By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – PM Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel and his cabinet ministers are trying to punch above their weight. He wants to punish the UN, and apparently even the United States. Netanyahu has forbidden Israeli officials to travel to 12 of the countries on the UN Security Council who […]
Top Five ways Jesus was not White
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Given the alarming rise of white nationalism in the United States and the ways in which it is often entangled with Christian nationalism, it is worthwhile remembering whose birth, exactly, is being commemorated today. The association of Christianity with whiteness is relatively new in history, as […]
Why the UN Resolution on Israeli Squatting didn’t Go Far Enough
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The United Nations Security Council on Friday passed a resolution with 14 member states in favor and 1 abstaining (the US), condemning Israeli government support for Israeli squatters who steal Palestinian land and squat on it in the Palestinian West Bank. Since Israel is in severe […]
With Fall of Aleppo, will a Russo-Iranian Middle East challenge Trump?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – On Thursday, the Syrian government announced that the last of those who wanted to be evacuated from the East Aleppo pocket had been bused out, and that the Bashar al-Assad regime had reestablished complete control over the entire city of Aleppo. Bashar al-Assad in his remarks […]
Trump blames Muslim immigrants for Turkey, Berlin Violence
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – After the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey by a member of the Ankara police force who appears to have gone over to some form of al-Qaeda-like radicalism, one person on the internet said that Turkey should never have let Muslims into its country. I […]
EPA: Climate Impacts in the Northeast
Mirrored from The EPA Overview The Northeast is home to historic cities and large rural areas that serve as important natural habitats and agricultural lands. Climate varies widely across the region and tends to be coldest in the north, at high elevations, and away from the coast. The Northeastern climate is experiencing noticeable changes that […]
Top 5 Reasons Senate Dems should block all Trump Supreme Court Nominees, Forever
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – We don’t need a Trump-nominated supreme Court justice. We desperately don’t need such a person. And there is no reason to have one. The Democrats in the Senate should just filibuster any nomination for the next four years. Now, you may say that a president deserves […]
Why do they Hate Putin’s Freedoms? Russian Ambassador assassinated in Turkey
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – It is not entirely clear why Mevlut Altintas, a young policeman in, ironically, a counter-terrorism unit in the Turkish capital of Ankara, shot Andrei Karlov– the Russian ambassador to Turkey– in the back on Monday. Was he a lone wolf? Part of a far-right Muslim vigilante […]
Trump’s Jerusalem embassy Move an Invitation to Terrorism: 9/11 Provoked in part by Israeli Occupation
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Incoming President Trump has repeatedly pledged to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, and he just proposed the appointment of a Zionist supremacist as ambassador to Israel, who equates American Jews who oppose squatting on Palestinian land in the West Bank as collaborators with the Nazis. […]