The columnist Roger Cohen discusses his recent reporting trip to Iran.

opinion Videolink New York Times
Roger Cohen on Iran
Jigar Mehta Published:
The columnist Roger Cohen discusses his recent reporting trip to Iran.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/06/25/opinion/1194841179757/roger-cohen-on-iran.html

Iran’s Tensions, Foreshadowed in Its Cinema

Film
Iran’s Tensions, Foreshadowed in Its Cinema (NYT Permalink)
By A. O. SCOTT Published: June 20, 2009
From the early 1990s until the middle of this decade, Iran’s historically rich movie culture entered a remarkable period of rejuvenation.

TEHRAN -- Pro-government and opposition demonstrators poured into the streets of Iran's capital Tuesday for a fourth day of sometimes-violent rallies

TEHRAN -- Pro-government and opposition demonstrators poured into the streets of Iran's capital Tuesday for a fourth day of sometimes-violent rallies, as the country's religious leaders agreed to a partial recount of Friday's disputed presidential vote.

(Source Wall Street Journal)
Amid the unrest, and more shooting by government-backed militia, authorities arrested prominent opposition leaders and clamped down on media covering the crisis. The demonstrations came hours after state media reported the top religious oversight council would examine Friday's vote, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trounce opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and two other challengers

Protests Flare in Tehran as Opposition Disputes Vote

International / Middle East
Protests Flare in Tehran as Opposition Disputes Vote (New York Times Permalink)
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI Published: June 14, 2009
The streets of Iran’s capital erupted in the most intense protests in a decade as riot police officers clashed with demonstrators who accused Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of stealing the election.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html

France debates Sunday working

France debates Sunday working
A controversial bill which proposes to relax regulations which prevent many businesses from opening on Sunday is due to be debated in France.

(Source BBC News)
President Sarkozy's UMP party has introduced the bill which is encountering opposition from those who want to preserve France's traditional working practices.
David Chazan reports

Obama's new stimulus plan same as the old

Obama's new stimulus plan same as the old
President Obama's new 'accelerated' recovery plan is neither new nor accelerated

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is promising some exciting coming attractions for his stimulus plan. But it turns out they're just summer reruns.
Obama promised Monday to ramp up spending from the $787 billion stimulus fund and create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer. It was an effort to shift the focus away from persistently rising unemployment and beat back criticism that the money isn't flowing quickly enough.

Those promises aren't new.

Stimulus spending had always been expected to rise sharply this summer, and the White House has been predicting that 600,000 job total for about a month.
Obama faces souring public opinion over his handling of the economy, which has shed 1.6 million jobs since the stimulus was signed in February. That total has far overshadowed White House announcements estimating the effort has saved 150,000 jobs, a figure that is so murky it can never be verified.
Monday's announcement sought to reposition Obama in the driver's seat of America's recovery. It portrayed the president as revving up the engine of the stimulus, but it was something federal agencies were already planning to do anyway.
Obama spoke about "modest progress" in the economy, citing fewer jobs lost last month than expected. He said he hopes to build on that in the months ahead with stimulus programs.
"We've done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again," he said. Read on...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obamas-new-stimulus-plan-same-apf-15473100.html?sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

Obama expedites stimulus
(02:15) Report Reuters Video

Jun. 8 - President Obama is expediting the economic stimulus package that Congress passed in February in order to create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.

SOUNDBITES:
# U.S. President Barack Obama
# Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute,Jon Decker reports.

Across Europe, Left-Leaning Parties See Clout Faltering

Across Europe, Left-Leaning Parties See Clout Faltering

(Source Wall Street Journal)
PARIS -- The economic recession should have meant easy votes for Europe's left-wing movements, longtime critics of unchecked capitalism.

Yet as Europe goes to the polls, left-leaning parties across the continent are looking likely to falter. That's true both for those in government, such as in the U.K. and Spain, and in the opposition -- such as France, Germany and Italy.

France's Socialist Party is trying hard to rally voters ahead of Sunday's European parliamentary elections. "Let's unite with all the French who contest free market, unfair policies that aim at deregulating everything," party leader Martine Aubry urged at a pre-election rally.

Yet less than 20% of voters say they plan to cast their ballot for the Socialist Party, according to recent surveys. That would be a weak performance considering France's main opposition party got 29% of the votes in the last European parliamentary elections.

In Germany, the Social Democrats are expected to get only around 26% on Sunday, consistent with their low opinion-poll ratings ahead of Germany's national elections in September. Italy's center-left Partito Democratico is expected to get a similar percentage.

One reason is that as Europe tipped into recession, the right moved left -- appropriating some of the left's long-standing economic policies, including nationalizations and bailouts.

French conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, helped recapitalize French banks, earmarked six billion euros for the auto sector and lashed out at "rascal bosses" with huge pay packages.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has planted her conservative camp firmly in the political center. Ms. Merkel has largely given up her former program of market-oriented reforms, and has gradually approved various kinds of state intervention to protect workers during the current recession, from bailing out carmaker Opel to subsidizing payrolls at companies whose export orders have collapsed.

Even before that, right-wing parties across the continent began offering more pragmatic approaches to policy than they had traditionally done. In the past decade, conservative parties introduced competition or privatized some public services in France, Germany and Italy -- but they refrained from dismantling the health-care and public transport services cherished by voters.

In the past, there was a clear fault line between Europe's left-wing and right-wing parties. The left called for more social welfare programs and public spending. The right wanted the state not to interfere in market forces.

Globalization helped change that. With nations and companies vying on a global scale, it has become difficult for a country to separate the effects of public spending and budget deficits from its labor costs and capacity to compete in export markets. The key moment came as far back as 1994, some political analysts say, when the World Trade Organization was created and much of the world began shifting to a more free-market economy.

"The WTO marked the triumph of the market economy," says Dominique Reynié, head of Paris-based Foundation for Political Innovation. "Since then, the left has been unable to propose another route."

The U.K.'s Labour Party stood as an exception when, under Tony Blair, it tried to shape a middle road. But Mr. Blair had inherited a deeply deregulated economy from the hands of previous conservative leaders, state coffers swelled during an economic boom, and he "had room to increase public spending and hire state workers," Mr. Reynié said. His successor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has struggled to find a similar compromise way amid Europe's falling financial fortunes. Read Article...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124425154944290829.html