By Ann Jones. | ( Tomdispatch.com First, for the record, let me tell you my story about another of those perversely creepy Hollywood predators, a sort of cut-rate Harvey Weinstein: the screenwriter and film director James Toback. As I read now of women he preyed upon year after year, I feel the rage that’s bubbled […]
Exodus of Climate Scientists to France only the Beginning if GOP Guts Grad Education
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – French President Emmanuel Macron has a program he calls MAPA – “Making the Planet Great Again.” His government is offering funding to climate scientists who are facing obstacles in their home countries, to come and work in France. He just managed to lure away 18 high-powered […]
The Difference between Israeli Policy and Turkish: Calling Each other Terrorist State
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – First, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas on Dec. 10, in which he said, “Israel is a state of occupation and a terror state . . . [Turkey] will not leave Jerusalem to the consciousness of a child-killer […]
Toward a Federal United States of Israel & Palestine?
By David Gerald Fincham They say that the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is dead. Good. Partition was never the right way out of the conflict. The two peoples need to be reconciled: keeping them apart, each limited to only a part of the land they consider to be their homeland, would increase hostility, […]
Why Aren’t Americans Celebrating fall of ISIL State? It is a bogeyman
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Other people are celebrating the defeat of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) on the battlefield and its destruction as a territorial state. Russia issued an announcement last week that ISIL has been wiped out in Syria. Iraqi prime minister Haydar al-Abadi said Saturday that Iraq had been completely […]
Massive worldwide Rallies Condemn US, Courtesy Trump Jerusalem Call
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Ayat Ahmad reports for Elbalad (Beirut, liberal) that Friday saw huge, angry demonstrations against the United States in the Palestinian West Bank, Jordan, Yemen, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere in protest of Trump’s announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. AFP starts […]
Trump-Mideast: Much More than a ‘Kiss of Death’ to Palestinians
By Baher Kamal | (Inter Press Ervice) | – – ROME, (IPS) – US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital does not represent only a ‘kiss of death’ to the two-State solution, but also a strong blow in the face of 57 Muslim countries, let alone igniting fire in this easily […]
Trump’s Gift to Hizbullah weakens Saudi Hand in Beirut
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Hassan Nasrullah, the secretary general of Lebanon’s Hizbullah, called for a new Palestinian uprising or intifada in the wake of Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He said Trump had thereby issued “A second Balfour Declaration.” (The first was in 1917 when the British cabinet […]
How Trump’s Jerusalem Move Just Helped Iran Win the Mideast
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Some sections of the crazy quilt that makes up the Trump administration want to push Iran back out of the Arab world and weaken it, in support of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Those actors have just been handed a big setback by Trump’s slurred and crazed […]