Juan Cole

At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California…

Early returns in Iran’s 9th parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution show that Ahmadinejad’s lay populists have taken a drubbing, and that hard line supporters of clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are ascendant. Ahmadinejad’s sister, Parvin, who stood for election from their own hometown of Garmsar, was defeated, a major blow to the president. Western […]

Rick Santorum is trying to distance himself from Rush Limbaugh’s slander of Sandra Fluke. He maintains that Limbaugh is just an “entertainer” and that he was “being absurd.” Limbaugh is not just an entertainer. He is a major force in Republican politics and in shaping political discourse in the United States. None of the Republican […]

About 55 million years ago, in the Eocene, volcanic activity spewed enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. The earth warmed by 4-5 degrees Centigrade. All surface ice melted, and every place on earth became tropical, even Antarctica. Sea levels rose a great deal and a significant amount of land was lost to the […]

In monasteries, seminaries, retreats and synagogues, they fear hell and seek paradise. Those who know the mysteries of God never let that seed be planted in their souls. Translated by Juan Cole from Whinfield 49

When Jonathan Schell’s The Unconquerable World, a meditation on the history and power of nonviolent action, was published in 2003, the timing could not have been worse…

Best argument for birth control: If Rush Limbaugh’s mother had used it, imagine how much better the world would be.