The war in Iraq is officially over. But did anyone notice, really? The last troops [except for the ones that are staying and the 5,000 mercenaries—oops, I mean contractors] are on their way home. President Obama welcomed them and thanked them. And that’s it?

Of course, there was no dancing in the streets, no victory parades, no flashy photos of sailors kissing nurses in Times Square. Why would there be? No one is proud of what the U.S. did in—or should we say “to”—Iraq. No valid mission has been accomplished. There’s no victory and nothing to celebrate. It’s just, sort of, over. Poof.

At least when the last U.S. combat troops finally left Viet Nam in 1975, the long overdue, ignominious ending was a media event: For those of us old enough to remember, it’s hard to forget the images of desperate Vietnamese citizens rushing the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and clinging to the skids of helicopters airlifting out the last few Americans. Those scenes were ugly and uncomfortable—a fitting visual punctuation to the ugly war they symbolized.

What a contrast with our last days in Iraq. Surely, given the absence of coverage and analysis of the U.S. exit from Iraq and the deafening silence in Congress, Dick Cheney and the neo-cons who ginned up this so-called war must be chortling and high-fiving, realizing that they got away with one of the biggest military con games in American history.

In the run-up to this bogus “war,” there was at least some debate and analysis. [An outspoken, courageous Illinois State Senator Barack Obama—remember that guy?—was an early critic, and his skepticism launched his ascent toward the Presidency.] But most of what opposition there was [to their credit, 23 U.S. Senators voted against the invasion] became overwhelmed by a sustained propaganda campaign to whip up support for a war that had been looking for an excuse since neo-conservatives hatched “The Project for A New American Century” plan in 1998. Those of us who protested [as I did, on a bridge in central Florida, where I was one of about 20 peace activists in a crowd of at least 400 war supporters] were told that we were unpatriotic. It wasn’t a very productive debate, but at least we were confronting the issue.

Now, at the other end of this thing, media coverage and meaningful analysis are hard to find.

When the invasion of Iraq began, CNN and every other American media outlet couldn’t wait to get on board a troop transport, ride along in a tank and breathlessly document the operation. Admittedly, there wasn’t much critical thinking going on then, either—just a mostly blind acceptance of the Bush Administration’s [false] assertion that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” and that Iraq was a player in the September 11 attacks.

In the intervening years, as 4,483 Americans were killed and thousands more wounded and disabled, fighting for…what, again?…the facts emerged and public opinion—and attention—turned away from the invasion/occupation. Maybe it was just too painful to watch. Or, perhaps voters, politicians and policymakers just lost the energy to keep debating the demerits of a military action that was so clearly wrong from the start, yet so difficult to disengage from.

Sure, now that it’s “over” [and even that is debatable], we’d all rather close our eyes, walk away, focus on something easier—like the latest celebrity wedding—and dismiss what happened in Iraq as a thing of the past.

But it’s not. The war-mongering, xenophobia, American exceptionalism and profiteering that led us into an unjustified invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no direct threat to the U.S. lives on. Just listen to the Republican candidates for president. Incredibly, just as the U.S. is getting out of Iraq, they seem to be shifting their attention to Iran, duking it out in the “debates” to see who can rattle the sabers loudest. [Ron Paul stands alone as the one candidate with a sane view of war in general, and U.S. policy in the Middle East in specific.] Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been spouting increasingly warlike rhetoric, and their contention that Iran poses a threat because it might be developing a nuclear weapon sounds alarmingly similar to what we heard about Iraq 10 years ago. And, of course, there’s the issue of Abu Ghraib and torture, elements of our sojourn in Iraq that have fallen off the media radar screen–except for some frightening pronouncements by Republican candidates who assert that “waterboarding isn’t torture,” and that they’d use “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the future.

If there was ever a time to pause and reflect on the meaning of Iraq, this is it.

The post This is the way the war ends: not with a bang, but a whimper appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Mayor’s office in NYC responded to accusations of mass arrests of reporters during Occupy Wall Street protests by stating that only five of the 26 reporters arrested were “credentialed by the city.” It seemed to have gone right over the spokesman’s head that he was confessing to the city having arrested five reporters for the crime of reporting a story that the city was uncomfortable with. To be clear, it is not uncommon for fully legitimate reporters to work in NYC without having been credentialed by the city, so it is likely that the count is higher than five, even if a few of the persons self-identifying as reporters were not actually “legitimate” journalists (whatever that means).

