Total number of comments: 1542 (since 2013-04-13 18:28:29)
Juan Cole
is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page
Website: http://juancole.com
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Hi, Kim. The statistic referred to coal, not all fossil fuels. And, even having one day of the sort you described is record-breaking and points to the future assuming the Tories don't sabotage it. Scotland is way ahead of England because the Scots wanted this greening. England can do it if it wants to.
There are no fossil fuels to speak of in Syria
Obama's appointment of an ambassador to Syria like everything else he did was going to be blocked by the GOP in a way the constitution did not envisage.
Obama's policy was to stay out of Syria proper, a policy that Ford came to disagree with. That isn't a debacle. Would you like a list of conflicts Republican presidents managed to stay out of? Were those debacles.
By the way, you voted for Trump, so, you know. Credibility gap.
Mr. Al-Assad, you neglected to mention the hundreds of thousands of Syrians you killed, some after imprisoning and torturing them.
Take away massive Big Oil and other Big Carbon government tax breaks and their stock share price would plummet like a stone.
1. The Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt in an autocratic way and tried to take over all major institutions of government; that way of proceeding however did not justify a military coup.
2. Ahmad Chalabi was working for Ahmad Chalabi.
3. Saudi Arabia produces oil, not gas, so measures against Qatar are political, not economic.
The map shows countries willing to join Saudi Arabia in beating up on Qatar versus those who are not.
Armenia is typically aligned with Iran in foreign policy. Russia is for the moment also allied with Iran. The map has nothing to do with religion. Israel, Egypt and Saudia have little in common but all hate Iran and the Brotherhood, hence are glad to join in anti-Qatar effort.
That would be ahistorical; King Abdullah did not behave this way.
Many thanks for the kind words!
the US doesn't get that much of its oil from Saudis.
Dude, I follow Mosul daily on Arabic language media.
https://www.juancole.com/mideast/arab-world/iraq
We have 7 multi-billion dollar media corporations over here and I have not seen Corbyn on any of them speaking.
Yes, there is obstructionism, including Koch Brothers-inspired GOP penalties on solar panels in Florida of all places!! Still, the interesting fact is that the deep south frankly doesn't have much wind and so most Red States can obstruct wind power without it meaning much for the country. And as for solar, you're starting to see a conversion in the GOP in places like Georgia. I personally think legislative obstruction of green energy is a strategy of the 2010s made possible by the continued competitiveness of natural gas price-wise. As solar and wind electricity production costs drop through technological innovation, NG will no longer be able to compete and nobody is going to pay double for their electricity just to make Don and Chuck happy.
Hi, David. The ice sheets are already in the water and their melting won't raise sea levels. They are however acting as barriers keeping some very large glaciers in place. Once the ice sheets plop in, the glaciers will be next. One of them is estimated to be able all by itself to raise the sea level 10 feet. The glaciers will go in. The question is only on what time schedule. But you ae right that the ice shelves will be first. Read all the way down here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/giant-iceberg-poised-to-break-off-from-antarctic-shelf-larsen-c
thanks a million for the field report, John!
Just an assumption on the part of al-Abadi's critics that he will do whatever Trump tells him to.
The Bush administration had *no* plans for rebuilding Iraq and Rumsfeld forbade the Pentagon from developing any Phase IV plans and preventing involvement of Tom Warrick who had run a 2 year project on it.
think about it in terms of billions of tons of CO2 that will be released because of government policy that would not otherwise have been released. Science and technology will win, but how many extra degrees will the temperature go up because of Trump policies and more importantly because of inaction on combating emissions?
yeah, the Germans in the Sudetenland begged Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia too.
The Russian Federation Unilaterally annexed the territory of a fellow UN member, and permanently incorporated that territory into itself with no international negotiation process that would have legalized these actions. That cannot be excused by what other countries have done, more especially if they have not annexed another country's territory permanently. If the allegation is that Crimea actually belonged to Russia all along, that should have been negotiated. Lots of such claims could potentially exist. Does Germany actually own Alsace-Lorraine and Gdansk? Does France own Genoa? Does Italy own Tirana? What are legitimate Turkish claims in the Balkans? You can't settle things like that by military annexation or you get WW III. Stop apologizing for Putin's thuggishness.
The US did not annex Serbia.
The US did not annex Iraq.
Oh, thanks a million, Frank. Fixed!
Oh, no. Saudi opposition is *more* fundamentalist, as seen in the municipal elections.
Sirte was held by ISIL; one would look into possible links.
