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The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned. In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

Though little noted, arguably the most important foreign policy decision of Trump’s presidency was his termination of the CIA’s covert support for Syrian rebels

Perhaps most significantly in that regard, Trump in July quietly abandoned the CIA’s covert war in Syria. In the U.S., some “regime change” advocates have complained about this “betrayal” of the rebel cause and some Democrats have tried to link Trump’s decision to their faltering Russia-gate “scandal,” i.e., by claiming that Trump was rewarding Putin for alleged election help. But the bottom line is that Trump’s policy has contributed to the Syrian slaughter abating and the prospect of a victory by Al Qaeda and/or its Islamic State spinoff fading.

Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit said Friday the prime minister’s wife Sara Netanyahu will be indicted for fraud and breach of trust for excessive spending on catering at the prime minister’s residence while falsely claiming the house did not employ a cook. The indictment for spending 359,000 shekels ($102,000) of state funds on the catering is subject to a hearing, whose date has not yet been announced.

Interpol has voted to admit Palestine as a full member, dealing a significant diplomatic blow to Israel, which has strenuously lobbied against Palestinian admission. In a secret vote of representatives of the international police organisation’s members in China, Palestinian membership was approved by 75 to 24 votes, with 34 abstentions – exceeding the two-thirds requirement of yes to no votes. “The State of Palestine and the Solomon Islands are now Interpol member countries,” the organisation tweeted after the ballot. Set up almost a century ago, Interpol was designed to help countries share police intelligence and cooperate against crime that crosses international borders, including terrorism and human trafficking,. It now has 192 international members. It is perhaps best known to the wider public for its “red notice” system, which issues requests to locate and provisionally arrest individuals pending extradition. The Palestinian bid was part of a series of efforts to push for membership of international institutions and thereby advance the goal of statehood.

As the disaster-relief effort enters its second week, air traffic is slowly resuming, which means hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans will likely flee the devastated island to stay with friends and relatives in the continental US as they wait for FEMA to rebuild roads, repair power grids and and revive the island's communications infrastructure – a process that could take months, if not longer.

While the urgency of the situation leaves many of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million population little choice, the Financial Times is reporting that the scramble to flee could worsen the population decline as some of those leaving may opt to permanently resettle. Meanwhile, cities with large Puerto Rican populations are asking for federal assistance as they prepare to absorb as many as 100,000 people fleeing the hurricane. Mainland US cities with large Puerto Rican populations are warning that they will need federal help to cope with an anticipated influx of island residents fleeing the devastation visited on the US commonwealth by Hurricane Maria. “If it’s as large-scale as we anticipated, it’s got to be a federal and state-co-ordinated response,” said Buddy Dyer, Orlando’s mayor. “It can’t be city by city.” Some have said they expect to host the disaster victims for up to six months.

President Donald Trump is being blocked from knowing he can pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in exchange for information vindicating Russia of hacking allegations, according to Republican California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Trump told reporters Sunday that he has “never heard” of a potential deal with Assange. “I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.

While the American media and Washington are expending substantial energy on the alleged Russian interference in the United States political theatre during the 2016 election cycle, another nation and its American promoters that invest substantially in Washington generally fly under the radar when it comes to political influence-peddling. According to Open Secrets, the pro-Israel "industry" has made the following political contributions since 1990:

Abstract Numerous polls demonstrate that U.S. public approval of President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has declined significantly since 1945. Many scholars and political figures argue that this decline constitutes compelling evidence of the emergence of a “nuclear taboo” or that the principle of noncombatant immunity has become a deeply held norm. An original survey experiment, recreating the situation that the United States faced in 1945 using a hypothetical U.S. war with Iran today, provides little support for the nuclear taboo thesis. In addition, it suggests that the U.S. public's support for the principle of noncombatant immunity is shallow and easily overcome by the pressures of war. When considering the use of nuclear weapons, the majority of Americans prioritize protecting U.S. troops and achieving American war aims, even when doing so would result in the deliberate killing of millions of foreign noncombatants. A number of individual-level traits—Republican Party identification, older age, and approval of the death penalty for convicted murderers—significantly increase support for using nuclear weapons against Iran. Women are no less willing (and, in some scenarios, more willing) than men to support nuclear weapons use. These findings highlight the limited extent to which the U.S. public has accepted the principles of just war doctrine and suggest that public opinion is unlikely to be a serious constraint on any president contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in the crucible of war. © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Venezuela’s Congress reports that the inflation rate has reached quadruple digits and that the inflation rate in 2017 will top some 2,000 percent. The opposition-controlled legislature reported that inflation reached quadruple digits with consumer prices rising by a whopping 1,369 percent between January and November 2017.

Congress began publishing its own data on inflation after the socialist party (PSUV) administration stopped releasing them. Venezuela’s central bank reported an inflation of 180 percent in 2015 and 240 percent in 2016 which so far had been the highest on record. The central bank and the administration of President Nicolas Maduro have since stopped providing detailed inflation figures. Congress reported that prices rose by 56.7 percent in November. The legislators also reported that they expect that 2017 inflation would top a whopping 2,000 percent. Monetary liquidity grew 14 percent in a single week of November, according to official data, its steepest rise since the central bank began keeping records in 1940. OPEC member Venezuela was struck by a severe economic crisis when oil prices slumped in 2014 leading to shortages of food and medicines, among others. The socialist party (PSUV) administration of President Nicolas Maduro is blaming the crisis on an alleged economic war against Venezuela, allegedly led by the United States, and allegedly in collaboration with members of the opposition.