Right now, the mainstream media (MSM) has not been giving a lot of coverage to the current challenge to the media’s right to report stories without being subject to arrest.  This is hardly surprising, given the American media’s lack of interest in covering the hard-hitting expose-style stories. This may be part of the explanation for the sharper decrease in newspaper sales in the US vs. Europe. Both are well developed industrial markets that attribute the loss of readership to newer technologies luring away the younger readership. What is really different is the willingness of the European media to take on hard-hitting news stories, and pay experienced reporters to travel the world and write the stories. Much of the best reporting on events in the Middle East and beyond is coming from European reporters and newspapers.

During the Occupy Wall Street protests, there has been little mention of the hypocrisy involved in condemning the violent oppression of demonstrators overseas, while using some of the same methods within the US. You know that something is wrong with how the media is working when a conservative commenter at Forbes magazine, who has spent time and ink criticizing the OWS protests, speaks out against the police tactics used at Berkeley before much of the MSM finds its voice in the matter.

Looking at who owns the media tells us why it is so slow to criticize elements that are set up to protect the 1% of the nation that controls finances in America – those same interests control the media! We are now used to turning to news programs and seeing extensive time spent on stories about celebrities such as the Kardashians, the Hiltons, etc… As this is written, the day after thousands of protesters interfered with normal operations of Wall Street and tied up bridges and landmarks in NYC, along with cooperative events in dozens of cities across the country, CNN’s web site’s lead story is the continuing scandal at Penn State. Whatever we think of the state of college sports, it cannot be mistaken as a story that will change the average American’s life.

Even if we ignore the worst offenders, such as Fox News, it is widely acknowledged that American media acts as a stenographer for those in power. As major corporations spin the story of their involvement in the real estate mortgage collapse, the media has been faithfully reporting their version of affairs. Even when the media does try to focus in on financial malfeasance, it often gets the story wrong, claiming that the Government spends $16 for a muffin, when it turns out that was the price for a whole breakfast at the Hilton, missing the bigger stories in the process. It is much easier to try and play “gotcha” journalism than it is to tell the difficult story of what is really going on with corporate influence in our nation.

One of the most important stories for the average American is climate change. Rather than giving the facts on what science says about climate change, the American media continues to cover the story as if it were two sides debating the meaning of the evidence. The reality is that science has long ago come to the conclusion that climate change is real and caused by human action, but this story might be discomfiting to the corporate overlords of the media. We can expect continued misreporting on issues that corporate America has an interest in.

So, if the average American cannot trust the corporate media, what should he/she do to stay informed? There are good alternatives. For foreign affairs, Al Jazeera and the BBC do excellent reporting, as does The Guardian out of London. To know what is going on politically within the US, independent media such as Democracy Now and Truthout are good options. For environmental news, keeping up to date with Greenpeace and other environmental groups will let you know what is really going on. It is more work than just watching a single news show, or reading the local paper, but if you want to know about the important issues that affect our lives, the only reliable method is to do the research yourself. The reason the American Main Stream Media is collapsing is that the quality is just no longer there, and it no longer has the guts to even cover its own demise.

The post What happened to American media? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The hysterical reporting, in some mainstream media outlets, about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is rooted in ignorance.  In his recent article in Truthdig, “Fear Not the Muslim Brotherhood Boogeyman,” Juan Cole attempts to enlighten us about the history and current status of this organization in Egypt. Stoking the fear that the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take over Egypt and turn it into an America-hating, Islamic fundamentalist society may sell advertising on Fox News, and on the conservative National Review Online, but it doesn’t have much to do with reality. Statements from neoconservatives like John Bolton that Egypt needs a US backed dictatorship to “maintain stability” are equally untrue.

Cole offers a few facts about the Brotherhood that may put those fears to rest:

The United States has actively promoted Muslim Brotherhood branches in other countries when it suited its purposes, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The pragmatic Muslim Brotherhood held only 20 percent of the Egyptian lower house of parliament, and has tended to side with the Mubarak regime. For example, it failed to support the nationwide campaigns for better wages and working conditions that eventually spawned the January 25 demonstration. The Brotherhood joined the protest movement only at the last minute and was never a leading force in it.