You are wrong about this. I had my retirement in stock and I remember a huge plunge. In any case, if you had a trillion dollars in the market, you wouldn't want to lose 8% of it either.
Valiy-i faqih is the function of the rahbar or leader, which is to say that he is a jurist-guardian. It is not a superlative. Just as an orphan has a guardian, so society has a guardian who acts as a jurisconsult. I'm not saying it is good or bad, I'm saying that the English "Supreme Leader" is an invented term that has no equivalent in Persian and is just designed to make Iran's leader sound like an Oriental Despot.
Nobody had an iPad in 2004. Now the world is full of billions of them. Electric cars will be the same way. Solar and wind can provide the electricity. It will happen overnight and people won't even notice it. It was the same way with the Model T.
Rahbar-i mu`azzam does not mean supreme leader. Supreme would be a`la or a`zam something. Mu`azzam is the passive progressive participle of Form II of `a z m. It isn't comparative the way 'supreme' is & just means exalted, and it is the speaker who is doing the exalting. Persian is flowery. The Western press when they say 'Supreme Leader' are not talking about a praised, beloved leader of the revolution. They are implying that he is Hitlerian, which is not the nature of his authority.
First of all, spreading xenophobia and strict religion is not the same as spreading terrorism or the Southern Baptists would all be in jail. Second, it isn't clear that Salafis produce more terrorism than Sunnis and Shiites. You're just emoting-- there are no facts here.
the stock market lost half its value on 9/12 and went on down from there. No one as heavily invested in it as the Saudi royal family would have planned out 9/11, which was actually planned by seedy jihadis in Qandahar and Khost who happened to have some poor Saudi young men among their cannon fodder. They didn't come from Malta and they didn't come from Riyadh either. This is just fake news, popular on the American left because of Orientalism and left Islamophobia.
oil sold for plastics or petrochemicals brings a fraction what what it brings in as fuel.
This is such a crock. The Saudi consulate was concerned for Saudi students, they didn't know those guys were radicals.
It was the CIA who had been tracking them and didn't share the knowledge, even with FBI.
The women continued to be close to Assange and to write him lovingly for some time after the alleged offense. The charges were clearly the state's idea. The charge was not made up but the prosecution was arguably frivolous. Assange could not risk going into the system since once detained for trial he would have been put on a plane to Gitmo.
Assange was never accused of committing sexual assault. He was accused of slipping off the condom in the middle of the sex act without getting partner permission, which would not be prosecutable in most countries however objectionable it might be.
V minor
Actually I wrote about Russia and Syrian Kurds for The Nation last week.
Thanks so much Mark. Sometimes blogging makes a person fuzzy minded but of course I know Clapper was DNI. DNI oversees NSA among others, which what was probably on my mind.
As I said, I was talking about foreign policy-- Climate change, European integration, etc.
As for the rest, two wrongs don't make a right.
They captured a lot of vehicles from the Iraqi Army depots in Mosul in 2014. And, I don't think air power is as all-seeing as you suggest.
Thanks for that, Alan! We needed it!
US has caused a lot of trouble in ME. Not true that Russia wd withdraw. Wants to suppress fundamentalism.
Yeah, I don't actually think the two situations are in any way similar.
There are actually three issues here, which you are running together:
How someone gets to power
Whether the leader has a national mandate
Whether the leader's techniques of rule are democratic.
Both Erdogan and Sisi became president through a deeply flawed electoral process in which press freedom was suppressed, opponents were coerced or jailed (ask HDP), and significant sections of the opposition were branded terrorist.
Both Erdogan and Sisi appear to be widely popular, though Sisi is probably more popular than Erdogan across the public.
Both Erdogan and Sisi have fired large numbers of civil servants on grounds of adherence to a 'terrorist' group. Both have governed in an illiberal and undemocratic way. Sisi had been until recently more illiberal and undemocratic, but Erdogan is catching up to him. Sisi has closed fewer universities and jailed or had fired fewer journalists and professors. Despite his military actions in Sinai, Sisi has also not displaced 350,000 of his own citizens.
Thanks for providing the opportunity to expand on the comparison, which is to Erdogan's disadvantage more than I originally thought.
Many people die because they don't have regular access to health care, and so they end up in the emergency room when it is too late. Doctor visits in pregnancy are also tied to lower infant and mother mortality.
Not to mention that Obamacare worked perfectly well in Massachusetts. It was in states where the GOP deliberately sabotaged it that it did not.
it is nothing to do with voter intelligence. The GOP congressmen were elected by a fourth of their district and with money provided by big corporations. Gerrymandering and voter suppression laws and Tuesday workday voting hours ensured that millions were disenfranchised. It is de facto oligarchy, not democracy.
