The tragic death of Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove has had one positive spin-off: it has given the British press a chance to dust off the old clichés about the US military, which have lain idle since the last good “incompetent gung-ho cowboy yanks shooting up our boys” incident during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq.  It’s especially timely since the high casualties expected to accompany the summer fighting season have failed to materialize, and continual editorials lamenting our seemingly endless commitment to an un-winnable war are redundant now that the new coalition government has announced that British troops won’t be there in strength beyond 2015 (stand by, however, for the “Why are we cutting and running/ Was it all in vain?” memes to be deployed as the situation, and reader appetite, require).

Some of the most interesting coverage of the failed – sorry “bungled” – Norgrove mission –has come from the schizophrenic Daily Telegraph.  While the more liberally-inclined sectors of the UK press take a consistently skeptical tone in their reporting on the US, the ostensibly conservative Telegraph finds itself in a difficult position: ideologically inclined to support the beacon of global capitalism, and enthusiastic in the championing of individual liberty over the nanny state, pro-Americanism should be a gut reflex to the Telegraph.  Yet stories  continue to appear which are apparently written by some grumpy hack in a basement who came of age in World War Two when the yanks were “overpaid, over-sexed and over here,” and cut his teeth reporting President Eisenhower supposedly stabbing British Prime Minister Anthony Eden in the back over the 1956 Suez fiasco.   And it is this latter tone that is wont to manifest itself when the US military screws up – sorry “cocks up, old chap” – and the Telegraph pounces. (more…)

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

September 23, 2010

Press Conference by President Obama

8:03 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening.  I have several announcements.

Today, federal marshals delivered George W. Bush to The Hague for his war crimes trial next month. Attorney General Holder will cooperate fully with the tribunal.  My message to the world: even American presidents are not above international law.

Next, I will sign the “Voting Booth Transparency Act” when it reaches my desk on Tuesday.

Beginning in November, this long-overdue amendment to the “Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) will rip away the veil of secrecy surrounding the act of voting.  Citizens will mark and sign their ballots before witnesses, and this information will become part of the public record.

Your friends, relatives, neighbors, union bosses, and SEIU thugs have a right to know if you voted the way they wanted you to or the way you said you would.  The days of isolated cubicles and anonymous marks on generic ballots are over.

At this time, I’d like to recognize Prince Nouria El-Aziz, my new White House Counselor on U. S.-Islamic relations.  [pointing] He’s the fellow in traditional Saudi dress standing against the wall next to Rahm Emanuel.  [El-Aziz bows to the president; Obama bows back]

His Majesty, King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, honors me by assigning one of his 403 nephews to be his eyes and ears in the West Wing.

Now, uh, normally, I’d take two planted questions, ramble aimlessly in response, then call it quits. (more…)

Libya has apparently decided that, if they’re going to have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, they’re going to own it. So in between using the UNHRC to spread antisemitic organ harvesting libels, they’ve dispatched a ship in the direction of Gaza. This is actually the second time in three years that they’ve tried to break the Israeli blockade, the intention being to establish a pipeline between Hamas and their Tehran sponsors and to build an Iranian port on the Mediterranean Sea. Because the Iranians, they’re humanitarians too.

When Israel intercepted the Turkish flotilla two months ago, it took five or six news cycles before the media’s beatific unarmed activists were proven to be lunatic death-worshiping jihadists. By then the anti-Israel narrative had already hardened, though Reuters gamely kept trying to hide the evidence and the New York Times continued hyperventilating about how “angry Israeli commandos” turned a “ship of protesters into a bloodbath” – just in case.

Now there’s this Libyan ship Amalthea, which may or may not end up reaching Israel. If it does, and if there’s a confrontation, the media coverage won’t exactly swing wildly in Israel’s direction. Instead you’ll see the same mostly lame attempts to whitewash the same mostly pathological jihadists. Except in this case there’s already tape on the whole lunatic death-worshiping thing, courtesy of an Al Jazeera interview with one of the passengers:

Here then, is the evidence that the media will be ignoring tomorrow, today: (more…)

It’s happened before, this tendency of the MSM to walk away from an incomplete story when something new, and usually more political, comes along.  Like sheep moving en masse, the eager correspondents run off in a pack to chase the new news.

It happens…it did back in 1979.

On November 4, 1979, when Iranian “students” took over the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, a 444-day saga began. If you weren’t tuned-in then, here’s just one image from that day.

Although little happened for months on end, the network evening news-readers counted up the days of the “crisis” like we count up the deficit these days. For President Jimmy Carter, the no-news of the daily-news brought political death by 444 cuts. (more…)

The information coming out of Iran is raw, and sporadic.  Mainstream press coverage is simplistic. Be careful what, and how, you read.  Here’s what to do.

Why is it so confusing?

Both information and disinformation arrive in fragments and in waves. The fragmentation reflects myriad goings-on coupled with regime’s censorship and disruption of communications.  The wave-like nature of the raw feed reflects the ebb and flow of the protests: planning and then action, planning and then action.

Eye-witness accounts are first-hand, but partial.  Twitter and YouTube bring us breathless updates, along with warnings that some Twitter usernames have been co-opted by the regime and relay false information.  “Leaked” documents and the informant-of-the-day offer uncertain and conflicting information.

Who is involved and what’s at stake may be changing. In July, the issue was electoral irregularities.  Now, depending on what you read, the protesters are young and old, liberal and conservative, and the argument(s) are about which players will the levers of power within the Islamic Republic, or how the Islamic Republic should work, or whether there should be an Islamic Republic.

Then there are the regime’s atrocities. These are undeniable, and the impact of the images is visceral.

(more…)

“Every single Iranian is valuable.  The government is at everyone’s service.  We like everyone.”

-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, June 2009

I cannot use my real name.  If the freedom of expressive condemnation practiced in this article were associated with my name I would never be permitted to return home.  Dozens of family members would be in danger of interrogation and persecution for my words.  This is an everyday reality for an Iranian-American.  I live in America with my family and enjoy all the freedoms and privileges contained within the American dream.  These are the freedoms that my fellow Iranians are fighting for.  I use these rights to voice my thoughts and to condemn those who will not acknowledge our struggle.

On June 13th, 2009, in the aftermath of Iran’s tenth presidential election, the Iranian people marched through the streets outraged, denouncing the disputed and fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As a result, the regime’s security apparatus fought the people’s will and tried to repress all forms of civil activism. Using different news media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, the Iranian people allowed their protests to be heard around the globe. (more…)

Not so long ago, writers, editors, concerned world citizens and deep thinkers of all kinds were consumed with the idea of a coming global catastrophe that seemed implacable and virtually unavoidable. When it comes to covering today’s debates on global warming, we might want to take a step back and recall this earlier, somewhat chillier 1980s obsession with the fate of the earth – that is, of course, The Fate of the Earth, the title of a three-part series by Jonathan Schell first published in The New Yorker, then republished as a popular book by Alfred A. Knopf in 1982.

Jonathan Schell

This influential series was all about the unstoppable, world-ending consequences of nations (especially the United States) clinging to their nuclear weapons. The fate of the earth, according to Schell, was to be nuclear annihilation, human extinction, the end of all life. Game over. You’re dead. We’re all dead. Your children are dead. Your dog’s dead. Your children’s children won’t exist. Finito.  It was a very popular idea at the time, much discussed at cocktail parties, sidewalk reefer breaks, and editorial meetings. Schell had caught the ear of the culture.

(To judge by this piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times by Schell’s older brother, Orville, pessimism seems to run in the family.) (more…)