Juan Cole

Al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] reports in Arabic that 11 Iranian troops occupied a small oil well on the Iraqi side of the border in Maysan province east of Amara, and raised the Iranian flag over it. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the Iranian ambassador on the mat about this action, demanding an explanation and […]

The USG Open Source Center translates Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Copenhagen on consumerism, hydrocarbon imperialism, massive military budgets, and obscene profit-seeking as the drivers of global climate change. Ahmadinejad earned top grades at Tehran Polytechnic in math and science; why didn’t he stick to what he knew instead of venturing into the history […]

The Associated Press: Pakistan bans minister's travel after graft ruling In summer-fall of 2007, the military dictatorship of Gen Pervez Musharraf was coming unravelled in the face of massive street demonstrations demanding the reinstatement of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and later the reversal of his wholesale dismissal of the Supreme Court. The […]

AFP: Babylon's last alcohol seller arrested: family Paul Wolfowitz said that Iraqi Shiites would be better friends for the US than the Saudis because they are ‘secular,’ and Paul Bremer boasted in his memoir of being viceroy of Iraq that he had kept key ministries out of the hands of the Shiite fundamentalists. The AEI […]

The USG Open Source Center rounds up Afghanistan Development News for November. Critics of the war often allege that only economic improvement will settle the country down, but the US corporate media almost never reports real economic developments in Afghanistan, focusing instead on fundamentalist Islam, ‘great men’ and foreign generals as ways of explaining what […]

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | President Zardari under pressure after NRO ruling Pakistan’s Supreme Court declined to extend a martial law ordinance that granted amnesty to high politicians charged with corruption. Chief among those newly liable to prosecution is president Asaf Ali Zardari. He probably cannot be impeached or tried while in office, but his position […]

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says that it is up to President Obama to sell his troop surge to Democrats in Congress. Then she called for a bowl and washed her hands. Jeremy Scahill on MSNBC (h/t The Nation) pointing out that not only are another 30,000 troops being deployed to Afghanistan, but also […]

DAWN.COM | Provinces | Bomber strikes at Khosa’s house in D.G. Khan A suicide bomber failed to reach his target and instead blew up innocents at a market in the province of DG Khan, a Punjabi area that abuts more tribal, Pashtun districts. The death toll has risen to 33 in later reports. Zulfiqar khosa, […]

FT.com / UK – Arrest warrant for Livni issued in London This incident is admittedly only a minor brouhaha, since former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni was forced to cancel her trip to London and since David Miliband, the British secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, immediately dissociated himself from the court warrant […]