Juan Cole

During my trip to Iraq last week, I visited Mutanabbi Street, a district of bookstores, handicrafts, and cultural centers, on Friday morning. I kept bumping into people I knew, including historians from Baghdad University. At the bottom of the street at a square abutting the Tigris, in front of the statue of the great medieval […]

Here are photos from my trip to Baghdad last week, to attend the 3rd International Conference on Translation, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture. There were about 100 scholars in attendance, from all over the world. American colleagues who belong to the Middle East Studies Association included Mark Levine, Elliot Colla and Nabil al-Tikriti, along […]

Former Bush and Obama administrations secretary of defense Bob Gates, a lifelong Republican, replied to some of the GOP fantasies about the possibility of a US military mission into Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. He pointed out that successful military insertions require substantial planning and knowledge of the environment into which troops are being put. […]

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in trouble with the public for chartering a $300,000 plane ride to attend the funeral of the late British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and then contracting to have a $127,000 bed built into it for the 5-hour flight, and charged to the taxpayers! Here is a video report: […]

Canadian Cmdr. Chris Hadfield has made his stay aboard the International Space Station a teaching moment, tweeting out images of the earth from space and reaching out to schoolchildren. He has also been an advocate for manned space exploration His last transmission before going home is a cover of David Bowie’s 1969 “Space Oddity,” shot […]

Turkey has charged that an extreme left group with ties to Syrian secret police was responsible for the twin bombings in the border town of Reyhanli on Saturday, which killed 49 and wounded over 100. This attack has shaken the Turkish public, and is the most dramatic spillover yet of the attempted revolution in Syria […]

It looks as though the Pakistan Muslim League (N), led by steel magnate Nawaz Sharif, is going to be the single largest party in Parliament, after Saturday’s landmark elections. It is the first time that Pakistan has seen a regular peaceful, hand-off of power from one civilian government to another. Imran Khan’s Justice Movement has […]

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show makes fun of the Republican obsession with the Benghazi events of last September and their unsupported allegations of some sort of scandal or cover-up there. Then of course there is the hypocrisy factor, since many US embassies were attacked with casualties in the Bush era, as I pointed out […]

by HAIYUN MA writes at ISLAMiCommentary : Haiyun Ma This week China’s new president, Xi Jinping, separately hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas — meetings that some analysts say is indicative of China’s desire for a more pro-active role in Middle East diplomacy. The timing of the visits of Abbas […]