Trump's claim to Syrian oil complicates US mission in Syria

(November 1)President Trump in a recent speech in Chicago said that the US was staying in Syria to control the oil. However, he also said that the US was "keeping the oil" and claimed it was worth $45 million per month.

Trump's position

A recent article reports Trump's position: "Trump has offered varying descriptions of the military's role in eastern Syria. On Oct. 25 he said, "We've secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil." Three days later, he went further, declaring the oil to be America's."We're keeping the oil — remember that," he said in Chicago. "I've always said that: 'Keep the oil.' We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month? Keep the oil."

Trump has twice before claimed he would remove US troops from Syria. He did remove troops from the so-called "safe" buffer zone along the border with Turkey and redeployed some to Iraq without the permission of the Iraqi government that has demanded that they just be considered in transit and move on.

US officials have not said how Trump is going to execute his plans or explained the rationale and legal basis for taking the oil.

Trump himself has suggested he can make a deal with an oil company such as Exxon-Mobil: "US President Donald Trump said yesterday that he is interested in making a deal with Exxon-Mobil or some other energy company to tap Syrian oil reserves in areas not controlled by the Syrian government."

US military goals in Syria have never been that clear and with ISIS mostly defeated no doubt Trump's position set out a new reason for the US to be there. However the mission has now become legally and morally dubious and appears its length is now open-ended.

Doubts about Trump's project

Russia as an ally of Syria was very critical of the Trump position calling it "state banditry". However, even US legal experts said that there was no real legal basis for the US to just seize Syrian oil. Any sale of the oil is problematic as well. No US or other oil companies have shown interest in extracting the Syrian oil no doubt because they realize the ownership of the oil would be disputed.

If any companies do in the end decide to extract the oil under the protection of US military occupation, the occupation could last until the oil runs out.

White House officials have not explained what Trump means by keeping the oil but said privately they had been given no order to take ownership of any Syrian resources including oil wells and stored crude. However Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Thursday he interprets Trump as meaning he will deny Islamic extremists access to the oil.

Details of the new deployment

A recent article describes details of the revised deployment in Syria: "Some 500 US ground troops are currently involved, along with M2A2 Bradley vehicles. Tanks are also reportedly going to be deployed to the area, though it’s not clear any have actually arrived yet.Estimates are that 700 to 900 US troops are going to remain in Syria under this plan, which is a minor decline from the 1,000 troops believed to be present when the US moved out of the north to facilitate the Turkish invasion. "

Previously published in the Digital Journal

China warns it can harm large Dow Jones listed firms in a trade war

(June 21) The Chinese government-controlled Global Times tabloid said that China could hit back at Dow Jones listed U.S. firms should the U.S. keep exacerbating tensions over trade.

Trump threatens even further tariffs on Chinese goods

Just this Monday U.S. president Trump threatened to put 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese products if China were to follow through on the threat to retaliate against his earlier targeting of $50 billion in Chinese imports with tariffs.

The threats are beginning to have a negative effect on stocks in the Dow Jones index (DJI). It closed down 0.17 percent on Wednesday. For the year now the index has declined 0.25. However, the Chinese Shanghai Composite Index has declined even more this year, 13.1 percent.

China may retaliate further

In a commentary, Global Times said: “If Trump continues to escalate trade tensions with China, we cannot rule out the possibility that China will strike back by adopting a hard-line approach targeting Dow Jones index giants.”

There were three rounds of high level talks between the world's two largest economies since early May but they failed to reach a compromise. The U.S. complains about Chinese trade practices and the $375 billion trade deficit it has with China.

Chinese commerce minister, Gao Feng, on Thursday said that although previous trade talks with the US were constructive the U.S. was now acting capriciously over bilateral trade issues. He warned that the interest of US workers and farmers would in the end be hurt by the Trump policy of brandishing "big sticks".

The U.S. has accused China of stealing intellectual property from the US, a charge that the Chinese deny: "Washington’s accusations of forced tech transfers are a distortion of reality, and China is fully prepared to respond with “quantitative” and “qualitative” tools if the U.S. releases a new list of tariffs, Gao told a regular briefing in Beijing."

In response to Washington's decision to levy tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods China plans to impose additional tariffs on 659 U.S. products. Duties on 545 of the goods is to start on July 6. These tariffs are in addition to tariffs already imposed on 128 U.S. goods including pork, fruits, and nuts a response to Trump's earlier imposition of tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. The goods to be affected on July 6 include also pork, fruit, but soybeans, autos and many marine products.

