Tag: media

L’Affaire Rosen

Friend of the blog Nir Rosen, who wrote a recent article about the Taliban for Rolling Stone (for which he embedded himself with the a Taliban platoon), is under attack for lack of patriotism. Rosen has been under attack before, since he views the recent US wars as imperialist (that’s what he told Joe Biden) and has a bizarre enthusiasm for dangerous people and places. Nonetheless, he’s produced some of the most original reporting that’s out there.

The criticism against him reached rather exaggerated levels at the generally respectable war nerd blog Small Wars Journal, where commentator Bing West, after making a series of reduction ad hitlerum remarks about journalists being unpatriotic, asserts that “It is morally wrong for an American citizen to deceive friendly troops in order to sneak into enemy territory in the company of enemy soldiers.” West longs for the days of moral clarity when people like Rosen, caught behind enemy lines, who simply be shot:

Rosen described how he and two Taliban fighters deceived the guards at a government checkpoint. Suppose during World War II an American reporter had sneaked through the lines with two German officers wearing civilian clothes. “When we caught enemy combatants out of uniform in the 1940s,” a veteran wrote in The American Heritage, “we sometimes simply executed them.” The Greatest Generation had a direct way of dealing with moral ambiguity.

An argument for the summary execution of journalists who take a look across enemy lines?

CNN and the Khalidi affair

This is an actual sentence from a CNN report on Sarah Palin attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with eminent Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi:

Khalidi has been a stern critic of United States foreign policy towards Israel and has accused the country of “occupying” Palestinian territories, but he has denied acting as a spokesman for the PLO.

How dare Khalidi suggest that Israel may be “occupying” (let’s use quote marks to underline the outrageousness of it all) Palestinian territories? As Philip Weiss says, this is the result of the disastrous effect of the Israel lobby and the skittishness with which US media approach the issue. But I’m sure Wolf Blitzer, former AIPAC lobbyist, will look into that.

Incidentally, the Khalidi business does make Obama look bad – it along with other decisions to distance himself from former friends makes him look like he’s opportunistic and ready to dump his friends at the drop of a hat.

On a related note: Joe the Zionist.

Eissa released by Mubarak

Boss Hosni has ordered the release of al-Destour editor Ibrahim Eissa, who was recently jailed for writing this:

The president in Egypt is a god and gods don’t get sick. Thus, President Mubarak, those surrounding him, and the hypocrites hide his illness and leave the country prey to rumors. It is not a serious illness. It’s just old age. But the Egyptian people are entitled to know if the president is down with something as minor as the flu.

But Mubarak is most misericordious and most merciful, is He not?

War of the CRAPs: Hirsi Ali contra Manji

This NYT piece on the relationship between Courageous Reformist Arab Personalities (CRAP) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji seizes the non-relevance of these people to the problems of the Islamic world yet, admitting that, continues to find them enthralling.

First there is this paragraph:

Yet though they are allies on one level, their approaches to Islam are strikingly different, with one working outside the religion and one within. Neither one can be considered a spokeswoman for a significant Muslim constituency in the Middle East. (Indeed, their most sympathetic audiences are probably Western.) But their differences have implications for all the big issues the West grapples with in considering the Muslim world. How much popular support do terrorists have? Is a secular Middle East possible, and what’s the best way to promote it? Is Islam itself an enemy of the West?

But then this conclusion:

Clearly, this is a debate of importance not only to Muslims but to non-Muslims as well, and for a Westerner listening in, the best way to understand it may be to translate it into the language of European history. Irshad Manji sees herself as moving Islam into the 16th century; Ayaan Hirsi Ali wants to move it into the 18th. It’s as if Luther and Voltaire were living at the same time.

Is there anything more puerile, more annoying, more navel-gazing, more incredibly stupid than comparisons between modern Islam and European Christianity? This is the New York Times: the best way to understand its approach to the Muslim world may be to translate it into the language of American television: a combination of the faux-earnestness of 1950s family comedy and the fixation on the travails of minor celebrities seen in contemporary reality shows. It’s as if “Leave it to Beaver” and “American Idol” were being watched at the same time.

