Editor’s comments

The end of hypocrisy

by Paul Woodward 12.12.2010

Carne Ross has provided one of the most concise and cogent analyses of the impact of the WikiLeaks cables release and concludes that the challenge this event has thrown up can only be met with one solution: “that governments must close the divide between what they say, and what they do.” A knee-jerk response to [...]

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Embedded with the Taliban

by Paul Woodward 12.12.2010

For an American cable news organization to embed reporters with the Taliban would be a bold move. CNN isn’t bold. But on Saturday evening it took the moderately risky move of airing a Norwegian journalist’s film of life with Taliban fighters. “Some people might see this and think that you are trying to humanize this [...]

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How to spot a terrorist

by Paul Woodward 12.11.2010

Eric Holder went to California to provide an update on the FBI’s terrorist training program. What he has yet to acknowledge is this: if the FBI can’t catch “terrorists” without first providing them with fake bombs, maybe the guys they’re catching aren’t really terrorists. Doesn’t the criminal process attach as much importance to means as [...]

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WikiLeaks and the Espionage Act

by News Sources 12.11.2010

WL Central reports: Today, Jennifer Robinson, one of the lawyers for Julian Assange, told The Guardian that the US government may be about to press charges against Julian Assange under the Espionage Act. She said that the legal team had heard from “several different US lawyers rumours that an indictment was on its way or [...]

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How WikiLeaks turned the First Amendment into a ‘problem’

by Paul Woodward 12.09.2010

First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams says: “WikiLeaks may just be the price we pay for freedom of the press in this country.” Why not: “WikiLeaks demonstrates the value of the First Amendment”? After all, what’s the good of having a free press when journalists so willingly serve the interests of the establishment? If the Fourth [...]

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Latest graduate in FBI’s terrorist training program

by Paul Woodward 12.09.2010

Since it’s difficult to identify and capture terrorists, the FBI seems to have concluded that an effective counterterrorism program can only work if they first find potential terrorists, coach them and then catch them. It’s a bit like sports hunting for those whose pride in displaying a trophy is undiminished by the fact that the [...]

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The expanding Saudi file

by Paul Woodward 12.07.2010

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki al-Faisal demanded on Sunday that WikiLeaks be “vigorously punished” and said that it was incumbent on the US “to not just be extra vigilant but to try to restore the credibility and the legitimacy of their engagement with the rest of us, and ensure that there are no more leaks to [...]

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New York Times plays down Saudi role in promoting terrorism

by Paul Woodward 12.06.2010

“WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists,” declares The Guardian, reporting on the US State Department’s concerns about the Kingdom’s role in funding al Qaeda and other militant organizations. The New York Times opts for the bland, “Cash Flow to Terrorists Evades U.S. Efforts,” with a subhead, “Arab Allies Resist U.S. [...]

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Is Yossi Melman linking WikiLeaks to Mossad?

by Paul Woodward 12.01.2010

In The Independent yesterday, Yossi Melman made an intriguing statement. Melman is the intelligence and military affairs correspondent for Haaretz and generally regarded as well informed on the operations of Mossad. He wrote: Three events – not seemingly related – took place yesterday. The leaking of State Department documents, many of which deal with the [...]

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“Terrorism” is now a fabrication of a national security state

by Paul Woodward 12.01.2010

This is not a conspiracy theory. To say that terrorism is a fabrication of a national security state is to say that when the label “terrorist” starts being indiscriminately applied to anyone who threatens the government we have taken another step towards totalitarianism. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the incoming chairman of the House Committee on [...]

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Transparency will be the first casualty of the latest WikiLeaks revelations

by News Sources 11.28.2010

Christopher Dickey writes: The first and most lasting casualty of this massive avalanche of documents classified “confidential,” “secret” and “noforn” (not for foreign governments to see) is going to be precisely the “transparency” that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he advocates. “Transparent government tends to produce just government,” he opined in July after an earlier [...]

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Crisis on the Korean peninsula or business as usual?

by News Sources 11.26.2010

Steven Borowiec writes: South Korean officials promised “enormous retaliation” if more North Korean attacks follow the shelling Tuesday of tiny Yeonpyeong island. For more than one reason, they can be glad that hasn’t happened. To match the North’s aggression would cause a destructive conflict; to do nothing is to appear weak. A taxi driver in [...]

