August 2009

Against the Israel boycott

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Against the Israel boycott By Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, August 31, 2009 One of the main battlefields in our fight for peace is Israeli public opinion. Most Israelis believe nowadays that peace is desirable but impossible (because of the Arabs, of course.) We must convince them not that peace would be good for Israel, but that [...]

Read the full article →

Israel ‘ups settlement activity in east Jerusalem’

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Israel ‘ups settlement activity in east Jerusalem’ AFP, August 30, 2009 Israeli settlement activity in annexed east Jerusalem accelerated in the first half of 2009 despite US calls for a freeze, an anti-settlement activist group said on Sunday in a report. “Recent months have seen the acceleration of the process of Israeli settlement in Palestinian [...]

Read the full article →

Pressuring Iran on nukes: would a gas embargo help?

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Pressuring Iran on nukes: would a gas embargo help? Time, August 31, 2009 While the Obama Administration may think that a gasoline embargo, even a partial one, would pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its nuclear activities, Tehran may be hoping for just that sanction to help it with one of its longtime goals: reducing [...]

Read the full article →

Cheney says he was proponent for military action against Iran

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Cheney says he was proponent for military action against Iran By Michael M Philips, Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2009 Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. [...]

Read the full article →

Seven days that shook Afghanistan

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Seven days that shook Afghanistan By Dexter Filkins, New York Times, August 30, 2009 The darker currents that have undercut the American-led war in this country have surfaced often over the past eight years, but rarely have so many come into view all at once. In the space of a single week, a string of [...]

Read the full article →

My Lai and Lockerbie reconsidered

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

My Lai and Lockerbie reconsidered By Nick Turse, TomDispatch, August 30, 2009 A week ago, two convicted mass murderers leaped back into public consciousness as news coverage of their stories briefly intersected. One was freed from prison, continuing to proclaim his innocence, and his release was vehemently denounced in the United States as were the [...]

Read the full article →

Hints of pluralism in Egyptian religious debates

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Hints of pluralism in Egyptian religious debates By Michael Slackman, New York Times, August 31, 2009 Writing in his weekly newspaper column, Gamal al-Banna said recently that God had created humans as fallible and therefore destined to sin. So even a scantily clad belly dancer, or for that matter a nude dancer, should not automatically [...]

Read the full article →

Blackwater tapped foreigners on secret CIA program

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Blackwater tapped foreigners on secret CIA program By Adam Golman and Pamella Hess, AP, August 30, 2009 When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA. With Blackwater’s lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots [...]

Read the full article →

Remnants of Iraq Air Force are found

by Paul Woodward 08.31.2009

Remnants of Iraq Air Force are found By Rod Nordland, New York Times, August 31, 2009 Iraqi officials have discovered that they may have a real air force, after all. The Defense Ministry revealed Sunday that it had recently learned that Iraq owns 19 MIG-21 and MIG-23 jet fighters, which are in storage in Serbia. [...]

Read the full article →

Sept. 11 plotter cooperated after waterboarding

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

Sept. 11 plotter cooperated after waterboarding By Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate, Washington Post, August 29, 2009 The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for [...]

Read the full article →

Olmert indicted in three corruption affairs

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

Olmert indicted in three corruption affairs By Tomer Zarchin, Haaretz, August 30, 2009 Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was indicted Sunday in three corruption affairs, concluding months of investigations into cases allegedly conducted during his tenure as Jerusalem mayor and trade minister. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz had announced earlier this month that Olmert would be [...]

Read the full article →

Tutu to Haaretz: Arabs paying the price of the Holocaust

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

Tutu to Haaretz: Arabs paying the price of the Holocaust By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, August 29, 2009 he lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns,” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday. Commenting on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement [...]

Read the full article →

Hard-line Iranian prosecutor fired

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

Hard-line Iranian prosecutor fired By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2009 Iran’s new judiciary chief ousted the hard-line prosecutor behind the ongoing trials against opposition figures in Tehran, replacing him with a relatively moderate newcomer from the provinces, an Iranian news agency reported Saturday. For years, Tehran prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi, a staunch ally [...]

Read the full article →

Karzai using rift with U.S. to gain favor

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

Karzai using rift with U.S. to gain favor By Helene Cooper, New York Times, August 29, 2009 A little over 24 hours after the polls closed, President Obama stepped out on the White House South Lawn last week to pronounce the Afghanistan presidential elections something of a success. “This was an important step forward in [...]

Read the full article →

Israel has Iran in its sights

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

Israel has Iran in its sights By Micah Zenko, Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2009 If Israel attempts such a high-risk and destabilizing strike against Iran, President Obama will probably learn of the operation from CNN rather than the CIA. History shows that although Washington seeks influence over Israel’s military operations, Israel would rather explain [...]

Read the full article →

New CIA docs detail brutal “extraordinary rendition” process

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

New CIA docs detail brutal “extraordinary rendition” process By Scott Horton, Huffington Post, August 28, 2009 Deep among the documents released to the ACLU on Monday afternoon was a curious memo dated 30 December 2004 and directed to Dan Levin, then acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The fax cover sheet [...]

Read the full article →

U.S. says Pakistan made changes to missiles sold for defense

by Paul Woodward 08.30.2009

U.S. says Pakistan made changes to missiles sold for defense By Eric Schmitt, New York Times, August 30, 2009 The United States has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, according to senior administration and Congressional officials. The charge, which set off [...]

Read the full article →

Afghan apocalypse

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

Afghan apocalypse: Part II By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, August 27, 2009 The highlight of Thursday’s event at the Heritage Foundation was analyst Marvin Weinbaum’s scathing review of the Afghan elections. Weinbaum, who served as a member of Barack Obama’s advisory task force on Afghanistan, is a former analyst for the State Department’s Bureau of [...]

Read the full article →

U.S.: We will be flexible on conditions for Mideast talks

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

U.S.: We will be flexible on conditions for Mideast talks By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, August 28, 2009 State Department spokesman said on Friday that the Obama administration will be flexible on pre-conditions for all parties involved in Middle East peace negotiations. “We put forward our ideas, publicly and privately, about what it will take for [...]

Read the full article →

Message to Muslim world gets a critique

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

Message to Muslim world gets a critique By Thom Shanker, New York Times, August 28, 2009 The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived [...]

Read the full article →

Young Afghan freed from Gitmo to sue U.S.

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

Young Afghan freed from Gitmo to sue U.S. AP, August 27, 2009 he family of one of the youngest prisoners ever held at Guantanamo plans to sue the U.S. government to compensate him for mistreatment and an adolescence lost to nearly seven years in a cell, his lawyers said Thursday. Mohammed Jawad returned to Afghanistan [...]

Read the full article →

Nuclear drive a casualty of Iran’s turmoil

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

Nuclear drive a casualty of Iran’s turmoil By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2009 Iran’s political crisis could prevent the nation from making any swift move to ratchet up its nuclear program, said analysts and officials, giving President Obama and Western allies more time to grapple with the issue. The chaos over the [...]

Read the full article →

Bush’s search policy for travelers is kept

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

Bush’s search policy for travelers is kept By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, August 28, 2009 The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of [...]

Read the full article →

Saudi Prince wounded in suicide attack

by Paul Woodward 08.28.2009

Saudi Prince wounded in suicide attack By Mark McDonald and Sharon Otterman, New York Times, August 29, 2009 A Saudi prince who leads the kingdom’s antiterrorism efforts received minor wounds in a suicide attack Thursday in an unprecedented assassination attempt by an affiliate of Al Qaeda against a member of the royal family, news services [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries