Juan Cole

Middle Eastern Contributions to Tsunamic Relief in Context Someone on an email list drew my attention to the following exchange from last week, with Tucker Carlson talking to Leslie Gelb, a fromer president of the Council on Foreign Relations, shown at 10 pm on Weds. Dec. 29 on CNN Newsnight. Carlson, who doesn’t know anything […]

Postings Postings may sometimes be irregular this week, since I’m at a conference.

Thousands of Fallujans Demonstrate Ash-Sharq al-Awsat Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return. One eyewitness reporter called in from the scene an estimate of 30,000 […]

Guerrillas kill 32 Car Bomb Kills 19, Wounds 6 AFP reports that guerillas killed 32 persons in Iraq on Saturday. The most spectacular act of violence was the car bombing of a bus carrying national guardsmen. “Sixteen Iraqi national guard soldiers and one Iraqi civilian were killed… when anti Iraqi forces detonated a vehicle borne-improvised […]

The End of War? A highly informed reader with practical Iraq experience wrote me the following, reponding to my statement on New Year’s day, “Now that nukes are becoming so common, humanity has to find a way to move into permanent cooperative and helping mode. War is gradually becoming unthinkable. The massive tsunami’s toll has […]

Happy New Year May 2005 bring us all more peace, good will, prosperity, and spiritual fulfilment than did 2004. Maybe it will be the year that we finally see some of the artificial barriers broken down, that divide Christians and Muslims, Jews and Arabs, Turks and Armenians, Americans and Iraqis. They’re all just human beings, […]

Split among Shiites on Elections 9 Iraqis Killed in Bombings, Shootings A suicide bomber killed 7 persons at Siniyah near Baiji, five of them national guardsmen. Another national guard was found dead near Fallujah, a warning pinned to his body against cooperating with the US. Clashes and desultory fighting continued in Samarra north of Baghdad […]

Bush Responds to Criticism on Tsunami The Bush administration scrambled to repair the diplomatic damage done by the relative insouciance with which it had confronted the massive tsunami of last Sunday. The administration raised the aid now promised to an initial pledge of $350 million, and Bush arranged to send his brother Jeb with Secretary […]

Tsunami toll rises above 125,000 On very early Friday morning, Reuters was reporting that the death toll in Sunday’s tsunami had now climbed to 125,000. I have a feeling that it will mount yet higher. Some are saying that the toll in Indonesia alone may be 80,000 or more. As relief workers reach some coastal […]