{"id":9864,"date":"2011-05-27T08:34:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T16:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=9864"},"modified":"2011-05-27T08:34:59","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T16:34:59","slug":"saudi-arab-spring-policy-imitates-u-s-media-cant-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/27\/saudi-arab-spring-policy-imitates-u-s-media-cant-see-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arab Spring Policy Imitates U.S., Media Can&#8217;t See It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/28\/world\/middleeast\/28saudi.html?_r=1\">a great example<\/a> of the general bias of <em>The New York Times<\/em> in today\u2019s edition.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Saudi Arabia\u00a0is <strong>flexing its financial and diplomatic might<\/strong> across the Middle East in a wide-ranging bid to <strong>contain the tide of change, shield fellow monarchs from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to calm turbulent republics<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0Egypt, where the Saudis dispensed $4 billion in aid last week to shore up the ruling military council, to Yemen, where it is trying to ease out the president, to the kingdoms of Jordan\u00a0and\u00a0Morocco, which it has invited to join a union of Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia is <strong>scrambling to forestall more radical change and block\u00a0Iran\u2019s influence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The kingdom is aggressively emphasizing the relative stability of monarchies, part of an <strong>effort to avert any dramatic shift from the authoritarian model<\/strong>, which would generate uncomfortable questions about the glacial pace of political and social change at home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can swap the words \u201cSaudi Arabia\u201d for the words \u201cUnited States\u201d and read the article we should have read at the very beginning of the Arab Spring. The U.S. has flexed its financial and diplomatic might in a desperate attempt to avert any shift from the authoritarian model they\u2019ve maintained in the region for decades. In Yemen, in Bahrain, in Jordan, in Palestine, in Egypt (before Mubarak\u2019s ousting was successful), and elsewhere, the U.S. has made significant efforts to ensure democracy is suppressed and tyranny persists. This is well known, but the mainstream media often suffers from an inability to scrutinize \u2013 or honestly report \u2013 the policies of America the way they do for other countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a great example of the general bias of The New York Times in today\u2019s edition. Saudi Arabia\u00a0is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East in a wide-ranging bid to contain the tide of change, shield fellow monarchs from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9865,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864\/revisions\/9865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9864"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}