[From Muslim Rebel Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other – New York Times]

Talking back

Yesterday several of the opposition-minded papers in Egypt ran with front-page stories about Bilal Diab, a Cairo University student who heckled Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as the latter was delivering a speech to students about how great things were going in Egypt. I love this story, as does the Egyptian media, because it is reminiscent of other similar incidents well-known in political and activist circles, such as Muslim Brother Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi’s famous harangue to Sadat in the 1970s (they were student union politicians then) or more recently (a few years ago) leftist political commentator Muhammad Said Sayyed’s osé questions about democracy to President Mubarak at the Cairo Book Fair.

Here’s more about Bilal Diab:

CAIRO: “Mr. President, Mr. President, Egypt’s youth are behind bars.�

With those words Belal Diab, a 20-year-old literature student at Cairo University, interrupted Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as he addressed the student body on campus Monday, kicking up a media storm.

“We want you to release those detained on April 6. Mr. President those are the people you were talking about who use the internet, those are the people who stood up and defended you when you were criticized at the World Economic Forum for saying Egypt is globalizing. Mr. President I want to tell you one thing, Education is zay el fol [perfect] the university is zay el fol, there is bread, there is democracy and freedom, release Egypt Mr. President, release Egypt Mr. President!� he said as students clapped passionately.

“I was provoked [by Nazif’s speech],� Diab told Daily News Egypt. “How can he talk about information technology, the internet and how the youth has to use it to express their opinions and get their voices out there when those who did exactly that are now all behind bars,� he said, referring to students who created the Facebook group promoting the April 6 strike.

“I admit that I was out of order but I had to get my voice out there, officials have to start listening to us instead of detaining us,� he said.

When Diab had completed his outburst, Nazif had turned to him and said, “I feel sarcasm and pain in your words, but I’m telling you Egypt is alright and you have to look at everything with objectivity because there are many challenges facing this country.�

“There objective reason for detaining these people is the acts of destruction they committed and there is a thin line between expressing your opinion and encouraging destruction, striking and rioting. Many want such chaos in this country but we won’t let this happen. Egypt is not a chaotic country,� continued the Prime Minister.

Diab, however, insists that he wasn’t wasn’t being sarcastic. “I was speaking passionately and my tone was serious. As for the sarcasm he was talking about who is really being sarcastic in this country, is his cabinet … those telling people that everything is fine and were are progressing,� he said.

The incident led to an abrupt halt of the lecture. Neither the Minister of Higher Education, Hany Helal, nor the President of Cairo University, Ali Abdel Rahman, gave their scheduled speeches.

As soon as Diab had ended his impassioned speech, two security guards sat behind him, but when the lecture was over and they tried to grab him they were prevented from doing so by the crowd, which saluted him for having “the guts� to speak openly.

But soon enough, the same security guards, accompanied this time by a police officer and a university professor, caught up with him. The professor asked for Diab’s university ID. It was then that the guards took hold of him in front of the crowd and escourted him to the office of the head of the university’s security.

What’s neat about this story, and some of the more recent similar episodes, is that you have people who are not really political activists standing up for themselves and their country. The same could be said of Esraa Abdel Fattah, the woman who is said to have started the Facebook campaign for a general strike on April 6, and who was arrested and charged with inciting unrest. Interestingly, both Diab and Abdel Fattah are young members of the al-Ghad party, the vehicle for Ayman Nour’s brief but spectacular entry into national politics in 2005. Nour, you will remember, is still in jail on trumped up forgery charges as punishment for his temerity. But obviously the spirit of dissent and contestation that Nour and many others (notably Kifaya) pioneered in 2005 is still alive and well, even if those movements and parties aren’t.

On a completely different note: this week the pro-government magazine Rose al-Youssef had a 32-page special on Facebook, including everything from its use for activism to the different groups Egyptians have formed there (such as, apparently, “Egyptians who love Israel” and “Egyptians who love George W. Bush” as well as, of course, the many sexual opportunities a Facebook account provides. Much of this “special” is complete bullshit, but I do like the cartoons.

roza.JPG

al-Hiwar channel first victim of satellite charter?

