religion

(By Juan Cole) In Benghazi on Monday morning, fighting resumed between the “Libyan National Army” forces of Col. Khalifa Hifter and fundamentalist extremists. The latter fired rockets at the Benina military airport overnight, but caused no casualties. It was from this base that aircraft were flown on Friday against positions of the fundamentalists, by air […]

Islam

Anti-Muslim Gadfly to run DC Bus ads linking Hitler to Islam (+Russell Brand video against Islam Hatred)

contributors

An organization run by an anti-Mulsim blogger has purchased billboards on the sides of twenty Washington DC Metro buses featuring Adolph Hitler and calling for an end to ‘all aid to Islamic countries.’ The ads are paid for by American Freedom Defense…

Featured

GOP holds hearings but in the Real Benghazi a Retired Col. is bombarding Extremists

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) As congressional Republicans prepare to have yet another round of investigations into the September 11, 2012 attacks on a US “consulate” in Benghazi, Libya, it is hard to see any concrete steps they have taken to forestall such calamities going forward. Congress had refused requests for better embassy security in 2012 because, […]

Economy

5 Reasons India’s new BJP (“Tea Party”) Government may not be so Great for Business

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s elections is being hailed in some Western media as a hopeful sign for US-Indian trade and for Indian business. But like the US Tea Party movement, it is rent by internal contradictions that could derail such aspirations. The BJP has many resemblances […]

Africa

Sudan judge orders Christian woman to hang for apostasy

Juan Cole

A Sudanese judge on Thursday sentenced a heavily pregnant Christian woman to hang for apostasy, a ruling which Britain denounced as “barbaric” and left the United States “deeply disturbed”. Born to a Muslim father, the woman was convicted under the…

Featured

Mass Protests, Strikes in Turkey over Erdogan’s Neoliberal Response to Miner Deaths

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Turkey’s Public Workers Union Confederation announced a one-day strike to demand better worker safety and political protests have broken out Friday in a number of Turkish cities over deaths of nearly 300 miners. Thousands protested in the Mediterranean port of Izmir, for instance. The tragic deaths at a coal mine in Soma […]

Arab Spring

Activists in Bahrain denounce anti-Shia Policies

Juan Cole

(By Catherine Shakdam) Early last week political activists affiliated with Bahrain’s opposition groups delivered a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon calling for his office to take a stand against Bahrain’s systematic targeting of the Shia community. Al Jazeera English Ever since Bahrainis rose against the government in 2011, emboldened by the Arab […]

American Jews

Donald Sterling’s Illiberal Zionism Part of Racism Controversy with Magic Johnson

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Major political ideas and philosophies are complex and ambiguous, not straightforward. American conservatism is an alliance of economic conservatives and cultural conservatives. Economic conservatives are champions of entrepreneurs and business, seeking low taxes and little regulation and opportunity for risk-takers from all persons of all backgrounds. Their ideology contains contradictions. Economic conservatives […]

Christianity

Israeli Squatter anti-Church Terror in Jerusalem “Poisons” Papal visit

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, has said that Israeli squatter attacks on and desecration of Christian churches has poisoned the atmosphere in advance of Pope Francis’s planned visit to Jerusalem. Suspected Israeli extremist squatters have committed 24 acts of vandalism against Jerusalem churches in the past year, many of them […]