“War in Context is one of the most reliable blogs on the Middle East. It is filled with sharp commentary, useful summaries, and an excellent selection of the best articles.” Joshua Landis, SyriaComment, Director, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Oklahoma.

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Independent journalism is an alternative to the mainstream media, free from corporate control and without ties to the political establishment — at least that’s the way most people define independence.

What it really means, however, is simply this: think for yourself.

And to do this, you need information — not just opinions that resonate with your own worldview.

The so-called independent media is subject to just as many orthodoxies as the mainstream media. Its delivered wisdom just rests on a different set of largely unquestioned assumptions.

War in Context is a product of my own effort to understand what is happening in the Middle East and the wider world and as such is a work in progress. Although I share my opinions, I’m not telling anyone what to think. I have no political affiliations and no ideology to promote.

If you find this site useful, please help support it through a monthly subscription or by making a donation. Click on one of the buttons in the sidebar to the right. Thank you, Paul Woodward

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Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

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Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

“If you are seriously interested in international politics, especially the Middle East, War in Context is one of the best sites on the web. Not only does it say smart things about war on a daily basis, but it also deals extensively with the broader political context in which war takes place. In that sense, Paul Woodward is a Clausewitzian at heart. He is also tough-minded, smart, and goes where the evidence takes him. The end result is first-rate analysis on the key issues of the day, something that is increasingly difficult to find in the mainstream media. It is for good reason that I make sure to read War in Context every day.”
— John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

“Paul Woodward’s War in Context is well named except it is not just war Woodward puts in context but foreign policy in general. For me, War in Context serves as a corrective I apply to my own thinking and writing. If I am on the same page as Paul Woodward, I know I have got it right. If I’m not, I go back and re-think. It’s not that I will change my own thinking if it is not compatible with Paul’s but rather that I respect his powers of analysis so much that he makes me think twice. Additionally, War in Context provides me with a guide to articles and columns from sources I would probably have missed otherwise. Having it close at hand is an insurance policy. If I read it, I know I am on top of events even if perchance I don’t get to read much else. It is indispensable.”
— M.J. Rosenberg, blogger and author of The Israel Lobby & Me to be published by Just World Books later this year.

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

“War in Context is an indispensable resource, both for its posting of valuable comment and analysis from around the web and for Paul Woodward’s progressive voice which, rather than constraining itself in an ideological straitjacket, is always attentive to facts and the perspectives of suffering people internationally.”
— Robin Yassin-Kassab, author of the novel The Road from Damascus, journalist, and co-editor of Critical Muslim and PULSE

“Paul Woodward’s War In Context provides an idiosyncratic and effusively heterodox view of what important is going on in the world. Never predictable, never dogmatic, the site is always alert to writers and themes that, if not part of standard Beltway discourse, are critical to understanding a struggling planet. I read it often, and always learn something new.”
— Scott McConnell, Founding Editor, The American Conservative

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

“Paul Woodward epitomizes the new internet journalist, that combination of fiercely independent judgment and intellectual depth that the internet has brought to journalism in our time. He has a roving mind with a philosophical bent, but he is tenacious when it comes to the corruption of American foreign policy and mainstream journalism by the special relationship with Israel; and his pithy, newsy and ironical observations of this process have made his site indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the American role in the world today.”
— Philip Weiss, journalist and co-editor of Mondoweiss

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

“The United States has been at war one place or another almost every year since 1981. The American public forgets. War in Context does not.”
— Christopher Dickey, Paris Bureau Chief / Middle East Editor, Newsweek & The Daily Beast.

“War in Context is one of the most reliable blogs on the Middle East. It is filled with sharp commentary, useful summaries, and an excellent selection of the best articles. Paul Woodward is smart and plugged in. He knows the Middle East. I read it every day.”
— Joshua Landis, SyriaComment, Director, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Oklahoma.

“Paul Woodward’s War in Context has been one of my top reads every morning since before the invasion of Iraq. With thoughtful and incisive analysis of world events, War in Context is must-reading for anyone interested in the Middle East, the War on Terror, or the trials and tribulations of the Global South.”
— Hassan M. Fattah, Editor-in-Chief, The National newspaper.

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

“I check out War in Context daily. It’s an invaluable ‘ally’ in my own work. It has just what I want from a political website: a sharp-as-tacks editor with a great eye for riveting writing and reportage from around the world that I might otherwise miss, a way of framing our world that increases my understanding and makes me look at it differently, and an idiosyncratic, original way of taking that world in. It’s a great package. The focus on the Greater Middle East and on American power (but with regular treats and surprises beyond those subjects) seals the deal for me. What more could I ask for?”
— Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, author of The United States of Fear and End of Victory Culture.

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.

Stay up to date with War in Context: subscribe by email.

Once a day you will receive an email summary including links to all the posts from the previous 24 hours. I will never share or sell your email address. Give it a try!

After signing up, look out for a confirmation email with the subject line: “War in Context – please activate your email subscription” — it could show up in your spam folder. Your subscription will not start until you have responded to this confirmation.

“Like anyone else interested in the news, I spend the beginning of each day reading — from the U.S. mainstream media to overseas newspapers, from personal websites to news aggregators to political blogs. But of the dozens of internet sites that I read, War In Context is always first on my list. For me, it is the one indispensable source that gives me both a essential insight into the news, coupled with an always crucial and pointed commentary. I find War In Context supremely useful, as it not only identifies and highlights the news of the day, but also provides a breadth of coverage that I’ve not found elsewhere. War In Context says that it provides ‘attention to the unseen,’ but for me it also brings my attention to ‘the unread and unnoticed’ — a crucial culling of stories that I will surely have missed had I not read it. So it is that War In Context provides me not simply with another set of eyes, it provides another, and very badly needed perspective.”
— Mark Perry, journalist and author most recently of Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with Its Enemies.

As an independent news editor and commentator, I use my own judgment. I don’t bow to anyone — not to governments, or political parties, or corporations, or the mainstream media, or advertisers, or think tanks, or academia, or popular opinion, or ideology, or the blogosphere, or social media, or even my own readership.

If you value this kind of liberated journalism, please support this site and make a donation. Thank you — Paul Woodward

Click the button above to make a secure donation via PayPal.

If you would prefer to make a donation by check, please contact me using the contact form or directly by email to: editor[at]warincontext.org and I will send you my mailing address.