Featured

(By Juan Cole) A Coptic fragmentary manuscript page that dates back to a few hundred years after Jesus’ death (and the text of which may go back to the second century) has been found by radiocarbon and ink testing to be authentic. That is, it is not, as some scholars claimed when it was first […]

Featured

GOP Armed Services Chair: Dropping Benghazi, Military did all it Could (Is the Witch Hunt Over?)

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Republican Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, declared on Thursday that the US military did all it could during the chaotic two days of September 11-12, 2012 in Benghazi, Libya and that his own investigation of the US response to the violence of that day is over. […]

Eastern Europe

Russian Sanctions-Busting?: Putin’s bruited 500k b/d oil deal with Iran draws US Threats

Juan Cole

Russia has rejected US criticism of a plan that has been floated to import 500,000 barrels a day of petroleum from Iran on a barter basis. The US Treasury Department has been instructed by Congress to place a financial blockade on Iran. The US has had that country kicked off major international bank exchanges, making […]

Featured

Poof! John Kerry Blames Israeli Squatting in E. Jerusalem for breakdown in Peace Talks; Bennett: It’s Just Zionism

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) You heard it first here. I had argued on Sunday that that the actions and statements of the far rightwing Israeli Likud government had sunk the peace negotiations with Palestine. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a similar narrative [my points 9 & 10] on Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee […]

Democratic Party

2 GOP Latino Strategies Clash: Sen. Ted Cruz disses Jeb Bush’s ‘Immigration for Love’ Meme

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Sen. Ted Cruz criticized Jeb Bush for appearing to downplay the rule of law in arguing that undocumented immigration to the US is a crime of passion, resorted to out of an abundance of love for families in straitened circumstances. Cruz said that such an argument injures the sovereignty of the US […]

Energy

Is Rand Paul right that Cheney invaded Iraq for Halliburton Profits?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) David Corn at Mother Jones got the scoop: In 2009, Rand Paul gave a talk at Western Kentucky University in which he accused former vice president Dick Cheney of having gotten up the Iraq War to rescue his troubled oil services company, Halliburton, which– along with its subsidiaries– was awarded enormous no-bid […]

Featured

Top Ten Ways in which it was Actually the Israeli Gov’t that Derailed the Peace Talks

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of peace negotiations that began last August under the auspices of Secretary of State John Kerry. In fact, the Palestinians took no Israeli land whatsoever since August, whereas the Israelis doubled their pace of building squatter settlements […]

Afghanistan

Top 7 Surprising pieces of Good news in Afghanistan Presidential Election

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Afghanistan went to the polls on Saturday, despite threats by the Taliban to disrupt the elections and calls by the extremists for Afghans to boycott the vote. As it turns out, the elections appear to have been a success, despite many problems (including a last-minute shortage of ballots as more voters showed […]

Climate Change

Dear America: Climate Change is threatening Water, Plants, Animals & doesn’t care what Party you belong To

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) A Gallup poll has found that only 35% of Americans are concerned about climate change, and that proportion is barely up from the previous year. Climate change has become a partisan issue in the US, such that a majority of Democrats is worried about it but only 29% of independents and only […]