It is indeed a great irony: Two days before the massive 9.0 earthquake struck Japan, one of FEMA’s senior officials during Hurricane Katrina was in Japan to warn of the danger of careless and uncoordinated disaster response planning. According to this article from Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, his warnings seem to have fallen of deaf ears. For Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, reporter Fumi Igarashi writes...

Guest post by Dmitry Gorenburg Dmitry Gorenburg is a senior analyst at CNA‘s Center for Strategic Studies, the editor of the journal Russian Politics & Law, and an associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. From 2005 to 2010, he served as Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). He has taught in the Department...

Is his legal (and political) day of reckoning at hand? An ailing ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons have been detained as officials begin to investigate the government violence against demonstrators that took place when Mubarak was President. Ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s health deteriorated on Wednesday, state media said, hours after he and his two sons were placed under 15-day...

As many of the readers of TMV may not know, I’ve been studying for a masters in political communications and recently have been focusing on the perceived inevitability of America’s decline on the international stage and the inevitability of China’s, India’s, Brazil’s and Russia’s rise and I have come to an interesting conclusion – things are not as inevitable as they seem. So, a little over 30...

While the American new and old media focus on domestic politics and news, a tragedy has been unfolding in the Ivory Coast — where death and destruction linger: Some more background: And a bit more:

Is it time for all sane people to conclude that the “war on drugs” is a failed, self-destructive enterprise? With Mexico descending into drug-fueled anarchy, columnist Jorge Carrillo Olea of Mexico’s La Jornada writes that it’s time for the Mexican people to rise up and reject U.S. involvement, President Calderon, and the notion that drugs can be eradicated by military force. With no...

Could it be that the escalating violence in Mexico is a sign of ‘success’ for that nation’s ongoing war on drugs? According to this incredulous editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada, the fact that U.S. officials have been making such a claim is yet more evidence that the U.S. is calling the shots in that war, and to admit how badly things are going would be to show the failure of its own...

Make room in your lexicon for yet another way to refer to neoconservatives. If Pakistan had prosecuted Raymond Davis for murder, would that have given American ‘Indo-Zionists’, aka/neocons, just the excuse they needed to “devastate Pakistan” the way they did Iraq? For the Pak Tribune, columnist Usman Khalid writes that it was better to let Pakistani intelligence quietly expel U.S. clandestine...

Over 250 legal professionals have signed an open letter protesting the “degrading and inhumane” treatment to which Pfc. Bradley Manning has been subjected for the past year. Titled “Private Manning’s Humiliation,” the letter is published in the New York Review of Books. I think it’s important enough to quote here in full:

I’ll probably regret wading into this morass but since my other post subjects are still being developed, I’ll put my useless two cents into this bizarre debate that still obsesses far too many Americans. Where was Barak H. Obama born? These musings were prompted by finding a copy of my birth certificate indicating that I born in New York City at Colombia Presbyterian Hospital in the Borough of Manhattan....

There are many terrifying videos of the Tsumani, but CNN’s Don Lemon (who is a younger anchor admirably of the serious “old school” of television anchors) presents a new video that puts the earthquake that took place a month ago in even more personal terms. Some people see the beginnings of the tsunami — and begin to run for their lives.

The British press are in an uproar this weekend over the just-won’t-die story about how News International (the U.K. subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corporation, hereafter referenced as NewsCorp) “journalists” at News of the World (NotW) “hack[ed] into the mobile phone records of celebrities and public figures.” It should be news when journalists are arrested for privacy violations. In...

Is Washington giving Saudi Arabia and Bahrain a free pass when it comes to democratic reform? According to this article by Demétrio Magnoli for Brazil’s Estadao, the Obama Administration will have to move beyond pressuring countries like Syria and move on to its Persian Gulf allies if it wants to be seen as putting its values before its interests. For Estadao, Demétrio Magnoli writes in part: The direction...

Having toppled an obdurate dictator in just 18 days of determined protest, the people of Egypt are justifiably proud of what they have accomplished. But as proud as they are, columnist Hamad Hassan of Egypt’s Al Messa newspaper expresses astonishment that people in places like Madison Wisconsin have drawn strength and inspiration from their history-making stand in Tahrir Square. For Al Messa, columnist...

Is the U.S. talking out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to Internet freedom? Continuing with China’s online counter-offensive, this article from state-run People’s Daily asserts that Pentagon plans for software to allow Defense Department personnel to assume multiple identities online for the purpose of planting pro-U.S. propaganda again demonstrates to the world that America cannot be...

SCAPEGOATS & THE BLAME GAME Human beings need someone or something to blame when things go wrong. This is probably part of our genetic code. It doesn’t even matter if the person or thing identified as the scapegoat had anything whatsoever to do with the actual mishap or disaster. Basic logic and scientific or legal causation are simply unimportant when compared to the emotional satisfaction of laying...

In an effort to ‘retrospectively legitimize’ their own policies, are neoconservatives wrongly comparing the Libya campaign to the Iraq War? Columnist Liuis Bassets of Spain’s El Pais writes that Spain’s former president and Bush ally José María Aznar is wrong – as are the rest of the neocons – to see Obama’s policies as some form of approval. For Spain’s El...

More than thirty-five year ago, in the summer of 1974, I was finishing a Masters degree at the University of North Carolina. I lived in a student residence — a high rise affair — where, every morning, I could walk out on my balcony and look down at a parking lot whose cars bore licence plates from all over the United States. There was always one car which caught my eye. It was a green Ford from...

Some of the ancient Greek philosophers stressed moderation in all things. That entails avoiding extremes in any direction in how we think, speak, act, believe and organize our lives and societies. It is a simple call for balance, flexibility, openness to various ideas, fidelity to all the facts, an honest effort to find the truth, and a good-faith effort to negotiate reasonable compromises. It is a plea for...

Who is more to blame for the murder of 10 U.N. workers killed after U.S. Pastor Terry Jones burned a Quran: The people who committed the murders or Terry Jones himself? For Poland’s Rzeczpospolita, columnist Jerzy Haszczynski expresses the view that what the world needs most is for Muslims to condemn the criminal behavior of people who killed innocents for the misbehavior of one U.S. pastor. For Rzeczpospolita,...

Is this all they are demanding? Shutting down the Federal government over less than $50 billion dollars when projected annual deficits are $1.5 trillion as far as the eye can see? The wimps haven’t even completely axed Amtrak, mass transit and High Speed Rail. They’re still arguing about the current fiscal year from October 2010 thru September 2011. Just wait till they debate raising the total federal...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Some things are so far out, it’s hard to believe they’re true. Like when a broadcaster in one of the most open, liberal countries in the world bans episodes of a TV show like The Simpsons as a public safety measure. But according to an incredulous Patrick Etschmayer, Swiss Radio and Television [SRF] has done precisely that. For Switzerland’s News, Patrick Etschmayer writes in part: After...

I originally predicted that President Obama would be a one-term Chief Executive in a TMV post dated 11/8/10 that was picked up by a number of prominent blog sites. I even started questioning his chances of re-election in other earlier 2010 TMV posts. Today respected long-time independent blogger Charles Hugh Smith made the same prediction on his excellent political/economic/social blog called Of Two Minds...

It increasingly looks like the rug is being pulled tug by tug from under European and American hopes that Muammar Gadaffi’s main supporters might abandon him to avoid further punishment from US and NATO warplanes and naval missiles. The risk has increased that Libya may turn into a new quagmire for the US because it is the pivotal power in that alliance. Of course, predictions deserve large pinches of salt...