Juan Cole
John Ricardo Irfan “Juan” Cole (born October 23, 1952) is an American academic and commentator on the modern Middle East and South Asia.He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Comment (juancole.com).
Recent articles by Juan Cole
4 January 2025
Consumer solar surge: Pakistan shows you don’t need government programs to green the grid
While no one was looking, the Pakistani public took matters into their own hands, adding 17 gigawatts of solar power this year. These installations are mostly in the form of Chinese panels for rooftop or ground level solar in towns and villages.
24 December 2024
Killing one innocent soul is the same as killing all of humanity: Jewish and Muslim teachings against cosmocide
The below is an excerpt from my essay, “The Sin of Cosmocide,” for Renovatio, the literary magazine of Zaytuna, the Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, Ca. It underlines how both Jewish and Muslim spiritual teachings forbid the killing of innocents who are guilty of no crime, and equate this deed to killing all humankind — what I term cosmocide.
1 August 2024
Civil war in Israeli army, Parliament as MPs detain soldiers for gang rape of Palestinian prisoners at vault of horrors
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that on Monday, military police raided the Sde Teiman detention centre where Palestinian prisoners are being held, detaining nine Israel soldiers suspected of gang raping and severely sexually torturing detainees. One further suspect was not apprehended. The soldiers belong to the Force 100 unit, which has been detailed to Sde Teiman as prison guards.
2 July 2024
A baby born in April 2023 has never experienced a month that wasn’t the hottest on record
When a baby born on April 1, 2023 reached 14 months and became a toddler this month, it had never lived through a month that wasn’t the hottest on record.
22 June 2024
UN Human Rights Commission: Israel’s is among the most criminal armies in the world. Chris Sidoti
Palestinians have experienced 70 or 80 years of dispossession, occupation, and human rights violations.
21 June 2024
Climate emergency strikes Islam’s holy ritual, with nearly 600 dead of heat stroke in Mecca
As the temperature in Mecca reached 125.24° F. (51.8° C.) on Tuesday, word leaked out that nearly 600 pilgrims had died of heat stroke and 2,000 have been hospitalised for treatment. A virtual clinic treated more thousands remotely. Some 324 of the dead were Egyptians, while dozens were from Jordan.
3 June 2024
Biden on Trump: “No one is above the Law;” except for Israel’s Netanyahu
Biden ultimately does not respect the rule of law when it comes to Israeli actions and policies any more than Trump respects the rule of law when it comes to Trump.
8 May 2024
Netanyahu as Lord of the Flies: He has wounded, sickened or starved all 600K Palestinian Children in Rafah
Catherine Russell, the head of UNICEF, said this week that of the 600,000 children in Rafah, southern Gaza, all of them are either injured, or sick, or malnourished. Much of the Gaza population has been forced south to Rafah by the Israeli military, which had promised them it was a safe zone. She added, “Over 200 days of war have already killed and maimed tens of thousands of children in Gaza.”
20 December 2023
Bloodbath: Israels War on Gazas hospitals and their patients
Back in mid-October, a controversy broke out about a blast on the grounds of the al-Ahli Arab (Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City. Some quarters blamed it on Israel, but the latters defenders took the stance that Israel wouldnt hit a hospital. It appears that it probably didnt on that occasion, and that the blast can be attributed to a Hamas rocket instead.
11 December 2023
Israeli/US war crimes in Gaza are orders of magnitude worse than those of Russia in Ukraine
The Biden administration has spent most of its diplomatic energy since the February 24, 2022, [on the] Russian invasion of Ukraine marshalling the world to punish the Russian Federation, to boycott its petroleum and gas, to seize assets even of private citizens in Europe and North America, and to make Russia a pariah. Russia certainly violated the UN Charter in attacking Ukraine and formally occupying part of that country, and it has extensively violated International Humanitarian Law with its indiscriminate bombings and drone attacks.
6 December 2023
As you read this, physicians are amputating childrens hands, arms and legs without anaesthesia
Doctors without Borders (the French volunteer organisation Mdecins Sans Frontires [MSF]) has written a poignant letter to the United Nations Security Council imploring for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as hospitals are turned into Morgues.
16 November 2023
Human-caused climate change cost US $67 bn., produced hottest 12 months for 125,000 years
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) The non-profit collective of high-powered scientists, Climate Central, has released a new report demonstrating that the past 12 months have been the hottest on record, and inferring that they are the hottest in 125,000 years.
20 July 2023
Olmert calls on Biden to boycott extremist Israeli government
President Biden hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House on Tuesday. Herzog is addressing a joint session of Congress, which a handful of progressive Democrats are boycotting.The same members of Congress also boycotted the address of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a far right Hindu nationalist who is implicated in an anti-Muslim pogrom.
11 July 2023
Average earth temperature last week was highest in 120,000 years
The earth is getting especially hot this year, as record after record falls. Seth Borenstein at AP reports that three times this past week, the average temperature of the earth topped anything ever recorded. Thursdays average 17.18 C. (62.9 F.) broke the record yet again.
30 June 2023
China adds 62 gigawatts of solar capacity in just five months, compared to 10 gigs in the US
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) Carrie Xiao at PV Tech reports that in the first five months of 2023, China has installed 62.1 gigawatts of solar capacity at a cost of $13.6 billion. Year on year, it was a 140 per cent expansion. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of this advance, a typical nuclear power plant has a nameplate capacity of 1 gigawatt.
14 June 2023
Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere hits high not seen for millions of years, threatening accelerated global heating
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) TheNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday that parts per million of carbon dioxide in our planets atmosphere averaged 424 ppm in the month of May, reaching a level not seen for millions of years.
28 May 2023
China and the axis of the sanctioned: how Americas divide-and-rule strategy in the Middle East backfired
A photo Beijing released on March 6th of Chinese President Xi Jinpings foreign minister Wang Yi delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he was, standing between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Irans National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an agreement to reestablish mutual diplomatic ties. That picture should have brought to mind a 1993 photo of President Bill Clinton hosting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn as they agreed to the Oslo Accords. And that long-gone moment was...
26 May 2023
Spain runs entirely on green energy for 9 hours for first time, in harbinger of green future
Spain, the worlds 15th largest economy and the fourth-largest in Europe, recently ran for 9 hours entirely on wind, solar and hydro. It is not the first time the renewables supplied all of the countrys domestic electricity needs on the peninsula, but it is the first time they did so for so many hours in a row, on a weekday when demand is heavier than on the weekends, and when three of the countrys nuclear power plants were shut down for various reasons. So reports Ignacio Fariza at El Pais.