Juan Cole

President Obama, like George H. W. Bush, has a problem with the ‘vision thing.’ And that is the reason for which he is being dogged by critics and ‘scandals.’ He presides over a huge bureaucracy and things will go wrong in it, for which he will be blamed if he allows others to control the […]

Egyptian version of “Crazy,” the 2006 Gnarls Barkley single (a collaboration of Danger Mouse and Cee Lo Green):

The Rohingya Muslim refugees in Myanmar [Burma], having been menaced by hatred of foreigners and Buddhist chauvinism, are now threatened by a powerful cyclone. Monday some 80 died as boats capsized, in which they were attempting to flee the storm. Others are insisting on staying put, in flimsy tents, despite UN urging that they evacuate. […]

A Guatamalan court has sentenced former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to 80 years in prison for his responsibility for the slaughter of some 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil by the army during his period in power, 1982-83. What the court did not decide was the culpability of Ronald Reagan for the atrocity, given his […]

A construction company in Belize gradually hollowed out and ultimately destroyed a 60-foot, 2300-year-old Mayan pyramid to get gravel for paving roads, National Geographic reports. There are exceptions (executives with a conscience), but mostly capitalism and its companies are about making money, any way they need to. They are all too often amoral, which is […]

Bertrand Piccard is piloting the sun-powered plane, ‘Solar Impulse,’ across America in legs. This video is of his flight from California up to San Francisco and then down to Phoenix, AZ this weekend. He used only a third of his battery power on this leg. Airplanes are currently a source of carbon pollution, contributing to […]

I got back from my trip to Baghdad on Sunday evening, and noticed when I checked the news that there seemed to have been a horrible shooting in New Orleans. I was jet-lagged and crashed before I could look into it. I remember thinking, oh, well,it will dominate the news cycle on Monday and I’ll […]

From Al-Araqib to Susiya (English) , a film by al-Adalah (Justice) : ” Two Villages – One Story An Interactive Dialogue on Forced Displacement In a new short film, From Al-Araqib to Susiya, Adalah journeys between two Palestinian villages on either side of the Green Line. The residents of Al-Araqib and Susiya tell their stories […]

Iraqi Sword Dance: Here are some folklore performances put on for us by a troupe in Baghdad on May 8, 2013, at the Ministry of Culture’s 3rd International Conference on Translation, which I attended. They shed a different light on the country than the news of sectarian clashes, bombings and fundamentalism that so often dominate […]