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""The only thing that changed after two years of the revolution is that our president has a beard,” Farahat Mohsen
Painter" BBC
. 1/25/13, "Fatal clashes on Egypt uprising anniversary," BBC
"Egyptian opposition supporters are protesting across the country on the second anniversary of the uprising that swept Hosni Mubarak from power, with five people killed in the city of Suez.
Police clashed with President Mohammed Morsi's opponents in Cairo outside his palace and near Tahrir Square.
Alexandria also saw clashes. In Ismailia, protesters set fire to the HQ of the Muslim Brotherhood's party....
The president has appealed for calm to end the clashes, in which more than 330 people have been injured nationwide....
One of the demonstrators at Tahrir Square, Hanna Abu el-Ghar, told the BBC: "We are protesting against the fact that after two years of the revolution, where we asked for bread, freedom and social justice, none of our dreams have come true."
The liberal opposition accuses Mr Morsi of being autocratic and driving through a new constitution that does not protect adequately freedom of expression or religion.
Ahead of Friday's rally Mohamed El Baradei, a leading opposition figure, said is a statement: "I call on everyone to take part and go out to every place in Egypt to show that the revolution must be completed."
The government is also being blamed for a deepening economic crisis."...
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6 examples of NY Times fatal errors in judgement: (I added bold, ed.)
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12/23/12, "Waiting for Roger Cohen’s mea culpa on Muslim Brotherhood," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"It’s time for the person most consistently wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood to admit that just about everything he said about the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s Arab Spring was wrong, including:
Already we hear the predictable warnings from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu: This could be Iran 1979, a revolution for freedom that..."...--------------------------
12/10/12, "The award for the person most consistently wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood goes to … Roger Cohen of The NY Times," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"I have written several times about the dangerous romanticizing of the Muslim Brotherhood by Roger Cohen of The NY Times. He certainly was not alone at The Times in doing so, but this quote from February 3, 2011, surely puts him in a league of his own:
Already we hear the predictable warnings..."...
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12/6/12, "Tunisia, cradle of the Arab Spring, devolves into Islamist nightmare," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"In February 2011, Roger Cohen of The NY Times demanded that we abandon the phrase “the Arab Street” as a relic of the past which no longer applied, even as crowds in Tunisia surged around a Synagogue shouting “”Jews, remember Khyabar, the army of Mohammed is returning”":...
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12/5/11, "The delusion continues," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"I previously have highlighted the treatment of the “Arab Street” by NY Times columnist Roger Cohen in the midst of the Arab Spring protests, many of which revealed an open and ugly anti-Semitic side:
In the Middle East you expect the worst. But having watched Egypt’s extraordinary civic achievement in building the coalition that ousted Mubarak, having watched Tahrir Square become cooperation central, and having watched the professionalism of the Egyptian army, I’m convinced the country has what it takes to build a decent, representative society — one that gives the lie to all the stereotypes associated with that dismissive shorthand “The Arab Street.”
In fact, post-Tahrir, let’s retire that phrase.Now Cohen, aware of the rise of Islamists, continues to downplay the threat:"...
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11/26/11, "Egyptian Imam The NY Times called “moderate” holds “kill all the Jews” mass rally," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"The NY Times has whitewashed the anti-Semitic aspects of the Arab Spring in Egypt since the beginning of the protests last January. NY Times’ columnists like Roger Cohen have sought to glamorize and glorify the so-called “Arab Street” and Nicholas Kristof has waxed poetic about Islamist forces in the Middle East.
So..."...
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11/24/12, "Dear generator-owning homeowners, do not invite Nick Kristof over next time there is a hurricane," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"I’m still waiting for Nick Kristof of the NY Times to write a column explaining away the rising dictatorship by his beloved Arab Spring.
Until then, we have to suffer through a mind-numbing series of non-sequiturs in which the decline in marginal tax rates over the last 50 years is responsible for..."...
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2/16/12, "Arab Spring Bears Fruit: Chemical Weapons, Civil War," American Interest, Walter Russel Mead
"During the halcyon days of the protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Western media outlets were filled with lofty predictions: the end of autocracy in the Middle East, the rise of the Arab twitterati youth, and the emergence of a liberal majority in the Middle East that would wipe away decades of tyranny and oppression. One year later, with repression in Egypt, fighting in Libya, and civil war in Syria, these predictions have been revealed for what they were: wishful thinking marred by an absence of critical thought about the region and its history.
Commenter notes startling incompetence of pundit class:
"WigWag says:
February 16, 2012 at 9:50 am
I am afraid Via Meadia is right; the “Arab Spring” is little more than a way station on the Muslim world’s relentless march back to the 10th century. What’s amazing is that it was not only liberal internationalists like Tom Friedman who were duped; Friedman can always be counted on to get it wrong. What’s surprising is that neoconservative thinkers like Robert Kagan turned out to be an even bigger apologist for the Arab Spring then his more liberal fellow pundits.
If any thing proves the startling incompetence of our pundit class (Professor Mead excepted) it is the Alice in Wonderland quality of their reporting on the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular."
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2/13/12, "Libya Tells UN Rights Council: “Gays threaten continuation of human race”," UN Watch, Geneva
One reviewer of the 2010 book "Gray Lady Down," about the fall of the NY Times said:
“McGowan’s Gray Lady Down has the great strength of showing how the Times's multicutural relativism on the home front and xenophilia abroad left it completely flat footed when it was called upon to report on the rise of Islamic extremism in America. The Times has developed a dangerous capacity to discover “moderation” in what should be seen as Islamist maximalism and cultural practices and values squarely at odds with American norms."
— Fred Siegel, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Scholar in Residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn"
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