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Juan Cole

Central Intelligence Agency
Torture is from Mars?  CIA's Hayden Says Sen. Feinstein Too "Emotional" To Judge CIA Torture

Torture is from Mars? CIA’s Hayden Says Sen. Feinstein Too “Emotional” To Judge CIA Torture

Juan Cole

Former CIA, NSA Boss Says Senator Feinstein Is Too Emotional To Judge CIA Torture Fairly (via Techdirt) We’ve written about former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden plenty of times around here, and the guy is practically a caricature of what you’d expect him to be. He defends the intelligence community at all costs, and […]

Democratic Party
2 GOP Latino Strategies Clash:  Sen. Ted Cruz disses Jeb Bush's 'Immigration for Love'  Meme

2 GOP Latino Strategies Clash: Sen. Ted Cruz disses Jeb Bush’s ‘Immigration for Love’ Meme

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Sen. Ted Cruz criticized Jeb Bush for appearing to downplay the rule of law in arguing that undocumented immigration to the US is a crime of passion, resorted to out of an abundance of love for families in straitened circumstances. Cruz said that such an argument injures the sovereignty of the US […]

Energy
Is Rand Paul right that Cheney invaded Iraq for Halliburton Profits?

Is Rand Paul right that Cheney invaded Iraq for Halliburton Profits?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) David Corn at Mother Jones got the scoop: In 2009, Rand Paul gave a talk at Western Kentucky University in which he accused former vice president Dick Cheney of having gotten up the Iraq War to rescue his troubled oil services company, Halliburton, which– along with its subsidiaries– was awarded enormous no-bid […]

Republican Party
Pelosi: “Cheney Proud of ordering CIA Torture”; Sen A. King: ‘Waterboard Cheney!’

Pelosi: “Cheney Proud of ordering CIA Torture”; Sen A. King: ‘Waterboard Cheney!’

Juan Cole

Dick Cheney has defended torture techniques so many times that a frustrated U.S. senator has finally offered to waterboard the former vice president. “The accusations are not true,” Cheney told college television station ATV last week. “Some people…

Arab Spring
Post-Revolution Yemen between Dialogue and Violence

Post-Revolution Yemen between Dialogue and Violence

Juan Cole

(by Tobias Thiel) A Map of Yemen’s Six Federal Regions, copyright: Yemen Times After ten months of deliberations, Yemen’s 565-member National Dialogue Conference (NDC) closed its doors on January 25, 2014. The NDC was the flagship of Yemen’s negotiated transition process. Jamal Benomar, the UN Special Adviser for Yemen, widely advertised the transition as a […]

Climate Change
 Climate Change: Who’s Campaigning Against Our Environment?

Climate Change: Who’s Campaigning Against Our Environment?

Juan Cole

(By Todd Smekens) Climate Change: Who’s Campaigning Against Our Environment? (via www.muncievoice.com) MUNCIE, Indiana – The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a new 2,600 page report this week compiled by over 300 scientists warning of the existing and potentially severe adverse future impact of climate change. “…   —– Related video: […]

Constitution
America's Post-9/11 Dystopia: No-Fly Lists, Secret Gov't Databases and Guilty even if Proven Innocent

America’s Post-9/11 Dystopia: No-Fly Lists, Secret Gov’t Databases and Guilty even if Proven Innocent

Juan Cole

(By Peter van Buren) Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a U.S. student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004, while she was still in the U.S. […]

Featured
Top Ten Ways in which it was Actually the Israeli Gov't that Derailed the Peace Talks

Top Ten Ways in which it was Actually the Israeli Gov’t that Derailed the Peace Talks

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of peace negotiations that began last August under the auspices of Secretary of State John Kerry. In fact, the Palestinians took no Israeli land whatsoever since August, whereas the Israelis doubled their pace of building squatter settlements […]

Domestic Surveillance
The Limitations of Washington's Proposed NSA Surveillance Reforms

The Limitations of Washington’s Proposed NSA Surveillance Reforms

Juan Cole

(By Kara Brandeisky for ProPublica) Ten months after Edward Snowden’s first disclosures, three main legislative proposals have emerged for surveillance reform: one from President Obama, one from the House Intelligence Committee, and one proposal favored by civil libertarians. All the plans purport to end the bulk phone records collection program, but there are big differences […]

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