Juan Cole

History of Baghdad: Abu Muslim and al-Mansur It is actually quite odd that despite the United States being in military occupation of Baghdad, there doesn’t seem to be much interest among Americans in . . . Baghdad. I thought it might be nice to have some entries on its history and glories from time to […]

Unbreaking News Just saw al-Jazeerah’s evening news and now they are reporting that there has been a last-minute glitch in Jaafari’s presentation of his cabinet to the presidency council. The presidency council is President Jalal Talabani (Kurd), VP Adil Abdul Mahdi (Shiite) and VP Ghazi al-Yawir (Sunni Arab). Al-Yawir is apparently dissatisfied with the final […]

Breaking News: Jaafari presents Cabinet to Talabani The Scotsman reports that prospective Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has presented his cabinet to President Jalal Talabani. Jaafari, a religious Shiite from the Dawa Party, gave 17 cabinet posts to Shiites, including the sensitive one of Interior (which includes domestic intelligence). Sunni Arabs will get the Ministry of […]

Negotiations on Government Al-Zaman/ AFP /DPA says that the new Iraqi military exchanged fire with the Syrians Monday at the Iraqi-Syrian border. The outgoing Iraqi government had accused Syria of allowing guerrillas to infiltrate Iraq from its territory. Syria denied the allegations. A huge fire broke out in the field of the giant Bay Hasan […]

Mainstream Media and Bloggers Matthew Haughey says he won’t read our blogs if we use the term “mainstream media” (a.k.a. MSM). A news flash for Matt: We don’t care. We don’t care if you read our web logs. The difference, Matt, is that we are independent actors, not part of a small set of multi-billion […]

Badr Corps Will Accept Ex-Baathists BBC Monitoring translates comments of Hadi al-Amiri in ash-Sharq al-Awsat for April 24: April 25, 2005 HEADLINE: HEAD OF IRAQI SHI’I GROUP OFFERS UNITY TO EX-BA’THISTS “The following is the text of the interview with Al-Amiri, conducted in Baghdad by Al-Sharq al-Awsat correspondent Huda Jasim, published by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq […]

NYT Coverage of Palestinian Deaths Criticized Alison Weir maintains that a statistical study of the New York Times’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows that the killing of Israeli children is highlighted and fully reported in a way that the killing of Palestinian children is not.

4 Carbombings Kill 23, Wound at Least 80 2 US Troops Killed Thomas Wagner of the Associated Press reports that on Sunday, guerrillas detonated 4 car bombs in Baghdad and Tikrit, leaving a trail of death and mayhem behind them. Wagner writes, A vehicle packed with explosives was driven into a crowd gathered in front […]

Jaafari Decides to Exclude Allawi Al-Zaman/ Reuters reports that prospective Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has decided to give up attempting to form a government of national unity that would include the Iraqiya list of outgoing PM Iyad Allawi, which consists in significant part of secularist ex-Baathists. It has been reported that Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani […]