Total number of comments: 1543 (since 2013-04-13 18:28:29)
Juan Cole
is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment and Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Follow him at @jricole
Website: http://juancole.com
Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion
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There may be a point at which the Muslim Brotherhood gives up its inner Secret Apparatus and tries to join the democratic process. At the moment they've revealed themselves little different from the stealth Stalinists of the 1940s who made coups in eastern Europe from the covert positions into which they wormed themselves. I gave them the benefit of the doubt in 2012 and they behaved badly.
The announcement of Mubarak's 'resignation' happened before Military Directive no. 1
Matt also thinks Congress was wrong to move to impeach Nixon, who was legitimately elected twice.
thanks Ron. But I'm 61 & this may be as good as it gets
The uprising had already been going on for a month before the French stopped Gaddafi from massacring Benghazi, and much of the country had revolted. The Eastern army had defected. Gaddafi had an advantage in armor, but once NATO leveled the playing field, the rebels won handily. NATO did almost nothing for Misrata, which fought off Gaddafi's brutal siege for 6 months mostly on its own.
Gaddafi was for the last part of his career on the CIA payroll.
Well I think its borders had something to do with the Ottoman Empire
give it a rest, Mike. The people of Libya got rid their government; all NATO and the Arab League did was destroy some arms depots, tanks and SCUDs, levelling the playing field. If they hadn't intervened, Libya would have turned into Syria. As for Zeidan, he was elected free and fair by the Libyans.
I'm planning for the end of petroleum as a fuel all over the world.
Bill, the argument is not that oil causes fundamentalism or violence but that it is funneled to Wahhabi & Salafi areas, unbalancing the region
The 19.5 million barrels a day is all burned as fuel. Petrochemicals are counted separately.
Kerry was sharing with Ashton as head of European Union negotiating team. The press has suggested that Fabius felt upstaged.
The writers are saying they are not writing the same things for publication they might have if they weren't afraid.
The US knew all about the Pakistani program in detail. I asked a USG person at the Lahore embassy about this in the 1980s & he said we told Islamabad not to assemble the bomb. We needed Pakistan in 1980s versus Soviets in Afghanistan.
No, I'm saying that a financial blockade that prevents oil sales goes beyond being sanctions and is dangerous because blockades are acts of war.
I am saying that his premises ( that like Dr Strangelove we eon't be able to restrain our aggression) are outrageous and also that in Washington they may work.
Olmert is on the Right!
it's not marked as a Paypal link!
Don't be silly. the Likud position is that Barak made a huge mistake.
link to israelnationalnews.com
I'll blog the hell out of it in a month or two.
I'm grateful for the detailed comments, which, however, seem to me to address a small part of my posting, which was about the significance of the launch for American culture.
I called Ms. Marvel an homage to Captain Marvel, and she certainly was, which you implicitly acknowledge by bringing up the potential copyright issues.
I hyperlinked to my sources, which appeared just after the Marvel press release, and they did not at that time mention Ms. Wilson by name. Subsequent reporting has highlighted her, which is all to the good. It is often the case that my pieces are ahead of the news curve and naturally later reporting is fuller with regard to some details.
Ms. Marvel will be the first Muslim-American superhero with her own comic book, which is what my title refers to and I would defend it. I was aware of the Green Lantern Muslim and Dust; they don't have the same significance as this title.
If only I could get as informed and helpful comments on foreign policy as I got on the pop culture entry.
what a great comment!
Thanks so much, Waseem. But I still think that the Ms. Marvel character created by Roy Thomas was sometimes referred to as Captain Marvel and is clearly a Silver Age homage to the Golden Age icon.
Best comment you've ever made, JT. We are coming more to resemble the looting aliens in "Independence Day" than the plucky Will Smith character.
thanks for such an informed comment!
Actually I think she is upset that she was *not* briefed on the Merkel tap and has begun to realize that the NSA hasn't told her a fraction of what it has been up to.
Spitzer's misconduct was discovered when US officials monitoring his bank account saw sums of $4,500 regularly coming out of it. They had no warrant to monitor his bank account in the first place. Movement of sums over $10,000 may be monitored to fight drug money laundering. But Spitzer's wounds were not self-inflicted. He was spied on illegally and outed by Federal employees who had no business doing so.
There is no evidence that Afghanistan knew about al-Qaeda plan for 9/11
Converting cars to natural gas would destroy the world's climate. Plus who wants to drive around a bomb?
Most people don't drive those kind of miles daily, on average. You're not thinking about the whole country. In fact because of the high price of gasoline, most young people have moved to cities and many are using public transport to get to their jobs, where they have one. Others are just driving less. That is one reason our national consumption of petroleum has fallen 3 million barrels a day since 2007.
4 wheel drive plug in hybrids are on the way!
Thanks, Jim. They came along after I did my initial research, but I'm sure they are great vehicles too. That people should be buying plug-in hybrids is the point.
Plug-in hybrids switch to gas after the battery runs down, so they don't have the problem you suggest. But most drives for most Americans are 5 miles are less, so even a pure EV like a Leaf would be good enough for most people most of the time.
