In The News

Kazakhstan Learns to Love Borat

Ryan Kennedy December 1, 2006
Kazakhstan leaders were appalled at how the movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” portrayed their nation as backward and anti-Semitic. The comedy-documentary, with a British actor posing as a Kazakh journalist seeking to learn lessons from the US, has yet to be shown in either Kazakhstan or Russia. Initial Kazakh reactions to the film – such as removing...

Getting Beyond Donald Rumsfeld

Joseph S. Nye November 20, 2006
While most US citizens oppose the war in Iraq, just as many still favor the war on terror. Most US citizens are too impatient for the time-consuming process of soft power – as described by Harvard professor Joseph Nye, which changes attitudes with time, education and ideas. Policies of aggression and war only create new jihadists, Nye argues. The ideas spread by education, entrepreneurship or...

Good News – The World Is Getting Richer

Robert J. Shiller November 14, 2006
Among 82 nations with data from 2004, the per capita gross domestic product increased, indicating a rising standard of living throughout the world, according to the Penn World Table, from the Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices, based at the University of Pennsylvania. However, the data also show a widening gap between rich and poor countries. The average real...

Kazakhs Seek Stronger Ties With Israel

Ruth Eglash November 7, 2006
Kazakhstan is abruptly the center of global attention, thanks to a film set in the US with a British star who is Jewish. British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen poses as a Kazakh television reporter, who is congenial, but also sexist and anti-Semitic. Kazakhstan officials protested the satiric film – “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” – for an...

US Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer

William J. Broad November 3, 2006
Intent on proving that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Republican politicians in the US demanded release of an archive of Iraqi documents, and President George Bush gave the nod. Weapons analysts, from agencies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, now describe the release as a...

Spy Agencies Now Share the Wikipedia Way

Greg Miller November 2, 2006
Typically, the US intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense invent gadgets that often find their way into daily American life. But aiming for better teamwork, US spies have turned to open-source software as invented by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where anyone can propose, write or edit entries. US Intellipedia, not open to the public, will allow staff of 16 intelligence agencies...

Google Defiant Over Censorship in China

David Smith November 1, 2006
Defenders of free speech reject any controls over the internet. This issue and others were debated by more than 90 countries attending the first Internet Governance Forum in Athens. Companies like Google do business in China despite some censorship, and Google maintains that simply providing a connection is a major first step to creating an open society. To deny access to restrictive regimes only...