In an attempt to appear relevant, “the Brotherhood called upon the new military regime to release all prisoners of conscience including young protesters incarcerated during the past three weeks. Its leaders also asked for an end to the state of emergency laws that allow the government to suspend civil liberties. It further suggested that a cabinet minister be appointed to investigate government corruption under the old regime.”

The Brotherhood issued a statement praising the Egyptian military high command for its role in stabilizing the country and taking it toward democratic civilian rule. The fundamentalist group denied that it sought to dominate Egypt, pledged that it would not field a candidate for president in the upcoming elections, and would not strategize to try and dominate the new parliament.

Opinion polling in Egypt finds that the Brotherhood would not be able to dominate parliament even if it wanted to. Although its leaders have called for putting the peace treaty with Israel to a popular referendum, the powerful Egyptian military would not allow it, and even if it did, polling indicates the peace treaty would win.

According to Cole, some of the falsehoods being spread in mainstream media are: The Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, that Ayman al-Zawahri of al-Qaida is in this group, and that the fundamentalist party Hamas in the Gaza Strip is under the control of the Egyptian Brotherhood.

But perhaps some facts are in order, and Cole offers the following:

The Brotherhood was begun in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, a schoolteacher, as a revivalist movement that also protested the influence of British colonialism. Contrary to what Paul Berman and other neoconservatives have alleged, al-Banna thoroughly condemned Hitler and Mussolini as execrable racists, and his movement had nothing in common with European fascism. In a reaction against the British reoccupation of Egypt during World War II, the organization developed a terrorist cell in the 1940s and early 1950s. But the massive crackdown on it that its violence provoked drove the organization underground and marginalized it.

In the 1970s, Sadat rehabilitated the Brotherhood and stipulated that if it would eschew violence and become a civil society association, the government would let its members out of jail and allow them relative freedom. It was this bargain, to which the Brotherhood has faithfully adhered, that drove radicals such as al-Zawahri, now al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, to break with the Brotherhood and to denounce it virulently. Sadat was not assassinated by the Brotherhood, contrary to what was alleged to the great Mideast expert Sean Hannity by the great Mideast expert Andrew McCarthy. The president was felled by militants who rejected both him and his ally, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Cole goes on to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is a decentralized organization. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is a different organization from the Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas takes no orders from Cairo.

What is true is that the Muslim Brotherhood is a reactionary, anti-semitic, fundamentalist organization that is hostile to women’s rights. It would like to move Egypt away from a secular society to a conservative one steeped in medieval Muslim traditions. It is not going away, it will continue to have a presence in Egypt, but it’s not going to be its future.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a sclerotic organization of old men. The youth of Egypt, whose uprising was driven by secular aspirations, are in ascendance.

Egypt is not Iran, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia, or Turkey, or Tunisia, or Muslim Indonesia. It is a cosmopolitan country with its own unique culture and history. Whether the Egyptian people will be successful in creating the truly representative secular democracy they want remains to be seen.

The post Should we fear the Muslim Brotherhood? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of DC based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), says mainstream reporting on Venezuela’s economy is way off the mark. He blames Venezuelan rightwing media opposition to Chavez, and a United States public relations campaign designed to denigrate Venezuela’s achievements. He says: “If you want a perfect illustration of media toeing the official line, look no further than the forecasts of Venezuela’s economic doom.”

According to Weisbrot, the “all bad news, all the time” reporting was overwhelmingly dominant even during Venezuela’s record economic expansion, from 2003 to 2008. Here are some of the achievements during that time that were ignored by U.S. and international media.

• Venezuela’s economy grew more than it ever had before.
• Poverty was cut by more than half.
• There were large gains in employment.
• Real social spending per person more than tripled,
• Free healthcare was expanded to millions of people.

The international media has yet to report on these accomplishments. Yet, if they want proof, economists at international organizations corroborate the figures. For example, the UN Commission on Latin America (ECLAC) found that Venezuela had reduced income inequality more than any other country in Latin America from 2002 to 2008.

In 2009 Venezuela went into recession, but it appears to have emerged from its recession in the second quarter of this year. On a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, the economy grew by 5.2% in the second quarter of 2010. Reporting by Morgan Stanley projected Venezuela’s economy would shrink by 6.2%.