In a dramatic development in the trial in Kiev of several Berkut police officers accused of shooting civilians in the Maidan demonstrations in February 2014, the defence has produced two Georgians who confirm that the murders were committed by foreign snipers, at least 50 of them, operating in teams. The two Georgians, Alexander Revazishvili and Koba Nergadze have agreed to testify by video from Tbilisi, if permitted, as they feared for their lives if brought to Kiev. The defence lawyer stated, “The eyewitnesses said they had seen with their own eyes a group of people who had received weapons and cartridges and who would deliver fire afterwards from the building of the Conservatoire. Nergadze also saw snipers at the roof of Hotel Ukraine. They know the individuals personally. Besides, they know the organizers and clients and are ready to give their names, as well as the names of the perpetrators.” “In all, about fifty mercenaries arrived in Kiev then and they were involved in the events on the Maidan afterwards and fired at the protesters on February 20,” Goroshinsky went on. “The mercenaries split into groups of ten men each and were dispatched to different spots where from they delivered fire.” “Each of them [the mercenaries] received $5,000 for the job done,” he said. “In other words, these people had been brought [to Kiev] with a well-specified task to create a conflict.” https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/15/the-maidan-massacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos/

S-400 and Pantsir-S anti-aircraft weapon systems will remain in Syria despite the recently announced withdarawal of Russian forces, Viktor Bondarev, former Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces and Chairman of the Defense, and Security Committee of Russia’s Federation Council revealed on December 13. According to the Russian state-run news agency TASS, Russia is not going to reduce its anti-aircraft capabilities in the country. Some number of helicopters, warplanes and military personnel still involved in the ongoing anti-terrorist efforts will also remain.

Elite U.S. forces are operating on the ground in Yemen against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, the Pentagon confirmed on Wednesday.“U.S. forces have conducted multiple ground operations and more than 120 strikes in 2017,” U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said in a statement.

Russia ramped up its calls for the U.S. military to depart from Syria on Thursday, contending it has no substantial reasons to be in the country and its presence there "must end."“Any reasons cited by the Americans to justify their further military presence... are just excuses and we think their presence must end," Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy to Syria, told reporters. Lavrentiev was in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday ahead of peace talks regarding the Syria conflict between Russia, Iran and Turkey, Reuters reports. Russia, a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has played a significant role in the Syria conflict. 

This is not the first time the Russian government has expressed such views in recent weeks. Russia seemingly feels the U.S. military has no purpose in Syria now that the the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has largely lost its foothold in Syria and Iraq. The envoy's remarks also come after the U.S. and Russia have sparred over airspace in Syria. In mid-December, two U.S. warplanes in Syria were diverted from supporting ground operations against ISIS to intercept Russian fighter jets that allegedly crossed into U.S. coalition airspace. But the Pentagon has signified it has no plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria any time in the near future. "We are going to maintain our commitment on the ground as long as we need to, to support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups," Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon told Agence France-Presse earlier this month. "To ensure an enduring defeat of ISIS, the coalition must ensure it cannot regenerate, reclaim lost ground or plot external attacks," he added. There are currently nearly 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, according to numbers from the Pentagon. Since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, it has claimed more than 400,000 lives, according to the U.N., and contributed to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. 

President Trump signed an executive order Friday allowing the Air Force to recall as many as 1,000 retired pilots to active duty to address a shortage in combat fliers, the White House and Pentagon announced.By law, only 25 retired officers can be brought back to serve in any one branch. Trump's order removes those caps by expanding a state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush after 9/11, signaling what could be a significant escalation in the 16-year-old global war on terror."We anticipate that the Secretary of Defense will delegate the authority to the Secretary of the Air Force to recall up to 1,000 retired pilots for up to three years," Navy Cdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. But the executive order itself is not specific to the Air Force, and could conceivably be used in the future to call up more officers and in other branches.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin assured the Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that Russia will continue assisting Syria in protection of the country’s sovereignty, unity and territory integrity, the Kremlin said. "In his message of greetings to the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad, the President of Russia expressed hope that in 2018 the situation in Syria would continue changing for the better," the Kremlin said. "Mr Putin noted that defeating terrorists and rapidly bringing the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic back to normal would be in the best interests of the whole world and would improve security in the Middle East." "In addition, Mr Putin confirmed Russia’s commitment to assisting the Syrian Arab Republic in upholding its state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and promoting a political settlement and economic recovery," the Kremlin added.

  The dollar slipped to its lowest in more than three months against a basket of major currencies on Friday as the euro and sterling climbed, putting the greenback on track for an almost 10 per cent fall over the year - its worst showing since 2003. The dollar started 2017 on a high, with the index that tracks it against a basket of six major currencies hitting its strongest in 14 years on hopes that new US president Donald Trump would implement pro-growth, pro-inflation measures. But it has fallen back on doubts about Trump's ability to push through those policies. And it has also lost out as growth has picked up outside the United States, with other countries' central banks moving towards tighter monetary policy, lessening the gap between the Federal Reserve and others. “We are seeing synchronised global growth, in particular a very strong growth recovery in the euro area, which is leading the ECB (European Central Bank) to gradually normalise policy, which is helping the euro,” said Societe Generale currency strategist Alvin Tan. Tan added that the dollar had become overvalued against the euro, yen and sterling at the start of the year and so another part of the reason for its weakness in 2017 was a mean reversion in valuation.

During President Trump’s first two years in office, his standing with many voters was buoyed by a surge in manufacturing that helped create millions of new jobs and undergirded the whole U.S. economy.But today, manufacturing has plunged into recession and is threatening to pull down other sectors, perhaps hitting hardest on supporters in those states that helped put Trump in office.Impeachment may be dominating the news, but the less-noticed industrial slump ultimately could pose a greater threat to Trump’s reelection.

Article 17 1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

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