Juan Cole

Shiite Parties Seek Power in National Assembly Defense Minister slams Iran Ashraf Khalil writes for the Los Angeles Times that the Shiite al-Da’wa Party is making an alliance with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in hopes of having significant influence in the 100-person Iraqi National Assembly to be elected at a convocation […]

Brahimi: Iraq War Caused More Problems than it Solved, Brought Terrorism to Iraq Deutsche Press Agentur reports that former UN special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, expresed deep criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraq war in an Austrian newspaper interview. Excerpts: ‘ [Brahimi] said Iraq would no doubt recover from the chaos in which it […]

Brown: Israel-Palestine: Walled In Kenneth L. Brown gives us a guest editorial on the Israeli security wall being built in the Occupied West Bank. A form of it earlier appeared in an Italian newspaper, Europa. It is worth revisiting in the light of the light of the finding of the World Court in the Hague […]

Washington Post Weblog Contest The Washington Post is running a contest for the best weblogs on politics this fall, including international politics. They are now taking nominations and will then do voting online. Another sign that blogging has arrived. I hope the Blogistan community will take the time to make its preferences known, now that […]

Democratic Convention Will not Denounce Iraq War Stewart Powell of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that there won’t be much difference between the policies on Iraq to be adopted by the delegates of the Democratic National Convention and those already pursued by the Bush administration. Powell writes: Delegates at the Democratic National Convention are expected tomorrow […]

Heavy Fighting at Buhriz Kills 15 Paul Garwood of AP reports that “the carnage” continued in Iraq over the weekend. US troops made a sweep of Buhriz, northeast of Baghdad near Baqubah, which is a radical Salafi (“Sunni fundamentalist”) stronghold, which has mounted numerous rebellions in recent months. Its nearby date palm groves were suspected […]

200,000 Israeli Fascists Demand Colonization of Gaza Tens of thousands of rightwing Israeli imperialists formed a human chain aimed at stretching between Jerusalem and Gaza to protest plans of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw Israeli colonists from Gaza. Let’s just talk a little bit about Gaza. The Palestinians are largely descendants of people […]

Sadrists Boycott National Congress As US Troops Surround Muqtada’s House Az-Zaman is reporting that US troops surrounded Muqtada al-Sadr’s house on Sunday for several hours before withdrawing. It was not known if he was in the house. He had come out of hiding to deliver the Friday prayers sermon in Kufa this weekend. He delivered […]

9/11 Commission report in HTML Thanks to Jason Kottke’s Documents Page for making the 9/11 commission report available in html, which I find generally easier to use than pdf. Ooops. That was only the executive summary. The whole thing is at Vivisimo. and PDF Hacks.