Friday, August 07, 2009

Significant news


No, I definitely do not mean Michael Jackson's toxicology report. (Sweet suffering Jesus, my coworkers were discussing it today.)

Juan Cole shares this at Informed Comment:
But the really big news out of Pakistan in the last week was the finding of the restored Supreme Court that Gen. Pervez Musharraf's emergency decree of November, 2007, was unconstitutional. The ruling has larger implications, in perhaps suggesting that all of Pakistan's military coups have been unconstitutional. This is the first time that the Pakistani Supreme Court has so forcefully stood up to the military.

If the American press and political establishment was serious about supporting democracy in Pakistan and the Muslim World, we'd have seen an avalanche of comment praising the Supreme Court ruling as a victory for democracy. I did a keyword search at Lexis under television transcripts and could not find any evidence that anyone in national television or radio except Julie McCarthy at NPR even mentioned the epochal Pakistani Supreme Court ruling!

...

And despite it being non-news in the US, the Pakistani Supreme Court ruling is a bigger turning point in Pakistani history than any we have seen since 1947.

If any of you are unfamiliar with Juan Cole's blog as a wonderful source for news of the Middle East, and commentary from the media of that region, get yourself on over there!

Let us pray for the people of Pakistan.

--the BB

2 comments:

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

Prayers ascending!

June Butler said...

Paul, I don't know how much of a difference blogs make, quite a lot, I expect, but it's plain the the MSM has gone to shit. And we are to shed tears because newspapers are dying?

Murdock will begin charging for online use of the newspapers in his empire. I won't pay to read them.