Republican Party

Middle East Monitor | – – US President Donald Trump has sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, one week after the BBC obtained emails revealing efforts by the UAE to have him sacked at “a politically convenient time.” Was this an unlikely coincidence? Should Americans not wake up to the power of lobby groups that […]

Donald Trump

Pompeo, Big Oil and the attack on Iran Deal

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – All you need to know about Mike Pompeo, the four-term congressman from Kansas who is actually from California, is that most of his life he has been in business with the Koch brothers. His appointment as Secretary of State puts a seal on Trump’s withdrawal from […]

Donald Trump

Pushing back against Trump Criminalization of Immigrants

contributors

By Aviva Chomsky | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The immigration debate seems to have gone crazy. President Obama’s widely popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which offered some 750,000 young immigrants brought to the United States as children a temporary reprieve from deportation, is ending… except it isn’t… except it is… […]

Donald Trump

Tower of Jello: The Struggle of Russia and UAE over Tillerson’s helming of State Department

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The New Yorker reports that there was a further Steele memo, prepared by the same ex-MI6 intelligence officer who authored the notorious “golden shower” dossier, which reported Russian foreign ministry boasts that they had blocked Trump from appointing Mitt Romney as secretary of state. Romney had […]

Donald Trump

Ignoring White Supremacists, Trump Smears Immigrants as Terrorists

contributors

By Arnold R. Isaacs | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – When you see an immigrant or a foreign visitor, especially from a Muslim country, should your first thought be that you might be looking at a possible terrorist? Clearly, that’s how the Trump administration wants Americans to react. It was the message in the president’s […]

Corruption

Did an Emirates-Israel alliance Help elect Trump more than Russia?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – One of the surprises thrown up by the Gulf crisis and by the Mueller investigation is how entangled the United Arab Emirates is with Israel, and how the lobbies of the two states in Washington powerfully shape American policy. While the Israel lobbies have received scholarly […]

Donald Trump

Pence’s White Nationalist exclusion of Syrian Refugees Struck Down by Court

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt has struck down former Indiana governor and present vice president Mike Pence’s attempt to stop Syrian refugees from settling in the state of Indiana. At the time he had cited terrorism concerns. Pence’s stunt, one shared in by some 16 […]

Donald Trump

Ultimate Blowback: A Planet Boiling With Unintended Consequences

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) | – – You want to see “blowback” in action? That’s easy enough. All you need is a vague sense of how Google Search works. Then type into it phrases like “warmest years,” “rising sea levels,” “melting ice,” “lengthening wildfire season,” or “future climate refugees,” and you’ll find yourself immersed in the grimmest […]

Bernie Sanders

Yemen War: Bernie Sanders et al. Try to get US Out

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday proposed a bipartisan resolution to take the US Pentagon back out of the Yemen War. The war was declared by Saudi Arabia and its allies in 2015 when Zaydi Shiites of the Helpers of God […]