:: Media Times Review Blog ::

Nearly everyone agrees that a large, multinational force of some kind is needed to police the Israel-Lebanon border and enforce a cease-fire.

THE first vaccine against H5N1 bird flu that can protect people at low doses has been developed by a British company. It is an advance that could improve the world's capacity to contain a human pandemic of the virus....

In June, the Islamic militia known as the Supreme Islamic Courts Council took control of Mogadishu.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo will soon hold its first democratic presidential elections since the country gained its independence in 1960.

It’s why Indians and Pakistanis continue to quibble over Kashmir, and why Israelis and Palestinians can’t seem to see to eye to eye.

A nuclear deal announced in March would allow the United States to sell nuclear materials to India and, in return, bring parts of India’s nuclear program under international safeguards.

The Web has changed millions of lives. Just two months from now, on September 22, we’ll be celebrating the first OneWebDay. OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities. In short, it’s like an Earth Day for the Internet—a day to stop and think about what the Internet means to us.

Add the OneWebDay Button to your site and get together with friends in your town to plan an outdoor celebration with an online component that people elsewhere on the Web can appreciate. Put a link on the OneWebDay wiki In New York’s Bryant Park, San Francisco’s Union Square, in London with the Lord Mayor, near City Hall in Austin, in downtown Chicago, in downtown Portland, Maine, all over Canada, and in Naples (Italy), and Canberra (Australia), OneWebDay will be celebrated for the first time on Sept. 22 — and those are just the celebrations we know about.

The goal of OneWebDay is to make the Web, and our individual connection to it, visible — so that we don’t take it for granted. We make progress when we make things visible.

So I’m sitting at a hot Internet Cafe in Costa Rica, interrupting the month with the family, to follow Dave’s lead in drawing attention to just how Edwards’ gets the net. As Dave explains, former-Senator Edwards has begun distributing video using BitTorrent — demonstrating the important value of this technology that has nothing to do with “piracy.” Now if only he’d signal clearly the freedoms that run with his video…

(Thanks, Dave)

One of the greatest moments in my career was when I got to introduce David Byrne at Wired’s Creative Commons Concert in New York. At that September 2004 event, we announced that David Byrne and Brian Eno intended to re-release their seminal Bush of Ghosts album with tracks available for remix under a CC license. A couple of months ago, the Bush of Ghosts remix contest launched with the component tracks of two songs available under CC for remix. So far more than 170 remixes have been submitted to this extraordinary site. I’m sure I’ll get in trouble for this, but as Byrne has always been an inspiration to me — long before I knew anything about copyright — I must confess nothing else in the history of CC has meant more to me. Pitchfork has a great new interview with Byrne on Bush of Ghosts, as well as his other cool projects (including his own fascinating blog) here.

As the conflict between Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinians escalates, FP spoke with Rami Khouri, editor at large of the Daily Star, Beirut’s largest English-language newspaper, for ...