Author Archives: Paul Woodward

OPINION: The face of American extremism

Iranophobia hits Ground Zero
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, September 22, 2007

…the US media have once again fallen victim to an orchestration of “enemy image” that aims to vilify, intimidate, deface and demonize a Middle Eastern leader who, ironically, has been unusually forthcoming in his expressions of warm feelings toward the American people (though not the US government and its policies).

Never mind that Ahmadinejad has released a few Iranian-Americans who were suspected of instigating a “velvet revolution”, or that he has broken the ice of diplomatic non-dialogue with the US by consenting to direct meetings between Iranian and US ambassadors in Iraq, or that he has made the most far-reaching Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to date.

None of this matters the least to frenzied pundits and politicians who want to cash in on the feverish anti-Iran mood in the US, whose government has done nothing to quell this Iranophobic frenzy and, instead, is fanning the flames by escalating accusations against Tehran. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Televised images of street protests in Pakistan where effigies of George Bush are being burned and the US flag is being trampled on are standard fare when it comes to representations of anti-American Islamic extremism. The New York Daily News presents nothing less than a mirror image — our own xenophobic extremism.

OPINION: The international community can do business with Hamas

Hamas is the key
By Ahmed Yousef, Haaretz, September 21, 2007

While largely unnoticed in American discourse on the topic, much has been said and written to debunk the sanctions regime imposed on Hamas government administrations since its resounding victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 2006. These calls and reports show with compelling logic that the sanctions regime is wrong and misguided and, equally important, that it is a reaction to the excessively intense pressure that the U.S. administration has exercised over other nations to induce them to boycott and besiege a government democratically elected by the people and to punish the Palestinians for their democratic choice. The Quartet has been spearheading this campaign of isolation against Hamas, and in the process is advancing a U.S.-Israeli agenda whose goal is to delegitimize Hamas and prevent it from exercising its right to lead the Palestinian people, even though the latter have elected it in a transparent, internationally monitored electoral process. A variety of underhanded methods, both internal and external, have been used to undermine the Hamas-led government, including destabilization from within the fragile Palestinian political system. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to the “West Bank first” fable, Israeli and Western support for the “moderate” Abbas regime would pave the way for peace and something vaguely resembling a Palestinian state. But even while Condoleezza Rice endeavors to add delicate strokes to her picture of a political horizon, the Israelis, rather than dismantling roadblocks — one of the specified gestures intended to serve as a sign post pointing to that political horizon — have instead been busy constructing dozens of new roadblocks.

NEWS: Will the dollar collapse?

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, September 21, 2007

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

“This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar,” said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

“Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States,” he said. [complete article]

See also, Has the repudiation of the dollar begun? (Naked Capitalism).

OPINION: Tall tales from the annals of the Bush administration

Glued to our seats in the Theater of War
By Ira Chernus, TomDispatch, September 20, 2007

Every war is bound to turn into a story. Every war is experienced as dramatic spectacle — the more mythic the better. It’s no coincidence that the military refers to a battle zone as a “theater.”

Political “battles” are high drama, too. On the campaign trail, the most gripping plot usually wins. In that context, a debate about the math of minimalist “drawdown” — how many troops should leave and how soon — is hardly the stuff of legend, the sort of thing to fuel public passions. And yet the two major parties have to conjure up the illusion of a profound, emotionally stirring difference between them. So they turn a debate like the present one about troop numbers and time frames into a contest between larger competing narratives. [complete article]

NEWS: Lawless contractors

Where military rules don’t apply
By Steve Fainaru, Washington Post, September 20, 2007

Blackwater USA, the private security company involved in a Baghdad shootout last weekend, operated under State Department authority that exempted the company from U.S. military regulations governing other security firms, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives.

In recent months, the State Department’s oversight of Blackwater became a central issue as Iraqi authorities repeatedly clashed with the company over its aggressive street tactics. Many U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives said they came to see Blackwater as untouchable, protected by State Department officials who defended the company at every turn. Blackwater employees protect the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Iraq.

Blackwater “has a client who will support them no matter what they do,” said H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an advocacy organization in Baghdad that is funded by security firms, including Blackwater. [complete article]

NEWS: Iraq’s refugees

Refugees in their own land: 2m Iraqis forced to flee their homes
By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, September 20, 2007

Nearly two million Iraqis have become refugees in their own land in the past year, redrawing the ethnic and sectarian map of Baghdad and other cities, a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent said yesterday.

