Most news are completely unworthy of attention.

Jokowi, DKI Jakarta's new elected Governor

I think it would be interesting to just hide from the globalization for a few years and see what's changed afterwards. I started getting into politic news in general recently and I'd recommend you do not make the same mistake. The discussions I've had with my buddies (recently Jakarta's New Governor candidates' backgrounds, plans and governing strategies) made me realize what an enormous circlejerk the whole thing is - just confirmation bias everywhere . In these discussions, most people don't ever think critically about what's being said - they just recycle the stories and infos provided by whatever ideology they subscribed to, and disregard the rest - to the extent that debate just becomes a series of reflex actions. I've caught myself a few times supporting or criticizing things I've never actually thought about.

Unless another 9/11 scale incident is happening, don't watch CNN- all you'll get from 24/7 news is random babble. Most international affairs is also fairly unimportant because you're simply not effected by these things as much as you might think nor are you capable of effecting them as well. If a war is about to start, read the papers. If a massive scandal like Indonesian Bank-Century Bank is breaking, read the papers. Other than that, just skim the headlines until you find something which actually sounds interesting. Business news is for investors, not stricly though. Science and technology news can be summed up with simply fact that science always makes breakthrough and technology is always advancing. However, you won't gain any true understand of science or technology by reading up on current research. Unless you're a researcher, just ignore most of this stuff. The only kind of news I would recommend that you keep a constant eye on is local news.

By all means, keep yourself updated with world events, but stay away from politics. Invest your time in something useful like the arts or science or anything else really. There is a moral duty to keep up with politics and related "news". Because ideally, each has to be an informed citizen. Our fate relies on the whole of us.

We're taught to think, but not how to think, or how to think well. We're told we've got to pick a side though.

When Egypt becomes the Islamic Republic of Egypt

What is happening in the Egypt? The cabinet was dismissed, but what will really matter is what the army does. If they side with civilians the way the protesters hope then we might have a full-on coup on our hands. On the other hand they might just not really do anything of significance and Mubarak will be able to ride this one out.

Americans can't see the difference because they don't know what is Islam or democracy.

Its already the "Arab Republic of Egypt", which is basically the same shit. This isn't an Islamic revolution, it's a democratic one. When this is over, Egypt will be more theorcratic but not comparable to Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood are pretty liberal and reasonable as far as militant Islamic organizations go. But I get the feeling It will get worse with the Islamic Brotherhood running Egypt

Revolutions across the Arab world result in a power vacuum that is easily filled up by powerful, violent, insane Wahhabi islamists who begin uniting most Arab countries into one Islamic state with the intent of conquering the entire world to be ruled under Islam, starting with Spain, the Balkans, Indonesia and India, which results in a world war where every non-muslim nation in the world unites to destroy and eliminate Islam.

Egypt, you know what you have to do, replace one dictator with another Islamic dictator.

The top ten things you didn't know about Iran

The assumptions most Americans hold about Iran and its policies are wrong
By Juan Cole

Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the U.S., other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.

But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.
Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.

Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map?"
Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
Reality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.

Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Reality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to U.S. signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the U.K. intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.

Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
Reality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.

Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
Reality: Iran's reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.

Belief: Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?
Reality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The U.S. elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.

Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
Reality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.

Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Engaging the Muslim World."
(sauce)