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Political analysts hurl insults - and punches - in a dispute over the credibility of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Video

Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who preached in Tahrir Square 10 days ago, loathes Israel, justifies suicide bombings against its civilians. 1. Sheikh Dr. Yusuf Abdallah al-Qaradawi is a central figure affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. He was expelled from Egypt and found refuge in Qatar, operating from there throughout the Muslim world. 2. Many consider him the supreme religious and ideological authority for the Muslim Brotherhood, although he is not officially its leader. (In the past, he refused to accept the title of the Muslim Brotherhood’s General Guide). He is influential in Egypt and considered one of the most important Sunni...

Iran is jamming broadcasts by Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera, satellite operator Arabsat said in a statement received on Tuesday. -excerpt- Officials in Iran's regional ally Syria, have repeatedly slammed Al-Jazeera's coverage of the deadly revolt in the country, which has largely remained sealed off from the foreign media.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Sam Donaldson on Sunday's "This Week" actually thanked the anti-American television network Al Jazeera for what they do in the Middle East. On Tuesday, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly invited Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley on his program to discuss the matter, and by the end of the segment, O'Reilly was practically screaming at Sean Hannity's former partner.

Occupy Wall Street: Another world is possibleObama's rightward shift since taking office has alienated many former supporters, helping to fuel the 'Occupy' movement. Paul Rosenberg Last Modified: 01 Nov 2011 18:14 **SNIP** Obama's implicit dream - based on his own successful political trajectory - was that he could negotiate a truce within the one per cent to substantially improve the overall management of the US political system. As a result, the nation as a whole would benefit substantially. Thus, he was not so much unconcerned with the welfare of the 99 per cent as he was scornful of them getting...

Al Jazeera has started recruitment prior to the launch of Al Jazeera Kiswahili, a new channel in the Swahili language. The channel, which will stick with the news and current affairs shows familiar to viewers of Al Jazeera English, will broadcast across East Africa and be headquartered in the region – probably in Nairobi. By SIMON ALLISON. This is big news for the East African media market, which is already the most vigorous in Africa, and is a huge step for the Qatar-based news outlet. Al Jazeera’s rise to prominence has been meteoric. Helped by handouts from the seemingly bottomless...

In an explosive interview with Al Jazeera’s English Washington bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blasted the journalist for “haranguing” and refused to answer his questions — accusing Foukara of having it in his “being” to be “disrespectful.” The heated exchange erupted when the topic came to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether he felt responsible for the deaths of “innocent Iraqis” because, according to Foukara, the Bush administration “didn’t secure the borders” of the country and sent in too few troops.

Algeria's audiovisual sector is to be opened to private broadcasters with the introduction of a new liberalisation bill to parliament, according to the North African country's Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia. "For the first time, we will have legislation dealing with the opening of broadcast media," Mr Ouyahia is quoted by AFP as telling reporters at the senate's inaugural session on Sunday (4th September). He added "there are no freedom restrictions" in Algeria's draft Information Bill, currently before Parliament. Algeria's public TV network is the state controlled Enterprise Nationale de Television (ENTV). Although liberalisation of the sector has long been called...

Gabriel Elizondo, a Brazil-based correspondent for Al Jazeera, is in the middle of a road trip across the United States, talking to people about the effects of 9/11 on American life. In Texas, Elizondo says he just experienced part of the impact firsthand. "Ten miles," he wrote Sunday in a blog post. "That's how deep I got into Texas before being asked to leave." On Friday, Elizondo says, he decided to stop at a high school football game in Booker, Texas, near the Oklahoma border. "What better a setting to immerse one's self into Texas rural life than high school...

Streaming in Arabic right now, on the Al Jazeera Arabic news site. Using translation software to read realtime in English. Ticker says that HAMAS has made an official statement of support welcoming the current advance of anti-Ghaddafi rebels in Tripoli, Libya.Link to the original Arabic.

A journalist for Al-Jazeera has been arrested on suspicion of being an agent of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The journalist, Samer Allawi, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Afghanistan, is a Palestinian. He was apprehended by Israeli authorities as he attempted to leave the West Bank. Meantime, Republican Rep. Ron Paul, a presidential candidate who has appeared on Al-Jazeera, has picked up the support of another foreign propaganda channel. In addition to getting major sympathetic coverage from Russia Today, which is funded by Moscow, the Texas congressman is getting rave reviews from Press TV, the channel funded by the Iranian regime....

Al-Jazeera’s Washington, D.C., Bureau Chief Abderrahim Foukara will speak tonight as part of a fundraiser for the General Henry Knox Museum. The Arabic news network’s journalist will appear at the Strand Theatre in Rockland as the annual gala’s keynote speaker... Foukara’s pending visit has sparked a public debate about the Thomaston museum’s choice of keynote speaker. Some have criticized the museum for legitimizing what they believe to be a “terrorist news network,” while others fully support the choice and view protesters as “narrow-minded extremists,” according to previous reports. Police plan to monitor any protests outside the theater. Foukara is expected...

Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux. Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told...

