Juan Cole

Iraqi Sword Dance: Here are some folklore performances put on for us by a troupe in Baghdad on May 8, 2013, at the Ministry of Culture’s 3rd International Conference on Translation, which I attended. They shed a different light on the country than the news of sectarian clashes, bombings and fundamentalism that so often dominate […]

The Associated Press has been the victim of massive secret surveillance of its reporters’ telephone traffic (not the substance but to whom they were talking) on the part of the Department of Justice. AP received a leak last year about a plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen against the United States, but […]

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached the milestone of 400 parts per million, something not seen on earth for 2 or 3 million years. This time, it is driven by human emissions from burning coal, natural gas and petroleum. Climate change at this pace threatens 50,000 plant and animal species over […]

Anne-Ruth Wertheim writes in a guest column for Informed Comment On 31 January 2013 Mohamed Rabbae stated on www.Joop.nl that far right wing politician Geert Wilders is not looking for solutions to what he calls ‘The Moroccan Problem’ in the Dutch Parliament. He is looking for allies to keep successful Moroccans out of politics, management […]

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 […]