Category
- Africa (96)
- Asia (528)
- Authoritarianism (99)
- Cats (1)
- Culture (333)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (152)
- Dissent (259)
- Economy (431)
- Education (50)
- Elderly (2)
- Energy (729)
- Environment (850)
- Europe (467)
- Featured (1,369)
- fiction (5)
- Food (5)
- Guns (8)
- History (142)
- Human Rights (802)
- Immigration (13)
- International (467)
- Islamophobia (193)
- Juan Cole (264)
- Latin America (28)
- Latinos (3)
- leisure (21)
- media (278)
- Middle East (4,781)
- Arab World (3,517)
- Iran (416)
- Israel (575)
- Israel/ Palestine (1,096)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (173)
- Turkey (282)
- military (101)
- Modernism (1)
- nationalism (86)
- NATO (3)
- Natural Disasters (7)
- nuclear weapons (22)
- Peace (51)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Popular Culture (22)
- Poverty (3)
- privacy (19)
- racism (181)
- religion (584)
- Rights (107)
- Romance (1)
- science (75)
- Secular (West) (7)
- Secularism (18)
- South Pacific (1)
- Spirituality (18)
- Statelessness (14)
- Surveillance (239)
- Terrorism (940)
- Tolerance (2)
- Uncategorized (7,998)
- United Nations (54)
- Urbanization (2)
- US Foreign Policy (388)
- US politics (2,031)
- Anti-War Movement (4)
- Campaign Finance (21)
- Censors (18)
- Central Intelligence Agency (49)
- Civil Rights (74)
- Constitution (205)
- Democratic Party (406)
- Domestic Terrorism (14)
- Drone Warfare (17)
- Espionage (99)
- Ethnicities (183)
- Far Right (106)
- FBI (26)
- Foreign Policy (154)
- Gay Rights (11)
- Guns (39)
- Immigration (90)
- Israel Lobbies (58)
- Militarization (180)
- National Security State (306)
- Native Americans (12)
- Nuclear arsenal (5)
- penitentiaries (5)
- Pentagon (145)
- Police (17)
- prison reform (1)
- Reproductive Choice (7)
- Republican Party (1,085)
- Supreme Court (17)
- Voter suppression (14)
- Whistleblowers (3)
- Xenophobia (4)
- Veterans (15)
- Voting Rights (4)
- War (170)
- Western Religion (295)
- White Supremacists (20)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (171)
- workers (99)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (94)
Archives: November 2011
Letter on Bahrain to Secretary Clinton
The Project on Middle Esst Democracy has written a letter to Secretary of State Clinton on the Bahrain crisis, which I co-signed. It asks the US take seriously the findings of severe…Democratic Developments in the Arab Upheavals
The Arab upheavals of 2011 have been very different from one another across countries, but have in common a language of parliamentary democracy as the ultimate ideal (albeit one that sounds more…Assassinating Dreams in Egypt: Amr
Ahmed Amr writes in a guest op-ed for Informed Comment: Nostalgia for more innocent times is a comforting refuge when hope is scarce. last week, as we inhaled a toxic dose of…Did the Muslim Brotherhood Threaten to Kill “All Jews”?
The Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties in Egypt (including the Salafis and the Gama'a al-Islamiya) held a rally at al-Husayn Square in Cairo last Friday to which a few thousand people…Empire by the Numbers
Number of Pakistani troops killed at checkpoint Saturday by a US helicopter raid from Afghanistan: 25 Number of NATO supply trucks allowed to cross from Pakistan to Afghanistan Saturday: 0 Number of…Anti-Liberal Netanyahu Slams Arab Spring as Anti-Liberal
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said yesterday that he had been right to oppose the forced resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last February and categorized the uprisings in the Arab world…Beeman: Letter from Iran
This is the second in a series of letters written this week from Iran by University of Minnesota Professor William Beeman. Since Americans hear so little directly from that country in their…Top Ten Things Americans can be Thankful for 2011
News is too often defined as bad news. At a time when many Americans are unemployed or under-employed, or have lost their homes or seen their value plummet, it is hard to…Gingrich Urges War with Iran and Skyrocketing Oil Prices
New Gingrich, sleep-walked into a declaration of war on Iran in last night's Republican foreign policy debate. Here is the relevant exchange: "BLITZER: The argument, Speaker Gingrich -- and I know you've…
Egyptian Protesters Reject Military Concessions, Demand Officers Return to Barracks
On Wednesday morning there were clashes between protesters and the military at the Ministry of Interior, which the interim government feared might be invaded and/or torched. In Egypt, Interior is in charge…Students, Pepper Spray & Class War: Cole in Truthdig
My column, " How Students Landed on the Front Lines of a Class War" is out in Truthdig.Egyptian Revolution 2.0?
