By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Several members of Donald Trump’s new team, including National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and proposed Secretary of Defense Mike Mattis have expressed themselves troubled about “political Islam” (or in Flynn’s case, just “Islam”). Mattis seems to have confused Daesh’s (ISIS, ISIL) idea of a neo-Caliphate (bringing […]
Archives for December 2016
IfNotNow’s ‘Jewish Day of Resistance’ against Trump and appointees
By Sarah Aziza | (Waging Nonviolence) | – – Demonstrators gathered in over 30 U.S. cities last Wednesday as part of a “Jewish Day of Resistance” against President-elect Donald Trump and his appointment of Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor. The group responsible for organizing the day’s events is IfNotNow, an organization of […]
Denialist GOP House “Science Committee” Retweets Fake News Breitbart
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org ) | – – Committee’s tweet comes during hottest year on record. Displaying a troubling disregard for science, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on Thursday tweeted a misleading article from right-wing, white nationalist website Breitbart News—one written by a climate denier and debunked by actual […]
Russian Pundit: Fall of East Aleppo a Geopolitical Turning Point toward Multi-polar World
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – By Friday evening outside observers like Rami Abdelrahman of the Syria Observatory in the UK were saying that even more of the East Aleppo pocket had fallen to the Syrian Arab Army, Hizbullah and Iraqi militias and that the government forces had consolidated their control over […]
Israeli Occupation economically suffocates Palestinian East Jerusalem
By: Al-Shabaka | (Ma’an News Agency) | – – In an unusual move, and after years of neglect, American and European delegations and development agencies have recently been visiting East Jerusalem and showing an increased interest in “doing something” about its deteriorating socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is, after a prolonged silence, working […]
The Election that Changed everything and Could be History’s Deal-Breaker
By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – For decades, Washington had a habit of using the Central Intelligence Agency to deep-six governments of the people, by the people, and for the people that weren’t to its taste and replacing them with governments of the [take your choice: military junta, shah, autocrat, dictator] across […]
Egypt’s Special Courts in time of Crisis are Nothing New
by Yoram Meital | (Informed Comment) | – – The toppling of a regime, whether by civil insurrection or military coup, invariably gives rise to a fierce struggle over the lineaments of the new order. This transition phase is the moment of truth in every revolution. It is informed by a collapse of the justice […]
Can Trump be checked and balanced?
By Ulrike G. Theuerkauf | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | – – The US Presidential system has been much heralded as a prime example of horizontal accountability, but there is no guarantee how Donald Trump will be kept in check. The US presidential system has been much heralded for its system of checks and balances. But Trump’s victory has given […]
Now that SecDef thinks Israeli Occupation is Apartheid, will the Lobby Blackballing Fail?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The interview of Gen. James Mattis by Wolf Blitzer at Aspen in 2013, in which the recently-retired former CENTCOM commander spoke freely on Middle East policy, has come back to haunt him now that Donald Trump has put him forward as the next Secretary of Defense. […]