Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, has no history of openly associating with bigotry. In fact, McMaster has throughout his career emphasized the need to work constructively with foreign Muslim populations.
.. the dramatic divide among Trump’s top foreign policy advisers. On one side are career military personnel who understand that antagonizing Muslims is both offensive to American values and damaging to the country’s security. On the other side are inexperienced, radical ethno-nationalists who shrug off international norms and believe that peaceful coexistence with the world’s Muslims is unlikely and undesirable.
.. McMaster has been a vocal proponent of protecting civilians in war zones and avoiding the “clash of civilizations” approach favored by Trump and his top advisers.
.. McMaster said that the United States must partner with people in Muslim-majority countries to defeat groups like the Islamic State, describing them as “the people who are suffering the most” from terrorism. McMaster added that to win such conflicts,U.S. forces must understand the history and social dynamics of the countries it is fighting in, as well as have “empathy for the people among whom these wars are fought.”
.. McMaster has also criticized agenda-driven D.C. think tanks and foreign policy seemingly driven by the weapons industry. In a 2015 speech at the University of South Florida, McMaster said that “the military-industrial complex may represent a greater threat to us than at any time in history.”
.. Mattis assured reporters during his recent meeting with Iraqi political and military leaders that, Trump’s frequent comments to the contrary, the United States would not try to seize Iraq’s oil. “I think all of us here in this room, all of us in America, have generally paid for our gas and oil all along, and I’m sure that we will continue to do that in the future,” he said. “We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil.”
.. Mattis believed that treating Iraqis with respect was essential to American security. He investigated abuses of prisoners in Iraq and helped stop the use of torture at one prison where an Iraqi in U.S. detention had died after being beaten.
.. Mattis believes that Israel’s continued military occupation of the Palestinians threatens American security and could lead to an apartheid-style situation. Asked about conflict with Iran during a 2016 interview, he replied, “It would be bloody awful, it would be a catastrophe if we have to have another war in the Middle East like that.”
White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon
.. He’s also a true believer in the idea that the United States cannot coexist with Islam.
.. “Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission. Islam means submission,”
.. in a documentary he once pitched titled “Islamic States of America.” In that film, he imagined a future United States where all the major institutions of society were ominously controlled by Muslims.
Sebastian Gorka reports to Bannon and has emerged as one of the chief White House ideologues pushing for the United States to take a more forceful stance on Islam.
.. He is also an associate of notorious anti-Muslim conspiracist Frank Gaffney
Senior Adviser Stephen Miller belongs to a new generation of far-right activists who argue that Western civilization is under attack by uncontrolled immigration and the spread of radical Islam.
.. he put together events to promote a “Terrorism Awareness Project” aimed at exposing the threat of “Islamofascism” — a term created by far-right activist David Horowitz
.. “Gripped by complacency and the omnipresent force of political correctness, our nation has failed to educate our youth about the holy war being waged against us and what needs to be done to defeat the Jihadists that are waging this war,” Miller wrote
CIA Director Mike Pompeo was until recently a Republican congressman from Kansas partial to defending CIA officials who engaged in torture, calling them “patriots.”
.. He has also claimed that “Islamic leaders across America [are] potentially complicit” in terrorism because they supposedly don’t speak out against it, which is not true.
.. Pompeo tapped as his deputy director at the agency CIA staffer Gina Haspel, who ran a secret prison in Thailand as part of a network of “black sites” that enabled the agency to torture detainees.
Senior Adviser Jared Kushner
.. Trump recently put an end to the longstanding U.S. insistence on a two-state solution, reportedly keeping his own State Department in the dark on the decision until it was made. It was Kushner’s counsel — not that of senior U.S. diplomats or military staff — that was guiding him.
.. While U.S. policy has held for decades that settlements built deep into Palestinian territories are illegal, Kushner’s family has helped finance them. And he fired a staffer at the New York Observer, which he owned at the time, after the staffer began to write critically about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Why oil prices will never return to $100 a barrel, in one chart
He explained that one of the biggest risks to the oil market is how low-cost producers respond to this abundance. In the current market, these low-cost producers can “ration” their supplies because they don’t have large expenses to immediately cover. That means they may be able to wait a day or month to produce more oil if it fits better into the trading environment.
.. “I would expect the low-cost producers to gradually use their competitive advantage to increase their market share relative to high-cost producers,” he said.
.. “My view on oil has always been that the level of oil prices we saw in the 2011-2014 period around $100-$110 didn’t seem a natural settling point. That in itself was a function of the many issues going on that at the time, particularly significant supply disruptions post the Arab Spring,”
Hurdles Mount for Saudi Aramco’s IPO
Basic elements of oil giant’s governance, structure and financial disclosures remain unresolved
The difficulty of quickly turning a behemoth that functions largely to support the Saudi budget into a company accountable to shareholders has crystallized over the past couple of months.
.. The prince has said the company could be valued at more than $2 trillion when it is listed.
.. Currently, about 90% of Aramco’s profit goes to the Saudi government and members of the royal family, say five people familiar with the finances. The rest, they say, gets reinvested in the company.
.. the government and Aramco have brought in a host of foreign advisers, including banks; accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Ernst & Young LLP; and law firms
.. The IPO is part of his plan to wean Saudi Arabia’s economy of its dependence on oil.
.. would put IPO proceeds and much of Aramco’s stock into a giant sovereign-wealth fund. That fund would then sink tens of billions of dollars into international and domestic companies outside the oil industry.
.. Prince Mohammed also met dignitaries including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
.. Aramco and the government are also trying to figure out how to handle vast subsidies on Aramco’s books, including natural gas that it sells at a loss to government-owned power plants
.. In some cases plants pay about two-thirds of the cost of pumping the gas; at other times the utilities don’t pay at all
.. The company currently requires that 80% of employees in each division be Saudi nationals, which is a challenge in some areas, like accounting, where there is a dearth of trained Saudis
Global Risks Begin to Recede
It isn’t just the Trump effect; from oil prices to Chinese outflows, the world is looking up
business surveys and markets have turned markedly more optimistic.
This is partly because investors hope that any fiscal stimulus Mr. Trump enacts will spill over to other countries. Yet a confluence of other factors is also at work: Oil prices are on an upswing thanks to production cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
.. Firmer energy prices have pushed actual and expected inflation higher. U.S. inflation hit a five-year high in January. Ordinarily that’s bad, but it is now welcomed by central bankers who worried that too-low inflation can easily become destructive deflation.
.. In mid-July bond markets expected inflation in five to 10 years’ time to average 1.2% in the U.S., 1.4% in the eurozone, and 0.1% in Japan. Those figures have since jumped roughly half a percentage point.
.. hopes for fiscal stimulus under Mr. Trump and a Federal Reserve continuing to err on the side of raising rates too slowly, rather than too quickly, are why expected inflation has risen.
.. projects annual growth in nominal Chinese gross domestic product—economic growth plus inflation—will reach 11% in the current quarter, up from below 7% a year earlier. This growth traditionally has correlated closely with oil and industrial prices.
.. political uncertainty hasn’t been the confidence killer that many feared.
.. Mr. Trump has prioritized rolling back regulations; he has yet to act on his harsh protectionist rhetoric.
.. The global economy is still likely to grow just 3.4% this year
.. China may owe its growth rebound to a debt bubble that could soon burst.