China remains committed to opening up its markets

Even as China takes measures in retaliation against US tariffs the tabloid insists the country is committed to reform and opening up its markets saying: “Beijing will further open up China’s financial markets to the world, a move that may draw funds from U.S. stock markets as global investors increasingly add Chinese stocks to their portfolios.Those measures may further knock down U.S. stock prices.”

China has said that it is willing to boost imports and widen market access. In April this year, Chinese president Xi Jinping said at a high profile Chinese forum that import tariffs on goods such as cars would be cut. In May, China promised it would lower import tariffs on 1,449 consumer goods beginning on the first of July this year. On Thursday Xi told a group of foreign executives in the capital Beijing that he had been keeping his promises.

Xi said that countries should not fight among themselves but cooperate to meet challenges together and warned that the last financial crisis was not that long ago. Xi said: “We still have vivid memories of what happened during the financial crisis and we are not yet fully recovered. We must also stay vigilant because, as economic growth still lacks momentum, we have seen a surge of trade protectionism, isolationism and populism.”

Gao warned that a trade war between China and the U.S. could disrupt global supply lines for the tech and auto industry and derail world growth. This would ultimately harm the interest of U.S. companies, workers, and farmers, Gao warned.

While the tariffs may be temporary and an attempt to force China to come to an agreement more favorable to the US the tactic could backfire. The tariffs could end up hurting farmers many of whom may support Trump. U.S. farmers export huge amounts of soybeans to China. However, in response to the tariff threats China has ordered its farmers to plant more soybeans. It is also planning to import more soybeans from other countries such as Canada. U.S. farmers may find that even if the tariffs are eventually removed by China their markets are mostly evaporated as China relies more on its own production and other countries than the U.S. for imports.

Previously published in Digital Journal

Clean electric cars require clean energy production

While electric cars are good for the environment in that they do not have polluting exhaust as do gasoline and diesel vehicles, they nevertheless can have negative effects on the environment.

Naturally those promoting electric car sales will stress such features as their having "zero emissions". However, this ignores the fact that the production of the electricity that acts as fuel can produce significant emissions. This does not mean that overall electric cars are not much more environmentally friendly than gas or diesel powered vehicles but that to ensure maximum reduction in emissions through using electric vehicles government policy should promote clean energy production through such sources as the sun and wind.

To what degree using an electric car reduces air pollution compared to fossil fuel powered vehicles depends for the most part upon the degree to which power production in your area is dependent on coal. This article notes the differences in a number of different countries in terms both of emissions released in manufacturing the vehicle and the fuel used.

Even in California, a prime market for electric vehicles, 60 percent of electricity is produced from burning fossil fuels as of 2015 with solar and wind producing less than 14 percent. About a third of total U.S. power is generated through burning coal. Although environmentalists would like to see use of coal to produce electricity phased out, President Trump favors reviving the coal industry.

Another often neglected aspect when comparing electric with conventional cars is the large amount of energy required to produce the latter. An article in Deutsche Welle maintains that it takes more than twice the amount of energy to produce an electric car than a conventional one. To a considerable degree this is a result of the complex batteries that electric cars use. The batteries use relatively rare metals such as lithium and cobalt.

The increasing demand is having its effect on metal markets:Markets are responding. Cobalt has surged 70 per cent on the London Metal Exchange this year, after jumping 37 per cent in 2016. Lithium prices have extended gains in recent years."There are environmental issues with some of the mines involved in production of some of these metals:"Mining activities in countries like China or the Democratic Republic of Congo often cause human rights violations and vast ecological devastation: deforestation, polluted rivers, contaminated soil."In order to ensure that electric cars do not contribute to environmental problems the production of these minerals also needs to harm the environment as little as possible.

There is also the issue of disposing of the batteries after use. There is considerable research being done to find new uses for the batteries after they are no longer of use in the cars and to find ways to recycle batteries. There is also considerable research into battery technology that may result in other metals being used or the life of existing types of battery extended. Finally, policies which favor advancing electrically powered public transport are much more efficient than just promoting individual electric car ownership as is happening now in many countries.

