By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – This week, we’ve seen a parade of Donald J. Trump’s far-right cabinet appointees attempting to tone themselves down (with help from pliant GOP senators) for the general public with half-truths and evasions. They were not challenged on some key issues. Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, didn’t […]
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Donald Trump
The US media pack needs to rediscover its teeth, for the Sake of Democracy
By Carmel O’Toole | (The Conversation) | – – In the style of some thuggish boxing promoter at a weigh in, the US president-elect, Donald Trump, gave us a clear and unsavoury flavour of the style of White House press conferences to come. And it’s not tasting good. In brutal contrast to the elegant style […]
The Russian Honeypot: Putin has had big plans for Donald Trump
By John Feffer | Foreign Policy in Focus | – – [I wrote this article about Russian efforts to cultivate Donald Trump as an asset last week for a Korean newspaper where it was published on Sunday. Little did I know that news would break this week of allegations that Russia has a file of […]
The Iranian Connection in the Age of Trump
By Rajan Menon | ( Tomdispatch.com | – – Stack up the op-eds and essays on the disasters that await the world once Donald Trump moves into the White House and you’ll have a long list of dismaying scenarios. One that makes the lineups of most pundits involves a crisis with Iran. So imagine this. […]
Trump does Poor imitation of Tin-Pot Dictator at “Press Conference”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In his first news conference in months, president-elect Donald J. Trump engaged in a series of petulant tirades. For anyone like myself, who has lived under dictators in the global South, his performance was unpleasantly reminiscent of their authoritarian publicity techniques. Instead of letting a wide […]
For Russian hold on Trump, follow the Money, not the Sex tapes
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Buzzfeed has published the unverified allegations by a former MI6 analyst with good Russian contacts, contained in a two-page hitherto secret annex to the US intelligence community’s report on Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 election. These two pages have circulated in Washington for months. […]
A Living Wage & a Right to Live: Resisting a government of Generals and Billionaires
San Francisco ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Many of the folks I know are getting ready to play serious defense in 2017, and they’re not wrong. Before we take up our three-point stance on the national line of scrimmage, however, maybe we should ask ourselves not only what we’re fighting against, but what we’re fighting for. […]
Welcome to Psychopathocracy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We are now on the brink of a new form of government, undreamed of by Aristotle, who spoke of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. We are headed to a psychopathocracy, which has something in common with the degraded form of classical regime types that Aristotle warned against (he thought monarchy can […]
Exxon’s Rex Tillerson and the rise of Big Oil in American politics
Brian C. Black | (The Conversation) | – – “How Big Oil Bought the White House and Tried to Steal the Country” is the subtitle of a book that tells the story of a presidential election in which a candidate allowed money from big oil companies to help him win office and then rewarded them […]