Posted on 02/01/2005 6:55:19 PM PST by PopGonzalez
Shut Up, al-Jazeera The network should be put out of business.
A while back, the television-radio network al-Jazeera considered offering $10,000 to anyone who could prove that the network had broadcast footage of an actual beheading by the insurgents. Although many in the region served by al-Jazeera remain adamant that such footage had been aired, al-Jazeera insisted that it had never shown the act itself. An ingenuous observer wondered why the suggested award was a mere $10,000. Inasmuch as the network knew that it was innocent of such a broadcast, why not offer a million dollars? What do you have to lose, if you know that documentary evidence can’t be forthcoming?
To frame the case against al-Jazeera on its alleged broadcast of a beheading is to commit the offense wryly described years ago by George Tyrrell. “The Jesuits,” he wrote acidly, “score off the exaggeration of their critics. Accuse them of killing three men and a dog, they will triumphantly produce the dog alive.” The point here being that what al-Jazeera does, day after day, is mischievous in a different sense from merely producing graphic shots of beheadings. What it does is give publicity, much of it favorable, to the kind of people who engage in beheading.
Al-Jazeera is heard and viewed by an estimated 40 million people in the tender and volatile Middle East. It is broadcast from Qatar, which is formally friendly to the West. That oil-rich little state nominally owns AJ, which spends $120 million per year and loses $40 or $50 million. (Qatar makes up the loss with a subsidy.)
Although the network provides around-the-clock service of news and commentary and entertainment, the poison resides in the news dispatches, which are anti-American and anti-Israel. AJ’s management replies to its critics that, after all, it is merely engaged in discussing the news, and the excesses of Israel and of President Bush are fair and legal subjects to bring up — so what is all the fuss about? So confident is AJ of its future, it is beefing up its bureau in Washington, D.C. and has provided itself with handsome $7 million quarters to do this comfortably. Already it is licensed to broadcast in Canada, though it is too early to say whether the Qatar mix will be unchanged.
The indecision of the U.S. government in facing the aggressions of the network brilliantly illustrates the special immobilization of liberal reasoning. “Administration officials,” reports the New York Times, “have been nervous to talk about the station, being sensitive to charges that they are trying to suppress free expression.”
Well, yes. Al-Jazeera has described U.S. operations in Iraq in such a way as to provoke from Donald Rumsfeld the charge that its coverage is “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.” American troops are portrayed by al-Jazeera as wantonly attacking Iraqi civilians and holy sites.
It defies reason that a country at war should cavil at doing what can be done to suppress rank misrepresentations of U.S. conduct. Its broadcasts were banned, beginning last August, from Iraq. Meanwhile, the lure of anti-Semitism is of course powerful and perhaps not even containable. The French government has denied a base to al-Manar, the terrorist Hezbollah’s television network, reflecting the steady rise in the Muslim population in France and a desire not to mobilize it with anti-Semitism.
The dogma that nothing should interfere with the free expression of thought is after all a dandyish application of John Stuart Mill to inflamed situations. When there are suicide bombers wading into mosques and schools and buses, and killing men, women, and children, attempts to examine what it is that moves them to such activity are reasonably made. If the news commentary the entire Near East region receives stresses the spiritual nobility of killing in the name of Allah, something should stress the nobility of putting such advocates out of business.
Are you related to Luis? Just wondering. :-)
No.
OK.
What are you saying by that terrible picture.
Great picture!
You must be very sad and disturbed person,
I smell toast.
Yes, it's easy for silly minds who have never experienced real war to say things like this.
Yes, I am! How could you have known? WOW!
Small world, isn't it? Well, nice to meet you, Touch.
You don't think a nuclear bomb blast is a disturbing picture?
and you think the picture and statements like "I smell toast" are OK?
But maybe I'll satisfy you and leave this conversation.
OK You win.
That was pretty easy but weren't there supposed to be hundreds of you?
You don't think a nuclear bomb blast is a disturbing picture?
and you think the picture and statements like "I smell toast" are OK?
But maybe I'll satisfy you and leave this conversation.
OK You win.
Looks like DU wents its butt kicked to me. Troll let me tell you soemthing you come here. In post this stuff on our board(Jims). While at the same time you expect Fr not to send our guys over. It smells like what Mexico's doing to the United states. How would you like it. If I went over there in said good things about Bush on DU?
You trolls need to stop trolling this board now!
How is AJ different from the AP, and the NY Times, and NPR, and CBS, and the BBC, etc?
I'm not so sure, CC. Give him a few minutes.What? You lost me.
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