I’ve been following the Guardian live blog. At the latest Army press conference, Egyptian press in attendance started chanting “Al Jazeera out”, and they applauded the Army and Police spokesmen when they were done answering questions.
I wonder how soon this will become standard practice at White House briefings.
Tone in DC
Darth Cheney, Bush Jr. and company were doing that shit in 2001.
Forum Transmitted Disease
It isn’t?
Soonergrunt
@ Mistermix, top:
“I wonder how soon this will become standard practice at White House briefings.”
When the next Republican President launches an unnecessary, illegal war against another country.
SATSQ.
schrodinger's cat
@Soonergrunt: Thanks for all your help on the Saturday thread, I am just getting a refurbished unit, instead of signing a new contract. I tried fixing the damn thing but could not get the case to open. I found a place that did repairs, but a refurbished unit costs less than the repair estimate. Strange but true.
Cacti
Mistermix, I’m assuming you were alive during the early days of the Iraq invasion. Remember when “liberal” MSNBC pulled the plug on Phil Donahue for being insufficiently rah-rah, hooray war.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
How would Chuck Todd differentiate himself from Brett Hume (or whoever else shows up at these) if they all clap? Far better to ask questions that mean absolutely nothing:
BGinCHI
When we get to “Fox News Out!” we’ll have real progress.
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Is that a joke or did Chuckie really ask that?
Cacti
Also too, anyone else remember Connie Chung telling (US-citizen) Martina Navratilova to go back to (non-existent) Czechoslovakia for criticizing Dubya too much?
Our national media was pathetically servile to the neocons for about 6 of 8 years that Bush was in office.
Shakezula
@Soonergrunt: This.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@schrodinger’s cat: I was joking. Hard to tell, though, huh?
Comrade Dread
I’m not sure I believe either side about what happened, but it does seem like we’re definitely going to see civil war in Egypt for years.
Roger Moore
@Soonergrunt:
I don’t think it will require another war, just another Republican President.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Soonergrunt:
Can we call them the Republican Guard?
JCT
re: thread title
Yikes, I heard this song yesterday and it took me all day to banish the ear worm.
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Well, they do ask stupid questions.
MattF
Well, this is the same press that serviced the Mubarak regime, so, no surprises.
Villago Delenda Est
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Only during Rethuglican assmalistrations.
p.a.
Are there any secular movements in the Middle East with enough strength to oppose the religious right without the support of the police and military?
Yatsuno
OT: Google Doodle: go check out. It’s fun.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yes, because when dealing with morans like Chuck Todd, Poe’s Law manifests itself in all sorts of bizarre ways that even the people at the Onion would have difficulty imagining.
catclub
@p.a.: Interesting how you put the question. In ME, apparently the police and Army ARE secular movements.
Soonergrunt
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m glad that worked out for you. Glad that what little I had for you was helpful.
BruinKid
So can someone explain why Egyptian media would be so against Al Jazeera? I thought Al Jazeera was supposed to be a rather decent news network, and not the Muslim version of Fox News.
srv
@Cacti: I’m trying to remember when Chomsky or anyone on the left ever had a microphone on a US network. Bush/Obama, pretty much the same, anyone who isn’t “Bomb Now” is “Well, yes, we should bomb/intervene, but maybe we should wait a little bit.”
You have to turn to RT/AJ channels or a fucking libertarian on US networks to see someone actually questioning why courtesy bombs might be a bad thing.
srv
@BruinKid: AJ is a platform for the Qatar government. The ones who are assisting us in Syria and lurv the Muslim Brotherhood.
That said, things are happening in Qatar:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/transition-qatar-idUSL5N0EM1ET20130610
and they just expelled a couple of MB and Hamas religious figures. Looks like they’re trying to re-write history or maybe we’re putting the boot on them.
catclub
@srv: I think Bill Moyers is the closest one is likely to find.
Bob Edwards was booted from NPR, but I never got the ‘Firebreathing liberal’ vibe when I listened to him. ;)
Elizabelle
@Yatsuno:
Yesh! I love the doodle today. What a nice surprise to wake up to.
RE Al Jazeera: new home of Soledad O’Brian.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@p.a.: Not remotely close. Frequently the police/military are on the side of the religious right; it just so happens that in Egypt (and Turkey) there’s more money to be made when you don’t have to split it with the fundies.
SiubhanDuinne
@JCT: That capital “I” in “LIke” is making me crazy.
/CDO
El Tiburon
Following The Guardian Live Blog?
