European Politics

Cannes Film Festival: Did Berlusconi Turn Italy Into a Reality Show?

Today in unexpected Cannes headline news: a convicted felon turns in one of the best performances at the festival thus far (and it's not Roman Polanski -- rimshot! -- who was the subject of a softball vanity documentary which screened here earlier in the week, and isn't really worth talking about). ... More >>

The U.K'.s PastyGate 2012: A Tale of Two Pasties (Hot and Cold)

While we here in the States currently are embroiled in such mundane things like GhostwritingGate and ParkSlopeCo-OpGate and HealthCareGate, the raging debate across the pond in the United Kingdom involves something far more fascinating: Cornish pasties. Last week, Chancellor of the Exchequer George ... More >>

Harry Burkhart, Alleged L.A. Arsonist, Suspected of Burning Down German Home in October

L.A. arson fire suspect Harry Burkhart might have had some previous experience sparking blazes, at least according to allegations made public in the German media today. The German network PNN says authorities in that country suspect that Burkhart burned down his family's home in the town of Schwalm ... More >>

Venice Residents Still Fuming Over Santa Monica Airport's Self-Serving Flight Pattern

New York Times, circa 2007Still annoying.​Update: L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl says he has some tricks up his sleeve to possibly take down the airport before 2015. Also, he calls it "a health emergency for the lungs of my people." More drama below. Originally posted October 18 at 12:50 ... More >>

E. Coli Outbreak Update: Eat Your Salad, Nobody Knows Yet

Flickr/petitshooyou can still eat this stuff​ According to the AP, German officials have retracted statements linking a lethal E. coli outbreak to sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany. In what is now the second retraction in a week, officials said that there is no evidence that spr ... More >>

Arnold's Love Child: In Defense of Schwarzenegger

​Here we are, on the Western cliff of this great democratic experiment we call America, where diversity, technology and new liberties (medical marijuana, for example), keep us on the utter edge of human evolution. And we're obsessed with ... a guy who had sex with the Guatemalan help. Sure, ... More >>

OK, Everybody, Time to Get Royally Pissed!

Belarus Free Theatre, Free Speech and Thought Control

BFT’s Natalya Kolyada, and Tim Crouch’s The Author

G20 to Address Rising Food Prices

Flickr/John Rohana grocery aisle in Korea​ How long has it been since you thought groceries were cheap? Everyone has noticed the increase in food prices, and now the G20, a group composed of the heads of state of 20 of the world's largest economies, is poised to do something about it. Accord ... More >>

Bookworms

White-nationalist reads in the United States and Europe reflect anti-migrant hatred in a grim economy

Johnny Marr to Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron: "I forbid you to like The Smiths"

"You are forbidden!": Marr to hip-wannabe David Cameron​ Conservative politicians and non-conservative pop musicians are always having altercations about the former's use of the latter's music and hipness for nefarious political purposes. The latest spat concerns UK Prime Minister David Came ... More >>

California Propositions 20 and 27: A Peek At The Gerrymandering Soul Of Congressman Howard Berman's Filthy Rich Handmaiden, Haim Saban

By Hillel Aron Mastering the Politburo​Haim Saban is different than you and me: he's the 287th richest man in the world, worth $3.3 billion. The Egyptian Jew, who looks an Ian McShane/Silvio Berlusconi cross, created The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. And he's the biggest giver to Proposition ... More >>

VIagra of the masses

Erik Gandini's intoxicating Videocracy, and the case against Silvio Berlusconi

The Lee Strasberg Diet: Just Eat McDonald's Every Day

From the Toronto Sun (via Food News Journal) we have today's installment of the Lee Strasberg Diet. It turns out that actor Dennis Quaid, to gain the requisite weight to get the part of Bill Clinton for an upcoming movie, decided to eat like the former president did in order to put it on in the firs ... More >>

NOT THE SWEDISH MEATBALLS YOU'RE USED TO

Polanski Appeals To Obama For Help Fighting Extradition To L.A.

