By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The meltdown of the US Republican Party is an unlovely sight inside the country, but what do people abroad think about the outlandish assertions of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump? Last week the Mufti of Egypt Shawqi Allam (maybe analogous to the president of the US Conference […]
Top 5 Crazy things Ben Carson said about Middle East and Islam
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Ben Carson is withdrawing from the GOP primary fight. Since he has emerged as the front runner, the focus of the press and politicians has been on Donald Trump and his erratic and often bizarre pronouncements. But back last fall, Trump was running neck and neck […]
GOP Candidates up ante, Promise 4 Major Ground Wars, murder of Innocents, Large Genitalia
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – At yet another GOP debate, there was a foreign policy section, which Fox News predictably put under the heading of “terrorism.” Brett Baier asked Marco Rubio about Daesh (ISIL, ISIS), noting that Rubio has proposed “sending a larger number of American ground troops to help defeat […]
As Coasts Flood, why isn’t the Corporate Press asking Candidates about Climate Change?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US corporate press is letting the presidential candidates set the agenda. Occasionally someone will step out of line, as Fox’s Megyn Kelly did when she pressed Donald Trump on his misogyny and general disrespect of women. But virtually no one in the mass media has […]
Why did Nigerian Military attack Muslim Protest Movement when violent Boko Haram is Still at Large?
By Allan Christelow | (Informed Comment) | – – On December 12-13, 2015 Nigerian security forces carried out an attack against the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) in the city of Zaria. The movement’s leader, Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenah were both seriously injured by shooting, and then kept in detention. The incident occurred […]
Don’t be fooled: Lindsey Graham & GOP Establishment just as Crazy as Trump
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Lindsey Graham has been posing as the voice of reason in the Republican Party for the past few weeks, warning Tuesday that if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic standard-bearer, then “crazy loses to dishonest” in the public’s eye. There […]
Russia open to “Federal” Syria, but opposition worries about Partition
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov said Monday that Russia supports whatever arrangements the Syrians in the current negotiations reach about the future, included a possible federal state. The United States has a federal system, which means that individual states retain a certain amount of autonomy, […]
“Tehran is liberated territory” as Pragmatists & Centrists win Iranian Capital & Expert Assembly
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The era of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also a former mayor of Tehran, is completely over. Ahmadinejad’s so-called spiritual mentor, Mohammad-Taqi Misbah-Yazdi (actually an extremely hateful individual), lost his seat on the Assembly of Experts, as did far right figure Mohammad Yazdi, the body’s sitting […]
How Much will Iran Change after Ayatollah Khamenei?
By Golnaz Esfandiari | ( RFE/RL ) | – – The succession question in Iran has come to the fore recently with the election of a new Assembly of Experts, the 88-member chamber of (male) theologians who pick and nominally oversee the work of the country's supreme leader. Speculation mounted about potential successors to Supreme […]
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