Tonight, who brought you, drunk, here to me? From behind the curtain, who brought you here?– to someone who was on fire because of your absence– someone who, like the wind, sought you everywhere! Who brought you here? Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 2
Big Bird and the Romney Games (Cartoon)
Poll: Obama better Represents America!
We can pronounce the long GOP campaign to frame Barack Obama as somehow ‘foreign’ as complete failure. In a new Reuters/Ipsons Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,600 likely voters, Americans saw Obama as ‘better representing America’ than Mitt Romney by double digits! I wonder, in fact, if the Culture Wars are not over. White European men are […]
Top Seven Errors President Obama has made on the Middle East
Yesterday I explored the errors and fantasies in Gov. Mitt Romney’s WSJ op-ed on the Middle East. Here I will briefly go over the mistakes that the Obama administration has made in the region. Unlike the proposed blunders of Romney, I have to say, most of these are errors of omission or of an abundance […]
Tom Ricks and The Generals: Why the US succeeded in WWII but not Since
Tom Ricks, award-winning military journalist, gives the Nimitz Lecture on why the US military succeeded in WW II but had so much trouble in the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The book version is out shortly, Tom Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today See also Ricks’s invaluable blog
Omar Khayyam (283) “Last night I wandered into a dark pottery workshop”
Last night I wandered into a dark pottery workshop and saw about two thousand pots lined up in silence. But then suddenly a vase cried out, inquiring, ‘Where in the world are the potter and the customers and salespeople?” Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 283
Annals of Settler Colonialism: British Atrocities in Post-War Kenya
The anti-colonial movement in Kenya of the 1950s was mythologized by the British as a shadowy ‘Mau-Mau,’ an irrational outbreak of aimless hatred. In fact, the movement was protesting the confinement of Kenyans to ‘reserves,’ their crowding into urban slums, the privileged position of white British settlers, and the latters’ plan to go on ruling […]
What Juan is Tweeting Today (Readings on Middle East, Environment)
Top Ten Things Mitt Romney Gets Wrong about US Middle East Policy
Gov. Romney published an op-ed on Monday criticizing President Obama’s Middle East policies. Aside from urging ‘strength,’ however, Romney offers no concrete alternative. And, he completely misunderstands the history of the US role in the region, which causes him to misunderstand its present dilemmas. Romney says, “The first step is to understand how we got […]
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