AP reports today: “On his flight to Indonesia on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that negotiations with Iraq on future training possibilities will begin later. “If such talks are held, they likely would start either when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visits Washington in December or after the end of the year, according…

Argentina’s election this weekend, in which President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner — who succeeded her now-deceased husband as president in 2007 — is expected to win handily in the first round. MARK WEISBROT, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which today releases a report…

VIJAY PRASHAD, Vijay.Prashad at trincoll.edu Author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Prashad said today: “The death of Gadhafi closes a chapter in Libyan history, but it does not settle many open questions for the Libyan people. What, for instance, will be the character of the next Libyan epoch? Gadhafi’s…

JEFFREY WINTERS, winters at northwestern.edu Author of the new book Oligarchy, Winters said today: “By choosing Wall Street as the origin of their action, and by focusing on the gap separating the 1% from 99%, the Occupy movement has hit upon the chronic problem of oligarchy and democracy in America. The power of concentrated wealth…

COSTAS PANAYOTAKIS, 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: “What happened in Greece today was the beginning of a two-day general strike in response to the…

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He said today: “A desperate population is plainly losing patience with the leaders of both major parties. At least a quarter of all the signs at Occupy Wall Street meetings…

JARED BALL, freemixradio at gmail.com Ball is an associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore and is the author of I Mix What I Like! A Mixtape Manifesto. He wrote the piece “The Corporate King Memorial and the Burial of a Movement,” which states that the MLK Memorial is designed to…

AP reports: “The cleanup of a plaza in lower Manhattan where protesters have been camped out for a month was postponed early Friday, sending cheers up from a crowd that had feared the effort was merely a pretext to evict them.” For more, including video streams from various cities, see. MICHAEL RATNER, mratner at michaelratner.com…

Contacts: Leah Bolger, Vice President of Veterans for Peace, leahbolger at comcast.net Medea Benjamin, Code Pink, medea.benjamin at gmail.com Protesters are currently demonstrating at a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee, standing up one by one and denouncing the continuing wars. Live video stream. They released the following statement this morning: “In 2120 Rayburn…

MUHAMMAD SAHIMI, moe at usc.edu Sahimi is a professor at the University of Southern California and lead political columnist for the website PBS/Frontline/Tehran Bureau. He has published extensively on Iran’s political development and its nuclear program. He just wrote “Questions over Alleged Islamic Republic Assassination Plot in U.S.” BEAU GROSSCUP, bgrosscup at csuchico.edu Grosscup is…