Burmese leader Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, who has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, could be released tomorrow (Saturday) by Myanmar’s military junta. The Burmese junta says it is preparing for the release of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi after international condemnation (including president Barack Obama’s recent strong remarks) of last weekend’s election and fears that a delay could...

Notable for their expressions of admiration for how the U.S. midterm elections demonstrate the healthy workings of democracy, these two articles from Eastern Europe, one from Poland and the other from Romania, disagree on the staying power and intelligence of the Tea Party platform. According to columnist Marek Magierowski of Poland’s Rceczpospolita, the 2010 midterm election results are a sign that...

In 2010 it is very difficult for me to put words to paper and ideas into digital form as I reflect on the U.S., our past wars, our military, and our veterans. I am not a Veteran. I was born at a time when the vast majority of citizens shunned military service during the decade following the fall of South Vietnam to the North in 1975. My only direct connection to the U.S. Military is that my father served in...

For those who haven’t heard, former Pakistan president/dictator and retired general, Pervez Musharraf, has just launched his own political party and wants his old job back. But if this editorial from Pakistan’s Frontier post is anything to go by, he has precious little chance of winning an election. The newspaper rips him for According to the editorial, his coddling of ‘cowardly’ U.S.-led...

I have, on more than one occasion, expressed my admiration for the work of James Travers. On this Remembrance Day, he wrote of his father who “learned to be a soldier at Kingston’s Royal Military College” and his uncle who “died soon after wearing pilot’s wings for the first time.” They would, he wrote, not recognize the Canada of 2010. “They wouldn’t understand...

That’s Marcy Wheeler, at Firedoglake, commenting on Tuesday’s announcement by the Justice Department that the federal prosecutor assigned to investigate the destruction of C.I.A. videotapes showing two high-level detainees being tortured during hours of interrogation in a secret C.I.A. facility in Thailand will not file criminal charges against C.I.A. officials responsible for the destruction of...

From Noah Shachtman, at Wired‘s Danger Room blog:

Author’s Note: I wrote and posted this piece yesterday, but the Community Boulevard forum software had the title as a generic topic number, and placed it on the second screen of posts even right after it was published. I don’t claim to understand why the software does so many weird things so much of the time (like posting blog posts in duplicate, which has happened to mine several times), but I don’t...

Can the Federal Reserve revive the U.S. economy with a second round of ‘quantitative easing’, also known as QEII? In essence, this means injecting $600 billion that never existed before into the U.S. and global economy in $75 billion monthly increments. Reflecting the growing interconnectedness of the global economy, two of the articles we’ve posted on QEII demonstrate growing international...

One meets some of the most interesting, some of the most endearing people sometimes by pure chance. So it happened that I met an unassuming young lady, a veteran, about two years ago. She had been an Air Force medic during Operation Southern Watch in 1999. She is a hero who was awarded the Airman’s Medal, one of the highest military decorations for heroism involving risk of life. I wrote about her shortly...

Yesterday, 72 years ago, the Holocaust was ushered in by the two nights of organized rioting against Jews called Kristallnacht (night of broken glass). One of Michael Stickings’ co-bloggers at The Reaction reminds us that the significance of Kristallnacht was that it moved Hitler’s Germany from the first stage of the Holocaust — legislated disenfranchisement and persecution of the German Jewish...

Even as India basks in the respect showered on it as a player on the global stage by President Barack Obama, a wave of despondency is rising among almost all sections of the people at the rampant corruption corroding its politicians, bureaucrats and media. Recent revelations indicate misappropriation of nearly $900 million in various scams orchestrated by senior politicians, ministers and top officials. The...

One of my first blog posts was Oil, Half Way To Empty.  When I wrote that post over six years ago there was very little Peak Oil discussion in the media or the blogosphere.  In that post I quoted James Howard Kunstler: “The whole Archer Daniels Midland model of turning oil into corn into Taco Bell—that whole complex, that system, is really going to be over,” says Kuntsler. “We’re...

