The English-language news channel of Al Jazeera consistently is first on the scene of Mideastern developments, and its journalists provide smart analysis of global events. It may be today’s most influential television-news operation.
According to cyberutopians like Clay Shirky, everything from Wikileaks to Twitter is making us better, kinder, gentler human beings. But technology is a tool that can be manipulated by both peaceful protesters and repressive governments.
The business of newspapers isn't as interesting as journalists think. Not only that, few can write properly, few report thoroughly, and many are frustrated at being chroniclers rather than the persons being covered.
Whether it's global warming, racism or deficit spending, beware of the experts you're listening to. They know far less than they claim.
Perhaps the most important argument made by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their new book concerns the impact of the lobby on the political discourse in the United States.
This article was originally published on October 26. Given Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's resignation, it is being republished.
Urban's is not a happy memoir. The subtitle, My War Within the Cold War, sums up his theme. The new policy involved years of often bitter struggle with both grotesque reactionaries and Western appeasers.
Gone is Churchill's "enigma wrapped in a mystery." Russia's media and many of its archives, along with its borders, have opened.
It is hard now for any director to have as foursquare a vision of civilization as John Ford did. Many contemporary directors have tried to revive the Western but they tend to get whipsawed by conflicting cultural vectors.
