Juan Cole

President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated a year ago, and this is a good time to review his major foreign policy success. It is, of course, important that he has repaired the reputation of the US in much of the world and replenished the stock of ‘soft power’ that has been so important a part […]

The new year is not very old, but several recent revelations cast the the US fight against al-Qaeda (a tiny if deadly fraternity of a couple thousand fanatics spread in dozens of countries) in a bad light, if not to say a scandalous one. The entire premise of combating al-Qaeda as though it were an […]

Study Finds Exposure to Chemical Pollutants Increases Fat: Scientific American Then there is the recent University of California study that indicates extra obesity risks from high fructose corn syrup. Contrary to the latter industry’s claims, it isn’t as safe as fruit juice and produces fat around the heart and tendencies to obesity. And American corporations […]

Skynews has video of Monday’s coordinated bombings and attacks in Kabul. End/ (Not Continued)

The Taliban mounted their boldest and most ambitious assault on the capital of Kabul in recent years on Monday, with a series of well-coordinated bombings in the vicinity of the presidential palace and a platoon-sized expeditionary force wreaking havoc. The Afghan Voice Agency reports in Dari Persian that numerous bombs were set off near the […]

We live in an even more regimented society than the 1950s and early 1960s. We live in a society where protests can be confined to ‘protest zones,’ where peaceful protest or critical comment can place activists and journalists on a no-fly list (while the authorities still seem routinely to overlook actual terrorists), where our electronic […]

Reuters AlertNet – HAITI: Arab aid making its way I was watching Aljazeera Arabic and they noted that the Qatari aid plane had difficulty getting in a queue to land at the airport and that aid delivery was heavily dependent on security, so that it would get easier as US troops were deployed. Some critics […]

Martha Coakley – Salon.com An evolution in the birthers and teabaggers? Joan Walsh points out that Republican candidate for senator from Massachusetts Scott Brown says he doesn’t know if Obama’s parents were married when they had him. You always knew what they called him in private, but here it is in public. A subtext here […]

A US and a Canadian soldier were announced killed in hostile action in Afghanistan on Saturday. In a further blow to the his leadership, the lower house of the Afghanistan parliament rejected 10 of 17 further cabinet nominees put forward by President Hamid Karzai, with 224 MPs present. Although the lede in most articles about […]