Juan Cole

The US military has admitted to having killed 37 civilians during an air raid on militants at Shah Wali Kot in Afghanistan last week. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on Barack Obama to reverse George W. Bush’s decision to depend heavily on air strikes in pursuing the struggle against the neo-Taliban.

Implementing solar power in the greater Mediterranean, with the Sahara generating Germany’s energy, may contribute to Middle East peace.

Some 6,000 Muslim clerics from around India have endorsed a formal legal ruling or fatwa condemning terrorism. There have been many such endorsements, as I pointed out in 2005 in response to Tom Friedman. Of India’s population of roughly 1.1 billion, about 147 million (13.4%) are Muslims, giving India the fourth-largest Muslim population in the […]

Unnamed Secret Service field officers have revealed to the press that Sarah Palin’s attacks on President-Elect Obama provoked numerous white supremecist assassination plots against him: ‘The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near […]

President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe is unacceptable. . . Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, I think is something that has to cease.” What I cannot understand is why American politicians who speak publicly on this issue do not at least acknowledge that to the best information […]

Dan Rather blames the decline of television news in the US on media consolidation and the corporate bottom line. Rather prescribes greater courage on the part of journalists, but that seems to me not to address his premise. If media consolidation is the problem then Anti-Trust actions would make more sense as a response. His […]

Paul Krugman, among my favorite political commentators, has spoken forthrightly of how during the past few years we have had “monsters” in office, naming Tom Delay, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. He complains that until recently, if an observer simply called them what they are, he or she was termed “shrill.” (h/t Daily Kos). I […]