​Director Roman Polanski wrote a letter to Barack Obama asking for the president's help with efforts to be sentenced in absentia in his 33-year-old sex-with-a-minor case. The correspondence was delivered to the American leader by Polanski supporter and French President Nicolas Sarkozy during h ... More >>

Where's Antonio? Lunching at the Getty, Talking Immigration at a Private Club

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was light on public events this week, which may be a good thing if he was rolling up the sleeves and working instead.Villaraigosa hangs at swanky City Club at Wells Fargo Center.​Then again, maybe not -- read more about the recent fruits of his labor in an L. ... More >>

Chef Alain Ducasse on French President Sarkozy, Yogurt Chocolate

Do you like really good yogurt and require at least one dose of 85% cocoa chocolate daily? According to an article that ran in last week's Women's Wear Daily, it appears Alain Ducasse considers those of us who think we can live on chocolate alone merely bonbons away from calling Morgan Spurlock abou ... More >>

The McItaly: How Do You Say 'I'm NOT Loving It' in Italian?

There's marketing, there's selling out, and then there's the McItaly, the new McDonald's hamburger that comes wrapped in the Italian flag, both literally and figuratively. The Italian government has so thoroughly embraced the burger that Luca Zaia, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Agricult ... More >>

Villaraigosa Tours Like A Rock Star

If you were surprised to read that City Hall has once again put off the issue of whether to ask the owners of Staples Center to reimburse taxpayers for its ​Michael Jackson memorial show, or if you're angered after finding out that after two years of deliberations at least one City Council mem ... More >>

Saylor's Delight: Pasadena PR Firm Wins Contracts in War-torn Region

The Saylor Company, a Pasadena crisis-management firm, has just landed two high-profile Yulia Ryzhenkova/Wikipedia2008: Georgian tank in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia​contracts in one of the world's violent flashpoints. The Georgian breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have hired the PR o ... More >>

WHY ARE BRITISH PEOPLE WHO MOVE HERE SO ARROGANT? DISCUSS.

An Early Frost, and Nixon

An Annie Kind of Photo

Working with Annie Leibovitz

Election '08: The McCain in Spain Fails Mostly to Explain

BY MARC COOPER I'm a bit surprised by how little coverage The Great McCain-Spain Gaffe has gotten (Well, not really that surprised given the relative insularity of the American media/political complex). But anyway you cut it, you've got to be alarmed. McCain's campaign is now officially saying tha ... More >>

Retired Russian Army Colonel Criticizes U.S. Actions in Iraq Even as Tanks Roll in Georgia

Yuri Yuryevich, also a former journalist, says idea of Russian censorship was concocted by the West — investigative journalism no problem as long as president isn't criticized

Letter From Moscow: Back in the USSR

You can't rely on the official media to learn much of what's going on in Russia. The government owns all Russian TV stations, on which never is heard a discouraging word. Jon Stewart-style political satire has disappeared from the airwaves. Those pundits who dared to challenge government policy have ... More >>

The Blair Switch Project

Small Things Considered

My Favorite Upstarts

2005’s bumper crop of socially concerned organizations

Tomdispatch: As the World Burns

New Yorker Art Editor Françoise Mouly and Professor of Islamic Studies Mark Levine parse the war of words in Paris

The French Revolt

Rejection of a corporate Europe

Our Russia, Ourselves

Sleeping with the enemy . . . then scolding her

Viktor vs. Viktor, Live From Independence Square

Democracy’s Heroes

Au Contraire, Monsieur Boosh

France's Dominique de Villepin on the traps the U.S. fell into

Royal Coke

How the U.S. and France let the smuggling prince get away to help the war on terror

Letter From Spain

Coming to terms with life after Atocha

Spain Flips Off W.

Rejection of the politics of lies starts abroad

Russian Roulette

On election eve, should Putin’s power be feared?

Google Bombs

Streets of Loathing

George W. Bush and the London protests

Gloom, Doom and George W. Bush

The president does London

Poet Against the War

The Back Story

Brakes of War

Signs are on that a full-scale invasion of Iraq is off

Beyond Disappointment

The Middle East, according to Robert Fisk

Out of Control

The attack on protesters and the press in Genoa

Euro Paean

Well, not exactly

Moscow stares into the abyss