and Iran. We haven’t heard a lot from CIA director Mike Pompeo, unlike most others in the Trump cabinet. But if I had to guess who is behind Monday’s “statement” . . .

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Civilians Fleeing as Battle for Mosul enters last days

By Juan Cole | Jun. 25, 2017 |

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by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The Iraqi army has created pathways for civilians trapped in Mosul to escape and at least 100 have managed to flee to safety.

The chief of operations for the Elite Iraqi Counter-Terrorism forces, Ma’n al-Sa`di, said that his units are engaged in vicious battles despite the difficult terrain. At the same time, 8 persons were killed by a suicide bombing in a popular market in east-central Mosul.

Daesh fighters, holed up in the Old City, are mostly foreign volunteers

A couple of days ago, Al Jazeera reported that Iraqi prime minister Haydar al-Abadi has announced that Mosul will be liberated from Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) during the coming days. At the same time, the head of the national federal police, Ra’id Jawdat, said that his forces had surrounded Daesh in the two districts of Ra’s al-Jada and Bab al-Bayd Old Mosul.

During this current campaign, the Iraqi Army also said that it is making more progress in encounters with Daesh, despite intense fighting, than it had anticipated, with their advance happening rapidly amid house to house fighting.

Mosul was the last major urban asset of Daesh in Iraq.

Over the border in Syria, Daesh is also losing neighborhoods to the Kurdish YPG supported by the US Air Force.

In Old Mosul in Iraq, some 150,00 civilians are still trapped between Daesh and the advancing Iraqi Army.

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Posted in Featured,Iraq | 1 Response | Print |

Green France: Macron bans Fracking and welcomes US renewables Scientists fleeing Trump

By Juan Cole | Jun. 24, 2017 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The French government wants to steal increasingly unemployed US green energy scientists, who are being systematically defunded by the Trump administration.

After Trump pulled out of the Paris accords, Macron addressed US professionals:

“To all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision of the president of the United States, I want to say that they will find in France a second homeland . . . I call on them: come and work here with us. To work together on concrete solutions for our climate, our environment. I can assure you, France will not give up the fight.”

At the same time, the Macron government has ambitious plans to make France a green energy powerhouse and major research hub, in hopes of capturing the trillions of dollars the renewables sector will generate. In short, who will invent the next inexpensive and efficient solar panel? The US, France or China? Whoever does will make a killing.

At the same time, French environment minister Nicolas Hulot (an actual environmentalist) announced that he France will ban any new fracking or exploration for oil, gas or coal on French soil. Now that’s what it is like to belong to a country not run by the CEO of Exxon Mobil.

France has a relatively low carbon footprint because 78% of its electricity is generated by some 58 nuclear power plants. Many of these plants are aging, however, and Macron will close a lot, reducing the nuclear share of electricity production to 50% only a few years from now (2025) Likewise, the French government hopes to see all coal plants in the country closed by 2022!

Macron and Hulot want to make up the shortfall with greater energy efficiency (many French buildings don’t have insulation), by encouraging 10% of work days to be telecommuting from home, and by making a massive push for wind and solar energy.

French wind power grew 7% last year, but the plan is for that pace to pick up substantially through government policy. It is now toward 5% of French electricity production.

France wants to build 2 gigawatts worth of small-scale solar installations.

France currently gets 11% of its electricity from renewables, but wants that proportion to be 23% by 2023– more than doubling in 5 years. France has applied to the EU to add 17 gigawatts of clean power over the next 7 years at a cost of $1.1 billion.

France is about to embark on the kind of “energy switch” Germany has long devoted itself to, with massive consequences for French society, science,engineering and the economy. The twentieth century was cruel to French military defenses, but this is a war where France will proudly be in the forefront, and winning, perhaps more than the fossil-fuel addicted US.

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Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Fracking,France,Green Energy,Solar Energy,wind energy | 13 Responses | Print |

Can the Sadr Movement in Iraq overcome Sectarianism with new Shiite-Sunni-Kurdish Party?

