By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump staffer Stephen Miller, an arch-conservative, defended Trump’s Muslim ban on television Monday by pointing to Europe, where he alleged there were Muslim ghettos that bred radicalism over generations. While a tiny number of Muslim Europeans deriving from poor neighborhoods have become radicals, they don’t actually […]
German Ambassador 1933: “Hostility to Jews Aimed Mainly at ‘Immigrants'”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Here are two newspaper articles from spring, 1933. They concern the issue of early Nazi policy toward Germany’s Jews. In the first, the German ambassador to the UK maintains that the issue isn’t Jews but Immigrants. In the second, it is clear that only a few […]
The Sadism of Racist Exclusion: Courts Temporarily Block Trump
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Picking on immigrants and refugees is the act of a sadistic bully, since they are the one fairly large group of residents of the United States whose constitutional rights are disputed. The executive order Trump signed late on Friday suspending entrance to the United States for […]
Trump Visa Denials target same countries Bush vowed to Overthrow
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s shameful halt to the admission of refugees for 6 months and his 3-month pause in allowing entry to the US from seven countries is being advertised as driven by security concerns. The countries targeted are Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen. What is […]
Torture works . . . to produce Fake News (and that’s how we Got into Iraq)
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – I told this story back in 2005 but it is a good story, has held up, and bears repeating now that President Trump is again promoting torture as “effective.” Torture is a good way to get people to tell you what they think you want to […]
Iraqi Leaders Denounce Trump over Oil, Jerusalem; US Troops in Political Crossfire
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Since his inauguration, Donald J. Trump has not been making a good impression in Iraq, where the US has 6,000 troops, according to al-Zaman (The Times) of Baghdad. The prime minister has forcefully rejected Trump’s talk of “taking Iraqi oil.” And the Shiite clerical leader, Muqtada […]
Trump’s Visa Ban is about anti-Muslim Bigotry, not Security
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Reuters is reporting that on Wednesday, Trump will announce a halt to the issuing of visas to citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. If this report is correct, Trump will represent this step as being about security, but it is not. Of […]
Trump to al-Sisi: Syria’s al-Assad is a Brave, steadfast Man (Beirut Report)
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – al-Diyar (The Lands) [Beirut] reports on what Egyptian officials allegedly leaked about the telephone conversation between Donald J. Trump and Egyptian president `Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. There is no way to certify the truth of this report. For all I know it is Egyptian propaganda, or Syrian […]
Trump to CIA: We now have 2nd Chance to take Iraq’s Oil
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump has had a contentious relationship with the US intelligence community, in part over their conviction that the Russian Federation attempted to use cyber tradecraft to interfere in the US election on behalf of Trump. His visit to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters at Langley, […]
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