Juan Cole

Gulbuddin Hikmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami [the Islamic Party] guerrilla group bombed a military convoy in Kabul this morning, killing 15, including 6 Americans. The Reagan administration gave Hikmatyar billions in the 1980s because he was effective in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, but in 2001 the old guerrilla switched sides and allied with the Taliban in […]

The African Development Bank has approved $150 million in funding for the Turkana wind farm in Kenya, which will be Africa’s largest, generating 300 megawatts of electricity and powering nearly 1 million homes. CCTV reports on the Turkana wind farm Kenya is among the more virtuous countries in the world environmentally, emitting only .03 percent […]

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 […]