Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro has done something no one else has: He has obtained the first convictions involving the CIA practice of ‘rendition.’ For those interested in reading the Italian coverage of yesterday’s first ever convictions for the U.S. government’s practice of ‘renditioning,’ this is the write-thru from the Corriere Della Sera, which includes a number of...

It is important we do our best to catalogue moments of joy.  We must write joy down and  proclaim joy to those who will listen.  We need records of joy, monuments of joy, places of joy we can revisit.  We must contend for joy, or the bitter water will overwhelm us all. Last night my two little boys turned joy into a dance.  Nathaneal is seven and Samuel is three.  Each boy has his own personality.  They...

Pro-regime demonstrators lampoon President Obama at the site of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the 30th anniversary of the storming of the facility. Continuing with our coverage of the 30th anniversary of the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran, this editorial from the state-run Web site of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting responds to the question of why it occurred. Laying out it’s position...

Pakistan, rightly or wrongly, is generally described as an “exporter” of terrorism. Now it is trying to export something different – its famous Murree beer produced at the nearly 150-year-old Murree brewery, Pakistan’s sole producer of beer. “Understandably, making beer and whiskey in a Muslim country, where 97 per cent of the population is officially banned from enjoying your...

Two of the 53 American Embassy workers being held hostage with the approval of the Iranian regime, after the facility was stormed on November 4, 1979. Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was stormed by followers of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It is a day that the current regime commemorates every year as a celebration of victory over what the leaders of the country like to call...

Eric Roux, a ‘legal representative’ of the Church of Scientology in France, seems relieved after the Criminal Court of Paris returned a verdict of fraud against the church – without imposing dissolution. Days ago, a long-awaited verdict was handed down in the French criminal trial of the Church of Scientology. In the opinion of German columnist Dietrich Alexander of the newspaper Die Welt,...

Coming from a state-controlled mouthpiece of Muammar Gaddafi’s despotic regime, some may scoff at this article calling for President Bush to be brought before the International Criminal Court and charged with war crimes. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the sentiments expressed by OEA Libya’s Ali Mar’i al-Ahad are by no means out of the norm in the Muslim world and beyond. For OEA...

Can Russia break the strongman habit? Is Russia ready for Western-Style democracy – which includes true pluralism and checks on the executive? It’s a debate that’s been going on since the fall of the Berlin Wall. This article from Izvestia - once the official mouthpiece of the Soviet government – openly, unapologetically and arrestingly admits that the answer is no. Nor does it wish to...

The specific problems we face cannot be solved using the same patterns of thought that were used to create them. -Albert Einstein — Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice. — Technorati : Albert Einstein, quotes Del.icio.us : Albert Einstein, quotes Zooomr : Albert Einstein, quotes Flickr : Albert Einstein, quotes

It’s been a little while since we’ve tried this One of the hardest things is to determine your own political position because it is only natural to assume you are the mainstream/center and everyone else should be left or right of you. There are a number of political surveys out there, and they too have some bias, but this one is pretty good at offering evaluation, and if anything it gives us an idea...

U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones faces Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Kremlin, Oct. 29. The American right will no doubt have a field day with this article from Russia’s leading business daily, Kommersant. According the Kommersant’s Vladimir Solovyev, the White House has made clear that it is eager to see the START III nuclear reduction treaty signed before President Obama...

Moving on to another French view of the Afghan conflict, Laurent Joffrin of the newspaper Liberation suggests that however bad the situation may be, the West in the person of President Barack Obama should not pull out of Afghanistan – yet. For Liberation, Laurent Joffrin writes in part: “A second round in the presidential election has now been scheduled. The outlines of a state, painfully, are...

Is it a fact that President Obama is ‘dithering’ – as former VP Cheney has said – over a decision on Iraq? In his editorial for Le Figaro yesterday, influential French columnist Pierre Rousselin seemed to agree, if not in a much more sympathetic fashion than Mr. Cheney. For Le Figaro, Pierre Rousselin writes in part: “From theory to practice, Obama is having a decidedly hard time...

Every time I think there are limits to stupidity, I discover there apparently are not. From CNN.com: Police received a call Friday night that two men with hooded sweatshirts and painted faces had tried to break into a man’s home in Carroll, Iowa. When police stopped a vehicle matching the caller’s description blocks away, they were stunned by the men’s disguises. There were no ski masks or...

Message to America: A bewildered man emerges Wednesday from a restaurant in Peshawar, Pakistan, to a scene of utter devastation. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed at least 107. If this editorial from Pakistan’s The Nation is anything to go by, Hillary Clinton’s “hearts and minds” visit to Pakistan is, as the headline says, “falling flat”...

In the amusing if likely to be overturned category…. It seems that the company is being sued by Charles Joyce and James Voigt who claimed that the company had used information they supplied as a basis for the Aquafina bottle water product. The lawsuit was filed in April but according to Pepsi they did not get notice until September. A secretary says she set aside the letter because she was getting ready...

If there was ever any doubt why California is known as la la land, I offer these stories ripped off the wires. 1) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was heckled recently when he crashed a Democratic Party fund raiser, vetoed a bill authored by one of his hecklers and despite the fact the Legislature approved the measure unanimously. Here’s the veto message. Now follow the first letter in the left...

Amid the torrent of news, one might have missed one of the largest drug busts in history just days ago – against La Familia – Mexico’s most deadly narco-trafficking mafia group. Confiscated by over 3,000 agents from emergency and security services in 19 states were 1,100 pounds of marijuana, 770 pounds of methamphetamine, 138 pounds of cocaine, $3.4 million, 144 weapons of various calibers,...

Just a couple of stories that came across my desk that I thought were interesting. In Northern California near the town of Fort Bragg a dead blue whale has come ashore. Sadly it appears that the noble creature was struck by a ship that was mapping the ocean floor. It does not appear that the ship was to blame, the odds of such a collision happening are pretty small and it is sadly just something that happens....

It was a busy weekend and I’d like to give people at the Moderate Voice a heads up on some of what we’ve been covering. From Pakistan’s The Nation Newspaper, the editorial headlined Hillary Clinton Should Mind Her Own Media! attacks the secretary of state for criticizing Pakistan’s media coverage of the huge U.S. aid bill to that nation. Then for Pakistan’s Pak Tribune in an...

The wages of sin are unreported. -Unknown — Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice. — Technorati : quotes Del.icio.us : quotes Zooomr : quotes Flickr : quotes

The newest critique against the Federal Government limiting executive salaries in companies that it has essentially saved from liquidation or in which it holds a major ownership interest, is that it will cause a brain drain of the best people to other companies. I have one response to such a meritless argument: Bullshit. Some of our private sector oligarchs are so narcissistic, greedy and arrogant that they...

It would appear from this angry article in Iran’s rigidly state-controlled Kayhan newspaper, that when it suits its own interests, the leadership in Tehran condones listening to the music of the Rolling Stones. With allusions to the all-seeing-eye of the Freemasons and a section on how Americans abuse women, this is the regime’s latest verbal assault on the United States. The author, Kian Mokhtari,...

The production of a Hollywood film on the romance between Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British viceroy of India, has been temporarily halted. The Indian government wants an assurance that the movie, Indian Summer, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant, would not contain physically intimate scenes. (Nehru’s name was also romantically...

Mural to the dead: Revolutionary Guard members look at pictures of commanders and colleagues killed in Sunday’s suicide bombing. Who is responsible for Monday’s devastating attack on members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard? According to Iran and others, the U.S. and Britain are responsible, since they back the Sunni group that has claimed responsibility and is fighting for an independent...