NEWSPAPER SAYS – QUOTING SECRETARY CLINTON: ‘WE’RE GUILTY OF THE VIOLENCE IN MEXICO. WE’RE BIG DRUGGIES’ UNCLE SAM SAYS: ‘AND IN 1847, WE WERE REAL THUGS WHEN WE STOLE HALF OF MEXICO FROM THEM, AND IN 1910 …’ Continuing with our coverage of U.S. involvement in the drug war from the Mexican point of view, today we post this article, which poses an old question being asked anew by Mexican columnists: are the U.S. intelligence services promoting and...

Does the phrase, ‘It took Nixon to go to China’ apply to the case of President Barack Obama and the nation of Iran? In this latest in a series of translations we’ve been doing on reaction to President Obama’s outstretched hand to Iran, the editorial board of France’s Le Monde makes the case that like Nixon – Obama might be just the man for the task. The Le Monde editorial says in part: “It’s been thirty years since the spectacular hostage-taking at...

As we learned yesterday from Franco Venturini of Italy’s Corriere della Sera, a G-20 clash is brewing between the United States, which favors more stimulus and consumption, and Europe, which favors less stimulus and more regulation of the global financial system. But unlike Venturini, who sees real danger in this difference of views and its likely consequences, Pierre Rousselin of France’s Le Figaro is more optimistic that such divergences need not result in a train wreck. Rousselin...

Judging from this op-ed by Franco Venturini of Italy’s Corriere della Sera, despite the adulation felt for Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, it could be rough sledding for the President when he visits Europe for the first time since taking office next week. Franco Venturini writes in part: “Celebrated with enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic, Barack Obama’s honeymoon with his European allies is at risk of becoming as short as it is passionate. In just a few days, America’s...

CARTOON TITLE: ‘DIPLOMACY IN ACTION’ SECRETARY CLINTON’S SIGN SAYS: ‘THERE’S NO PROBLEM GOVERNING MEXICO’ MEXICAN FOREIGN SECRETARY ESPINOSA SAYS: ‘YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT ALL!’ With Hillary Clinton in Mexico praising that country’s president for his handling of the drug war, is President Calderon, who took office after a contested election, using that national emergency to grab power, legitimize himself and de-legitimize his political opposition? According...

Hillary Says: ‘Although this isn’t a FAILED state, I hope that their security system doesn’t fail.’ According to this editorial from Mexico’s El Universal, after the disappointment Mexicans felt with the Bush Administration and the Democratically-controlled Congress, Mexicans are gun-shy about believing Obama’s warm words. The El Universal editorial says in part: “With ex-President Bush, it was thought that Mexico had finally gotten its arrogant neighbor...

Commentators around the world are debating the wisdom of President Obama’s video message to Iranians last weekend. According to this pair of op-eds from Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, if the United States wants to resume normal relations with Tehran, it’s going to have to do a few things that it has hitherto been unwilling to do: officially admit to and apologize for the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup against Iran’s first, and many would argue last, democratically-elected...

Will the United States government have to take on the NRA along with the Mexican drug cartels in order to lessen the chances of Mexico becoming a failed state? For Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper, León Krauze writes in part: “I said in this space a couple of weeks ago that the attitude of the United States government in regard to the violence in its border with Mexico would change when the blood began to flow – not only in the streets of Ciudad Juarez, but in Phoenix. And so it...

On March 6, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a button labeled ‘reset’ in English, and ‘peregruzka‘ in Russian. Unfortunately, peregruzka means ‘overloaded‘ rather than ‘reset‘, embarrassing the U.S. Secretary of State and the agency she leads on live TV. According to Maxim Sokolov of Russia’s Izvestia newspaper, the error highlights a larger issue: that American English, ‘which is anything...

Believe it or not – French investigations into the crimes of Bernie Madoff are just getting under way. This account from France’s Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien into what French prosecutors have uncovered so far contains some interesting details. For Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien, Laurent Valdiguie relates in part: “Between 3,000 and 5,000 French citizens were swindled by the American financier. … The worst is that most of these people don’t know, because their...

So now that Barack Obama has sent a conciliatory Persian New Year message to Iranians and their leaders, is Tehran reacting favorably? According to this news account from the Islamic Republic’s state-controlled Fars News Agency, the Supreme Leader’s response is the political equivalent of ‘show me the money.’ In a speech delivered on March 22, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei discussed a few domestic issues and then responded in some length to President Obama’s...

Russian Political Scientist Igor Panarin postulates that the United States is on the verge of a civil war that will lead to it’s dissolution into six seperate political entities. What’s more, the Kremlin seems to be encouraging the idea. In another undeniable sign that independent media still exists in Russia, Stanislav Minin of Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes that when Russian ministries sponsor conferences and meetings popularizing these ideas to the foreign press, they...

