We Should Fear The Coming Islamophobic Backlash

... there is a wider narrative that is emerging in the rush to judgment, as news media attempt to stitch together details — at first entirely circumstantial— into an explanatory story. The assumption is that the killers are members of some sort of Islamist group, possibly linked to Islamic State, and are exacting political retribution for the publication’s regular satirical attacks on Islam by executing its journalists. And about that, I do have something beyond the obvious to say, just as a starting point.

The first point is that French President Francois Hollande declared this a “terrorist” attack very early on. Now, we don’t need to know any concrete details to understand the purpose of this. “Terrorism” is not a scientific term; it is inherently normative.

The uses of “terrorism” in such contexts are by now well understood. I suggested apropos the Woolwich killing that it functions as a narrative device, setting up a less-than-handful of people as a civilizational threat evoking stoic defense (of “British values,” “la république,” “the West,” etc). 

It justifies repressive and securitarian responses that tend to target Muslims as such, responses which in the United Kingdom chiefly come under the rubric of the government’s Prevent strategy.

The second is that there is already an enormous pressure, in this context, to defend Charlie Hebdo as a forceful exponent of “Western values,” or in some cases even as a brilliantly radical bastion of left-wing anti-clericalism.

Now, I think there’s a critical difference between solidarity with the journalists who were attacked, refusing to concede anything to the idea that journalists are somehow “legitimate targets,” and solidarity with what is frankly a racist publication.

I will not waste time arguing over this point here: I simply take it as read that — irrespective of whatever else it does, and whatever valid comment it makes — the way in which that publication represents Islam is racist. 

If you need to be convinced of this, then I suggest you do your research, beginning with reading Edward Said’s Orientalism, as well as some basic introductory texts on Islamophobia, and then come back to the conversation.

We have been reminded of the perils of such “you’re with us or against us” campism throughout the “war on terror.” Now, unfortunately, I suspect we’re going to see more of this, and many who know better capitulating to the political blackmail.

The argument will be that for the sake of “good taste” we need “a decent interval” before we start criticizing Charlie Hebdo. 

But given the scale of the ongoing anti-Muslim backlash in France, the big and frightening anti-Muslim movements in Germany, and the constant anti-Muslim scares in the UK, and given the ideological purposes to which this atrocity will be put, it is essential to get this right.

No, the offices of Charlie Hebdo should not be raided by gun-wielding murderers. No, journalists are not legitimate targets for killing. 

But no, we also shouldn’t line up with the inevitable statist backlash against Muslims, or the ideological charge to defend a fetishized, racialized “secularism,” or concede to the blackmail which forces us into solidarity with a racist institution.

By Richard Seymour

Asking Muslims To Condemn Terrorism Must Stop

There's a certain ritual that each and every one of the world's billion-plus Muslims, especially those living in Western countries, is expected to go through immediately following any incident of violence involving a Muslim perpetrator. It's a ritual that is continuing now with the Sydney hostage crisis, in which a deranged self-styled sheikh named Man Haron Monis took several people hostage in a downtown café.

Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: "As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form."

This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. 

The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion. 

This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry.

It is time for that ritual to end: non-Muslims in all countries, and today especially those in Australia, should finally take on the correct assumption that Muslims hate terrorism just as much as they do, and cease expecting Muslims to prove their innocence just because of their faith.

Bigoted assumptions are the only plausible reason for this ritual to exist, which means that maintaining the ritual is maintaining bigotry. Otherwise, we wouldn't expect Muslims to condemn Haron Monis — who is clearly a crazy person who has no affiliations with formal religious groups — any more than we would expect Christians to condemn Timothy McVeigh. Similarly, if someone blames all Jews for the act of, say, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, we immediately and correctly reject that position as prejudiced. We understand that such an accusation is hateful and wrong — but not when it is applied to Muslims.

This is, quite literally, a different set of standards that we apply only to Muslims. Hend Amry, who is Libyan-American, brilliantly satirized this expectation with this tweet, highlighting the arbitrary expectations about what Muslims are and are not expected to condemn:

Hend @LibyaLibertyAs a Muslim, I condemn acts of sexual assault following time spent as a self-proclaimed spiritual healer specializing in black magic.10:50 AM - 15 Dec 2014

This ritual began shortly after September 2001. American Muslims, as well as Muslims in other Western countries, feared that they could be victims to a public backlash against people of their religion. While the short-term need to guard against a backlash was real, that moment has passed, and the ritual's persistence is perpetuating Islamophobia rather than reducing it, by constantly reminding us of our assumption that Muslims are guilty until proven innocent.