In Baghdad alone, nearly a million people have fled their homes.

Last month saw the sharpest rise so far in the numbers of Iraqis forced to abandon their homes – 71.1%.

The forced migration raises questions about claims from the Bush administration that the civilian protection plan at the core of its war strategy is making Iraq safer for Iraqis. [complete article]

NEWS: U.S. builds up pressure on Iran; Bolton backs Israeli strike; ElBaradei’s inconvenient deal

U.S. ramps up pressure on Iran
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy, September 19, 2007

One year after the United States launched an intensified global economic campaign against Iran with the stated aim of halting Tehran’s nuclear work, the Bush administration is counting its successes — and calling for still more pressure.

In recent months, once-reluctant European countries have joined the effort, which some are calling a financial war, with more vigor.

Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank AG, said recently that it would stop doing business in Iran. France has trimmed export credits that encourage business in Iran and advised French firms, including the oil and gas giant Total S.A., not to start new investments there. Even Japan, heavily dependent on Persian Gulf oil, has pulled back from energy projects in Iran. [complete article]

Bolton: US would support preemptive Israeli strike on Iran
By John Byrne, Raw Story, September 18, 2007

President Bush’s former United Nations ambassador John Bolton said the United States would stand behind a pre-emptive strike by Israel against countries developing “WMD facilities.”

In his remark, printed in Tuesday’s edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, Bolton directly referenced Iran.

“The greatest concern is to prevent Iran and other countries in the region from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Bolton said, according to JTA.org, a Jewish news service. “We’re talking about a clear message to Iran — Israel has the right to self-defense –and that includes offensive operations against WMD facilities that pose a threat to Israel. The United States would justify such attacks.” [complete article]

Iran’s pact threatens to wrongfoot the West
By Roula Khalaf and James Blitz, Financial Times, September 20, 2007

Diplomats from the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council and from Germany are to discuss Iran tomorrow, amid disagreement over whether to impose a new round of UN sanctions.

Although the US, UK and France are determined to renew pressure on Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, this new drive in Washington for UN sanctions is unlikely to get far, as it will be blocked by Russia and China.

At the heart of the dispute is an accord between Iran and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency – the UN nuclear watchdog. [complete article]

OPINION & NEWS: Syria’s uranium mining capabilities pose little proliferation risk; Israel says can’t ignore regional efforts to acquire WMD

Extracting uranium from phosphates
By Jeffrey Lewis, Arms Control Wonk, September 20, 2007

Phosphate extraction is just another (uneconomical) form of uranium mining and milling. The resulting uranium would still need to be enriched, using a separation method such as gaseous diffusion or strong rotation. Doing so would require a facility such as the centrifuge plant that Iran is constructing near Natanz. That is, and always has been, the bottleneck that we worry about from a proliferation perspective. Otherwise countries like Kazakhstan, Niger, Naminbia and Uzbekistan would be major nuclear proliferation concerns. [complete article]

Israel says can’t ignore regional efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction
By Amir Oren, Haaretz, September 20, 2007

The deputy chairman of the board of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Gideon Frank, warned delegates at the 51st International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna Wednesday that Israel would not be able to ignore the efforts by various countries in the Middle East to develop weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

Even though Frank did not specify the countries in question, his statements hinted heavily at Iran and Syria.

Responding to the near permanent call by Arab states for Israel to agree to a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, Frank reiterated a series of preconditions for achieving what he described as “a noble goal,” stressing that this “cannot be advanced out of context.” Frank stressed that the manifestation of this “vision,” which is interpreted as a call on Israel to relinquish its nuclear capabilities, can only occur in stages. [complete article]

NEWS: Lebanon car bombing

Car bomb near Beirut kills Christian lawmaker
By Nada Bakri and Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, September 20, 2007

A powerful car bomb in a Christian neighborhood just east of Beirut killed a Christian lawmaker from the governing coalition and six others Wednesday evening. It was the latest in a deadly string of bombings that have rocked Lebanon’s teetering political order as the country prepares to select a new president.

The bombing appeared to have deep political implications, giving credence to longstanding fears of a plot to eliminate the governing March 14 movement’s razor-thin majority in Parliament.

