You can’t have a viable Palestinian state with the two major Palestinian political factions at each other’s throats. So my initial reaction to this is that it’s good news:

American media, by and large, seems to be doing a great injustice to the American people by keeping them in the dark about the looming crisis in Afghanistan. The US administration is refusing to admit major reversals although there has been a daring jail break by 500 Taliban militants, and now the killing of 8 NATO soldiers (see here). Barack Obama seems to have finally abandoned the slogan for “CHANGE”...

In Egypt, pro-democracy protests led to the forced resignation of the president, who now faces criminal charges as the Army leads an interim government. In Syria, the president had long promised reforms but when they did not come brutally cracked down on demonstrators when they took to the streets. From the monolithic American view, Egypt and Syria would not appear to be especially different countries,...

Why we hesr so little about Japan these days, from On The Media: BROOKE GLADSTONE: Steve Coll covered his fair share of natural disaster and war in his decades as foreign correspondent at The Washington Post, and he found that there is a template for many stories, no matter how harrowing. In his experience, earthquake and disaster coverage, in general, follow a 12-day editorial cycle. He witnessed it while covering...

If a new Angus Reid Poll is an accurate snapshot of where the country is today, then we are — as the first George Bush used to say — “in deep doo-doo.” According to the poll, the majority of Canadians believe that “the worst are full of passionate intensity,” while “the best lack all conviction.” Jaideep Mukerji, the vice president of Angus Reid, summarized the...

There might be an explanation for our society’s massive disinterest in sanely talking about – yet alone tackling – any and all major issues. Our society is stuck on a broken status quo that needs a complete overhaul but too many of us are afraid of change. Thus a small minority among us continues their incredibly avaricious, greedy, nihilistic, out-in-the open fraudulent practices to amass more and...

Will the free trade deal recently agreed to by the Colombia and the White House actually hurt Colombia? According to this roundup of Colombian reaction by columnist Antonio Caballero of Semana, some Colombians sense a ‘whiff of imperialism’ in concessions that force Colombia to protect trade unionists, which will diminish the one real trade advantage Colombia has – cheap labor. For Semana,...

For those of us who have written extensively about the so-called War on Terror and its demented bastard child, the Bush Torture Regime, the latest revelations about the detainees at Guantánamo Bay break little new ground but are a reminder that while things have gotten better under the Obama administration, the president has not broken completely with the past despite campaign promises to the contrary. ...

It’s hard to put into words the reaction to seeing a video that shows a young boy with a horrorific head wound — from which he will never recover, let alone survive. But that’s just part of what is now going on in Syria as the regime bloodly clamps down. Go to the link HERE to see that video and others.

The Big Historical Event: Syria’s Biggest Crisis in 40 Years by Barry Rubin Yesterday Syria entered its biggest internal crisis since 1970. The regime has come out to crush the insurrection. Either it will succeed by killing many people or the insurrection will build into a real potential revolution. And the Western states are doing…precisely zero. One Syrian expert friend responded: “Less...

Has Standard & Poor’s opened the floodgates for further criticism of America’s credit worthiness? Writing for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza Business, analyst Alfred Adamiec points out that while downgrading the outlook for U.S. debt is closer to reflecting reality, reticence to actually downgrade U.S. debt shows that the world has yet to emerge from the financial crisis. For Gazeta Wyborcza...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post (Pulitzer Prize Winner) This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Somehow we got this thing wrong. When I was studying history, the British controlled one-quarter of the world’s land mass and its people, making them rich and powerful. Less than a century later, the U.S. is fighting in the Middle East with troops all over Europe and Asia in occupations that are draining trillions from our economy. How did we get into such a dyslexic version of empire and how long can...

Is Washington applying double standards when involving itself in the ever-growing number of Arab uprisings? Is it too involved or not involved enough? It’s a maddening foreign policy conundrum if there ever was one. Asserting that helping Syria’s opposition topple their regime is in keeping with America’s heritage, Dr. Abdul Rahman Mubarak al-Dusari, for Kuwait’s Al-Seyassah, writes...

In an increasingly global economy that permits multinational private enterprises to pit near slaves against working people with the full support and acquiescence of most sovereign governments, who do you think is going to win? It has become a meaningless mantra and a silly shibboleth to say we need better educated workers in order for Americans to compete globally. It’s Pure Bullshit. Despite endless campaign...

Was the Standard & Poor’s warning about the reliability of U.S. debt just the medicine American lawmakers needed. According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, S&P’s warning was just what the money doctor ordered. The Financial Times Deutschland editorial says in part: “The signal is a dramatic one: Standard & Poor’s is the first major credit...

I have consistently supported the enforcement of the UN-established no-fly zone in Libya and have defended it against those who would try to compare it to the disaster that was the invasion and occupation of Iraq—as I did here. At times, things have not gone too well, and even those who supported the enforcement have begun to waver. There has just been an important announcement regarding the coalition...

Is Mexico, in the words of La Jornada columnist Jorge Camil, “witnessing the beginning of a dangerous expansion of U.S. military activity in Mexico and Central America”? In this column, Camil chastises Mexico’s Senate for allowing unmanned U.S. drone flights and warns readers that their use signals that Mexico is rapidly losing control of its territory to the U.S. and the drug cartels. For...

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney in Paris, France. ********** It’s test-time. The durability of an unpopular dictator, Arab or otherwise, has been called into question since January. Fair enough. But each bud of the Arab Spring has taught us another thing or two. Tunisia taught us that an aura of inevitability bolstered by rhetoric from abroad could do little...

Is it time for the U.S. to drop its geostrategic calculations and back Bahrainis in their quest for freedom? For Sotal Iraq, columnist Hassan al-Ansaari honors democracy activist Maryam Alkhawaja for challenging Hillary Clinton and writes that it is time for the Obama Administration to drop its double standards and stand by the people of Bahrain. For Sotal Iraq (the Voice of Iraq), Hassan al-Ansaari writes...

What a relief that Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer vetoed two meritless Bills from the Legislature ostensibly controlled by an insane cabal of Republicans, Tea-Partiers and worshippers of perpetual tax-cutting guru Grover Norquist. The two proposed measures were the new strict requirements for Presidential candidates to get on the Arizona Ballot (The “Birther” Bill) and the proposal to permit...

Dan Leger, in the Chronicle Herald, writes that the real issue behind Canada’s election has been obscured: What’s the great issue of the 2011 election? Certainly leadership, platforms and competing visions of Canada are in play. But something else is going on. This campaign has become a battle for legitimacy. It has gone deep and turned dark, into a place where the parties now claim that electing their...

As a country with its own history of opposing Western imperialism, is there a kind of kinship between China and Qaddafi’s Libya? Reporting from Libya, correspondent Gu Di of China’s state-controlled Huanqiu advises the country about how to deal with the West going forward, and describes Qaddafi’s situation as a cautionary tale for other leaders: Don’t assume that making amends with...

For those seeking to understand the growing suspicion in Mexico that the “drug war” is being used as a pretext for U.S. intervention if not outright invasion, this article by Gilberto Lopez y Rivas of Mexico’s La Jornada will undoubtedly prove illuminating. This is history from a Mexican point of view – and it is anything but flattering to the the United States. For La Jornada, Gilberto...

The Standard & Poor (S&P) cautious downgrade of US debt may cascade into real peril if world trade challenges add to the troubles policymakers already face in cutting the devastating budget deficit and national debt. In principle, US policymakers have up to 2013 to find credible bipartisan ways to reduce the deficit. But to get there they will also have to break the budget deadlock and create a path...