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FOCUS: Baghdadi Story Reveals Divided - and Broken - News Media |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51548"><span class="small">Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 October 2019 11:02 |
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Taibbi writes: "Donald Trump was correct when he tweeted Saturday night that something 'big' had happened, but from there, America received two almost completely different versions of the story of al-Baghdadi's pursuit and suicide."
America received two almost completely different versions of the story of al-Baghdadi's pursuit and suicide. (photo: M. Swarup/AP)
Baghdadi Story Reveals Divided - and Broken - News Media
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
29 October 19
If you have two sets of news media, you have none
 wo sets of headlines over the weekend described the suicide of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. From the Washington Post Sunday morning:
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48
The Post has since rewritten that, though the description of an “austere religious scholar with wire-rimmed glasses” remains in the lead paragraph. Meanwhile, the headline on Foxnews.com:
Al-Baghdadi kill: how the daring military operation went down
The Post headline would fit a quiet academic who died in his sleep, not a genocidal jihadist leader. The Fox headline is less nuts, but still not quite right: al-Baghdadi wasn’t killed but reportedly committed suicide, while pursued by American “military dogs.”
Donald Trump was correct when he tweeted Saturday night that something “big” had happened, but from there, America received two almost completely different versions of the story of al-Baghdadi’s pursuit and suicide. It was a vivid demonstration of how dysfunctional the modern news landscape has become.
When important events take place now, commercial news outlets instantly slice up the facts and commoditize them for consumption by their respective political demographics. We always had this process, to some degree, but it no longer takes days to sift into the op-ed pages.
Now news is packaged for Republicans or Democrats on the first reporting pass. Moreover, it’s no longer true that Fox is more blatant about its slant than the Democrat-friendly press, which in the Trump years has become a bullhorn of caricatured bellyaching in the same way Fox was in the Clinton years.
The Trump version of the Baghdadi story was a predictable heroic cartoon. The Obama administration at least had the decency to seek out a decent director and wait a year or so before the heroic Zero Dark Thirty bin-Laden-killing epic was released. Trump decided the skip the Hollywood negotiations and deliver the boffo movie lines upfront.
“He died like a dog, he died like a coward,” Trump said, saying al-Baghdadi died “whimpering and crying.” Al-Baghdadi, Trump said, was the “biggest ever” terror villain, even bigger than bin Laden, because he “built a caliphate.” He even praised the “beautiful dog, talented dog” that chased al-Baghdadi into a tunnel. The White House released photos of Trump and advisers watching the assault, an experience Trump described as being like “you were watching a movie.”
Conservative media immediately emphasized the political benefit of the raid to Trump, as in the Fox headline, “Al-Baghdadi takedown catches Dems flat-footed, blunts criticism of Trump’s Syria pullback.” There was also mockery of liberal culture-war targets like Saturday Night Live, which ran an ill-timed gag this weekend. “SNL mocks Trump for ‘bringing jobs back to ISIS’ amid operation targeting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria,” read the Foxnews.com headline.
Meanwhile, in what increasingly feels like a monolithic bloc of anti-Trump media at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, etc., the Baghdadi headlines were a remarkable collection of angst-ridden talking points. Even if you’re not the kind of person who can ever celebrate a violent helicopter assault that results in the deaths of children – I count myself in that number – the difference in how this story was covered compared to analogous stories about bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was striking. Apparently, the salient facts about the death of al-Baghdadi included:
That last story – that Trump’s situation room photo was taken nearly two hours after the raid happened, undercutting the notion that Trump was “watching a movie” – flew around the Internet for hours before it turned out to have been based on an error. Actual news outlets noted the presence of unplugged Ethernet cables, like moon landing conspiracists pointing out suspicious shadows. It should be noted that similar absurdities directed toward Obama rocketed around the Internet after the bin Laden news broke.
Appropriately, many Americans used to roll their eyes at the brazen pettiness of Fox news. During the Obama years, the network seemed constitutionally incapable of reporting positive news of any kind, or even dealing with anodyne developments rationally. “This is proof he’s a Marxist,” was a famed Fox line about Obama’s decision to wear a tan suit.
Trump is inspiring similar insanity now with Fox’s opposites at the Times, Post, CNN, MSNBC, etc. I’m no fan of Trump either, but this has gotten to the point where there’s no longer anyplace to go, if you’re looking for unslanted first-draft takes on news. I’m increasingly forced to turn to the BBC and AFP to try to grab raw quotes and numbers before spin doctors in American outlets have a chance to salt news with hot takes.
