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Juan Cole

Afghanistan
Taliban Getting Stronger, As US Public Support for Afghanistan War Collapses

Taliban Getting Stronger, As US Public Support for Afghanistan War Collapses

Juan Cole

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is getting weaker over time, and the Taliban are getting stronger, according to Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Matthews says that there will be a lull in the winter, but insurgent operations will pick up in the spring. As NATO allies draw down (many have announced […]

Environment
5000 Birds fall out of Sky in Arkansas

5000 Birds fall out of Sky in Arkansas

Juan Cole

An environmental mystery: The blogosphere is abuzz about the mystery of thousands of birds falling out of the sky in Arkansas. Such things happen sometimes because of atmospheric events, lightning storms, etc. But Arkansas weather officials suspect this event may derive from a big fireworks spectacle in a rural area where the birds were concentrated […]

Iraq
Glaspie Memo Vindicates Her, Shows Saddam’s Thinking

Glaspie Memo Vindicates Her, Shows Saddam’s Thinking

Juan Cole

Wikileaks has released the July 25, 1990 cable by US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie in which she reported her meeting with Saddam Hussein over the Kuwait crisis. Saddam had summoned her. The cable’s text supports Glaspie’s accounts of the meeting and exonerates her from the charges by her political enemies in the US Congress […]

Egypt
Christian Crowds Protest Violently in Egypt

Christian Crowds Protest Violently in Egypt

Juan Cole

Crowds of Christian youth protested in the hundreds in Alexandria and Cairo on Sunday. The protesters in Alexandria were prevented by riot police from reaching the Saints Cathedral that had been bombed early Saturday morning, killing 21 and wounding almost 100. In Cairo in the Abbasiya neighborhood, the crowd gathered around St. Mark’s Cathedral, where […]

Israel/ Palestine
Wikileaks: Israel Plans Total War on Lebanon, Gaza

Wikileaks: Israel Plans Total War on Lebanon, Gaza

Juan Cole

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that ‘ The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same period of […]

al-Qaeda
Mubarak: We will Cut off the Head of the Snake;  Al-Azhar: This was an Attack on all Egyptians

Mubarak: We will Cut off the Head of the Snake; Al-Azhar: This was an Attack on all Egyptians

Juan Cole

The semi-official Egyptian newspaper, al-Ahram, reports that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asserted in a speech to the nation on Saturday that a foreign hand was behind the car-bombing of a Coptic Christian church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, which killed 21 and left nearly 100 persons wounded, […]

Egypt
Top Ten Middle East Challenges for U.S. Policy, 2011

Top Ten Middle East Challenges for U.S. Policy, 2011

Juan Cole

10. The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will attempt to stampede Obama into keeping troops in Iraq, delaying any withdrawals from Afghanistan, and launching a military strike on Iran. Just last week, Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, and other members of the Permanent War Party flew to Paris to lobby on behalf of […]

Uncategorized
Map of United Arab Emirates

Map of United Arab Emirates

Juan Cole

Uncategorized
New Year in Dubai

New Year in Dubai

Juan Cole

New Year in Dubai

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