A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her ‘top song’ for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is “a single lady.” The old woman’s son is mesmerized by what he sees. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the coffee shop. The man’s T-Shirt reads: “what the fxxx are you looking at?”

Respecting the message on his T-Shirt, I try to keep to myself, but find it increasingly difficult. The wife is completely covered, all but her face. The contradictions are ample, overwhelming even.

The attire of the family, the attitude of the ladies and even the man with the provocative T-Shirt are all signs of the cultural schizophrenia that permeates many societies in the so-called Third World. It’s a side effect of globalization that few wish to talk about.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

Is election reform brewing in the Buckeye State? In an extensive and well-argued editorial the Dispatch made the case for the integration of key state government databases into a statewide electronic voter registration system under the control of the Secretary of State’s office, as proposed in pending legislation.

Ohio’s voter registration databases are in disarray. In the 2008 presidential election, many voters found their right to vote challenged in Ohio because of discrepancies in state and federal databases. For example, under Social Security I am listed as Robert John Fitrakis, but on my driver’s license it’s Robert J. Fitrakis. On the voting rolls I’m Robert Fitrakis. If the states would integrate their databases and establish a single form for voter registration, bizarre challenges over middle initials and names may become a thing of the past.

As the world awaits Barack Obama's decision on Afghanistan, a lethal myth has spread. It says that standing up to the military will doom him to be a single-term president.

The "one if by peace" myth comes most recently from Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books. Wills mourns that Obama would commit political suicide by pulling out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because "the charges from various quarters would be toxic---that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure."

Against all that, says Wills, "he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate."

Coming from an astute observer like Wills, this is a stunning analysis---and dead wrong.

In fact, the only way Obama can begin to think about getting re-elected is to leave the Afghan quagmire and do the same from Iraq.

The key phrase here is "the quarters where such charges would originate."