Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The first recorded world-historical pandemic took place (541–750 CE) in the Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran, as well as neighboring […]
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Is Obama the Apostate, or is Bush? A Reply to Luttwak
I’ve been traveling again and so only just saw Edward Luttwak’s ridiculous column about Barack Obama being considered an “apostate” in the Muslim world. It […]
Cole & the BBC Doha Debates
As I was setting off for some conferences in the UK last April, I got an invitation from Tim Sebastian to come participate in the […]
Puzzle of Bombings in Jaipur
The bombings that shook Jaipur and killed 80 innocents are not immediately legible as ordinary politics. Most previous such bombings (Bombay, Hyderabad) have been in […]
11 Killed, 20 Wounded in Sadr City;
No sooner had the truce between the Mahdi Army and the US & Iraqi military been signed than it appeared to break down. Clashes broke […]
Dangers facing the World
As if Iraq was not enough to worry about, some important political developments in Lebanon, and even in the Yemen have raised the temperature of […]
Cole in Salon: Obama and Clinton on Aljazeera
My column, “Clinton and Obama on Aljazeera,” is just out in Salon.com. It is based in part on an interview I did with the editor-in-chief […]
Mosul Offensive Catches Residents Off Guard; Turks Bomb N. Iraq; New Bloc in Parliament?
The Mosul operation came so unexpectedly for residents of the major northern city that they did not have time to stock up on food. Alexandra […]
Maliki-Sadr Agreement on Sadr City; Al-Maliki Heads to Mosul
The al-Maliki government and the Sadrists pulled back from the brink in Sadr City on Saturday. PM Nuri al-Maliki had demanded that the Mahdi Army […]
Sadrists Denounce Sistani and al-Maliki
AFP reports that on Friday an aide to junior cleric Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr lashed out at Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani over his silence at the […]
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