By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iran’s government has apparently discovered the real reason for the protests that swept its small towns and working class neighborhoods during the past couple of weeks. English was being taught to third graders in some schools. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the clerical Leader of the country, has […]
White Nat’list Trump Adviser Miller Bounced from CNN after Sit-in
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Senior policy advisor for the Trump White House and notorious white supremacist Stephen Miller appeared on Jake Tapper’s Sunday show to defend Trump from the allegations in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury.” Miller declined to leave after the train wreck of an interview, in which he […]
Trump Engineered Saudi Soft Coup, attack on Qatar, to Save Self
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
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Nope, coal is still doomed. Coal is the dirtiest fuel for electricity generation, putting out enormous amounts of carbon dioxide when it is burned. Its use is responsible for a significant amount of global climate change since the late eighteenth century. And yes, the enormous storm […]
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 […]
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