By Juan Cole | Jun. 23, 2017 |

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By Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | ( Niqash.org) | – –

One of Iraq’s most powerful political groupings, the Sadrist movement, is trying to form a new alliance that may unite secular, Sunni and Kurdish parties. It would be a first for Iraq. But it could also be a trap.

The Sadrist movement has had a busy few months. The Iraqi political movement, which is led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has defected from the larger Shiite Muslim political alliance to which it belongs, withdrawn ministers from government, joined in popular anti-corruption demonstrations calling for political reform and now, it seems, the Sadrists are trying to form a new alliance in preparation for federal elections next year. The most interesting thing about the latter is that the Sadrists appear to want to form an alliance that does not rely on sectarian affiliations – that is, whether one is a Shiite or Sunni Muslim. It may also end up not mattering whether one is religious or not, too.

For several weeks now, the Sadrists have been holding a series of talks with secular political groups. If successful, the alliance would be the first between a religious, Shiite Muslim political group and a secular, civil-minded one.

There are obvious ideological differences between the two groups but they also have some very important things in common.

“The Sadrist movement will be the first to break away from these sectarian alliances,” Ali Shawaileh, an MP for the Sadrist movement’s political party, known as the Ahrar bloc, told NIQASH; the model built on sectarian alliances and quotas for each of them in Iraqi politics has failed, he argued.

“And we have made many concessions in order to be able to do so,” Shwaileh continued. “We withdrew our ministers from the government so that the prime minister [Haider al-Abadi] was able to choose technocrats for ministers. However all the other political parties rejected this and continued to insist on the posts being filled, according to sectarian quotas.”

The meetings between the Sadrists and secular groups involve two major subjects. Firstly, their ability to form a future-proof political movement and how to compete in the next federal elections, slated to be held in 2018, with it. And secondly, how to keep up the pressure with weekly protests that take place every Friday in Baghdad and in other provinces.

There are obvious ideological differences between the two groups but they also have some very important things in common. One of the most vital is their shared enmity for Iraq’s former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Not a week goes by without some senior member of the Sadrist movement criticising al-Maliki. Muqtada al-Sadr himself said in a television interview in mid-May that he would never vote for al-Maliki again because he had sold off the country.

Al-Maliki countered that by criticizing the Sadrist movement for stepping outside the Shiite Muslim alliance and going against what he called the consensus.

The secular groups also dislike al-Maliki. The latter’s hostility towards the organisers of the Friday demonstrations is well known; he used Iraq’s military to disperse the unarmed protestors and arrested many of them.

Shiite Muslim parties have held power in Iraq since 2003, winning a majority of seats in parliamentary elections in 2005, 2009 and 2014. In the past, al-Maliki had said he wanted to lead the country because of his ability to liaise with all sectors of Iraqi politics, including Sunni Muslim parties and the Kurdish ones.

But in 2018, al-Maliki has said he wants to return to power because he is supported by the Shiite Muslim alliance. Some of the Shiite Muslim militias, who started as volunteer fighters against the extremist Islamic State group but who are now a quasi-official force, say they will support al-Maliki. In particular, the militias allied with Iran say they support the former prime minister.

However, if the Sadrist movement do not take part in the existing Shiite Muslim alliance, this would mean the loss of around 30 seats and effectively, a loss of their majority.

Since April 2017, Ahmad al-Sadr, the 31-year-old nephew of Muqtada al-Sadr, has been involved in trying to build new political alliances for the Sadrist movement. During April, the younger al-Sadr has held meetings with most of the other political blocs in Iraq, including Sunni Muslim and Kurdish parties. He did not hold a meeting with the coalition led by al-Maliki.

