Juan Cole

Stampede Catastrophe Brings Dissension, Unity Bush’s polling numbers drop A Sadrist cabinet member responded to the horrific crushing of over 1000 persons in a crowd of worshippers on its way to the Shiite shrine in Kadhimiyah by calling for the resignation of the Minister of the Interior and the Defense Minister. Interior is controlled by […]

New Orleans as a Casualty of Iraq Bob Harris’s take on the story of how resources for levees and floodworks for New Orleans, along with the Louisiana National Guard, were diverted to Iraq, strikes me as balanced and right. The nation made a decision about priorities. Tax cuts and the Iraq War came first. In […]

Seven Questions: Framing Iraq’s Constitution My interview on the Iraqi Constitution with Foreign Policy magazine is up at their web site.

Weblogging Liability The question of whether Weblog owners are legally liable for comments made by readers could be settled by a current lawsuit. A lot of forces in US society are very upset about the emergence of an Information Democracy on the Web, and I think the courts will increasingly be invoked to close down […]

1000 May be Dead in Kadhimiyah Stampede The mortar attack by guerrillas on the Shiite worshippers heading for the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim made the crowd nervous and suggestible. Later on, it appears that someone shouted that there was a suicide bomber in the crowd. A stampede ensued that has killed some 800 persons […]

Zalmay Urges Further Revisions of Constitution Sunnis Accuse Iraqi Government of Massacre US Bombings Kill 56 The BBC is reporting Wednesday morning that guerrillas fired mortar shells at Shiite worshippers in Kadhimiyah who were going to the shrine of the seventh Imam, Musa al-Kadhim, to commemorate his death. Early reports are that they killed seven […]

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” […]