The Telegraph (UK) has put the word “genocide” in its headline as a description of what has been going on in Syria. On Wednesday morning, more persons were killed in Homs, as the Syrian military invaded strongly Sunni neighborhoods and drove toward the city center. Tanks and artillery barrages have been used against civilian crowds. […]
Archives for February 2012
Chinese Envoy: Veto aimed at Protecting Syria from Civil War
The USG Open Source Center translates from the Chinese an article that includes an explanation of China’s veto of a new UN Security Council resolution on Syria. Special envoy on Middle Eastern affairs Wu Sike explains that China feared the resolution would push Syria into a full-fledged civil war. He said he also wanted to […]
Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Why the Energy-Industrial Elite Has It In for the Planet
If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet –…
Omar Khayyam 16
Before time ever was, You fashioned the divine handiwork of heaven and hell– out of compassion and rage. Your banquet is in heaven, and I am empty-handed, since I have no path to paradise. trans. Juan Cole From Whinfield 16.
Hoekstra Blames Everyone but Himself for the Deficits He Voted for
It is hard to decide what is the most despicable thing about senatorial Republican hopeful Pete Hoekstra’s Superbowl ad attacking rival Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. The ad has a Chinese young woman speaking broken English and gloating about the indebtedness of the US to China and the export of US jobs to China. Given the […]
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Kicking Down the World’s Door
Make no mistake: we’re entering a new world of military planning…
How an Israeli Strike on Iran could radically weaken Israel
Some colleagues on an email list got me thinking about the worst case scenario of an Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, so here is what I came up with. I think each of these scenarios is plausible in its own right, and that all could well ensue. 1. Iran is now threatening […]
Cole Spanish interviews on Arab Spring in Costa Rica Press
My Spanish-speaking readers will enjoy these links to interviews about the Arab Spring I did last week in San Jose, Costa Rica, with the press there. My thanks to the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the National University for helping set up the interviews, and above all to Professor Sergio I. […]
Omar Khayyam 14
The idol asked the pagan, “Do you know why you started bowing down to me?” –“It was because the One who looks out through your eyes shone his light on me!” trans. Juan Cole from Whinfield 14
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