By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The conspiracy hatched by Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to undermine President Obama’s negotiations with Iran over its civilian nuclear weapons program has a false premise that dooms it. Many Republicans, and Netanyahu, believe that Obama is negotiating a bad deal […]
Syria: Daesh/ ISIL takes 150 Christians Captive as 3,000 flee to Hasaka
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Al-Nahar (“The Day,” Beirut) reported that dozens of Assyrian Christians have been abducted by Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) in Hasakah Province, northeast Syria. Reuters later put the number at 150. The abduction occurred after heavy fighting by Kurdish YPG commandos that included allied Christian fighters versus Daesh attackers in […]
Renewable Energy skyrocketing, From Solar Mosques to Wave-Powered Naval Bases
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Here are some of the green energy good news stories of the past few weeks: 1. China put in a massive 21 gigawatts of new wind power in 2014, half of all the wind power installed in the entire world that year and four times as much as […]
In New Gilded Age, Social Protest dominates Academy Awards Ceremony
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – If social and economic inequality were a mine, and if America were deep in this mine with a canary in tow, the canary would long since have expired. Some 400 billionaires have more wealth than the bottom half of Americans. We lived through a year of dramatic incidents […]
Yemen: Saudi backs Sunni revolution against Shiite Houthi Rebels linked to Iran
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Yemen Voice reports that Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has launched an all out political offensive against the Shiite Houthi rebels who have taken over the north of the country. The Houthis took the capital last September but kept the government in place until recently, when they made a full […]
Top 5 Reasons Palestinian-Israelis Could shape the Israeli Election
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Israel, despite the attempts of current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cast it as a monochrome “Jewish state,” has a divided and complicated population. Some 21 percent or 1.7 million of the 8 million Israelis are of Palestinian heritage, the majority of those being Muslim. About 300,000 Israelis […]
Giuliani & Obama: Immigrant Families and Really Loving America
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Rudy Giuliani maintains that Barack Obama doesn’t love the United States of America because of the way he was brought up. Obama was largely brought up after age 10 by his grandmother and grandfather on his mother’s side, Madelynn Dunham and Stanley Armour Dunham. Stanley Dunham enlisted in […]
Jeb Bush on Foreign Policy: Peddling old Iraq Myths Again
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Jeb Bush gave a maiden foreign police speech in Chicago yesterday in which he mixed up Iran with Iraq and alleged with science fictional inaccuracy that Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) has 200,000 men under arms. The actual number of fighters is probably 20,000. His office later admitted that […]
Iraq: Kurds repel ISIL/ Daesh w/ help of the Shiite Militiamen they Distrust
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – In a bold move, Daesh (i.e. ISIL or ISIS) fighters moved Monday on Kirkuk and Erbil, two cities patrolled by the Iraqi Kurdistan paramilitary, the Peshmerga (those who stand before death). Erbil is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Kirkuk is an oil city and is disputed among Turkmen, […]
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