March 2010

Turkey recalls ambassador over US vote

by Paul Woodward 03.05.2010

The Financial Times reports: Washington suffered a setback in its attempt to strengthen relations with Turkey when Ankara recalled its US ambassador on Thursday night. The move came after a congressional panel backed a resolution describing the Ottoman-era massacres of 1.5m Armenians as “genocide”. Ankara has long warned that such a vote could harm US-Turkish [...]

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Former Pakistani officer embodies a policy puzzle for the US

by Paul Woodward 03.05.2010

Carlotta Gall spoke to a US-trained former colonel in Pakistan’s spy agency, who spent 20 years running insurgents in and out of Afghanistan: If Colonel Imam personifies the double edge of Pakistan’s policy toward the Taliban, he also embodies the deep connection Pakistan has to the Afghan insurgents, and possibly the key to controlling them. [...]

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Why Iran’s top spy isn’t meddling in Iraq — for now

by Paul Woodward 03.04.2010

Among the many intriguing pieces of information about Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, in this profile by Christopher Dickey, is this: Suleimani along with many other senior figures in the Quds Force actually supported Mir Hossein Mousavi in last summer’s presidential election. The text message was cryptic and sent through an intermediary, [...]

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Dutch anti-Islam leader is major winner in polls

by Paul Woodward 03.04.2010

Reuters reports on the latest display of European Islamophobia: Dutch anti-Islamist leader Geert Wilders scored major gains in local authority polls Thursday, making him a serious challenger for power in a June national election, preliminary results showed. In the first test of public opinion since the collapse of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s coalition government [...]

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It’s not about Islam and Judaism; it’s about anti-colonialism, territory, liberation, and lives

by Paul Woodward 03.04.2010

Nir Rosen writes: On Sunday, February 28th the New York Times published an outrageous oped by Efraim Karsh full of lies, distortions and mistakes. Karsh describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an urgent foreign policy matter for the United States. It doesn’t appear to be urgent. One more American administration has prostrated itself before Israeli arrogance [...]

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Tzipi Livni won’t be visiting the UK any time soon

by Paul Woodward 03.04.2010

To hear it from the Israeli press you’d think that the British government can now make changes to the law simply by having the prime minister write an op-ed. Last December an arrest warrant was issued for former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, when she was expected to arrive in Britain. According to Haaretz she [...]

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Michael Foot 1913-2010: A passionate English radical

by Paul Woodward 03.04.2010

Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law – Michael Foot, 1980 At the height of World War Two in 1942, Michael Foot, then acting editor of the Evening Standard, gave a passionate defense of freedom of the press after the Churchill government tried to censor the Daily Mirror. Foot chided his [...]

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The impossibility of a two-state solution and the reality of the Israeli apartheid state

by Paul Woodward 03.03.2010

Just over a year ago, Bob Simon at CBS’s 60 Minutes did a piece that implicitly challenged the credibility of President Obama’s early push to revive the Middle East peace process. Simon noted the swiftness with which the new president had taken up the issue, but then went on to show the stark realities of [...]

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UN envoy: Gaza an open-air prison

by Paul Woodward 03.03.2010

Yousef Munayyer writes: “To cut down on gang-related crimes, policies could be put in place to curb the African-American population growth in places like Harlem and Compton. The government could consider cutting off welfare benefits for families in these urban areas to discourage births of blacks and cut down the supply of ‘superfluous young men’ [...]

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No country would accept Netanyahu’s conditions for peace

by Paul Woodward 03.03.2010

Akiva Eldar writes: The decision to add the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb to the list of historical heritage sites up for renovation was not made with the intention of inflaming tempers and sabotaging efforts to revive final-status talks with the Palestinians. It was merely a routine move by a rightist government, further [...]

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Dubai assassins employed by US companies

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Bloomberg reports: Suspected assassins of a Hamas leader in Dubai “fraudulently” acquired prepaid payroll cards and stole identities to obtain jobs at U.S. companies, according to card-issuer MetaBank. Authorities informed Meta, a unit of publicly traded Meta Financial Group Inc., that the suspects used fake passports to get cards issued by the firm and other [...]

