Featured

(By Juan Cole) Among the charges in former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s memoirs against Barack Obama is that the latter did not trust his generals, did not adopt the Afghanistan War as his own, and was skeptical of the Pentagon plan for a troop escalation and a big counter-insurgency push. It is now forgotten […]

Afghanistan

Top Ten Things Bob Gates was Wrong about, Some Criminal

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his new memoir is said to have slammed Vice President Joe Biden for having been consistently “wrong” on foreign policy matters over the past four decades. Gates’s petty gossip about his former colleagues should put an end to the pusillanimous Democratic Party tradition of appointing […]

Climate Change

Spain, Portugal show that 50%, even 70% Power from Renewables is Possible Right now

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The miserable record of the United States in tackling its deadly carbon dioxide emissions (5 billion metric tons a year) sometimes obscures how very possible it is for industrial economies to go green. Spain, a country of 47 million, was nearly at 50% renewables for electricity generation in 2013. That 50% from […]

Featured

Recognizing Israel as a Jewish State is like saying the US is a White State

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is adding a fifth demand to his negotiations with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas: That the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” For Netanyahu’s demand to make any sense, he first has to define “Jewish.” “Jewish” has a number of […]

Featured

John McCain and Lindsey Graham Want to invade Falluja Yet Again

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) There were conflicting reports on Sunday morning about whether the Iraqi government and its allied tribal levies had regained control of the western city of Falluja, which had fallen to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) on Saturday. What was not in doubt was that some in the […]

al-Qaeda

Iraq’s Sunni Civil War

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The attempt launched earlier this week by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) to take and hold city quarters in Falluja, Ramadi and Khalidiya in al-Anbar province has provoked an enormous political crisis in Iraq. The insurgents and supporters chased police and soldiers away from their stations, burned […]

Featured

GOP isn’t Getting more Ignorant on Evolution, it is Just getting Older

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Polling by the Pew Charitable trust shows that the gap between Republicans and Democrats on evolution has substantially widened in just 5 years. The percentage of Republicans who say that human beings have been unchanged since they originated rose from 39% to 48% just since 2009. Meanwhile, the percentage of Democrats who […]

Dissent

Egyptian Military Junta Jumps the Shark, Interrogates Islamist Muppet

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) When the venerable al-Ahram newspaper, then under the control of the government of Hosni Mubarak, published the allegation during the 2011 revolution that the crowds were just coming down to Tahrir Square for KFC chicken, it was the beginning of the end of the Mubarak establishment. It might have survived being repressive, […]

Climate Change

Solar Ascendancy: Minnesota Court Ruling for Solar over Gas a Harbinger of Things to Come

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Minnesota Judge Eric Lipman found that solar is a better deal than natural gas for Xcel Energy, permitting Geronimo Energy to construct 20 huge solar facilities worth $250 million in Xcel’s service area in that state. The amount of solar power in the state would increase by a factor of 7. The […]