When I was on the plane to California a couple of weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two women in the seats behind me. One of them was a soldier who had completed her tour in Iraq and was on her way to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. The other woman asked what she was going to study, and she said "Russian, 'cause, you know, they just had a war over there." I thought, Well, good for you, honey, to have escaped a second trip to Iraq--but what a fucking shame that we have a government that does nothing to encourage people to learn a second language, except in the service of wars, cold and otherwise. *sigh* I remembered that young woman today when I read this article by Mark Ames about The New York Times' gross distortion of the Russia-Georgia conflict. It's a bit of a rant, but seems right on target.
On another front, Johann Hari had an excellent column in The Independent today about what's fueling the war in DR Congo. It's another conflict that has been very poorly explained in the mainstream news media. Hari does a good job of connecting the dots here.
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