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Dubai police chief says to seek Netanyahu arrest

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Reuters reports: Dubai’s police chief plans to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of Israel’s spy agency over the killing of a Hamas leader in the emirate, Al Jazeera television reported. Dahi Khalfan Tamim “said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for … Netanyahu and [...]

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Payoneer CEO alleged to be linked to Mossad

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Gulf News reports that Yuval Tal (the CEO of Payoneer, the New York-based company that issued prepaid debit cards used by the Dubai assassins) is alleged to have links to Mossad: … a person who said he met Tal a couple of times but did not want to be named told Gulf News that “there [...]

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In Marja, a communication gap

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

The New York Times reports: In the battle-scarred district of Marja, where the open fighting stopped just a few days ago, feelings about the war and the previous period of Taliban control are deeply personal, and the message from local people to the Afghan government on Monday was simple: words are not enough; if you [...]

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Before Iraq election, Arab and Kurd tensions soar in the north

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Christian Science Monitor reports: In a sign of heightened Arab-Kurd tension along a disputed boundary just days from Iraq elections, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan says the governor of the adjoining Arab-majority province will be arrested if he enters Kurdish-controlled areas. In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor at his mountaintop headquarters in northern [...]

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Genuine American exceptionalism on due process

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Glenn Greenwald on America’s disregard for due process: If there’s any country which can legitimately claim that Islamic radicalism poses an existential threat to its system of government, it’s Pakistan. Yet what happens when they want to imprison foreign Terrorism suspects? They indict them and charge them with crimes, put them in their real court [...]

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Obama wants to expand America’s military reach

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

As President Obama prepares to present his first Nuclear Posture Review, the news is that he’s about to announce plans to eliminate thousands of nuclear weapons from the United States arsenal. So good so far — but it gets worse from here on in. If a smaller arsenal might look like a step towards the [...]

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America, the fragile empire

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Niall Ferguson writes: If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time — it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, [...]

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The war on terror is anti-American

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Philip Giraldi writes: The expression war on terror is meaningless. Terror is a tactic, it is not a foreign government or political movement. To use the expression a “terrorist group” is equally misleading as the groups which come in all shapes sizes and colors are essentially political and have frequently clearly defined political objectives even [...]

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Greek mess, global mess

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Immanuel Wallerstein writes: Everyone is discussing what Fortune magazine is calling the “Greek maelstrom” and everyone is pointing the finger at someone else. The Greek government is accused of cheating and allowing Greeks to live beyond their means. The European Union is accused of having created an impossible structure for the euro. Goldman Sachs is [...]

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American hypocrisy on weapons in the Middle East

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Haaretz reports: The U.S. administration has asked Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately stop transferring arms to Hezbollah. American officials made the request during a meeting Friday with the Syrian ambassador to Washington. Al-Hayat reports Hillary Clinton sent a message to Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on the need to curtail arms smuggling to Hezbollah. [...]

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39 army raids, 28 arrests: Just another day in the West Bank

by Paul Woodward 03.02.2010

Amira Hass reports: “The year 2009 was the quietest for Israelis from the security point of view and the most violent for the Palestinians from the point of view of attacks by settlers in the West Bank.” Just as he was saying this – as an example of one of the absurdities that characterize the [...]

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FBI called in over Hamas murder

by Paul Woodward 03.01.2010

The National reports: Dubai authorities have asked the FBI to investigate the links between suspects in the murder of the Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouth and their American-issued payment cards, an FBI source confirmed yesterday. The investigation will seek to discover the source of the funds used in the January 19 assassination at a Dubai [...]

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Hamas-Israel prisoner swap negotiations collapse

by Paul Woodward 03.01.2010

Der Spiegel reports: Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has reached an impasse in its efforts to secure the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held captive in the Gaza Strip since 2006. The chief negotiator for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has told SPIEGEL that he is no longer willing to take part [...]

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