Articles by Juan Cole

We found 40 results.


South Africa Lodges Urgent Complaint with Int’l Court of Justice Over Israel’s Plan to Assault Rafah
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Feb 2024

South Africa lodged an urgent complaint on Monday [12 Feb] at the ICJ against Netanyahu’s plan to attack Rafah, where 1.4 million people, most of them refugees, have been pushed by the Israeli military.

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Israel in Search of Its Hiroshima: Massive Bomb Wipes Out 20 Apt. Buildings, Kills, Wounds 400 Civilians
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Nov 2023

In one of the biggest massacres it has so far committed, the Israeli Air Force on Tuesday [31 Oct 2023] bombed the Jabaliyaa refugee camp in Gaza, killing or wounding at least 400 persons and destroying the Block Six residential complex, felling 20 buildings. Many more victims are under the rubble.

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Belgian Minister Says What Biden Won’t: Israel Is Wiping Entire Palestinian Villages Off the Map
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Sep 2023

3 Sep 2023 – Belgium’s Minister of Development, Caroline Gennez, said in an interview that “Entire villages are being wiped off the map by the Israelis” in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. The Israeli ambassador to Brussels lambasted the remarks as “libel.” To her credit, Ms. Gennez has stood her ground since she is right.

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Oceans Hit Hottest Average Temperature Ever Recorded, Endangering Ecosystems on Which We Depend
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Aug 2023

5 Aug 2023 – The world’s oceans hit an average temperature of 20.96°C (69.728°F ) this week, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. It is the highest average ocean temperature ever recorded.

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China and the Axis of the Sanctioned
Juan Cole | TomDispatch - TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 May 2023

16 May 2023 – How U.S. Divide-and-Rule Strategy in the Middle East Backfired

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Israel Has Jailed 50,000 Palestinian Children since 1967, and the Number of Detentions Is Growing Rapidly: Report
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Nov 2022

23 Nov 2022 – The Palestinian Commission on Detainees and Ex-Detainees released a report for World Children’s Day on the routine Israeli arrest and jailing of minors, saying that Palestinian children are not secure from being constantly targeted by Israeli security forces.

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Top 5 Worst Things That Far-Right Netanyahu Could Do as Prime Minister
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Nov 2022

… to Israeli Democracy and Palestinian Society

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Irony Officially Declared Dead as Israeli Foreign Ministry Decries Russian Annexation of Others’ Territory
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Oct 2022

28 Sep 2022 – I say irony is dead because Israel is among the worst actors in defying the norms of international law when it comes to gobbling up other people’s land.

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[Nobel Peace Laureate] Desmond Tutu, the Nonviolent Foe of Two Apartheids – South Africa and Israel-Palestine
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jan 2022

27 Dec 2021 – “Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won’t let ambulances reach the injured.” — Desmond Tutu

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Apple Sues Israeli Gov’t-Backed NSO Spyware Company: “Notorious Hackers-21st Century Mercenaries”
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Nov 2021

24 Nov 2021 – Apple is suing the NSO group, which produced the spyware that Israel uses to keep under surveillance the 5 million Palestinians. They have sold their hacking tools to repressive governments to hack into iPhones and Android smartphones against democracy activists and dissidents.

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Was Mark Ruffalo Wrong to Accuse Israel of Genocide?
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Jun 2021

2 Jun 2021 – So, is it bigoted to say that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians? No. Is it inaccurate? That is harder to say. Is it inflammatory? I guess I would ask why that is an issue.

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Did the US War on Terror Displace 37 Million?
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Sep 2020

8 Sep 2020 – The Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War Project put out a report with the astounding figure. Here’s what they got right and what they got wrong.

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How American Cities Were Reduced to Esper’s “Battlespace”: from Fallujah to Minneapolis
Juan Cole | Informed Comment - TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2020

3 Jun 2020 – Some 2.7 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, an astonishing number. The Bush administration began the practice of sending to civilian police departments military equipment no longer needed in Iraq– everything from Kevlar vests to armored vehicles. Community policing in some towns and cities gave way to the spectacle of militarized police, heavily armed and armored, and inevitably separated from the public they were supposed to serve and protect.

