By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s angry threat to invade a Syrian Kurdish canton in response to the US announcement that it would train and arm a 30,000-man Syrian Kurdish border force produced anxiety in Moscow. Russia has made a big bet, worth billions of rubles and involving […]
Thanks to all our Generous Supporters for an Amazing Fundraiser
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Many, many thanks to all our very generous and committed contributors for another successful fundraiser! Your donations are key to our plans for a significant redesign and for gradually moving to becoming a magazine. The internet environment is increasingly unpredictable and possibly hostile to small blogs […]
Trump Admin Commits to Forever War in Syria against Iran
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a talk Wednesday at the right wing Hoover Institution that hovers over Stanford University, in which he committed to a Forever War in Syria. The talk was a mishmash of incompatible talking points and full of inaccurate and tendentious assertions, […]
As US throws Kurds under the Bus, Is Turkey preparing to invade Syria?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The BBC reports that Turkish armed forces are massed on the border with Syria in preparation for a possible move into the Kurdish-held areas of Afrin and Manbij. The Kurdish militia, the YPG, took Manbij away from ISIL with US support. Afrin, home to some 500,000 […]
Turkey threatens war against US/Kurdish Force in Syria
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US announcement that it would form a 30,000 strong policing force in northeast Syria from the YPG leftist Kurdish militia has provoked unprecedently strong words from Turkey, and signs of an unusual convergence of Syrian and Turkish foreign policy objectives. In the cross-hairs are 2,000 […]
What Africa taught the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In 1957 Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta went to Ghana in connection with its independence from Britain. The British had grabbed the fabled West African Gold Coast in the nineteenth century in order to profit from its gold and other resources (after having profited […]
Impeachable Offense? Trump golfs while Hawaiians endure Nuclear Panic
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – A false alert was sent out by the state of Hawaii on Saturday to residents’ cell phones warning of an incoming North Korean nuclear strike, as Mary Papunfuss of Huffpost explains. That is a remarkable falsehood and symptomatic of the hysteria in the age of Trump, […]
Trumpist UK Thugs waving US Flags try to Apprehend London’s Muslim Mayor
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – London Mayor Sadiq Khan was about to begin a speech on gender equality to the leftist Fabian Society when he was interrupted by British Trumpist hooligans shouting that they intended to make a citizen’s arrest of the mayor. After a while, during which Khan leafed through […]
Did Trump just Paint a target on backs of US Diplomats & Businessmen?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The United States as a superpower is in competition with global and regional competitors for influence in the world. Its rivals and enemies will take advantage of Trump’s insult of Africa, the Caribbean and Central America to reduce US leverage there and to increase their own. […]
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