When people in other countries quote the Founding Fathers to Americans, they are almost invariably seeking to strike a nerve that they hope will get the United States to change course. Columnist Holger Schmale in this article from of Germany’s Berliner Zeitung asserts to his readers that by seeking the arrest and prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Washington is acting hypocritically and...

The Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2010 Raging Moderate, by Will Durst Please be advised: the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2010 are not to be confused with the Top Ten Legitimate News Stories of 2010. They are as different as lasagna and asphalt. Ear wax and linoleum. A lunch-wagon sink trap and nuclear-lab clean rooms. Toe shoes and track cleats. Christian Science ministers and health insurance seminars....

Jesus told us the meek would inherit the earth. The cynical among us don’t see that happening. Seems like the meek will have a difficult time garnering enough votes to rule or even filibuster. And even if they could filibuster, being meek, they probably won’t. Meek leadership does not appear to be the fruit of democracy. This seems to hold true for capitalism as well. Seldom do meek and CEO go together....

Today, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize – but his chair went empty. Beijing refused to allow him, his wife or any of his relatives to travel to Oslo and accept the award. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, awarding the Prize to Liu Xiaobo is part of a long-running Western conspiracy to obstruct China’s...

The ramifications of the WikiLeaks disclosures continue to ripple around the world. One country that has had to scramble more than most to deal with the fallout from the massive leak of U.S. diplomatic communications is Lebanon. Not only did the cables reveal the Saudis suggesting an armed Arab force to ‘destroy’ Hezbullah, which is well represented in the current Lebanese government, but news...

Four years and 2700 posts ago, I imagined that the 2000 election had turned out differently and offered a tongue-in-cheek critique of “President Gore, Lame Duck.” Now, on the tenth anniversary of the national disaster that gave us George W. Bush, New York Magazine enlists five fantasists, including Glenn Beck, who with the benefit of hindsight posit such lurid developments as the 9/11 destruction...

There is a Mount Everest-sized amount of news, information, and analysis on the Internet about Wikileaks. The release of, to date, 1,269 diplomatic cables out of a total of 251,287 that Wikileaks has in its possession has sparked a furor in the United States and globally — although the tenor of the debate in this country is strikingly different from what it is in many other parts of the world.

What is the long-term significance of the disclosures by WikiLeaks? And how are international journalists coping with interpreting the huge mass of once-declassified material suddenly flung into the public domain? These two articles – one from Germany and the other from France – give a European accounting of the answers. According to the first article headlined WikiLeaks Makes Real a Global Public...

Has China been too restrained and too considerate of its nervous neighbors, by not building an aircraft carrier of its own? According to this article from China’s state-run Global Times, America’s recent military exercises with South Korea near the China coast is all the reason Beijing needs to set aside any misgivings and begin construction. For China’s state-controlled Global Times, Sun...

Between Mark Zuckerberg and Julian Assange, the prophecies in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” are coming to pass long before the year 2540 in which the novel is set. The two have combined to speed up the timetable for the death of privacy reflected in Huxley’s dystopian slogan, “Everyone belongs to everyone else.” Coming from opposite ends of an over-sharing universe, Zuckerberg...

Globalization applies to information as well as corporate CEOs looking for cheap labor. Those high-paid, unionized manufacturing jobs will never again be the ticket to the middle class for unskilled American workers because of global economic competition that is here to stay? Well, the Internet is here to stay, too — and the Internet-fueled phenomenon known as “crowd-sourcing,” or open-source...

Are the people of WikiLeaks just like the neighborhood gossips, and doesn’t the name of their leader Julian Assange sound like a brand of hairspray? Columnist Joao Quadros of Portugal’s Jornal De Negocios takes a humorous and uniquely Portuguese and European look at what, in terms of ink spilled, may be one of the most significant news stories in years. For the Portugal’s Jornal De Negocios,...

I see that the recent episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” stirred up a bit of controversy, along the lines of what I wondered about last week (if not exactly what I was asking about).  My colleague here at The Moderate Voice, Joe Windish, has rounded up some of the commentary. On a more productive and educational bent, though, is the episode of “Mythbusters” tonight, which features an appearance...

Once again defeated Tea Party favorite and GOP Senate candidate for Delaware Christine O’Donnell strikes again – this time comparing the “tragedy” of extending unemployment benefits to Pearl Harbor and the death of Elizabeth Edwards. And of course, she later insisted that isn’t what she meant. O’Donnell is symptomatic of the 21st century’s troubling politico who feels...

UPDATE Tues Dev 7, 2010 2:11 Mountain Time. London judge refuses bail to Assange, saying that he has frail ties to British residency, has much money accessible, and is thereby too easily able to not re-appear in court. Mr. Assange has thus been sent to an undisclosed jail location (as is usual in London) until further hearing in a week or so. His charges were defended by his lawyer, re alledgedly raping a woman...

The reaction of China to the disclosure by WikiLeaks of U.S. diplomatic cables is particularly interesting. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, Beijing suspects that the U.S. may have some kind of ‘tacit understanding’ with WikiLeaks. But even if WikiLeaks developed organically, the editorial says that China is concerned that as a child of the Western-dominated...

It seems my last post on TMV (WikiLeaks: Educating Americans About Open Society) has touched a raw nerve in some. Well that was the exact purpose. My journalistic mission has been to get people out of their comfort zone and provoke them to participate in a spirited no-holds-barred discussion. I try to irritate those who have a habit of trivializing issues I have been writing for more than two decades that...

It’s one of the most fascinating details to emerge from the leak of classified U.S. diplomatic dispatches: Leaders in Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf nations want the United States to stop Iran and its nuclear program, or in the words of Saudi King Abdullah, ‘cut off the head of the snake.’ But as the articles below show, while the two nations may in fact be at loggerheads, they agree...

The WikiLeaks controversy is a field day for cartoonists around the world. Here are a few examples: Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen Manny Francisco, Manila, The Phillippines Christo Komarnitski, Bulgaria

William Kern, my colleague at TMV, quoted a Spanish paper’s headline: “WikiLeaks: The Assault on ‘Big Brother’ Begins (El Pais, Spain). He also mentions another article headlined “Thanks to WikiLeaks’ Disclosure, Classical Diplomacy is Dead.” To the world at large America now, post-United States diplomatic cables leak, appears as a large wild elephant caught in the quagmire...