The bomb, apparently hidden inside a parked car in the Sin el Fil neighborhood, exploded just as the lawmaker, Antoine Ghanem of the Christian Phalange Party, drove past. The explosion ripped through the busy street, crushing cars and damaging buildings nearby, in a scene now eerily familiar in this politically tense city. [complete article]

OPINION NEWS: Muslim Brotherhood; Egypt’s crackdown on the press

I will stand up for the Muslim Brotherhood
By Mona Eltahawy, The Forward, September 19, 2007

…as that same secular, liberal Egyptian Muslim, I believe I must defend the Brotherhood’s presence on Egypt’s political stage. If I don’t, then I am just as guilty as the regime that has for decades sucked the oxygen out of the body politic — and with Gamal Mubarak being groomed to take over the presidency from his aging father, the regime seems set to rule for another generation.

Besides the state, the Brotherhood is the last man standing in Egypt. We’re down to the state and the mosque. The Muslim Brotherhood must remain on Egypt’s political stage, not least so that its ideas are out in the open and can be challenged.

I was in Egypt in 2005 when the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats in parliamentary elections, and I remain unconvinced that the majority of Egyptians would vote for them in free and fair elections. Less than 22% of Egyptians turned out to vote in 2005, which to me says most Egyptians want neither the state nor the mosque. They want a real choice. [complete article]

Egypt extends crackdown to press
By Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 2007

Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian editor and columnist whose newspaper, Al Dustour, has become a byword for the kind of journalism that courts controversy and attacks government limits on free speech, doesn’t look like a man facing a year in prison.

He’s smiling and almost jolly in his downtown Cairo office as he attacks the verdict against him – for the crime of defaming President Hosni Mubarak – and predicts he’ll lose his appeal.

“If you make the decision to be an opposition journalist here, you have to have the demeanor to carry yourself through all sorts of situations,” he says. “But am I hearing that there’s some kind of deal out there to keep me out of jail? No. The regime has given up on me. The regime is panicking and sees anyone that writes the truth about them as dangerous.” [complete article]

NEWS: Surveillance dragnet

U.S. airport screeners are watching what you read
By Ryan Singel, Wired, September 20, 2007

International travelers concerned about being labeled a terrorist or drug runner by secret Homeland Security algorithms may want to be careful what books they read on the plane. Newly revealed records show the government is storing such information for years.

Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he’d packed for the trip.

The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government’s screening program at the border is actually a “surveillance dragnet,” according to the group’s spokesman Bill Scannell. [complete article]

FEATURE: Bush’s choice for attorney general

Big terror trial shaped views of Justice Pick
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, September 20, 2007

On Jan. 17, 1996, after a nine-month terrorism trial and a rambling 100-minute lecture from a blind sheik found guilty of conspiring to wage war against the United States, Judge Michael B. Mukasey had had enough.

With a few terse, stern and prescient remarks, he sentenced the sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, to life in prison. Judge Mukasey said he feared the plot could have produced devastation on “a scale unknown in this country since the Civil War” that would make the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which had left six people dead, “almost insignificant by comparison.”

Long before most Americans had given deep consideration to the terrorist threat from radical Islam or to whether the criminal justice system is the right forum for trying people accused of terrorism, Judge Mukasey received an intensive education on those topics.

The vivid lessons Judge Mukasey took away from the trial — notably that the urgency of the threat requires tilting toward protecting national security even at some cost to civil liberties — have echoed through his speeches and writings. Now, as President Bush’s choice for attorney general, he is poised to put those lessons into practice. [complete article]

NEWS: The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn’t want you to know about

Case dismissed?
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, September 20, 2007

The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs.

The campaign — which involves some of Washington’s most prominent lobbying and law firms — has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community — or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant. [complete article]

NEWS: Bin Laden declares war on Musharraf

Osama bin Laden declares war on Musharraf
By Isambard Wilkinson, The Telegraph, September 20, 2007

Osama bin Laden has declared war on the Pakistani president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, on the day the embattled leader set the date for the election that will determine his political future.

Gen Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, will seek re-election on Oct 6, despite legal challenges in the Supreme Court and slumping popularity.

Al-Qa’eda, which Washington officials say has rebuilt in Pakistan’s tribal areas and may be linked to a wave of violence targeting Pakistani security forces, revealed that bin Laden will release a new message soon declaring war on him. [complete article]

See also, Al-Qaeda’s Zawahri appears in new video (Reuters).

