December 2004 – Page 6

Out, damn spam!

The spam attack of the past week has been more damaging than I thought, so until further notice any comments with links will have to be moderated. I still encourage readers to post comments, with or without links.

As I am rather sick at the moment and some other people who contribute are traveling, posting may continue to be a little light. There are many exciting things happening at the moment, so it’s a shame. But things should be back to the normal pace in a few days. There will also be some special coverage of the signature of an Egyptian-Israeli-American trade deal next week as well as the OPEC conference that will be taking place in Cairo. There are rumors that Egypt, buoyant with the launch of two Liquid Natural Gas terminals this year, may join the organization.

The Washington Post-Modern

Michael Getler, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, on the war that his newspaper says is finished and the defense report it did not think was worth mentioning.

Hitchen, Hitchens, Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens has a defender.

Reading this tribute makes his loss to the current hysteria all the more regrettable. Hitchens’s desire to imitate his idol, George Orwell, took him to the point of fabricating his own Spanish civil war and his own fascism when there is but a relatively powerless, if occasionally deadly, threat in what he likes to call “Islamo-fascism.”

Pollack panned

The Asia Times’ Kaveh Afrasiabi trashes Kenneth Pollack’s new book, The Persian Puzzle. I haven’t read the book but I’m glad someone’s taking Pollack to task, as his The Threatening Storm was probably the most influential pro-war book in the run-up to to the invasion of Iraq. It was particularly admired by Washington liberals (notably Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who interviewed Pollack) who now seem to have forgotten that, well, Pollack was completely wrong: there was no serious WMD threat in Iraq. But then again they should have known not to trust any Beltway think tank “expert” who conveniently releases books when their subjects are in the news.

Al Jazeera in English

Al Jazeera is launching its English-language station in November 2005, and its chosen different headquarters than for its Arabic channels (it has sports channels in Arabic as well as the famous news channels): Kuala Lumpur.

Most Malaysian analysts interviewed for this article said they eagerly await a greater al-Jazeera presence in the region, regardless of what shape it takes, because it will provide viewers with a different perspective. But when it comes to news, celebrating diversity for its own sake can be dangerous. Consider how big media have tended to celebrate diversity in the divisive post-September 11, 2001, era. Outfits such as al-Jazeera, CNN and FOX are ossifying allegiances and exacerbating gaps in understanding as they inexorably pursue their nationalistic agendas.

On the other hand, al-Jazeera is a young station. It is bold and irreverent. It has challenged traditional barriers of press freedom in the Middle East and has forced outlets subservient to draconian Arab governments to either change or risk being ignored. Who’s to say al-Jazeera can’t become the same inspiring equipoise in Asia? In places like Malaysia, which consistently lands in the basement of press freedom indices, and where the variety of print and broadcast media eerily mirrors the choices on an old Soviet-era supermarket shelf, a stronger challenge to the status quo is sorely needed. (Despite plans to drop its incendiary tone, Collins said the Malaysian government has no intentions of tampering with al-Jazeera’s content.)

This reflects an interesting trend for the Gulf to look Eastward to India and South-East Asia rather than to the Arab world and the West. The Asia Times article quoted above is rather snarky about Al Jazeera in my opinion, sometimes unfairly. But it raises some interesting questions as to whether it will provide the same critical take on South-East Asia that it has on the Arab world. Their coverage of China, in an area where big media’s desire to get inside the homes of 1.2 billion Chinese has made them rather coy about criticizing Beijing (see Murdoch’s pandering for instance), will be particularly interesting to watch.

Light blogging this week

I am currently in Rome attending a conference, so I will not be able to post much this week. I apologize to all those who left comments in the past few days — I’ll add some of my own thoughts soon. I’ll also have a few comments on the conference, although I probably won’t be able to say much as it was confidential and not generally open to the press, as there are both Arabs and Israelis who may not want to be identified. More on that soon.