Some colleagues on an email list got me thinking about the worst case scenario of an Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, so here is what I came up with. I think each of these scenarios is plausible in its own right, and that all could well ensue. 1. Iran is now threatening […]
Cole Spanish interviews on Arab Spring in Costa Rica Press
My Spanish-speaking readers will enjoy these links to interviews about the Arab Spring I did last week in San Jose, Costa Rica, with the press there. My thanks to the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the National University for helping set up the interviews, and above all to Professor Sergio I. […]
Omar Khayyam 14
The idol asked the pagan, “Do you know why you started bowing down to me?” –“It was because the One who looks out through your eyes shone his light on me!” trans. Juan Cole from Whinfield 14
Syria Veto and the Revenge of the BRICS
Russia and China jointly cast a veto Saturday in the United Nations Security Council against an Arab League-backed resolution that would have called for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to step down. The vote came in the wake of an alleged massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Friday night, in which artillery shells […]
Lyons: Islam, Women and the West
Jonathan Lyons writes in a guest column for Informed Comment Islam, Women, and the West This essay is adapted from my latest book, Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism, newly published by Columbia University Press. For more information, please see the CUP catalogue, at the CUP catalogue or […]
NASA’s Dangerous new Blue Marble
NASA’s new composite “Blue Marble” high definition image of the planet earth from outer space: Quick, a test: Was your first reaction, “What a beautiful planet we have!” ? Or was it, eeew, that is that dangerous Middle East… ?
Greenwald: Koch Brothers Should Testify before Congress
The Wall Street Journal carried a plaintive piece about how the poor far right wing oil billionaires David and Charles Koch (who bring you everything from science denial, to the Keystone XL pipeline– which is not as dead as you might like it to be– to secret funding of most of the “Tea Party”) are […]
Omar Khayyam 13
Where’s the smoke from my fire around here? Where’s the profit on my investment around here? As for the guy who called me a bar fly, now really, where’s the bar around here? trans. Juan Cole from Whinfield 13
Egypt Soccer Protests Challenge Military Regime
Friday saw another day of big protests and police repression in Egypt’s major cities. The protesters, who want the military to withdraw from politics and go back to the barracks, were galvanized by the soccer tragedy at Port Said on Wednesday, where some 74 persons were crushed in a stampede after local ultras (soccer hoodlums) […]
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