So, for ONE of your assertions you have one example - and Friedman made  a mistake, then an example against your assertion (Cohen)  and some Arab bloggers say SOME foreign correspondents don't speak Arabic.

Is that it ?

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

I asked if ANYONE had questioned the NYT's reports of what some of the people in the revolution had said in interviews.

They are very net-savvy young people so even they, especially since Mubarak left, are quite likely to read the NYT stuff on their revolution online.

Re the NYT, as afew pointed out:

The Angry Arab News Service

Comrade Talal sent me this (I cite with his permission): "I have to say that Tony Shadid made a huge difference to the coverage by the NYT of the recent Arab revolt. At his worst he was good, and at his best outstanding. The other NYT correspondents did not come close, and I am sure he would have been even better if the infamous NYT editors had let him loose."

So - despite the "infamous NYT editors" (a judgement I agree with) - Angry Arab is passing on the word there can at least be some respectable material on the NYT.

I'm sure that Angry Arab will be delighted to know that his own biography doesn't count as evidence of achievement.

I'm sure you'll continue to ignore relevant evidence such as Sharp's bio that doesn't fit your conspiracy theory.

Still - I expect he can console himself with the thought that if he was writing for the NYT you'd believe everything he said, based on its proven expertise, impeccable track record, and convincing contrition when caught lying.

If you don't have any arguments resort to caricature again. No, I don't believe everything that's in the NYT, but then I don't adopt the stupid position of rejecting everything that's in it either. You haven't shown that the NYT has got anything wrong in this case, so again you just caricature what it says.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

WHO HERE HAS BOTHERED TO READ SOMETHING THAT GENE SHARP HAS WRITTEN?

--Some small part of the body of work that so impressed Chomsky, Zinn and so many other luminaries of the thoughtful left?

The lack of any real support for your angry arguments, stevesim, is obvious. If you had any real ammo, you'd have fired it off. Nothing in your many comments supports your angry assertions, and I've read them all at least twice.

TBG, your gratuitous and unnecessary history lesson has so little to do with the question "So who pays for all this"? My head swims searching for any connection with Sharp Unless you're asserting that, as a taxpayer, he's as screwed as the rest of us. I'll grant that point. As well, it's equally hard to find a logical frame for the rest of your slashing attack other than a cynical refusal to accept the possibility that there might be good, honorable men out there, and some of them might even be Americans. That's a problem I've encountered before with your comments, but I set it aside because I respect your intellect.

But this time it's tough.
You treat us to a revelatory journey into arcane organizational trivia, and eventually reveal that-- Shazam! One of his donors has a bio that suggests a crooked financial history.
That's --it?
Jeez. Shades of Gene McCarthy. Sounds a lot like J. Edgar Hoover's elaborate decades-long search for evil in MLK's heart (or pants), turning up a used condom and a doubtful merit badge. Or all the years of frothing over Clinton's blow job- we all know such things rot your brain. Don't they? (Drool).

But, now that you put it all together for me,-- jeez. I should have tumbled to the plot right off. Stupid me. Somewhere under that single room in his small home, guarded faithfully by his single female assistant lies the headquarters of a vast, well-funded intercontinental PR plot, supported by dough from a crook who just barely escaped the slammer for securities fraud. Of course. Just the sort of thing Mr. Teflon would do.
A PR --or more properly, a psywar operation, an evil  Media Medusa that has used once again all the compliant, servile major media, but also has sucked in international leftist media from 15 countries (that I can count, from his site) and has flimflammed an incredible list of high-powered thinkers alive and dead.
Jeez. If the evil empire is this slick, this powerful, ---what can us miserable ordinaries do?

Think I'll just suck off the gas water heater.


Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.