Juan Cole

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is, "Engaging the Muslim World," (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored, "Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has given many radio and press interviews. He has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular column at Truthdig. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there.

On Labor Day, Trump’s Mismanagement of Pandemic has left 27 Million Unemployed and Turning to Food Banks

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It is a sad Labor Day, in the shadow of the Trump Pandemic. Over a fourth of workers are afraid of losing their jobs because of the pandemic, up from 15% last year this time, according to Gallup. That is, the anxiety over joblessness as almost doubled. Many are much more worried, as well, about having their wages cut. Workers are more anxious than at any time since the Great Recession began to taper off nine years ago. Some 27 million US workers Continue Reading...

Will Trump’s Maximum Pressure on UNSC against Lifting Iran Arms Embargo Backfire Big Time?

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Peter Hutchison at AFP reports that the Trump administration may be set to shoot itself in the foot at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) next week by pressing for an over-ambitious resolution against lifting the arms embargo on Iran. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by the US and the other permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany involved a set of bargains. Iran had to give up 80 percent of its civilian nuclear Continue Reading...

All the Lies Trump told the West Point Graduates about American Militarism

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It was bad enough that Trump endangered the health of the graduating class at West Point for the purposes of a photo op for his reelection campaign by insisting on bringing them back to campus. It was bad enough that he gave an alarming performance in which some observers saw an advancing dementia and during which he had difficulty lifting a glass of water. What was worse was all the lies and half-truths Trump told the West Point Continue Reading...

I guess “Islam” doesn’t Hate us After All: Trump pins hopes for Vaccine on Muslim-American Slaoui

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Trump became president in part by playing on fears, resentments and outright hatred among some segments of the American public, especially of a racial and religious sort. He bashed Mexican-Americans as drug dealers and rapists, and recently blamed Chinese-Americans for the coronavirus. But no group came in for so fierce a lashing at his hands as the 3.5 million Muslim-Americans. “I think,” he said, “Islam hates us.” He called for a moratorium on Continue Reading...

Trumpism was Always the Tyrannical Tantrum of a Stubborn 5-Year-Old, but Now it will Kill People; Lots of People

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Trumpism is a form of fascism, of course, but at its core is a whiny rebellion against the achievements of human and civil rights since the 1960s. Do the new norms after the Civil Rights Movement stop people from saying in public that African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians and women are inferior? Then by God, Trump and Bob Mercer and Breitbart and Fox would go out of their way to put all those groups down. Did the Federal Continue Reading...

Coronavirus, but Israelis Keep Vulnerable Gaza as Largest Open Air Prison

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California prisons are releasing prisoners for fear that the crowded conditions in penitentiaries could prove deadly breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus. There are 2 million prisoners, most of them not adults, however, who won’t be let out of prison despite the dangers of over-crowding and externally dictated inadequate health facilities. They are the people of the Palestinian Gaza Strip, with a population size similar to Continue Reading...

What Martin Luther King Jr. Would have thought of Israeli anti-Palestinian Apartheid

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The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose activism we honor today, took stands far beyond Selma and Montgomery, and called on other capitals than Washington, D.C., to ensure a dignified life for human beings. Dr. King was an early and vigorous opponent of the white South African Apartheid (segregationist) government. He wrote former ambassador Chester Bowles in 1957 on behalf of a rally in New York on Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, organized by the Continue Reading...

Israel’s Netanyahu a War Criminal?

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A prosecutor on the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, has opened an investigation into Israeli and Hamas war crimes, drawing a furious response from caretaker Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Palestine filed the case in some large part because of the Trump administration’s brutal policies against the Palestinians, in which US AID and UNRWA funding was slashed, all of Jerusalem was given away to Israel, Netanyahu was Continue Reading...

What does Fraud and Bribery trial of Israeli PM Netanyahu tell us about Trump Impeachment?

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Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit on advice from the police, indicted caretaker Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on fraud and bribery charges Thursday. On Friday, he refused to step down. Netanyahu is charged in three cases. In Case 4000, Netanyahu is accused of giving the owner of the Walla! News website $280 million worth of regulatory benefits, in return for which Netanyahu received positive media coverage. In Case Continue Reading...

Trump, head of GOP, demands Chinese Communist Party Prosecute Businessman for Crime of Making Money

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A particularly unperceptive and unfeeling wag came up with the bon mot defining a “socialist” as someone kept up at night by the fear that somewhere someone was making money. (Socialists are actually haunted by people working but not making money because the capitalist class is stiffing them). But by that definition, Trump is our planet’s premier socialist, with the proviso that the particular person he is afraid is making money is Hunter Continue Reading...

Trump Gives away US Intel Sources, Methods with Photo of Iran Launch Failure

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Trump couldn’t contain his inner five-year-old when an Iranian satellite launch at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport went bad last Thursday. He had to taunt Tehran on twitter, as Passant Rabie at Space.com reports. (Iranians don’t have twitter, although some high officials use it for public diplomacy overseas.) He appears to have taken, or had an aide take a smartphone picture of a classified briefing slide. The slide shows a US spy satellite photo of Continue Reading...

Trump Cites “Proportionality” in Iran Pullback, Though he has often Violated It

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Trump in an interview Friday with Meet the Press attributed his decision not to go ahead with a strike on Iran to concerns about proportionality. He said he asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff just before the strike was to have been set in motion about the likely Iranian casualties. They estimated 150. He said that since the Iranian had shot down an unmanned drone, that death toll seemed to him not Continue Reading...