MSM ONLY GIVES ONE SIDE TO THE EGYPT DEBATE

According to Barry Rubin:

As I pointed out recently the mass media in America generally presents only one side of the debate nowadays. Then, it publishes nonsense which survives because it is protected from the withering critique it deserves. And even people who should know better are just losing it.

Consider one example (Roger Cohen has gone beyond ridicule so let's focus on someone who should know better). I regret criticizing Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution as he is one of the smarter, saner people.

Yet the kinds of things he is quoted as saying in the New York Times remind me of why the "neo-conservatives" have been so dangerous because of their naivete about the Middle East. They are fitting counterparts of the apologists for radicals who have demonized them. Both groups are trying to impose their fantasy model on the real Middle East. Of course, if Kagan didn't say things like this he wouldn't be quoted at all in the New York Times.

He may be right. "Neo-cons" are probably the nadir of the conservative movement, and are going to need a lesson in how to convey their arguments better.

The wider MSM won't be very likely to let anyone know what Anne Bayefsky says about the UN either; how they abandoned the people in Egypt for 3 decades:

There is one main reason why the Obama administration misjudged Egypt entirely – they cannot get their facts straight. For the last two years they have been busy defending the U.N. as an effective vehicle for promoting U.S. interests, in the name of engagement.

But for the three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s reign the U.N. has dedicated its human rights apparatus to demonizing the state of Israel and ignoring the human rights victims in Egypt and across the Arab world. As dissatisfaction and unrest have grown in the region over his presidency, the Obama administration failed to recognize the U.N.’s gross negligence or to take responsibility for ensuring an alternative vehicle to promote democracy. Instead, it legitimized the U.N.’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council (HRC), by joining it.

Notwithstanding the meltdown in Egypt, Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs picked Tuesday to give her evidence for the success of the Obama foreign policy of engagement with the U.N. and its human rights world.

At a speech to the Brookings Institution she said: “Since the United States joined the Human Rights Council, it has not held a single special session on Israel.” Except that the U.S. took its seat on the Council September 14, 2009, and the Council held its sixth special session on Israel on October 15-16, 2009. It was a rather unforgettable session, actually, since it was the occasion the Council endorsed the notorious Goldstone report.

It is a mystery why the person in charge of international organizations in this country has no clue what the actual record is of the Council, but here is a short synopsis for her edification:

There have been twelve country-specific special sessions of the Human Rights Council in its history. Half of them have been directed at Israel alone. Half of all the resolutions and decisions of the Human Rights Council critical of a specific states’ human rights record have been about Israel alone, and half on the rest of the world. There are ten permanent agenda items of the Council which govern all of its business. One of those items is only about condemning Israel and one is about any other “human rights situation that requires the Council’s attention” elsewhere on the planet. Ten countries were once subject to a specific human rights investigation, but the Council discontinued them for the likes of Belarus, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Maldives, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

There's more at the link, but don't expect Brimmer to ever consider the true image of the UNHRC, or even care to acknowledge it.