To mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech on August 28, the networks of the Broadcasting Board of Governors will provide special programming including live reports from Washington, DC, topical original features on human rights and civil disobedience in the United States and abroad, and interviews with key figures in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar fell out because they supported conflicting interests primarily in Egypt. Elsewhere too - Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Gaza (Hamas). But their coming together in any case was for limited tactical reasons: to stall the Arab Spring. The big asset the Qataris brought to the union, hurriedly put together, was the incomparable credibility of their TV channel, Al Jazeera. Qatar launched Al Jazeera, initially only in Arabic. Later, superior retirees from the BBC like Sir David Frost were enlisted to launch its English service.

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter uploaded this video showing the final minute of Current TV and the first five minutes of Al Jazeera America, which began broadcasting at 3 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. It’s mostly a promotional video, which hits repeatedly on two main themes: a heavy subtext of Americanness (it refers to the United States as “home”) and the not-so-subtle implication that other American TV news networks lack seriousness.

Six years of unremitting headlines on extreme violence and rampant crime has sullied Mexico’s reputation abroad. Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and his confrontational “War on Drugs” grew increasingly unpopular over the years, resulting in the 2012 election of opposition party candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, who espoused a new security strategy and vision for Mexico.

Al Jazeera now runs three television channels, including the newly-launched Al Jazeera America. The station is based in Qatar. But the kind of journalism Al Jazeera does is still a pipe-dream in that country. Northwestern University in Qatar journalism student Yara Darwish said of her countrymen, including her parents, “they actually have no clue of what journalism is. The culture in Qatar hasn’t allowed them to accept the idea of journalism. We are not a society that shares everything, that shares the news; we are a very private society.

If you’re a film buff, you may have heard of a Korean-made summer blockbuster that, strangely, hasn’t reached American shores quite yet. Starring a line-up of famous Western actors, some critics say Snowpiercer — Korea’s most expensive film ever — represents a potential cultural landmark. Based on a French comic book, it covers a dystopia of post-apocalyptic survivors who, living on a train that travels around the world, rebel against their repressive overlords.

I was two days into a pleasant Baltic Sea vacation when the request from RT arrived in my inbox. Formerly “Russia Today,” RT is Moscow’s multilingual, global cable news network. RT is not your babushka’s Soviet-style propaganda; it broadcasts sophisticated conspiracy theories and “anti-establishment” attitudes to push a virulently anti-American and illiberal agenda. The network relies on a pool of talking heads, including “9/11 Truthers,” anti-Semites and other assorted extremists, who espouse the sort of views found where the far left and the far right converge.

At some point, the post-revolutionary Arab states will emerge from the self-destructive madness that has them so tightly in its grip. While Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia deal with varying degrees of instability, the future should be kept in sight. The key to an improved future in the region is less political than it is economic. Democracy is a worthy goal, but it will be reached only slowly. The shriveled economies of many Arab states (they are not all oil-rich) were the most significant factors behind the uprisings of 2011.