MER Article Softening Structural Adjustment As we discussed in our last column, the US Agency for International Development’s “Governance and Democracy Program” is ostensibly intended to foster political liberalization, democracy and official accountability in Egypt and other countries where USAID provides economic assistance. Closer scrutiny Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article USAID's "Free-Market" Democracy “Two historic transformations are sweeping much of the world today -- the establishment of open market economies and the movement toward more accountable democratic governance.” This assertion, extracted from a US Agency for International Development (USAID) document, reflects a belief widely held among government officials and media pundits alike, who Al Miskin • 6 min read
MER Article Experts, News and Knowledge Sam Husseini, who works with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), recently gave us a glimpse into the bizarre and incestuous world inhabited by the mainstream media and the Middle East experts they parade before us. Sam has made available a transcript from a $250-a-ticket New York City fundraiser held Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article The News Industry Over the past few months, a couple of stories have crossed our desk that merit more attention than they got. These stories tell us some important things about how the US news industry operates, especially its willingness to follow the administration’s cues on major issues. Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin DANGEROUS For decades, Muhammad Madbouli’s bookshop in the center of Cairo has been one of that city’s -- and Egypt’s -- major cultural landmarks. Egyptians and foreigners alike knew that Madbouli had the city’s best array of Arabic books of every kind, including those which aroused the ire of the Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Gatekeepers The media have devoted a lot of space in recent months to the so-called political correctness issue, conjuring up a portrait of college campuses patrolled by ideological truth squads ready to punish any deviation from left-wing orthodoxy. In the July-August 1991 issue of Tikkun, Evan Carton hit the nail on Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin Tikkun editor Michael Lerner’s noisome whining and waffling over whether or not to support US military action against Iraq lasted just about as long as the Gulf crisis itself. But at least Lerner never went all the way and fully endorsed Operation Thyroid Storm. The same cannot be said of a number o Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article The More You Watch, the Less You Know The Persian Gulf crisis received massive and sustained coverage in the American media. As numerous critics have pointed out, television network news in particular largely parroted the Bush administration’s line, accepting and passing on its version of reality as the truth. A study released in March Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Al Miskin George Bush’s war against Iraq came and went more quickly than most people expected, but its consequences will be with us for years to come. This is true first and foremost for the tens of thousands of Iraqi families who lost loved ones, or saw their homes and livelihoods destroyed, but it is also t Al Miskin • 2 min read
MER Article Al Miskin After reporting for years from Beirut and Jerusalem for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman is now featured as that newspaper’s diplomatic correspondent and resident expert on the Middle East, his status enhanced by a cozy tennis court relationship with Secretary of State James Baker. An article in Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin The first “instant book” on the Gulf crisis has already reached stores across the United States. In his October 22 column in The Nation, Alexander Cockburn related how Judith Miller of the New York Times sought unsuccessfully to induce Samir al-Khalil, the pseudonymous author of Republic of Fear, to Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin During the first seven months of this year, for the first time since the Cold War began, the position of “official enemy” of the United States went unfilled, the Soviets having resigned the role. That deplorable deficiency, which threw the White House and the Pentagon into a panic, has now been reme Al Miskin • 3 min read
