Will Russell Crowe as Noah help Egypt Separate Religion and State?
(By Juan Cole) Darren Aronofski’s biblical epic “Noah” is already provoking controversy in the Muslim world,…
(By Juan Cole) Darren Aronofski’s biblical epic “Noah” is already provoking controversy in the Muslim world,…
(By Juan Cole) Bill O’Reilly maintains that one downside of having a woman president is that…
(By Juan Cole) President Abdullah Gul has rejected a suggestion by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that…
The Fall of the New Year Throne 7:4
(By Juan Cole) The Fall of the New Year Throne (To read this sword and sorcery novel as it has unfolded before this installment, click here) Chapter Seven 4. The Persian prince…
More Solar Workers in US than Coal Miners, and Solar doesn’t Poison Drinking Water
(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,…
CAR Muslims Risk Ethnic Cleansing: What if Thousands of Christians were forced out of a Muslim Country?
(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…
Sen. Al Franken: Comcast-NBC / Time Warner Merger Concentrates Media, Hurts Consumers
CNN: “Sen. Franken: We need more cable competition” Karl Bode writes in a similar vein at TechDirt: Comcast: Allowing Us To Get Immensely, Inconceivably, Ridiculously Massive Is ‘Pro Consumer’ (via Techdirt) Comcast…
Donkeys on the Nile: The Egyptian Gov’t's Problem with Journalists
(By Jonathan Moremi) “While Cairo was exploding, Egypt’s State TV aired pictures of a donkey pulling its cart peacefully along the banks of the river Nile” Three years after the revolution, the…
Game Over for Earth: Big Carbon’s Fatal, Scorching Triumph over Greens
(By Michael T. Klare) Listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, it would have been easy to conclude that we were slowly but surely gaining in the war on climate…
The Fall of the New Year Throne 7:3
(By Juan Cole) The Fall of the New Year Throne (To read this sword and sorcery novel as it has unfolded before this installment, click here) Chapter Seven 3. A spear butt…
Putinism in Cairo? The Rise of the Russian Model
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…
Planet, Oceans Burning Up: There is no “Pause” in Global Warming
(By Jon Queally) Climate change has not hit a "speed bump." The planet's temperature is not remaining steady and it certainly isn't cooling. Earth, especially its ocean, are heating up… and rapidly.…
Israel to Implant 9-Storey Ultra-Orthodox Seminary in Palestinian East Jerusalem
(Via AFP) Israel to build high rise in annexed E.Jerusalem area: NGO (via AFP) Jerusalem’s planning committee moved forwards on Wednesday with plans to build a nine-storey Jewish seminary in the heart…
UN: Civilian drone deaths triple in Afghanistan
(By Alice K. Ross) Civilian drone deaths in Afghanistan tripled last year, according to a report by a UN agency. Forty-five civilians died in drone strikes in 2013. The report, by the…
The Fall of the New Year Throne 7:2
(By Juan Cole) The Fall of the New Year Throne (To read this sword and sorcery novel as it has unfolded before this installment, click here) Chapter Seven 2. Roxanna had been…
Did Religious Extremism drive 2 Million Egyptian youth to Unbelief?
(By Juan Cole) Egyptian journalist Hilmy al-Namnam said last fall that some researchers had concluded that there were 2 million Egyptian atheists. He blamed the rapid increase in unbelief among young people…
We’re all Living in the World Dick Cheney Made
(By Mark Danner via a href=”http://www.nybooks.com/”>NYRB and Tomdispatch.com) If you’re a man of principle, compromise is a bit of a dirty word. — Dick Cheney, 2013 1. “We Ought to Take It…
Can Obama make a grand bargain with Iran over Syria?
(By Shahram Akbarzadeh) The last round of talks to bring some relief to the humanitarian disaster in Syria achieved remarkable nothing. The anti-Assad delegation traded barbed insults with the Syrian government delegation…
False Dawn: The 35th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution
(By Farhang Jahanpour) The Iranian revolution succeeded exactly 35 years ago this week. After 37 years of rule, Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, never to return. His nemesis,…
Obama & Hollande stress Hope for Iran Breakthrough
(By Juan Cole) In his news conference with French President Francois Hollande, President Obama outlined four areas of diplomatic progress. The first is foreign policy, including Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.…
The Arts of the Arab Uprisings at the Arab-American Museum
VOA interviews my colleague Christiane Gruber of the Art History Department at the University of Michigan on the exhibit she helped curate at the Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which came out…
Assassination by Leak: US floats Trial Balloon of Droning an American to Death
(By Tim Cushing) Administration Officials Perform Some Very Public Handwringing Over Extrajudicial Drone Killing (via Techdirt) The administration has sort of painted itself into a corner with its new rules on drone…
Iraq illegally Jailed thousands of Women, Torture & Abuse Alleged
(Human Rights Watch) (Baghdad) – Iraqi authorities are detaining thousands of Iraqi women illegally and subjecting many to torture and ill-treatment, including the threat of sexual abuse. Iraq’s weak judiciary, plagued by…