During the Trump-Clinton presidential race three years ago, I wrote:
The model going forward will likely involve Republican media covering Democratic corruption and Democratic media covering Republican corruption. This setup just doesn’t work.
The al-Baghdadi story is a classic example of what happens when that dynamic is allowed to play out to its logical conclusion. From Fox to the New York Times, all of the major commercial outlets this weekend were more consumed with telling audiences who benefited politically from the al-Baghdadi mission, than getting the facts about that mission out.
This is a disservice to audiences, who deserve to know the basics. Who is al-Baghdadi? How did he come to be the leader of ISIS/ISIL? Why was he in Idlib? The story of this person ought to have been a mix of the enraging and the sobering. Al-Baghdadi was reportedly involved in all sorts of atrocities, from beheadings to crucifixions, but he seems to have become radicalized by America’s invasion of Iraq.
This ought to have been a moment to reflect on what’s happened in the last twenty years, and if our policies across multiple administrations have been the right ones. Would we even be launching operations against such a person if we hadn’t invaded Iraq all those years ago? What’s the endgame? What do the people of the region think?
All of this has been subsumed to the only story left that matters in the United States – who’s winning Twitter at any given moment, Trumpers or anti-Trumpers? News outlets are now so committed to pushing one or the other narrative that they are falling prey to absurdities like the Post’s “austere cleric” headline.
If papers are going to go this far in an obituary to avoid even the implication of a favorable Trump narrative, how are audiences supposed to trust reporting on super-charged partisan stories like impeachment? There’s more to life, and to the news, than what is or isn’t good for Donald Trump. Can’t we at least get a day or two of facts before we fight over whom they favor?
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It Seems Like Bad News for Rudy Giuliani and His Henchmen That the Feds Blew the Door Off a Safe |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 October 2019 08:27 |
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Pierce writes: "In the end of things, when there are no more distractions and nothing more to throw overboard, and thirst and hunger begin to overcome the last occupants of the lifeboat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Rudy Giuliani. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
It Seems Like Bad News for Rudy Giuliani and His Henchmen That the Feds Blew the Door Off a Safe
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
29 October 19
The presidential* lawyer may well be thrown overboard.
 n the end of things, when there are no more distractions and nothing more to throw overboard, and thirst and hunger begin to overcome the last occupants of the lifeboat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they're all going to cast starving eyes at Rudy Giuliani and think thoughts of grim cannibalism. From CNN:
The subpoena to Steven Fruman is the latest indication of prosecutors' actions since the rushed arrest two weeks ago of his brother, Igor Fruman, and another defendant, Lev Parnas, at a Washington-area airport. Since then, investigators have doled out multiple subpoenas and conducted several property searches, in one case blowing the door off a safe to access the contents, sources tell CNN.
Federal prosecutors told a judge this week that they are sifting through data from more than 50 bank accounts. In addition, they've put a filter team in place as they examine communications obtained via search warrant and subpoena, sensitive to material that could be subject to attorney-client privilege because Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, counted Parnas as a client. A filter team is a separate set of prosecutors who are assigned to examine evidence and set aside material that is privileged.
I am not an international bagman, but I've got to be thinking that having the Feds blow your safe is a pretty damn bad sign for your personal future.
As they pursue an ongoing investigation into Igor Fruman, Parnas and their co-defendants, prosecutors are also investigating Giuliani's Ukranian business dealings, CNN has reported. Parnas and Igor Fruman for months have aided Giuliani in what he has described as his effort to unearth damaging information about his client Trump's political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, whose son was on the board of a Ukranian energy company. In recent days, Giuliani has been seeking a criminal-defense attorney, CNN has reported. He says he has not been contacted by the FBI or by New York federal prosecutors.
Six, two and even, they're selling you out, Rudy. They're going to cut you loose. You're the scapegoat of last resort.
