Juan Cole

Rep. Alan Grayson: The Bush administration didn’t start any wars by mistake except Iraq, no cities drowned under Bush-Cheney except New Orleans . . . End/ (Not Continued)

While American security officials are focused laser-like on the 300 or so al-Qaeda members in rural Maarib province of Yemen, and worry about further strikes on the US planned by this small group, a regional food fight has broken out between Iran and Saudi Arabia about a different sort of local insurgency, the Huthis, who […]

Now Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not only questions the extent of the Holocaust but is also a “truther,” saying, absurdly, that the US and Israeli governments were behind the 9/11 attacks. The USG Open Source Center paraphrased and translated his speech on Wednesday in Ahvaz (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) Wednesday, January […]

If we were smart we’d move to Mali or the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). The world’s earthquake zones according to the US Geological Survey Another way in which white slavery was unfair to the Haitians . . . End/ (Not Continued)

h/t Daily Kos: Evangelist Pat Robertson manages to blame Haitians for the earthquake, instead of a shift in tectonic plates: And you know Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third […]

Oh, no. Here we go again. Some 2000 villagers from near Lashkar Gah in Helmand province mounted a demonstration against the alleged desecration of the holy Qur’an by NATO troops. The rally turned violent, and Afghan and foreign troops opened fire, allegedly killing at least 6 persons. (NATO denied the deaths, saying only a sniper […]

ITN has early video of the earthquake devastation of Port au Prince, Haiti. For a quick overview of the Haitian economy, see this site. It was a sad story even before the earthquake. (courtesy Daniel Morel at twitter; for more, see here. Obviously, the country will need a lot of aid to come back from […]

Six NATO troops were killed in hostile action in Afghanistan on Monday, three of them Americans. The US troops appear to have been killed in close combat, whereas most of the other deaths were from roadside bombs. The notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan will shortly be turned over to the Afghanistan army by the US. […]

Satire Republicans were outraged Monday by two-year-old remarks of Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid about the electability of Barack Obama, in which Reid (an early Obama supporter) spoke of Obama’s light skin color and his lack of “Negro dialect.” The GOP, they said, would never apply such superficial criteria to the choice of high […]