By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The hysteria about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee servers and the phishing scam run on Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, is short on evidence and high in self-righteousness. Much of the report issued Friday was old boilerplate about […]
Circus of Liars: How Trump & GOP are Twisted into Pretzels over Putin Hack
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald J. Trump has picked another fight with the elders of his own Republican Party, over whether Russia engaged in hacking aimed at influencing the US election. Trump has maintained that it is impossible to trace hacking attempts, that it isn’t clear who was behind them, […]
Top 4 Ways Bush even more Outrageously Dissed the Intelligence Community
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Philip Mudd, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency counter-terrorist center and FBI National Security Branch, has been on CNN maintaining that there was a big difference between how the intelligence agencies were treated by the Bush administration and how the PEOTUS is treating them. […]
Rebuking Fundamentalists, Funeral for Palestinian-Israeli Istanbul Victim draws Thousands
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – One of the thirty-nine victims of the Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) shooting at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, Layan Nasser, 19, was buried on Tuesday in her home town, Tira, in central Israel. Roughly a fifth of Israeli citizens are of Palestinian heritage, the majority of them […]
Iran confident Trump’s bond with Putin will Benefit it, too
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iran’s pundits are confident that the country is sitting in the catbird seat. They are elated over the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad proving victorious, with Russian help in Aleppo. They are exulting in their newly strengthened ties with Moscow. They believe that the Obama administration’s […]
Preparing for the Normalization of a Neofascist White House
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – It is 2017, and shortly the White House will be inhabited by an unscrupulous, corrupt narcissist who has shamelessly mobilized the Neo-Nazi fringe of the Republican Party to get into power. Despite all the cries of ‘no’ to normalization on the left, Trump will be normalized […]
America’s Major Challenges in Middle East Policy, 2017
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The incoming Trump administration is riven by a profound division between those determined to avoid deep entanglements in the Middle East, such as Donald J. Trump himself, and the hawks he is putting in key positions, who desperately want to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. […]
Top Eight Mideast Stories of 2016 that Shaped our World
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In 2016, the Middle East continued to be a major focus of the US public, and it often came up in the primary and presidential debates. Alas, the Middle East referenced by US politicians and many pundits does not actually exist, and the American fixation on […]
Top 5 Ways Obama Sanctions on Russia work for Democrats
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama’s sanctions on Russia are small potatoes and will have almost no effect on the Russian Federation. The high officials sanctioned are unlikely to have assets in the US that Washington can attach. When you hear that the US is sanctioning the FSB (the Russian […]
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