Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A CNN exclusive by Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne reveals that Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi told the US, “I need to know if you are capable of protecting my people, of stopping these bombs falling on us or not. I need to know, because if you’re not, I need to […]
Turkey Shells position of US Special Forces in Syria, almost Provokes Firefight
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tom O’Connor , James LaPorta AND Naveed Jamali at Newsweek report that the Turkish military subjected a position occupied by between 20 and 100 US special forces personnel embedded with the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) to heavy artillery fire. Turkey has invaded northeast Syria for the purpose of ethnically […]
How the Roberts Court’s ‘Citizens United’ allowed Parnas and Fruman to Buy influence in America
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As I pointed out last week, the most powerful intervention in US politics allowing foreign influence in US elections, which contributed to Trump’s victory in 2016, was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, (2010) decision. Like Michaelangelo’s God creating Adam with a pointing finger, SCOTUS created out […]
Not Just Ethnicity: Turkey v. Kurds and the Great Divide over Political Islam v. the Secular Left
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkey’s incursion into Syria has roiled the Middle East and NATO countries, demonstrating one key polarizing divide on both sides of the Mediterranean. That divide is between supporters of political Islam and its opponents. By political Islam I mean movements like the Muslim Brotherhood that make Islam more than a […]
Is Trump’s Syria Policy about to Loose 12,000 ISIL Terrorists on the World?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tessa Fox at Al Jazeera writes that Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. special operations forces from northern Syria in expectation of a Turkish invasion could throw the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia cultivated for the past four years by the US into confusion. Moreover, Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army may […]
Winners and Losers from Trump throwing Syrian Kurds under the Bus
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The reasons for which the Washington Establishment is appalled at Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of US special operations troops from northern Syria are not necessarily the right ones. Former special presidential envoy for combating ISIL Brett McGurk wrote, “Trump tonight after one call with a foreign leader provided a gift to […]
Trump Talks tough with Journalists but Lets Real Strongmen like Turkey’s Erdogan Walk all over Him
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last week during the visit of the Finnish president, Trump acted out with a journalist, James Mason of Reuters who asked him a simple question. What exactly did Trump want from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky during the notorious July telephone call? Trump did a bad de Niro impression, asking him, […]
Iraqi Gov’t Teeters as Protest Death toll Rises to 100, with 4,000 Wounded
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Protests broke out again in Baghdad on Saturday, leaving 15 dead. The government had shut down the internet a few days ago in a bid to quell the widespread rallies, but returned partial service yesterday, which allowed activists to call for further protests. The Neoconservatives and the Bush administration pledged […]
Trump, head of GOP, demands Chinese Communist Party Prosecute Businessman for Crime of Making Money
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A particularly unperceptive and unfeeling wag came up with the bon mot defining a “socialist” as someone kept up at night by the fear that somewhere someone was making money. (Socialists are actually haunted by people working but not making money because the capitalist class is stiffing them). But by […]
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