Juan Cole

Comedian Jim Carrey has hit back at Fox Cable News for its campaign of defamation in the wake of his release of a video parodying gun nuts. Carrey described the notorious far right wing propaganda organ as: “a media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams and should be emptied before it […]

Why this and not that? I don’t understand my own country much of the time. For instance, in his first major public speech after resigning from his position as head of the CIA, David Petraeus felt he had to apologize again for having had an affair. But some elements of the CIA engaged in extensive […]

Ira Chernus writes at Tomdispatch.com Barack Obama came to Israel and Palestine, saw what he wanted to see, and conquered the mainstream media with his eloquent words. U.S. and Israeli journalists called it a dream trip, the stuff that heroic myths are made of: a charismatic world leader taking charge of the Mideast peace process. […]

I have long held that the worst thing about religious fundamentalism is that it is humorless. And, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is proving me right. The Egyptian Prosecutor General has issued a summons to Bassem Youssef for the comic’s satire on fundamentalist president Muhammad Morsi and for mocking ‘religions. Aljazeera English reports: Morsi just justified […]

Recycled WMD charges: From Jamiol’s World

Tom Giesen writes in a guest column at Informed Comment The option to avoid 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) of global warming – our goal for more than 10 years – is out of reach: we have emitted too many greenhouse gases and are on a much warmer trajectory. In 2000, we had many […]

Pope Francis on Maundy Thursday declined to address enormous crowds. Instead he went to a prison to emulate Jesus’s act of humility before his crucifixion in washing the feet of his 12 disciples. The pope washed and kissed the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women and two of them Muslim (one of the […]

Yet again, researchers have found that there is no link between vaccines and autism. It is a myth, a hysteria, and a dangerous one, since large numbers of unvaccinated children are an epidemic waiting to happen. Why so many Americans go running off on such wild goose chases but can’t see the nose on their […]

Cenk Uygur interviews former president Jimmy Carter concerning his imminent complete eradication of the deadly guinea worm: This extremely impressive achievement of Carter and his Carter Center is one that I have discussed at some length in the past. Let’s just recall that some former presidents go around speaking for large sums, whereas Carter in […]