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Juan Cole

Israel/ Palestine
US loses UNESCO Voting Rights: How Kow-Towing to Israeli Policy Weakens America

US loses UNESCO Voting Rights: How Kow-Towing to Israeli Policy Weakens America

Juan Cole

President Obama called America “the greatest country in the world” on Friday, but the same day the US lost basic voting rights on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). The US stopped paying its dues in fall of 2011 because Unesco accepted Palestine (now a non-member observer state of the UN like […]

Iran
Top Reasons Israel’s Likud Really Opposes an Iran Nuclear Deal

Top Reasons Israel’s Likud Really Opposes an Iran Nuclear Deal

Juan Cole

Rightwing Israeli politicians like Binyamin Netanyahu are squawking furiously about the prospect that Sec. of State John Kerry might reach an agreement with Iran over its civilian nuclear enrichment program. The US is trying to convince Iran to scale back its program to the point where it cannot be used to produce a weapon in […]

Arab Spring
Arts of the Arab Uprisings at the Arab-American Museum, Dearborn

Arts of the Arab Uprisings at the Arab-American Museum, Dearborn

Juan Cole

The Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, has mounted an exhibition on the Arts of the Arab Uprisings. It includes art, photography and video by street artist Amr Nazeer and celebrated social justice blogger Wael Abbas of Egypt and Tunisian activists Lina ben Mhenni and Nadia Khiari, among others. Here is NPR’s interview with Egyptian street […]

Afghanistan
How American Troops in Afghanistan became Unreal (Jones)

How American Troops in Afghanistan became Unreal (Jones)

Juan Cole

Ann Jones writes at Tomdispath.com The last time I saw American soldiers in Afghanistan, they were silent. Knocked out by gunfire and explosions that left them grievously injured, as well as drugs administered by medics in the field, they were carried from medevac helicopters into a base hospital to be plugged into machines that would […]

Energy
Record High Warming Gases in Atmosphere: Earth Losing Race Against Time (McCauley)

Record High Warming Gases in Atmosphere: Earth Losing Race Against Time (McCauley)

Juan Cole

Lauren McCauley writes at Commondreams.org The amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere reached a record high in 2012, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), continuing an upward and accelerating trend which, according to report authors, spells "devastating consequences" for the future of the planet. According to WMO's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, between […]

Israel/ Palestine
It wasn’t Arafat who was Assassinated but the Palestinian People

It wasn’t Arafat who was Assassinated but the Palestinian People

Juan Cole

Aljazeera America has the exclusive on the Swiss scientists’ findings that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with polonium, after the fashion of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. That the Likud government of Ariel Sharon in Israel was behind the assassination is not much in doubt. Polonium is only produced in Russia and wouldn’t be easy […]

Islam
Ms. Marvel and the Rise of the Muslim Superhero in America

Ms. Marvel and the Rise of the Muslim Superhero in America

Juan Cole

Umberto Eco argued that Superman, from the character’s inception in the 1940s through about 1970, was a politically conservative figure. The stories were about protecting property and combating petty crime, rather banal stuff given the character’s powers. The character was opaque and unchanging (i.e. the stories are plot-driven adventures, not character-driven). Art by Adrian Alphono […]

Energy
Dear Press: Stop Enthusing About Habitable Planets until People like Va.'s Cuccinelli Stop Destroying this One

Dear Press: Stop Enthusing About Habitable Planets until People like Va.’s Cuccinelli Stop Destroying this One

Juan Cole

The issue of habitable planets, earth’s own disastrous climate change, and Virginia politics don’t intersect every day. But today they do, and that does not reflect well on the human species or its prospects. Bear with me. NASA’s now-idle Kepler telescope’s earlier search for habitable planets in the universe from time to time generates breathless […]

Israel/ Palestine
Israelis plan new Colonies, Oil Drilling, on Palestinian Land during “Peace Talks”

Israelis plan new Colonies, Oil Drilling, on Palestinian Land during “Peace Talks”

Juan Cole

The current round of so-called peace talks between Israel and Palestine is marked by so much bad faith on the part of the Israelis that only the corruption and perfidy of the Mahmoud Abbas government in the West Bank can explain why the Palestinians should subject themselves to such exploitation and humiliation. Israel just issued […]

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