By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In an exclusive, Reuters reports today that the Trump administration is going into the Iraq reconstruction conference in Kuwait next week with no plans to contribute a dime to the effort. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will attend. Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi estimates that Iraq […]
How Trump’s Erratic Isolationism is Helping China Rise
By Dilip Hiro | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – In his State of the Union address, Donald Trump warned grimly of “rivals like China and Russia that challenge our interests, our economy, and our values.” In response, he demanded that Congress give even more money to “our great military” and fund the growth and modernization […]
Syrian Kurds allied with US stream into Afrin, Rally against Turkish Offensive
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Arabic daily Elaph reports that hundreds of Kurds who came into Afrin from other Kurdish cantons in northern Syria staged a demonstration in the city Tuesday evening against the Turkish invasion. Kurds drove from the northeast, from Qamishli and Hasaka, and from Kobane, through Kurdish-held […]
Top 5 Economic Disappointments of the Trump Regime (so far)
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Since Trump has decided that declining to clap for him is a form of treason, and only dictators in banana republics use that sort of diction, perhaps it is time to start speaking of the Trump regime rather than administration. And that regime rode to power […]
What Journalists get wrong about Islam
Sharia isn’t only about Laws, and Muslims don’t need to abandon Islam to become “Moderate”
What Rapid Climate Change Looks Like: the Younger Dryas Comet
Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – It has long puzzled scientists that the gradual ending of the last glacial maximum or ice age beginning about 20,000 before present, extending into the 13,000s, was interrupted in the 12,000s by another short period, of 1,200 years, of ice age. When that one receded, the earth […]
Right’s ban on phrase “Polish Death Camps” Backfires on Warsaw
Sławomir Sierakowski | (Project Syndicate) | – – A new Polish law criminalizes blaming Poles for any wrongdoing against other nations. But the move only serves to highlight the fact that some Poles were complicit in crimes against Jews, while jeopardizing the country’s relationship with its three most important allies: the US, Germany, and Ukraine. […]
Russia Mounts intensive Syria Air Campaign in Response to Downed Jet
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Russian side of the story, presented in the Syrian press, is that an al-Qaeda-linked group in Idlib, a northwestern province of Syria, used a shoulder-mounted missile launcher to shoot down a Russian fighter jet. The pilot ejected and landed, but then was attacked by ground […]
The Nunes Memo, Spirit Cooking and Pizzagate
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The confident pronouncements by pundits and politicians that the Nunes memo is a dud, dead on arrival, neglect to consider the main tactic of the Republican right wing for some time now. It is a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories carried Trump to the White House […]
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