ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN, ervand_abrahamian at baruch.cuny.edu Abrahamian, who was born in Iran, is a distinguished professor of history at City University of New York. His books include A History of Modern Iran. He said today: “Some sectors of the Iranian government — especially the Revolutionary Guards — would have known about the impending attack on the embassy…

RUSSELL MOKHIBER, russellmokhiber at gmail.com Mokhiber is editor of Corporate Crime Reporter. His books include Corporate Predators: The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the Attack on Democracy. He just wrote the piece “Richard Grossman 1943-2011.” Mokhiber said today: “When I first met him over 20 years ago, Richard Grossman was making the inside the beltway public…

A New York Times front page article reports today: “The NATO air attack that killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers over the weekend reflected a fundamental truth about American-Pakistani relations when it comes to securing the unruly border with Afghanistan: the tactics of war can easily undercut the broader strategy that leaders of both…

EMAD MEKAY, emekay at stanford.edu Mekay is a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and has covered much of the Egyptian uprising. He said today: “The Egyptian military junta managed to fool many Egyptians when they took over after the fall of Mubarak by convincing them that they will be true to their…

NANCY ALTMAN, njalt at aol.com Altman is co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of over 300 national and state organizations representing more than 50 million Americans and author of the book “The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble.” Altman said today: “The announcement that the so-called supercommittee could…

JOHN CAVANAGH, SARAH ANDERSON, via Lacy MacAuley, lacy at ips-dc.org, Cavanagh and Anderson are lead authors of a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled “America Isn’t Broke: How to Pay for the Crisis While Making the Country More Equitable, Green, and Secure.” The report “lays out a plan for reform that amounts…

The Congressional budgetary Super Committee Report is due on Wednesday. Expectations for success are low. Talk about the possibility of another U.S. bond downgrade is widespread. But what exactly would “failure” really consist of? THOMAS FERGUSON, [email protected] Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the…

USA Today reports: “A crowd of several hundred protesters marched from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan to the New York Stock Exchange a few blocks away on Thursday as Occupy Wall Street demonstrators across the country promised mass gatherings to mark the movement’s two-month anniversary. Lines of helmeted police, some on horseback, blocked every approach…

The New York Times reports today: “Fresh from announcing an expanded American military presence in Australia, a plan that has angered China, President Obama came to this remote northern town that will be the base of operations and told American and Australian troops it is the ‘perfect place.’” CATHERINE LUTZ, Catherine_Lutz at brown.edu Editor of…

COSTAS PANAYOTAKIS, [in NYC] cpanayotakis at gmail.com Panayotakis is associate professor of sociology at the New York City College of Technology at CUNY and author of the forthcoming book “Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy.” He said today: “The rise of bankers and unelected technocrats to power in Greece and Italy shows how…