Juan Cole

New Orleans and Iraq Nabil Tikriti writes ‘ This is a posting written by a native New Orleanian and Middle East History professor, Nabil Al-Tikriti: New Orleans is in awful shape, and it frankly resembles Dhaka, Bangladesh after a cyclone (looting, refugees stranded on highway bridges, air rescues, flooded housing, lack of social order). Much […]

Bourbon Street Unscathed Christian Terrorists Proved Wrong Bourbon Street in New Orleans is relatively unscathed. Amid so much death and destruction, that New Orleans did not take the full fury of the storm, and so many lives were spared, is one small consolation. But let us consider what this means in light of the twisted […]

Nussseibeh: Israel Wall Bars Education in Jerusalem URGENT APPEAL by Sari Nusseibeh, East Jerusalem THE “SECURITY” WALL BARS EDUCATION IN JERUSALEM As Arab schools in East Jerusalem prepare to start the new academic year in early September, nearly seven hundred teachers employed by those schools will be unable to reach their classrooms. With the “security” […]

Is the US Still Tinkering with the Iraqi Constitution? A closer observer of the Iraq scene writes in outrage: Filed at 9:43 a.m. ET BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The U.S. ambassador suggested Tuesday there may be further changes to the draft constitution to win Sunni Arab approval, saying he believed a final edited draft had […]

Sunnis Charge Interior Ministry in Killings 2000 Sunnis Protest More Corpses Found Al-Zaman/ AFP: The Iraqi Islamic Party accused elements in the Iraqi ministry of the interior on Monday of having kidnapped 36 citizens from Hurriyah Township in Baghdad and then throwing them in the Tigris after they were bound and shot in the head. […]

Arab World Concerned about Iraqi Constitution Arab leaders on Monday expressed consternation that the Iraqi constitution does not identify Iraq as part of the Arab world. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa echoed these concerns but also said that the present constitution is a “recipe for chaos.” The diction in the constitution is that Iraq is […]

Schenkman: If Bush had been President in 1861 After Ft. Sumter: “There is much that we can be grateful for. No lives were lost during the attack. And as our vice president has indicated already, this attack indicates that the rebellion against federal authority is in its final throes.” [click the link for more at […]

Constitution born by Caesarian Section So they had the ceremony, and the drafting committee (minus Sunni Arab members) presented the final draft of the permanent Iraqi constitution to parliament on Sunday. But parliament did not vote on it. The Sunni Arabs did not attend. Parliament has abdicated its responsibilities toward the constitution and put it […]

Some Sunnis I just heard Bush’s audio on CNN concerning the situation in Iraq. I don’t know if all the news programs had the same bad feed, but the poor quality of the transmission made Bush sound like Darth Vader, with a faint electronic echo. Sounding like a science fiction villain did not help the […]