Weisbrot says the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is projecting negative per capita GDP growth for Venezuela over the next five years. He notes that the IMF was repeatedly and wildly off the mark on its underestimates of the Venezuelan economy during the expansion between 2003 and 2008. Right now, Venezuela has a sluggish economy as does the United States, Canada and Europe. But the IMF may again be ignoring Venezuela’s strengths:

[Venezuela] has adequate foreign exchange reserves, is running a trade and current account surplus, has low levels of foreign public debt, and quite a bit of foreign borrowing capacity, if needed. This was demonstrated most recently in April with a $20bn (about 6% of Venezuela’s GDP) credit from China. As such, it is extremely unlikely to run up against a foreign exchange shortage. It can therefore use public spending and investment as much as necessary to make sure that the economy grows sufficiently to increase employment and living standards, as it did before the 2009 recession. (Our government in the United States could do the same, even more easily – but that does not appear to be in the cards right now.) This can go on for many years.

Weisbrot advises that:

…whatever happens, we can expect complete coverage of one side of the story from the media. So keep it in mind: even when you are reading the New York Times or listening to NPR on Venezuela, you are getting Fox News. If you want something more balanced, you will have to look for it on the web.

A recent update by CEPR on Venezuela’s economy can be downloaded here.

The post Venezuela’s economy doing better than reported in US media appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In the instant-news world of 140-character news feeds, what’s going to happen to long-form journalism? And when can you find the time to read a 4,000-word story, anyway?  Two college students have an idea for that. It’s called longform.org.

On their new website, Max Linsky and Aaron Lammer collect long news and feature stories that a) they wish they had time to read, or b) they read a while back and can’t get out of their heads, or c) they think are worth sharing with other news junkies, or d) other long-form newshounds recommend.

It’s a great idea for those of us who have come across a news article that we know we should read, but just don’t think we have the time (or stamina) for right now. What happens, of course, is that we either skim it, or promise ourselves that we’ll come back to it “later,” and then, when there’s actually time (say, when your flight is canceled for five days because of volcanic ash), we can’t remember where we saw it. Some readers, of course, are highly efficient and, upon finding a story, download it to an iPhone or computer to keep for that rainy day. But many of us don’t, and that’s where longform.org comes in.

So far, Linsky and Lammer have been posting from their personal stashes of favorites, but according to Slate:

They’re also adding newly published pieces on a daily basis and are accepting suggestions from readers. The Longform.org archives now contain links to 49 stories, and the site posts about four new ones daily. Writers represented in the latest Longform.org lineup are the usual suspects—Susan Orlean, Mark Leibovich, Mark Bowen, James Fallows, Simon Winchester, David Grann, Michael Lewis, Jeanne Marie Laskas, John Sack, Jeffrey Goldberg—and a few writers you may not have heard of, such as Marco Vernaschi, Gendy Alimurung, and John Geluardi. New posts are announced via a Twitter feed.

Most of the articles posted on longform.org come from current publications. But some are golden oldies. Right now, the oldest appears to be, “Oh My God, We Hit a Little Girl,” a legendary, 1966 Esquire cover story, which told the story of  “one company of American soldiers in Fort Dix, New Jersey, who trained for war and who found it in South Vietnam fifty days later.” Also on the site is a 1995 article from the Chicago Reader, profiling a fledgling politician named Barack Obama.

“For a piece to make it onto Longform, it either has to be a stellar piece of writing based on exceptional reporting or such a great topic it doesn’t matter if the writing is a little weak,” Linsky says.

A nifty feature of the site is the inclusion of an application called “Instapaper.”

Readers who set up a free Instapaper account can 1) bookmark to the Web stories selected by Longform.org and 2) render them as a single ad- and navigation-free page for when the user finally gets around to reading them online or offline. Instapaper pages look great on desktops and netbooks; and apps, both paid and free, make Instapaper work nicely on iPhones and iPods. Every story posted at longform.org includes an Instapaper button.

Slate says that the Brooklyn-based duo’s plans for the site are not huge.

“It’s something we’d use if we weren’t doing it,” says Linsky. “Not forcing some half-cocked business model has allowed us to make every decision with the reader in mind.” If Longform.org convinces more people to read long-form stories, Linsky and Lammer will be happy. But if their project convinces publishers to move great long-form pieces from behind the pay wall or to jailbreak classics that have never appeared on the Web, they’ll be ecstatic.

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