No doubt, in time, electric cars will replace conventional cars and even hybrids, but the vast infrastructure of charging stations must be built up — although we are beginning to see the numbers of charging stations increase greatly:Nearly 16,000 public charging stations have been made available in the few short years since 2009. These stations sport an average of 2.7 chargers per unit, meaning a lot of cars can charge at the same time. In fact, with 542,000 registered EVs in the United States, this means that if all 43,000 charging connectors were used at the same time, nearly eight percent of all electric cars could be charging at once. These numbers don't include private charging or shared stations.

Some European countries are planning to ban conventional cars eventually. Britain has joined France and Norway in declaring that it would ban sales of fossil-fuel car sales in the coming decades. Volvo announced it has plans to stop producing cars with conventional combustion engines. Tesla has recently announced a new model 3 that will have a starting price of $35,000. This may help develop a mass market for electric cars.

Yet in many places, electric cars are still very slow sellers. In Germany, VW, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes and BMW all have electric cars to offer. Sales of the cars constituted only 0.6 percent of the market in the first quarter of 2015. In contrast, the figure for Norway, even further north, is about 20 percent.

There is little doubt that electric cars will eventually replace conventional fossil fuel vehicles, but it may take some time yet. And it is important there be parallel policies of producing clean electricity, mining which is environmentally responsible, and encouragement of electrically powered public transportation not just more and more private electric cars.

One of the world's biggest polluters is the U.S. military as described in a recent article. It would seem that the pollution by military vehicles, planes, tanks, etc. is not even an issue except for a few environmentalists. All the other military forces in the world also seem to be seldom criticized on the grounds of the damage their operations do to the environment and there appears little pressure for them to become more environmentally friendly.

Right-wing extremists responsible for more than twice number of US terrorist attacks as Muslim extremists

A new report claims that right-wing extremists were responsible for nearly twice as many incidents of terrorist acts as those identified with "Islamist domestic terrorism".

The report is the result of joint efforts of the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, and news outlet Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The project looked at 201 designated terrorist incidents within the US from 2008 to 2016.

The report found 63 incidents that involved those “motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State”. Incidents included the Boston Marathon bombing, and San Berardino shootings. Right-wing extremists were responsible for 115 incidents including an attack on a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic that offered abortion services that killed three people. The police were able to thwart 76 percent of Islamist incidents but only 35 percent of right-wing-extremists actions. Almost half of the Islamist related incidents involved sting operations whereas this was true of far fewer of right and left-wing extremist actions.

More people were killed in the Islamist-related incidents 90, that includes mass shootings such as those in Fort Hood Texas in 2009. Yet only 13 percent of the Islamist incidents involved death, as compared with a third of the right-wing extremist acts. There were also seven deaths caused by left-wing extremism with 19 incidents in all. The report shows that President Trump's emphasis on "radical Islamic terrorism' is not justified by the facts about terrorist incidents.

In his campaign, Trump emphasized the threat of Islamic terrorism and when he came into power he immediately issued a travel ban on certain Muslim-majority countries. Now the US Department of Homeland Security announced that they are changing the focus of their counter-terrorism grant program. They are shifting funding from groups that focus on general domestic terrorism to those that are specifically targeting Islamist extremism.

The move is not unexpected, even back in February the Trump administration was considering changing the name of the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program to Countering Islamic Extremism as the emphasis of the program was to be on countering Islamic extremism. Money then was shifted to groups focusing on Muslims including $1.2 million in grants to local law enforcement offices in California, Washington and Minnesota. for programs to train police to identify signs of alienation that might lead people to be vulnerable to recruitment by extremist groups.

David Shanzer, director of Duke University's Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security said that it would be a huge mistake to focus solely on Islamic extremism. He noted that even before Trump was elected it was difficult to enlist the Muslim community in counter-terrorism programs because many saw them as a form of surveillance. Four schools had turned down funding by the CVE because of such concerns and 20 percent of the $10 million in Department of Homeland Security funding for countering extremism had been actually rejected.

Trump's emphasis ignores the threat of far-right and anti-government groups and as Senator Tim Kaine put it could "continue to give rise to the false narrative that Western Civilization is at war with Islam". The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) points out that far-right and anti-government groups number nearly one thousand different organizations in the US and carry out terrorist attacks more frequently than do extreme Islamists.

The SPLC notes that there has been an increase in hate crimes since Trump's election. Of course there are those who consider the SPLC itself a hate group! As the appended video shows there may be some reluctance to call crimes terror-related when non-Muslim appear to be involved. It shows too that many, what appear to be terror crimes, are perpetrated by lone wolves who may not be associated with any particular groups.