Tag Archives: Big Media/Big Tech

US media angrily marvels at the lack of Muslim gratitude

open quoteOne prominent strain shaping American reaction to the protests in the Muslim world is bafflement, and even anger, that those Muslims are not more grateful to the US. After all, goes this thinking, the US bestowed them with the gifts of freedom and democracy – the very rights they are now exercising – so how could they possibly be anything other than thankful? Under this worldview, it is especially confounding that the US, their savior and freedom-provider, would be the target of their rage.

On Wednesday, USA Today published an article with the headline “After attacks in Egypt and Libya, USA Today asks: Why?” The paper appeared to tell its readers that it was the US that freed the Egyptian people from tyranny:

“Attacks in Libya that left four US diplomats dead – including Ambassador Christopher Stevens – and a mob invasion of the US Embassy in Cairo, in which the US flag was torn to shreds, have left many to wonder: How can people the USA helped free from murderous dictators treat it in such a way?”

Did you know that the “USA helped free” Egyptians from their murderous dictator? On Thursday night, NBC News published a nine-minute report on Brian Williams’ “Rock Center” program featuring its foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, reporting on the demonstrations in Cairo, which sounded exactly the same theme. Standing in front of protesting Egyptians in Tahrir Square, Engel informed viewers that this was all so very baffling because it was taking place “in Cairo, where the US turned its back on its old friend Hosni Mubarak”, and then added:

“It is somewhat ironic with American diplomats inside the embassy who helped to give these demonstrators, these protesters, a voice, and allowed them to actually carry out these anti-American clashes that we’re seeing right now.”

That it was the US who freed Egyptians and “allowed them” the right to protest would undoubtedly come as a great surprise to many Egyptians. That is the case even beyond the decades of arming, funding and general support from the US for their hated dictator (to his credit, Engel including a snippet of an interview with Tariq Ramadan pointing out that the US long supported the region’s dictators).

Beyond the long-term US support for Mubarak, Egyptians would likely find it difficult to reconcile Engel’s claim that the US freed them with the “made in USA” logos on the tear gas cannisters used against them by Mubarak’s security forces; or with Hillary Clinton’s touching 2009 declaration that “I really consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family”; or with Obama’s support for Mubarak up until the very last minute when his downfall became inevitable; or with the fact that the Obama administration plan was to engineer the ascension of the loathed, US-loyal torturer Omar Suleiman as Mubarak’s replacement in the name of “stability”.

Given the history of the US in Egypt, both long-term and very recent, it takes an extraordinary degree of self-delusion and propaganda to depict Egyptian anger toward the US as “ironic” on the ground that it was the US who freed them and “allowed” them the right to protest. But that is precisely the theme being propagated by most US media outlets.close quote (Read more)

White House Press Secretary: Protests not directed at the United States

Clueless. Idiot. Arrogance.

open quoteWhite House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday the violent protests throughout the Middle East are not directed at the United States or U.S. policy but are a response to a YouTube video:

CARNEY: We also need to understand that this is a fairly volatile situation and it is in response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration, or the American people, but it is in response to a video, a film that we have judged to be be reprehensible and disgusting. That in no way justifies any violent reaction to it, but this is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at U.S. policy, this is in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.

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“Rejoicing” Markets

Patrick Barron‘s letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

open quoteDear Sirs:
It is a misnomer to claim that markets “rejoice” due to interventions by monetary authorities, in this case by the European Central Bank (ECB), to drive down the interest rate artificially. True, the world’s stock markets went up and the targeted interest rates did go down, but this is strictly the result of money printing and not the result of market fundamentals, such as increased profits. When a central bank intervenes to lower interest rates, it buys bonds at above market prices, which is the flip side of the interest rate; i.e., when bond prices rise, interest rates go down (and vice versa, of course). One may view this as nothing more than a counterfeiter paying more for a good than the free market price; there is no market force involved. Consequently, when bond interest rates are forced down by such action, these bonds become less attractive investment instruments. Money that would have been invested in bonds will now flow to stocks, where one may get a better yield. The resultant increase in stock prices is not some sort of rejoicing by the market, but simply arithmetic by investors who have nowhere else to go. This game of ever larger injections of funny money will come to an end when price inflation gets out of hand. Simply stopping the increase in the monetary spigot will cause the whole, corrupt house of cards to come crashing down.close quote

Chickenhawk Warmonger David Frum gets new ideaology and soft landing

open quoteDavid “Axis of Evil” Frum first gained notoriety as one of George W. Bush’s more polemical speechwriters. During the run-up to the Iraq war, he was all over the media, agitating for the invasion and viciously denouncing anyone who questioned the wisdom of such a course. In an infamous article for National Review, entitled “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” he attacked those conservatives and libertarians who counseled caution, smearing Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan, Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, Taki Theodoracopulos, and myself as, variously, “defeatist,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-Semitic.” Here is Frum, in March of 2003:

“They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies.”

