For understandable reasons, analysis of the political changes in Egypt has focused on personalities (new president Muhammad Morsi is not charismatic); on ideology (how far can he depart from his sectarian commitments as a hard line Muslim fundamentalist truly to be president of all Egyptians?); and on military-civilian relations. But those questions are not the […]
Top Five Things Morsi has to Do if Egypt is to Succeed
Cole’s Opposition to Iraq War in January, 2003
The Neocons, masters of disinformation, keep trying to put it about (and it is in the current Wikipedia article on me) that I somehow was initially supportive of the idea of going to war with Iraq. I was not. I thought it was a horrible idea and would end badly. Basically my position was the […]
Morsi: Between Human Rights and Extremism
Egyptian President-elect Muhammad Morsi addressed an enormous crowd in Tahrir Square on Friday, paying homage to the revolution that allowed him to come to power through the ballot box. The headline item in his speech was the following: “Dr. Muhammad Mursi . . . pledged to secure the release of all political prisoners, saying, ‘I […]
Feminist Brooke Shields-Tom Cruise Cartoon of the Day
Explanation here..
Mideast Twitter: Gulf Giants, Arab Spring Midgets
Jeune Afrique (Young Africa), has a piece on social media in the Arab world. It shows that by volume of tweets, Twitter in the Middle East is dominated by the Gulf oil states, not by the mostly more populous countries of the Arab Spring. The giants of tweeting are Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, with the […]
Top Six Things Congress would do if they Cared if we are Healthy
Health care is essential, and no American should be without insurance to pay for it. But prevention of diseases and injuries is as important as treating them. Since Americans live in a big company town where their banks keep them indebted and paying debt servicing and Big Agro uses them as storage bins into which […]
Low Life Expectancy tracks with Opposition to Obamacare (Map)
Life expectancy in the United States by state (2009 statistics): Hawaii has the longest life expectancy among the states, so maybe Obama thought it isn’t normal for people to drop dead young the way they do in South Carolina. (About a fourth of South Carolinians lack health care insurance, and the local elite is committed […]
Patriotism and PTSD (Levinson)
Nan Levinson writes at Tomdispatch.com: Mad, Bad, Sad What’s Really Happened to America’s Soldiers By Nan Levinson “PTSD is going to color everything you write,” came the warning from a stepmother of a Marine, a woman who keeps track of such things. That was in 2005, when post-traumatic stress disorder, a.k.a. PTSD, wasn’t getting much […]
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