Featured

The depths of hypocrisy of the Republican Party in supporting Trump’s meeting with the North Korean dictator in Singapore are hard to plumb. This is a party whose leading members adopted the Ostrich Foreign Policy Principle for decades. If you don’t like a country’s government or political and economic system, pretend it does not exist. […]

Featured

After What Trump did to Iran and Canada, why Should N Korea trust Talks with Him?

Juan Cole

On the face of it, Trump’s erratic behavior with allies and his violation of the 2015 accord on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program ought to give North Korea pause about negotiating with him. It does not. The Iran deal in particular was closely negotiated over the course of years. Iran gave up 90% of its […]

Climate Change

Shorter Pope Francis to Big Oil: You’re Going to Hell if You don’t Go Green

Juan Cole

Pope Francis on Saturday forthrightly reminded Big Oil that climate change is a moral issue. The Pontiff quoted his Encyclical, Laudato Si, to representatives of ExxonMobil, Total, BP and many others, saying, “There is no time to lose: We received the earth as a garden-home from the Creator; let us not pass it on to […]

Featured

Anthony Bourdain: The Only Mensch on Gaza

Juan Cole

Anthony Bourdain was the only major American celebrity who succeeded in depicting publicly the Palestinians as rational, caring human beings rather than as irrationally angry “inciters” to violence. He was the anti-Bernard Lewis. Lewis smeared the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims with the charge of “Islamic Rage” (as though large swathes of humankind are angry for […]

Donald Trump

G7 Views Trump’s US as Rogue State, as France Threatens a “G6” Memo

Juan Cole

Trump’s 17th century mercantilist trade policies are making the United States the skunk at the party at the G7 meet in Quebec on Friday. Trump will skip the session on climate change. Trump has been needling Justin Trudeau, the PM of Canada, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president. Macron is needling back: The American President […]

Donald Trump

Is Trump’s Iftar Party for Muslim envoys an attempt to Sway SCOTUS on Muslim Ban?

Juan Cole

Trump held an iftar dinner to break fast with Muslims on Wednesday. His guests, however, were not American Muslims but rather a select number of ambassadors to the US from pro-American Muslim governments. A survey of the Arabic press shows that this nuance is being ignored by the headline writers, who report that Trump invited […]

Featured

War of Aggression: The Saudi & UAE Slaughter in Yemen isn’t a Proxy Conflict with Iran

Sheila Carapico

Richmond, Va. (Informed Comment) – Alongside their throttlehold over which reporters can visit what parts of Yemen, and thus what story they can tell, Saudi and Emirati investments in public relations, lobbying, think-tanks, and political consultants are shaping the narrative about their war there. Headline writers, pundits, Wikipedia, news correspondents, and even some so-called experts […]

Democracy

Is there Too Much Democracy in the Middle East?

Juan Cole

In the Washington Post last week, historian of the US Yoav Fromer of Tel Aviv University published an article about how the problem with the Middle East is too much democracy and not too little. Fromer seems to take at face value George W. Bush’s policy of “democratization.” That was a slogan to cover the […]

Featured

“The Light of a Thousand Suns:” India has 5 of World’s largest Solar Farms, Plans Huger

Juan Cole

Once upon a time, if it was big and it was a technological advance, I’d expect to hear it was happening in the United States. As Trump flushes the toilet on true American greatness (its intellectual capital, ability to attract talent from around the world, its open-mindedness and freedom for innovation, its commitment to the […]