Yes, India has excellent engineers and many people are handy. They can do this.
Paying tuition should result in your hearing things you didn't know, not in only hearing things you want to.
Hi, Kevin. Could I push back against the idea that taxpayers have jurisdiction over the speech of professors at public universities because they pay their salaries? I help pay the salary of Gov. Snyder, and my Texas counterparts pay the salary of Ted Cruz and yet we have no say in their public discourse, nor do I think we want any. Presumably taxpayers are paying for the students in their state to be educated, not to create a class of thousands of muzzled slaves.
As Informed Comment evolves into a magazine it inevitably syndicates a wide range of views. Publication of them is not an endorsement of the author but an invitation to think critically about the points made. That Russia has become an oligarchy of some sort is not controversial.
This isn't quite accurate, Mark. The French may have gotten some Alawite young men to join the army during the colonial period, but members of that sect weren't all that prominent in the 20s and 30s. The Baath was multi-confessional and in the 60s the Druze briefly dominated it. Hafez al-Assad only came to power, in a coup, in 1970.
Some officers and soldiers were Vichy loyalists and never did support the allies. Their 'country' was Nazi occupied, so is that what they were fighting for? And some of these officers and troops went on to genocide the Algerians. The FN has very, very smelly origins.
Roosevelt in 1940 was trying to avoid war; not a sign he liked Fascism. He sent troops soon thereafter to kill those Vichy troops in N. Africa who would not stand down.
http://ww2days.com/hitler-petain-meet-pledge-cooperation.html
"Montoire, Occupied France • October 24, 1940
After failing the day before to convince Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to bring his country into the war on the Axis side, Adolf Hitler met with 84-year-old Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain, respected military leader (“victor of Verdun”) and now head of state (chef de l’État Français), and Pierre Laval, deputy leader of Vichy France, on this date in 1940 in the relatively isolated town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir, about 80 miles south of Paris. The secret meeting between German and French leaders had been suggested two days earlier by Laval, an outspoken proponent of state collaboration with Nazi Germany, even pushing his view on Pétain that the Marshal formally enroll France in the Tripartite (Axis) Pact.
Hitler’s charm offensive took place in his private railcar just outside the town’s train station. For Pétain and Laval it was important to define a new political relationship with Germany, even if it was an unequal one. On Pétain’s agenda was a reduction in the war indemnity France was obliged to pay the victorious Germans. Pétain also wanted Hitler to release the 1-1/2 million French prisoners of war who were still in POW camps, held hostage to enforce German terms on France. Pétain and Laval were assured that France could expect concessions if an acceptable agreement on collaboration was negotiated.
The famous handshake between Hitler and Pétain was photographed, and Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda ministry made much use of the photo to gain support from French civilians. A week later, when Pétain publicized his meeting with Hitler, the Marshal made collaboration Vichy state policy, declaring on French radio: “I enter today on the path of collaboration” (“J’entre aujourd’hui dans la voie de la collaboration”), and inviting his countrymen to join him on the journey. Five years later, in 1945, Pétain was handed over to the provisional French government headed by his wartime nemesis, Gen. Charles de Gaulle."
US troops took heavy fire, and casualties, from loyalist Vichy French troops in North Africa. Admittedly, some of them went over to de Gaulle and laid down their arms. The children of those Vichy troops firing on American GIs in Morocco and Algeria formed Le Pen's National Front. I am shocked that some readers are resisting these obvious facts.
Now that is an informed comment! Many thanks, Neil.
The Moroccan king pushed back against Vichy inquiries about surrendering his Jews to them, but he wasn't very powerful. There isn't any doubt that most Muslims were appalled at the idea.
Hi, Nicholas. I lived in Beirut under Syrian Baath occupation. I was personally censored under Baath rules. I know fascism when I see it.
Le Pen is a fascist. Racial hierarchy? Check. Ultra-Nationalism? Check. Xenophobia? Check. State-corporate hegemony? Check. Authoritarianism? Check. Militarism? Check.
Trump also has fascist tendencies.
Now that's an informed comment! Thx!
I like Alabama quite a lot. Don't judge the people there by Sessions et al
oh she let Trump have it on twitter
Alabamans are wonderful. Their political class has not served them well.
With all due respect, robotics can't solve the problem
Serif Mardin proposed center- periphery split as far back as '70s. All of the above.
If you're going to be in your house 10 years, you are losing money by not putting in solar panels now.
