There’s a fun flub in the paragraph quoted below. A spellchecker would not have caught it, of course. Syntax-monitoring software might have. I’m not sure software that capable exists, however. It’s a reminder that good journalism is produced by humans. To err is human….

Where does this go? Leaders across the region are learning that they “can’t rely on 20th-century tools to keep the populations quiet any longer,” remarked Marwan Muasher, the former foreign minister of Jordan, who now overseas research on the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 “broke the fear taboo in many Arab countries, and the collapse in oil prices since 2014 has broken the money bargain.” Citizens now declare: If you can’t guarantee me a government job, I get to say whatever I want.

(Thomas L. Friedman, “Beware the Mideast’s Falling Pillars,” NYTimes, 3-19-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.