Below is a letter sent by the Committee to Protect Journalists to the chairman of Nilesat regarding the ban of al-Hiwar, a London-based satellite channel, which is apparently the first victim of the new Arab Information Ministers’ Charter on Satellite TV:

April 8, 2008

Mr. Amin Bassiouni

Chairman

Nilesat
P.O. Box 72

6th of October City, Egypt

Via Facsimile: +202 384 00 402

Dear Mr. Bassiouni:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to express its deep concern about your company’s decision to stop carrying the signal of the London-based Al-Hewar Television.

Nilesat, an Egyptian government-owned satellite transmission company, stopped carrying the channel on April 1 without warning or explanation, according to international news reports and Egypt-based journalists. The station remains accessible to viewers on the Atlantic Bird satellite system, according to news reports.

The public silence of your company, coupled with the recently promulgated Arab Information Ministers’ charter on satellite broadcasting, has prompted speculation that the decision comes in retaliation for the station’s critical reporting on Egyptian and Arab world politics. The Arab Information Ministers’ charter, adopted in February, calls for vague bans on broadcasting that has a “negative influence on social peace and national unity,� that is “in contradiction with the principles of Arab solidarity� or that defames Arab “leaders or national and religious symbols.�

Continue reading al-Hiwar channel first victim of satellite charter?

CJR: Dave Marash: Why I Quit

Dave Marash, al-Jazeera English’s Washington anchor until last week, gives an interesting interview to the Columbia Journalism Review about the reasons behind his departure. Chiefly it seems that he was unhappy with the US coverage of the station and his dwindling influence, but he also gives an intriguing explanation of recent editorial changes at both AJE and the mother station:

BC: What changed?

DM: I think that the world changed about nine, ten months ago. And I think the single event in that change was the visit to the gulf by Vice President Cheney, where he went to line up the allied ducks in a row behind the possibility of action against Iran. And instead of getting acquiescence, the United States got defiance, and instead ducks in a row the ducks basically went off on their own and the first sort of major breakthrough on that was the Mecca agreement, which defied the American foreign policy by letting Hamas into the tent of the governance of the Palestinian territories. This enraged the State Department and was one crystal clear sign that the Mideast region was now off campus, was off on its own. And it is around this time, and I think not coincidentally, that you see the state of Qatar and the royal family of Qatar starting to make up their feud with the Saudis, and you start to see on both Al Jazeera Arabic and English a very sort of first-personish, “my Haj� stories that were boosterish of the Haj and of Saudi Arabia. And you start to see stories of analysis in The New York Times where regional people are noting that Al Jazeera seems to be changing its editorial stance toward Saudi Arabia. I’m suggesting that around that time, a decision was made at the highest levels of [Al Jazeera] that simply following the American political leadership and the American political ideal of global, universalist values carried out in an absolutely pure, multipolar, First Amendment global conversation, was no longer the safest or smartest course, and that it was time, in fact, to get right with the region. And I think part of getting right with the region was slightly changing the editorial ambition of Al Jazeera English, and I think it has subsequently become a more narrowly focused, more univocal channel than was originally conceived.

I’m not sure what he’s talking about when he mentions “following the American political leadership and the American political ideal of global, universalist values carried out in an absolutely pure, multipolar, First Amendment global conversation” — after all American news media, or indeed policies, hardly follow “universalist values” or “multipolar conversation” of any kind — but the Cheney bit is interesting.

More on Arab Satellite Charter

Arab Media & Society has translated the Arab League Satellite Broadcaster Charter revealed a few weeks ago and offers some analysis, with various experts weighing in on whether the charter may be a good thing in some respects (regulating hate speech, religious extremism, etc.) but judging from its contradictions and the track record of who’ll be doing the implementation, we should not get too excited. Like a lot of rules in the Arab world, they are harsh on paper but the implementation can be very flexible — so it’s probably yet another tool to be deployed when necessary but not scrupulously enforced, especially as some of its measures seem illegal.

I do wish it would be used to regulate religious speech, though, starting with some of the stuff you hear on Islamic channels like Iqraa and the crazy Christian channels. But somehow I doubt they’ll touch that one.