My Kitchen Table

Tom Regan's Decoding Middle East Media

Traditional Media in the Arab/Iranian World

1. (Right) Jerusalem Post (especially Caroline Glick's column)- http://www.jpost.com

2. (Left) Ha'aretz (especially Brad Burston's “Special Place in Hell” - http://www.haaretz.com/

3. Palestinian News Network - http://english.pnn.ps/

4. BBC News (Middle East) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/default.stm

5. Al Jazeera (English) - http://english.aljazeera.net/

6. Magharbeia.com (Northern Africa) - http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/homepage/default

7. Albawaba.com (Great gateway site) - http://www.albawaba.com/

8. Hurriyet (Turkey) - http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/home/
9. Daily Star (Not great reporting, but a great opinion section) - http://www.dailystar.com.lb/

          Rami Khouri - http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=102988

11. Jordan Times - http://www.jordantimes.com/

12. Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran) - http://www.irna.ir/En/?idLanguage=3

13. Gulf Times - http://www.gulf-times.com/

14. The Peninsula - http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/index00.asp

15. Dawn (Pakistan) - http://www.dawn.com/

16. Watching America - http://watchingamerica.com/News/

17. Doha Center for Media Freedom - Under construction

18. Al-Masry Al-Youm - http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en 

19. The National (UAE) - http://www.thenational.ae

20. Al Arabiya (Satellite) - http://www.alarabiya.net/english.html

21. Yeman Post - http://www.yemenpost.net/

22. Yemen Times - http://www.yementimes.com/

23. Kuwait Times - http://www.kuwaittimes.net/

24. Now Lebanon - http://www.nowlebanon.com/

America looks at the "Middle East"

Esquire, Nov. 1882 - The Man who Married Dan Rather

- "Moments" - somebody watches something and feels it, tastes it and knows it." (Van Gordon) Sauter wanted several such moments of 'intense feeling' in every broadcast."

- an emphasis on heart-tugging TV "moments"

Concentration of Media Ownership

In 1981, forty-six media companies controlled most of the book, magazine, newspaper, movie, and television industries. By 1986, this number had shrunk to twenty-nine and by 1989 to twenty-five. Then, in the 1990s, the process of conglomeration in the media was so rapid that one could scarcely follow the players. Disney bought ABC, Westinghouse bought CBS, and General Electric took over NBC. A new network, Fox, was able to supply some competition, but only because it was part of a huge global newspaper, book, and TV empire belonging to Rupert Murdoch. Time/Warner not only controlled magazines, movies, and books, but had also taken over Turner Broadcasting, CNN, and a wide swath of the cable TV distribution network.

By 1997, just seven giant companies had nearly cornered the vast multimedia markets of the United States: Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Viacom, Time/Warner, Newhouse, General Electric, Westinghouse, and Disney.

Media ownership study ordered destroyed
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/

The analysis showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of "on-location" news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market. It was part of a broader decision liberalizing ownership rules. At that time, the agency pointed to evidence that "commonly owned television stations are more likely to carry local news than other stations."

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227115.500-humans-prefer-cockiness-to-expertise.html

No True Scotsman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman

Boston Globe series on Saddam Statue

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/iraq/galleries/statue/01.htm

Toppling of Saddam Statue

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Toppling_the_statue_of_Saddam_Hussein

When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html

NYT: We Made Big Mistakes On Front-Page Gitmo Story, But We Did Not Get Spun

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/nyt_editors_note_walks_back_claims_in_front-page_g.php

Seeing the news through "cultural values"

Several years ago, Karyn Karnheim, who was then at the AEI, noted that people filter their views through their cultural values. That's why a fact is not a fact to them, unless it aligns with their own views. She also added that reporters frequently don't understand when people seem to ignore what seems "indisputable" to them. What actually happened or what was actually said really matters very little. 

Social Media in the Arab region

Generation Mubarak/Generation Facebook

Arab women emerge as internet-savvy

Egyptian opposition, pro-government groups battle on Facebook

Khaled Said

Mohammed ElBardei Facebook page

Iran issues list of banned websites

Iran Green Movement

ElBaradei for President Facebook page

Blogs worth reading

Saudi Jeans
http://saudijeans.org/

Mona Elthhawy Blog
http://www.monaeltahawy.com/blog/

Saudiwoman's Weblog
http://saudiwoman.wordpress.com/

The Angry Arab News Service
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/

The Arabist
http://www.arabist.net/

From Beirut to the Beltway
http://beirutbeltway.com/

BeirutSpring
http://beirutspring.com/blog/

Rooz 1199 [Very good Iranian blog]
http://www.roozonline.com/english.html

Stop torturing us [Iranian blog written from inside Iran]
http://www.roozonline.com/english.html