Egypt is virtually rudderless as morning breaks on Tuesday. Interim prime minister Essam Sharaf and his cabinet tendered their resignations in protest against the use of violence against protesters in Tahrir Square.…
Top Developments in the Arab Spring Today
1. Egypt's security police and other forces are alleged to have killed 13 persons and wounded hundreds more at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo as they systematically cleared it of protesters. The…
Army vs. People in Egypt
Thousands of protesters in and around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo clashed for a second day on Sunday with Egyptian security forces, with some 18 arrested in the morning hours. Protests are…
Libya Should Turn Saif over to the Int’l Criminal Court
The capture of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi on Saturday has created a knotty set of political and judicial issues. Aljazeera English has video: Saif was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war…
Muslim Brotherhood and Liberals Confront Military Rule in Egypt
Al-Ahram reports in Arabic that hundreds of thousands of Egyptians all around the country protested on Friday against the military remaining in power. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi fundamentalists took the…OWS under Pressure: Banks Bailed out, People Sold Out
The Occupy Wall Street held a series of rallies around the country on Thursday, in response to the attempt of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to remove their tents and other camping equipment from…Serri: Iran’s UN Inspectors are Repeating the Iraq Mistakes
Hamid Serri of Florida International University writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency under Yukiya Amano is adopting toward Iran the same approach as the…Tomgram: Engelhardt, Movie-Made Me
Every childhood has its own geography and every child is an explorer, as daring as any Peary or Amundsen or Scott...
Gingrich Called for Jail for Politicians with Freddie Mac Ties
Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff on Wednesday accused Newt Gingrich of "corruption" for taking roughly $1.6 million from private/public mortgage company Freddie Mac. When pressed, Gingrich minimized the affair, admitting only to…
Arab League Suspends Syria as Israeli Warns of “Islamic Empire”
The Arab League suspended Syria on Wednesday at its meeting in Rabat, Morocco, and gave the Baath government three days to cease shooting protesters or else threatened economic sanctions would kick in.…Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the…
McCain Plays Politics with Obama’s Iraq Withdrawal
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) played shameless politics during a hearing on Tuesday on the US withdrawal from Iraq. McCain more or less called Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta a liar to his…Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Puncturing the Pipeline
Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs...NYPD Attack on OWS and the End of the First Amendment
Not only did the police, at the orders of billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg, abruptly move on the protesters, they are alleged to have deliberately kept the press away, which is clearly unconstitutional…
Only Green Energy Can Save Yemen
No one gives any credence to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's pledge on Monday to step down in 90 days, since he's made such commitments before and reneged on them. The Yemeni…
Muslim- and Liberal-Hater Breivik Confronted by Survivors in Open Court
Norway's mass murdered Anders Behring Breivik, a right wing white Christian supremacist who has confessed to killing 77 Labor Party youth activists and allegedly wounded 151 others, appeared in open court on…
Herman Cain Painfully Clueless on Libya
Herman Cain more or less admits that he has no idea what he would have done about the Libyan Revolution and no idea whether his criticisms of Obama on the conduct of…GOPers Promise you War on Iran & Torture & Poverty
Saturday's Republican debate, sponsored by CBS and the National Journal, revealed a Republican field that is promising war on Iran and a revival of the use of torture, as well as horrible…No, that wasn’t an al-Qaeda Flag over Benghazi
I asked a Libyan scholar about the silly urban legend going around that an "al-Qaeda" flag flew from a government building in Benghazi recently. Here is what he said: " I looked…
Arab League Sets Syria for Suspension
The Arab League initiated the suspension of Syria's membership on Saturday, giving Damascus three days to cease shooting down Syrian demonstrators or else the country would be isolated, with AL members withdrawing…Could Electronic Communication Cooperatives Protect Us?
