Connecting the dots -- or not

In a survey of recent news linked, in some way, to the fate and health of the American empire, Tom Engelhardt laments that "our demobilized media treats the world, if at all, as a set of hopeless fragments and just doesn't consider puzzling them together part of the job description."

Echoing what countless bloggers and media consumers have discovered, Engelhardt concludes, "If you want to grasp our world as it is, you might actually have to click off that TV, use your local paper to wrap the fish, and head for the Internet."