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Juan Cole

Energy
Stand up to Global Warming or just Observe it?  Ice Cover down 40% since 1980 (Naidoo@ Moyers)

Stand up to Global Warming or just Observe it? Ice Cover down 40% since 1980 (Naidoo@ Moyers)

Juan Cole

Bill Moyers interviews Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International on the urgency of action on climate change: The program’s blurb: “On this week’s broadcast, the charismatic Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo joins Bill to discuss the politics of global warming and the urgency of environmental activism. As of this moment Vladimir Putin’s government is holding […]

Climate Change
With a Solar Minimum and La Nina’s, Why isn’t it Really, Really Cold?

With a Solar Minimum and La Nina’s, Why isn’t it Really, Really Cold?

Juan Cole

2013 is witnessing another year of very low sunspot activity, showing that we are in a years-long solar minimum. It may not last much longer, but something is going on more than just the usual drop in solar activity every 11 years. Even that 11-year cycle affects the weather. But we’ve seen remarkably low sunspot […]

Afghanistan
Dear President Obama:  Some American Exceptionalism is nothing to be Proud Of (Engelhardt)

Dear President Obama: Some American Exceptionalism is nothing to be Proud Of (Engelhardt)

Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com “But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.  That’s what makes America different.  That’s what makes us exceptional.  With humility, but with resolve, let us never […]

US politics
Why Ted Cruz Should sit down and Shut Up: Countries with Social Safety Net Happiest

Why Ted Cruz Should sit down and Shut Up: Countries with Social Safety Net Happiest

Juan Cole

In a performance that the rest of the world could not even comprehend, a wealthy, Ivy League-educated Texan talked until he was blue in the face to prevent poor children from seeing a doctor. Political scientist Benjamin Radcliff summarizes decades of survey research on human happiness, and the findings are not in doubt. People report […]

al-Qaeda
Taliban on the Euphrates: Syria fighters Dump Moderate SNC, Aim for Fundamentalist State

Taliban on the Euphrates: Syria fighters Dump Moderate SNC, Aim for Fundamentalist State

Juan Cole

The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat [Life] reports that 14 bands of fighters in Syria have broken with the moderate Syrian National Council led by Ahmad al-Jarba and have repudiated its Free Syrian Army. The importance of this development should not be underestimated. It will throw a scare into Baghdad and Amman, and will provoke serious thought […]

Iran
US, UN Sanctions on Iran Hurt Most Vulnerable

US, UN Sanctions on Iran Hurt Most Vulnerable

Juan Cole

In smug Washington-speak, US ‘sanctions’ on Iran have forced it to the negotiating table, making it possible to ‘stop’ the Iranian ‘nuclear weapons program.’ Even President Obama has started talking this way. They leave out the story of the children who die because they can’t afford medicine. The US doesn’t just have sanctions on Iran, […]

Iran
Iranian President Rouhani acknowledges Holocaust as Crime against Jewish People

Iranian President Rouhani acknowledges Holocaust as Crime against Jewish People

Juan Cole

The speech of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the UNGA pledged that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and said that Iran never would. The new Iranian president said he was committed to a time-bound set of negotiations over the country’s nuclear enrichment program. His remarks were encouraging, but unspecific about the ways he could […]

Government surveillance
President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil at UN delivers Stinging Rebuke to Obama on NSA Spying (Lazare)

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil at UN delivers Stinging Rebuke to Obama on NSA Spying (Lazare)

Juan Cole

Reuters reports on President Roussef’s speech condemning US spying on her country and on her personally: Sarah Lazare writes at Commondreams: In a furious critique that opened the UN's General Assembly meeting Tuesday immediately before President Obama took the podium, Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff blasted U.S. secret surveillance programs for violating her country's national sovereignty, […]

Iran
Is Iran Ready to do a Deal with Obama over its Nuclear Program?

Is Iran Ready to do a Deal with Obama over its Nuclear Program?

Juan Cole

The United States, France, Germany, the UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE form a bloc that are convinced that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is intended ultimately to produce a bomb. Iran maintains that the program is solely intended to produce fuel for nuclear reactors, which will allow it to avoid using its petroleum for […]

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