220 volt rechargers, which are installed in Ann Arbor public parking garages, only take 4 hours to recharge and it happens while you're parked and at work. You're about 4 years out of date in your prejudices.
If you deliberately launch an illegal war of aggression on a nationality, which causes the death of half a million civilians, and you could reasonably have expected that launching the war would indeed result in very large numbers of deaths among the nationality that you illegally attacked without any casus belli, it seems to me that you had the intent of killing off part of that ethnic group, which in the Genocide Convention equals... genocide
if you launched an illegal war of aggression on Iraq, what could a prudent person expect to happen to *Iraqis*?
you are being too literal minded
I said 'analogy' not exact parallel
costs of solar energy are falling rapidly & with more investment in R& D that will accelerate
I added a link to a recent discovery that doubles efficiency. I understand that it takes time to bring this to market but the lab breakthroughs are very encouraging
Pew polling found MB favorability rating fell from 50% to 18% during Morsi's presidency
wasn't celebrating; just analyzing
I agree. I didn't say anything about the Israeli public as opposed to the ruling party.
all of those types of considerations could be laid against Israel as well. E.g. intelligence support for Baluch rebels of Jundullah who have blown up Shiite mosques. As for Hizbullah, it was created by Israeli occupation and continued Israeli threats to Lebanese territorial integrity.
Anthropogenic; but let us just say human-caused
There were 18 million Jews before 1940 by our best demographic projections.
There were 12 million after World War II.
Hmmm.
Well Wiki is wrong. 19.75% is not considered Highly enriched uranium. Above 20% is.
19.75% LEU is not bomb grade!
As horrible as these attacks on soft targets like malls are, they are typically signs of desperation and failure, not of success. Alshabab cannot get back Mogadishu this way, and, if anything, has stiffened Kenya's resolve to root them out. They may give some cultists temporarily inflated egos because of the attention, but there is no strategic advance to be had here. The economic effect is ephemeral and minor.
Nope. Glad to have good comments from a whole range of points of view.
Since the wind turbines are getting significantly bigger, more efficient and cheaper by the year, the challenge gets easier as time goes on. Your cost figures for a project begun in 2004 become ridiculous if used now. And 5 years from now they will be even more absurd. Same of solar panels, where something like Moore's law has begun to operate and they are rapidly falling in price and increasing in efficiency. As the market expands it will create more and more efficiencies and R&D will be better funded. Arguing for the next decade from figures such as you presented is at the best a form of anachronism and at worst a form of trolling.
Thanks, Bibi. Was that before or after he threw the sound grenade at her? And that petite French woman must have had some right hook to menace the Israeli army. Maybe the commandos need to be trained in fending off tossed hors d'oeuvres.
boy was that an understatement. It got on Reddit's front page! Plus it went viral elsewhere. It is by now among the most read columns I've written. As for thick skin, this stuff is like playing video games for me. (Yes, I have an X-Box).
Ben had some household slaves as almost all wealthy Americans then did but he freed them and advocated abolition.
Ben had some household slaves as almost all wealthy Americans then did, but he freed them and advocated abolition.
no this does not work. email services pass the drafts through their servers. this was Petraeus's technique, which failed.
10 miles might be all I go, & if I could recharge parked outside, that would work for me as a commute.
The panels are improving very rapidly.
you need more panels; & you're not counting reduction of gasoline burning.
we have 10 yrs - we can all be driving electric cars in that period if we want to. we can't redo the transit system.
it wasn't a glowing assessment, just an analysis
Russia barely uses Tartus base & has much mire geopolitical weight in Central Asia than Syria
Look at the map. How would you get from Syria to Europe except through Turkey? And therefore wouldn't Turkey be enough?
Sunni Arabs are 60%. 2 million Sunni Kurds are not Arabs.
France couldn't keep the other colonies you mentioned very long after the war either. Historians of decolonization see the German conquest of France as important in leading to the independence of the colonies because it delegitimized such conquest and also weakened France economically and militarily.
No, I can't see the difference between what Germany did to France and what France did to Syria.
Can you specify what Iranian 'weapons stockpile' you are referring to?
Also, when were these weapons deployed?
The Libyan no fly zone was authorized by the UNSC.
There is no international legal framework for a unilateral US attack on Damascus.
It is unlikely that Obama's symbolic missile strike would be more consequential than closing off the Syrian regime's loopholes in finances; rather, less.
My positions are principled.
I was presuming people knew that the Syria policy I outlined is intended to block Iran's land bridge to the Levant and Israel's borders, which is the grand strategy.
I don't deny that is an issue; however, Jewish Americans have a long history of anti-war activism that could offset that consideration.
With all due respect, the issue is not putting pressure on al-Assad because of use of chemical weapons. The issue is support of a cruise missile strike, which is what Obama wants and for which he cannot gather support.
The Europeans fought the idea of getting involved in the Balkans tooth and nail for years.
Joe, you're being unusually propagandistic.
Please name G20 countries supporting a US cruise missile strike on Syria.
Yes, countries that abhor chemical weapons use are there, but that is a separate issue.
