Facing
an unprecedented popular uprising against his autocratic rule and his
apparently fraudulent re-election, Iran's right-wing president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad has attempted to blame the United States. A surprising
number of bloggers on the left have rushed to the defense of the
right-wing fundamentalist leader.
Early on Sunday morning, troops stormed the presidential palace of Honduras
and kidnapped the president. Immediately eyes turned to the United
States, which for more than a century has backed friendly dictators and
cooked-up coups in Central America.
There is a lot of great analysis circulating on the military coup
against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. I do not see a need to re-invent the
wheel. (See here here here and here).
However, a few key things jump out at me. First, we know that the coup
was led by Gen.
TEGUCIGALPA - Leftist Latin American leaders rallied
around ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Monday and tried to
thrash out a response to an army coup that sparked protests in the
impoverished nation and drew worldwide condemnation.
Pro-Zelaya demonstrators defied an overnight curfew and held a vigil
by the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, while Venezuela's firebrand
President Hugo Chavez led talks with Zelaya and other allies in
neighboring Nicaragua.
Iranians do not need or want us to teach
them about liberty and representative government. They have long
embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was
Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup
to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the
Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power.
Nations that chart a self-defining
course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and
markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US
corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their
leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials
and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro,
Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo
Chavez, and others.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that Israel could not accept the Obama administration's demand to "completely" halt activity in West Bank settlements.
"We have no intention to change the demographic balance in Judea and Samaria," Lieberman said during his talks with the secretary of state in Washington. "Everywhere people are born, people die, and we cannot accept a vision of stopping completely the settlements. We have to keep the natural growth."
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu threw a rhetorical bone to President Obama in his much anticipated
speech on June 14, when he used the term "Palestinian state."
But he conceded nothing of substance, reiterating Israel's continuing
rejection of real Palestinian statehood, independence, sovereignty,
and self-determination.
Let's face it, even Bo is photogenic, charismatic. He's a camera hound. And as for Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia -- keep in mind that we're now in a first name culture -- they all glow on screen.
BEIRUT - U.S. envoy George Mitchell said on Friday a Middle East peace agreement would not come at Lebanon's expense and praised this week's election as an "important milestone" for the country.
Mitchell, who has Lebanese roots, is on a tour that has taken him to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan as part of U.S. President Barack Obama's Arab-Israeli peace push. He is due to travel to Syria later on Friday.
