By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The hopes of the Trump administration to use the Syrian Kurds as a wedge against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus may be rapidly fading. The liberal Lebanese newspaper Elbalad [The Country] reports that the Autonomous Administration of the Kurdish-majority Afrin region of northern Syria, […]
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Featured
China surges with 52 Gigs of new Solar as Trump kneecaps US sector with 30% Tariffs
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Clean Technica reports that China blew the top off expectations for its solar installations in 2017, It put in 52.83 gigawatts. The incredible 2017 solar surge in China brought its total solar installed capacity up to 130 gigawatts. As a cursory look at these statistics makes […]
Countering Turkish Propaganda, Pentagon reports 150 ISIL Killed in Airstrikes
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The front page news today that US and coalition aircraft (mostly American joined by French and British pilots) struck last Saturday at an ISIL base in eastern Syria where hundreds of fighters had regrouped, killing 150 of them. There are lots of question marks about this […]
Jordan’s King Abdullah warns Pence-Trump of Major instability over Jerusalem
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Political scientist John Mearsheimer wrote a book on the tragedy of great power politics. While that subject is indeed shockingly depressing, imagine the tragedy of small power politics. Poor King Abdullah II of Jordan was forced to host Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, the world’s biggest […]
Turkey launches Land invasion of Syria, Calls France opposition “Terrorism”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – BBC Arabic reports that Turkey has launched a land invasion of the Kurdish-majority Afrin canton in northern Syria, home to some 500,000 Kurds. Turkey has also flooded Arab fundamentalist fighters into the region, calling them “Free Syrian Army.” The move comes after some 72 Turkish F-16s […]
The worst thing about Year One of Trump: Fascistization of Cable News
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – American mass media journalism is broken. There are some simple elements of US journalistic practice that have proved easy for special interests to hack, and the editors at least have allowed themselves to be used by sinister forces. (I am speaking primarily of television news here, […]
Syria: Turkey Begins Military Operation against US-Allied Kurds in Afrin
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Reuters reports that on Friday, Turkey began cross-border shelling of the Kurdish-majority Afrin canton in northern Syria. There are also reports of busloads of Sunni Arab guerrillas of the rebel Free Syrian Army, who had been sheltered in Turkey, being sent into Afrin. The region is […]
Russia accuses US of destabilizing Syria with Kurdish-Turkish Clash
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s angry threat to invade a Syrian Kurdish canton in response to the US announcement that it would train and arm a 30,000-man Syrian Kurdish border force produced anxiety in Moscow. Russia has made a big bet, worth billions of rubles and involving […]
Trump Admin Commits to Forever War in Syria against Iran
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a talk Wednesday at the right wing Hoover Institution that hovers over Stanford University, in which he committed to a Forever War in Syria. The talk was a mishmash of incompatible talking points and full of inaccurate and tendentious assertions, […]
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