October 2009

Goldstone: My mission – and motivation

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Goldstone: My mission – and motivation By Richard Goldstone, Jerusalem Post, October 18, 2009 Israel and its courts have always recognized that they are bound by norms of international law that it has formally ratified or that have become binding as customary international law upon all nations. The fact that the United Nations and too [...]

Read the full article →

Iran says U.S., Britain behind attack

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Iran says U.S., Britain behind attack By Michael Slackman, New York Times, October 19, 2009 Iranian officials claimed Monday that they had evidence of American and British involvement in the country’s worst suicide bombing attacks in years, raising tensions as Iran meets with Western nations for another round of delicate talks on its nuclear program. [...]

Read the full article →

Iran ‘doubts’ over nuclear deal

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Iran ‘doubts’ over nuclear deal BBC, October 19, 2009 Iran appears to be backing away from a proposed deal to resolve the crisis over its nuclear programme, Iranian media reports suggest. A state TV channel said Iran wanted to import fuel for its research reactor, without sending its own enriched uranium out of the country. [...]

Read the full article →

Decision on Afghan troops may wait

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Decision on Afghan troops may wait By Peter Baker and Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, October 19, 2009 The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United [...]

Read the full article →

Yes, the Taleban are being thumped but . . .

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Yes, the Taleban are being thumped but . . . By Anatol Lieven, The Times, October 19, 2009 The Pakistani Government and Army have finally decided to heed the words of a former ruler: “No patchwork scheme — and all our recent schemes, blockades, allowances etc are mere patchwork — will settle the Waziristan problem. [...]

Read the full article →

Awakening leader’s tale illustrates Iraq’s volatility

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Awakening leader’s tale illustrates Iraq’s volatility By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times, October , 2009 The Sunni Muslim paramilitary leader’s campaign slogan holds the promise of imminent rescue: “Hold on, we are coming.” But the aspiring parliamentary candidate, Mustafa Kamal Shibeeb, may not be in a position to deliver on his slogan: He’s a fugitive, [...]

Read the full article →

Questions about al Qaeda’s next move

by Paul Woodward 10.19.2009

Questions about al Qaeda’s next move By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2009 The plot for the Sept. 11 attacks was set in motion in late 1999 from a cluster of Al Qaeda training camps near Kandahar. In those dusty Afghan compounds, Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants signed off on the plan, [...]

Read the full article →

At NYU, devilish Shlomo Sand predicts the Jewish past and pastes the Zionists

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

At NYU, devilish Shlomo Sand predicts the Jewish past and pastes the Zionists By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, October 17, 2009 When Sand said that Israel was not a democracy, and a Zionist called out, “It is a flawed democracy,” Sand bellowed. No: a democracy is founded on the idea that the people are the sovereign, [...]

Read the full article →

Kerry: Obama would be ‘irresponsible’ to send more troops to Afghanistan now

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Kerry: Obama would be ‘irresponsible’ to send more troops to Afghanistan now CNN, October 17, 2009 Sen. John Kerry cautioned President Obama Saturday against raising troop levels in Afghanistan, saying it would be “entirely irresponsible” to do so while the Afghan government remains in turmoil following national elections. “It would be entirely irresponsible for the [...]

Read the full article →

Gaza costs Israel another friend: there aren’t many left

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Gaza costs Israel another friend: there aren’t many left By Tony Karon, The National, October 18, 2009 For years Israel has acted as if the unconditional support of the US would be enough to shield it for ever from the consequences of its behaviour – which is why last week was an unusually traumatic one [...]

Read the full article →

Mitchell the man for the job?

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Mitchell the man for the job? By Steve Clemons, Al Jazeera, October 10, 2009 Senator George Mitchell is one of America’s most impressive public servants. He has served the state of Maine well, chaired any number of commissions for various presidents since his senate retirement and patiently plodded through years of work and negotiations with [...]

Read the full article →

Talks on Iranian reactor deal show divisions on sanctions

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Talks on Iranian reactor deal show divisions on sanctions By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, October 18, 2009 A team of Obama administration officials, joined by officials from France and Russia, will begin negotiating in Vienna on Monday with Iranian diplomats over terms of an unusual deal that could remove a significant amount of Tehran’s low-enriched [...]

