Featured

(By Juan Cole) US television newscasters have often slipped up and spoken of an Iranian nuclear “weapons program,” even though no UN inspectors have found firm evidence of any such thing and Iran maintains that its program is for peaceful purposes. Now that there is positive evidence of thorough Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic […]

Arab Spring

Racializing Politics: We don’t say “Slav” Democracy troubled in Ukraine, why Talk about “Arab” Failures?

Juan Cole

The troubles that Ukraine is having (and that Russia and the former Yugoslavia also had) in its post-Soviet politics, with a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy and between a Moscow orientation versus a Brussels one, are very similar to the difficulties that have beset many countries of the Arab world in the past few years. […]

Climate Change

Bill Nye Science Guy to Debate GOP Rep Gohmert on Gravity

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Satire David Gregory’s Meet the Press today hosted a debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on whether gravity is just a theory. “Sure,” Gohmert said, “things fall down all the time. But that doesn’t mean gravity is a law. Look at the Leaning Tower of […]

Climate Change

Kerry Blasts Climate Denialists, equates Climate Change with Terrorism, WMDs

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Secretary of State John Kerry was in Asia this weekend, and one of his emphases in China and Indonesia was the urgency of dealing with the climate disruption caused by carbon dioxide emissions/a>, which he said is as great a threat as terrorism or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: “When […]

Featured

Dear GOP: Top 5 Biblical Marriage Moments far worse than Gay Marriage

Juan Cole

David Edwards at Raw Story quotes Mitt Romney from Meet the Press as saying “But I think marriage should be defined in the way that it has been defined for several thousand years . . .” implying, by the Bible. (Mitt says it is all right with him if gay people just shack up with […]

Crime

Race Inequality in America by Graph, from Crime Sentencing to Income

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Most death sentences are handed out for killing white people, even though African-Americans make up 50% of murder victims (they are only 12% of the population). So if an African-American male had fired ten shots into the SUV of some white suburban kids playing their music too loud, killing one of them, […]

Climate Change

More Solar Workers in US than Coal Miners, and Solar doesn’t Poison Drinking Water

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) By the end of 2013, the number of workers in the solar energy industry in the US had grown to 143,000. About a third of them are in California, followed by Arizona, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. the wind power industry employed another 80,000 or so workers directly, and many more in transportation […]

Africa

CAR Muslims Risk Ethnic Cleansing: What if Thousands of Christians were forced out of a Muslim Country?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Central African Republic has a population of 4.5 million, about 15 percent of them Muslim, or about 670,000 people. Those Muslims are now, according to Amnesty International, in serious danger of being ethnically cleansed. “The group [Amnesty Interntional] said attacks against Muslims had been committed “with the stated intent to forcibly […]

Egypt

Putinism in Cairo? The Rise of the Russian Model

Juan Cole

Vladimir Putin on Thursday hailed the possibility of a run for the presidency of Egypt by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the architect of the July 3 coup against the elected Muslim Brotherhood government. Al-Sisi flew to Moscow this week in search of such support and of arms sales. The implicit message is that he is […]