Jacob Rubenstein

I watch the news to attempt to understand what is going on in the world and so far I'm sure I'm clueless. I checked the news on Africa to see how things were over there. Here are the stories I got, "Kidnap Britons spotted in Ethiopia", "Europeans kidnapped in Ethiopia", and "Cell phone user won't go to jail after all."
My question is how does this count as the news when such atrocities are happening over there? I had to do additional research to find any news of importance. I found out that the peace treaty in Uganda between the government and the LRA ended. This information could end thousands of lives yet we choose to report on some kidnapped people and some guy who doesn't know how to work a cell phone. People getting kidnapped is a horrible thing, but pick your fights. People get kidnapped often enough that if we chose to make each of them front page news we would have paper boys with broken backs after a week.

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"I need not offend to make my point, but I apologize for stating your intelligence. If though my observations it seems I transgress. Accept my apologies."
"Think with your mind, not your soul"

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

You can't watch the news to understand what is going on in the world. You have to do reading, serious reading.

One of the tools I used was to read concise history books. I've read concise history books on China, Japan, Africa, South America and the Middle East.

History is your best friend if you want to get more knowledge of the world.

You can find some good internet resources out there, but we're not talking about the news here. We're talking about serious websites and thinktanks that discuss regional news in seriousness and detail.

The Library of Congress has an excellent political and historical summaries for many different countries. The only problem is that they are are all 10 years out of date.

Try also Economist.com

A good source, but biased. I recommend it though (as well as BBC country profiles) if you are starting from scratch.

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WEB Music Playlist

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

BBC NEWS | Country Profiles

After you check out the country profile for each country, look in the upper-right hand corner for a link to a timeline of major events in that country's history.

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WEB Music Playlist

africanhope

I find if you want news of a country or continet, it is best to read the papers of that country or continet. Fo African news, you can go to news24.com or my fav local newspaper mail and guardian at mg.co.za

Also SABC Africa, but I do not have the webpage for that one

I agree with WEB on the books, and can give you a the names of a few good ones if you want.

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

top gun

I'll tell you another thing. When it comes to military discussions and decisions what's promoted often isn't very close to what the real overall background plan may be.

My girlfriend who lives with me is ex-military intelligence. She's multi-lingual specializing in Russian. She worked with message interception and codes for 4 years in the Army/NSA. She'll see stuff all the time on the news and say... I bet that's not what's going on... they're probably going to try and do this. Several times a few months later wala... something like that would actually happen.
Actually she's kinda freakin' me out... LoL!

presluc

Although the news is often very often a little lame,still it is a form of information.
You just have to sort through the Bullshit to get to the important facts.