Today's Interesting Links

Well, friends and neighbors, we have quite a crop of interesting links today.  Media mergers, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, and all sorts of things in between!  So, without much further ado . . .

General Interesting News:
First, Brian Stelter of the NYT's Media Decoder Blog reports that Al Jazeera is planning to purchase Al Gore's faltering Current TV.  Rather than merging with Current, Al Jazeera seems to be planning the creation of a brand new US-oriented television channel: Al Jazeera America.  The merger/purchase reportedly provides Al Jazeera with access to 60 million US households with cable/satellite television.

Also in the topic of general news, the New York Times today lost a US District Court battle over its quest to obtain greater details and documents concerning the United States' drone program.  A PDF copy of the court opinion for the case (New York Times Company, Charlie Savage, & Scott Shane v. US Department of Justice) can be found HERE.  Additionally, here is Wired's story about the NYT's case: " 'Alice in Wonderland' Ruling Lets Feds Keep Mum On Targeted-Killing Legal Rationale."

Syria:
Moving on to a much more depressing story, the United Nations is now estimating that over 60,000 people have been killed over the course of the Syrian conflict since March 2011.

Egypt:
Several interesting links out of Egypt today.  First up, we have Olga Khazan writing for the Washington Post: "Meet Egypt's Jon Stewart, Who is Now Under Investigation for Satire."

Next, we have an article from the Egyptian Independent concerning the dramatic expansion of power granted to Egypt's Shura Council by the new Egyptian Constitution.

Finally, we have, courtesy of MEMRI TV, a video of Egyptian cleric Mahmoud al-Masri talking about Israel's discomfort with the rise of an Islamist Egypt and an unstable Syria, and explaining that "the final annihilation of the Jews will come at the time of the Mahdi, or shortly before the Mahdi appears."  Charming.

And Some More:
And here are some more links, without the accompaniment of any of my blathering:

• Afghanistan:
• "Among Top News Stories, a War is Missing" (NYT Media Decoder)
• "What 2012 Has Meant for Afghanistan" (BBC)
• "Algeria Ruling Party Loses Senate Majority" (The Daily Star (Lebanon))
• "Strategic Horizons: When Generals Shape National Policy" (World Politics Review)
• "Renditions Continue Under Obama Despite Due Process Concerns" (Washington Post)

And, finally, a piece from Glenn Greenwald (with whom I sometimes vehemently disagree) on freedom of expression, censorship, and France's recent attempts to regulate/criminalize speech on Twitter.  I like this piece so much, that I may have to blog about it within the next several days.  If I don't, here is my favorite quote:  

Nowhere in Farago's pro-censorship argument does he address, or even fleetingly consider, the possibility that the ideas that the state will forcibly suppress will be ideas that he likes, rather than ideas that he dislikes. People who want the state to punish the expression of certain ideas are so convinced of their core goodness, the unchallengeable rightness of their views, that they cannot even conceive that the ideas they like will, at some point, end up on the Prohibited List.

That's what always astounds and bothers me most about censorship advocates: their unbelievable hubris. . . . .

The history of human knowledge is nothing more than the realization that yesterday's pieties are actually shameful errors. It is constantly the case that human beings of the prior generation enshrined a belief as objectively, unchallengably true which the current generation came to see as wildly irrational or worse. All of the most cherished human dogmas - deemed so true and undeniable that dissent should be barred by the force of law - have been subsequently debunked, or at least discredited.

How do you get yourself to believe that you're exempt from this evolutionary process, that you reside so far above it that your ideas are entitled to be shielded from contradiction upon pain of imprisonment? The amount of self-regard required for that is staggering to me.

While I don't agree with Mr. Greenwald that ALL of "the most cherished human dogmas" have been debunked or discredited, his overarching point is a good one.  Those who seek to criminalize or censor speech never seem to believe that their own ideas may one day be the ones that are proscribed.