Juan Cole

We still have only rumors about Wade Michael Page, the gunman who walked into a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin near Milwaukee and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon (weapons that should be illegal) on men women and children beginning to gather for a day of worship, singing and feasting. He killed 6 Americans […]

Updated Number of Murders, United States, 2010: 12,996 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775 Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638 (Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders) Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58 (equivalent to 290 US murders) Number of Murders by crossbow […]

As for the Romney campaign, you know things aren’t going well when Rachel Maddow finds old footage of you demanding that Ted Kennedy release his tax returns for the then senate race. Romney demanded Kennedy release his tax returns, saying the veteran senator needed to “prove he [had] nothing to hide…” and adding, “It’s time […]

Chris Woods writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: One of Islamabad’s most senior diplomats has told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that ongoing CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas are weakening democracy, and risk pushing people towards extremist groups. He also claims that some factions of the US government still prefer to work […]

Since the Free Syrian Army is a guerrilla group, whether it can hold the northern metropolis of Aleppo is not absolutely central to its survival. Guerrillas can always fade away to fight another day. But for the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad, losing Aleppo would be fatal. The regime controls increasingly little of the country, […]

William Fitzgibbon writes at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism When the government told the people of London that the eyes of the world would be on it during the Olympic Games, it failed to mention one particularly powerful watcher; a new software programme used for tracking potential troublemakers. In the September edition of Wired Magazine, […]

John Sullivan writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: A Cabinet nominee or a Supreme Court nominee produces decades of tax returns to the Senate for confirmation. Romney should meet that criteria. The deduction for the horse included over $2,000 in medical expenses. Medical expenses are not deductible for taxpayers unless they exceed 7.5% […]

Mitt Romney told notorious media bully and propagandist for the American Far Right, Sean Hannity, that it is time for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ‘put up or shut up.’ Reid had pointed out that an investor with Bain capital, Romney’s former company, had alleged that Romney had not paid taxes for ten years […]

Subhankar Banerjee writes at Tomdispatch.com: Walking the Waters: How to Bring the Major Oil Companies Ashore and Halt the Destruction of Our Oceans When you go to the mountains, you go to the mountains.  When it’s the desert, it’s the desert.  When it’s the ocean, though, we generally say that we’re going “to the beach.”  […]