Month

Archives: March 2005

Shahristani Denounces Ex Baath Sunnis

Shahristani Denounces ex-Baath Sunnis in Parliament Child malnutrition has soared in Iraq under the Americans, according to a former Official. Al-Zaman: Hussein Shahristani, a prominent member of the United Iraqi Alliance, affirmed…

Provincial Council Gives Najaf Mayor

Provincial Council Gives Najaf Mayor Prerogative to Appoint Police Chief Al-Zaman: The governing council of Najaf province charged Najaf mayor As`ad Abu Kalal (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq or SCIRI)…

Parliament Fiasco Mortar Shells Landed

Parliament Fiasco Mortar shells landed in the green zone near parliament at one point during its meeting on Tuesday, emptying the room briefly of frantic reporters, according to al-Hayat. The wrangling over…

Car Bomb Targeting Shiites Kills 7

Car Bomb Targeting Shiites Kills 7, Wounds 9 The war in Iraq is the most important problem facing the US in the eyes of the American public, according to a recent poll.…

Florida Funeral Director Buries

Florida Funeral Director Buries Universities Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has introduced a Horowitz-inspired so-called Academic Freedom Bill of Rights in the Florida State legislature. In our Orwellian world, this is actually a…

Dutchess Community College Stands Up

Dutchess Community College Stands up for Academic Freedom More on the subject from a different state (this thing is spreading like the Black Plague)."Professional Staff OrganizationDutchess Community College24 March 2005In response to…

Hariri Likely Killed By Truck Bomb

Hariri Likely Killed by Truck Bomb The truck, parts of which the UN had alleged were planted by the Syrian government has been identified in a video broadcast by al-Arabiya.This discovery bolsters…

No Government And 16 Dead Us Generals

No Government and 16 DeadUS Generals revealed on Sunday that a) guerrillas in Iraq are able to keep the number of attacks at about 60 a day and b) that the proportion…

Googlesmear As Political Tactic Google

The GoogleSmear as Political TacticThe Google search has become so popular that prospective couples planning a date will google one another. Mark Levine, a historian at the University of California Irvine, tells…

3 Us Troops Killed Ansar Al Islam

3 US Troops Killed Ansar al-Islam Rounded Up A car bomber managed to kill two US troops in Baghdad on Saturday. A Marine died fighting in Anbar province.Iraqi security forces backed by…

Rozen On Ghorbanifar Am Behind On My

Rozen on GhorbanifarAm behind on my reading and just getting to Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer's article on the Paris Iranian exiles and their influence on how Washington sees Tehran. Rozen has…

Massive Protest In Bahrain Reuters Is

Massive Protest in Bahrain Reuters is estimating that 80,000 demonstrators came out in Bahrain on Friday to demand a new constitution. The demonstration, which was peaceful, had been forbidden by Minister of…

23 Dead In 4 Car Bombings Other

23 Dead in 4 Car Bombings, Other Violence The guerrilla war in Iraq marched on, on Friday, with four big carbombs and other attacks that left a total of some 23 persons…

News Roundup American Israel Public

News roundupThe American Israel Public Affairs Committee spy case is heating up again. The FBI clearly believes that AIPAC is at the center of an important political conspiracy, but may not be…

No Government Any Time Soon In Iraq

No Government any Time Soon in Iraq The formation of a government in Iraq has been put off yet again, possibly until April 1 or beyond, according to AFP. The Shiites and…

Sunni Arabs Struggle With New

Sunni Arabs Struggle with New Realities Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Sunni Arabs are unhappy with the small number of ministries being offered them in the new government. They want at least 6,…

Major Battle North Of Samarra Leaves

Major Battle North of Samarra Leaves Dozens Dead Or Does It? Al-Zaman: Rockets fell on schools in Amiriyah district, West Baghdad, Wednesday, killing 4 students.Gunmen wounded the director of the Imam Hasan…

30 Killed On Tuesday Including Us

30 Killed on Tuesday, Including US SoldierEarly on Monday, Iraqi troops supported by US forces fought a firefight in northern Baghdad, killing several guerrillas, according to US military sources as reported by…

