Juan Cole

NTI: Global Security Newswire – Iran Not Committed to Building Nuclear Bomb, Pentagon Intel Chief Says U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess said, “The bottom line assessments of the [National Intelligence Estimate] still hold true,” Burgess said. “We have not seen indication that the government has made the decision to move ahead […]

At least two Pakistani soldiers in Pakistani Kashmir were killed by a roadside bomb Thursday.Some observers fear this sort of move is a bid by the Taliban to assert themselves in Kashmir, which is contested between India and Pakistan, and where India has mounted a concerted counter-insurgency campaign. The fighting has killed thousands in the […]

My essay is up at NPR on why Wall Street should tithe its bonuses to Haiti as an act of propitiation and a recognition that a lot of this money was generated by their use of low-interest public funds for triage. The only thing I’d add is that the bonuses of the six biggest banks […]

Three bombs were set off in the old city of Najaf, among the holiest of Shiite sacred sites on Thursday afternoon, according to DPA. The casualty count is confused, but up to 27 were killed and up to 111 wounded according to this source. The incident comes at a time of renewed Sunni-Shiite tension that […]

Jimmy Kimmel does 10 of 10 on Jay Leno’s show and savages him over the torpedoing of Conan O’Brien End/ (Not Continued)

Bill Quigley: What the Mainstream Media Will Not Tell You About Haiti: Part of the Suffering of Haiti is "Made in the USA" Bill Quigley reviews the ways that US policy set Haiti up for development failure. End/ (Not Continued)

Rep. Alan Grayson: The Bush administration didn’t start any wars by mistake except Iraq, no cities drowned under Bush-Cheney except New Orleans . . . End/ (Not Continued)

While American security officials are focused laser-like on the 300 or so al-Qaeda members in rural Maarib province of Yemen, and worry about further strikes on the US planned by this small group, a regional food fight has broken out between Iran and Saudi Arabia about a different sort of local insurgency, the Huthis, who […]

Now Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not only questions the extent of the Holocaust but is also a “truther,” saying, absurdly, that the US and Israeli governments were behind the 9/11 attacks. The USG Open Source Center paraphrased and translated his speech on Wednesday in Ahvaz (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) Wednesday, January […]