Featured

(By Juan Cole) Two bombings shook the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Friday morning. The first was apparently a car bomb detonated at 5:30 am that targeted the Directorate of Security, leaving 4 dead and 51 wounded. Car bombs have been rare in Egypt but are common in Iraq and Syria, and it is a very […]

Climate Change

Top Ten Ways GOP could avoid “War on Women” Label

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Mike Huckabee objects to the charge that the Republican Party is waging a war on women. The GOP obviously is increasingly a party of angry white men. It suffers from a significant gender gap, which helped elect Barack Obama twice. Huckabee wants to just wish all these realities away. But in the […]

Bashar al-Assad

Syria Conference Roiled by Shouting Matches, Insults

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Geneva II negotiations at Montreux, Switerland, opened on a sour note on Wednesday. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem droned on interminably and charged the rebel forces with being “traitors” supported by bloodthirsty foreign powers. Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that President Bashar al-Assad step down in favor of a transitional […]

al-Qaeda

Gates worries Pakistan Violence blocks Polio Eradication, But is CIA Partly to Blame?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done an amazing job in targeting diseases for eradication, and the world is very close to getting rid of polio altogether, in part because the Gates in recent years have given their support to the effort, which began in 1988. Cases have fallen 99% since […]

Bashar al-Assad

Massive War Crimes: Syrian Regime Tortured, Starved, Murdered 11,000 Prisoners

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) A new report by three respected jurists argues that photographic evidence provided by a defector from the Syrian police proves systematic torture and summary execution of thousands of prisoners by the Baath regime headed by Bashar al-Assad. Ian Black at the Guardian broke the story . The authors of the report write, […]

Barack Obama

After Defending Pot, Obama has to Pardon Medical Marijuana Growers He Jailed

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Barack Obama has a weed problem. Not just that he’s admitted using it. He said clearly when campaigning for president in 2008 that he approved of medical marijuana. Yet his Attorney General, Eric Holder and his Department of Justice went on to launch punitive campaigns against legitimate marijuana businesses operating within state […]

Dissent

Gov’t used Surveillance of MLK in Bid to Destroy Him: Now they want us to just Trust Them

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Among the ironies of Barack Obama trying to sell us the gargantuan NSA domestic spying program is that such techniques of telephone surveillance were used against the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in an attempt to destroy him and stop the Civil Rights movement. Had the republic’s most notorious peeping tom, J. […]

Egypt

The Shame and the Danger of Egypt’s 98% Vote

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The announcement on Saturday by the Egyptian government that there was a 38% turnout for the referendum on the new constitution was unexceptional. It was more than the 33% that turned out to vote on the Muslim Brotherhood constitution of 2012, but not that much more. But the declaration that the constitution […]

Climate Change

The GOP’s War on Science Endangering America: Climate Change, Evolution, Regulation

Juan Cole

The Republican Party is increasingly emerging as an anti-science party. Since American greatness was built on its science and technology (and not on the odd cult of biblical inerrancy), this development is a danger to the republic, and, indeed, to the world. The US used to be about solving problems, about a can-do spirit, not […]