Government To Be Formed By Sunday

Government to be Formed by Sunday?Iraqi official sources maintained on Tuesday that negotiations between the United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdish Alliance to form a government are well advanced, and that the…

Wolfowitz Romancing Tunisian World

Wolfowitz Romancing Tunisian World Bank Employee?I can't vouch for the accuracy of this gossipy story that Paul Wolfowitz is romantically involved with Shaha Ali Riza, a Tunisian woman brought up in Saudi…

Live Blogging 1100 Am Sorry Im Getting

Live-Blogging11:00 amSorry I'm getting to the Brookings event on blogging, which is being webcast here, a little late this morning. One of the disadvantages of being a professor blogger is that other…

10 Killed In Iraq Sistani Impatient Ed

10 Killed in Iraq Sistani ImpatientEd Wong does his usual good job of reporting on developments in Iraq. The guerrilla war continued apace, with ten Iraqis killed in separate incidents. Guerrillas in…

Schiavo Case And Islamization of the Republican Party

The Schiavo Case and the Islamization of the Republican PartyThe cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists…

45 Dead In Continued Guerrilla War

45 Dead in Continued Guerrilla War Baghdad Pitched Battle Kills 24AFP reports that violence in Iraq on Sunday left 45 dead in separate incidents.The biggest incident involved an ambush about 15 miles…

Iraq And Vietnam Although Martin Van

Iraq and VietnamAlthough Martin van Creveld in the Boston Review is pushing the analogy between Iraq and Vietnam (with Moshe Dayan in Saigon as an interesting plot device), in fact the conflict…

Iraq Two Years Later Tom Engelhardt

Iraq Two Years LaterTom Engelhardt pulls it all together in his essay on the state of affairs in American Iraq. It is a comprehensive and timely meditation, given that we have just…

Hariri And Al Qaeda Really I Dont Have

Hariri and al-Qaeda? Really?I don't have a dog in the fight about who killed Rafiq Hariri, but I don't find the case for the Syrians being behind it is airtight. I worked…

Wave Of Bombings In Middle East

Wave of Bombings in Middle East (Revised).The continued instability in the Middle East yielded on Saturday a harvest of deadly bombings in the region.Qatar was shaken Saturday by a bombing near a…

Jaafari Iraq Headed Toward Religious

Jaafari: Iraq headed toward Religious Law On the second anniversary of the launching of the Iraq War, crowds demonstrated throughout the world. Among the larger rallies were those in London (45,000) and…

Two Car Bombings Of Us Troops Iraqi

Two Car Bombings of US Troops Iraqi Politics Still Unsettled Wire service report that ' Insurgents attacked US troops with two suicide car bombs in the western Iraqi town of Haditha on…

Wolfowitzs Plot To Destroy Opec And_18

Wolfowitz's Plot to Destroy OPEC And Why it was always RidiculousJoe Conason presents some excellent reasons why Paul Wolfowitz should not head the World Bank. But there may be others.The BBC Newsnight…

Poll Shows Bush Popularity On Iraq

Poll Shows Bush Popularity on Iraq PlummetingA new ABC/Washington Post poll shows the number of Americans who approve of Bush's handling of Iraq way down.Gary Langer tells us:* ' [Bush's] approval specifically…

Iraqi Parliament Meets To Sound Of

Iraqi Parliament Meets to Sound of BombsAl-Zaman: Guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a US facility in southern Baghdad on Tuesday, but only managed to kill an Iraqi and to wound 12…

Democracy By George My Essay Democracy

Democracy by George?My essay, "Democracy -- by George? President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for spreading freedom across the Middle East. Here's why they're wrong" - is out today at…

Women Bloggers And Other Quiet People

Women bloggers (and other quiet people) Jeanne at Body and Soul has some thoughtful and right-on observations on the Levy/ Jarvis debate I discussed below, on whether the white male dominance of…

