Posts Tagged ‘NYT’

Go tweet yourself NYT!

The NYT demonstrates its utter stupidity by banning the word “tweet.”

Lift the Gaza — and Cairo — Siege

My posting for the New York Times Room for Debate Blog…

If the deadly attack on the Gaza aid convoy has served to highlight once again the plight of the Palestinians living under the Israeli siege, the ensuing demonstrations in Cairo show a different kind of siege.
Tens of thousands of peasant conscripts, dressed in the black uniforms of Egypt’s notorious Central Security Forces, were mobilized in the main squares, university campuses and central mosques, as demonstrators vented their anger not only on Israel’s actions but also on the ailing 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak’s role in aiding Israel in that siege.
The demonstrators chanted beautifully rhymed, yet angry, slogans against Israel and the U.S., but quickly the chants changed to denouncements of the police presence, torture, electoral vote-rigging, privatization of state-owned firms and the deterioration in the country’s national insurance system. In what has become a ritual, young activists broke the security cordon laid around the protest site, drawing parallels between the siege of Gaza and the siege the protesters were feeling among the overwhelming police presence.
Israel’s recent actions in the sea amount to nothing but piracy and state-sponsored terrorism. If the U.S. has an ounce worth of respect for human rights, it should be the first to call for prosecuting the Israeli perpetrators of those killings. The international community also has to come to terms with the fact that there is an elected government in Gaza, which yes happens to be Islamist and involved in resistance attacks against an occupying power.
Military and financial aid to Israel, President Mubarak and the rest of the Arab dictators who are ruling their nations with draconian security services, torture chambers and failed economic policies, must cease immediately. The Egyptian people, just like the Palestinians, feel they are under occupation.

NYT Op-Ed: Our allies not in the White House

The New York Times asked me to write an Op-Ed regarding Obama’s visit…

THE bridge I take to work in central Cairo was painted overnight. On the roads, colored concrete blocks were installed in turns where car accidents happen daily. Main streets in the neighboring city of Giza are suddenly blossoming with flowers. Street lamps are polished, and they are actually working. This could mean only one thing: our country is receiving an “important” foreign visitor.
President Obama should not have decided to come to Egypt. The visit is a clear endorsement of President Hosni Mubarak, the ailing 81-year-old dictator who has ruled with martial law, secret police and torture chambers. No words that Mr. Obama will say can change this perception that Americans are supporting a dictator with their more than $1 billion in annual aid.
The Western press is clearly excited about Mr. Obama’s “significant” choice of Egypt, and his destination, Cairo University, which the news media seem to consider a symbol of enlightenment, secularism and freedom.
The truth is that for years, Cairo University students have been demonstrating against the rising cost of education, demanding the university subsidize expensive text books, only to be rebuked by the authorities, who claim no funds are available. Yet the university somehow managed to find the money to polish up the building dome that will shine above Mr. Obama’s head when he delivers his address.
As for the other host of the president’s visit, Al Azhar University, one of its students, Kareem Amer, is languishing in prison after university officials reported his “infidel, un-Islamic” views to the government, earning him a four-year sentence in 2007. In advance of the visit, Egyptian security forces have rounded up hundreds of foreign students at Al Azhar.
We do want allies in the West, but not from inside the White House. Our real allies are the human rights groups and unions that will pressure the Obama administration to sever all ties to the Mubarak dictatorship. Their visits to Egypt are more meaningful, even if unlike Mr. Obama, they do not get a lavish reception.

Warlords can sometimes be liberal…

… when they are America’s friends…

The Taghreed Files

Insight into how the New York Times manufactures pro-Zionist consent…

“Egypt’s rights defenders are NOT afraid of the army”

I received an angry email from a rights activist friend, asking whether I read NYT’s story on Talaat el-Sadat’s prosecution by the military. My friend was so upset by misreporting that:

Mr. Sadat’s case has not prompted the kind of outcry from human rights activists and democracy supporters in Egypt that other cases have, in part because it involves one of the remaining red lines — the military. Another reason is that he spins tall conspiracy theories, suggesting, for example, that Israel and the United States may have had a hand in the assassination.

My friend was fuming, as the NYT report totally ignored the fact that eight rights group issued a statement denouncing the trial. “We drafted this statement precisely because I didn’t want anyone, let alone the NYT, to say Egypt’s rights defenders are afraid of the army,” my friend wrote me in an email exchange.