If The Beatles managed to convey the increasing dominance of machine over man — with their voice and script struggling to rise over the clamour and force of musical instruments, Michael Jackson’s songs, accompanied with his unbeatable mechanical body movements, went a step further to deliver a similar message — the human beings gradually turning into robots. Thus, The Beatles and Michael Jackson...

Jeanne Carstensen has an absolute must-read Salon interview with Hooman Majd, a leading Iranian intellectual who grew up “mainly in the United States,” and who, in Carstensen’s words, is “the consummate insider and outsider.”

Americans love a juicy scandal spiced with sex, intrigue, lies and ultimate redemption, especially when it involves a rather high-profile person such as Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. It would not surprise me if in Sanford’s high school yearbook he was voted the least likely senior to have an affair, let alone writing steamy emails to his paramour at a time his political party was considering him...

Of course, the Spanish/Latin American press and web are full of stories on the “Yankee Governor” who instead of hiking in the Appalachian Mountains, was having an affair way down South, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There are literally scores of articles describing the scandal in varying levels of detail. Here are some of the headlines and links to some of those articles (All are translations from...

Guest post by Hamid M. Khan While history is replete with revolutions, successful ones are able to match a collective will with an endemic philosophy for change. Days ago, Iranians gathered to elect a president, but in the ensuing firestorm from Iran’s electoral results found reason to challenge Iran’s current government. And while there are almost an infinite number of reasons to alter the Iranian...

Perhaps unaware that it was using a phrase taken from the nightmarish, counter-intuitive language known as Newspeak from George Orwell’s novel 1984, the Iranian regime today complimented President Obama for his restraint – and lowered the boom on Great Britain. This article by Kian Mokhtari of the Islamic Republic’s conservative, state-controlled Kayhan newspaper says in part: “We...

Commenting on the criticism President Obama has been receiving for not more roundly condemning the Iranian regime after the June 12 election, this article from Russia raises the question: Is it an advantage for Russia that it’s President can meet with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, because it ‘doesn’t try to preach to others or impose morality’? According to this article for Russia’s...

Have the ripple effects of President Obama’s Cairo speech now reached Latin America? Many people now believe that the elections in Lebanon and Iran were a direct or indirect result of the president’s speech to Muslims. This article by columnist Artemio Cruz of Nicaragua’s El Nuevo Diario shows that that beyond the fact that President Obama’s two speeches to Muslims [from Ankara and...

Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The president’s news conference this afternoon provides much food for thought (transcript here). The president has been very careful until now about asserting that democracy and human rights are universal values. Yet today, he said once, and then repeated twice that: As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and...

First, my usual disclosures. I voted for Obama. I like Salon’s Joan Walsh. I especially liked the cool, calm, collected, and informed way she recently debated—whenever she wasn’t rudely interrupted—a boorish, fuming, huffing and puffing, uninformed O’Reilly on Dr. Tiller’s murder and on O’Reilly’s previous ranting on this subject—prior to the murder. I also...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

What are the beliefs that motivate extreme anti-abortion activists to murder the doctors that perform abortions? My friend and colleague Jon Shields provides careful answers to a question that usually provokes little more than partisan rhetoric. Jon, now a professor at Claremont McKenna, recounts the influence on the extremist movement of violent activist Michael Bray. There is little in Michael Bray’s...

The ongoing battle in the streets of Iran isn’t the only political-religious clash going on. For Scientologists, perhaps the most pressing current conflict has been taking place in a Paris court. Seven French members of the group, the organization itself and its bookstore have been charged with organized group fraud and illegal use of pharmaceuticals. Scientology frames the case as a thinly-veiled attack...

Women assail government-funded militia as they beat a protester on the streets of Tehran, Saturday, June 20. While there is widespread global support for those battling for reform in Iran, it should surprise no one that even in the Arab/Sunni world, there is support for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his young apprentice, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For Saudi Arabia’s Dar al-Hayat, in a particularly visceral...

It sounds like a routine alarm, but the things are getting serious. The question being asked in this part of the world is: Who would grab Pakistan’s nuclear weapons first…the Al Qaeda or the USA? To this speculation one may add an Aesop’s fable: Would it be the “monkey” India/Israel combo snatching the nukes away from the Al Qaeda/USA “cat” ? Here is a categorical...

A Muslim cleric has charged that Pepsi is actually a “Zionist plot.” Seriously. Really. No joking. Here are the details proving that the light fizz isn’t just atop Pepsi but is also in the craniums of people who love to hate: Extremist Moslems have not dropped their allegations that Pepsi Cola is essentially the code name for a Zionist plot. MEMRI has released an English transcript of an address...

Are we watching the death throes of a decrepit and corrupt dictatorship – or the beginnings of a Persian-style Tienanmen? According to Jean-Claude Kiefer of France’s Les Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace, the mullahs that run the Islamic Republic are ‘doomed’ because openness to the outside is a mortal threat to the regime there – and as anyone who tweets can see – openness...

Continuing with our coverage of the just-concluded trial against Scientology in France, this news item from Le Monde is in part made up of quotes from Scientology’s lead attorney, Patrick Maisonneuve, who sees the case as a cop-out on the part of prosecutors. While the charges against Scientology are for organized group fraud and the illegal use of pharmaceuticals, Maisonneuve says the real defendent...

We have all heard by now of the allegations of massive fraud in the counting and reporting of the recent election results in Iran. There is telltale “suggestive evidence” that tends to confirm such allegations: * The unrealistically high votes for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in urban areas, including Tehran and Tabriz where he is not very popular. * The surprisingly poor performance by opposition...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spoken. Last Friday’s national election results were not rigged because “the Islamic state would not cheat,” he declared. He warned the opposition would be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if the protests continued. At least eight citizens have been killed in the demonstrations so far. The ayatollah is the hammer, the lead mullah,...

To what degree can the recent election result in Lebanon and the current events in Iran be attrutible to President Barack Obama? That question is at the heart of much of the global commentary in regard to the unfolding drama in the streets of Tehran, and as we learn from this article from Lebanon’s L’Orient Le Jour, Beirut as well. For L’Orient Le Jour, Issa Goraieb writes in part: “‘Everything...

U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada recently admitted to an extramarital affair. We have gone through this many times before with other elected figures under different personal circumstances, including the failed impeachment of President Clinton. Some people who have inherited the faulty combination of prurient and puritan genes are getting themselves all worked up in a tizzy over something that is none of...

The ex-Beatles pop music sensation Sir Paul McCartney and his two daughters are avidly campaigning for meatless Mondays to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s livestock, among the most serious contributors to global warming.” The Independent reports: “The McCartneys have attracted support from across the worlds of showbusiness, science, business and the environment. The...

Has President Obama’s Cairo speech exposed a deep-seated European fear of ‘Islamization?’ This article from the country that houses the Vatican in part blames the Catholic Church for the phenomena. For Italy’s La Stampa, Guido Ceronetti chastises his European brethren for being too lily-livered to support a stronger European defense and stand up to oppose those they fear – and...