Featured

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump’s blatantly racist attacks on immigrants have all along had as their subtext the implication that there is something wrong with those brown-skinned people and maybe it is unwise to let them in. Trump even said “‘it’s time’ for the UK to depart the European […]

Espionage

The Palmer Raids: When Trump’s Grandfather and Wives could have been Profiled

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Marx said that every great event in history happens twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. In this regard, the Red Scare of the late teens and early 20s of the last century, promoted by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, was […]

Featured

Pyrrhic Victory? As Iraq rolls back Daesh, can it stay together as a Country?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – From all accounts, most people in Fallujah are very happy about being out from under the murderous and puritanical rule of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). But Daesh took the city in January of 2014 for a reason. Locals did not put up much of a fight to […]

Featured

The end of the Beginning: The Fall of ISIL in Fallujah

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – After Montgomery and his troops defeated the Germans and Italians at El Alamain in northern Egypt in 1942, Winston Churchill was relieved finally to have some good news after a string of defeats. He said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the […]

Featured

British Trumpism? Anti-Immigrant “Britain First” White Terrorist kills Member of Parliament

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The assassin shouted “Britain First!” as he repeatedly stabbed Jo Cox in the stomach with a hunting knife and then shot her with an old revolver several times. He also cut a 77-year-old man who unsuccessfully attempted to intervene. Cox, 41, and mother of two, served […]

Arab Americans

Despite Terrorism fears, 59% of Americans Welcome Syrian, Iraqi Refugees

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | “American attitudes on refugees from the Middle East”: A Public Opinion Poll by Shibley Telhami is just out. Despite the raft of Republican mayors who have pledged to keep Syrian refugees out of their states (that isn’t actually a thing) and the sewage that has spilled from the […]

Featured

Obama: Hating on Muslim-Americans makes you an ally of ISIL, & Unamerican

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama is clearly concerned about the direction of the country and the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim hate speech, especially in the context of impossible-to-prevent lone wolf attacks like that at Orlando. He launched his fiercest attack yet on Donald Trump and warned of a repeat of […]

Featured

Top 7 ways to tell if Someone is lying about being a ‘Salafi Jihadi’

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Regulars at Pulse Nightclub are saying that Omar Mateen, the alleged shooter in the early Sunday morning massacre there, was himself a regular! The Orlando Sentinel writes, “‘Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would […]

Domestic Terrorism

Omar Mateen and Rightwing Homophobia: Hate Crime or Domestic Terrorism?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – US law enforcement is at least initially categorizing the horrific Orlando shootings as “domestic terrorism.” I don’t think it probably was terrorism in any useful sense of the term. I used to know what domestic terrorism was, before the term became politicized in the past decade. […]