Alexander Zaitchik

If you're an investor, you probably aren't reading this. You're watching MSNBC. You also probably have tunnel vision. I know. I used to be one.

Robert Kaplan is a professional downer. We are lucky to have him, but should be prepared to look beyond his hopeless worldview — its just blind idealism in reverse, and just as dangerous.

Kurt Vonnegut's final book is a collection of short fiction from the 1950's. It goes down easy, but is likely to form a Kilgore Trout's parakeet sized lump in your soul.

As the world attempts to make sense of a historic week of protest in Washington, who can help but wonder: Are we entering another decade of social unrest and mass activism? And do we get to win this time?

The neo-conservative camp of the Republican Party is calling for a massive arms build up and a more aggressive US role in world affairs, including "rogue regime rollback." If the neo-cons regain power, GOP foreign policy under their influence could look a lot like it did in the early 1980's. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

George W. Bush has turned the state of Texas into a toxic dump. He knows virtually nothing about the world or the important issues of the day. He is not considered mentally equipped by the brains of his own Party. He is fully in the pocket of the most polluting industries on Earth. He defines 'arms control' as the ability to hit your target. And he just might be in the drivers seat at the dawn of the next American Century. Valium, anyone?

Bruce Lee made four awful movies and died, and yet he fascinates all over the world. Davis Miller explores why in a new book.

John McCain has a lot of independents charged up with his straight talking GOP insurgency. Talk of "McCain Democrats" has the Gore camp sweaty. Alex Zaitchik is afraid all the excitement has blurred our collective sanity.

The last thing The Onion needs is more effusive praise, but I'll just say this anyway: Our Dumb Century is a flat-out brilliant, milk-spurting-out-of-your-nose tour de force of razor blade studded, dangerously informed wrecking ball humor. There, it's out.

The media reform bill up for vote in the Czech Parliament this spring is a hornet's nest of issues, each of which promises to influence Czech society far beyond the bill's pragmatic role as just another EU requirement.

Who won the Post Office's "Celebrate the Century" ballot? Are these voters the real arbiters of history? Or, did Ayn Rand get it right when she wrote a 1970 piece called "Apollo and Dionysus." She declared the two forces coined by Nietzsche to represent "the fundamental conflict of the age", are Cape Kennedy and Woodstock — embodying both principles in "pure, extreme, isolated form."

Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News first published a series of articles connecting the CIA to Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers. His new book, Dark Alliance tells the whole story. You won't believe it, even thought you know it's true!