Al-Monitor, an Insult to Journalism and to Decency

Let me start by telling what used to happen when I was publishing and editing a small town newspaper.

I used to get press releases from the local politicians telling the local media what they did at the Provincial or Federal level to “bring home the bacon,” so to speak. I would publish them, and so did the other newspapers.

What used to happen at times was that a press release would be sent out from the office of a politician one day and then again a few days later. As editors, we had to watch out for these things because to publish the same story twice would give credit where credit was not due, and in so doing deceive the public, the greatest sin that a publication can commit.

Most of the time, such press releases would be sent out more than once by mistake. At other times, however, they would be sent deliberately in an attempt to catch an editor off-guard, thus embellish the image of the politician for something he did not do. We would know the difference because a press release that was sent by mistake came in the same format each time; whereas the attempt to deceive came in a different format, rewritten to make the project sound like it was something new.

When it happened that an editor got fooled – publishing the same story twice – the other editors would “laugh” at him quietly by writing a story about the project in question; but write it in such a way as to tell the public something new about the same project. However, there would be enough markers in the story to let the editor in question know that he was caught off guard … and that “we're laughing at you”. Of course, all that was done in good spirit, being a kind of internal joke that is peculiar to the industry. The public did not sense anything unusual and would not have appreciated that kind of humor in any case.

I tell this story because there is an online magazine called Al-Monitor that goes too far using small mishaps of the kind that happen regularly in the industry to do to Egypt what is said was done to America on 9/11 when some low-life animals allegedly celebrated the fall of the World Trade Center. That is, the editors of Al-Monitor regularly celebrate the mishaps they say happened to Egypt even when such mishaps are nothing more than the product of their delusional minds.

The latest such celebration came under the title: “Are Egypt's new water discoveries just a distraction?” and the rather lengthy subtitle: “It seems every time Egypt finds itself in a critical position in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam negotiations, it rushes to announce the discovery of some new groundwater reserve.” Published on February 19, 2016, the article was written by Rami Galal and translated by Sahar Ghoussoub.

What's it all about? It's about ongoing negotiations between the nations of the Nile Basin on how to proceed with their individual developments without hurting the interests of others. And there have always been low-life “journalistic” groups that pointed to tiny developments they spun in such a way as to make them sound like huge things hiding calamitous secrets.

For example, when during the era of Mubarak, some farmers protested they were not allotted enough water to grow their crops, the low life groups said that the protest was staged by the government to impress upon the Nile negotiators the notion that Egypt was suffering from water shortages already. The story now is to the effect that the government is staging the discovery of new water sources to impress upon the Egyptian population that things look rosy when, in reality, they are not. It is that Egypt gets it coming and going from these animals.

Al-Monitor says that in 2012 the government announced the discovery of an underground basin with enough water in it to cultivate 260,000 acres of land. It goes on to say HOWEVER, which is the same as saying BUT “the details of the discovery still haven't been disclosed.” These people can spend their time chasing details of the kind they hunger for in all the places they fantasize about. What is of interest to the public is that land reclamation in the Qattara Depression has started, and that it is ongoing. And the acres are planted as soon as they are readied for cultivation.

Al-Monitor proceeds with another story it says happened last month. It explains that a government minister embarrassed himself by announcing the discovery of a “new” underground basin that was known to be there for decades. It describes the find as being “the already discovered and well-known Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System stretching from Egypt to Sudan, Libya and Chad.”

But then, like idiots eager to hurt Egypt, they try to stretch the story further than it can go; and in the process, shoot themselves in the foot. They find someone whom they say told them: “The underground quantities are known and were publicly estimated years ago. The sources of water do not exceed 132 trillion gallons all over Egypt and they are mostly nonrenewable.” Al-Monitor also has the same man say that the “statement about the massive groundwater discovery is not scientifically proven.” Well, which is it? Is it well known the discovery is real? Or is it not scientifically proven, therefore unreal?

Note also that the estimated reserves are 132 trillion gallons of water. At 264 gallons per cubic meter, it says that the amount comes to 500 billion cubic meters, most of which is nonrenewable. If we assume that only 10 percent of that quantity is renewed every year, it would amount to 50 billion cubic meters, which is close to Egypt's current share of Nile waters. It is as if the country had two Niles; one above ground and one below it.

Having made a mess of their presentation, the idiots begin their macabre celebration by telling a big fat lie. They quote a professor of water resources at Cairo University as telling them: “the water minister wanted to shift public attention from his failed negotiations and distract it with hopes of new water sources in Egypt.” First of all, a scientist would not talk politics. Second of all, given the current climate in Egypt, no one in his right mind would make a statement like that even if it were true.

The editors of Al-Monitor kept the lie because it leads to this delusional celebration “statements made by the Ethiopian foreign minister clearly show Ethiopia will not commit to changing its plans. He believes Ethiopia will not make any concessions to Egypt, especially regarding its share of the Nile water.” These creatures are not human journalists; they are savage animals in human clothing.

Which is why I call on the people who sit on the board of that publication to reconsider their association with that filthy rag. They are: Simon Ayat of Schlumberger; Tony Chase of ChaseSource; Joanna Hitchcock, formerly of the University of Texas Press; Nassif Hitti, observer at UNESCO; David Leebron of Rice University; Andrew Parasiliti of the RAND Corporation; Paul Salem of the Middle East Institute; Denis Simonneau of GDF SUEZ and John Solomon of the Washington Times.