commentaries

CNN, "more frivolous banalities than you can shake a stick at." It would be great if we became more geopolitically literate, the nonsense about apology tours would disapear overnight and we could debate the US foreign policy posture in a manner than more closely reflects reality (given the diffusion of power, is Obama's stone cold realism superior to Bush's neo-conservative idealism)? Is the transistion to nonunipolarity beyond our control (I believe it is)? If no, what measureas can be taken to extend American hegemony? If no, is Obaam's strategy of bottom-up diplomacy (idealism to the street) coupled with behind-closed-doors realism the best strategy to manage this transition? These are some of the broad discussions we should be having and, I beleive could be having if a little serendipitous daily dose of international news coverage was made easily accessible to us.

The problem with all of today's news reporting stations, both TV and Radio, is that they are promoting their own feelings toward an issue, whether it is left leaning or right leaning, when the absolute goal should be reporting and just that, reporting; leave your opinions out of it!

"is Obama's stone cold realism superior to Bush's neo-conservative idealism)?" -- events in Egypt beg the question as to whether Obama's policy is really stone-cold stupidity.

Al Jazeera English seems to be a classy network with good quality. People say the Arabic version is much more "biased" to the Arab point of view (and why would it not be). Check out the podcast of the Riz Khan interview program. It's the best on television, just my opinion.

I want my, I want my...BBC!

I want Dan Rather, Keith Olberman and Al Franken........Why shouln't we have access to this.

Even if you object to Al Jazeera, the network still should be shown here. Let people form their own opinions. American media needs a desperate shake up and competitor.

Is Al Jazeera any relation to Al Jarreau?

Al Jazeera is very popular in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. It really goes in-depth into issues affecting the world. No, it is not always favorable to the Arab world. That's why Egypt's rulers wanted them out. You can find out what is really happening in parts of the world. We need it in the US on cable networks.

In what sense Ranger? With the benefit of Wikileaks we can see that Obama made a strong calculation, to leverage available assets to advance American interests (his job). His speech in Cairo I would argue and the wikileaked cables on strengthening ties with Mubarek I would argue reveal the strategy of exploiting passions of the street(s) around the globe. It's what I expected him to do and why I voted for him. Now consider Obama's agenda and his lessons learned from the prism of January 2009. At that time Bush's road map for peace was considered too little too late. His name and shame strategy, feckless. Conventional wisdom at the time was that Bush's mistake was that he waited too long in his term to advance the 2 state process (I think this is arguable). From Obama's perspective then, he had in Mubarek a ready access for partnering on terror and rendition and a resource to push ME peace (with military aid as a lever for coercion). Seen from that prism, with what's public, I would have made the same calculation. As regards the speed of the shift from supporting Mubarek to expressing a desire for peace, keep in mind that Obama wasn't playing a single-iteration strategy game. The news that we DO get presents overly-simplified versions of the truth. A lot of our interests are safe-guarded by a lot of autocrats and they were watching the events in Cairo closely. It was a near-impossible challenge to navigate, other than talking too much, I think he's handled it pretty damn well. Of course this underscores the value of consistent international news reporting, to provide the context to dispassionately assess the global theater.