Juan Cole

Prospective Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has taken a lot of heat in the Middle East and in the left blogosphere because there are fears that he will push for the positions of the Israeli right wing. His father lives in Israel and was a member of the Irgun. Rahm Emanuel gave […]

Democrats.com has taken up my call from last week for the television networks to avoid inviting commentary from politicians who are criminals of various sorts. (I hear the snickers; yes, there would be someone left.) The networks put on a Tom Delay because he is controversial and makes good copy, but it is a disservice […]

The US military has admitted to having killed 37 civilians during an air raid on militants at Shah Wali Kot in Afghanistan last week. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on Barack Obama to reverse George W. Bush’s decision to depend heavily on air strikes in pursuing the struggle against the neo-Taliban.

Implementing solar power in the greater Mediterranean, with the Sahara generating Germany’s energy, may contribute to Middle East peace.

Some 6,000 Muslim clerics from around India have endorsed a formal legal ruling or fatwa condemning terrorism. There have been many such endorsements, as I pointed out in 2005 in response to Tom Friedman. Of India’s population of roughly 1.1 billion, about 147 million (13.4%) are Muslims, giving India the fourth-largest Muslim population in the […]

Unnamed Secret Service field officers have revealed to the press that Sarah Palin’s attacks on President-Elect Obama provoked numerous white supremecist assassination plots against him: ‘The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near […]

President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe is unacceptable. . . Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, I think is something that has to cease.” What I cannot understand is why American politicians who speak publicly on this issue do not at least acknowledge that to the best information […]

Dan Rather blames the decline of television news in the US on media consolidation and the corporate bottom line. Rather prescribes greater courage on the part of journalists, but that seems to me not to address his premise. If media consolidation is the problem then Anti-Trust actions would make more sense as a response. His […]