Juan Cole

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s brother may be involved in the drug trade. Actually, a majority of Afghans are involved in raising poppies or making and exporting heroin. A good third of the country’s gross domestic product derives from the drug trade and 85% of Europe’s heroin comes from Afghanistan. Some of the Pushtuns the US […]

Fighting between Turkish government troops and Kurdish guerrillas in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq left 15 Turkish soldiers and 23 Kurdish fighters dead. Sounds like a big deal to me– countries that lose 15 men in one day are always tempted to send in more troops. Two US blackhawk helicopters crashed in Baghdad. One Iraq […]

Aljazeera English reports on the tunnels that Gazans use to blunt the impact of the siege imposed on them by Israel (and Egypt). The smugglers are sometimes killed in tunnel collapses or by demolitions by the Egyptian government. Human rights protesters against Israel’s virtual siege of the civilian population have sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, […]

As global warming melts land ice and causes ocean levels to rise, islands like Tuvalu are in danger of being inundated. The 10,000 people in the island nation are pleading with Australia to take them in when the waters rise further. Internet devotees will remember Tuvalu as the nation licensed to give out the .tv […]

The bad news is that 250 million years ago, global warming almost killed the planet. ‘Through the darkest days, the planet was a barren wasteland. Ocean circulation, so vital to our modern climate, had shut off. Huge algal blooms sucked the seas dry of oxygen. Poisonous hydrogen sulfide built up to lethal concentrations in the […]

Shiite guerrillas deploying a roadside bomb killed a US soldier in Amara. Iraq’s presidency council approved the enabling legislation for provincial elections scheduled early next year. The council had shot down the first such bill, in part over the question of how the disputed oil province Kirkuk would be dealt with. Aljazeera English interviews former […]

It was not a debate. Just as television in prime time has been largely emptied of drama and innovative comedy, with a few exceptions, in favor of empty-headed “reality shows,” so the political debates have mostly been gutted. Judging “how the candidates did” is rather like weighing in on the wittiness of the libretto of […]