By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Michael Wolff in his new book Fire and Fury makes a number of allegations about Trump’s role in the Gulf crisis that, if true, help explain the mess in that part of the Middle East. Wolff asserts that Trump and his then inner circle–Jared Kushner, Steve […]
Civilized UK, rebuking Trump on Coal, now 30% Wind Powered
Even Wyoming is bailing on Coal, putting in huge Wind Farms
Has Iranian regime repression Succeeded?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – News agencies are reporting that on Thursday, Iran’s wave of protests died down. If so (and for all we know they could start back up again), here are some reasons. The regime raised the cost of protest, speaking of executing protesters. While that threat might not […]
Bannon’s Game: White Supremacist takeover of GOP
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Steve Bannon’s trash-talking of the Trump in the interviews he gave in Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury,” are not political suicide and not just pique. Bannon wants to take over the Republican Party. Nor is Bannon likely to be deterred by Trump’s ‘cease and […]
No Normalization: All the Fascist Highlights Trump still Hits
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Fascism as a political ideology is difficult to define, in part because it usually contains a big dose of populism, and the content of populism differs from people to people. In my view Mussolini’s fascism in Italy is a fair exemplar of the phenomenon. One characteristic […]
America’s Biggest Mideast Foreign Policy Challenges in 2018
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In some ways, the United States faces a more favorable foreign policy environment in 2018 than it has in some years, with regard to facts on the ground. Ironically, some of the more severe challenges emanate not from objective conditions abroad but from the erratic and […]
Are Iran’s protests Economic or Political?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Neoconservative poobah Elliott Abrams slammed the New York Times for headlining an article about the Iran protests as being about the economy. (Abrams was an Iran-Contra fraudster supporting nun-killing right wing death squads in Central America who was convincted of lying to Congress but was rehabilitated […]
Top 5 Signs Trump doesn’t Actually Care about Iranian Protesters
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump has tweeted as though he cares about the welfare of the Iranian protesters in small towns across that country who are upset about reduced government subsidies for commodities such as eggs and gasoline. His administration tried to prosecute protesters for laughing at VP Mike Pence. […]
Did the US cause Iran’s Economic Protests & will Trump Take Advantage?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The scattered urban protests that began in Mashhad on Thursday spread to several other provincial cities on Friday, including Qom, Rasht, Kerman and Qazvin. This is like protests in the US starting in Boston and spreading to Denver and Cleveland. Predictably, Trump had to get involved, […]
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