Blogging Phenomenon Steven Levy At

The Blogging PhenomenonSteven Levy at Newsweek asks why blogging is dominated by white males, and what the implications of this configuration are if blogging replaces traditional media. He quotes presenters at a…

Parliament Meets With No Government

Parliament Meets with No GovernmentGuerrillas detonated at least five car bombs in Iraq on Tuesday. They detonated another at Baqubah early on Wednesday, killing 3 Iraqi soldiers and wounding several others.The Iraqi…

Citizenship Requested For Sistani

Citizenship Requested for Sistani Kurdish-Shiite-Sunni NegotiationsAl-Zaman The provincial council of Najaf, now dominated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, requested that the first act of the Iraqi parliament once…

Halliburton Over Charges Us

Halliburton Over Charges USHalliburton appears to have charged the US government $27 million to deliver $84,000 worth of fuel to Iraq. Everywhere you dig there are bodies.The NYT says that Halliburton over-charged…

Dueling Demonstrations In Lebanon In

Dueling Demonstrations in LebanonIn the duel of the demonstrations in Lebanon, the political opposition (a coalition of Christians, Druze and some Sunni Arabs), brought out hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in downtown…

Shiite Kurdish Deal Collapses Al Hayat

Shiite-Kurdish Deal Collapses Al-Hayat: The Shiite/Kurdish negotiations to form a government before parliament is seated on March 16 have fallen apart, apparently because the Kurds reneged on the deal they had worked…

Mosul Bombing Leaves Legacy Of

Mosul Bombing Leaves Legacy of Sectarian Bitterness Al-Hayat: On the security front, 16 Iraqis were killed on Sunday, along with 3 US troops, in separate attacks to the north and south of…

Lebanon Counter Demonstration One

Lebanon Counter-Demonstration One thing the Bush Administration hadn't counted upon when it pushed for withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon was that the vacuum might well be filled by the paramilitary of…

Plan For Southern Confederation

Plan for Southern Confederation Advances Al-Hayat: Twenty-five political, social and religious personalities met to create the "Project for the Southern Confederation," that would unite Basra, Amara and Nasiriyya provinces in accordance with…

Democracy Now On Ann Arbor Ypsilanti

Democracy Now on Ann Arbor/ Ypsilanti RadioThis page suggests ways to campaign for Democracy Now to be heard in our area. I suggest that we work with WUOM and WEMU to see…

On Ending Military Occupations In

On Ending Military Occupations in the Middle East Some Iraqis find it ironic that President Bush called for a withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon before the elections, but that elections were…

Fallujah Tent City Awaits Compensation

Fallujah, Tent City, Awaits Compensation Al-Zaman/ AFP: The Iraqi government has yet to pay out any compensation to the inhabitants of Fallujah from the funds dedicated to the rebuilding of the city,…

Discover Yo Mamas Network Turning

Discover Yo Mama's NetworkTurning the tables on Horowitzism, just for fun.

Sistani Calls For Unity Grand

Sistani Calls for Unity Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called Friday "unity and solidarity among all Iraqis despite the attacks targeting the innocent." He was referring to the horrific bombing of a Shiite…

What Do You Do If Democracies Defy You

What do you Do if Democracies Defy You?The US and British support for democratization in the Middle East is a deeply contradictory policy, since Washington and London also want friendly regimes that…

Democracy Now Transcript Here Is

Democracy Now Transcript Here is a transcript of my interview this morning with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.For Southeast Michigan readers: What would have to happen for WUOM or WEMU here in…

Sadrist Funeral Targeted Funeral

Sadrist Funeral TargetedThe funeral targeted by a bombing that killed 47 and wounded 84 in Mosul was for "Hisham al-Araji, the Mosul representative for radical Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr." The bombing might…

Breaking News Government To Be Formed

Breaking News: Government to Be Formed Bombing at Shiite Mosque in Mosul Kills 36It has been announced that the Shiites and the Kurds have reached sufficient agreement to elect a government when…

30 Us Contractors Wounded 26 More

30 US contractors Wounded, 26 More Corpses FoundGuerrillas detonated another bomb near the al-Sadeer Hotel in downtown Baghdad on Wednesday, wounding 30 American contractors. Most of the wounds were reported to be…