There is no doubt that the Sadrist movement remains powerful. Muqtada al-Sadr is the only Shiite Muslim political leader who is capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis within hours. Other Shiite Muslim parties, especially those with close links to Iran, are unable to do this – they may have power but it is considered to come from outside Iraq. Additionally only the Sadrist movement has leaders who remained inside the country while Shiite Muslims were being terrorized by former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim.

Today the Sadrist movement’s strength comes from three different things. Al-Sadr’s ongoing popularity with the poor Shiite Muslims of Baghdad and in the southern provinces, who are inspired by him; the armed forces the Sadrist movement can raise because of this – formerly it was the Mahdi army, now it is the Salam, or Peace, brigades; and the fact that the movement’s political wing, Ahrar, is very active at both federal and provincial level. Despite changes in the political scenery, the Sadrists have remained united.

All of these factors mean that if the Sadrist movement does manage to ally itself with civil, Sunni Muslim or Kurdish parties, it will become even more important in the next Iraqi elections – because of its new alliances and also because of its crippling withdrawal from the Shiite Muslim alliance. Any new alliance between the Sadrists and non-Shiite actors will effectively prevent al-Maliki from leading the country again. There’s only one question local analysts are still asking: Could the Sadrist movement be setting up a Trojan horse? Given more historic Sadrist ties to Iran, that possibility is also real – but only time will bring the answer.

Via Niqash.org

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In Apocalyptic Vandalism, ISIL blows up 800-year-old Nuri Mosque in Mosul

By Juan Cole | Jun. 22, 2017 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

al-Hayat (Life) reports that on Wednesday evening around 9:30 pm local time, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) blew up the Nuri Mosque in Mosul.

The destruction of the 800-year-old edifice was undertaken at a time when Iraqi government troops were closing in on this area in Mosul’s Old City, the last remaining bastion of Daesh there, where 3,000 fighters are still keeping some 100,000 people as human shields. That is about a tenth the strength they initially had.

I once called the destruction by the US Air Force of the annex to the Iraqi National Archives where 19th century administrative documents were housed a “cliocide,” a killing of history itself. The razing of the Nuri Mosque is another act of cliocide. Ironically, I also once suggested that the main antecedent for Daesh, of a state that held both Mosul and Aleppo, was the Zangid polity before the rise of Saladin Ayyubi. Daesh emulated the Zangids geographically and now they have wiped out one of their major surviving architectural legacies.

Iraq prime minister Haydar al-Abadi remarked that the terrorist organization was by this act announcing its own defeat.

This is a fair observation. Daesh was proud of having captured Mosul and of having taken that mosque, built in the rule of Nur al-Din Zangi, a Muslim ruler who held Mosul and Aleppo during the era of the medieval Crusades. They would not have destroyed the mosque where their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his claim to the caliphate (a lapsed medieval institution akin to the Christian papacy) unless they knew they were about to lose control of it.

Daesh has beheaded and otherwise slaughtered so many real, living human beings that it is perhaps wrong to concentrate on the destruction of a mere building.

But historical consciousness matters, and helps make us who we are. Mosulis were fiercely proud of the great mosque. Its minaret famously leaned, and that seems to have started happening soon after it was built. The medieval traveler Ibn Battuta spoke of seeing a leaning structure at the city’s citadel, and he likely was referring to this mosque.

The siege of Daesh has gone on for months, and the Iraqi counter-terrorism brigades are exhausted. They continue to fight on, and will eventually liberate all of Mosul.

Daesh sought support from sympathizers by falsely claiming that the US struck at the mosque. The US Air Force, however, denied that it was running any bombing raids in that part of Mosul.

We are seeing the slow destruction of Daesh as a territorial state. Eventually West Mosul will fall (though they have put up a more bloody-minded and dogged existence than anyone would have imagined.). Daesh believes that the last days are upon us, and its destruction of the mosque is likely an announcement of the near advent of the Judgment Day in their eyes. But actually we’ll all be around for a while to do ordinary non-apocalyptic politics.

