A missing chapter in the history of U.S. military aviation On the eve of this most recent Veterans Day, I had the privilege of accompanying World War II veteran John Tschirhart to a reception hosted by the Texas Veterans Land Board at the Capitol Visitors Center, in Austin, Texas. Tschirhart, a B-17 bombardier with 35 bombing missions over Nazi occupied Europe under his belt, is now 91 and every time I hear...

Newt Gingrich’s comment that Palestinians are an ‘invented people’ is proving to be one of the most globally devisive of the 2012 campaign season – particularly in the Muslim world and especially among Palestinians. For Samidoon in the Palestinian Territories, columnist Abd Al Bari Atwan expresses the frustration felt among Palestinians over the wider meaning of Gingrich’s comment,...

Not surprisingly, Arabs aren’t taking too kindly to Newt Gingrich’s recent comment that the Palestinians are an ‘invented people’ seeking little more than the destruction of Israel. For Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, K. Selim writes that if Gingrich makes his way into the White House, at least Arabs will be able to stop pretending that there is any hope of Washington being a...

Saudi officials have executed a woman for practicing witchcraft. According to this post it seems that they have a system for finding witches.

Are the American-based credit rating agencies in cahootz with the U.S. government? Columnist Anna Szabó of Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet Konyvek sees a war on Europe and specifically Hungary in the latest credit rating downgrades by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, and exorts Europeans to create their own credit rating agency that would be independent of U.S. influence and offer more accurate...

Has the very foundation of modern democracy been superseded without anyone noticing? Columnist Nicolas Demorand of France’s Liberation warns that democratic politicians have a new master – and it isn’t the constitution or the voter. For Liberation, Nicolas Demorand starts out this way: Executive, legislative, judiciary: political philosophy teaches that a democratic state is based on the...

Will the newly-launched Community of Latin American and Caribbean States end up displacing the Washington-based Organization of American States, as Venezuela President Hugo Chavez hopes, or will it fizzle out as so many previous attempts at Latin American unification have done? Columnist Nelson Ortega from Venezuela’s Aporrea is certain that the formation of CELAC is the culmination of Simon Bolivar’s...

Are the once all-powerful credit-rating agencies, the most important of which are American – becoming irrelevant to the markets and those who invest in them? According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, despite the fact that Standard and Poor’s threatened to downgrade eurozone debt last week, European markets have hardly moved. The editorial board of the Financial...

Could it be that part of America’s plan for the Iraqi invasion was to undermine the Iraqi family by luring women and girls to work for the occupation? For Oman’s Al Watan in an article reminiscent of the type of content we published at the height of the war, columnist Walid Al Zubaydi writes that the way U.S. immigration officers insult Iraqis granted asylum in the U.S. is a consequence of the...

Does the global “Occupy” movement reflect the very best of Western dedication to social and economic justice – or is it just a craven reflection of a civilization in moral decline? Columnist Iulian Leca of Romania’s Voxpublica writes that juxtaposing the mad rush for Black Friday shopping bargains against images of the protests exposes the ‘Occupiers’ as no better than the...

Will the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States, the new organization that pointedly excludes the U.S. and Canada, prove to be more than a footnote of history? This news item from Venezuela’s El Universal, the first of a series of CELAC articles we are working on, covers the opening session of the event, which featured a speech by Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. Chavez implored his guests...

Early exit polling from Russian parliamentary elections suggests that Russian President to Be Putin and his United Russia political party will win far fewer seats than they have in previous elections. In previous votes United Russia had routinely won a 2/3rds supermajority which allowed Putin to basically govern by decree. The returns this time suggest that United Russian may not even win a simple majority in...

Calls for the legalization of drugs are coming from the strangest places these days – like from the president of the world’s leading cocaine exporter. Columnist Antonio Caballero of Colombia’s Semana writes that while he may be ‘the most submissive servant of the United States among world leaders,’ Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has done something not even Washington’s...

