Editorials

Israel’s faux revolutionaries

by Paul Woodward 08.27.2011

Israel’s July 14 social justice movement is really like a campaign in support of sunshine. Who’s going to oppose it? The supporters of social injustice? To the extent that Israelis were inspired by the example of the Egyptian revolution, this seems to have gone no further than sharing in the empowering experience of being among [...]

Read the full article →

How Israelis (and many others) shirk moral responsibility for their actions

by Paul Woodward 08.25.2011

It’s a clever maneuver and it’s used again and again. They are attacking me not because of what I did. They are attacking me because of who I am. Not only does this put the self-declared victim in an invulnerable position — no one can change or should need defend their simple identity — but [...]

Read the full article →

Obama, Libya and triumphalism in Washington

by Paul Woodward 08.24.2011

Joe Cirincione writes: This week, in Libya, thousands of people celebrated carrying posters of “The Fantastic Four”: Obama, Rice, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. All four played a leading role in supporting the people of Libya in their overthrow of a tyrant. But it was America that played the crucial [...]

Read the full article →

The voice of democracy frightens Israel

by Paul Woodward 08.23.2011

The creation of a Jewish state, right from the moment of its conception, was never compatible with the development of democracy. Democracy rests on the recognition of the political rights and power of dēmos, the people, and in as much as it allows for any kind of discrimination it does so by empowering the under-privileged. [...]

Read the full article →

Libya — the first real victory in the Arab Awakening?

by Paul Woodward 08.21.2011

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy To all those who argued that NATO’s involvement would irredeemably taint the Libyan revolution, here’s an idea that could be too much to wrap your mind around. Look at the ongoing struggle in Syria, the brutally crushed revolution in Bahrain, the unfinished revolution [...]

Read the full article →

Israel’s security strategy — when in doubt, hit Gaza

by Paul Woodward 08.21.2011

Three days after the attacks by gunmen outside Eilat in southern Israel, what do we know about the identities of the gunmen? Almost nothing. In the mainstream media they are blithely referred to as “Palestinian gunmen” yet so far the only basis for this description is the unsubstantiated word of Israeli officials. Those officials have [...]

Read the full article →

Celebratory explosions in Tripoli?

by Paul Woodward 08.21.2011

In a telephone address to the Libyan people, Muammar Gaddafi appealed to them to “Go forward, go forward,” and he then hung up. An advance is indeed under way, but not the one Brother Muammar was asking for. “If you can call any mobile number in Tripoli, you will hear in the background the beautiful [...]

Read the full article →

Israeli army hasn’t the faintest idea who launched the Eilat attacks

by Paul Woodward 08.20.2011

The Real News Network‘s Lia Tarachansky asked IDF Spokesperson Lt. Colonel Avital Leibovitz how the IDF reached their conclusions about who was responsible for Thursday’s attacks near Eilat in southern Israel. Tarachansky: On what are you basing your conclusion that this group [the Popular Resistance Committees] is responsible for the terror attacks? IDF Spokesperson: We [...]

Read the full article →

The context of the Eilat attacks and the threat to Gaza

by Paul Woodward 08.19.2011

Israelis who today for some reason feel safer because Gaza is getting bombed, might pause to consider this question: why would a member of the group that launched attacks outside Eilat yesterday — a group supposedly based in Gaza and sworn to the destruction of Israel — today blow himself up in an attack on [...]

Read the full article →

Who benefits from the attacks in Israel?

by Paul Woodward 08.18.2011

Today’s attacks in southern Israel in which gunmen killed eight people were clearly carefully planned. It seems reasonable to assume that as much attention was given to the attacks’ timing. Reuters reported: The Magen David Adom ambulance service said seven people were killed along the road, just meters from the border with Egypt. The military [...]

Read the full article →

Israel’s J14 ‘social justice’ movement — just about money?

by Paul Woodward 08.15.2011

Since it began, Israel’s J14 ‘social justice’ movement, has made what was ostensibly a tactical choice to be apolitical and sidestep the divisive issue of the occupation. Following a chorus of appeals to take a stand on this pivotal issue, the movement has implicitly done just that. Max Blumenthal reports: On August 14, a month [...]

Read the full article →

The CIA, lies and intelligence

by Paul Woodward 08.12.2011

After a recent speech, John Brennan, a longtime former CIA officer and currently President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, took a question from John Hopkins professor of strategic studies, Elliot Cohen, on the US policy of so-called targeted killing. Brennan responded by highlighting the “surgical” precision that Obama has insisted upon when the US chooses its targets. [...]