The media has played a significant role in maintaining this ritual and thus the prejudiced ideas behind it. Yes, that includes openly Islamophobic cable news hosts like those in the US. But it also includes even well-intentioned media outlets and reporters who broadcast Muslims' and Muslim organizations' condemnation of acts of extremist violence, like the hostage crisis in Sydney.

There is no question that this coverage is explicitly and earnestly designed to combat Islamophobia and promote equal treatment of Muslims. No question. All the same, this coverage ends up cementing the ritual condemnation as a necessary act, and thus cementing as well the racist implications of that ritual. 

By treating it as news every time, the media is reminding its readers and viewers that Muslims are held to a different standard; it is implicitly if unintentionally reiterating the idea that they are guilty until proven innocent, that maybe there is something to the idea of collective Muslim responsibility for lone criminals who happen to share their religion.

Instead, we should treat the assumptions that compel this ritual — that Muslims bear collective responsibility, that they are presumed terrorist-sympathizers until proven otherwise — as flatly bigoted ideas with no place in our society. There is no legitimate reason for Muslim groups to need to condemn Haron Monis, nor is there any legitimate reason to treat those condemnations as news. So we should stop.

We should treat people like Haron Monis as what he is: a deranged lunatic. And we should treat Muslims as what they are: normal people who of course reject terrorism, rather than as a lesser form of humanity that is expected to reject violence every time it happens.

By  Max Fisher

The Difference Between American and Canadian Media

A tragedy in Ottawa, Canada shows us just how different US and Canadian media are.

“Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? 

Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind.” 

― Philip K. Dick

Jews Do Control The Media (and The Whole Country)

The Times of Israel, July 1, 2012 - We Jews are a funny breed. We love to brag about every Jewish actor. Sometimes we even pretend an actor is Jewish just because we like him enough that we think he deserves to be on our team. We brag about Jewish authors, Jewish politicians, Jewish directors. Every time someone mentions any movie or book or piece of art, we inevitably say something like, “Did you know that he was Jewish?” That’s just how we roll.

We’re a driven group, and not just in regards to the art world. We have, for example, AIPAC, which  was essentially constructed just to drive agenda in Washington DC. And it succeeds admirably. And we brag about it. Again, it’s just what we do.

But the funny part is when any anti-Semite or anti-Israel person starts to spout stuff like, “The Jews control the media!” and “The Jews control Washington!”

Suddenly we’re up in arms. We create huge campaigns to take these people down. We do what we can to put them out of work. We publish articles. We’ve created entire organizations that exist just to tell everyone that the Jews don’t control nothin’. No, we don’t control the media, we don’t have any more sway in DC than anyone else. No, no, no, we swear: We’re just like everybody else!

Does anyone else (who’s not a bigot) see the irony of this?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, here, fellow Jews. We do control the media. We’ve got so many dudes up in the executive offices in all the big movie production companies it’s almost obscene. Just about every movie or TV show, whether it be “Tropic Thunder” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is rife with actors, directors, and writers who are Jewish. Did you know that all eight major film studios are run by Jews?

But that’s not all. We also control the ads that go on those TV shows.

And let’s not forget AIPAC, every anti-Semite’s favorite punching bag. We’re talking an organization that’s practically the equivalent of the Elders of Zion. I’ll never forget when I was involved in Israeli advocacy in college and being at one of the many AIPAC conventions. A man literally stood in front of us and told us that their whole goal was to only work with top-50 school graduate students because they would eventually be the people making changes in the government. Here I am, an idealistic little kid that goes to a bottom 50 school (ASU) who wants to do some grassroots advocacy, and these guys are literally talking about infiltrating the government. Intense.

Now, I know what everyone will say. That everyone tries to lobby. Every minority group and every majority group. That every group has some successful actors and directors. But that’s a far call from saying that we run Hollywood and Madison Avenue. That the Mel Gibsons of the world are right in saying we’re deliberately using our power to take over the world. That we’ve got some crazy conspiracy going down.

Okay. Fine. So some of that is kooky talk.

But let’s look at it a bit deeper.

Maybe it’s true: everyone lobbies. Maybe it’s true there are actors of every ethnicity out there. But come on. We’re the ones who are bragging about this stuff all the time. Can’t we admit that we’re incredibly successful? Can’t we say it to the world?

