Echo Chambers, Mirrors and Henny Penny Temple-Raston

Juan Cole and NPR Check reader, informedveteran, recommended Tom Englehardt's excellent piece on the Washington Echo Chamber's reaction to the revolutions sweeping the Middle East. Englehardt writes:

"It would seem like a good moment for Washington - which, since September 12, 2001, has been remarkably clueless about real developments on this planet and repeatedly miscalculated the nature of global power - to step back and recalibrate.

As it happens, there's no evidence it's doing so. In fact, that may be beyond Washington’s present capabilities, no matter how many billions of dollars it pours into 'intelligence.' And by 'Washington,' I mean not just the Obama administration, or the Pentagon, or our military commanders, or the vast intelligence bureaucracy, but all those pundits and think-tankers who swarm the capital, and the media that reports on them all. It’s as if the cast of characters that makes up 'Washington' now lives in some kind of echo chamber in which it can only hear itself talking."

(Enter Dina Temple-Raston stage far-right)

Dina was not about to let her bread and butter (banging the al-Qaida fear drum) get drowned out by the inspiring and historic events in North Africa and the Middle East. On Thursday's ATC she dragged out a trio of "those pundits and think-tankers who swarm the capital" to rattle on about the terrifying opportunities that the uprisings provide to al-Qaida. The statements of these "experts" provided some rich irony:

Bush stooge Juan Zarate said,

"That is to say, al-Qaida has been very good at focusing the attention of their constituents and of the world on this idea of the far enemy. That is that all of the world's problems, all of the angst and grievances of the Middle East can be blamed on the United States, or at least can be affected by attacking the United States."

Seems to me there was some other terrorist organization that focused its constituents' attention on a far enemy and blamed every problem on a distant foe.

Then Temple-Raston trots out NPR regular & CIA-award winner, Bruce Hoffman to state that al-Qaida will

"exploit whatever issue is served in front of it, and do so equally adroitly. So for now it will focus on the near enemy."

Oh my God, enemies of freedom and civil rights focusing on the "near enemy"!

Lastly Temple-Raston highlights the expertise of Rick "Ozzie" Nelson whose "last military assignment was with the Joint Special Operations Command" (can you say JSOC?) Regarding Yemen and Libya, special operative Nelson explains that al-Qaida's leadership is

"probably best positioned to exploit the weakness in those countries."

Imagine the cynicism of a group that exploits weakness and upheaval in troubled countries to indiscriminately murder civilians.

Seriously, one of the things that I love about these uprisings in the Middle East is how starkly they expose the history of US government actions in the region as being based on complete contempt for the human rights and dignity of the actual people in the region. The fact that al-Qaida apes Washington in its contempt for the people it claims to champion and - like the US government - is willing to use extreme methods of violence to achieve its aims is almost laughable compared to the decades of such behavior by Washington.

But it's not laughable if you are one of the media "professionals" who depend on the Washington echo chamber that Englehardt critiques. In that case you have to keep hammering on the same discredited themes that earn you access to the "expert" think-tankers and counterterrorism wankers that populate your predictable reports. These reports are predictable that you'd think a journalist would be embarrassed. Not Temple-Raston, she was back on Saturday morning squawking about the terrible danger of al-Qaida rising Phoenix-like from the turmoil in Libya. Want to guess who her experts were? Bruce Hoffman, Juan Zarate, and Rick "Ozzie" Nelson. Now where have you heard those names before?

Roads Not Traveled

NPR gets credit for getting French-speaking reporter, Eleanor Beardsley into the capital of Tunisia by Friday morning. Her reports have provided some dramatic first-person accounts of police repression and the chaos of the revolutionary scenario in the capital. However, NPR's general coverage lays the blame for the uprising on Tunisia's dictatorial regime and the spike in food prices - while avoiding any in-depth discussion of two important elements of the Tunisian uprising:

1. The way in which the the Tunisian dictatorship reflects the gross hypocrisy of the US-led "war on terror" which has created increased global repression (and terrorism).
2. The role that US/European economic neoliberalism has had in bringing on the misery which helped ignite the Tunisian rebellion.

A discussion of these two threads practically begs to be covered, given the WikiLeak cable on the US awareness of repression and corruption in Tunisia - a cable that was widely know and discussed in Tunisia [and terrifies our newest thug ally in the "war on terror."] And more cables on US complicity in Tunisian repression and cronyism were released yesterday. Amazingly, Beardsley trumpets the role of social media in the Tunisian uprising but WikiLeaks is never mentioned (search NPR "heard on air" for Wikileaks + Tunisia and you get zilch as of Sunday afternoon!).

As far as the role of neoliberal economics (and US foreign policy) in compounding North Africa's miseries, not only does NPR completely ignore it, but to explain rising food prices there turns to Gary Blumenthal, who

"served as Deputy Assistant for Cabinet Liaison to former President George Bush, and as Special Assistant to the President for Agriculture Trade and Food Assistance....served as Executive Assistant and then as Chief of Staff to then Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter, providing oversight of all operations in this large federal agency (110,000 employees) and exercising continuous scrutiny over $65 billion worth of programs including research, education, production, domestic and international marketing, food safety and inspection, nutrition, environment, public affairs, economic analysis, legal counsel and administration matters related to USDA's mission in the U.S. and in 60 countries around the world. He also served with the Foreign Agricultural Service as Legislative Director, and as a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Larry J. Hopkins (R-KY)."

Mr. Blumenthal explains that rising food prices in the Maghreb are the result of increased demand and "imperfect weather." How's that for insight?

Eleanor Beardsley has mentioned several times in her reports that people in Tunis are watching Aljazeera TV - too bad none of Aljazeera's coverage is finding its way into NPR's coverage. I'd also recommend Juan Cole's Informed Comment for far more substantive coverage and analysis of the Tunisian revolution.