Tuesday, November 21, 2006
With the death of former East German espionage chief Markus Wolf and the nomination of ex-Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates to be the next Secretary of Defense, the news has been full of stories about the tense and secretive atmosphere of the Cold War. Several of those articles claimed that this golden era of [...]
Freedom in an information economy does not mean free information.
Wednesday, August 3, 2005
I found the op-ed "Switched Off in Basra" a particularly good read, so I was a bit dismayed to find that its author, Stephen Vincent, was murdered yesterday:
Mr. Vincent and Ms. Tuaiz [his interpreter] were kidnapped around 7 p.m. Tuesday, as they left a moneychanger's shop in downtown Basra, by at least two men dressed [...]
This letter to the International Herald Tribune by an official from the "Embassy of the Union of Myanmar" really annoyed me with its criticism of a Human Rights Watch report on the persecution of ethnic minorities by the military, especially with its suggestion that "The International Herald Tribune needs to be sensitive to the real [...]
Since the "liberations" of Iraq and Afghanistan, it has become popular in Republican circles to claim that Bush is the heir to Woodrow Wilson, and the interventionist, pro-democracy type of foreign policy that Wilson and his Fourteen Points have come to represent. I previously suggested that this approach was merely an opportunist attempt to increase [...]
It seems increasingly likely that Bolivia will not collapse into chaos, a real possibility as recently as two days ago. Diez, the conservative President of the Senate, decided not to accept the presidency. After suggesting that the military could be used to suppress protest by indigenous Bolivians, most of the country considered him an unpalatable [...]
Although most of the world's attention seems to be focused elsewhere, the recent political uprest in Bolivia culminated in the resignation of the president, Carlos Mesa, two days ago. Some suggest that it may be part of a larger trend toward liberalization in South America.
"The bottom line is that Latin America is in open rebellion [...]