By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed during the annual IC Fundraiser! I’m bowled over by your generosity, and pledge to keep Informed Comment at the cutting edge of analysis of both foreign and domestic policy! Am enclosing a photo I took last fall in Istanbul […]
For Russian hold on Trump, follow the Money, not the Sex tapes
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Buzzfeed has published the unverified allegations by a former MI6 analyst with good Russian contacts, contained in a two-page hitherto secret annex to the US intelligence community’s report on Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 election. These two pages have circulated in Washington for months. […]
Welcome to Psychopathocracy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We are now on the brink of a new form of government, undreamed of by Aristotle, who spoke of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. We are headed to a psychopathocracy, which has something in common with the degraded form of classical regime types that Aristotle warned against (he thought monarchy can […]
Meryl Streep calls out Trump: Having Bully-in-Chief Coarsens whole Culture
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Occasionally entertainment and politics intersect, often hitting a false note. You never want your screenplay to be, as they say in Hollywood, “on the nose.” You have to step sideways away from ordinary news and address some dimension of the human condition to make art. But […]
US Media outraged by Russia, won’t Notice Israeli plot on UK Parliament
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment)- – Washington is obsessed by the story put out by US intelligence agencies that Russia tried to interfere in the US presidential election. But for reasons of self-preservation, the blockbuster story just hitting the headlines that an Israeli operative was plotting to get up scandals to unseat British members […]
Reflections by a Middle Easterner on the Electoral College as a Remnant of Elite Tribalism
By Hsain Ilahiane | (Informed Comment) | – – The Founding Fathers wrote the electoral college in the United States Constitution. In late summer 2004, I became a naturalized United States citizen in Des Moines, Iowa. The following November election day, with my voting card in hand, sure-footed and full of excitement, I walked over […]
Those Times the NSA Hacked America’s Allies
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The hysteria about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee servers and the phishing scam run on Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, is short on evidence and high in self-righteousness. Much of the report issued Friday was old boilerplate about […]
Circus of Liars: How Trump & GOP are Twisted into Pretzels over Putin Hack
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald J. Trump has picked another fight with the elders of his own Republican Party, over whether Russia engaged in hacking aimed at influencing the US election. Trump has maintained that it is impossible to trace hacking attempts, that it isn’t clear who was behind them, […]
Top 4 Ways Bush even more Outrageously Dissed the Intelligence Community
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Philip Mudd, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency counter-terrorist center and FBI National Security Branch, has been on CNN maintaining that there was a big difference between how the intelligence agencies were treated by the Bush administration and how the PEOTUS is treating them. […]
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