Just off the wires from Iraq:
The sectarian cleansing that drove 68-year-old Abbas al-Saiedi from his home may be as alarming a sign of a country on the brink of civil war as the killings that have swept Iraq in the past week…….
Al-Saiedi’s story, a tale of fear and desperation told to The Associated Press on [...]

First of all many thanks to the kind folk of Afoe offering me the possibility of expressing my views on some European reactions to the Mittal Steel bid for the European steel giant Arcelor. By now most of you must have heard about this sitation. Mittal Steel is the world’s largest steelmaker and was founded [...]

Good lord, this looks serious:
A dawn bomb attack devastated a major Shi’ite shrine in Iraq on Wednesday, sparking nationwide protests and sectarian reprisals against Sunni mosques despite appeals for calm from government and religious leaders. The attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest sites, provoked more violence than attacks that [...]

While I’m still struggling to put my reaction to the cartoon row into appropriate writing, today’s Spiegel Online’s English edition features an interesting and important article about a different kind of culture clash. It’s a timely story about the fact that Islam the religion and Islam the cultural practice are often quite distinct. It’s a [...]

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda o Barcelona
Which is Welsh (the language of my childhood) for Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year from sunny Barcelona. Well, I just added the sunny part, since the sun is, right now, also rising.
Since I am not religious, and I am not really a dedicated fan of [...]

The FT has just put this up:
The Kurdish regional government’s surprise announcement that it had begun drilling for oil in the north of Iraq sparked alarm yesterday, two weeks ahead of national elections.
As the FT indicates, the decision of the Kurdish government hinges on the controversial article 109 of Iraq’s constitution, which gives the [...]

Billmon, in a very eloquent post, says nothing. All he does is put up a series of quotations. Yet his message couldn’t be clearer; or more correct.
Lest visiting American wingnuts misunderstand me: I do not assert that Billmon is correct in inviting us to infer that Donald Rumsfeld is guilty of war crimes. That question [...]

Both of you.
John Barry, author of Rising Tide a rather timely book about flooding and New Orleans and of The Great Influenza a rather timely book about the 1918 pandemic, will be half of a panel about hurrican Katrina at Politics & Prose bookstore this Friday at 7pm. The store is at 5015 Connecticut Ave [...]

Crickey, this really does seem to fall under the definition of what you could call a scandal. According to the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn one billion dollars was plundered from Iraq’s defence Ministry between June 2004 and February 2005 (during the government of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi):
“It is possibly one of the largest thefts [...]

A few weeks ago, if you can cast your mind back that far, the big story was apparently something to do with a country called Iraq that was trying to agree among itself on its future constitution. After multiple deadlines were breached, two of the factions in the country decided to impose the constitution on [...]