Juan Cole

Sharon to Condi: F– You! Haaretz reports on US Secretary of State Condi Rice’s visit to Israel: ‘ U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent Thursday in Jerusalem, where she met with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. Rice told Shalom that coordinating the pullout plan with the PA [Palestinian Authority] was critical and must be continued. […]

Reader Comment on Gaza Pullout Roger Wyatt writes from the U.K. ‘ I find your blog enormously stimulating and admire your prolific output. Your comments on the Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land are spot on. During the first Palestinian intifada I was a volunteer at Kibbutz Kissufim just outside the Gaza Strip (ok, at that […]

London Police Shoot Suspected Terror Network Member London plainclothes police were on the trail of a suspected member of a terror network when he bolted in a subway. He was wearing a thick coat in the middle of a humid summer day, and it appears that the police were afraid he might be concealing a […]

The Networks of the London Bombing: Shehzad Tanweer and Jaish-e Muhammad Anger over Guantanamo I have been trying to trace the influences on and organizational contacts of the July 7 bombers in London. Let me start with 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer of Leeds. His family is originally from a Punjabi village near Faisalabad, Kottan (Chak number […]

20 Dead in Guerrilla Violence Sunnis Pull out of Constitution Drafting Committee Guerrillas abducted two Algerian diplomats on Thursday, in a continuing campaign to isolate the new elected government internationally. All the Sunni members of the Constitution-drafting committee have suspended their membership in the committee and are boycotting its meetings. They protest that the clerical […]

Jaafari and Shahrudi Alireza Doostdar writes: ‘ I just read your . . . article on Salon (The big winner is… Iran), and had a comment on the section on Iraqi PM Ja’fari’s meeting with Iran’s judiciary chief Ayatollah Shahrudi. Shahrudi had apparently called for Iraqi judicial cooperation with the “Islamic Human Rights Organization” in […]

Forensic Evidence Leads to 2 Arrests London police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced that substantial forensic evidence had been recovered in relationship to Thursday’s bombings. Two arrests have been made, one of them near a bomb site, another near the Downing Street prime minister’s residence. Since there are eyewitnesses to the attempted bombings who saw […]

Blogging London from UK Blogger comment from Tim Worstall. And the Guardian news blog. AFP has an updated report that depends heavily on Sky News. Highlights: From Sky News: ‘ “They said the strong smell of acetone would have sparked fears of a chemical attack. And the smell indicated that the explosives had been made […]

More Bomb attempts in London The Wikipedia entry is already a useful starting place. One caution: UK authorities are denying the rumors of chemicals and say these were small conventional bombs. Around noon EST on Thursday I live-blogged the press conference by London officials: Sir Ian Blair says there are four scenes. At each of […]