Courtesy Anthony A. Lee, here are four poems from his and the late Amin Banani’s translation of the quatrains of the great Sufi mystic Mevlana Jalalu’d-Din Rumi: Jalalu’d-Din Rumi, 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love: Poems from the Rubaiyat of Mevlana Rumi, Translated by Amin Banani and Anthony Lee (White Cloud Press, 2014) Truth […]
Georgia Courthouse is shot up by Sovereign Citizen after GOP backs Bundy, Open Carry
By Juan Cole That didn’t take long. The Georgia GOP rushed into law an ‘open carry’ provision in April allowing people to tote around guns in bars and churches (apparently these are felt to be complementary institutions in Georgia) and schools (these are apparently felt to be full of expendable if short people in Georgia). […]
On D-Day: Remembering the Muslim Troops who Fought the Axis
By Juan Cole One of the frustrations for a world historian is the unyieldingly parochial vision of the North Atlantic common among journalists and even many historians, and consequently among the public. The 17 world leaders gathering for the D-Day commemoration should by all rights include Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Indian Prime Minister Narendra […]
Facial Hair, Patriotism and the Enemy in American History
By Juan Cole Media Matters for America put together a collage of Fox Cable News commentators smearing the father of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl as having a Taliban-like beard and maybe even being a Taliban sympathizer. Thanks to MM4A for the Laura Ingram clip in which she says that if he weren’t so light-skinned he could […]
Is the Prisoner Swap Hysteria a sign of GOP War withdrawal Symptoms?
By Juan Cole The United States has been continually at war since October of 2001. In many of the succeeding years, until Dec. 31 2011, The US was at war in both Iraq and and in Afghanistan. Wars fulfill multiple functions for the US elite. They justify vast expenditures that benefit the political clients of […]
Faced w/ Global Warming Threat, Obama fudges EPA Carbon Reduction
By Juan Cole President Obama’s decision to unleash the Environmental Protection Agency on US carbon dioxide emitters is a sea change in environmental policy and is extremely welcome to any who care about the planet. But its real significance does not lie in the targets for carbon dioxide reduction Obama has set. Those are way […]
Dear GOP: The US has negotiated with Terrorists and Amnestied Them all through History
By Juan Cole The GOP talking points in response to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a trade for five former officials of the 1990s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) focused on a few basic premises. !. You don’t negotiate with terrorists; 2. such a swap would encourage terrorists to capture Americans; 3. these […]
What Does Sgt. Bergdahl’s Release tell us about Afghanistan, Pakistan & the Taliban today?
By Juan Cole The surprise announcement by President Obama on Saturday of the negotiated release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, captured in 2009, is wonderful news for him, his family, and America. But what does it tell us about the Taliban, Afghanistan and Pakistan? Qatar was the country that successfully acted as mediator, and what does […]
Solar Power for the Global Masses: The Next Revolution
By Juan Cole As the price of solar panels drops, they increasingly are being spontaneously bought and installed by villagers throughout the world, who are often ill-served, or not served at all, by the central power grid in their countries. Some remain off the grid once they have gone solar. Just as many countries in […]
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