Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trump administration is unlikely to have the same success in getting other countries to boycott Iranian petroleum as did the Obama administration in 2012-2015, though its officials are making a full court press in that regard. Proof came in the form of statements from the Turkish, Iraqi and Chinese […]

Featured

Progressive Dems Are Celebrating Ocasio-Cortez v. Crowley Win; But where is the Legislation?

Juan Cole

Progressives are rightly elated by the surprise win in a New York primary of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They saw her ten-term opponent as having failed to stand for workers. But it is possible for Ocasio-Cortez never to pass even a single law. My advice to her and to her backers is not just to perfect her […]

Featured

The Seventh Exclusion: Great Moments in American Racist Immigration History

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I had predicted after Trump’s announcement that he wanted to try to keep Muslims out of the United States that he might well have some success in that endeavor. Courts, as SCOTUS just showed once again, are reluctant to micro-manage the Executive on things like who can enter the country. […]

Featured

New Light on the Arabian Religious Background of Islam?

Juan Cole

There is a key problem with our sources on early Islam. Aside from the Qur’an itself, all the sources we have were written down after the Abbasid Revolution of 750 against the Umayyads. The first author to compile a complete biography of Muhammad (d. 632), the chronicler Muhammad ibn Ishaq of Medina, was born around […]

Featured

No, Iran’s Grand Bazaar Protest doesn’t mean the Government or Economy is Collapsing

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tuesday’s protests at the Grand Bazaar in Tehran were in many ways the opposite of the small-town clashes that broke out last January. These were rallies of the economically privileged, such as people who sell foreign smartphones to Iran’s middle classes, and members of those middle classes themselves. Neither protest […]

Featured

Warning to US: Erdogan has used same techniques as Trump to de-Democratize Turkey

Juan Cole

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, began his legitimate political career at the turn of this century with a push for more political pluralism in a Turkey that had long been dominated by an elite, secular military. Now that he has won another term, Erdogan’s rise as an authoritarian strong man is a key […]

Featured

Sarah Sanders complains about not being served in Restaurant after Urging same Treatment of Gays, Immigrants

Juan Cole

Sara Sanders complained on Twitter about not being served at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. WaPo reports that the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, insisted that patrons uphold standards of honesty and compassion, and that Sanders flacks for an “inhumane and unethical” administration, defending Trump’s “cruelest policies.” Wilkinson’s grounds for not serving the White House […]

Featured

The American March to Inequality: Why the UN Alston Report Alarms the Trump Plutocrats

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is no surprise that flacks for the plutocrats in charge of the US like Nikki Haley are squawking about the report on American poverty just issued by UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston. It throws loads of light on how unequal a society America is, how it is marching rapidly […]

Children

#Bringbackourgirls: How Trump made the US into Boko Haram

Juan Cole

Trump campaigned in 2016 on being tougher against radical Muslim movements such as ISIL, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. He even went so far as to blame all of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims for these tiny groups (which have largely been defeated by other Muslims). But one of the horrible practices of these radical groups […]