Featured

(By Juan Cole) In the same way that pedophiles are attracted to professions where they come into frequent contact with children, peeping Toms surely are attracted into electronic surveillance work. That seems to me the only explanation for the US National Security Agency and British intelligence’s Optic Nerve program, just revealed by The Guardian from […]

Featured

Who Favors Discrimination against Gay Newlyweds? Most Republicans, old People, Southerners, Evangelicals

Juan Cole

A new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute sheds light on the divisions in the US over gay marriage. Over all, acceptance of gay marriage is on an upward trajectory, with a majority of Americans now supporting it compared to only about a third in 2002. What is interesting is who has not joined […]

Barack Obama

Dick Cheney Broke US Military, now blames Obama for Cuts

Juan Cole

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has lambasted the Obama administration for its announcement that it will cut 8% out of the military budget and reduce standing army troop levels to the lowest level since before World War II (from 550,000 at the height of the Iraq War to 440,000). Cheney told CNN he believed that […]

Afghanistan

Obama Plans for complete US Withdrawal from Afghanistan in December

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) America’s longest war may be over by the end of this year, and it is making Afghans and neighbors like Pakistan nervous. On Tuesday President Obama called Afghan president Hamid Karzai for the first time since last summer, saying that since Karzai had declined to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement, he had […]

Crime

4 Darknesses: Internet being Manipulated, Deceived by Western Intel Trolls

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Researchers on online behavior have shown that internet trolls (people who use insincere techniques to disrupt conversations) really are psychopaths, marked by narcisssism, sadism, Machiavellianism. Professors Eric Buckels, Paul Trapnell, and Delroy Paulhus administered surveys to students and found that about 6 percent of them enjoyed messing with other people’s heads on […]

Eastern Europe

Not to Reason Why: A New Crimean “War”?

Juan Cole

(Juan Cole) The Russian-speaking population of the Crimean Peninsula in the Ukraine is upset by the popular movement in the west of the country that has overthrown president Viktor Yanukovych and is said to be forming militias. On some government buildings, Ukrainian flags have been replaced by Russian ones. Sevastopol is an important Black Sea […]

Arab Spring

As Ukraine’s President Flees in Overthrow, Lessons for Kyiv from the Arab Upheavals

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The dramatic overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Saturday, as he fled the presidential palace and it was occupied by extreme nationalists, recalls events in the Middle East in 2011. The crisis in the Ukraine was provoked last fall when Yanukovych reconsidered earlier moves toward integration with Europe. He is from […]

censorship

The Deep State is Vulnerable to People Power

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) My remarks below were published at Bill Moyers’ site this weekend. They came in response to Mike Lofgren’s important essay, “Anatomy of the Deep State” . Lofgren is a former congressional staffer. Mike Lofgren’s long experience on the Hill has given him a small window, he might say only an aperture, into […]

Barack Obama

The GOP, Race and Ted Nugent: If you won’t Denounce Nazi Insults, What does that Say about You?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Musician Ted Nugent called President Barack Obama a ‘subhuman mongrel.’ He has not been denounced for this language by Greg Abbott, the Republican who wants to be the next governor of Texas, though Abbott brought Nugent along on two campaign appearances. On Friday, Nugent “apologized” (though “not to president Obama”) for using […]