I woke up this morning to headlines about the bombing of a Coptic church in Cairo that killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more. An article in The Washington Post was one of the ones I opened to read the about what happened. You can follow the link to get the details, but what struck me was this paragraph:
Egypt’s Orthodox Coptic Christian community, who make up 10 percent of the population, have long felt discrimination at the hands of the country’s Muslims. Attacks on Christians have intensified since the 2011 populist revolts that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Am I alone in thinking that it’s very unusual to read something like this in the WaPo, or any other mainstream media outlet? Those who read alternative media outlets are used to facts such these, but since when have we seen them in the Legacy Media?
The last I heard, the “2011 populist revolts” were still referred to in the MSM as the “Arab Spring”, and were regarded as a great moment of liberation for the Egyptian people. Then General Al-Sisi came along and spoiled the new enlightened democratic government by deposing President Morsi. In other words, they dutifully repeated the standard line from the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama.
So what happened? Why are we now allowed to know that Christians are discriminated against and persecuted by the Muslim majority in Egypt?
Is the truth beginning to creep into the pages of the Washington Post?
I’m sure it’s just a mistake, Baron. An overnight story that slipped by the Ministry of Truth at the WaPo. Those involved will no doubt be given correction training and the WaPo will return to its regular “programming” soon enough.
No no no Baron!
You got it all wrong.
This must be so called “false news”.
You must have read about “false news” in the WaPo and other MSM.
Don’t believe them they are feeding you “false news”
Please don’t allow your mind to be poisened by “false news” from WaPO, NYT, CNN and all the others.
Down with “false news”!
Isn’t it delicious, the fog is starting to disperse! 🙂
And the whole hysteria about fake news has real fear behind it: they know that the plebs have empowered ourselves to tell fake news from real, without their mediation. Just like the Protestants once discovered they could reach out to God without priestly mediation. Sweet!
“There’s a new sheriff in town”.
And while we still have a vigorous internet one can at least parse through ‘the weeds’ if we’ve the time.
As to mediation, tread lightly my friend, and cautiously, for one needs a guide in a strange land… Godspeed.
“Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.
Ay me! How hard to speak of it that rude
And rough and stubborn forest! The mere breath
Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood;
It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;
Yet there I gained such good, that, to convey
The tale, I’ll write what else I found therewith . . . .
so begins
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
Cantica I (L’INFERNO)
Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1949
Could it be that WAPO and NYT have realized that they are losing readers,and they have to sprinkle their opinions with a fact now and then? Or maybe that they don’t have to protect the Anointed One any more….
There are 99 Muslim Brotherhood criminals on death row in Egypt. Let the government bring forward their executions.
Well, I suppose even dhimmis have to tell the truth occasionally. They could hardly blame it on ‘far right extremists’ because, of course, such people don’t exist where there are no whites, do they?
It is an old CIA trick: “Sometimes mix some truth into the lies!”
Just like a broken clock is right twice a day, an occasional ideological mistake (i.e., truth) slips past the WaPo Censorship Division.
Heads will roll for this, I’m sure, and they won’t be Islamist heads in Egypt, but journalistic heads in Washington…
It’s suddenly a populist revolt, because we just had a populist revolt & they are bad and people will get killed when you have a populist revolt. The bigger narrative has just changed a little in delivery.
Possibly it’s just my skewed view of the world, but I suspect the hidden agenda may be to suggest 1) that al-Sisi–despite his public gestures toward the Christians–has not been able to protect them as well as Mubarak did; 2) that maybe the “populists” who ushered in the Muslim Brotherhood were really no worse than the “populists” who supported Brexit and Trump. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t trust anything from the Post.
BBC Radio 4 reported that the Copts were resented for their alleged support of al-Sisi, without giving the context of the MB’s attitude to Christians.
The press hitches a ride on the prevailing paradigm. This shows that the paradigm is in the process of changing.
It’s possible that the imminent departure of the muslim in the White House is loosening tongues. During the terror years of the Beliar reign here in the UK, the bully Alastair Campbell held sway with the MSM by bestowing or withholding favours but once the Labour Party was kicked out of office, his power went too. The Obama administration appears to have adopted the same practice during his reign of terror. I don’t think, though, that the MSM are redeemable but they probably recognise that the new administration of Mr Trump will not be as wilfully vindictive as the collectivists and this will give them some leeway to introduce some truth into their fake news reports.
I have not heard about “Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1949” for so long and yet she was one of the most intelligent writers I ever stumbled upon years ago.
On another note, I wonder when the middle-east nightmare will end. Not holding my breath of course.
Maria_dee
If you like Sayers (an indication of good taste, that) try C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters”, a book she loved.
http://amzn.to/2hsOfmV
Amazing, is it not, that a book published (in serial form) in 1941 is still so popular? But sadly predictable that a few of the dimmer-witted Anglican clergy of his time failed to see that it was satire.
If you’ve ever read any of Calvin and Hobbes, the delicious cartoon series, you’ll have recognized the homage to “Screwtape” in Watterson’s characterization of Calvin’s mean teacher as Miss Wormwood. In a way, Calvin and Hobbes is more based on Lewis’ theology than it is Calvin’s.
At the Amazon site, there’s a lively discussion of Screwtape. Wherever he is, no doubt Lewis is enjoying the thousand or so people who showed up to say something about his effort. I hope the UK Amazon page has an even better discussion, given their native understanding…I’m afraid to look, in case it isn’t true. One can stand only a few shattered illusions a week…
The blurb reads:
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a classic masterpiece of religious satire that entertains readers with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to “Our Father Below.” At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation — and triumph over it — ever written.
BTW, Lewis had thought at one time to do a kind of “answer” to the book in the form of a good angel’s advice to his juniors – those guardian angels everyone is issued at birth. But it proved too much of a slog: it’s too difficult to reduce virtue to sly satire. Of course, Lewis hadn’t encountered the writers at the modern-day Sunday Times or he’d see how facilely fluent those bozos are at doing just that.
NOTE: they have used books for a dollar plus postage. I like the used versions of books like this: often full of adolescent marginalia as they struggle through this assigned reading.
BBC Radio 4 did “Screwtape” some years back, with the (sadly late) Ian Richardson. He was the traitor in the tv series after Le Carre, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, and the villainous politician in “House of Cards”, recently remade in the US with Kevin Spacey.
They don’t have to fawn for Obama any more.
“why are we now allowed to know that Christians are discriminated against and persecuted by the muslim majority in Egypt.” because they are about to blame it on Donald trump.
Yet again, I’m reminded of the fact that AFTER the Liberation of France after WW2, the number of “French Resistance Fighters” increased dramatically. Perhaps, with the arrival of President Elect Trump, the Lügenpresse are smelling the scent of “Nüremberg Tribunals” and preparing to shift to the right side, by brown-nosing the truth-tellers ?
The editor got as far as, “Egypt’s Orthodox Co…”, and gave up looking for meaning. Just to be thorough, they kept skimming and processed, “discrimination … … … of the country’s Muslims.” This sounded fair, so they approved the story as it stood. “Attacks on Christians have intensified”, put a warm fuzzy in their heart, so they told them-self to buy that writer a coffee, later.