Update (3:18 p.m.): Of course, Rudy isn't helping his own case very much. Unbelievably, from NBC News:
The fact that Giuliani was reaching out wasn’t remarkable. He and the reporter had spoken earlier that night for a story about his ties to a fringe Iranian opposition group. But this call, it would soon become clear, wasn’t a typical case of a source following up with a reporter. The call came in at 11:07 p.m. and went to voicemail; the reporter was asleep. The next morning, a message exactly three minutes long was sitting in his voicemail. In the recording, the words tumbling out of Giuliani’s mouth were not directed at the reporter. He was speaking to someone else, someone in the same room.
Giuliani can be heard discussing overseas dealings and lamenting the need for cash, though it's difficult to discern the full context of the conversation.“You know,” Giuliani says at the start of the recording. “Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case ‘cause he didn’t do any due diligence.” It wasn’t clear who Charles is, or who may have been implicated in a fraud. In fact, much of the message’s first minute is difficult to comprehend, in part because the voice of the other man in the conversation is muffled and barely intelligible. But then Giuliani says something that’s crystal clear. "Let's get back to business." He goes on. "I gotta get you to get on Bahrain."
Well, you know what they say: a lawyer who butt-dials a reporter has a fool for a client.
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Congresswoman Hill Was Brought Down by Same Forces That Enable Weinstein |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=50436"><span class="small">Jessica Valenti, Medium</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 October 2019 08:19 |
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Excerpt: "The congresswoman is being punished for a crime she's the real victim of."
Katie Hill. (photo: Hans Gutknecht/Getty Images)
Congresswoman Hill Was Brought Down by Same Forces That Enable Weinstein
By Jessica Valenti, Medium
29 October 19
The congresswoman is being punished for a crime she’s the real victim of
 unday night, California Rep. Katie Hill announced her resignation from Congress. Her exit follows the publication of nude photos, allegedly leaked by her estranged husband, on RedState and in the Daily Mail; as well as the disclosure, again by her estranged husband, of her affair with a former campaign aide. The relationship was consensual, but unethical — arguably worthy of resignation, yet a mistake that many of her male colleagues have made without having to leave public office.
The truth is that it wasn’t the affair that ended Hill’s time in Congress — it was the explicit photos. More accurately, it was “revenge porn” that killed her career.
Revenge porn is a form of domestic and sexual abuse. It’s a way to control, humiliate, and punish. In fact, Hill characterized it as such, writing in her resignation letter that she needed to step down “so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation.”
Make no mistake: Hill was the victim of a crime, but she’s the only person being punished. And her resignation is just the latest in a recent spate of sexist wins, reminders that any progress feminism makes is sure to be met by a backlash that is just as strong.
Just last week, for example, Harvey Weinstein — a supposedly universally reviled abuser — showed up at a showcase event for young artists. When comedian Kelly Bachman called Weinstein out during her set, however, she was booed and told to “shut up” by someone in the audience. Comedian Amber Rollo was called a “cunt” by one of Weinstein’s friends after she called him “a monster” offstage, and actor Zoe Stuckless was kicked out of the venue for asking why people were acting normally in the presence of a serial rapist. “Nobody is really going to say anything?” she said.
This was never about Hill’s affair, but about the desire to humiliate her by sexualizing her in public.
Wasn’t Weinstein supposed to be the worst of the worst? Someone we all agreed was a bad guy? Yet Weinstein not only had friends with him, including two young women, he had sympathizers in the crowd — and on stage, apparently. Another male comedian later chatted with Weinstein as if he wasn’t accused of assaulting dozens of women.
How effective can #MeToo be if a serial rapist can still function in polite society? The same goes for Hill. It’s wonderful that America voted in a record number of women, but to keep them there, we need to be able to defend them from the kind of sexist attacks that women in power are most vulnerable to. (Again, this was never about Hill’s affair, but about the desire to humiliate her by sexualizing her in public.)
These continued sexist wins — whether Weinstein, Hill, Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, or an audience cheering for Louis C.K. when he returned to stand up — feel like they’re gaining steam.
Feminism is building power — socially, politically, and culturally. Whenever that happens, the status quo fights back. It’s expected. But when the backlash starts to roll back any win we had — whether abortion rights or ousting a female politician via sexual shaming — we are losing the larger battle.
If we want to make progress that sticks, Americans need to push back harder against the backlash. Right now, every setback matters.
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Trump Turns Baghdadi's Killing Into a Reality Show |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6791"><span class="small">Christopher Dickey, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Monday, 28 October 2019 12:49 |
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Dickey writes: "The president knows great television when he sees it, and he was enthusiastic about the images he was watching from the White House situation room Saturday night."
