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. […]
The US Role in Turning Countries into Shitholes and provoking Immigration
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump just can’t help letting the cat out of the bag. And boy does his administration have a lot of cats in bags. The line of the Republican Party right wing has been that voter suppression laws are necessary for the integrity of elections. In fact, […]
Nearly a year after Trump bombed Syria, al-Assad and Russia extend control
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Syrian war limps along at the margins. It is over where it matters but continues in key demographic pockets. The two most significant are East Ghouta near the al-Assad-held capital of Damascus and the province of Idlib in the northwest of the country. East Ghouta […]
Iran’s Khamenei: Trump Unbalanced, Playing Crazy Games, but Iran policy will Fail
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iran’s clerical leader, Ali Khamenei, gave a speech in Qom on Tuesday, in which he warned Donald Trump that his “crazy games” would not go without a response. Western news outlets such as the NYT tried to represent this speech as a threat, and some outlets […]
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