Do we know who the bloggers are? What is their agenda? Motives? Are they pompous, long winded assholes? Before we ingest the content of their reporting, shouldn’t we dissect their personal lives?
catclub
@srv: Unusually bald-faced/informative statement about Qatar in the article: ” a bankroller of Arab Spring revolts in alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
I always say ‘important if true’ when I read things like that.
catclub
@El Tiburon: Have they signed a blogger ethics policy statement?
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub: I especially don’t get that vibe nowadays, when I hear his weekend show. He’s fine when he’s interviewing actors and singers and writers, but his weekly conversation with Doyle McManus is arch, ponderous, and insider-y. The CW of the MSM in one pompous, patronizing package.
p.a.
@catclub: what the hell does Maine have to do with…ooohhh. ;-). Like most anywhere, I think the military is secular in the sense that they’ll tolerate any ideology that ensures domestic tranquility and a budget the generals consider adequate. A descent into social and especially economic medievalism can provoke pushback. Iran is an exception it seems, but this may be explained by Saddam’s attack.
HinTN
@BruinKid: That is the problem, they actually report instead of regurgitate.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Tiburon:
Unfortunately, our ability to perceive those reporting news as dispassionate professionals has been ruined by our exposure to the vermin of the Village.
So, yes, those questions need to be answered. These people are not Uncle Walter or Chet Huntley, you know.
Elizabelle
The NYTimes website is down.
ETA: Not. Sorry. Elizabelle Litella
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I only catch Edwards from time to time, I like him and I think he’s an old fashioned Roosevelt Democrat on substance, but when it comes to politics he’s got a bad case of the Villages. The weekly NPR version of his show always carries an interview with Doyle McManus, again not the worst but a dedicated both-sides Broderist. They both pimped the IRS “scandal” hard, and that hard on the heels of selling the Obama-doesn’t-reach-out-to-Mitch line.
Or what I see @SiubhanDuinne: just said.
LAC
@El Tiburon:Interesting… Especially since their long winded assholery is at the expense of fact checking and thoughtful analysis in order to get clicks from enthralled syphocants. Why bother focusing on their personal lives? I mean, there should be enough of their body of work out there to see.
Botsplainer
@El Tiburon:
Why bring Greenwald into this?
catclub
@Elizabelle: Never mind.
Violet
The whole Egypt thing is just sad for the ordinary Egyptian. These things rarely go well for the regular folks.
Since Egypt has such a large tourist industry, a lot of people could be affected as tourists re-think their plans. Even places like Sharm El Sheikh, which is well away from Cairo, were affected during the previous uprising when Mubarak was ousted and had to offer deals to lure back the tourists. Wonder how it’ll go this time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
It it always thus. Most of the people executed during the Terror of the French Revolution were not aristocrats, they were just ordinary people caught up in the times. Life is disrupted and the masses are forced to deal with it with the meager resources they always have at hand.
srv
@catclub: Here’s what AJ has to say about it:
Jewish Steel
Can we get some kind of color code for:
anti-Greenwald
anti-anti-Greenwald
anti-anti-anti-Greenwald
…comments. Or maybe some footnotes?
Soonergrunt
@catclub: That’s a left-over from when they were
protectoratescolonies. The British in particular were great at modeling the local army after their own, and making sure that it had no real loyalties to anyone but the British colonial administration.LanceThruster
@Cacti:
Wow. I never knew that (never watched her show). If Connie was on hubby Maury’s show, she could have thrown a chair at Martina.
And Martina’s answer was priceless –
CHUNG: Can I be honest with you? I can tell you that when I read this, I have to tell you that I thought it was un-American, unpatriotic. I wanted to say, go back to Czechoslovakia. You know, if you don’t like it here, this a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want.
NAVRATILOVA: And I’m giving it back. This is why I speak out. When I see something that I don’t like, I’m going to speak out because you can do that here. And again, I feel there are too many things happening that are taking our rights away.
srv
@Jewish Steel: You could ask Cleek to code up green backgrounds for Sully posts and IDK, pink, for Greenwald?
Soonergrunt
@BruinKid: AJ is pretty much the pan-arab version of Fox News Lite, especially with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood and to a lesser extent the Ba’ath party and other “pan-arab” movements.
We don’t see it because we don’t watch AJ, and also because we miss the cultural cues.
burnspbesq
For a zombie that was “gutted” and had its “heart cut out,” the Voting Rights Act looks pretty spry.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/07/new-texas-voting-disputes/
burnspbesq
@srv:
Magenta for Greenwald. It’s much more of an attention-grabber than mere pink, and grabbing attention is what Greenie is about.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
BLINKING magenta.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Tiburon: I realize you are just being a dick to make a point, but there is a real difference between a liveblog that covers events as they unfold and the Snowden/Greenwald affair. But please do carry on.
Botsplainer
The Venezuelan offer to Snowden has a sell-by date.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/07/19333719-venezuela-snowden-has-until-monday-to-respond-to-asylum-offer?lite
ETA- I don’t think that means next Monday. I think that means today.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@burnspbesq: There are still things that can be done with it, but the burden now falls on the plaintiff to prove harm rather than the states to prove they aren’t going to do harm, and with the Supreme Courts current idea of standing, they could easily make things have to wait until after an election for things to be redressed. And I don’t imaging the Supreme Court invalidating 5 year old elections.
the Conster
@El Tiburon:
Do you obsess about GG and his precious reputation 24/7, or is it your day job?
Botsplainer
@the Conster:
Y’know what’s going to be awesome? When Snowden goes into a lockup, Greenwald is going to still be winless regarding giving brilliant legal advice.
Stunningly inept strategery is his calling card.
burnspbesq
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The key fact in the story is that the District Court in San Antonio asked for briefing on Section 3 sua sponte. Pending cases aren’t just going to vanish.
patroclus
@Soonergrunt: Actually, AJ has multiple platforms – in addition to the news channel with which Americans are vaguely familiar, which resembles CNN but is, as you say, Qatari and pro-Muslim Brotherhood generally, there is also a channel which AJ analogizes to C-SPAN, which basically shows lengthy raw unexpurgated Muslim Brotherhood “conferences” and “sessions” which basically amount to religious events, with sermons and harangues. It’s kind of like if CNN owned the Christian Broadcasting Network and showed Pat Robertson, Bob Jones, Fred Phelps and their ilk constantly and dressed it up like C-SPAN and sold it as a “public affairs” channel. Critics claim that this AJ channel is pro-Islamicist and is constantly showing what they claim amounts to incitement to violence; AJ presumably claims that they’re merely showing what people are actually saying. It is this AJ channel that is drawing all the ire and has been (temporarily?) closed in Egypt. Critics claim that it is more analogous to Rwandan radio prior to the massacre there.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
Are they in hiding at the Moscow airport after fleeing to Hong Kong?
Oh, wait, I forgot, that’s an unfair investigation into their personal lives.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@burnspbesq: That is an interesting point, for sure. I wonder how SCOTUS feels about putting themselves in the position of validating every map? Because I see any blocking of a map being sent all the way to the Supreme Court. OK, I don’t entirely wonder about the conservative members: “All maps are valid.”
Kay
@burnspbesq:
burns, you know as well as I do that 3 doesn’t offer the same protections as 5. Even if they win on 3 it is likely to be applied as a remedy for a violation of 2, specifically, so.narrower than 5.
They did cut the heart out of it.
Soonergrunt
@patroclus: Thanks for the clarification. I knew it was something along those lines, and while I know that there huge cultural differences of which I am only somewhat more aware than the average American, I know that there are still LOTS of things that I miss.
I always count a day in which I learned something new or expanded my knowledge of something to be a good day. Thanks!
catclub
@Kay: I wonder how vigorously the federal AG can apply the bail-in provisions to make the application of preclearance have teeth. I wonder if they can replace the section 5 definitions that were thrown out with bail-in (actually it should be fail-in) to reinstate
the preclearance requirements. I wonder if they could base it on recent history of preclearance cases that the AG rejected?
Kay
@catclub:
I don’t think so, (and I’m not an expert) because 3 isn’t the fall-back for 5. It reads like one remedy for a violation of 2. Now, 5 was in one way of looking at it a “remedy” on voting rights violations but I don’t think judges will see it that way. It isn’t how I read it, anyway. I haven’t read the Arkansas bail-in case yet, though (Arkansas was bailed in at one point). You may be right.
In the short term, I’m more interested in the Texas voter ID than the bigger case. Strictest in the country. I think we need to know if a court is ever planning on finding that an ID law is too burdensome. They’ve been all but cavalier on ID up to now. If they AREN’T going to rein Republicans in on ID, ever, we all need to know that, because then we can focus on whatever we can do without them, at the state level, preparing voters, etc. Sufficient TIME and CERTAINTY pre-election are hugely important for people in states where this stuff is going on. Republicans can run out the clock.
Frankensteinbeck
@Botsplainer:
Pro-GGs never seem to grasp that the primary objection to Greenwald is that he’s dishonest, and even when he seems to prevent facts he twists them so far out of context they’re essentially lies. It’s a personal attack that is very, VERY relevant to dismissing GG’s claims and bleeds over to Snowden.
@burnspbesq:
C’mon, man. This is a topic you should sound reassuring about, not sarcastic. Most people here WANT news that the VRA still functions, even if not as well.
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
This is true in countries where the military is a political power in its own right; it exists as a power independent of the civilian government and throws its weight around to get what it wants. In countries that have adequate civilian control over the military, generals who tried that kind of thing would get shut down before they had a chance to do much damage. Part of the reason the Iranian government has been stable is that they have successfully subordinated the military to the constitutional government.
burnspbesq
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think you misunderstood. I’m the guy who has consistently been pitching “the sky didn’t fall (at least not completely) as a result of Shelby County” since about an hour after the decision was read from the bench. I am very happy that the District Court in San Antonio, in particular, thinks it still has a role to play in protecting all Texans’ right to vote.
patroclus
@Soonergrunt: Apparently, AJ now has 20+ channels, including multiple sports channels, children’s programming and channels in various languages and targeted to different countries. Since 2011, the ownership has been transferred to the AJ media network, so it is no longer owned directly by the Qatar government, although some say that that is a distinction without a discernible difference as yet. They launched AJ Mazeerah (or AJ Live) as their C-SPAN-like channel in 2005 and they launched AJ Mazeerah Misr in 2011 with a specific focus on Egyptian public affairs. AJ Live Misr is the channel that is drawing the ire for the reasons I listed above. It is new and has focused on the Muslim Brotherhood since its launch because they took power following the 2011 Arab Spring – critics assert that it so far has proven to be nothing more than a propaganda channel that is partially responsible for the MB winning the election (by contrast, the other elements of the opposition to Mubarak were nowhere near as organized).
Perhaps a better analogy to the critics’ complaints would be like if Fox owned C-SPAN and turned over its management to Breitbart, Drudge or O’Keefe and all it did was show Focus on the Family, the NRA, Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin 24/7. Or, for the purposes of this blog, it turned over its management to GG/Snowden 24/7.
Anyway, that’s the channel that the Egyptian journalists are complaining about – rather than striving to be even-handed like C-SPAN, they have instead showcased Moursy supporters rather than their opposition.
Anna in PDX
@BruinKid: Egyptian state media back when I lived there under Mubarak was very much a sychophant of the regime. Probably mostly the same people are working for these stations/newspapers. So they are going to not like the Brotherhood and like the Army better. And a common response I’ve seen from Egyptian regular people (in-laws, to be precise) is that they are in a very angry place right now. They want the brotherhood out and they are glad the Army is doing that. And they don’t want to hear from anyone foreign telling them they are doing things wrong. That includes Obama, Al Jazeera, anyone else making any statements that are in the slightest way anti-coup.
Anna in PDX
@Soonergrunt: I don’t think this is true at all. AJ is not like Fox News at all, never has been. I watched it a lot, and I watched the Arabic version of it, when I lived in the Middle East for 12 years. I speak Arabic fluently and I do catch cultural cues.
It did have a rep for focusing a lot on the Arab Israeli conflict to the detriment of other coverage. But it also was widely respected. It was the only pan-Arab station that regularly hosted talk shows with Israeli guests.
Anna in PDX
@Anna in PDX: I should add that it may have done a 180 since I left in 2006, but I highly doubt it would have become at all like Fox News in the interim. Maybe it got more sensational and worse, but it would have had a long way to go. It was head and shoulders above all other media including every American news station ever.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kay:
IOW, in the case of the VRA, 3+2 does not equal 5.
brashieel
I really don’t get the anti-Al Jazeera trend in this thread. They have their biases, but they’re really the only serious Arab language news organization. The traditional Egyptian media is the sort of craven power worshippers you’d expect from so many years of dictatorship, and the fact that they’re yelling at AJ doesn’t carry much weight with me.
Al Jazeera is a lot of things. Their relationship with Quatar’s government is complex and sometimes troubling. But they aren’t Fox News. Their cameras are the reason most of the world ever really heard of the Arab Spring.
Another Halocene Human
@patroclus: Thanks for the clarification.
Another Halocene Human
@Anna in PDX: And they don’t want to hear from anyone foreign telling them they are doing things wrong. That includes Obama, Al Jazeera,
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s the vibe I got. AJ’s twitter feed during the coup was very negative on the whole affair.