FROM THE PUBLISHER: " ... AS YOU HAVE READ, almost all the news I regularly watch comes from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. (For example, I know that as I write this in my sweltering apartment, it's as hot in Madrid and Zagreb, as it is here in New Orleans today. OR you might not have heard the Canada's Molson and the USA's Coors beers are contemplating becoming the world's largest beer distributor, via merger. )

I don't trust USA news organizations any longer. My view is supported by the people over at OutFoxed.org the site promoting the film "Out Foxed". This new documentary film asserts that Fox News Network is little more than the propaganda wing of the US Republican Party and features former staffers and internal memos to drive home the point. It's damned good journalism of the sort that garnered your World's Magazine its first Press Club award. (We used to make it a habit of publishing internal corporate memos, too, but have since outgrown that impulse. Now we report from "on the ground".)

The result of all this, as a thoughtful person would infer, is to drive a deeper and deeper wedge between myself and the normal dinner table or water cooler talk in my own country.

Depending on who you are, the accusation that I "think like a European" is either an accolade or pejorative. ..." READ MORE


DOUGLAS MC DANIEL ON THE NEW CRUSADES: " When George Bush Sr. was crowned president in the 1980s, he moved his office pens, pencils and stuff into the Oval Office to the sound of a pretty swell soundbyte. Remember: "One-thousand points of light."

It was a beautiful idea. One everybody in networked society could completely understand. The Reagan era capped off the tank with all of its trainees, a whole beehive of cronies, and so the only problem was with a nation of 250 million people was, hey, if you really looked at it, "One-thousand points of light" was still pretty elite company.

After a decade of gestures in the form of little wars in the 1980s, the Company launched us all on another 10 years of real big war in Iraq. True to form: It was a group effort. A small group, yes. But now, look and see, the 1,000 points are still in action. The Company, still intact.

But what we failed to avoid, or understand, in the rush to another large-scale compaign, was this: History was repeating itself. Not the first Bush era, but a whole `nother millennium.

Somewhere in one of Dubya's first speeches after Sept. 11, another unfortunate mantra sprung from the Company spin machine: A "crusade" against terrorism.

This was the problem.

Our language, our first media soundbyte to declare a war on terrorism, "crusade," only served to stir up a festering beehive. And just like the Popes of yore, the Christian world poured itself into the melee only to increase the feedback loops of incredible vengeance... " READ MORE


MPUTHUMI NTABENI ON HIS HOMELAND: " ... When the workers made their voice clear on the issue of wholesale privatisation of State owned companies, Mbeki listened. Now those companies are no longer going to be privatised wholesale but just enough to ensure competence in their running while guarding against landslide loss of jobs that always comes with privatisation.

Because of this there's a growing school in South African politics, especially among white liberals, that the ANC under Mbeki's leadership treats equality not as a test of opportunities, but rather as a vice that holds progressive people back until the rest of the pack catches up.

This school of politics sees itself as defenders of productive wealth. Meantime -- by saying the president sacrifices progress on the altar of equality -- much is of our history is overlooked.

The issue in our country is not that the rich are increasing their share of wealth. The real issue is that this (wealth for the elite few) comes at the expense of the rest. The rising tide of the few, among them the black nouveaux riches who benefited from black empowerment deals, is not raising all ships. Their fortunes are coming out of the hides of the rest. The president is trying to tilt scales towards fair material wealth distribution and bridge the yawning gap between poverty and prosperity... " READ MORE

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