As the global financial crisis has worsened, Europeans could only look on with envy as the United States continued to issue debt and successfully sell it – and at amazingly low interest rates. That’s because America has a central bank empowered to be the ‘lender of last resort,’ which means that if private investors don’t buy U.S. Treasury Bonds, the FED will. According to Ulrike...

Is Iraq in for a re-eruption of the kind of ethnic and religious strife it experienced during the height of the U.S. occupation? For Iraq’s Al Iraq News, Dr. Fadhil Al Badrani warns his countrymen that unless Iraqi leaders ‘review their political inclinations and renounce their differences,’ those fearing a U.S. pullout – and those celebrating it – will end up as ‘wood’...

With the world looking to Berlin to save the euro, Germans may be reevaluating their decades of nearly constant criticism of the way the United States wields its influence. Die Welt columnist Clemens Wergin warns his readers not to expect gratitude from Europeans for saving the common currency, and lays bare the irony of Europe’s growing need for German help – and its fear of German power. For...

BEIJING — Even the briefest acquaintance with this smoggy, sprawling capital is basis enough to conclude that much of the campaign rhetoric we’re hearing about China is unrealistic, dishonest or just dumb. This is my first visit to China, and I plan to spend the next few columns reporting what I see and learn. I spent enough years as a foreign correspondent to know how tricky first impressions...

WASHINGTON – Any time the Obama administration touches issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, it seems to get itself caught in a rhetorical and moral crossfire that leaves all involved wounded and angry. This is what’s happening in the battle over how contraception should be covered under the new health care law. Partly because it mishandled the issue at the outset, the Obama team seems...

The failure of the deficit reduction supercommittee — so fundamental that the panel could not even agree on what should be in play let alone why it failed — was foretold. It was a bi-partisan failure in every sense, although much of the blame goes to Republicans, five of six whom would not consider tax hikes for the wealthiest Americans and instead demanded tax cuts for them. In the end, the Democratic...

Is NATO pondering an Arab-backed, Libya-like invasion of Syria? Are Israel and the West planning to strike Iran’s nuclear program? Columnist Mohamed Kawash of Jordan’s Al-Arab Al-Yawm writes that the Arab street has a sinking feeling that history is about to repeat itself. For Jordan’s Al-Arab Al-Yawm, Mohamed Kawash writes in part: How similar today is to yesterday. History is repeating itself....

Has Washington intentionally set things up so that Iraq will have no choice but to allow U.S. forces to remain in the country past 2011? According to Sotal Iraq columnist Qasim Al-Kafaji, the U.S. has no intention of pulling out, which explains its 16,000 ‘diplomats’ at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and its failure to fully prepare Iraqis to take contol of their own territory. For Sotal Iraq/aka...

For several years now, Greece has been presenting on a global stage, a never-ending “Waiting For Godot” comic-tragedy in which there is constant worldwide audience participation despite a complete lack of plot, or any ideas on how to end this story. A Greek default on its international debts may not bring down the global financial system, but it regularly paralyzes governments, bondholders, and stock markets...

this from the South Bend Trib. the only newspaper within a many mile area from my small hometown population 600. Harry Houdini was like a folk hero where I grew up… and every year on Halloween, people waited til near midnight to tell the story, not of his life… but of his life after. You decide. Houdini was never convinced in his lifetime that the dead could contact the living. But he vowed to continue...

One wonders what would have happened for Cain if he made jokes about lynching black people who make no effort to work…but then later, much later, he said ‘awwwwww, that was a joke, and America needs to get a sense of humor.’ Unfortunately, Cain himself is becoming not a leader, but is seen as a reason to laugh as he blunders along trying to find his way into a presidential nomination. He had...

What is at the root of what’s wrong with our economy and our civil society? Weaving the issue of the U.S. death penalty into the global financial crisis, columnist Guido Rossi of Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore is unequivocal: our system of ‘financial capitalism’ has slowly but surely eaten away at the fabric of society, which demands protecting the rights of not only the powerful and well-connected,...