Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkey and Russia engaged in a tense dance of negotiation and threat on Friday in the wake of the killing of 34 Turkish soldiers in an air strike the previous day. Russian sources maintained that the Turkish troops were “where they were not supposed to be,” and were nested among […]
Turkey mobilizes for war with Syria and Russia as Nearly 3 Dozen Turkish Troops Killed
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al Jazeera reports that nearly three dozen Turkish soldiers in a barracks in Syria were killed Friday by an air strike. Although most reports say that the bombing was carried out by the Syrian Air Force, some Syria experts suggest that it was instead done by the Russian Aerospace Forces, […]
Anti-Science and Opportunistic: Trump and Iran’s Ayatollahs both Play down Coronavirus
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Christine Romans at CNN wonders if Trump’s news conference on Wednesday evening on the Covid-19 coronavirus was his “Mission Accomplished” moment. After he invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, George W. Bush gave a triumphant speech that May about how war was now good for humankind beneath a banner […]
Sanders calls out “reactionary racist Netanyahu” while Bloomberg charges Mideast with “age-old hatreds”
At Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in South Carolina on CBS, Major Garrett, chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, asked Bernie Sanders a leading question. The question assumes that American Jews are a one-issue constituency who only care about Israel, and, indeed, it assumes that American Jews support the Netanyahu government. According to Gallup, about a […]
The Trumps don’t have a Right to the Taj Mahal
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trumps visited the Taj Mahal during their trip to India. They didn’t have a right to do so. The building is properly the mausoleum of Mumtaz Mahall, literally “Queen Mumtaz” in Mughal Persian. It was constructed of white marble in Agra between 1631 and 1648 by the Mughal emperor […]
The Fall of France to the Nazis? Chris Matthews and Corporate Democrats’ Bernie Derangement Syndrome
NB Matthews apologized for his remarks on 2/24/20 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I was watching MSNBC Saturday afternoon during the voting at the Nevada caucuses. I did a little channel surfing, checking in at CNN and at the real news on Al Jazeera. But mostly I had MSNBC on. And I nearly fell off […]
Why the Russian Petro-state is actually terrified of a Bernie Sanders Presidency: The Green New Deal
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused by Western intelligence agencies of seeking to interfere in the 2020 US elections in favor of Donald Trump on the right and in favor of Bernie Sanders on the left. But guess what, Russia doesn’t actually want Bernie to win. At all. Moscow […]
The Prophet Muhammad’s Wives and Muslim Women in Early Arabian Rock Inscriptions
Ahmad Bin Ghanim al-Ida’ published a photograph of an inscription he found south of al-Ula (near ancient Hijr) in Saudi Arabia. It was picked up and transcribed by Saudi archeologist Mohammed al-Maghthawi. The inscription says, “God, forgive Muhammad the Prophet, and join with him his wives, and, God, forgive the male and female believers, and […]
Russia wants Trump reelected, and may be Making a Bet that Bernie Sanders can’t Defeat Him (They’re Wrong)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Julia Arciga at The Daily Beast writes that the Bernie Sanders campaign is convinced that notorious far right wing internet troll Richard Grenell, whom Trump wants to make acting Director of National Intelligence, is the source of the leak that Russia is backing the Sanders campaign. At the same time, […]
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