Iran produces a wealth of homegrown popular movies, music andliterature. Iranian popular culture thrives under the watchful eyes ofgovernment censors — in part by creatively pushing the boundaries ofwhat is permissible, and in part by using the Internet and technology to avoid those limitsaltogether. Worldfocus correspondent Bigan Saliani and producer Richard O’Regan report.
In the asymmetric wars that have characterized the post-9/11 conflict horizon, our adversaries have been unable to challenge U.S. control of the skies. Now used primarily for close air support and the hauling of gear and supplies for ground troops, the U.S. Air Force has been left to wonder whether its pilots will ever again be called upon to perform their most prestigious of missions — air-to-air combat. As a result, the Air Force has been actively looking for new missions. It has bought hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), machines that have proven invaluable to ground forces fighting in [...]
In general, practitioners of international politics, and those charged with developing and executing governments’ foreign policies, have certain expectations regarding the behavior of the states comprising the international system. Indeed, these expectations reflect both rules commonly observed by state governments — if all too often in the breach — as well as a common understanding of the prerogatives that obtain to governments, as opposed to individuals and others not disposed of governmental authority. But do these expectations still hold and, if so, are they realistic today? Is modern information technology, and the global information infrastructure it enables, changing what we [...]