The movie Frost/Nixon has opened in Bogota Colombia, and according to Antonio Caballero of the newspaper Semana, it is a reminder of the political lessons that the career of Richard Nixon has taught generations of politicians around the world who look to get away with wrongdoing. Caballero writes in part: “In Bogotá they’re showing a film entitled Frost/Nixon about the famous 1977 television interviews of British presenter David Frost and ex-President Richard Nixon in which Nixon...

In Bogota, the exchange of recriminations is in high gear over who’s responsible for blowing Colombia’s valued strategic relationship with the United States. Claudia López of Colombia’s El Tiempo writes in part: “As President Lula de Silva of Brazil meets face-to-face to discuss global and Latin American politics with President Obama at the White House, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos deplores the ill treatment that, according to him, Colombia has received from...

Has France swung too far to the right – farther in fact, than the United States under President Obama? According to Pierre-Alain Muet, a Socialist Party member of the French National Assembly, the United States and the rest of the world is leaving Sarkozy’s France behind by embracing FDR’s program of restoring equality to income distribution and keeping savings banks out of the business of speculation. For France’s Le Monde newspaper, Pierre-Alain Muet writes in part: “With...

Given the growing strength of China’s military and the fact that the People’s Republic of China is America’s largest creditor, is it time for the United States to curtail its military surveillance in and around that nation? According to this editorial from Hong Kong’s China-owned Wen Wei Po, Beijing recommends in part: “Washington should size up the situation and learn from the Bush Administration’s term in office that the pursuit of hegemonism resulted in a...

Days ago, the wire services reported that Venezuela President Hugo Chavez invited President Obama to join him in ‘socialism.’ We translated this article from Mexico’s El Financiero, which contains that quote along with some others. Chavez also explains why he thinks it correct that democratically-elected leaders remain in office as long as the people want to vote for them and why that ‘evil, genocidal empire’ is finally coming to an end. The El Financiero article is...

Judging from the recent content we’ve been translating, European concern that the United States and China are sidelining a disunited Old Continent seems to be reaching something of a fever pitch. Likening Washington to ancient Rome of the fifth century, Thomas Klau of the Financial Times Deutschland warns Europeans that the largest debtor [the U.S.] and the largest creditor [China] might not share the cultural bonds of Europe and the United States – but they are bound by something...

“UNCLE SAM SAYS: ‘THEY’RE LUNATICS IF THEY THINK I WON’T STICK MY NOSE INTO THE ISSUE OF MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING” [La Jornada, Mexico] Continuing with the series of articles WORLDMEETS.US is working on in regard to the Mexican drug crisis, we offer this item from Chile’s La Tercera. For Americans busy scratching their heads about why the last few months the Mexican drug war suddenly erupted into a major challenge to Mexico’s government and the United...

As we like to do, WORLDMEETS.US has posted an Iraqi write-thru on the trial and sentencing of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi, who on Thursday of last week, was sentenced to three years in prison for throwing his shoes at President Bush during a farewell visit to Baghdad last December. This article, a translation from the Iraqi News Agency, contains a number of interesting details not mentioned in the English-language coverage – including quotes from the reporter’s sister about how...

This week, WORLDMEETS.US is working on a series of articles from Mexico and Latin America about the battle over drugs now spilling over the Mexican border into the United States. According to this first item by Pablo Hiriart of Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper, the governments of the United States and Mexico are painting themselves into a corner with mutual recriminations about the burgeoning drug-related war down south. Hiriart writes in part: “Recent statements by senior officials on...

As the big G-20 summit tipped to be the launching pad for a new global economic order approaches, the countries of the G-20, particularly Europe and the United States, are taking the measure of one another. So how is the dialogue going so far? According to Pierre Rousselin of France’s Le Figaro, even with President Obama, U.S.-Europe relations are no bed of roses, but at least people are acting professionally and dealing directly with the issues at hand. In regard to the G-20 summit, Rousselin...

So what do the Polish have to say about President Obama’s apparent willingness to give up the the much struggled-over Central European missile shield for Russian help with Iran’s nuclear program? According to Marek Magierowski of Poland’s Rzeczpospolita, Obama had better have quite a few moves planned in advance if he hopes to win that chess match. Magierowski writes in part: “He is extending his hand to Russia and Syria, and soon, perhaps, to Cuba. … he wants to...

In this latest article from Iraq critical of growing Iranian influence in the country, Kitabat’s Khadir Taahar writes in part: “The Iranian octopus extends everywhere in Iraq, wringing her body of riches even after it tore it to shreds with sectarianism. During his current visit, the criminal Rafsanjani [Iran's former president] proposed an Iraq-Iran joint initiative in the area of religious tourism. … The purpose of this scheme is absolute Iranian control over Iraqi airports,...

Human stem cells undergo division. The global reaction to President Obama’s decision to increase the amount of federal of federal funding is pouring in – and it reveals something quite surprising: Continental European bans on stem cell research are more strict than they were in George W. Bush’s America; and with America set to go full-bore into stem-cell research, the pressure is growing elsewhere to ‘get in the game’ or be left behind. Here is a four-article sampling...