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Trump, Troll-In-Chief, Wags the Impeachment Dog by Going to War with Iran
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jan 2020

3 Jan 2020 – The madman in the White House has been sulking and raging for weeks about his impeachment proceedings, tweeting manically on some days more than 100 times. Trump has abruptly begun trafficking in the sanguinary merchandise of all-out war just at this moment when his throne is on the brink of toppling. Now, by murdering Qasem Soleimani, Trump has brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

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China Defies Trump on Iran Big Time with $400 bn Belt-and-Road Investment and 5000 Red Army Troops
Juan Cole | The Transnational – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Sep 2019

9 Sep 2019 – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Beijing recently for what turns out to have been the biggest triumph of his career. China has decided it has nothing further to fear from the Trump administration, and has decided to incorporate Iran into its One Belt, One Road plan with investments totaling some $400 billion.

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Khamenei, in Reply to Trump, Gives Europe 6-Point Ultimatum on Nuclear Deal
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 May 2018

24 May 2018 – A set of ultimatums of this sort signals that Khamenei wants out of the JCPOA, since he surely knows that Europe is highly unlikely to acquiesce in his demands. He clearly has decided that Europe cannot be depended upon to buck Trump.

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Netanyahu: Don’t Look Here Where We’re Shooting Children, Look Over There at Iran
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 May 2018

1 May 2018 – Netanyahu even seems to have provoked the White House to issue a communique falsely stating that Iran has a weapons program presently, which it promptly had to retract. The incident shows how easy it is to manipulate the erratic Trump and his not-ready-for-prime-time staff.

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Trump Only President Not Invited to Paris Climate Summit
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Nov 2017

After Syria signed on 6 Nov, the 197th country to join the treaty, the US was left the sole country in the world outside the accord.

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Why the UN Branded Israel an Apartheid State
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Mar 2017

17Mar 2017 – A shouting match has been provoked this week by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, which issued a report this week concluding definitively that Israel is guilty of Apartheid practices toward the Palestinians. The report is careful to say that it is not using the term merely as a pejorative but is rather appealing to a body of international law with precise definitions.

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Top 5 Green Energy Good News Stories Today
Juan Cole | Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2016

3 Jul 2016 – Solar power is poised to grow 6-fold by 2030 and could constitute between 9% and 13% of world electricity production by then. Price per kilowatt hour for solar is plummeting, so that it is on the verge of being the cheapest form of energy, outstripping coal in that regard.

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How Not to Talk about Muslims after a Fringe Terrorist Group Attacks
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Mar 2016

2. Call the terrorists “Muslim” if you have to characterize them, not “Islamic” or even worse, “Islamics.” There is no such thing as “Islamic” terrorism. The word “Islamic” has to do with the ideals and verities of the religion of Islam, and is analogous to “Judaic.”

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Paris at Midnight: Attempt to Push France Out of Anti-ISIL Coalition in Syria?
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2015

Paris was hit by at least two well-trained and -equipped terrorist cells in a coordinated attack on 6 or 7 soft targets on Friday [13 Nov 2015] night. Some fear that these strikes will spell the end of Schengen open borders and will negatively affect the refugees that have come to Europe in the thousands recently. The terrorists may have been attempting to replicate the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which also aimed at soft targets, and which convinced Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

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US Kneejerk Support for Israeli Nukes Torpedoes UN Disarmament Talks
Juan Cole – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2015

24 May 2015 – After four weeks of negotiations, a revised UN treaty on nuclear disarmament has been torpedoed by the US. In running interference for Israel’s estimated 400 warheads, the US has made the world a more dangerous place. Guess which country has requested further meetings at the UN in hopes of reviving the revised NPT? Iran.

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What’s Religion Got to Do With It? German Co-Pilot as Terrorist
Juan Cole – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Mar 2015

26 Mar 2015 – Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked “what was his religion?” (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn’t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was “terrorism.” It isn’t political terrorism, likely, but certainly it was a terroristic act of killing.

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Wind Supplied 98% of Scotland’s Household Power in 2014 and Other Amazing Green Energy Stories
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jan 2015

Scotland is well on its way to getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2022. Germany is rapidly replacing nuclear and coal with wind and solar, so much so that coal use was down 11% last year.

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Recognizing Israel as a Jewish State Is Like Saying the US Is a White State
Juan Cole – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jan 2014

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is adding a fifth demand to his negotiations with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas: That the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.”