Across the Bay [neocon flavor]
http://beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/

Informed Content [One of the best progressive blogs]
http://www.juancole.com/

The View from Fez
http://riadzany.blogspot.com/

Plus 361 (Lebanon)
http://www.plus961.com/

Egyptian Chronicles
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/

The Religious Policeman [Saudi]
http://muttawa.blogspot.com/

Sudanese Thinker
http://www.sudanesethinker.com/

Fudzail [Saudi]
http://1426.blogspot.com/

Toot [Great blog aggregator]
http://itoot.net/

Best of the Arab Blogs
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/blogs.htm

360East [Jordan]
http://www.360east.com/

Elder of Ziyon [Pro-Israeli settler blog]
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

JBlog Central
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_home.php

Jordan Watch
http://batir.jeeran.com/

Iraqi Blog Count
http://iraqblogcount.blogspot.com/

Pro-American Muslims
http://proamericanmuslims.wordpress.com/

Culture Unplugged
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/index.php

Salam Pax (The Baghdad Blogger)
http://salampax.wordpress.com/

Ahmadinejad: What, me worried?

Iranian President Ahmadinejad seems a bit perturbed by President Obama's interview this week on Al Arabiya where he offered an open hand to Iran if it "unclenched its fist." Seems Ahmadinejad wants to clench his fist a bit more for a while.

So he made his typical over-the-top "I hate America" speech where he called on the US to apologize, to stop backing Israel, to withdraw all its troops around the world, yada, yada, yada. (Yawn) I mean, this stuff hardly plays in Iran.

Obama is a real problem for the little Iranian president. He's not an easy target like Bush was. And if in the upcoming presidential election, Iranian voters (and more important, the mullahs) think that a moderate president will help change the status quo in a way that better works in the future, he's toast.

Jon Stewart hits it out of the park once again

Leave it to Jon Stewart to point out the inconsistencies in the Israeli and American positions about Gaza.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Strip Maul

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The real cost of the Israeli incursion into Gaza

An excellent analysis of the situation from The New York Times. If any one in Israel thought that this would mean the end of rocket fire or the end of Hamas, I think they might be sadly mistaken.

Why U.S. Media is not giving the whole story on Gaza

Interesting piece I found on Andrew Sullivan's blog about the difference in coverage between U.S. media and international media. (It's from Al Jazeera, which has its own axe to grind of course - no more than Ha'aretz or the Jerusalem Post it has to be said - but the piece makes a good point.)

If you watched US media, you wouldn't necessarily know the death toll is basically 100 to 1 in terms of Palestinian deaths compared to Israeli deaths. But if you were watching the BBC or CNN international, you might have a idea that this is a much more deadly and complex conflict than the US media is showing. (Even the video used on the BBC's website is far more graphic about the damage in Gaza than ANY of the American networks are showing.)

Look, I'm no Middle East peace expert. Israel feels it has to protect its citizens from these undirected rocket attacks and decides to use overwhelming force to solve the problem. But WHEN has this approach ever worked against the Palestinians? I would argue never. Oh, perhaps it has lead to a lull in violence for a year or two. But in the 60-odd years of this ongoing conflict, these kind of actions that result in huge numbers of Palestinian deaths only create whole new generations of Palestinians (not to mention Arabs around the region) that hate Israel and will find new ways to attack it, enhances - not undermines - the power of groups like Hamas, and destroys any of the work towards reconciliation that good people on both sides have tried to accomplish.

It's just a bad, bad, stupid way to deal with the problem, especially when it looked like the economic blockade was doing more harm to Hamas than any land assult could do. I think there is a lot of internal Israeli politics lingering around this attack, especially with elections coming up soon. Which only makes it that much more ridiculous.

PS: I really like what Jeff Goldberg has to say about Gaza over at theAtlantic.com. It encompasses the paralysis of the situation so well, for both Israelis and Palestinians. And as Goldberg notes, "I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East."

Israel's "just war" on Gaza

Andrew Sullivan offers a brilliant dissection of the notion that Israel's attacks on Gaza fall under the "just war" theory. Basically, while he says that nothing that Hamas does can qualify as "just war," neither can the current actions undertaken by Israel.

Maybe I am missing an element here. Or maybe just war theory cannot account for modern terrorism. But if that is the case, then an argument must be made for a new framework of just warfare that can account for that. It does seem to me that the combination of apocalyptic terror and WMDs shift the equation. But with Hamas, we are not talking about WMDs. And we have to acknowledge something the neocons rarely do: Hamas is more democratically legitimate than the King of Jordan, an unelected plutocrat who runs a torture state.