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, who at one point ruled over some eight million people, was killed in a U.S. Special Operations raid, on Saturday, October 26th, in Syria. (photo: Al-Furqan Media//Reuters)
Trump Turns Baghdadi's Killing Into a Reality Show
By Christopher Dickey, The Daily Beast
28 October 19
The president knows great television when he sees it, and he was enthusiastic about the images he was watching from the White House situation room Saturday night.
 resident Donald J. Trump wants you to see his new movie: “Bring Me the Head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
At a special Sunday morning press conference in Washington D.C., Trump described the way U.S. Special Operations Forces attacked Baghdadi’s compound and killed him in such graphic and explicit detail that some intelligence professionals worried he may have revealed, again, too much about sources and methods.
But Trump knows great television when he sees it, and he was enthusiastic about the images he was watching from the White House situation room Saturday night. “It was absolutely perfect, as though you were watching a movie,” he said.
Baghdadi “died like a dog,” Trump said repeatedly. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward. He died whimpering, screaming and crying, and, frankly, I think it’s something that should be brought out so that his followers and all these young kids that want to leave various countries, including the United States, they should see how he died. He didn’t die a hero, he died a coward, crying, whimpering, screaming, and bringing three kids with him to die. Certain death.”
Trump makes an important point. In fact, it may be an imperative. Al Qaeda and ISIS leaders have built their reputations among their followers extolling their medieval vision of Islam and claiming the chivalric virtues of the past. Trump wanted to make it clear that when Baghdadi died he was anything but a brave knight under the Prophet Muhammad’s banner.
Some of the many thousands of radical jihadis and sympathizers around the world who revered Baghdadi will refuse to believe that he is dead; others will honor him as a martyr, and in the realm of Islamic sects, especially a cult like the so-called Islamic State, the “disappearance” of a leader—in Baghdadi’s case a self-proclaimed “caliph”—only serves to intensify the passionate devotion of the faithful. That is one reason the Obama administration buried Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden at sea in 2011. There would be no grave to become a shrine.
It’s a given that very few jihadists or would-be jihadists will believe Trump’s version of Baghdadi’s death: cornered as his cronies and family were killed or surrendered, then running into a dead-end tunnel with three of his kids where he detonated a suicide vest to blow them up along with himself. In what truly seemed a Hollywood touch, Trump said the only American injured was a brave K9 soldier (“I call it a dog, a talented dog, a beautiful dog”) who had chased Baghdadi and the kids down the tunnel.
No doubt a fictional movie about the raid already is being planned and scripts written, but if Trump’s account is accurate, the actual video would be much more powerful than a docudrama for the purpose of dissuading potential jihadists and, in his mind, impressing potential voters for Donald J. Trump in next year’s presidential election.
The reasons such a video of the 2011 Osama operation was not released are the same ones that the intelligence community will use to argue against dissemination of the Baghdadi death: because such images could compromise so much about the operation.
But quite apart from Trump’s worthy desire to undermine the messaging of the still virulent ISIS organization, there is also his unworthy inclination to gloat. Remember when Trump tweeted a highly classified high-resolution image of a failed Iranian missile launch earlier this year for little more reason, it would seem, that smug self-satisfaction?
Trump hates it when the fast-turning news cycle that he uses effectively to obscure his failings also works to push his accomplishments into oblivion. (His announcement in September that the son of Osama bin Laden had been confirmed killed fell flat. It had been reported months earlier, but confirmation was delayed, apparently while awaiting DNA from what was left after a missile strike.)
So it’s fair to ask how far how far Trump will go to keep this deadly triumph alive.
One possibility: leaked images of the physical proof that Baghdadi died.
I have covered a fair number of suicide bombings over the years, and the effect of explosive vests is fairly predictable. The torso is destroyed and the extremities, including the head, detach.
So I was not surprised to see it reported by Jennifer Griffin, a national security correspondent for Fox News, that Baghdadi was identified so quickly because there was no need to wait for DNA tests. His head had popped off more or less like a cork, and proof came through “biometrics (facial recognition).”
Trump told the press on Sunday “there wasn’t much left” of Baghdadi, but there were “substantial pieces they brought back.” The head no doubt is among them.
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o, not a scene from a David Attenborough series, but just some of the wildlife that live in the Falkland Islands.
