By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – During the past week we’ve been subjected to hours of testimony by or interviews with James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence. On Sunday, Clapper made waves when he said on CNN that Donald Trump is engaged in an assault on US institutions by doing things […]
GOP Greatest Single Threat to Mothers on Mother’s Day
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – I know it is sort of gauche to politicize Mother’s Day. But then politicians politicize family values all the time. And besides, the Republican Party is being mean to moms, and today is when they should be called out for it. The way this gentleman called […]
Is China Now the Adult in the Room? Xi and Macron Consult
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump preferred the Neofascist Marine Le Pen as president of France, who wanted to pull out of NATO and the European Union. Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency advisers are resigned because of his attack on the science of climate change. Trump is mulling pulling out […]
Russians Troll Trump, release Photos of Meeting
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – CNN says White House officials were furious on Wednesday when the Russian press (the only journalists invited to the meeting of Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak) abruptly released the pictures. Apparently White House staff thought there was […]
The Sadism of creeping Dictatorship
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – One of the classic techniques of dictatorship is humiliation, a manifestation of the sadism of the regime. Most people want to avoid being made the butt of ridicule, and authoritarian personalities calculate that they will even surrender some rights and liberties to avoid it. Even if […]
Which Middle East Authoritarian Leader is Trump most Like?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s abrupt and virtually unprecedented firing of FBI director Jim Comey raises the question of whether he and his far right wing circle of Neofascists intend to reshape the Bureau as (even more of) an instrument of white nationalism and executive authoritarianism. Despite the cover story […]
NSAgate: Trump was warned (by Yates and Obama), and yet He Persisted
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Trump administration is running as hard and fast as it can away from Michael Flynn, whom Trump briefly appointed National Security adviser. But the facts of this case implicate Trump and his high officials (likely Steve Bannon was somehow involved, for instance). I was attending […]
It was ISIL, not Hackers, who Hijacked French Election
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – That hackers, most likely Russia-linked, were trying to throw the French election to Marine Le Pen this weekend by releasing thousands of emails from her opponent Emmanuel Macron, probably struck too late to achieve their goal. They were counting on the rule that candidates may not […]
Wind Power and the quest for 100% Renewables in age of Trump
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Are some major industrial countries only a decade or two from getting all their electricity from non-fossil fuel sources? Since it is the industrialized world that produces most of the deadly, toxic carbon dioxide that is poisoning our planet through the greenhouse effect, ameliorating the crisis […]
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