By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The nation of Germany gazed with helpless horror at Trump’s disastrous Tuesday press conference, in which he tried to make a false equivalency between the neo-Nazis and the counter-protesters. Even before Trump’s wretched performance this week, only 11 percent of Germans said they trusted him to […]
Fascism in Charlottesville: Why it had a monopoly on violence & Intimidation
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In his unhinged news conference on Tuesday, Trump equated what he called the “alt-Left” (which is not a thing) with the alt-Right. He characterized the latter as good people who were just protesting removing a statue of the traitor Robert E. Lee and wondered if statues […]
Why don’t People think Trump’s Denunciation sincere? B/c he Ran on Racism
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump finally came out, two days late, to denounce explicitly and by name the hate groups who organized an invasion, hundreds-strong, of little Charlottesville, VA (pop. 46,000) on Saturday. While the statement will take some of the political pressure off the president, it will be dismissed […]
Bannon must go, but after that, Protesters should listen to Bernie
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Steve Bannon ran, and is still likely pulling the strings at, Breitbart, the “Stormfront” in a business suit with a skinny tie. Bannon once characterized it as enabling what he called the “alt right,” by which he meant a slightly more presentable version of the skinheads, […]
Top 5 Ways White Terrorism means never having to Say you’re Sorry
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – I’ve argued for some time that US media treats white terrorists differently than others. And, I noted recently that the US press seems to have been astonished when the governor of Minnesota branded the bombing of a mosque “terrorism.” We have more evidence today to make […]
‘Locked & Loaded’ Trump’s 1960s Cowboyism re: N. Korea & Venezuela
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – If you were away from news on Friday, you might like to know that in addition to hot wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen (and maybe Somalia and Libya), the Trump administration talks as though it is on the brink of opening new fronts in […]
If an Iranian president talked like Trump we’d think them all nut cases
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Over the years the smug Western pundits have had a good deal of fun at the expense of unhinged Middle Eastern rulers. There was Daffy Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. One headline in the 1990s spoke of ‘the fruitcake ravings […]
Kissinger pushes Iranophobia, fear of ‘radical empire’ as ISIL declines
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Henry Kissinger at 94 is still misinforming Washington about Iran. Now he is warning of an “Iranian radical empire” stretching from Tehran to Beirut if Iran is allowed to “fill the vacuum” as ISIL is rolled up– as Jack Moore at Newsweek points out.. Kissinger seems […]
“Fire & Fury” or “Shock and Awe”: it is always the start of a Quagmire
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – If we weren’t talking about two nuclear-armed states with unhinged leaders, the war of words between the US and North Korea would be hilarious. Trump’s threat Tuesday that “”North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved