Egypt and Arab States circle toilet bowl
 

State television also announced the arrest of an unspecified number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group long considered the largest and best organized political group in Egypt, for “acts of theft and terrorism.”

It was unclear, however, what role the Brotherhood played in the protests or might play if Mr. Mubarak were toppled. There have been many signs of Brotherhood members marching and chanting in the crowds. But the throngs —mostly spontaneous — were so large that the Brotherhood’s members seemed far from dominant. Questions about the Brotherhood elicited shouting matches among protesters, with some embracing it and others against it.

Nascent democracy or nutjob Islamist state. My money is on the nutjobs. Good thing we don't support any other totalitarian regimes.:rolleyes:

And STATE television is going to tell you the full, honest truth...right? :rolleyes:

Ha! The government's focus on the brotherhood is probably for Western consumption but they do exist as an organized group. We are still a long way from power sharing arguments...

Sadat had foresight. He planned for his replacements. When he was assassinated, the replacements stepped right in.

Mubarak has no such plans. He apparently will do anything to stay in power as if (he apparently believes) that if good for Egypt. His health is said to be so bad that he has been staying in vacation towns outside Cairo trying to get healthy - for at least a year.

Worse, below Mubarak is a power vacuum. Therefore an outsider (ElBaradei, the Nobel prize winner) living in Vienna Austria and not from the Army may be an only viable replacement.

Since Nasser, every leader has come from the Army. There is, apparently, no one with sufficient 'leadership' from those ranks to replace Mubarak. That power vacuum is probably the most serious long term problem.

If these sparks ignite more tinder, then Saudi Arabia might be next. Even the Economist, like so many others, got it very wrong this time. Even Kaddafi of Libya may be concerned. Two uprisings almost without any warning. Apparently every major world government never saw it coming.

Have been watching Al Jazeera from where I am. Last night their cameramen had had their equipment impounded so while they talked about what was happening, they had Egyptian state television on loop with footage of the "new government" being inducted.

There is a short article in Times Topics on the Muslim Brotherhood. They appear to have positioned themselves very well to remain major players.


On January 30, the Brotherhood joined the secular opposition in banding together around a Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent and secular government critic, to negotiate on behalf of the forces seeking the fall of Mr. Mubarak.

The United States and Mr. Mubarak had long sought to reduce the power of the Brotherhood. But by disbanding the credible secular opposition parties or driving them underground, the Egyptian government had made the Brotherhood seem the group most likely to gain power in a post-Mubarak era.

Wheeeeee here goes Jordan

Next up ... Meeting on the Plains of Meggido, world ends, no film at 11.

I guess we're reading the right novels anyway.

I've been watching Al Jazeera live also. Additionally, following #eqypt hashtag on twitter. Great way to keep abreast of current events from those who are actually THERE and observing. Not just spouting the "party" line....

Having spent years in the Middle East, I know all too well how things get twisted (by the authorities there as well as here in the US).

Okay, let's review. ;)

Fox News: We're rich because we don't spend money on maps and shit.

Perhaps they've outsourced to India as a cost containment measure and in Hindi the translation for "Iraq" is "Egypt?"

Pete: No. very funny, but no.
wolf: also no.

real reason: It just doesn't matter. It was a simple mistake, but an easy one, since they've been stuck with that map like, forever At least they got the name right.

Ok, let's review. Who here watches Fox News for the news? A show of hands?

Thought so.

I don't currently but I used to.

To be fair, that map is a really old f-up. Outside of all the issues with Fox, I just wonder what process ends up with a map like that? After all, the digital world is full of labeled maps. Maybe an intellectual rights thing?

To be balanced, that map is really f'-ed up. What process ends up with a map like that? It *can't* be an intellectual property issue (we're dealing with Fox /snide). Seriously. It's an editorial oversight. INHO, one made by a very long habitual focus on the region at the map's center, with the country name du jour applied to the label. Generously, it's laziness, an organizational bias toward action at the expense of fact checking rigor. But that's what they're about. I won't bother with the less generous assessments.

Well, either that or Steve the graphics intern fucked it up.

Of course Steve the graphics intern screwed it up. People make mistakes. It's what we do.

You need to have a system in place to scrutinize everything. Double check everything by a fresh pair of eyes. It's seriously a tone set by management. Fox didn't have a second fresh set of eyes looking at that graphic. Whoever "double checked" Steve's work is the one who deserves the blame.

Mm, but even double and triple-checked items retain a certain amount of errors, which is one reason it's important to follow a broad range of news sources to truly understand events.

We would have to look at the overall rate of error in not just graphics, but headlines, the crawl, the DJIA and everything else broadcast 24x7 to make a determination of whether this single screen shot is indicative of a high overall rate of error.*

Who here has watched Fox News regularly enough to make that determination?

Who here is ready to make the call while admitting not watching? (Biggie you may step forward)


*actually, there is another way to know: if this shot is put forward as an egregious example of the worst of Fox News, that would be an indicator that Fox News is not that bad.

Who here is willing to make fun of Fox for its stupid error even though we make stupid errors all the time?

*Raises hand*

I posted it because it is a funny fuckup.

If we want to balance the abuse, NPR annoyed me in the fair and balanced department this week when Terry Gross presented Bob Spitzer as a writer of nuanced books about gun policy instead of a hardcore left-winger whose college classroom I was warned to avoid due to my libertarian tendencies and his willingness to award dissent with gpa crushing grades... but this is not (yet) a gun control thread.

I accept your call-out.

I don't watch Fox News. I have seen it, I have seen enough of it to have formed my opinion. In my opinion, they're much more about excitement and incitement than they are about anything else, especially including News. It is info-tainment, with the accent on the -tainment.

Fox and I have different working opinions of that word, News. I consider News to be facts (and opinions) about current events, about things that are happening that I don't know about, or don't know the newest or nuanced details about. What I get from Fox is much more sizzle than steak. I *especially* dislike their presentation style that slyly colors their presentation of facts with emotionally effective adjectives, clearly designed to persuade. I don't want to be fucking persuaded by my newscaster. Just tell me what happened. I also like to hear what it means, because I don't have expertise in every area, not even many areas. But don't tell me how to react or how to feel. How I respond is *my* business.

To add injury to this kind of insult, I've seen enough instances where opinion was presented as fact to seriously degrade their credibility. I find this offensive. Making shit up and presenting it on a network called Fox *NEWS* chaps my ass. They're effective, and I give them full credit for that. They have a lot of viewers (credit to their attractiveness) and a lot of believers (credit to minimally critical thinking habits of their viewers). But they're not a trusted reliable source of good factual information offered with a minimum of bias.

ALL "news" is biased. Some you can tell, some you can't.

If you can't, it means you share the bias. That's all it is.

Lest We Forget:

Dan Rather, the most trusted "news" man of the last decade, announced at the top of "60 Minutes", America's most trusted "news" program, two months before the election, that they had proof that George W. Bush was AWOL from the National Guard.

This proof was, unmistakably, a modern Microsoft Word document that they alleged came from a 1960s era typewriter.

But hey Fox News fucked up a label on a map, so, fuck them.

Lest we also forget. The primary bias of all news organizations has nothing to do with politics. The primary bias of news organizations is to make money. I see the Rather thing more as hoopla than political bias. Not that that makes it any better.

I also don't see anyone here particularly busting Foxes balls over this. It's a stupid mistake and people are going to point and laugh at stupid mistakes.

No, UT. News is not biased. News is just news. The modern presentation of news is biased, sure. And all the presentations have some kind of bias, and some amount of bias, agreed. Fox's bias is not my bias, and so it is obvious to me. Fox's bias is considerable, so it is obvious to everyone.



As for "fuck Fox", ... your words. Not mine. I said in all my posts here that the map represents a mistake. an oversight. this item by itself is not fuck-worthy. I did allow that my opinion of Fox as a news outfit is low. and although you pointed out that Dan Rather also made a mistake, I notice you didn't take issue with any of my assessments of Fox's style. Dan Rather's actions don't justify Fox's--you're not really trying to say that, are you? ABC (it was ABC, wasn't it? anywhooo) they got conned and went with it. they thought they had a scoop and went with it. I doubt Steve the Graphics Intern is trying to pull one over on Fox News, nor is he trying to rewrite geopolitical history with this successful and revealed submission of factually incorrect information.

I like what you said earlier about stuff needing to be double and triple checked, and that it still can be wrong. Heck. That's how we here know that this screenshot is wrong. We all checked it. We all checked it. It clearly got overlooked at Fox by ... by, well, everybody who looked at it. I don't think Fox was trying to convince me that Iraq is Egypt. but they do try to do that kind of thing enough that I have relegated them to advocate status. You're right, all the presentations have some kind of bias, and I strain to identify the motivations behind the other stories and sources I take in. Fox gets whacked by me for the strength of their bias and their feigned innocence about it.

the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch too, and there's a similar bias. The direction is similar but the intensity is not close. And the acknowledgment is not close. Thererfore, I trust WSJ for NEWS far far more than I do Fox.

No, I don't take issue with your assessments, although I think many people hate the FN opinion shows so deeply that they apply their filter to the regular news hours.

When I was watching cable for news I would turn on CNN, wait for something I believed was biased, and then switch to FN and do the same. The most educational moments were those where I switched and the other channel was covering the same news story, often with the same narrative.

We all make mistakes. But that one is equivalent to looking at a naked man and naked woman. And mislabeling them.

Funny - and so sad.

No, not biased. Even Fox News reporters were outside the NO stadium and convention center. Reporting that no food or water had been provided for three days. The Fox News anchorman literally mocked them. Denied that could be happening. We all know no food or water was delivered for four days. But White House spin on day three was that did not happen.

Why did Fox's anchor deny reality when all other news services were reporting a fact that contradicted White House spin? Fair and Balanced.

FN is the only news service that so reminds me of Radio Moscow in the 1960s.

Comment from someone who flew out of Cairo yesterday.

