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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mohamed Bin Salman, the thirty-two-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia, is finding his wings clipped, by his father and by the heavy hand of reality, so severely that some are speculating about whether he can survive politically. Alkhaleejonline.net reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman recently met with his […]

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Iran Parliament Fires Finance Minister, as US Sanctions Bite (Cost Iran $1.1 Trillion)

Juan Cole

Iran’s parliament on Sunday fired the Finance Minister, Massoud Karbasian, in a severe political setback for president Hassan Rouhani. The Iranian rial has fallen dramatically against the dollar in recent months, eating into the purchasing power of Iranian consumers who buy goods from abroad. Supporters of Karbasian in parliament clashed physically with his critics, leading […]

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That Time the Republican Party Made McCain Black to Defeat his Presidential Bid

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Racism is so pervasive in the United States, and white power elites work so hard to stigmatize minorities, that the dominant racists are even sometimes able to marginalize senior white males on grounds of their association with those minorities. The head of the Republican Party will not mourn the passing […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Foreign Policy Hand Crippled by Legal Woes

Juan Cole

Trump’s domestic woes as an unindicted co-conspirator inevitably make him weak on the world stage. Foreign adversaries don’t take seriously a president who looks as though he might be impeached. And they know that presidents under siege in the capital do not have the leisure to attend to foreign affairs with any concentration. Even friends […]

Donald Trump

With South Africa Conspiracy Theory, Trump is becoming Dylann Roof

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – White nationalist terrorist Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African-Americans in a church, including a sitting state senator, confessed himself deeply disturbed by various white grievances. Before murdering his hosts, he accused them of “taking over our country” and “raping our women.” He wrote in his manifesto, “From this point I […]

Donald Trump

Is Trump’s Fascism part of the Reason for Cohen’s Willingness to Indict Him?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I can only imagine that some Jewish and other minority members of the Trump administration experience significant discomfort at being part of the promotion of white nationalist fascism with strong overtones of anti-Semitism or outright neo-Nazi hatred of Jews. We have seen that the most prominent African-American close to Trump, […]

Donald Trump

Unindicted Co-Conspirator again in White House: A Turning Point in American History

Juan Cole

Historians will mark August 21, 2018, as a turning point in American history. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer pleaded guilty to 8 counts of criminal wrongdoing that could carry a sentence of up to 65 years. Most significantly, he pleaded guilty to having attempted illegally to interfere in an election “in coordination with and at […]

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Early Arabic Inscriptions and the Life of the Prophet: A new Source for History

Juan Cole

Among the anecdotes told in the early biographies of the Prophet Muhammad is one about him being harassed by his immediate neighbors in Mecca, in roughly the period 614-622. One way they bothered him was to throw sheep offal through the window of his home in Mecca where he lived with his first wife, Khadija. […]

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Trump’s Remark that Israeli PM will be ‘Mohammed’ ignores how Apartheid Works

Juan Cole

In a conversation earlier this summer with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the king told Trump about the possibility of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which Abdullah said younger Palestinians increasingly favor. Trump is said by French and other diplomats present to have replied, “what you say makes sense. [In a one-state scenario,] the […]