NEWS: EU and UN call on Israel not to cut services to Gaza

EU calls on Israel to reconsider sanctions against Gaza Strip
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, September 20, 2007

The European Union joined on Thursday a United Nations call for Israel to reconsider its move to declare the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” and appealed for it not to cut key services to the Hamas-run territory.

Israel announced the move on Wednesday, saying it would disrupt electricity and fuel supplies to the coastal strip as a step to prevent continued rocket fire at Israeli civilians.

Following the cabinet’s decision, Israel Defense Forces officials on Thursday morning began formulating plans to limit services to the civilian population in Gaza. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: How to counter terrorism

How to counter terrorism
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 19, 2007

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone is on a mission to promote to promote “religious enlightenment.” The programs he oversees as commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, are designed to shape Iraqi detainees and “bend them back to our will.” It sounds like Stalinism.

The idea of rehabilitating jihadists isn’t new; this just sounds like a somewhat mangled version of a program that was devised in Yemen and has been applied with great success. Yet the philosophical approach is profoundly different. Contrast Stone’s aim of bending wills in what he calls “the battlefield of the mind,” with the approach masterminded by former judge Hamoud Abdulhameed al-Hittar, who is now the Minister of Human Rights in Yemen.

This is how Hittar lays the foundation for his work:

Dialogue is a part of human nature. The first step in the creation of human beings was dialogue.

The Qur’an addresses the idea of dialogue with people we don’t agree with. The Pharaoh called himself a god. He said that he was the creator of Mankind. And even then, God granted a dialogue with the Pharaoh. This is an example for us to talk with people, regardless of how bad they are. No matter how much we agree or disagree with them, we should not avoid talking with them.

It is under this principle, that we dialogue with the people from Afghanistan [returning jihadists]. In the tradition found in all religious scriptures, as transmitted by Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Jonas, etc., dialogue is a necessity.

Continue reading →

NEWS: Iran will retaliate against attack

In case of war, Iran has plans for airstrikes on Israel, general says
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2007

A senior Iranian military official said today that his country had drawn up plans to launch airstrikes against Israel in case of war between the two countries, according to an interview published by an Iranian news agency.

Gen. Mohammed Alavi, a deputy commander in the Iranian air force, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that his country could attack Israel with long-range missiles as well as fighter planes in case of war between the two countries.

Israeli and U.S. officials have threatened the possibility of preemptive attacks on Iran to block it from obtaining advanced nuclear technology that could be used to build atomic weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is meant to augment civilian energy needs.

Military analysts say Iran could retaliate against any U.S. or Israeli air raids by hitting targets in the Persian Gulf, disrupting oil flows or launching attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — When for weeks the Bush administration has been doing nothing to dampen speculation that Iran has been targeted for bombing, and after Israel’s recent mysterious attack on facilities in eastern Syria, it is completely disingenuous for the White House to claim that Iran’s comments on retaliation were “totally unprovoked.”

Israel itself has downplayed the Iranian threat:

Israeli officials are treating Iran’s latest claims that it has 600 Shihab-3 missiles aimed at targets throughout the country the same way it treated Teheran’s claims last month to have crossed a key nuclear threshold: by listening carefully, but not believing everything they hear.

Is this the response we would expect from a nation that supposedly lives in the shadow of an existential threat?

OPINION: Who will start the war on Iran?

Why Bush won’t attack Iran
By Steven Clemons, Salon, September 19, 2007

During a recent high-powered Washington dinner party attended by 18 people, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was NSA to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Here’s the inside story from someone who knows more than the insiders. Steve Clemons always comes up with interesting stuff. He is of course far too modest to divulge whether he was one of the high-powered people at the dinner party he describes, but he was obviously there in spirit if not body, casting his vote with Scowcroft. By the end of the piece though, the insider’s insight — that Bush won’t initiate an attack on Iran — becomes what Clemons should concede: a moot point.

Clemons says that “a classic buildup to war with Iran, one in which the decision to bomb has already been made, is not something we should be worried about today.” He nevertheless concedes that we should be worried about an “accidental war” — one not preceded by a classic buildup. This sounds like a distinction that probably concerns high-powered dinner-party pundits more than anyone else.

What should concern us all is whether those who are trying to build up the momentum for war can effectively be disempowered. In that regard, the role of the press is crucial and just as happened in the buildup to the war in Iraq, with all too much frequency the press is letting us down by parroting unsubstantiated accusations and failing to challenge their precious political sources.