The city is in disarray but it isn't actually as violent as you might think from the news. Keep in mind that it is a city of anywhere between 16 and 32 million depending on the census and definition of city area. What I mean is that much of the city is unaffected directly by protesters and looting and fighting are less common that the news seems to be making out. That said, it is a pretty revolutionary moment. Keep in mind that any protest a fraciton of this size was heretofore unheard of for over thirty years, let alone crowds of this magnitude that have lasted for 8 days now.

Fox has aired incorrect information many times. For instance, when the Republican Florida Representative (Foley?) was caught sex-texting underage male congressional pages, he was identified as a Democrat. Whether these are innocent mistakes or not is questionable because of their bias. Just watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report - you'll see lots of examples.

I can think of only a couple times where the "mainstream media" has done the same type of thing: Candra Levy/Gary Condit, The Pickup or SUV that was purposely blown up, and the Dan Rather incident that you mentioned. There doesn't seem to be a consistent bias among these examples, considering that Condit was a Democrat.

I heard on the way to work that Pro-Mubarak and Anti-Mubarak citizens are getting violent with each other in Liberation Square.

Ever notice how

its the countries

with the least bacon

that are always rioting?

I hadn't. But now that you mention it, there's clearly a correlation.

Clearly we're seeing causation not correlation.

The people you agree with agree that the people you both disagree with are often disagreeable.

I agree.


I think.

I wonder how this is going to end.



http://i.imgur.com/xvRTw.jpg

The fact remains that they show multiple examples of Fox being incorrect.

Anderson Cooper was set upon by Pro-Mubarak thugs.

My favorite comment on the page:

It's all fun and games until Anderson Cooper gets punched in the face. Now it's for real!

Which explains why Kosher nations are constantly in riot.
(Oh. That is also called Jewish comedy. Explains all the violence in Blazing Saddles.)

Yeah. You can't trust a guy who punches out an innocent horse.

A few days Late as I Heard The Gubment turned the Net and cell phones back on ,

The conversation about news media brought this to mind:



This is from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, a short run series of weekly programmes analysing news reportage and general trends in news media, drawing from both current and historical sources. This looks at some stylistic differences between UK and US news. In case you think any of it is anti-American, he is equally savage elsewhere in the show about UK news , which is his primary target for the series.

That was great Dana!

So what do you watch to get your news, if you watch TV at all for news?

I think you are confusing News Commentary with News Broadcast. Just an observation.

hehehe funny video

I lol'ed

A good article on the subject....

http://bigthink.com/ideas/26695

Interesting article. Thanks for that.

Dictator or Democracy. Wait didn't everyone tell Bush not to export Democracy?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-egypt-mubarak

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1

WASHINGTON Feb 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. intelligence committee warned President Barack Obama's administration of instability in Egypt at the end of 2010, but did not foresee the trigger for unrest, a top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday.

http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptN...01485620110203

And Obama was supposed to do what with that vague warning, given only a month ago?

Maybe formulate a plan for a response rather than waiting days and days. Sort of reminds me of the criticism that people put to Bush about 9/11 after he took office on 8 months prior. I find it more interesting rather than a chance to bash Obama but it does present a contradiction in our Foreign Policy when we want to support democratic events overseas on the one hand but don't want to ruin relationships that have been fostered over 30 years in an effort to maintain peace in the region.

Virtually nobody saw this coming. The Economist about two months ago noted the coming instability because so many Arab leaders are so old and so authoritarian. Cited were Mubarak, Kaddafi, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

Even those in Egypt probably had no idea this was coming.

Responsible leaders are supposed to make provisions for the replacement. Important to protect their legacy. In democracies, we call that elections. In Egypt, Sadat had selected his successor - Mubarak. One would think Mubarak learned. Nope. A problem when one lives in an ethersphere for too long. In his case, 30 years.

Mubarak is so detached from reality as to blame another political party - the Muslim Brotherhood - for his problems. An example of what happens when one lives too detached from his people for too long. And a real shame. A man who did so much for Egypt would so tarnish his legacy by making so many mistakes in the past decade. He is so removed from reality as to believe 90% of Egyptians voted for his party? Too much time in the ethersphere will severely pit what could have been a stellar record.

Americans have no pig in this race. And should not be involved. Even whether Mubarak has plans for a successor is not for any American to demand. Well, an American president did try to subvert elections in Australia. How did that work out? Learn from history. Only they can decide the government they want. Our job is to be talking to all parties - nothing more.

No response Pico?

What are you expecting? Its so vague and only a month old. But even so, how do you know that they didn't already have a response formulated.

Because none was given. Did you even follow the news in the days when the protests and then riots started? Did you follow the response from the White House? There was first support to for the ruling dictator followed by fence sitting. They can't have it both ways.

You're talking about a public response, you dont know what was said or done behind closed doors.

Yes, I am talking about a public response... to the world.

In other news, Fox says ObamaCare could cause the same kind of uprising here.

Obama's been warned!

Chris Matthews: Panama Canal is in Egypt

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/28748