Yesterday, Senator Duckworth, and other Democratic Senators called on Donald Trump to disclose the Ethics Waivers for former White House staff to join lobbyists, and to disclose the White House Visitors Log. The White House response was that “grave national security risks” make it unwise to continue releasing White House visitor logs.” One of the regular visitors to the White House, Carl Icahn, “special adviser for regulations” was among the visitors that the Senators were concerned about because his nebulous role has been allowing Trump and Icahn to skirt conflict of interest laws. (insurancenewsnet.com/… ) This flaunting of traditional White House practices of transparency, and White House ethics conflict of interest laws is troubling enough in of itself.
But now we hear from Democracy Now! on the same day (PBS April 21, 1017), that Carl Icahn, and Trump allies in Indonesia are associated with an ISIS linked coup attempt to overthrow the democratically elected President of Indonesia, President Joko Widodo, Jokowi. (Shocking Exposé Reveals Trump Associates & ISIS-Linked Vigilantes Are Attempting Coup in Indonesia, www.democracynow.org/…)
And if that is not a “grave national security risk to the United States of America” I don’t know what would be.
The interview of Allan Nairn, investigative journalist who has focused on Indonesia, revealed shocking information about current events in Indonesia. Carl Icahn, has investments in Freeport-Mc-Mo-Ran, a company with huge involvement in copper and gold mining in Indonesia. Trump is also tied to Indonesia by Indonesian investors in two Trump resorts including Trump’s key Indonesian business partner, Hary Tanoe. Trump is also tied to Fadli Zon, vice speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives, who appeared with Trump at one of Trump’s campaign rallies in New York Trump Tower and was a strong supporter of Trump in Indonesia. Nairn states, “The local Trump people in Indonesia, including his top political backer, the politician Fadli Zon, including his local business partner, Hary Tanoe, and others, have been funding and backing this coup movement.”
Nairn also adds that “The leader of the FPI militia [the group conducting the coup] is a lawyer who is a corporate lawyer for Freeport-McMoRan, the giant U.S. mining corporation that is controlled by Carl Icahn, Donald Trump’s good friend and White House deregulation adviser. This lawyer—his name is Munarman—he represents a local corporate front for Freeport. And he is there presiding over the militia, as—the FPI militia, as they commit violence, and standing next to the FPI leaders as they call for the death by hanging of Jakarta’s governors. This lawyer for Carl Icahn’s Freeport was videotaped not long ago at an ISIS swear-in ceremony, where he was one of two people presiding as a group full of young men pledged allegiance to—swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. The program of massive street demonstrations, aimed at ultimately bringing down the Jokowi elected government, has been endorsed by Indonesians who have gone to Syria and joined up as ISIS fighters, as they describe themselves, etc.” He also explains that ...”now, just in the past year and a half or so, [Freeport] they have been under challenge from the Jokowi government, which is demanding a renegotiation of the contract between the Indonesian government and Freeport-McMoRan, and which has been restricting Freeport’s copper exports. So this is creating a problem for Icahn, a serious economic problem for Carl Icahn. As this conflict between the Jokowi government and Icahn’s Freeport has been going on, the local lawyer for Icahn’s Freeport has been helping to lead the coup movement to oust—to oust Jokowi.”
The group, FPI, is also backed by many of the generals in the Indonesian army whom the current Jokowi government is investigating for war crimes in various massacres in East Timor and elsewhere in Indonesia. Nairn continues that “ Fadli Zon is not just a politician but is also the right-hand man of General Prabowo. Prabowo is the most notorious mass-killing general in Indonesia. He was also the general who was the closest protégé of the U.S. Pentagon and intelligence during his military career.” and “Prabowo, of course, as he had told me in our extensive discussion, himself was the most—the closest partner of U.S. intelligence in Indonesia when he was helping to run the mass-murdering Suharto military. He worked for the DIA, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.”
The FPI claims to be militant Islamists who challenge the Islamic purity of opposition figures. They have been stirring up hundreds of thousands of people by claiming that the current governor of Jakarta, an ethnic Chinese Christian, Ahok, insulted Islam. Nairn states “The FPI is what are known in Indonesia as preman, street thugs. They were created by the Indonesian army and police shortly after the fall of Suharto, in order to do killings—...in order to do repression and, when needed, killings on behalf of the army, without the army having to take responsibility for it. And they would do it under the banner of radical Islam, kind of diverting attention from the fact of army and police sponsorship behind it. ”
What is also very scary, and yet very familiar, is the parallel with what Bashar Aasad has done in Syria. When Syria exploded into rebellion against the Aasad regime at the outbreak of the Arab Spring, most of the Syrian Sunni rebels were moderate Muslims, even some were secular, seeking greater democratic voice in the country . (Aasad is not Sunni, but from a small sect, the Alawites, who are allied with the Shia of Iran, and the Aasad regime had promoted secularism because Alawites are only 10% of the population.) With probable Russian advice and backing, Aasad released a number of extremist Islamic militants from his jails when the rebellion against his rule looked as if it were gaining momentum. These Islamic militants, sprinkled with members of Aasad’s Baathist (Socialist-Russian associated) party, fled to Iraq where they morphed into ISIS. Aasad then used this ISIS threat (that he helped to create) to justify his massacres of Sunni rebels, whom he labeled terrorists, and their predominantly Sunni civilian areas. (Sunnis were 80% of the population.) Simultaneously they also orchestrated the assassinations of most of the more moderate, even secular rebel groups and individual leaders of the original Arab Spring revolt. And although the remaining groups, while they are or have become more devout Sunni Muslims, they are not ISIS. But this has allowed Aasad and now the Russians who “joined the fight against ISIS” to continue to claim that the rebels are also terrorists and massively bomb Sunni civilians. Both Aasad and the Russians claim that they have been fighting ISIS but direct attacks on ISIS have been rare. And ISIS, itself, does not often actually attack Aasad strongholds.
It has been thought by many that there are covert interactions and coordination between some aspects of ISIS and Aasad. These kinds of secret plots and manipulation of democratic tendencies and movements to discredit them and undermine them by creating militant Islamic extremist riots seems to have been a pattern in the ME. The vulnerability to such manipulations seem related to seeds planted for years and propagated by years of Russian disinformation and agitation in the Middle East since the end of WWII to turn the ME against Western influences , until Arab Spring. (See the book by Ion Pacepa, Disinformation)
“Deja vu” all over again??