By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Turkey on Monday for direct talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in a bid to further normalize relations between the two countries. Russian-Turkish trade and diplomatic ties were stress late last fall when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet […]
Die-Hard Trump Supporters want to *be* Trump
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Back in the 1960s when the James Bond craze hit the US and even President Jack Kennedy revealed that he liked Ian Fleming’s thrillers, I remember reading an interesting essay on the reason for the character’s popularity. After all, James Bond is not in fact very […]
How Far will Americans take anti-Muslim Hate? Making them wear Green Stars?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The de facto criminalization of being Muslim or speaking Arabic, which is contrary to every core American value and contradicts the First Amendment, is proceeding apace. The number of anti-Muslim attacks in the US is up by 80% since Donald Trump announced his proposed Muslim ban […]
Yemen & Dubai may be at War, but both are going Solar Big Time
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – There is big news on the solar energy front, with the price of panels and installation falling rapidly and popular adoption of it for novel purposes. It occurred to me after I made this list that two of the stories, about Yemen and Dubai, concern countries […]
De Mistura: al-Qaeda must leave E. Aleppo to save it from Destruction
by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has addressed the Levant Conquest Front, whose leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri. De Mistura said that among the 8,000 or so fighters from rebel groups in the East […]
Hurricane Matthew a Herald of Man-Made Climate Change
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – If your tv isn’t telling you the below, turn it off and read more Informed Comment columns instead. Hurricane Matthew is unusually strong, and was for a while there a level 5 tropical storm. Level 5 hurricanes only form when the top layer of the ocean […]
“Little Trump” Pence: Bomb Syria, confront Russia, smear refugees; & smoking doesn’t cause Cancer
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump running mate Mike Pence continued the unreality of this election season in Tuesday’s debate by denying many things that are true and asserting many things that are not true. For example there was this exchange: “KAINE: [Trump said that] More nations should get nuclear weapons. […]
US breaks off Military Cooperation with Russia in Syria
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Arab press reacted to the announcement on Monday by the US government that it was ending its military cooperation with the Russian Federation in Syria. Masr al-Arabiya noted that the US underlined that that the step did not imply that all sorts of joint activity […]
Whose Fault is Trump? Top 7 Culprits
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign platform has from the beginning been based on racism, religious bigotry, class warfare of the rich on workers, hatred of women, and a whole series of other unacceptable and disgusting planks. Not since David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan ran […]
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