by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Shiite popular mobilization units (Iran-backed militias) have played a key role in taking of the northern city of Talafar from ISIL. The ninth armored division of the regular army and the military’s counter-terrorism brigandes have also played an important role. A government spokesman said that only […]
Trump Exploits Harvey Victims in Stealth Pardon of Arpaio
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Eminent climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State noticed not one but two horrible things about Friday evening. You never want to see a Hurricane that looks like this at landfall.I fear #Harvey will take a heavy toll. Be safe folks. pic.twitter.com/1r0CXvhghm — Michael E. Mann […]
Take that, Trump! 5% of California New Car Sales now Electric
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Despite Trump having pulled the US out of the Paris Climate accord, there is reason to think that the US will nevertheless meet its obligations to reduce deadly carbon dioxide emissions. Although Trump is blowing up the Environmental Protection Agency the way a terrorist would blow […]
Germany’s Merkel: A Selfish & Isolationist America isn’t “Great Again”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In an interview with Handelsblatt , German Chancellor Angela Merkel took on Donald Trump’s philosophy directly. She said that Trump’s isolationism cannot make America greater. Turning inward and abandoning friends can only diminish America, she said: “An America that does not care about the rest of […]
Trump, the Magical WASP, Deepens Racial Divide again in Phoenix
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – After another Stockholm Syndrome performance, on Afghanistan, where he gave the speech National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster wrote for him, Trump on Tuesday returned to form at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a week and a half after Trump discredited himself with two-thirds […]
Trump flip-flops on Afghanistan, opts for Years-long Quagmire
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The 16-years-long Afghanistan War has bedeviled Washington decision-makers since the US invasion of fall, 2001, which came in response to the attacks of September 11. In his speech on Monday night, Trump was primarily attempting to manipulate American domestic politics. He was trying to look presidential […]
Why no Eclipse Denialists? The Same Science predicts Global Heating
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Eminent physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s tweet pointing out that there are no eclipse denialists the way there are dedicated climate change denialists went viral: Odd. No one is in denial of America’s Aug 21 total solar eclipse. Like Climate Change, methods & tools of science predict […]
Trump Pledged to Carpet Bomb ISIL, but Little Lebanon is Taking them On
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Lebanese Army has mobilized to clean out an ISIL enclave in a mountainous region on the border with Syria, Jurud al-Qaa and Jurud Ra’s Baalbak. Some 600 ISIL terrorists had controlled about 36 square miles in the hills, but already on late Saturday, one day […]
Trump fires Bannon: Who are the Winners & Losers Globally?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Steve Bannon by his own admission promoted the Breitbart webzine as a mouthpiece of white supremacism, in an attempt to create a new, well-educated and well-dressed version of seedy racism. The Republican Party had since the Nixon Strategy of the 1970s played on a soft version […]
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