Featured

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — In 2014, Iran made news on a number of important fronts. 1. Although there was no decisive breakthrough in its relationship with the United States and the European Union, there was anticipation that some sort of deal would be reached eventually with the permanent members of the UN […]

African-Americans

GOP Figures used racist Ape imagery for Obama before North Korea did

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment)– North Korea lashed out at President Barack Obama on Saturday, blaming him for the Sony film, “The Interview,” and for the North Korean internet outage, adding “”Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest..” Given the long history of racist associations of […]

Bashar al-Assad

Baathist Riposte: How the Regime Came back in the Syrian Civil War in 2014

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — In the course of 2014, two major trends, long since visible in the Syrian civil war, were strengthened. First, the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad continued to assert control over most urban areas along the trunk roads of the west of the country. Damascus, Homs, Hama, Latakia and […]

Featured

Why Kim Jong-Un was Really afraid of “The Interview:” A Humiliation Romp, not an Assassination Flick

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — N.B.: Contains spoilers; if interested in the film, go see or stream it first and then read. There has been a lot of blaming the victim in the commentary on Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg’s controversial film, “The Interview” (2014). The premise, of an assassination plot against the […]

Featured

Have the Kurds cut the ISIL/Daesh State in Two, Blocking Supply Lines?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — Al-Mada newspaper in Baghdad had an interesting article in the aftermath of the fall of Shinjar to the Iraqi Kurdistan Peshmerga. The piece argued that the Peshmerga (Kurdistan’s paramilitary, meaning ‘one who stands before death’) have now effectively cut of the supply lines between Raqqa in Syria and […]

Bill of Rights

Is the NSA Responsible for N. Korea’s Hack of Sony Pictures?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — In all the discussions of what is alleged to be North Korea’s horrible cyber-vandalism against Sony Pictures, I haven’t seen anyone bring up a key issue: The National Security Agency has been for two decades a powerful behind-the-scenes lobby for weak internet encryption and privacy protocols. I don’t know enough […]

Democracy

Tunisia: Nationalist Candidate’s claimed win in Presidential Poll Contested

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — The major political parties do fairly sophisticated exit polling in Tunisian elections now, and secular, nationalist warhorse Beji Caid Essebsi claimed a victory of some 52 or 53% on Sunday evening. His opponent, human rights activist and incumbent interim president, Moncef Marzouki, however, declined to concede. Formal results […]

Displaced and Refugees

Kurds inflict first Major Defeat on Daesh/ ISIL, Rescue Yezidis of Sinjar

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — The pan-Arab London daily, Al-Hayat [Life] reports that the Iraqi Kurdistan paramilitary, the Peshmerga, have taken Mt. Sinjar from Daesh (what Arabs call ISIL or ISIS). They have therefore saved several thousand members of the Yezidi (Izadi) Kurdish religious minority, who have been besieged and sometimes enslaved or […]

Featured

5 Countries where Solar Power is making a Revolution

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — Developing countries of the global south don’t have enough electricity. Sometimes rural populations are only just now getting electricity. Ironically, many of them can leapfrog conventional power and go straight to solar and wind. Indeed, in the next generation, renewables will be a central element in national development. SunEdison has […]