Frum went on for at least three thousand words, attacking his enemies as traitors and terrorist-sympathizers. It was all lies, of course, and I answered them here. Yet now we see Frum has reinvented himself as a “moderate” Republican, and has carved out a new career for himself as the kind of conservative who gets invited on NPR and CNN to snark at his former comrades. In a recent interview with Politico, he was asked: “What do you know now that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?” His answer:

“That the Iraq War would be a disaster. Come to think of it, they did tell me.”

In the accompanying photo, Frum is sitting on a patio somewhere, smiling and petting his golden retriever. Who, me worry? Such a blithe spirit, that Frum, who is wearing white pants with no socks. Deaf to the bitter cries of the dead and the maimed, not to mention those he accused of treason, he puts his feet up in a pose of summery relaxation. The memory of his hysterical smears – “They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country” – seems to have dissipated into the stratosphere. He’s put it out of his mind.

This is the New David Frum, the moderate, measured, wonkish would-be charmer, who only loses his soft edges when the subject of foreign policy is raised. After a well-publicized break with the American Enterprise Institute over his supposed opposition to Republican orthodoxy, he also broke with National Review, where he had once taken on the role of ideological enforcer, and underwent a makeover. He set up the “Frum Forum” as the online headquarters of the Frummian Republicans, a small but extremely self-satisfied gaggle of online bloviators, who sneered at the Tea Party and cheered as Frum announced the GOP was in danger of being taken over by anti-government “extremists.”close quote (Read more)

New York Times CEO Thompson Stands to Make $10.5 Million

Wow. For that kind of money, I might even consider giving Krugman a column if it pleased my financers.

open quoteMark Thompson, hired as the New York Times Co.’s chief executive officer this week, will receive a pay package totaling as much as $10.5 million, including an annual salary of $1 million.

Thompson, who served as the British Broadcasting Corp.’s director general, stands to make as much as $4.5 million from his signing bonus, $2 million in annual incentives and $3 million in long-term incentives. close quote (Read more)

Professor Krugman, Where Is The Austerity?

open quoteWe are told that austerity in Europe has failed. The elections in France and Greece, for instance, are supposedly evidence of people’s opposition to severe cuts in spending. However, the growing anti-austerity backlash against Europe ignores one fundamental point: If there is austerity in Europe, in most cases it hasn’t taken the form of massive spending cuts.close quote (Read more)

EU Austerity

Ron Paul Contingent Forced Gold Discussion, Court Intellectuals Launch Slander Campaign

Ever since the Ron Paul contingent forced a statement about the Gold Standard onto the party platform, the court pseudo-economists, intellectual body guards of the state have gone to work:

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Why the Gold Standard Is the World’s Worst Economic Idea, in 2 Charts “Whether it’s 1896 or 2012, it doesn’t make sense to crucify our economy on a cross of gold.” (Read more from The Atlantic)

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Republicans tease with gold standard, but idea seen full of bugs open quote U.S. Republicans have all but guaranteed the backing of the “gold vote” this November by raising an idea that even the most bullish mainstream bullion boosters believe is unrealistic – a return to the gold standard.

Gold prices would likely surge to $10,000 an ounce, the greenback’s credibility would vanish and global superpowers would risk a new trade war if Republicans were to restore the link between the U.S. dollar and gold that was severed 40 years ago.

But that isn’t stopping Republicans from considering the idea, who will call for a commission to look at restoring a fixed value for the dollar, according to a draft of the party platform to be adopted at the Republican National Convention that begins on Monday in Tampa, Florida.close quote (Read more)

Perfect example of cowardly, sycophantic, on-message journalism

Sharp Decline in Terror Attacks After Bin Laden Death

open quote The number of worldwide terror attacks fell to 10,283 last year, down from 11,641 in 2010 and the lowest since 2005, the State Department reported today.

What’s made the difference? The State Department cites the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members killed last year including Atiyah Abd al-Rahman and Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the head of Yemen’s Al Qaeda affiliate and had ties to the underwear bomber plot in 2010.

“The loss of bin Laden and these other key operatives puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse,” the report stated.close quote (Read more)