By Juan Cole: Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIS or ISIL) has mounted a major offensive in a bid to take Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar Province in western Iraq. Ramadi is due west of Baghdad past Fallujah. Iraqi eyewitnesses told the al-Arabiya satellite news channel that Daesh had taken over some of the neighborhoods […]
Top 6 Green Energy Good News Stories, November 2014
By Juan Cole 1. There has been a lot of reporting and angst over the possibility that India will turn to coal to electrify the country (many in India still lack electricity). While the government may well initially deploy coal in a kind of ‘all of the above’ strategy, the fact is that solar photovoltaic […]
Top 5 Ways Obama Punked the GOP on Immigration; and the 2016 Campaign
By Juan Cole | — The 2016 presidential election will be very different from the 2014 congressional midterms just held. In the off years, turnout is low (this time it was less than 36 percent) and the people who come out to vote are disproportionately older, well off, and of northern European heritage. That is […]
The Historical Drivers of Modern Day Developments in Iraq (Cole Interview)
By Juan Cole, interviewed by Bassam Haddad | — Bassam Haddad, a prominent Syria specialist at George Mason University, interviewed me this fall for the new web radio program Status Hour , on the Middle East. Do check out the range of important interviews already up at the site. My own audio interview is here. […]
3rd Possibility: Coming Civil War in West Bank/ Jerusalem?
By Juan Cole | — Observers of the evolution of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians have long argued that there are only two likely outcomes of the alternating violence and diplomacy between the two sides that has gone on nearly 70 years now. One is a “two-state solution” wherein Israel accepts a rump […]
Americans 64 times more likely to be Murdered than die in Terrorism
By Juan Cole | — The Institute for Economics and Peace in the UK has released a report on terrorism in 2013, which it maintains was substantially up. There are virtues of the study. It shows that 80% of the victims of terrorism in the past year are Muslims living in just five countries– Nigeria, […]
Top 5 Ways Daesh/ ISIL is Losing, as it lashes out like a Cornered Rat
By Juan Cole Daesh is what ISIL is called in the Middle East by the vast majority that doesn’t like it. It has not had a good month, suffering substantial setbacks in Iraq and watching with concern as the Damascus regime of Bashar al-Assad looks set to retake the major northern city of Aleppo, to […]
Saudi Arabia at the G20: Is it waging Econ War on Iran, Russia and N. Dakota?
By Juan Cole The G20 is a conference of the world’s top 20 economies as measured by Gross Domestic Product. Some observers have slammed it as an unelected and arbitrary body that is doing some of the work the United Nations was intended to do– only in a much less egalitarian way. The official web […]
Daesh (ISIL) Loses Refinery City in Iraq to Iraqi Army, Shiite Militias
By Juan Cole | — Iraqi army and police joined forces with Shiite militias and US close air support to expel Daesh (ISIL) from the city of Beiji, north of Baghdad beyond Tikrit. The Iraqi military claim has not been independently verified. The army is now only 1 kilometer (less than a mile) away from […]
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