Read the full article →

Iran Guard commanders said to be killed in blast

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Iran Guard commanders said to be killed in blast AP, October 18, 2009 A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard and at least 26 others Sunday near the Pakistani border in the heartland of a potentially escalating Sunni insurgency. The attack — which also left dozens wounded — was the [...]

Read the full article →

Obama’s bad influence

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Obama’s bad influence By Naomi Klein, The Nation, October 14, 2009 Now that Europe and the United States are officially reunited, it seems worth asking: is this necessarily a good thing? The Nobel Committee, which awarded the prize specifically for Obama’s embrace of “multilateral diplomacy,” is evidently convinced that US engagement on the world stage [...]

Read the full article →

British High Court rejects U.S./British cover-up of torture evidence

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

British High Court rejects U.S./British cover-up of torture evidence By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, October 17, 2009 There is a vital development — a new ruling from the British High Court — in a story about which I’ve written many times before: the extraordinary joint British/U.S. effort to cover up the brutal torture which Binyam Mohamed [...]

Read the full article →

7 months, 10 days held by the Taliban

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

7 months, 10 days in captivity By David Rhode, New York Times, October 18, 2009 Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form [...]

Read the full article →

Pakistan fights ‘mother of all battles’ with the Taliban

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2009

Pakistan fights ‘mother of all battles’ with the Taliban By Saeed Shah, Emal Khan and Dean Nelson, Daily Telegraph, October 17 , 2009 Pakistan’s generals have called the offensive the “mother of all battles” for the survival of a country under siege. There were reports of Taliban compounds coming under aerial bombardment from Pakistan gunships [...]

Read the full article →

Israel: A fugitive state

by Paul Woodward 10.16.2009

Israel: A fugitive state By Paul Woodward, War in Context, October 16, 2009 Do the innocent refuse to be questioned? The Netanyahu government’s campaign to obstruct both the Goldstone inquiry and the report that it produced has been waged in the name of protecting Israel’s right of self-defense. But Israel’s defenses are actually far weaker [...]

Read the full article →

US: Security Council might not debate Goldstone Report

by Paul Woodward 10.16.2009

US: Security Council might not debate Goldstone Report By Yitzhak Benhorin, Ynet, October 16, 2009 The endorsement of the Goldstone Report by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) does not necessarily mean that it will be reviewed by the Security Council, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Friday. Earlier, the UNHRC voted to refer [...]

Read the full article →

Our shame near complete

by Paul Woodward 10.16.2009

Our shame near complete By Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly, October 15, 2009 … he post-Oslo culture has espoused a class of contractors. These are businessmen who are either high-ranking officials in the PA and the Fatah Party, or both, or closely affiliated with them. Much of the billions of dollars of international aid that poured [...]

Read the full article →

Karzai aide says Afghan runoff vote is likely

by Paul Woodward 10.16.2009

Karzai aide says Afghan runoff vote is likely By Elisabeth Bumillar and Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, October 16, 2009 The government of President Hamid Karzai is preparing for the likelihood that he will have to face an election runoff with his main challenger, Afghanistan’s ambassador here said Thursday, acknowledging an outcome that Western diplomats [...]

Read the full article →

U.S. considers a new assessment of Iran threat

by Paul Woodward 10.16.2009

U.S. considers a new assessment of Iran threat By Siobhan Goram and Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2009 U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say. The intelligence agencies’ [...]

Read the full article →

Has Obama’s foreign policy sacrificed human rights?

by Paul Woodward 10.16.2009

Has Obama’s foreign policy sacrificed human rights? By Julian Borger, The Guardian, October 13, 2009 It is as hard as ever to know how much credence to give the report in today’s Kommersant newspaper that the Obama administration has done a backroom deal with Moscow in which it has agreed to self-censor on Russian human [...]

Read the full article →

Israel is becoming a diplomatically crippled nation

by Paul Woodward 10.15.2009

Disengaging from Israel By Eldad Beck, Ynet, October 13, 2009 The historic reconciliation agreement signed Saturday between Turkey and Armenia constitutes further testament to the positive changes undergone by Turkey in recent year. A government with an Islamic orientation was able to impressively promote two highly sensitive issues for Turkish public opinion: Recognizing the cultural [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →