a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

comments have mercifully vanished.

here u go - http://www.cbsnews.com/8601-18560_162-20032070-0.html - theres some push back now but theres a good string of all muslims are animals in there if you care to torture yrself

http://www.mofopolitics.com/2011/02/03/slutty-cbs-reporter-lara-logan-detained-in-egypt/

jesus

MAKE THE WORLD GO AWAY

wow

i managed to get this far w/o knowing that existed

aaaanyway

M White that article on the constitution is super interesting. i got a little nervous when reports said the constitution had been suspended, but, it looks like it sucks.

This analysis of the crisis of Arab pride and leadership is the best - or at least the clearest and most wide-ranging - piece I've read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021102617.html

http://www.mofopolitics.com/2011/02/03/slutty-cbs-reporter-lara-logan-detained-in-egypt/

― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, February 15, 2011 4:49 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

uggghhh

you know who didn't get assaulted while covering egypt?

http://i.imgur.com/wAT2l.gif

Interesting detail from a Fisk article last week:

Mubarak ordered a Tiananmen style massacre but the people in the tanks who got the order (I assume from their army superiors who are now in charge?) refused.

http://www.americablog.com/2011/02/mubarak-ordered-tiananmen-style.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-as-mubarak-clings-on-what-now-for-egypt-2211287.html :

But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

that's amazing + really moving

Fisk coming correct

wow, was wondering abt that

Following a series of offensive tweets about the sexual assault of CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo Tuesday, New York University has accepted the resignation of Nir Rosen, a fellow at the university’s Center on Law and Security.

Shortly after news about the assault was released, Rosen, a veteran war correspondent, tweeted, “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal,” referring to Anderson Cooper’s beating in Cairo at the beginning of the month. He added later, “I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she’ll get,” citing his view that she is “a major war monger.”

Following a few backlash comments on Twitter, he responded, “Yes yes its (sic) wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too,” suggesting that it somehow would have been amusing if Anderson Cooper had also suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.” (Rosen says that, at the time, he was not aware of the severity of the attack.)

Rosen has since deleted both tweets and apologized repeatedly on Twitter. “(I) forgot Twitter is not exactly private,” he tweeted, later saying that he “never meant to heart anyone” and has “brought shame” upon himself and his family.

holy shit

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2011/02/17/alg_tweet_nir-rosen.jpg

fucking asshole.

Countdown to Ann Coulter's first L.Logan "joke"...

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/13/wanted-a-grand-strategy-for-america.html

basically think every sentence in this is either tendentious or outright wrong

cant wait to read more terrific niall ferguson essays in the tunku varadarakan-edited newsweek

fucking people

thank god tina brown saved it from the brink, so that we could all get more niall ferguson in our lives

“never meant to heart anyone”

piers morgan, simon cowell, and now niall ferguson... you guys have funny taste in brits

n-ferg has some cushy appt at harvard! and he was some kind of historical advisor to mccain for a while. clearly been wanting to get in the game forever.

Interesting detail from a Fisk article last week:

Mubarak ordered a Tiananmen style massacre but the people in the tanks who got the order (I assume from their army superiors who are now in charge?) refused.

http://www.americablog.com/2011/02/mubarak-ordered-tiananmen-style.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-as-mubarak-clings-on-what-now-for-egypt-2211287.html :

But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

― StanM, Wednesday, February 16, 2011 11:00 AM (3 hours ago)

this is kinda breathtaking

n-ferg has some cushy appt at harvard! and he was some kind of historical advisor to mccain for a while. clearly been wanting to get in the game forever.

― goole, Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:17 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i remember him when he was knee-high. a tosser then, desperate to escape england. was hilares when it transpired he was on #team_mccain

you shd have sent back schama in return for him

xpost

wd take the fisk with a pinch of salt for now, it being fisk

schama's a "bit of a tory" too tho inne?

god i want to go line by line on this stupid dickfuck article but eh

short version: something claiming that there was a huge policy failure in some regard ought to sketch out what a successful policy outcome would look like, amirite? instead of going on about kissinger and fucking bismarck. ass.

He is married to journalist Susan Douglas, whom he met in 1987 when she was his editor at the Daily Mail. They have three children. In February 2010 the Daily Mail reported that, following a series of affairs, Ferguson had left his wife for former Dutch MP and feminist critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A similar story in The Independent was followed by the publication of a correction, noting that Ferguson's marriage had broken down before he met Ali.

ohhh that's right

I tried to read a book by Niall F. that looked interesting, but after about 60 - 80 pp into it I could see he was a gigantic horse's ass who wrote falsified history for his own ideological purposes.

"He is married to former ilm poster Susan Douglas"

this is just gonna be the start of a very protracted and embarrassing death for newsweek

Confession: I like Ferguson, he talks well and his books are pretty good imo - he was also, uh, in a band with a friend of mine when he was a nipper. But the stuff of his I've read recently has been dismal. Dreading looking at that one tbh.

maybe the worst thing about that article is the extent to which it feels like it was created in an edit meeting just so the magazine could go out with a headline like OBAMA'S EGYPT FAILURE

wd take the fisk with a pinch of salt for now, it being fisk

― for all the fucked-up children of this world we give you 1p3 (history mayne), Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

does fisk have a record of questionable reporting i'm not aware of

writes for a joke newspaper, is a dick + irl skeezy

schama's a "bit of a tory" too tho inne?

― goole, Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

nup

my impression is that his paper (which is indeed a joke) don't exactly have him on a tight lead, and as a result he has a pretty casual relationship with sources, quotes, etc. his journalism is v impressionistic.

im not saying the story is bs, just that i've not seen it corroborated

iirc the fisk story was published last week, and you'd have thought it would have gained traction?

the para about headsets and phone calls to relatives wouldn't get published in the news section at a lot of other newspapers.

Um wtf: http://twitter.com/#!/alibinkhalifa

alibinkhalifa Ali Bin Khalifa
@sayyidhashim @JohnFurrToronto I didn't kill anyone ever. I swear I was home all day. Just went for a coffee and came back.

Fisk is a bit of dick, don't care if his newspaper sucks (which is immaterial), he is still the best Western journalist when it comes to the Middle East

the depth and breadth of experience he has in the Arab/Muslim world seems largely unparalleled to me. I read his latest book last year and it was pretty incredible in scope and detail.

One problem with his books is he seems to have started just repeating the same bits in them - like that thing about bringing bits of cluster bombs that were taken out of a child back to the American company that sold them to the Israeli air force. It is a great story, but srsly.

xp, yeah he has definitely earned his spurs and has a huge amount of deep background. but i do think the newspaper matters. he's become kind of a professor emeritus these days, i.e. tolerated for the prestige he brings, rather than for his productivity in terms of meritorious journalism.

well I've only read the one. and a bunch of his columns.

xp

Bad scenes in Bahrain right now. Details sketchy.

http://www.undispatch.com/bahrain-massacr