Maybe Noah has a response to these points. I'm happy to air it. These are provisional thoughts and I reserve the right to adjust them. But until neoconservatives can do a better job at defending the morality of the current assault, they will lose the battle for global opinion, and deepen the crisis that the Israelis face in the new century.

Shouting ourselves in the foot (again)

I swear, this administration is dumber than a bag of hammers.

OK, so we're negotiating this really important agreement with Iraq that will allow the U.S. to maintain troops in the country after the U.N. mandate runs out in December. But there is a fair bit of resistance to the treaty because Iraqis are afraid that U.S, troops will act like cowboys, do whatever they want, and then not be held responsible for their actions, which frequently involve collateral damage - as in innocent bystanders.

So what do we do?

We act like cowboys, zoom into Syrian, blow a few things up, kill some innocent civilians along the way and then explain it by saying ""We are taking matters into our own hands."

D'ohhhhh. From Reuters:

Some Iraqi officials warned that the U.S. military raid into Syria could be used by opponents of the security pact under negotiation with the United States.

"Now neighboring countries have a good reason to be concerned about the continued U.S. presence in Iraq," prominent Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told The Associated Press.

[Iraqi Foreign Ministry undersecretary Labid Abbawi ] said he did not believe the Syrian raid would affect the security negotiations but acknowledged that "some will use the incident for the argument against the agreement."

Look, I understand the importance of getting the bad guys (if there were any) regardless of where they hide out. But now we've both put Iraq in a touchy situation with a neighboring country with which it needs to get along AND we've given ammunition to all those Iraqi politicians who don't want us to stay in the country after Dec. 31st.

We couldn't have waited to do this until the agreement was signed?

Well, stupid is as stupid does. And this was just downright stupid.

We Have Nothing to Fear, Except the Fear That's Fabricated

This is a fascinating article from Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek. This week's he's writing about a new study from Simon Fraser University that shows that terrorism around the world has actually plummeted in the past few years and the biggest reason for the drop is the drop in support for terrorist organizations among Muslims.

The Simon Fraser study notes that the decline in terrorism appears to be caused by many factors, among them successful counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries and infighting among terror groups. But the most significant, in the study's view, is the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years." These are largely self-inflicted wounds. The more people are exposed to the jihadists' tactics and world view, the less they support them. An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for the jihadist militants in the country to be 1 percent. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, where Al Qaeda has bases, support for Osama bin Laden plummeted from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008. That dramatic drop was probably a reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but it points to a general trend in Pakistan over the past five years. With every new terrorist attack, public support for jihad falls. "This pattern is repeated in country after country in the Muslim world," writes Mack. "Its strategic implications are critically important because historical evidence suggests that terrorist campaigns that lose public support will sooner or later be abandoned or defeated."

So why haven't we heard more about this study? Well, as Zakaria writes, "... it does not fit into the narrative of fear that we have all accepted far too easily."

Time for Ahmadinejad's performance review?

January, not April, is the cruelest month of all. Especially in Iran

Just ask Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Last week, while being interviewed on his own state-run television, he was told by an interviewer that his policies were widely considered 'harsh, emotional and  unscientific.'

Then this morning he got up to read his copy of the Washington Post only to discover that the US has given its troops in Iraq authorization to kill his operatives who are 'in country" stirring up trouble. This came only a few days after Wayne White, a former US intelligence analyst, told a seminar at the Middle East Policy Council that he had seen recent plans for an attack on Iran and "We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets."

But his biggest problem may be with his boss. The Age of Melbourne reports that when Ahmadinejad asked for a meeting with Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he was told "Sorry, I'm busy."

This is the first time since Ahmadinejad became president that Khamenei refused to see him. The Age says that the Supreme Ruler's action "has been taken by opposition politicians in Iran as a criticism of the government's handling of the controversial nuclear issue, which has resulted in the country's mounting international isolation."

The country's business leaders are not happy either. Omid Memarian, an Iranian journalist in L.A. who runs the Iranian Prospect blog (Memarian also won the Human Rights Watch's Human Rights Defender Award in 2005), writes in a piece for the Inter Press Service that the sanctions placed on Iran have made it tough for the president to fulfill his economic promises and this is making the 'bazarries' unhappy.

At the same time, the traditional conservatives and their natural allies, the bazarries, the country's small merchant class who control much of the Iranian economy, are increasingly alarmed about Ahmadinejad’s policies. The influential head of Tehran's bazaar guilds, Ahmad Karimi, recently stated that economics is a science and those who have neglected its basic principals -- meaning the Ahmadinejad administration -- can no longer evade responsibility by blaming others for their mismanagement.

Not good, not good at all. I don't see any bonus for the president in this month's paycheck.