In the last 24 hours, the state-run newspapers in China emitted two cold blasts directed at the United States. One relates to President Obama’s trip to India, and the other the U.S. midterm elections Although much of the attention surrounding President Obama’s trip to India focused on Pakistan’s reaction, the other elephant in the Indo-Asian room has also been watching carefully. Columnist...

President Barack Obama’s visit to India has set the foundations for a deep and broad partnership that will create a new powerbase in Asia alongside China if things go as planned. I am currently in Delhi for the visit and can report a new openness and realism in the bilateral dialogue taking the relationship to a more robust level. The basic and urgent needs of most Indians are “bijli, sarak, pani”, meaning...

Our ’round the world survey of global reaction to the new U.S. political landscape continues with this article from Russia’s Gazeta. Columnist Fyodor Lukyanov offers a detailed analysis of why such things as the Tea Party and wild swings in the political climate occur in the United States – and what the foreign policy ramifications might be, particularly for Russia and the New Start treaty...

Members of Indian Parliament listened mesmerized as US president Barack Obama today transformed himself from being a mere salesman-in-chief of America to a visionary world leader who aspired to live up to the great ideals that had inspired Indian and US founding fathers in laying the foundations of the two democratic republics. (Of course, he did also make major policy commitments, such as US support for India’s...

As we’ve seen, Europe’s reaction to the Tea Party, with the exception of Spain and some in Great Britain, has been tepid at best. Right up until now, Obama reigns supreme and as far as Europeans are concerned, is one of the most popular leaders in the world. Which is why, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung columnist Christian Wernicke, the midterm election results have thrown most of Europe for...

So what’s the view of Beijing to the recent 2010 midterms? Not only do the U.S. elections appear unlikely to encourage China to set aside dictatorship for pluralism, according to this article by Mao Yingying for China’s state-run Beijing Times, America itself would be better off reconsidering how its ‘so-called democracy’ should run. For the Beijing Times, Mao Yingying writes in part: Americans...

Does the result of the midterm elections threaten the very future of the United States? Correspondent Martin Kilian of Germany’s Tages Anzeiger outlines for readers his concern that the apparent gridlock in the American system could threaten not only America’s future – but the world. For the Tages Anzeiger, Martin Kilian writes in part: Instead of paving the way for a long overdue rehabilitation...

One of the highlights of President Barack Obama’s visit to Mumbai was a visit to St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, founded by German Jesuits in 1869. Obama seemed so much at ease with the students, and so communicative, that one wonders whether he should have been a professor or a diplomat instead of being a politician/president, a task some say he should have perhaps left to Ms Hillary Clinton!!! India’s...

Turkey is a a crossroads. Theodore Couloumbis, Bill Ahlstrom and Gary Weaver, a post on RealClearPolitics take a look at a country that seems to be on the ascent: Turkey is misunderstood by most people in Europe and the U.S. – not the least because Turks themselves comfortably call their country European, Eurasian, Balkan, Mediterranean and Near Eastern, and this very modern, actively commercial, long-time...

Kanchan Gupta, a well-known Indian journalist & writer, begins an article in his blog by quoting a friend: “There was a time when Indian Prime Ministers used to visit the US looking for food to feed hungry Indians. Now US Presidents visit India looking for jobs for Americans. “To Mr Obama’s credit, as also to his advisers’, no false claims of furthering ‘strategic relations’ have been...

On reaching India, while US president Barack Obama virtually played salesman-in-chief for American companies/business, his wife Michelle Obama let her hair down and kicked off her shoes to play hopscotch, and sang and danced with children in Mumbai. The Indian media gave her as much publicity as her famous husband. The Indian Express reported: “It’s not everyday that a First Lady takes off her shoes...

It is ironic that US President Barack Obama will today stay in the same hotel in Mumbai which was one of the targets scouted by American spy David Headley for the bloody Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, better known as India’s 26/11. According to Reuters: “Access to David Headley, who is in custody in the United States, and intelligence linked to his visits to India have emerged as thorny security...