In The News

Chinese Consulate in Mandalay Attacked

Saw Yan Naing October 10, 2007
Demonstrations against the government ruling Burma, renamed Myanmar, have evolved to include protests against China, for keeping the military junta in power. A drive-by shooting targeted the Chinese consulate in Mandalay, and local observers suggest that the event reveals rising hostility toward Beijing. Since violent riots between Burmese and Chinese residents of Rangoon 40 years ago, the...

Burma's Brutal Crackdown Continues

October 3, 2007
Although the streets of Yangon, Burma's largest city are now quiet and empty of protesters, the killing has not stopped. Der Spiegel correspondents report that police forces have invaded monasteries in the area, imprisoning and executing dissenters under the cover of darkness. Although the world condemns violence against unarmed protesters, some authorities see cause for hope. British...

Venturing Into Unreported China

Dan Griffiths September 26, 2007
The job of a journalist is to discover new people and locales, reporting stories of conflict and cooperation in accurate and unbiased ways. But local officials in China fear media exposure and discourage both domestic and foreign reporters from setting out to find “scoops” – the stories not yet told by other journalists. Dan Griffiths discovered the limits to practicing journalism in rural China...

Iran’s Unlikely TV Hit

Farnaz Fassihi September 25, 2007
A popular television show reveals a big divide in Iranian society. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned the historical basis of the Holocaust. But the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approves all programming for Iranian state television, including a well-funded show about an Iranian-Palestinian Muslim man who loves a Jewish woman: The hero rescues his love from Nazis who would send her to a death...

Disowned by Mentor, Bin Laden Seeks New Pastures

Fawaz A. Gerges September 19, 2007
Just before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden released a new videotape, in which he adopts a neo-Marxist posture, suggesting that mortgage debt, global warming, growing wage inequality and other ills are a result of greed from multinational corporations and politics of the West. “The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations...

Globalization and Cultural Diversity

Michael Lynton September 12, 2007
Those who oppose globalization are especially sensitive about loss of culture. But the American film industry does not contribute to the homogenization or Americanization of culture, argues Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Instead of creating a single, boring global village, the forces of globalization are actually encouraging the proliferation of cultural...

Bin Laden Unplugged: Analyzing the Latest Video

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross September 12, 2007
Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, released a video criticizing global warming, capitalism, campaign financing by corporations and interest-bearing loans. From hiding, the international fugitive derides the media as “a tool of colonialist empires,” yet tailors a message hinting that he follows the news. Urging that religion, as outlined in the Koran, can replace current standards in...