By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – al-Akhbar (Beirut) reports that al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Levant, also known as the Support Front (jabhat al-Nusra), repeated scenarios it had previously acted out against other “moderate” remnants of the old Free Syrian Army. It launched a massive attack on the headquarters of Division […]
Winners and Losers in 5 Years of Syrian Civil War
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Five years ago this week, protests began in Damascus and Deraa (mainly Deraa) in Syria, on the heels of the overthrow of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. Syria’s government was even more repressive than those of the other two countries, however, much more of a Stalinist […]
Which Protest-busting Dictator is Trump most Like?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump’s incitement chickens came home to roost in Chicago on Friday, when his acolytes attacked the protesters who turned up to a Trump rally. Trump chose the better part of valor and decamped. It seems obvious that Trump’s constant threatening and bullying of anyone who […]
GOP debate Civil? Candidates urged torture, child-murder, backing bloody Dictatorships
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The headlines Friday about the GOP debate in Miami stressed how relatively civil it was, with less name-calling and pissing matches among the remaining candidates. Those editors have a weird definition of civility. So here is Marco Rubio: “Let me give you an example of a […]
Top 6 Signs Trump is wrong & Islam doesn’t ‘Hate us’
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Republican presidential candidate and billionaire bigot Donald J. Trump said in a CNN interview on Wednesday that “Islam hates us.” “I think Islam hates us” . . . deploring the “tremendous hatred” that he said partly defined the religion. He maintained the war was against radical […]
Nearly Half of Israeli Jews want to Expel Palestinian-Israelis from Country
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Nearly half of the over 6 million Israeli Jews want to expel from the country the 1.6 million citizens of Palestinian heritage, most of them Muslims, according to a just-released Pew Forum poll This is a startling statistic. It would be as though half of Flemish […]
Netanyahu GOP Policy in Tatters, he snubs White House Invitation
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – A year ago, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intervened in US politics in a big way, addressing a Republican-dominated Congress and lobbying it against the UN Security Council deal with Iran forestalling that country’s civilian nuclear research program from ever becoming militarized. Netanyahu’s startling direct intervention […]
As Bomb Kills 60, is Iraq Army Preparing for Armageddon with ISIL?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – A truck bombing in the largely Shiite city of Hilla killed 60 on Sunday, one of the worst terrorist attacks in that city. Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attack. The bombing, which killed and injured policemen at a checkpoint (though 3 dozen of the […]
The Middle East reacts to Trump: ‘Strange Candidates’ with ‘Weird Beliefs’ & anti-Muslim Pogroms
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The meltdown of the US Republican Party is an unlovely sight inside the country, but what do people abroad think about the outlandish assertions of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump? Last week the Mufti of Egypt Shawqi Allam (maybe analogous to the president of the US Conference […]
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