You'll note there is nothing about a missile strike or violence at all in this statement.
The European Union issued a statement at the G20 that objected to the strike. The four you mentioned were isolated in the EU
it is just a franchise term for radical Sunnis who believe in using terrorism to accomplish various goals, including imposition of Taliban-style 'sharia' governance and weakening the industrial democracies.
I don't and didn't think it plausible in the short to medium term. In the long term it is a possibility. I am saying that that long term is now being put off even further.
Yes
Neither of your premises is true. Syria is not particularly tribal. And a series of statelets are not viable. Nearly half the country is minorities of one sort or another who mostly get along. The hard line Baathi Alawites and the hard line Sunnis are at the poles, and if they become less salient the country will come back together.
The UN Secuirty Council would have to forward Syria to the ICC, which Russia won't allow.
This is not true. Rice tol Lavtov exactly what would happen.
My thesis is that the Homs campaign drained manpower from the capital, heightening its vulnerability.
A local chem unit commander appears to have gone a little too far; that the Syrian army was behind it is not in doubt, though there is a question as to how high up the decision was made:
link to thecable.foreignpolicy.com
The rebels in places such as Rif Dimashq in the south are local boys on the whole, not like Jabhat al-Nusra in the far north, who are often foreigners. It is different when you're killing your own cousins.
Being a historian, I was speaking in the second instance over a long period, perhaps a decade. In the short term, the regime's advances are tenuous and would not take pressure off it to deflect rebel advances in Rif Dimashq.
Heavy Syrian gov't bombardment of the site of chemical use likely destroyed the evidence
The room for abuse here is enormous. Police can arbitrarily arrest someone and the go on a fishing expedition through his data.
the issue is that he wasn't detained for having stolen "property" but as a terrorist. That is Orwellian.
What about if the NSA stole the documents from us in the first place?
the public would have to know and care
No, the officer corps calls the shots.
sure!
the unions were universally for Rebellion/ Tamarrud, said Morsi policies were driving factories into the ground
link to english.alarabiya.net
Rouhani is probably to the right of Ahmadinejad, who was probably only elected once, when he was posing as a populist.
I don't see the sanctions as having produced the Rouhani victory. He is an insider and close to Khamenei on most issues, not really a reformist at all. He is however in favor of a slight cultural opening, which is what the Iranian electorate has voted for since 1997 pretty consistently. One forgets that domestically Ahmadinejad attacked the ayatollah fat cats and favored women coming out to stadiums for soccer games, etc. I suspect Mousavi won in 2009 because Ahmadinejad reneged.
The Iranians have been electing reformers as president since 1997.
No, Egypt imports most of its food and the government sets prices for purchasing from farmers. So poor peasants often came to absolutely despise Morsi, which is one reason on June 30 you saw so many rural depot towns join in the Rebellion.
Dear Huib:
I was once part of a year-long seminar on the history of religious toleration and read a lot about the Dutch case. You still have the wrong century and they did publish Voltaire.
you are mixing up centuries and also don't have the story right. The rabbis expelled Spinoza & pressured the Dutch authorities about him. Amsterdam kicked himout briefly at the behest of the Jewish community, but after a year he came back & the Dutch didn't bother him again. By 1700s there was much more toleration; indeed in some ways the Dutch invented it in its modern form.
State Department officials have repeatedly told our graduate students that they won't be hired if they are known to have read the cables, Bob.
you have old statistics. 18% live on $2 a day.
But in any, case, Morsi didn't buy enough wheat & he caused a 15% fall in the value of the Egyptian pound, and caused the price of bread & diesel to rise substantially. The poor came to hate him. The textile unions & the whole town of al-Mahalla fervently supported Rebellion / Tamarrud. Likewise many rural depot towns.
Brotherhood leadership long since became bourgeois. They screwed the working class, which is one reason they are out.
Contrary to what you seem to think, though, I always held the coup a very dangerous idea.
this is because you seem to be under the impression that Khairat Shater represents the poor!
The Benghazi Syndrome to which I was referring was the unsubstantiated charges of some sort of cover-up (not clear of what) on Sept. 11, 2011. No, it is not bipartisan.
Embassy staff in the region have complained to me that they can't do their jobs as well as they would like because of the skeleton crews etc. There isn't any doubt that closing the embassies has an impact on effectiveness.
follow the hyperlink
Rhymes with Melody Garage
that's not a soft shoe number, it is a Washington-Tel Aviv shell game. Closing the fuel cycle is a right guaranteed by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But closing the fuel cycle is also always an inevitably a break out capacity.
There is no evidence of weaponization or diversion of uranium to weapons use, which is what is important. Iranians have the *capacity* to walk into Caspian sea en masse; the question is whether that's what they want to do and if there are actually any people on the road toward the north. Answer: No.
The electricity shortages don't stop urban people from watching tv! They mostly have generators they run a few hours a day. And people still rent a lot of pirated videos and play them at home when they arrange electricity. Your image of Pakistanis as lacking media access because of the electricity problem discounts their ingenuity.
In Swat Valley, by the way, individuals are putting in solar panels because they are cheaper than diesel generators.