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Does the Road to Mideast Peace Run through Tehran?
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Dec 2013

It is not too soon to begin considering what the Middle East would look like if relations between Iran and the West (the United States and Europe) were to improve.

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Israelis Plan New Colonies, Oil Drilling, on Palestinian Land During “Peace Talks”
Juan Cole – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Nov 2013

The current round of so-called peace talks between Israel and Palestine is marked by so much bad faith on the part of the Israelis that only the corruption and perfidy of the Mahmoud Abbas government in the West Bank can explain why the Palestinians should subject themselves to such exploitation and humiliation.

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Top Ten Ways Bradley Manning Changed the World
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Aug 2013

Whatever one thinks of Manning’s actions, that we deserved to know some of what he revealed and that his revelations changed the world are undeniable.

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Argentina’s President Kirchner: US Industrial Espionage Gave Me Chills down My Spine
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jul 2013

The relationship between the United States and Latin America may have just plunged to its lowest level since the 1910s and 1920s, the height of US imperialism in the area, when United Fruit and the Marines imposed themselves on the region.

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Should Memorial Day Include Commemoration of Thoreau?
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2013

Thoreau was saying that in times of an unjust law and an unjust war, honorable persons will likely be in jail. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” went on to influence Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King (which is how we got the Civil Rights movement and an end to Jim Crow segregation.)

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Congress Obsessed with American Muslims, Neglects Real Threat of White Supremacists
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Apr 2013

It is not allowed to say this in the corporate media, but some Republican representatives and their constituents are, if not implicated in white supremacist sentiments, at least a little smelly in that regard.

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Israel’s Apartheid Deepens, Along With Its Global Isolation
Juan Cole – Truthdig, 17 Dec 2012

The real threat to Israel comes not from tiny, impoverished Gaza, but from the policies of the country’s increasingly right-wing politicians.

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Protest Planet
Juan Cole – TomDispatch, 14 Nov 2011

How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism – 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 popular protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.

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People Power vs. Washington
Juan Cole – Truthdig, 21 Mar 2011

The claim that George W. Bush’s war of aggression against Iraq somehow opened up the Middle East to reform is an affront to the brave crowds that have risked their lives to change the American-backed order in that part of the world.

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Fear Not the Muslim Brotherhood Boogeyman
Juan Cole – Truthdig, 21 Feb 2011

The hysteria in American media about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is not only ignorant and demagogic, it is hypocritical.

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Why Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979
Prof. Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Feb 2011

Egypt is, unlike Iran, not primarily an oil state. Its sources of revenue are tourism, Suez Canal tolls, manufactured and agricultural exports, and strategic rent (the $1.5 bn. or so in aid from the US comes under this heading). Egypt depends on the rest of the world for grain imports. Were it to adopt a radical and defiant ideology like that of Iran, all its major sources of income would suddenly evaporate, and it might have trouble even just getting enough imported food. Moreover, the social forces making the revolution in Egypt have a significantly different profile and different dynamics than in Iran. Let us just go through the same list.

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WikiLeaks: Israel Plans Total War on Lebanon, Gaza
Juan Cole, Informed Comment – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jan 2011

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that: The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same period of time, to which Aftenposten has gained access, leave a clear message: The Israeli military is forging ahead at full speed with preparations for a new war in the Middle East. Note: This war preparation is serious and specific, according to the paper, and clearly is not just a matter of vague contingency planning.

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BIGOTRY WINS IN SWITZERLAND: VOTING TO BAN THE CONSTRUCTION OF MINARETS
Juan Cole - Global Research, 7 Dec 2009

Swissinfo surveys the headlines in Switzerland Monday morning and finds that the press there universally condemned and expressed dismay at Sunday’s vote. Editors expressed consternation at the inevitable tarnishing of Switzerland’s image and worried about the consequences. Will there be boycotts? Sanctions? Appeals to the European Court of Human Rights? I can anticipate right now […]

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PARANOIA ABOUT THE PASHTUNS – ARMAGEDDON AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD: NOT!
Juan Cole, 28 Jul 2009

A Century of Frenzy Over the Northwest Frontier WHAT, what, what, What’s the news from Swat? Sad news,Bad news, Comes by the cable led Through the Indian Ocean’s bed,Through the Persian Gulf, the RedSea and the Med-Iterranean – he ’s dead;The Ahkoond is dead! – George Thomas Lanigan Despite being among the poorest people in […]

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