Juan Cole

Not only have Blackwater mercenaries (now Xe) helped the CIA kidnap people (“rendition”), but it is now coming out that they’ve been helping launch covert assassination drones in Pakistan. The revelations, which have outraged the Pakistani people, have forced the USG to cancel the contract. Aljazeera English reports on the fear gripping mosque-goers in the […]

If it is true that the Nobel committee awarded President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, they must have been dismayed to discover that Bush’s war on terror remained the framework for Obama’s acceptance speech. It was a great speech, with its references to Gandhi and King and its […]

Antony Adolph writes in a guest op-ed for IC: A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama’s Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe? No one wants to sit on a sofa that’s uncomfortable for too long, so why would Eastern Europeans, let alone the world? The ‘SOFA’ in question (a Status of […]

The world has noted the irony that President Barack Obama is delivering his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize after launching an escalation of the Afghanistan war. Of course, the critique is a little misplaced, since the prize is for a specific policy success, not for being a pacifist. Still, Mr. Obama was clearly […]

Favorite Books of 2009 | The Progressive The Progressive lists their writers’ favorite books this year. I’m proud that Engaging the Muslim World made the list Note that both Engaging and Napoleon’s Egypt make excellent holiday gifts for friends and relatives who are readers and love history and world affairs. End/ (Not Continued)

Five large bombs were detonated throughout Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 127 persons and wounding 500, and damaging important government buildings. Three of the five were suicide bombs. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the bombings targeted the ministries of the interior and of finance, as well as a popular market and a court house. They hit […]

The protests against the regime in Iran on Monday were remarkable in several ways, I conclude on reading Borzou Daragahi’s account in LAT. One is the sheer number of cities where students came out for rallies: “Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan […]

Bombings kill 46 people in 2 Pakistan cities | Top AP Stories | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle The market that was struck in Lahore, in Iqbal Town, is known as upscale– where there are American franchises like KFC and high end retailing. So there is a class conflict element to the bombing. The Pakistani authorities […]

Is the earth’s climate warming? Indisputably. Has the pumping of vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by human beings since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution contributed to global climate change? Also, indisputably. Would extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause warming? In the absence of some sort of offset, yes. In fact, […]