I’ll give my theory for why Jews don’t want to talk about their control of the media.

First of all, as much as Jews like to admit that so many of them are successful, and that so many of them have accomplished so much, they hate to admit that it has to do with they’re being Jewish. Maybe they’ll admit that it has something to do with the Jewish experience. But how many Jews will admit that there is something inherently a part of every single one of them that helps them to accomplish amazing things?

The ADL chairman, Abe Foxman, was interviewed in a great article about the subject and he said that he “would prefer people say that many executives in the industry ‘happen to be Jewish.’” This just about sums up the party line.

The truth is, the anti-Semites got it right. We Jews have something planted in each one of us that makes us completely different from every group in the world. We’re talking about a group of people that just got put in death camps, endured pogroms, their whole families decimated. And then they came to America, the one place that ever really let them have as much power as they wanted, and suddenly they’re taking over. Please don’t tell me that any other group in the world has ever done that. Only the Jews. And we’ve done it before. That’s why the Jews were enslaved in Egypt. We were too successful. Go look at the Torah — it’s right there. And we did it in Germany too.

This ability to succeed, this inner drive, comes not from the years of education or any other sort of conditional factors, but because of the inner spark within each Jew.

Now, the reason groups like the ADL and AIPAC hate admitting this is because, first of all, they are secular organizations. Their whole agenda is to prove that every Jew is the same as every other person in the world. I cannot imagine a more outlandish agenda. No, we’re different. We’re special.

And clearly, that whole thing about big Jewish noses was totally blown out of proportion. (illustrative photo: Abir Sultan/Flash 90)

Of course, people hate when anyone says this. They assume that if you’re saying that Jews are special, it somehow implies that they’re better.

To be honest, I’m not really sure what the word “better” even means. What I do know is that being special simply means a person has a responsibility to do good.

I think that’s the real reason most Jews are so afraid to admit that there’s something inherently powerful and good about them. Not because they’re afraid of being special. But because they’re afraid of being responsible. It means that they’re suddenly culpable when they create dirty TV shows that sully the spiritual atmosphere of the world. It means that things can’t just be created for the sake of amusement or fun or even “art.”

Suddenly, we can’t screw up the world.

The interesting thing is that Jews have done so much for the world in so many other ways. They’ve moved forward civil rights; they’ve helped save lives in Darfur, Haiti and just about everywhere else.

But that’s not enough. Fixing the world physically is only half the battle.

Our larger battle, the harder battle, is elevating the world spiritually. And this is what the people that fight with every inch of their soul to prove that Jews are just the same as everyone else are afraid of. It means that we can no longer just “express ourselves.” We’ll have to start thinking about the things we create and the way we act. It means we’ll have to start working together. It means we’ll have to hold one other, and ourselves, to a higher standard.

The time has come, though. We no longer have to change our names. We no longer have to blend in like chameleons. We own a whole freaking country.

Instead, we can be proud of who we are, and simultaneously aware of our huge responsibility — and opportunity.

By Manny Friedman.

The “Conspiracy Theory” Label

Powerful Tool of Media Disinformation and Political Discourse

On March 18, 2014 Cass Sunstein released his latest collection of essays,Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas.[1] Like his other works geared toward a mainstream readership, the prominent Harvard law professor, former Obama administration regulatory czar, and NSA advisor [2] points to numerous alleged dangers posed by even “rational people” who are susceptible to adopting “crippled epistemologies.” What Sunstein fails to explain throughout his most recent medley of gentle authoritarianism is how the “conspiracy theory” term has received vigorous promotion from the editorial practices of certain major corporate news media.

“Conspiracy theory” is not merely a flippant or off-handed water cooler term, but rather a powerful tool of political discourse. “Deployed as a pejorative putdown,” political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith observes,

the label is a verbal defense mechanism used by political elites to suppress mass suspicions that inevitably arise when shocking political crimes benefit top leaders or play into their agendas, especially when those same officials are in control of agencies responsible for preventing events in question or for investigating them after they have occurred.[3]

Along these lines, “conspiracy theory” and its common variants, “assassination buff,” “crackpot,” “wacko,” and so on, were essentially interpolated into news reports and commentary in the late 1960s by CIA media assets as the agency maneuvered to bolster the Warren Commission’s “lone assassin” explanation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

When confronted in 2012, Sunstein does not “remember very well” co-authoring a 2008 paper, “Conspiracy Theories,” the namesake of his most recent book.