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Hitchens on 9/11

by News Sources 11.19.2010

From an interview of Christopher Hitchens by Australia’s ABC TV (the full interview can be viewed on broadband here on Windows Media Player): TONY JONES: So let’s talk briefly about that day September 11, 2001. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes. TONY JONES: You described it very tellingly soon afterwards, if not on the day, as it being [...]

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AIPAC bares all to quash Rosen lawsuit

by Paul Woodward 11.16.2010

Maybe the days of the Israel lobby are numbered — not because it’s about to fall apart but because the terms of discourse will change. That is, we will no longer be speaking about a “lobby” as such but more explicitly about the evidence that the state of Israel has effectively pulled off a soft [...]

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Israelis united by fear

by News Sources 11.14.2010

Uri Avnery writes: On Saturday evening, two weeks ago, we returned by taxi from the annual memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin, and as usual got into a conversation with our driver. Generally, these conversations flow smoothly, with lots of laughs. Rachel loves them, because they bring us face-to-face with people we don’t normally meet. The [...]

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Separation without separating

by News Sources 11.10.2010

Amjad Atallah and Mickey Bergman step outside the confines of a two-state solution whose parameters are supposedly already well understood, and present a new approach that could conceivably meet both Palestinian and Jewish nationalist aspirations. In their outline for a plan, the two states would be defined more in terms of the political rights based [...]

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Pentagon’s Cyber Command seeks authority to expand its battlefield

by News Sources 11.06.2010

A defense official quote in this report from the Washington Post says: “Al Qaeda is everywhere.” That’s the same as saying that anyone who has a blog is “everywhere” — presence on the web is by its nature global. Still, it’s a dubious claim when coming out of the mouth of a US government official [...]

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Leasehold settlements?

by Paul Woodward 10.29.2010

Haaretz reports: Israel is conducting secret negotiations with the U.S. on establishing the future borders of a Palestinian state, the London-based Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Friday. According to the report, Palestinian sources confirmed that the two sides discussed an option wherein Israel may lease lands in East Jerusalem from the Palestinians in [...]

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Lieberman orders a “day after” plan for dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran

by Paul Woodward 10.25.2010

Reuters reports: Hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has commissioned a report on how to prepare for a nuclear-armed Iran as doubt mounts about the efficacy of preventive action, an Israeli source said on Monday. Publicly, Israel has pledged to deny the Iranians the means to make a bomb but its previous, centrist government also [...]

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Clearing the fog of war in Iraq

by Paul Woodward 10.24.2010

The expression “fog of war” evokes both the confusion of the battlefield and the ways in which uncertainty can be used as propaganda tool to obscure the real nature of warfare. One of the striking things about the statistics that Wikileaks have released is that the leading cause of death which accounts for half the [...]

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The utter failure of multiculturalism?

by Paul Woodward 10.18.2010

It wasn’t just Germans who were disappointed to see their team fail to win the 2010 World Cup in South Africa this summer. If this was the team that represented “multi-kulti”, for most of us who had the pleasure of watching their performance, the response was: let’s have more — not: this is an utter [...]

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Obama chooses new national security adviser who has ‘no credibility with the military’

by Paul Woodward 10.08.2010

Undaunted by the revelations from Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, President Obama is replacing National Security Adviser Gen James Jones with his deputy, Tom Donilon. Last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Donilon would be a “disaster” in that position and Jones said Donilon had “no credibility with the military.” Was it Donilon’s performance as [...]

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Israel and Palestine: A true one-state solution

by Paul Woodward 09.03.2010

Israel should adapt to the 21st century. Is that really a utopian idea? As Tony Judt succinctly distilled the issue a few years ago: “The very idea of a ‘Jewish state’ — a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded — is rooted in [...]

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When misanthropy and philanthropy go hand in hand

by Paul Woodward 08.24.2010

In a society that trumpets its faith in equal opportunity, freedom and the power of the people — government of the people, by the people and for the people, and all that — it’s ironic that again and again, we discover that some of the most powerful people in America are men (invariably men) who [...]

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