Featured

By Juan Cole The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, population roughly 2 million (think Houston) until today, when much of the population was fleeing. While this would-be al-Qaeda affiliate took part of Falluja and […]

Crime

Top 3 White Terrorist Attacks in America this Week

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Our capitalist class may be becoming an absolute danger to ordinary Americans. By promoting a doctrine of absolute right to gun ownership (which rather helps gun manufacturers) and at the same time encouraging people to hate the Federal government and resent paying taxes, they are creating a whole class of alienated far […]

Barack Obama

Student Debt: Blame Law-Makers, Tax-Shirking Rich, War on Drugs, not Universities

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole In honor of President Obama’s support for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s bill to address the student debt crisis by offering students with older debt loads lower interest rates [see video below], I’m reprinting this golden oldie. The statistics in it have only gotten worse from a social point of view in the past […]

Afghanistan

Dear Sen. McCain: No, the Taliban Prisoners didn’t Carry out 9/11; but you Supported Muslim Radicals

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Sen. John McCain on Sunday maintained that President Obama, in releasing the five officials who had served in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in the 1990s and until 2001, had released people who were “hard core al-Qaeda who were responsible for 9/11.” I am shocked and dismayed that the knowledgeable Sen. McCain […]

Arab Spring

Egypt, Syria, Libya . . . . What is the Appeal of Phoney Elections in the Middle East?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The world has been treated to a whole series of “elections” in the Middle East recently. Iraq had parliamentary elections, Libya’s parliament voted for a new prime minister, and Egypt and Syria had presidential elections. This summer, Turkey will have elections. It would be nice if all these elections signaled a turn […]

Democratic Party

Georgia Courthouse is shot up by Sovereign Citizen after GOP backs Bundy, Open Carry

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole That didn’t take long. The Georgia GOP rushed into law an ‘open carry’ provision in April allowing people to tote around guns in bars and churches (apparently these are felt to be complementary institutions in Georgia) and schools (these are apparently felt to be full of expendable if short people in Georgia). […]

Africa

On D-Day: Remembering the Muslim Troops who Fought the Axis

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole One of the frustrations for a world historian is the unyieldingly parochial vision of the North Atlantic common among journalists and even many historians, and consequently among the public. The 17 world leaders gathering for the D-Day commemoration should by all rights include Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Indian Prime Minister Narendra […]

Featured

Facial Hair, Patriotism and the Enemy in American History

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Media Matters for America put together a collage of Fox Cable News commentators smearing the father of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl as having a Taliban-like beard and maybe even being a Taliban sympathizer. Thanks to MM4A for the Laura Ingram clip in which she says that if he weren’t so light-skinned he could […]

Barack Obama

Is the Prisoner Swap Hysteria a sign of GOP War withdrawal Symptoms?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The United States has been continually at war since October of 2001. In many of the succeeding years, until Dec. 31 2011, The US was at war in both Iraq and and in Afghanistan. Wars fulfill multiple functions for the US elite. They justify vast expenditures that benefit the political clients of […]