With the WikiLeaks release of another data bomb of classified U.S. files, this one about Guantanamo, allies and adversaries alike are expressing shock at President Obama’s failure to close the facility. This editorial from Spain’s El Pais expresses dismay at what it regards as his betrayal of all those around the world who supported his election. The editorial from El Pais says in part: These reports...

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”...

Polls in the Canadian elections show the NDP surging to an unexpected 2nd place finish with Conservatives in 1st place, Liberals in 3rd. If true this would likely mean a coalition government with the NDP and Liberals and as leader of the bigger party NDP leader Jack Layton would be in position to become the first NDP Prime Minister. It would also mean a sharp leftward turn for Canada, as the NDP is rather liberal...

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,...

Several sources are reporting that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will attend her husband’s Endeavour space shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral on Friday—a launch that President Obama and the first family are also expected to attend. This would be the first time that Giffords is allowed to travel since she was flown from Tucson to Houston more than three months ago to recover from her injuries sustained in Tucson. An...

There’s been a lot of speculation, tidbits and just plain guessing about the condition of Arizona Rep. Gabriella Giffords, who was shot in January. And now the Arizona Republic, in an extensive report, details exactly where she is and isn’t. It is progress — and she has a way to go. Here’s some of the beginning of the article: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is left-handed now. Her handwriting...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This editorial from Brazil’s O Globo demonstrates again how important American economic soundness and foreign policy is to the rest of the world. Commenting on foreign affairs and the spectacle now taking place in Washington over the budget, O Globo takes a look at what it will take for President Obama to win in 2012, and suggests that if his more multilateral foreign policy proves a failure, a return...

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...

Frank Buckles, the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I — of nearly 5 million Americans who served during that war — died last month at age 110. Buckles, who served in England and France, was a member of a steadily aging and shrinking group of heroes from our “early” major wars — where I am also including World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War — the Veterans...

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...

It seems that Paul Ryan’s proposal to cut the deficit by privatizing Medicare and eliminating Medicaid doesn’t sit too well with his constituents. Obviously, Ryan isn’t overly concerned by that. And why should he be? He’s a monopoly in his district:

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....