Only in the past forty years or so has the label become an especially salient discursive technique for channeling political dialogue and inquiry. From the late 1800s through the first half of the 1900s the phrase can seldom be found in news discourse. A search of the Historical New York Timesdatabase finds that “conspiracy theory” is used 30 times between 1870 and 1960, often in accounts of criminal court proceedings. Yet from 1960 to 1969 alone there are 46 instances of the term’s usage in Times articles. Since 1970, it is invoked in over 1,700 pieces, with a peak between 2000 and 2009 (728).[4]

Today the pejorative not only acts as a disciplinary measure–journalists and scholars alike fear such a trenchant smear–but also as a technique to shape information and analysis. It serves as a more-than-subtle way of saying, “Look here, not there,” thereby guiding readers and viewers to place their reasoning faculties in abeyance and adopt what are often uncritical and even misleading modes of substantiation and conclusion. While this phenomenon is clearly demonstrable in print news media, it is also widespread in US-based cable and broadcast news.

A LexisNexis search of news program transcripts for the dates March 1, 2011 to March 1, 2014 reveals 2,469 usages of the “conspiracy theory/theories” term. Probing the surveyed time span reveals CNN (586 transcripts) and MSNBC (382) as the foremost purveyors of the phrase, with Fox News (182) a distant third. The US government’s transcript service, US Federal News, comes in at fourth, suggesting persistent strategic usage of the label at federal government press conferences and similar functions to drive home official positions and dispel challenges to them. Programming on National Public Radio ranks fifth, with 115 instances.

The following is a breakdown of the cable or broadcast outlet/program referencing “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy theories” in transcript text within the aforementioned three-year span.

CNN Transcripts  -  586
Global Broadcast Database (local broadcast transcripts)  -  416
MSNBC  -  382
Fox News  -  182
US Federal News  -  144
National Public Radio  -  116
Australian Broadcasting Corporation  -  71
NBC News  -  67
Congressional Quarterly Transcripts  -  57
ABC News  -  55
CTV TV (Canada)  -  55
CBS News – 54
CNN International  -  48
Imus Simulcast  -  39
Financial Market Regulatory Wire  -  31
PBS News Hour  -  21
Bloomberg: Surveillance Show  -  17
Congressional Quarterly Testimony  -  16
The Charlie Rose Show  -  15
Follow the Money  -  14
Euro News  -  13
Lou Dobbs Tonight – 12
Cavuto – 8

To be more conclusive, the specific contexts in which the term is mobilized might be more fully examined and delineated. An argument may also be waged that this metric is not exactly proper given the dissimilar breadth of content produced by each outlet. After all, a 24-hour cable news channel such as CNN simply has far more “news hole” to fill than a daily one-hour broadcast likePBS News Hour or Charlie Rose.

Image: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (Wiki Commons)

Yet even here the variances are telling. For example, when comparing domestic CNN transcripts to those of the channel’s counterpart, CNN International, the former uses the term over twelve times as frequently. Such findings suggest the execution of a clear-cut editorial policy to fulfill certain propaganda-related ends–indeed, not unlike the Central Intelligence Agency’s usage of the term to combat alternative interpretations of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Along these lines, further examination of the data sample distinguishes how even news personalities’ bylines are correlated with frequent employment of the “conspiracy theory” label. Searching within the same data set, transcripts with CNN Anderson Cooper’s byline possess the highest incidence of the expression (81), with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Al Sharpton tied for second place (77), and Piers Morgan (38) ranking third. CNN’s Erin Burnett and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tie for fourth. Ostensibly conservative Fox News personalities Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity use the expression less frequently.

Anderson Cooper (CNN)  -  81
Rachel Maddow (MSNBC)  -  77
Al Sharpton (MSNBC)  -  77
Piers Morgan (CNN)  -  38
Erin Burnett (CNN)  -  31
Chris Hayes (MSNBC)  -  31
Sean Hannity (Fox News)  -  29
Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) – 19

Image: CNN’s Anderson Cooper (Wiki Commons)

With the exception of ABC (Australia) and CTV (Canada), all of the outlets are US-based, suggesting how the American population, well known for its limited historical comprehension and political sophistication, is expressly targeted with repeated usage of the “conspiracy theory” phrase. A population relying on sensation, caricature, and hearsay to understand national and world affairs has already forsaken its freedom.  It is perhaps ironic that CNN and MSNBC in particular cater to audiences that see themselves as open-minded and “liberal”–indeed, the opposite of cunning technocrats such as Sunstein. At the same time, if these two networks’ continually depressed ratings are any indication, the public is becoming more and more skeptical of how it is being patronized.[5]

A most profound political act any individual can undertake may involve adopting a basic regimen of intellectual self-defense that would include an increased awareness of the “conspiracy theory” label itself and a resolve to assess the term’s utilization vis-á-vis the context in which it is employed, in an effort to better determine what it seeks to obscure, legitimate, and redirect attention to.

Notes

[1] Cass Sunstein, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014.

[2] “America’s Joseph Goebbels to Serve on NSA Oversight Panel,” Liberty Blitzkrieg, August 25, 2013.

[3] Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013, 9.

[4] See also deHaven-Smith, 126-131.

[5] “Key Indicators in Media & News,” Pew Research Journalism Project, March 26, 2014.

(James F. Tracy)

George Galloway vs The MSM

Truth & Lies In The War On Terror

John Pilger breaks the silence and investigates American foreign policy in the world

By John Pilger

American Anthrax

Media Roots presents American Anthrax, a documentary comprised of news footage that establishes, by history's own narration, how everything you've been told about the Anthrax Attacks is a lie. Conceptualized, edited and produced by Robbie Martin, co-host of Media Roots Radio.

September 11, 2001, shook the United States to the core, a country that had been nearly untouchable since its democratic inception. However, immediately following this horrific tragedy, another equally as impactful 'terrorist attack' occurred when weaponized anthrax was sent to multiple Congressman and journalists through the U.S. Postal Service.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were both one-time events that happened in two prominent cities. Unlike 9/11, the Anthrax Attacks localized terrorism and spread fear to every corner of American life, where the simple act of getting your mail could prove to be fatal. Five people died as a result of breathing in the deadly anthrax spores, including postal workers and one NY Post reporter. Countless others were infected.

The Bush administration initially tried to link this 'second wave of terrorism' to al-Qaeda with zero proof. Once that talking point out-lived its usefulness, the official narrative began leaning towards Saddam Hussein and his mythological biological weapons program.

Establishment propagandists like John McCaine and ABC news reporters intentionally spread disinformation to plant the seed in the public mind that the anthrax came from Iraq, which eventually lead to Colin Powell's infamous 2003 WMD speech at the UN. All the while, the U.S. government was fully aware that the anthrax did not come from an external source, because the strain showed tell-tale signs of being a specific anthrax strain that was weaponized and manufactured by the U.S. military.

Regardless, the idea of the Anthrax Attacks being executed by an external terrorist organization remained conventional wisdom the public was conditioned into believing in the aftermath of 9/11. Eventually, two men were accused of being the perpetrators behind the attacks, yet no charges were ever brought to either of them. The first accused individual, Steven Hatfill, ended up being rewarded a multimillion dollar settlement from the government for being wrongly accused before any evidence was presented against him. The subsequent accused individual, Bruce Ivins, allegedly committed suicide while the FBI was trying to break him into confessing.

Ultimately, the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to verify its evidence pointing to Ivins as the main suspect. Instead, the NAS concluded that the DNA in the anthrax sent in the mail was in fact not a match to the anthrax Ivins worked with. Before the National Academy of Sciences finished their independent investigation, the FBI rushed its pre-established conclusions about Ivins's guilt to the press, and the case was closed. To this day, the FBI has never commented on the many glaring contradictions in the official government narrative about the Anthrax Attacks.

Follow Robbie at @fluorescentgrey

http://www.mediaroots.org

Truth: The Enemy Of The State

The political establishment has implicitly embraced the mindset of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels:

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State

can shield the people from the political, economic and/or

military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally

important for the State to use all of its powers to

repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the

lie, and thus by extension the truth becomes the greatest

enemy of the State.

This is why the state is so threatened by such modern technologies as the Internet, as well as by the “whistleblowers” who insist on exposing the state’s embarrassing truths to the general public.

Our institutionalized world is increasingly hostile to any utterances of truth that would be upsetting to the status quo. 

