These are confusing times. Most Americans seem to have reached the point where they accept the idea that Osama Bin Laden caused the attacks on Washington and New York on September 11, and that he is hiding somewhere in Afghanistan, protected by the Taliban. But have these "facts" really been established? Who is to say the whole Bin Laden explanation isn't a clever, U.S.-generated diversion designed to give comfort to the real perpetrators in the hopes they will let down their guard and get caught? Or who is to say that we aren't buying into a diversion set up by the real evil-doers? Whether you are asking these kinds of questions, or questions about what we, our government, or the world should be doing about this situation, chances are you are looking for information with a new sense of urgency. We all are.

Traditional media sources like television, radio, newspapers and magazines can quickly overwhelm with "information." But it's possible to reach a point where you feel that for all the hours of viewing, reading, listening, you're not really learning anything useful. The next step is, of course, the internet, which offers a broad, and dizzying array of news sources. For example, over the weekend of September 22 and 23, most American news sources were hesitating to report the fact that U.S. forces were establishing bases of operation in Uzbekistan, but you could read all about it on the internet in, among other places, the Times of India.

It is certain that there will be times when information being reported by foreign press outlets, available over the internet, will not be appearing in our national media. This is not to say we are being brain-washed. Our media institutions make their own editorial judgments for their own reasons, but there's nothing unpatriotic about using available resources to become informed. We now know that we were misled by reporting during the Gulf War, about the effectiveness of our weapons, about casualty estimates, and so on. Today, the internet provides an alternative that did not exist then. You can be sure that our enemies aren't limiting themselves to CNN and the New York Times. So why should we?

That said, the internet opens the door to a vast, unregulated flow of unverified, paranoid, partisan, loopy, and sometimes just plain bogus reporting. You need to consider the source and make your own judgments. Debka.com gives you an insight into information gathered by Israeli intelligence, such as a September 26 story detailing the movements of Bin Laden operatives in the Balkans and their plans to attack U.S. troops there. Notwithstanding the fact that Debka is effectively a propaganda arm of the Israeli government, this is something worth considering. Speaking of propaganda, I've looked at Azzam.com, a website run by the Mujahideen. This one reads more like a fan-zine for the international jihad. Not much in the way of information, but it gives some insight into the mindset of those who hate America.

The current crisis aside, these internet sources can provide fascinating views into the thinking going on in far away places. You can read in the Gulf Daily News a story called "The Good Life is Killing Us," reporting on the First Arab Conference on Nutrition at which delegates discussed the ironies of wealthy people in Gulf states dying of heart disease and wasting vast quantities of food while others in these same countries starve and suffer malnutrition.

In all, an hour spent cruising international news websites is likely to teach you a lot more than an hour of watching cable television. I recommend it highly. A good place to start is by checking out the World News section at afrocubaweb.com. This site has pulled together an impressive array of web news sources. Meanwhile, afropop.org has introduced a new News Sources category in our Other Links section, and we'll be adding sites we think are particularly interesting. The URL is

http://www.afropop.org/community/links.php?ID=News+Sources

We may live in the freest country in the world, but as Afropop listeners well know, there's still plenty to be learned by viewing the world through other eyes.

Banning Eyre