By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestine, is asking Britain for an apology for its having in 1917 issued the infamous “Balfour Declaration.” He won’t get one. The difference between the North Atlantic countries and the rest of the world is that the former are still committed to […]
Why the Boeing & Airbus Sales to Iran are a Big Effing Deal
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the real power center for the American government, has issued licenses to Airbus and Boeing allowing them to sell commercial airliners to Iran. President Obama ordered the licenses, defying the Republican-controlled Congress, which doesn’t want […]
Top Six US Problems worse than Terrorism
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Every time a person of Middle Eastern heritage who ought to have been committed to an insane asylum but wasn’t (because rich people who don’t want to pay taxes successfully lobbied to get rid of insane asylums) commits violence, our press and politicians hit the panic […]
Obama: End terrorism like that in New York by Destroying ISIL in Mosul, Iraq
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama met yesterday with Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi and discussed the coming campaign to take the northern Iraqi city of Mosul away from Daesh, entirely destroying the terrorist organization’s territorial power in Iraq. Obama expects the campaign to be launched before the end of […]
5 Signs that Wind Power in the US is suddenly going Massive
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Iowa Utility Board has approved a $3 bn. MidAmerica wind farm project which will be the country’s largest, due to come on line in 2019, and which will generate enough electricity to power 800,000 homes! I looked this up, and there are only about 1.2 […]
In Massive Intel Error, US Kills 80 Syrian Troops, Helps ISIL Advance
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In a massive intelligence failure, the US Air Force hit a Syrian military installation in Deir al-Zor that it thought was Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). But it turned out to be the Syrian Arab Army position at Deir al-Zor military airport. The strike killed 80 soldiers and […]
The Green Current: A Superhero
By Juan Cole | Informed Comment | (Graphic Novel) | – – Ali Saleh was an ordinary American teenager at Dearborn High. His father, Dr. Mahmoud Saleh, who had been born in Egypt, was a photovoltaic engineer. He made an epochal discovery that would make solar panels highly efficient and almost free. A coworker in […]
“Pigs! Crusaders!”: US-Backed Fundamentalist Militias drive US Commandos out of al-Ray, Syria
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – As Raf Sanchez of The Telegraph writes, fundamentalist militiamen of the US-backed Free Syrian Army chased US commandos out of al-Ray in Syria near the Turkish border, cursing them as “pigs” and “crusaders” and asserting that the US is attempting a military occupation of Syria. Full […]
“This Parrot is no More”: The 2016 Presidential Election did not Take Place
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) The French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote a book in 1991 entitled The Gulf War did not Take Place . In the same way, the 2016 presidential election did not take place. Baudrillard did not mean to say, of course, that no war was prosecuted by the US […]
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