By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – I told this story back in 2005 but it is a good story, has held up, and bears repeating now that President Trump is again promoting torture as “effective.” Torture is a good way to get people to tell you what they think you want to […]
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Uncategorized
Trump’s Visa Ban is about anti-Muslim Bigotry, not Security
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Reuters is reporting that on Wednesday, Trump will announce a halt to the issuing of visas to citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. If this report is correct, Trump will represent this step as being about security, but it is not. Of […]
From Syria to Sanctions, Flynn-Russia Quid Pro Quo?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The headlines about Trump and his team on the one hand and the Russian Federation on the other are coming fast and furious. The items are often, however, merely isolated data points. Can we draw them together? First, while the Obama administration was imposing sanctions on […]
Trump does Poor imitation of Tin-Pot Dictator at “Press Conference”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In his first news conference in months, president-elect Donald J. Trump engaged in a series of petulant tirades. For anyone like myself, who has lived under dictators in the global South, his performance was unpleasantly reminiscent of their authoritarian publicity techniques. Instead of letting a wide […]
US Iraq-Afghanistan ‘Burn Pits’ – Poisoning America’s Soldiers
Reviewed by H. Patricia Hynes | (Truthdig) | – – “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers” A book by Joseph Hickman They are called “this generation’s Agent Orange”—the open fire pits operated on over 230 US military bases across Iraq and Afghanistan during our wars there. Every kind of waste—plastics, batteries, old ordnance, […]
Meryl Streep calls out Trump: Having Bully-in-Chief Coarsens whole Culture
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Occasionally entertainment and politics intersect, often hitting a false note. You never want your screenplay to be, as they say in Hollywood, “on the nose.” You have to step sideways away from ordinary news and address some dimension of the human condition to make art. But […]
US Media outraged by Russia, won’t Notice Israeli plot on UK Parliament
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment)- – Washington is obsessed by the story put out by US intelligence agencies that Russia tried to interfere in the US presidential election. But for reasons of self-preservation, the blockbuster story just hitting the headlines that an Israeli operative was plotting to get up scandals to unseat British members […]
GOP Russia Hawks attack Trump: McCain Says he Must ‘Stand Up’ to Putin
TeleSur | – – On Friday, Trump congratulated Putin for not retaliating to Obama’s expulsions. On the same day a top aide to President-elect Donald Trump said the White House may have disproportionately punished Russia by ordering the expulsion of 35 diplomats, Republican Senator John McCain reaffirmed his conviction that the United States could only […]
Top 5 Ways Obama Sanctions on Russia work for Democrats
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama’s sanctions on Russia are small potatoes and will have almost no effect on the Russian Federation. The high officials sanctioned are unlikely to have assets in the US that Washington can attach. When you hear that the US is sanctioning the FSB (the Russian […]