A very smart and respected co-blogger on TMV (who happens to live a modest drive from me in Arizona) recently broached the subject of the former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate. I agree that she’s great at self-promotion . She’s a very successful self-made entrepreneur because she fully understands America’s 24/7 info-entertainment news Media. She knows how to play the...

Like most politicians, China’s capitalist/communists are convinced that recent news coverage involving hacked Gmail accounts and the arrest of artist/democracy activist Ai Weiwei mean only one thing: Beijing needs better public relations. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Huanqiu, China suffers a negative public image because it has allowed a hostile Western media to characterize...

I have to admit that there have been times in the last few years when I have been deeply saddened by the cynicism of young people. I also have to admit, however, that their cynicism was — or is — entirely understandable. They have grown up in an age in which the institutions and the elites who dominate their world have failed them utterly. I write this as someone who taught young people for thirty-two...

The Coming Crisis in the Middle East by Barry Rubin The gap between dominant Western perceptions of the Middle East and the region’s reality is dangerously wide. While the “Arab Spring” is celebrated as an advance for moderation and democracy, in fact the advance is going to revolutionary Islamists. Developments in Turkey and Egypt especially threaten to plunge the Middle East back into an...

Current signs are that European efforts to save Greece from defaulting on its debt will be too feeble to prevent new financial tensions. They may grow into a global crisis equal to or worse than the fall of 2008. The latest indication came today from the European Central Bank’s blunt refusal to back a German plan to force creditors to take a haircut (accept less than 100 cents to the dollar) or reschedule...

Along with the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Zionists, the Bilderberg Group is a member of that august club of organizations that in the minds of conspiracy theorists around the world, are at the helm of global affairs. According to this article from Switzerland’s Suedostschweiz, which includes a letter from Swiss MP Dominique Baettig calling for the arrest of U.S. officials, the group is rumored...

After months of scrambling to contain an astonishing series of natural and manmade catastrophes, this editorial from Japan’s Nishinippon Shimbun warns Japanese officials that while they’ve been overwhelemed with domestic issues, the global situation has been evolving rapidly and mostly without any influence being applied by Tokyo. The Nishinippon Shimbun editorial says in part: Even as the Japanese...

More evidence has surface that Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi is truly one of history’s bad guys: The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor says there is now evidence hei ordered the rape of hundreds of women to spread fear of his regime and curb dissent.

About three years ago, I took then-Presidential candidate John McCain to task for saying during a town hall meeting that it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years.” I was not only taken aback by McCain’s apparent level of comfort with prolonging a war where we were losing young Americans on a daily basis, but also by his continued, stubborn...

Is Mexican President Calderon too cozy with the United States and its involvement in his country? La Jornada columnist Javier Jimenez Espriu writes that Calderon’s apparent self-comparison to staunch U.S. ally Winston Churchill and rumors of U.S. military activities in Mexico are causes of great concern. For Mexico’s La Jornada, columnist Javier Jimenez Espriu writes in part: I’m worried by...

The nation’s economy is stagnant and many think it may tank again. The official high unemployment masks the even higher “unofficial” one most Americans see. The President appears to be out-of-touch with reality and continues to act as a tool of Wall Street. There is low voter approval for the Incumbent and most Democratic policies. With all this news, Republicans should be making plans to take...

Are offers of Western aid to the Arab revolutions a shell game designed to benefit the world’s wealthiest nations at the expense of Arabs demanding freedom and justice? Columnist H. Sulayman of Algeria’s El Khabar writes that the G8 countries are pretending to side with Arab peoples after decades of taking benefit from their oppression. For Algeria’s El Khabar, columnist H. Sulayman writes...

Washington’s decision to impose sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company for doing business with Iran have triggered fury in the Latin American Left. Tomas Borge, the last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandanista National Liberation Front, writes for Aporrea that the sanctions are just an old trick of the ‘Yankee Empire’, and that Venezuela has just as much a right to relations...

Some of the most idyllic and memorable times of my early youth are the days and weeks I spent in the late 1940s with my parents and sister in the Oriente of my native Ecuador. The Oriente is Ecuador’s magnificent jungle region on the East side of the majestic Andes Mountains. It is the beginning of the Amazon rain forest basin — some parts still pristine — and one of the most biologically...

I wrote a TMV post on 4/22/11 “Who Needs an Education Anymore” wherein I questioned the value of a college education in the 21st Century. Many other people have been thinking along the same lines for even longer, and in greater depth and clarity. An excellent post on this topic was published today by long-time blogger Charles Hugh Smith on his very informative and thought-provoking blog “Of...

Today is the 67th anniversary of D-Day. 160,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to fight Nazi Germany on June 6, 1944. Steven Spielberg captured this heroic and scary moment very well in Saving Private Ryan. Today most US experts — with the notable exception of Tom Ricks — do not worry about a war with Germany or a return of militarism and Nazi ideology in Berlin. Instead they are...

Now here’s a creative way to defeat terrorism without violating anyone’s civil liberties. British intelligence has hacked into an al Qaeda website and replaced bomb making instructions with a cupcake recipe. The cupcakes are reportedly favorites of Ellen Degeneres. More here .

Reports out today that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has accepted an offer to travel to Saudi Arabia to obtain ‘medical care’ for injuries sustained in a recent attack. If true this could be a face saving way for him to step down from power as heading to another country for ‘medical treatment’ is often code for such a move. Yemen has been plagued with protestsas part of the Arab...

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s rebuke of Presisdent Obama before a joint session of the U.S. Congress has not only weakened Obama’s hand at home, but has badly damaged his influence among Arabs. For Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, Kharroubi Habib writes that this leaves Palestinians one choice: to press the U.N. when the General Assembly opens in September to recognize a Palestinian...

Have the anti-French headlines in New York’s tabloid press since the arrest of the disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn gone too far? Marie-Christine Tabet of Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien writes that the blood-sport of New York newsgathering is such, that chances are, the ‘French bashing has only just begun.’ For Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien, Marie-Christine Tabet reports on how...

Amid excitement about Anthony Weiner’s Twittering comes a reminder of something less trivial–what Osama bin Laden’s death did not solve for America and the Arab world. “Bin Laden,” Thomas Friedman writes, “really did a number on all of us…the Arab states, America and Israel–all of whom have deeper holes than ever to dig out of thanks to the Bin Laden decade, 2001 to 2011, and all...

I may not agree on a philosophical, emotional, political or economic basis, but as a practical matter, we simply have to eliminate all discretionary domestic spending, and drastically reduce Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. This may lead our nation quickly to a corporate feudalism. But if there are no plausible alternatives to the declining status quo, we might as well embrace dystopia and make the worst...

Can the U.S. Congress be called more hostile toward Palestinians and Arabs than even the Israeli Knesset? According to columnist Hafiz al Barghouty of Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to a joint session of the U.S. Congress should be a lesson to Palestinians and Arabs not to trust the United States. For Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah of the Palestinian Territories, Hafiz al Barghouty...

I get to see Ezekiel Isaac Malekar at least twice a year. A pleasant person wearing a kippah, Malekar is a permanent invitee at many Indian government’s national functions, including the birth and death anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi at the Gandhi Smriti, in the heart of New Delhi, where Gandhi was assassinated in 1948. Sitting next to a Maulvi, a Muslim teacher/scholar, Malekar recites passages from...

Last Memorial Day our nation was in the midst of a bitter debate over the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT); over whether women should serve aboard our nuclear submarines and in combat; over immigration, in particularly whether to provide a path to citizenship to certain undocumented immigrants who have come to our country as children and who go on to serve honorably in our...