Paul Zanetti, Australia This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Not surprisingly, Arabs aren’t taking too kindly to Newt Gingrich’s recent comment that the Palestinians are an ‘invented people’ seeking little more than the destruction of Israel. For Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, K. Selim writes that if Gingrich makes his way into the White House, at least Arabs will be able to stop pretending that there is any hope of Washington being a...

Is Syria’s election a sham? A cross section of thoughts HERE.

Let me say at the outset: I think Christiane Amanpour got a bum rap from many critics, partisans and bloggers. She was a highly informed, outward looking and thinking host of ABC’s “This Week” and it was refreshing to see someone on American television whose focus was not soley on our domestic political horse races. That being said, this does not surprise me one bit: Christiane Amanpour is...

WASHINGTON — I’m inclined to believe that the apparent result of the climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, might turn out to be a very big deal. Someday. Maybe. That’s my view, but it’s hardly universal. After the meeting ended Sunday, initial reaction basically ranged from “Historic Breakthrough: The Planet Is Saved” to “Tragic Failure: The Planet...

Are the American-based credit rating agencies in cahootz with the U.S. government? Columnist Anna Szabó of Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet Konyvek sees a war on Europe and specifically Hungary in the latest credit rating downgrades by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, and exorts Europeans to create their own credit rating agency that would be independent of U.S. influence and offer more accurate...

Has the very foundation of modern democracy been superseded without anyone noticing? Columnist Nicolas Demorand of France’s Liberation warns that democratic politicians have a new master – and it isn’t the constitution or the voter. For Liberation, Nicolas Demorand starts out this way: Executive, legislative, judiciary: political philosophy teaches that a democratic state is based on the...

Donald Nuechterlein is a political scientist whose writing can be found in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In an article published today, he says that because of an assumption that the 2012 presidential election will focus on domestic issues, pundits and reporters are paying scant attention to where the candidates stand on foreign policy issues and the GOP candidates themselves largely content themselves to say...

WASHINGTON — It was gratifying to hear a despotic leader blame the United States for the rise of a democratic protest movement against his regime. Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, wants his people to think that those who have taken to the streets to express their rage over rigged elections are nothing but tools of American foreign policy, put to work by none other than Secretary of State...

Souring U.S. Pakistan relations are now poised to get much worse: Pakistan is vowing to shoot down U.S. drones that it sees in its airspace: Pakistan will shoot down any U.S. drone that intrudes its air space per new directives, a senior Pakistani official told NBC News on Saturday. According to the new Pakistani defense policy, “Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated...

Will the newly-launched Community of Latin American and Caribbean States end up displacing the Washington-based Organization of American States, as Venezuela President Hugo Chavez hopes, or will it fizzle out as so many previous attempts at Latin American unification have done? Columnist Nelson Ortega from Venezuela’s Aporrea is certain that the formation of CELAC is the culmination of Simon Bolivar’s...

Here is some economic history from Barry Ritholtz: We’ve known for literally thousands of years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this. We’ve known for 1,900 years that that rampant inequality destroys societies. We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse. We’ve known for hundreds of years that the...

UPDATE, Dec. 13: Bloomberg News reports that MVRDV, the Dutch architecture company that designed the much criticized “pixelated cloud” buildings may modify the design in the wake of the negative reactions. Bloomberg: “It may be difficult for the developer to go on with the current design after getting negative attention in the mass media,” Lee Sang Yun, a professor at Yonsei University’s department...

Are the once all-powerful credit-rating agencies, the most important of which are American – becoming irrelevant to the markets and those who invest in them? According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, despite the fact that Standard and Poor’s threatened to downgrade eurozone debt last week, European markets have hardly moved. The editorial board of the Financial...

Vladimir has gone back in time to the days of the Soviet Union. How else to explain the Russian prime minister’s assertion that the US and not people from his own country are behind the protests of vote tampering that have arisen since Russia’s recent parliamentary elections? Putin is increasingly going back to his happy place, where war was peace, reality was conveniently airbrushed out of existence,...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Manny Francisco, Manila, The Phillippines This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. (And Russia’s anti government protests grow...)

Could it be that part of America’s plan for the Iraqi invasion was to undermine the Iraqi family by luring women and girls to work for the occupation? For Oman’s Al Watan in an article reminiscent of the type of content we published at the height of the war, columnist Walid Al Zubaydi writes that the way U.S. immigration officers insult Iraqis granted asylum in the U.S. is a consequence of the...

Former House Speaker and current front-runner for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination Newt Gingrich has announced that if he’s elected he’d appoint John Bolton as Secretary of State, rather than someone who indulges in “appeasement” as he says Hillary Clinton is doing. Yes, it’s the same John Bolton who ran into trouble being confirmed as UN ambassador under George Bush...

Latest update from the BBC: The BBC reports that Iranian TV has shown the first video footage of the US drone that Tehran says it downed near the Afghan border. Images show Iranian military officials inspecting the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which appears to be undamaged. Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground. [:] BBC security correspondent Frank...