US politics

Cenk Uygur at Young Turks makes the point that the National Security Agency and other US intelligence (services who are ending up with massive amounts of electronic surveillance information on Americans –whether that is what they were mainly going for or not) keep saying we should trust them with the information. They maintain that they […]

Featured

Solar would be Cheaper: US Pentagon has spent $8 Trillion to Guard Gulf Oil

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was in the Gulf on Friday at a conference of defense ministers from the region, including the Gulf Cooperation Council and Iran. Hagel underlined American commitment to the security of the Arab states on the littoral of the Gulf, including Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, […]

Africa

The Mandela Problem of the AWM Wing of the GOP

Juan Cole

The US Republican Party has become the party of the angry white man (AWM) in the United States, which is a large part of the reason it has had trouble winning presidential elections. There are more female than male voters, and if you add white females to Asians, Latinos, African-Americans, gays and agnostics, you have […]

Africa

United States, Israel opposed Mandela, supported Apartheid

Juan Cole

The attempt to make Nelson Mandela respectable is an ongoing effort of Western government spokesmen and the Western media. He wasn’t respectable in the business circles of twentieth-century New York or Atlanta, or inside the Beltway of Washington, D.C. He wasn’t respectable for many of the allies of the United States in the Cold War, […]

Christianity

GOP: No Climate Change because, Bible

Juan Cole

Opposing views points to the scary ignorance and bible-thumping to which GOP representatives in Congress are appealing in their genocidal stand against quick action on climate change. If you have to have a biblical theology about these things, it should be the old-fashioned one that human beings are stewards of the earth and have a […]

US politics

Almost Human: How Robots, Race and Neoliberalism killed Detroit and what it Means for You

Juan Cole

Detroit can go into bankruptcy, a judge has ruled. Likely it means that workers’ pensions will be at least in part stolen from them. It is a good occasion to reprint this recent piece on post-industrial decline, robots and the future of capital and labor: Reprint Edition The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and […]

Featured

On the 80th Anniversary of Repeal of Prohibition, Why isn’t Marijuana Legal?

Juan Cole

It is the eightieth anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Among the many reasons for the popularity of banning alcohol in the US then were the concern of industrialists such as Henry Ford for the creation of a sober, industrious working class. Prohibition was in part intended to regiment and control working people and ensure […]

Energy

Top 10 Ways the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World

Juan Cole

Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt. VOA reports : While it is true that you don’t typically have to bribe your postman to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America’s political and financial practices make […]

Uncategorized

Can even Colbert make us laugh at America’s tragic growing Wealth Divide?

Juan Cole

Stephen Colbert on America’s astonishing wealth divide, which has even the Wall Street Journal worried: Boing Boing gives us the statistics : “#1 The lowest earning 23,303,064 Americans combined make 36 percent less than the highest earning 2,915 Americans do. #2 40 percent of all American workers (39.6 percent to be precise) make less […]