The mainstream media and most of academia long ago gave themselves over to propagandizing on behalf of defending and/or enhancing the coercive power structure of the state. When war policies are under discussion, retired Army generals or officials from “think-tanks” funded by the national defense industry, are trotted out to “debate” such non-issues as how many troops to send in, who to attack, etc., etc., all to maintain the pretense of having a “fully-informed” public. 

But when was the last time you saw a Robert Higgs, Noam Chomsky, Lew Rockwell, Amy Goodman, Justin Raimondo, Angela Keaton, Karen Kwiatkowski, Chris Hedges, or other critic of the war system allowed to raise the kinds of questions that are not supposed to be asked in this best of all possible worlds?  

[Butler Shaffer]

Have Some Popcorn خد فيشار

The so-called "news" the Egyptian media produces isn't based in reality and is closer to the stuff of science fiction movies. So Joe skewers the media lies and propaganda in a creative and witty video.

The Detroit Sleeper Cell That Wasn't

... after years of legal wrangling, the “Detroit Sleeper Cell” became something very different: a cautionary tale about the dangers of pursuing terrorism cases too zealously and connecting dots where they might not exist.

The Justice Department, after winning terrorism convictions against two of the men in 2003, took the extraordinary step the next year of moving to throw out the charges and repudiating its own case. 

Prosecutors, remarkably, discredited their own witnesses and found fault with virtually every part of a case they had brought.

The prosecution, the Justice Department belatedly acknowleged, was a “three-legged stool” that toppled under its own weight.

The videotape found of Las Vegas landmarks, originally thought to be a terrorist “casing” video, might have been simply a tourist’s keepsake. An audiotape thought to contain an anti-American hate speech appeared to be just an old children’s song in Arabic about a duck.

And the odd sketch in a day planner of what looked like a blueprint for an attack on a Turkish air base? Perhaps nothing more than a mentally ill man’s doodling of a Middle East map, prosecutors were forced to acknowledge.

Prosecutors turned against prosecutors. Ethics inquiries were opened and criminal charges filed — this time against two government officials who helped put the case together. Attorney General Ashcroft was reprimanded by the judge in the case for falsely linking the suspects to the Sep. 11 attacks in violation of a gag order.

There were no clear winners in the case; a certain loser was the federal government itself, as its “new paradigm” of thwarting terrorists before they struck clashed headlong into age-old notions of justice and due process.

We in the media breathlessly covered every warning and tip about threats real and imagined: scuba divers, cargo trucks, tourist helicopters around the Statue of Liberty, a cable-cutting blowtorch on the Brooklyn Bridge and more, as if they were the next big attack. 

But by 2004, the year that the case collapsed in court, the pendulum had begun to shift. Three years removed from Sept. 11, the Bush administration was facing tougher scrutiny of its tactics in the “war on terror” from the media, the courts and the public at large. The Detroit case, once a symbol of the new threat of Islamic terrorism, became a symbol of government over-reaching instead.

Weeks after the collapse of the Detroit prosecution, a Times colleague, Danny Hakim, and I wrote a long investigative piece that examined the unraveling of such a high-profile case. What we found was infighting within the Justice Department, internal doubts about the strength of the case, tainted witnesses and questionable legal tactics.

We found that, inside the Justice Department, prosecutors believed aspects of the case were weak even as they were moving ahead with a major terrorism indictment against the Detroit men.

“We can charge this case with the hope that the case might get better,” the head of the counter-terrorism section wrote in 2002, “and the certainty that it will not get much worse.”

In fact, it did.

Twelve years after the dramatic arrests of “the Detroit Sleeper Cell,” remnants of the case are still being litigated in the federal courts. The difference now is that the Justice Department is the defendant — the result of a long feud between the department and a former employee, Richard Convertino, the original prosecutor in the Detroit case.

The Justice Department blamed Mr. Convertino for much of the bungled case and even brought criminal obstruction charges against him in 2006 for reportedly withholding evidence from defense lawyers for the Detroit men. But Mr. Convertino was acquitted of the charges and insisted he became the scapegoat for bad decisions that were largely made by higher-ups in Washington.

Last year, an appeals court revived a lawsuit that Mr. Convertino filed against the Justice Department. He is trying to establish that someone at the department improperly and anonymously leaked his name to The Detroit Free Press in 2004 as the target of an internal ethics investigation growing out of his handling of the Detroit case.

Earlier this year, a judge ordered the newspaper to turn over internal documents related to its original story on the ethics charges. The legal battle over Mr. Convertino’s lawsuit could mean still more embarrassment for the Justice Department in a case it once embraced.