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of parliament in Iceland, has written a column in which she complains that the US Department of Justice asked Twitter to turn over her private account information to…Pyramids Partially Closed in face of New Age “Threat”
The Egyptian Antiquities authority partially closed the Pyramids to foreign tourists on Friday, in an attempt to prevent Western New Age groups from holding rituals there. Egypt has been awash in rumors…The Little Iran Nuclear Report that Couldn’t
A key allegation in the IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities has fallen apart. Gareth Porter has been able to use interviews and other material to demonstrate that Vyacheslav Danilenko, a Russian…Tomgram: Juan Cole, Protesting a Pasha-the-Tiger World
From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive…
Perry’s Lapse likely owing to Bad Faith and Destructive Politics
Rick Perry flubbed the CNBC debate when he forgot his own talking points. He had campaigned on abolishing the Commerce, Education and Energy Departments. But he could only remember the first two…
Iraq, Iran and the Nuclear Phantasm: We’ve Seen this Picture
Nuclear issues are so complicated that the public is easily misled and frightened by nuclear demagoguery. That is why the new International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear program will be…
Netanyahu a “Liar”: Sarkozy
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was recently overheard talking to President Obama and complaining that he couldn't stand Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whom he called a "liar." President Obama didn't seem in…
Greenwald: Koch Brothers Fund Voter Suppression for Minorities, Elderly, Students
Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films exposes the most aggressive interference in the ability of Americans to vote since sheriffs in the Deep South stopped giving African-Americans that Latin exam. The number of…
Iran Looks to China, Russia to Break out of US Sanctions
The four rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran are likely about as far as Russia and China are willing to go. Even the new charges against Iran apparently contained…
Newt’s new Crusade against the Arab Spring
Newt Gingrich's poll numbers and fund-raising have improved recently, as the GOP faithful continue their quest for an ABM (not anti-ballistic missile but "Anyone but Mitt"). Gingrich in turn has begun trying…Godzilla Carbon Emissions in 2010 Unprecedented
The spike in carbon emissions in 2010, a 6% increase over 2009, was so humongous that the scientists measuring it initially thought that there must have been a mistake somewhere in the…Berube on Libya and the Left
Michael Berube does a post-mortem on Libya and the Left, and what he finds is not a pretty picture. Woolly thinking, outrageous lies, moon-eyed Qaddafi-worship, false equivalences, and simplistic proxies for actual…Israel’s Strangulation of Gaza by the Numbers
The Israeli navy illegally interfered with Gaza aid ships on the high seas, Friday, kidnapping the people on the two vessels and sending the ships involuntarily to an Israeli port. The Geneva…Would Obama Greenlight an Israeli Attack on Iran?
The Israeli press notes that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and maverick Defense Minister Ehud Barak have been talking up a possible Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. No one knows…A Hot Wet Thousand Years and 10 Green Energy Stories to Avert it
The bad news is that I've been reading David Archer's The Long Thaw on climate change projections, and he thinks that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been way too conservative.…Likud Government takes Revenge on Palestinians for UNESCO Membership
The Pan-Arab London daily, al-Hayat, editorializes today that President Obama's vote against Palestine's membership in UNESCO demonstrates that his 2009 Cairo speech was "empty words." Obama's forays into outreach to the Muslim…Romney Flip-Flops on Mideast, Too: Cole in Truthdig
My column is out in Truthdig, entitled, "Mitt Romney’s Big Bad Ideas for the Middle East". Excerpt: "The Arab revolutions of 2011 have already removed three dictators and forced governments across the…