By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Fundamentalist Salafi militias, some linked to al-Qaeda, and backed by Turkey, have allegedly taken three new villages in the Afrin canton away from the leftist Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Over all, the Turks and their allies claim the conquest of 71 villages in northern […]
Marco Rubio dismisses High-School Shooting Survivors as out of Mainstream
TeleSur | – – The event, hosted by CNN, offered a rare opportunity for people directly affected by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy to confront the pro-gun lobby. Survivors of last week’s mass shooting at a high-school in Parkland, Florida, confronted Republican Senator Marco Rubio and National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch […]
Top Ten Signs the US is the most Corrupt nation in the World (2018 Edn.)
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt. This year’s report from Transparency International puts the US on a par with Austria, which is ridiculous. All kinds of people from politicians […]
Thousands of US Citizens Jailed Over Debts as Small as US$28
TeleSur | – – One in three Americans has been reported to a private collection agency with the majority of cases affecting Latin American and African-American communities. The United States, where the streets are paved with gold and US$28 can send a young single mother or an 80-year-old grandmother to jail for a week or […]
Seas Rising ever Faster as Humans burn more Fossil Fuels (NASA Image)
Image via NASA NASA’s Earth Observatory writes: “Global sea level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data. This acceleration has been driven mainly by increased ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica, and it has the potential to double the total […]
The Age of Total War in Syria
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – One of the most distressing take-aways of the Syria War since 2011 is that the United Nations does not work and all the hopes of the framers of its charter in 1945 have been dashed. World War II was a total war that polished off some […]
Turks Threaten al-Assad if he sends Army to Defend Syrian Kurds
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Rumors swirled on Monday that the Democratic Union Party in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria had made an agreement for Syrian government troops to come defend them from the current Turkish assault on them . Reports were circulating (some of them from the […]
Mass Shootings and Gang Murders have unrestricted Semi-Automatic Weapons in Common
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised Can anything be done about the phenomenon of “mass shootings?” These killings have plagued the US for decades. The problem is getting substantially worse over time. The first time I published a version of this column, in 2012, only 88 people were killed in mass […]
Despite Coal Lobby, Australia to Double Solar Energy in 2018
Already 1 in 5 Australian homes has solar panels
© 2025 All Rights Reserved