Reality Raises It’s Head and the Media Wakes Up About the Obama Administration’s Middle East Failure By Barry Rubin There’s something big happening in the air regarding American media coverage of the Obama Administration. With the Washington Post in advance, the New York Times waking up the tiniest bit, the Los Angeles Times trailing far behind, and a lot of other newspapers getting tough, reality...

Israel-Monsters and Arab Cartoonists By Daryl Cagle The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians still looms large in political cartoons around the world, with an endless flow of cartoons from Arab countries showing monster-Israel assaulting, eating, crushing or somehow decimating the poor Palestinians. The dove of peace has been killed by Israel in every imaginable cartoon — crushed, squeezed, stabbed,...

Judge Oscar Magi: Repercussions over his decision to convict 23 CIA agents of kidnapping on Italian soil are already being felt. Italians today may be proud that their system of justice hasn’t spared intelligence agents of the world’s mightiest power, but the children of ancient Rome are well-acquainted with the consequences that are sure to follow. In regard to Thursday’s convictions by an...

JUST WESTERN BLUSTER BEFORE THE INEVITABLE DEAL? Could it be that at the end of this tortuous process of negotiating with Iran, the United States and the West will arrive at some sort of entente with Tehran that leaves America’s current Arab allies out in the cold? That is precisely the prediction of Le Quotidien d’Oran Kharroubi Habib, who sounds this clarion call to his Arab brethren to prepare for...

Guest post by Jared Stancombe Jared Stancombe is a 2009 graduate of Indiana University, where his studies focused on peace and conflict studies in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. His other academic interests include counterinsurgency and complex military operations. He is currently an analyst for a U.S. government agency responsible for national security and is in the officer selection process...

Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro has done something no one else has: He has obtained the first convictions involving the CIA practice of ‘rendition.’ For those interested in reading the Italian coverage of yesterday’s first ever convictions for the U.S. government’s practice of ‘renditioning,’ this is the write-thru from the Corriere Della Sera, which includes a number of...

In 1960, President Eisenhower warned us of the growing influence and power of the Military Industrial Complex. He was right and we ignored him. Today our country has the world’s largest total annual Military Budget of over $650 billion, additional defense-related spending of over $350 billion, more than 1.5 million people serving in its Armed Forces in over 100 countries around the globe, and is currently...

Here are two recently broadcast reports on the development of wind power and other alternative energy sources in Denmark. Steep energy taxes seem to be helping the northern European nation to both end its dependence on foreign oil and do its part to clean up the global environment. [This is being crossposted at my personal blog.]

Pro-regime demonstrators lampoon President Obama at the site of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the 30th anniversary of the storming of the facility. Continuing with our coverage of the 30th anniversary of the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran, this editorial from the state-run Web site of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting responds to the question of why it occurred. Laying out it’s position...

I didn’t vote on Tuesday in Phoenix, Arizona, my residence for almost the past 4 years though I voted in the National Elections last year. I was pleased to see that the local school funding and bond issues all passed with comfortable margins across the metro area. Had I voted, my other choice would have been for a city council position wherein I did not know either candidate. ARIZONA Heavily Democratic...

Two of the 53 American Embassy workers being held hostage with the approval of the Iranian regime, after the facility was stormed on November 4, 1979. Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was stormed by followers of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It is a day that the current regime commemorates every year as a celebration of victory over what the leaders of the country like to call...

Eric Roux, a ‘legal representative’ of the Church of Scientology in France, seems relieved after the Criminal Court of Paris returned a verdict of fraud against the church – without imposing dissolution. Days ago, a long-awaited verdict was handed down in the French criminal trial of the Church of Scientology. In the opinion of German columnist Dietrich Alexander of the newspaper Die Welt,...

Guest post by Jared Stancombe Jared Stancombe is a 2009 graduate of Indiana University, where his studies focused on peace and conflict studies in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. His other academic interests include counterinsurgency and complex military operations. He is currently an analyst for a U.S. government agency responsible for national security and is in the officer selection process...

Coming from a state-controlled mouthpiece of Muammar Gaddafi’s despotic regime, some may scoff at this article calling for President Bush to be brought before the International Criminal Court and charged with war crimes. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the sentiments expressed by OEA Libya’s Ali Mar’i al-Ahad are by no means out of the norm in the Muslim world and beyond. For OEA...

The Syracuse Post-Standard talks to Dede Scozzafava:

Recent events in Afghanistan raise the question: So now what? The always thoughtful Dave Schuler looks at this issue with both a roundup and some always-welcome thoughts of his own. This is how he begins it: President Karzai narrowly won a clearly fraudulent election. His main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has withdrawn from consideration as a candidate, ruling out a run-off election. That leaves us with an...

I just finished reading a fantastic and timely book. Fantastic because of how the writer, Doug Stanton, brilliantly and in gritty, sometimes grisly detail describes the unprecedented actions of a band of American Special Forces heroes who rode into Afghanistan after 9/11 during the opening days of what is now the Afghanistan War. Timely, not necessarily because of what these magnificent men did on horseback...

It’s not what you might think. It’s not dying in battle. It’s not losing your life. It’s losing your mind, your heart, your soul, and the life force inside you that makes you want to survive.

Can Russia break the strongman habit? Is Russia ready for Western-Style democracy – which includes true pluralism and checks on the executive? It’s a debate that’s been going on since the fall of the Berlin Wall. This article from Izvestia - once the official mouthpiece of the Soviet government – openly, unapologetically and arrestingly admits that the answer is no. Nor does it wish to...

Yaakov Kirschen, The Jerusalem Post, Dry Bones This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

The news that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been declare the winner of Afghanistan’s hotly contested and controversial Presidential election now ensures that the Afghanistan issue be an ongoing controversial one on several fronts in several countries. Clearly, the fact that his prime foe former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah has pulled out rather than participate in a runoff that Abdullah insisted...

President Obama must understand that foreign wars are the undoing of U.S. Presidents and most domestic agendas. If he hopes to concentrate on getting us out of this deep recession, he cannot spend any more time in Iraq and in particular, enlarge or continue our dead-end involvement in Afghanistan. Perhaps he’s trying to find a way to break the news to the U.S. Military and the American people that we must...

There are a few strong voices in Israel’s media who are willing to call out Israel’s intransigence on issues related to the peace process for what it is — the self-destructive behavior of an arrogant spoiled bully convinced that consequences are for someone else. How did Israel’s leaders develop such an entitlement mentality? Levy’s answer: Washington, D.C.: Now is the time to say...

I thought it might be interesting — now that the Honduran government and exiled President Manuel Zelaya have come to an agreement that will restore Zelaya to the presidency until the legal end of his term — to look back at the reaction around the world when the coup occurred, at the end of June. It’s easy now, four months after the events took place, to forget how united the world was in its...

Okay, I’ll admit I’m surprised Hiatt decided to go the route of supporting the democratic rule of law and nonviolent conflict resolution — although he cannot resist a bit of propagandizing about the evil “Chavistas.”