Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Emmanuel Macron’s extraordinary rebuke of Donald Trump from the podium at the commemoration of the end of World War I was more than mere rhetoric. Macron, an educated man, knows that modern social science distinguishes between patriotism, which is considered healthy, and nationalism, which has a pathological dimension. As Trump […]
Archives for November 2018
Muslim Troops Helped Entente Win WW I, Shaped European Security
(Informed Comment) – As the world is marking the end of the First World War first centenary and remembering its millions of military and civilian victims, in this article I’m going to focus only on one victim of the Great War and that’s the truth. There are millions of forgotten Arab and Muslim soldiers who […]
Putin’s biggest Fanboy in Congress, Rohrabacher, Defeated in bright Red District
Washington (AFP) – Representative Dana Rohrabacher, whose quixotic foreign policy campaigns made him persona non grata in Pakistan and Afghanistan and who became a rare US defender of Vladimir Putin, has lost his seat after 30 years. The 71-year-old Republican, whose exploits have included grabbing a gun to join Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet mujahedin, was projected Saturday […]
Netanyahu Defends allowing Qatar to Send millions in Aid to Gaza
by Jonah Mandel | – Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended allowing Qatar to transfer millions of dollars to Hamas-run Gaza despite criticism from within his own government over the move aimed at restoring calm after months of unrest. The Israeli-authorised money transfer appeared to be part of talks that would […]
Haunted by the Hole where our Memories of the Afghanistan War Should Be
(Tomdispatch.com) – I’m here in Chicago, 7,000 miles and 15 years away from Jalalabad, a desolate town in southwestern Afghanistan. Yet sometimes it seems to me as if it were yesterday, or even tomorrow, and anything but thousands of miles distant. There are moments when it feels like I never left — or maybe I […]
The Qur’an and the Modern Self: A Heterotopia
This essay has just been published in Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 85, No. 3, Fall 2018, pp. 557-572. The whole issue is about essential books, and includes Lisa Anderson on Frantz Fanon, Rebecca Goldstein on Spinoza, and many other great essays. I recommend getting it. I wrote about the Qur’an in modern literature […]
The Lessons of World War I– Don’t Trust Hateful Politicians like Trump
Trump is in Paris to commemorate the end of World War I, about which he knows almost nothing. The outbreak of that war in 1914 took many contemporaries by surprise. That it would last four years, when leaders promised a quick victory, was a another shock. That advanced machine guns and artillery would make mincemeat […]
Iraqi Parliamentarians Demand Timetable for US Troop Withdrawal
Iraqi MP Ahmad Al-Assadi, senior leader of the Iraqi Construction Alliance, revealed on Friday parliamentarian moves to pressure the Iraqi government to evict US forces from the country. Al-Assadi said that the previous Iraqi parliament had started the calls, but now the new parliament was calling for a clear timetable for the US withdrawal from […]
Did Trump avoid Cemetery, dishonor Troops, b/c Rain would Muss his Hair (more)?
by Francis CURTA and Clare BYRNE Paris (AFP) – US President Donald Trump came under fire on Saturday after cancelling a visit to an American World War I military cemetery in France because of rainy weather. Trump, who is in France for commemorations marking the centenary of the end of the war, and his wife […]
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