May 2010

The myth of Talibanistan

by Paul Woodward 05.05.2010

Pepe Escobar’s analysis is interesting as always — though one note of warning: In writing about Baitullah Mehsud I think Escobar is actually referring to Hakimullah Mehsud. Reports that Baitullah was killed last August, have, as far as I’m aware, not been disputed. It was Hakimullah who reemerged this week after he was reported to [...]

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Drone strikes like “canon fire”

by Paul Woodward 05.05.2010

CNN reports: Drone-launched missiles are now hitting lower-level al Qaeda and Taliban personnel, camps, training areas, bomb makers, buildings and other targets in the remote region. “You’ve had an expanded target set for time now, and given the danger these groups pose and their relative inaccessibility, these kinds of strikes — precise and effective — [...]

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Drone attacks provoke calls for revenge

by Paul Woodward 05.04.2010

In a report on the CIA’s campaign of drone warfare in Pakistan, the Los Angeles Times recounts the stories of some of the civilian victims of the attacks. Many of the boys that Zaman Khan grew up with in the South Waziristan town of Shakai eventually joined the Taliban. He knew they had become militants, [...]

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Predator warfare blowback

by Paul Woodward 05.04.2010

“Looks like you just lost that bet, Mr. Woodward. I’ll be waiting for your apology,” a reader said after I wrote on Sunday, “if I was to place a bet on who did this, I’d go with someone whose sympathies are probably more Tea Party than Taliban.” Indeed I was wrong, though I’m not sure [...]

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“I call this a Rube Goldberg contraption”

by Paul Woodward 05.03.2010

That’s a description of the Times Square incendiary devise provided by James M Cavanaugh. He spoke to the New York Times and is a former bomb expert with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who investigated car bombs and tracked the Unabomber, Theodore J Kaczynski, and Eric R Rudolph, the bomber of [...]

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The sadistic logic behind Israel’s siege of Gaza

by Paul Woodward 05.03.2010

The Israeli human rights group, Gisha, has taken the Israeli government to court in an effort to force Israel to reveal information on the import controls through which Gaza is being held under siege. Rules that allow the importation of cinnamon but not coriander might seem arbitrary and it’s unlikely that further documentation from the [...]

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A view of life in Gaza

by Paul Woodward 05.03.2010

In a bloggingheads.tv interview, Robert Wright speaks to Bassam Nasser, who works for the Catholic Relief Services in Gaza. Though Wright’s questions tend to be somewhat uninformed and predictable, Nasser’s responses provide a much richer and more nuanced view of life under siege and Israeli occupation than can be gleaned for standard news reports. Share

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Is J Street, AIPAC’s Trojan horse for disarming the American Jewish left?

by Paul Woodward 05.03.2010

After meeting last week with J Street‘s executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the Jerusalem Post‘s Shmuel Rosner mused that J Street may have a complimentary role to the one performed by AIPAC. Maybe as a separate organization with more credibility on the left J Street can help Israel more by way of helping curb the wacky [...]

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Tea partying through history

by Paul Woodward 05.03.2010

At TomDispatch, Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman, put the Tea Party movement in a historical context. [T]he Tea Party movement reminds us that the moral self-righteousness, sense of dispossession, anti-elitism, revanchist patriotism, racial purity, and “Don’t Tread on Me” militancy that were always at least a part of the populist admixture are alive and [...]

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Tea Party or Taliban?

by Paul Woodward 05.02.2010

Any event that can be described as an act of terrorism will no doubt provoke some level of alarm, but the incendiary device that fizzed in Times Square apparently provoked as much curiosity as fear. Taj Heniser from Seattle, who couldn’t get to see the show, “Next to Normal,” because 45th St had been blocked, [...]

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US lifting the veil on Israel’s nuclear status

by Paul Woodward 05.02.2010

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. is negotiating with Egypt a proposal to make the Middle East a region free of nuclear weapons, as the U.S. seeks to prevent Iran from derailing a monthlong U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation that begins Monday. U.S. officials familiar with the move call it an important step in [...]

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The future of Palestine: righteous Jews vs. the new Afrikaners

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2010

Professor John Mearsheimer, in a speech delivered at The Palestine Center in Washington DC on Thursday said: As anyone who has spent time in the Occupied Territories knows, it is already an incipient apartheid state with separate laws, separate roads, and separate housing for Israelis and Palestinians, who are essentially confined to impoverished enclaves that [...]

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Palestinian roads: cementing statehood, or Israeli annexation?

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2010

At The Nation, Nadia Hijab and Jesse Rosenfeld write: Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has staked his political credibility on securing a Palestinian state by 2011 in the entire West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, a program enthusiastically embraced by the international community. Ambitious PA plans include roads and other infrastructure across the West [...]

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All Kayani’s men

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2010

Anatol Lieven, in an article where he notes that Pakistan’s military is among the most democratic of institutions in what otherwise remains a largely feudal society, writes: American operations in South Asia… are threatening to upset [a] fragile balance between Islam and nationalism in the Pakistani military. The army’s members can hardly avoid sharing the [...]

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Pakistani intelligence officials say Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud is alive

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2010

The Washington Post reports: Even by the standards of a bullet- and bomb-dodging Taliban commander, Hakimullah Mehsud has displayed notable survival skills. The Pakistani Taliban chief was thought to have died in a leadership duel last summer, only to stage a news conference a few days later. A U.S. drone strike in January was followed [...]

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Iraq prime minister lashes out at rival

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2010

The Los Angeles Times reports: Iraq’s prime minister dismissed his rival’s call for international help to resolve the country’s postelection political crisis as the dispute threatens to inflame rifts and undermine American plans for withdrawal. In a televised speech Friday, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, whose political bloc finished a close second behind former premier Iyad [...]

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