General Henry Knox, a Revolutionary War hero and U.S. Secretary of War in the country’s early days, was no stranger to political controversy. But the museum established at Montpelier, his home in Thomaston, seems like an unlikely site for an ideological flap generated by the attention of a national right-wing media watchdog. The General Henry Knox Museum is a private non-profit organization. It holds an annual fundraising gala that includes a guest speaker, dinner and reception. This year’s event is scheduled for July 28 at the Strand Theatre in Rockland and will feature a talk by Abderrahim Foukara, the Washington...

The February 20th movement, a pro-reform group, had called for a boycott of the vote, denouncing the new constitution as a superficial gesture that would leave the king's power intact and stave off real change. "The numbers the government is using have nothing to do with reality," insisted Amal Albaghdadi, a Rabat native and organiser with the February 20th movement. "I have come out to say enough with poverty, discrimination, and lack of freedoms. We want real democracy." "We were never allowed to express our concerns about the constitution," said protester Lekbari Mohammed, Rabat native. "These are false results because...

Poor Congressman Anthony Weiner. As if it weren't tough enough making a living out of bashing Arabs and Palestinians to satisfy New York's pro-Israel voters. Now the self-deprecating references have taken a difficult, bizarre turn for the New York representative, after a lewd photo of a man clad only in underwear was sent from his Twitter account to a college student. Weiner refuses to acknowledge in any of the interviews that the photo is definitively not a picture of him. Weiner further alleges he was hacked and wants an investigation. Yet days into the fray and--here comes the real surprise...

Elites pooh-pooh the danger of the more draconian forms of Shariah law ever taking root in the United States and point to the small number of adherents of this code as evidence of its harmlessness to Americans. They can only make these assurances, though, by completely ignoring evidence that this body of legal beliefs is already taking hold in some surprising places, namely American courts and schools.. For example, The Center for Security Policy reported in an in-depth study— Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases— on “50 appellate court cases from 23 states...

Following are excerpts from an interview with recently resigned Al-Jazeera TV journalist Ghassan Bin Jiddu, which aired on Al-Dunya TV on May 19, 2011: Ghassan Bin Jiddu: You just mentioned Sheik Osama Bin Laden. Regardless of what we think about Sheik Osama Bin Laden, or about what Al-Qaeda did in the United States… I am among those who never concealed their objection to the attack against New York and Washington in the United States. I was not ashamed to express my opinion from the every first moment. But to kill Sheik Osama Bin Laden and treat him in this manner?!...

Obama is the first US president to address the joint houses of parliament [Reuters] Barack Obama, the US president, has addressed the British parliament, saying that Western influence remains strong in the world, despite emerging world powers such as China, India and Brazil. In a speech to both houses of parliament on Wednesday, Obama said that Western powers still had a responsibility to uphold "universal rights", but stressed that this work must be done through multilateral forums like the G20. "Even as more nations take on the responsibilities of global leadership," Obama said, "our alliance will remain indispensable to the...

Al Jazeera's Dorothy Parvaz, who went missing on arriving in Damascus to cover the Syrian protests, is returned to Qatar by Iran, where she had been held for most of the 19 days... The mysterious 19-day detention and release of a Seattle journalist in Syria and Iran has underscored the murky security ties that bind those staunch Middle East allies... Dorothy Parvaz, who holds American, Canadian and Iranian citizenship, arrived safely Wednesday in the Qatari capital of Doha on a flight from Iran... She reportedly told her fiance she was held for much of the period in solitary confinement in...

Al Jazeera may not be having much luck getting its English channel onto American televisions, but Washington, at least, continues to be smitten. At the opening night of the Al Jazeera U.S. Forum on Monday night, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney could be spotted milling among Al Jazeera top brass on the balcony of the Newseum while waiters passed non-alcoholic refreshments. Over dinner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. John McCain praised Al Jazeera’s role as a catalyst in the Arab Spring uprisings before a room of journalists ranging from New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to Ayman...

"We do not have an agreement with this service that would permit us to carry Al Jazeera English on our cable systems and Comcast is not currently in active talks to complete such an agreement," says David A. Jensen, Vice President for Content Acquisition at Comcast. His April 15 letter was in response to an Accuracy in Media supporter by the name of Jeffrey Smith, who had sent a letter to the cable company objecting to the possibility of al-Jazeera getting more carriage. Smith made the Comcast letter available to us for publication at this time. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News'...

Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism will bestow its highest honor to Al Jazeera English, the university announced Wednesday. The Columbia Journalism Award is given annually during the school's commencement to recognize an individual or organization for "singular journalism in the public interest," according to a press release. It will mark only the second time that the award is being given to an organization. "Al Jazeera English has performed a great service in bringing the English-speaking world in-depth coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East," said Dean Nicholas Lemann. "We salute its determination to get to the heart of...