Read the full article →

Obama’s secret war in Somalia where ‘the Americans are creating a monster’

by Paul Woodward 08.11.2011

“Mercenary” is a word with lots of ugly connotations — not least for men who’ve been jailed for being mercenaries. So, Bancroft Global Development, a private company based in Washington DC currently providing “military services” for the US State Department and the UN in Mogadishu, doesn’t like the term “mercenaries.” It describes itself instead as [...]

Read the full article →

Crime and punishment

by Paul Woodward 07.27.2011

Reading Anders Behring Breivik’s account of his preparations for his July 22 attacks in Oslo and Utøya evokes a certain dread at the sight of such a deliberate effort to cause carnage. Breivik expresses no doubt about what he is doing other than the fear that he might run out of funds and be unable [...]

Read the full article →

From Pamela Geller to Anders Behring Breivik — how Islamophobia turned deadly in Norway

by Paul Woodward 07.23.2011

When terrorism has a white face it invariably gets marginalized in the popular narrative. The lone wolf, the outsider, the sociopath — in many cases these portraits of misanthropic, isolated individuals who turn to violence are quite accurate. The Oslo killings, however, should be seen in a different light since there is a wealth of [...]

Read the full article →

Will Obama once again cover up Bush’s crimes?

by Paul Woodward 06.16.2011

The New York Times reports: A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of [...]

Read the full article →

The end of the world and the approach of summertime

by Paul Woodward 05.20.2011

Where will you be at 6pm US Eastern on Saturday when the Great Earthquake strikes? I haven’t decided, but I think I’ll take the day off. For those who imagine life is like a movie, here’s a song fit for the closing credits — and, for those of us in the northern latitudes, the approach [...]

Read the full article →

The cost of fear: How Osama bin Laden helped drive America towards bankruptcy

by Paul Woodward 05.06.2011

While most of America is celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, it’s worth giving credit where credit is due: he didn’t just nurse a quixotic ambition — to attack the US economy — but he also figured out how it could be done and succeeded. Perhaps he was inspired by the AIDS virus and [...]

Read the full article →

9/11 is not the axis around which the world revolves

by Paul Woodward 05.05.2011

You can’t talk like a five-year old without ending up thinking like a five-year old, yet this is the mentality many Americans bring to bear when they look at the world through the prism of 9/11. America is at war with “bad guys” and on Monday morning “we got him” — the baddest guy of [...]

Read the full article →

How Libya is making smart people turn stupid — updated

by Paul Woodward 04.16.2011

Update below – I have little doubt the Gaddafi regime pays close attention to the views being expressed by Western critics of the intervention in Libya. One of the key lessons the Libyan leadership will have duly noted is that so long as Libyan civilians are killed 10 or 20 at a time, the war’s [...]

Read the full article →

I won’t give my right arm to become a one-armed blogger — updated

by Paul Woodward 04.11.2011

Update below – When I say War in Context is handmade, that’s not a figure of speech. Typing and cutting-and-pasting involve all sorts of precise flexions, animated by action potentials rippling at high speed down the median nerve which extends from the cervical spine to the hand. For the last two months the root of [...]

Read the full article →

Islamophobia — on The Daily Show

by Paul Woodward 04.05.2011

It looks like Jon Stewart has discovered his Islamophobe-within as he drums up laughs and fear among those Americans who’ve decided that Libya is the new Afghanistan and Libya’s rebels are destined to become foot soldiers for Osama bin Laden. For Stewart, the armed opponents of Gaddafi aren’t just rebels but something far more ominous: [...]

Read the full article →

Forget Goldstone — remember Gaza

by Paul Woodward 04.04.2011

Here’s a circle that should never have been closed. The Goldstone Report, once credited with having provided a hefty shove as Israel veered towards pariah status, is now being held up by Israelis as having unintentionally demonstrated why, when the need arises, Israel will be able to launch Cast Lead Two and once again chant: [...]

Read the full article →

Holy moly — here comes another 9/11. Fears of blowback from Libya

by Paul Woodward 03.31.2011

Reuters reports that the CIA is now on the ground in Libya and the Obama administration is considering arming Gaddafi’s opponents. This is some of the reaction from Firedoglake‘s David Dayen: I can just go back to the American track record of arming insurgencies and it’s not very good. Robert Gates knows well from his [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →