Juan Cole

My column has appeared in Salon.com, What’s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick! Excerpt: ‘ The GOP vice-presidential pick holds that abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest or severe birth defects, making an exception only if the life of the mother is in danger. She calls abortion an “atrocity” […]

Richard Drake writes in a guest book review for IC, reprinted by the author’s permission from The Great Falls Tribune, 7 September 2008 : In Pursuit of Osama Bin Laden Barack Obama’s early and consistent critique of the war in Iraq gave him high standing during the Democratic primary campaign. On this crucial issue, he […]

Biden complains that his GOP rivals virtually ignored the economy in favor of snarky personal attacks. At a time when the Republican Party is forced into socialist policies in taking over two major mortgage companies to prevent a general collapse of the mortgage market, you’d think a proposal for fixing it would be more important […]

Joe Biden wants to know what exactly John McCain’s plans are for Iraq, beyond this vague claim of ‘victory.’ Iraq has approved a preliminary deal with Royal Dutch Shell to develop its natural gas fields. Shell recently pulled out of a deal to develop Iran’s much more extensive gas fields, out of fear of being […]

New Pakistani president Asaf Ali Zardari will face the challenge of a struggling economy. The stock market has lost 40% of its value since last March, currency reserves are deplete, and high energy and food costs are hitting ordinary folk hard. Aljazeera English examines the remarkable victory of Asaf Ali Zardari in Saturday’s presidential election […]

For the nine years before 2005, Asaf Ali Zardari, widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was in prison facing corruption charges. On Saturday Zardari was elected president of Pakistan. Ironically, given Bush’s neoconservative agenda of democratizing the Muslim world, the most significant steps toward genuine parliamentary governance and rule of law, in Pakistan during […]

A conservative Republican woman who idolizes Margaret Thatcher decries McCain’s choice of Palin as cynical and dishonorable: ‘ In choosing a woman he doesn’t know or understand, purely for electoral advantage, he reveals a dishonourable lust for office, a disrespect for women generally and a dishonourable indifference to the future of his country. After all, […]

Russian archeologists are saying they have found the capital of the Khazar state. This largely Turkic state was multicultural, but its ruling sept converted to Judaism, which it used as the state religion. If it is borne out, this discovery will shed loads of illumination on Jewish history as well as on early medieval life […]