Egypt's Generals Plotting Media Gag

A new video has emerged which appears to show Egypt's military generals deciding how to deal with the country's media.

The footage, released by activists on Wednesday, shows army chief General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi addressing senior officers of the army in the months before Mohamed Morsi was ousted from power.

The new recording starts with an officer urging Sisi to find a way to frighten journalists from criticising the army.

"We must re-establish red lines for the media. We need to find a new way of neutralising them, the media in Egypt is controlled by 20 or 25 people," the officer is heard saying in the footage.

“We should engage with these people directly and individually either terrorise them or win them over,“ he adds.

Sisi then interrupts the officer and says: “I know how to win them over, but tell me how do you suggest I terrorise them?”

“I want to tell you that we’ve been concerned with controlling the media from the very first day the army took over power in 2011, and we suffered a lot; because in order to achieve what you’re talking about you need to have influence, it's not as simple as just setting up a committee or task force,” Sisi is heard saying in the video.

“It takes a long time before you’re able to affect and control the media. We are working on this and we are achieving more positive results but we are yet to achieve what we want.”

Since the military takeover on July 3, dozens of journalists have been arrested and several television stations shut down in Egypt.

"After the toppling of Mubarak, army generals were caught by surprise, They did not have a strategy. [For decades,] they controlled the media and had immunity and journalists couldn’t question them.

"But after the revolution, they lost control. So they are putting together a strategy where they could either win journalists over or threaten them to enforce the red lines they had before," Dajani, speaking from Washington D C, said.

Reporters Without Borders last week condemned the Egyptian authorities for targeting journalists, especially those affiliated with or sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We are very disturbed by a renewed increase in violations of fundamental freedoms, including freedom of information, and by a wave of official statements displaying clear hostility towards media that fail to sing the army’s praises,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

لعبة الكلمات

Introduction



Word Play: لعبة الكلمات

Egypt Press Crackdown and Propaganda

... the current regime appears eager to shut down most political avenues and media outlets it can't control. 

On Sunday, it released and deported three foreigners who were arrested while reporting in Cairo for Al Jazeera English. Last Friday, the offices of Al Jazeera Egypt Live (Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr) in three Cairo locations were raided and shut, their broadcasting equipment confiscated, for what government-controlled newspaper Al Ahram said was a lack of "professional ethics."  Previously Al Jazeera Arabic's local offices had been shut down, though correspondents continue to file reports from inside the country.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the government is trying to suppress dissent.

"The Egyptian government is widening its censorship campaign against critical media in Egypt to undermine coverage of Muslim Brotherhood protests," Sherif Mansour, the group's regional coordinator, said in a statement. "Like their predecessors, authorities apparently fail to grasp that the attempted suppression of dissenting voices only compounds the dissent."

The big picture: It appears that a battle has been joined in Egypt, with the military and its appointed civilian leaders seeking to put the genie of greater media freedom back in the bottle. The presence of Al Jazeera and other regional broadcasters in Tahrir Square during the uprising against Mubarak electrified not just the country, encouraging more people to get out of the house and join protests, but the region.

Controlling the flow of pictures and reporting stems the chances of a repeat. Meanwhile, 

The increasing flow of disinformation, fabrications, and outright lies on Egyptian media pushed outgoing US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson into a rare, extremely angry statement holding Egypt's interim rulers responsible for a fabricated article in Al Ahram late last month. An article written by the government newspaper's Editor in Chief Abdel Nasser Salama reported that Patterson was part of a conspiracy with Muslim Brotherhood members and foreign militants to destabilize Egypt and divide it into two smaller countries. 

"I am writing to adamantly deny the outrageous, fictitious, and thoroughly unprofessional headline article that appeared in your paper on August 27. Your article’s claim that I personally am involved in a conspiracy to divide and destabilize Egypt is absolutely absurd and dangerous," Patterson wrote to Mr. Salama. "I am particularly disturbed to think that Al Ahram, as the flagship state-run paper in Egypt, is regarded as a representative of the government’s viewpoint. We will, therefore, raise this article at the highest levels of the government to protest its publication and the irresponsible behavior that led to it."

Ahram has long been a tool for state propaganda, and is emerging as an important figure in Egypt's ongoing information wars. Local television is likewise focused on the threats of the Brothers, allegations of ties to foreign plots, and warnings of the need for stability and order.