But the grievances that gave rise to Daesh and led to the establishment of this iniquitous city-date are still there. How Baghdad treats post-war Mosul will be crucial.

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Posted in Featured,Iraq,Islamic State of Iraq and Syria | 9 Responses | Print |

The Millennial’s Palace Coup in Saudi Arabia: How Dangerous?

By Juan Cole | Jun. 21, 2017 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The epic battle in the Trump White House between Jared Kushner, the Orthodox Jewish son-in-law, and Steve Bannon, the alt-NeoNazi White House strategist, is hard to top.

But Saudi Arabia just topped it?

Saudi Arabia just topped it.

King Salman just fired the crown prince and made his son, Muhammad bin Salman, heir apparent.

the new crown prince is a foreign policy adventurer and hard liner who said just last month that there can be no compromise with Iran.

The octogenarian King Salman acceded to the throne in January of 2015. He has made several changes in his cabinet since then, but by last year the two most important figures in it were Muhammad bin Naif, 57, his nephew and the crown prince, and Muhammad bin Salman, 32, his son.

Muhammad bin Naif had become the minister of the interior, a position his father had also filled at one point, and was known as master of the deep state. He had taken the lead in the war on terror in 2003-2006 when al-Qaeda launched a concerted attempt to undermine the kingdom through terrorism. He was known for his iron fist policy and for filling jails with suspects. US CIA director Mike Pompeo recently gave him an award.

Muhammad bin Salman did not have much of a resume before his father made him minister of defense. In spring of 2015 he launched a devastating air war on the Houthi guerrilla group in northwest Yemen believing it was a slam dunk. It is still dragging on with no end in sight. The war has disregarded humanitarian considerations and deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure. At one point after he launched the war, Muhammad bin Salman went off on vacation to the Maldives and US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter couldn’t get hold of him despite the urgency of the situation.

Both men seem to have supported the Yemen War. Muhammad bin Naif had a longer history in the Syrian conflict, but both seem to have backed Salafi jihadis like the Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) and the later formation of an alliance of the Freemen of Syria with the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Syrian Conquest Front (formerly Nusra).

Muhammad bin Salman was identified in addition with a scheme to cut pensions and benefits for government workers and to begin privatizing the state owned petroleum giant. The king undid the pension and benefits cuts just before making his son the crown prince, and gave him the credit for the change.

It isn’t clear that the two cousins had any strong ideological differences with one another, but they just did not like one another. Muhammad bin Salman seems to be as ambitious as he is sloppy, and wanted to move his cousin out of the way.

Saudi Arabia had been using an agnatic succession model, where the brother of the king is given preference over the son of the king.

The Third Saudi kingdom was founded by Ibn Saud in 1902. He and his ancestors had an alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi clerics. He initially only had Najd in the interior, but in 1913 he added Shiite Eastern Arabia (where the oil turned out to be), and in 1924-6 added the Sunni Hejaz on the Red Sea littoral. In 1932 a united Saudi Kingdom was announced. Ibn Saudi died in 1953. One of his many wives, Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi, had given him 7 sons, the largest bloc of men eligible for the throne, who tended to support each other vis-a-vis other branches. From the 1930s, Saudi Arabia struck oil and the royal family became fabulously wealthy. Sometimes some members of it have caused scandals with how they have spent it.

Salman is a Sudairi, as are Muhammad bin Naif and Muhammad bin Salman; the latter were the first of Ibn Saud’s grandsons to have a shot a the throne.

Muhammad bin Salman is also the first Millennial (born in 1985) to have the prospect of succeeding to power. His father is advanced in age.

The new crown prince is known to be both reckless and sloppy. His irrational hatred for Iran could well lead to a military confrontation. His Yemen and Syria policies are in tatters. He has fallen out with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He is trying to squash the independence of neighboring Qatar. Some European investment firms are afraid he will upset the world’s apple carts so much it will hurt all our retirement accounts.

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Posted in Featured,Saudi Arabia | 26 Responses | Print |