Huge Truck Bomb Kills At L_111035929701973743

Huge Truck Bomb Kills at least 3, wounds Dozens Officials Assassinated A guerrilla detonated a huge truck bomb in downtown Baghdad early Wednesday morning, between the al-Sadeer Hotel and the Ministry of…

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Shiites Stage

Hundreds of Thousands of Shiites Stage Pro-Syrian Demonstration in Beirut Hizbullah's call for a huge pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut was answered by hundreds of thousands of protesters on Tuesday. The largely Shiite…

Awful Crap From Wolfowitz I Was

Awful Crap from WolfowitzI was looking at this rreport of Major Isaiah Wilson, official US army historian, which concluded that the US military lost control of Iraq by June, 2003, and has…

Al Hakim Us Troops Out Le Monde

Al-Hakim: "US Troops Out!" Le Monde reported Monday that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the cleric who leads the United Iraqi Alliance, rejects a long-term presence for US troops in Iraq:Permanent American bases in…

Guerrillas Kill 33 Wound Dozens

Guerrillas Kill 33, Wound Dozens The guerrilla war in Iraq boiled along on Monday. In addition to the operations around Baquba reported yesterday morning, AP describes several further attacks:' In Balad, southeast…

Foreign Occupation Has Produced

Foreign Occupation has Produced Radical Muslim TerrorismFareed Zakariya argues that Bush got one thing right. Zakariya writes:" Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture…

12 Killed 26 Wounded At Baquba Roundup

12 Killed, 26 Wounded at Baquba Roundup: Looting, Kidnapping, and Shortage of Recruits The Iraqi parliament will meet March 16, whether or not it can form a government at that time, it…

Us Intervention In 1957 Lebanese

US Intervention in 1957 Lebanese ElectionsA reader writes by email concerning the question of whether the United States engineered the parliamentary elections of 1957 in Lebanon in an attempt to give President…

Asad Pledges 2 Stage Withdrawal

Asad Pledges 2-Stage WithdrawalPresident Bashar al-Asad of Syria gave a major policy speech [Arabic link] to the Syrian parliament on Saturday on Lebanon. He pledged a withdrawal of Syrian troops to the…

Kurdish Shiite Negotiations Grand_06

Kurdish-Shiite Negotiations Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani put pressure Saturday on the United Iraqi Alliance to maintain its unity and to speed up the formation of a new government. Intrepid PBS reporter Elizabeth…

Samarra Turmoil Afp Reports That Iraqi

Samarra TurmoilAFP reports that Iraqi police in Samarra announced a daytime curfew aimed at preventing the holding of mass demonstrations called for by the Association of Muslim Scholars. This curfew is apparently…

Constitutional Issues Professor Nathan

Constitutional Issues Professor Nathan Brown has written an overview of constitutional issues (link is pdf).Andrew Arato writes by email:This is the more or less complete picture for what 2/3 votes are needed…

Public Support For Iraq War Collapsing

Public Support for Iraq War CollapsingMajority of Americans want to Bring Some Troops Home Zogby international found that in late February the percentage of Americans who felt that the Iraq War was…

Us Wounds Italian Hostage Kills

US Wounds Italian Hostage, Kills Intelligence Man Guerrillas Kill 4 Marines The US military on Friday fired on the car carrying a just-released Italian journalist who had been taken hostage. AP says…

Chalabi Seeks Anti American Coalition

Chalabi seeks Anti-American Coalition Kurds Demand KirkukAz-Zaman: In a development that many observers considered a surprise, it was announced Friday that Ahmad Chalabi, Shiite secularist and head of the Iraqi National Congress,…

Achcar Allawis Offensive Gilbert

Achcar: Allawi's OffensiveGilbert Achcar writes by email:Allawi's offensive which I described in my previous email involved a phone talk yesterday with George W. Bush, described as follows by the WH spokesperson:----------------------------------------------Press Briefing…