The planes destroyed were destroyed because they had been grounded for repairs. The regime flew missions from it the next day. Not extensive damage and light years from being any sort of game changer.
Sorry - was traveling, wifi was knocked out by storm - & just lacked time or resources to proofread that. Thx all for helpful corrections.
I meant 11 tons
You need to talk to some Syrian Allawites, Christians, secular Sunnis. They might have wavered in 2011-2012 but now they fear it is the regime or the Salafi Jihadis, who will kill them all.
You're missing something. International sanctions were all that kept Iran from developing LNG. Now Shell or Total or someone will, and they will ship it on the seas to Europe. Going from Iran with natural gas to Europe anyway can be done through Turkey. Iran does not border Syria, and volatile gas pipelines can't go through rabidly Salafi anti-Iranian provinces.
There is *no* gas pipeline explanation for the Syrian war. This is not about hydrocarbons.
Until they went into Syria seriously in late 2015, the Russians barely bothered with that little base at Tartous.
You don't know that. h was asked to leave by computer. He may have been mayled because of race.
The Alawi core around Bashar would never hand power to a relative outsider like Tlass!
there is no appreciable oil in Syria. Entrepreneurs are always looking for it but the really big fields in accessible places were long ago found. Since oil prospectors need big bucks to just look, there are lots of completely unrealistic prospectuses out there. Syria was doing 400k barrels a day before the war, which isn't worth mentioning, much less making war over.
There is almost no oil in Syria. With supertankers and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), hydrocarbons can be moved on supertankers efficiently and safely. So there is no reason to put a pipeline through Syria, and certainly not enough of a reason to go to war for it. Syria is about geopolitics.
Almost all is not the same as all.
Guerrilla groups only flourish if they have a base in the local population. The point of gassing Khan Shikhoun is to let people in Idlib know that they had better turn on al-Qaeda and its allies and deny them food, shelter, support or else they are all toast together. It is pour encourager les autres, to 'encourage the others' in the wicked French phrase.
It doesn't defy reason at all. Idlib is al-Qaeda central now and coming to the front burner for Damascus. That it is rural is irrelevant; that is where you find guerrilas. Al-Qaeda did not gas its own subjects.
There are no chem warehouses in that area and Idlib is owned by the Syrian Conquest Front; this was an attack by the regime on one of their safe houses.
The story that Carter gave a green light for Iraq to attack Iran is not supported by any documentary evidence and is flatly contradicted by Gary Sick, who was on the Iran desk at the National Security Council in that period. It also doesn't fit with what we know of Carter.
The Sargodha situation is murky and it is weird to say it is a matter of a cult. The keeper of a Sufi shrine seems to have gone bonkers and killed his own visitors. There is no reason to think the shrine congregants were a 'cult.' Some suggest that the shrine keeper went Taliban. We'll see.
attributing global warming to natural causes is denialism because it intends to deny that burning hydrocarbons is harmful. Russia is an oil state. There are no natural causes that would explain our 1.1 degree C. increase in the past century and a half; in fact, sunspots are low and if were were still in the holocene it should be cold.
Well I can't say how pleased I am to have seen this discussion here! Thanks, all!
It is so nice of you to share your expertise with us here!
Yes typo & thx
The opposition agreed to the referendum. 80% of the electorate voted for him. There was a constitutional process. Neither are Houthis legitimate.
I use a VPN and it doesn't slow down things at all. I recommend the practice to everyone, all the time.
Apparently this can be defeated by using a Virtual Private Network.
Yeah, Nicholas, with all due respect the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, not just some pedestrians and tourists.
the Saudi royal family is not supporting Daesh! Daesh talks dirty about them and pledges to overthrow them.
Not only that, but the other judges ruled differently from Gorsuch. They were also interested in the meaning of the law.
Clinton's server was not unauthorized and was never the issue in the investigation. The question was if she had emailed out highly classified material from it. She did not.
Using a private server is not and was not against the law.
Not every geographical area is rich in potential wind energy (likewise the US Southeast). There are transmission wires that will solve that problem. China is building thousands of miles of them to bring wind power down from Mongolia. But in any case wind is likely a temporary solution, and solar is the future, including solar technology that can get power on cloudy days.
Solar panels will become so efficient that we'll just be able to put them on car roofs. Why you think the small batteries that will be needed at night are not practical is unclear to me but battery technology will also improve. Mass transport has drawbacks because many routes are not served, including most rural ones.
One path to bringing Israeli officials to the ICC is UN Security Council where US has veto
At least 1200 Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were interned
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans#Hawaii