Featured

The newly elected Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who represents Michigan’s 13th District, is seeking to take a delegation of congressional representatives to the Palestinian West Bank, which is militarily occupied by Israel and where some 600,000 Israeli squatters have usurped Palestinian land belonging to the nearly 3 million Palestinians living there (another nearly 2 million live […]

Democratic Party

Top 6 Things Wrong with Trump denying Pelosi Gov’t Transport

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s petty cancellation of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip on military transport to Brussels and Afghanistan was clearly his revenge for her cancellation of his State of the Union message until he ends the shutdown of the government. Here are the top 5 things wrong with this step: […]

Featured

No, US Troop Deaths in Syria don’t Contradict Defeat of ISIL

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A powerful blast in the streets of Manbij killed 2 US troops and 2 American civilians and wounded 3 other Americans. Syrian civilians were also killed and others wounded by the suicide bombing at a restaurant on Wednesday. Up until yesterday, 4 US troops had been killed in Syria since […]

Featured

Stateless Palestinians Seek Full State Membership at UN, Defying Trump & Netanyahu

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The some 12 million Palestinians in the world, the majority of them made refugees by the Israelis, lack a nation-state. A good half of them ,in addition to having no Palestinian state, do not even have citizenship in a host state. That is, the 5 million Palestinians under Israeli hegemony […]

Featured

GOP must reject Trump’s Wall to really Repudiate Rep. Steve King’s Racism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Monday stripped Rep. Steve King (R-IA) of all his committee assignments, leaving him a fifth wheel with nothing to do in Congress. The move came after King told the New York Times, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become […]

Donald Trump

Who’s Running John Bolton to Start a war with Iran? He worried even Mad Dog Mattis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – National Security Adviser John Bolton lied his face off when he told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on his recent Mideast junket that he was sure Iran’s leaders are dedicated to acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons. Nuclear security expert Joe Cirincione shredded Bolton over his false assertion, which is contradicted by […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Erratic Foreign Policy in 2019: Will it put us in More Danger?

Juan Cole

Let me just say a few things about the interview I gave at Arirang a couple of weeks ago, embedded below. I argue that Trump is becoming increasingly impatient with being held back by the Washington Establishment, and that he has gradually shed everyone who could curb his impetuous decision-making. His National Security Adviser, H. […]

Climate Change

Solar and Wind Good news Stories Today

Juan Cole

Scotland is now getting 70% of its electricity from renewables (wind, solar, wave and hydro) and plans to be at 100% in 2020. In some months in 2018 Scotland’s renewables generated more 100% of the electricity the country uses. Scotland is innovating in tidal power, driven by the powerful currents in its seas, but onshore […]

Donald Trump

Pompeo’s US Jingoism and Anti-Iran Warmongering Rejected by Mideast Public

Juan Cole

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a major and extremely embarrassing foreign policy speech in Cairo on Thursday, which is probably inconsequential since his major talking points departed from the positions of his president, Trump. Also, aside from some generals and kings and princes, nobody in the region agrees with anything he said. Pompeo’s message […]