By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s shameful halt to the admission of refugees for 6 months and his 3-month pause in allowing entry to the US from seven countries is being advertised as driven by security concerns. The countries targeted are Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen. What is […]
Torture works . . . to produce Fake News (and that’s how we Got into Iraq)
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – I told this story back in 2005 but it is a good story, has held up, and bears repeating now that President Trump is again promoting torture as “effective.” Torture is a good way to get people to tell you what they think you want to […]
Iraqi Leaders Denounce Trump over Oil, Jerusalem; US Troops in Political Crossfire
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Since his inauguration, Donald J. Trump has not been making a good impression in Iraq, where the US has 6,000 troops, according to al-Zaman (The Times) of Baghdad. The prime minister has forcefully rejected Trump’s talk of “taking Iraqi oil.” And the Shiite clerical leader, Muqtada […]
Trump’s Visa Ban is about anti-Muslim Bigotry, not Security
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Reuters is reporting that on Wednesday, Trump will announce a halt to the issuing of visas to citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. If this report is correct, Trump will represent this step as being about security, but it is not. Of […]
Trump to al-Sisi: Syria’s al-Assad is a Brave, steadfast Man (Beirut Report)
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – al-Diyar (The Lands) [Beirut] reports on what Egyptian officials allegedly leaked about the telephone conversation between Donald J. Trump and Egyptian president `Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. There is no way to certify the truth of this report. For all I know it is Egyptian propaganda, or Syrian […]
Trump to CIA: We now have 2nd Chance to take Iraq’s Oil
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump has had a contentious relationship with the US intelligence community, in part over their conviction that the Russian Federation attempted to use cyber tradecraft to interfere in the US election on behalf of Trump. His visit to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters at Langley, […]
All the terrible things Trump plans to do to Women (besides that one)
By Juan Cole | – – About 1 million women and their supporters demonstrated in Washington, D. C. on Saturday, but many millions more rallied in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta and in small towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan, as well as in cities around the world. The target of their […]
Translating Trump’s inaugural Speech from the original German
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump’s inaugural speech, like the candidate himself, was a chain of falsehoods, saber-rattling and scary Neofascist uber-nationalism. But it could be difficult to follow because so much of it seemed stolen from the mass politics of the 1930s in central and southern Europe. So here […]
The Inauguration of White Supremacy
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s cabinet has no Latinos, the first time that minority, which comprises 18 percent of Americans, is absent for twenty-five years. Trump famously accused Mexican-Americans of being the worst people, including in their ranks rapists and drug dealers and having been deliberately sent across the border […]
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