Now blogging at diego's weblog. See you over there!

This past week I've been reading more than writing. Part of it is the trip: visiting family and friends gives me little time to reflect much on geopolitics and whatever and makes me focus on the immediate. The other part however is that there has been a lot of opinion pieces and commentary on the press this past week. Here are some of them, with different viewpoints and ideas on what happened, what will happen, and how to make things happen:

• New York City a year after
• A year in the world
  
• The Split in the saudi royal family
• The Worst Case Scenario in Iraq
• Echo of the bullhorn
• Security and freedom
• Calling the UN bluff
• Stocks and bombs  
• The guns of september
• Bush: "Time for an international order"
• The white house as target
• Confronting Iraq
• George Bush at the UN   
• The UN Route
• Relying on Saddam 
• W's Conflicts of interest
• Going our way
  

I might be a news junkie and so predisposed to read op-ed after op-ed, but for most people it is almost impossible to read everything and make any meaningful assesment of all the sides and live a life outside them. 
All of these articles have common themes of course: September 11, one year on, and the coming US-Iraq conflict. This debate is good: that's how democracy is supposed to work. But.... but.... there is so much information and so many ideas and opinions... how can people keep up with them? It seems to me that the press and politicians and "policymakers" are talking to each other and they rely on polls to know what the people think. The people, meanwhile, are basically told what to think  by what they read and see on TV. Unbiased and unadulterated information is rare. Such a vicious cycle of "decision making" sounds seriously broken to me. Wrong, wrong. And this is just one topic.
The question is, how to change it?
Categories: personal
Posted by diego on September 16 2002 at 7:38 PM