By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The headlines about Trump and his team on the one hand and the Russian Federation on the other are coming fast and furious. The items are often, however, merely isolated data points. Can we draw them together? First, while the Obama administration was imposing sanctions on […]
All the President’s Deniers
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – This week, we’ve seen a parade of Donald J. Trump’s far-right cabinet appointees attempting to tone themselves down (with help from pliant GOP senators) for the general public with half-truths and evasions. They were not challenged on some key issues. Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, didn’t […]
Trump does Poor imitation of Tin-Pot Dictator at “Press Conference”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In his first news conference in months, president-elect Donald J. Trump engaged in a series of petulant tirades. For anyone like myself, who has lived under dictators in the global South, his performance was unpleasantly reminiscent of their authoritarian publicity techniques. Instead of letting a wide […]
Informed Comment Fundraiser Success- with Profound thanks
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 […]
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