After Osama: Stop feeding the beast Bin Laden's discovery in a wealthy suburb of Abbottabad raises questions over US military funding to Pakistan. Leila Hudson After years of former Pakistani military dictator General Musharraf assuring the world that bin Laden was either dead or in Afghanistan, he was found and dispatched by US special forces in the town of Abbottabad, a mere 30 miles - 50km - as the crow flies from the capital Islamabad. Abbottabad is a colonial era army "cantonment" or garrison town and home to the Pakistan Military Academy PMA Kakul, less than two miles from the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden made a propaganda recording shortly before his death and expect that tape to surface soon. It is unclear whether the tape is audio or video, but a U.S. official says that intelligence indicates it is already working its way through al-Qaida's media pipeline. The official said the timing was coincidental and there is no indication he knew U.S. forces were bearing down on him.

BEIRUT - An Al-Jazeera journalist has not been heard from since she entered Syria on Friday to report on the political turmoil there, the Arab satellite TV station said Monday. A regional official of the Committee to Protect Journalists said there was "strong evidence" to suggest the journalist, Dorothy Parvaz, had been detained on arrival at Damascus airport on a flight from Qatar. She has U.S., Iranian and Canadian citizenship, and formerly was a reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "We are deeply concerned for Dorothy's safety, security, and well-being," Al-Jazeera said in a statement. "We are requesting full...

Hillary Clinton loves it. It seems to love the Muslim Brotherhood. And now Barack Obama seems to be a fan of it, too. What is “it?” The Middle Eastern cable news channel Al Jazeera. In a lengthy article, Politico reveals that the once-demonized outlet during the Bush administration has become a favorite in the Obama White House. In fact, its programing is plastered all over Pennsylvania Avenue and Obama is singing its praises: Seven years after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it, Secretary of State...

Seven years after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised it as “real news” in her recent Senate testimony. Not only that, her staffers, as well as those of the CIA and the Obama White House, were attending the Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner as Al-Jazeera’s guests. “They are a really important media entity, and we have a really great relationship with them,” said Dana Shell Smith, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international media engagement, who speaks Arabic and has...

President Obama on Thursday hosted Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, otherwise known as the Boss of Al-Jazeera, for a meeting in the Oval Office. Obama called him “Your Highness” and “His Highness,” even though the Emir dropped his robes of royalty for a business suit. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani financially sponsors Al-Jazeera and its most famous personality, anti-American and anti-Semitic cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has just returned to Egypt from Qatar to supervise the transformation of that one-time U.S. ally into an Islamic state. “In addition to our efforts in Libya,” Obama said, “we have a...

... What the UN and their western running dogs will not do is accuse Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Libya, or Sudan of crimes against humanity. In fact, even as I write, the Left is busily trying to "spin" the half-hearted Goldstone recantation to their own advantage. They insist that Israel engaged in overkill, that it used disproportionate force, that it is "guilty" of something, of everything; mainly, it is guilty because it dares to exist and presumes it has the right to defend itself. ...

World Net Daily has comprehensive coverage of the Al Jazeera press conference: Al-Jazeera called 'security risk' for America Conference speakers warn expansion plans 'invitation to radicalize Muslims' WASHINGTON – The proposed expansion into American cable markets by Al-Jazeera, the Arab-language broadcaster headquartered in Doha, Qatar, could offer a serious security risk for America, according to speakers at a conference held here. The conference at the National Press Club, which included speaker Cliff Kincaid of America's Survival, called on Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., to hold hearings on the issue in his Homeland Security Committee. A panel that included Kincaid, blogger Pamela...

Every morning at 7am Ahmed Najib presses the numbers 514 on his TV remote control and Al-Jazeera's swirling golden, flame-shaped Arabic logo appears in the corner of the screen of his ancient Toshiba TV. The 24-hour news channel stays on all day. He and the customers who visit the clothes shop he runs just off Goldhawk Road, west London, could watch the BBC, Sky or ITN, but they prefer to get their news from a bit further away - the tiny Gulf state of Qatar. Men like Najib, who was born in Cairo but now lives in London, and Arab-speaking...

Al jiz conf Today I was the keynote speaker at a conference at the National Press Club to expose the covert expansion of Al Jazeera into the United States. Pamela Hall was there, and she'll have video and pics posted this weekend. Your taxpayer dollars at work. Al Jazeera is being broadcast on MHz Networks, a division of Commonwealth Public Broadcasting, which receives over three million in taxpayer dollars. Would we have subsidized Tokyo Rose or the Mufti Al Husseini's radio broadcasts during World War II? Well, that's exactly what we are doing now. Commonwealth Public Broadcasting is a "public...

Guess what news source Google pushed for tsunami coverage? Oh, Almighty Google Machine--I kid! We know you're not evil. You're the most benevolent algorithm ever. But every once in a while, Google (which owns YouTube) drops a little data point about how it sees the world Early this morning, while bopping around YouTube (don't ask) I noticed something different--Google had popped a little "breaking news" alert at the top of the YouTube page, telling viewers about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan

The powers that be at Al Jazeera have offered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a job. Ever since she gave them a free commercial on the floor of the Senate, they began development of a signing package for her talents at the "real-news-even-if-you-don't-agree" station. Sources familiar with the package have been able to disclose the conditions of her employment. First of all, the former First Lady will have to cover her face. She may not agree with that, but that's really one of the most important things. Secondly, she will be the travelling road reporter that reports exclusively on honor...

The nation’s premier journalism school points to the Al-Jazeera TV network as a model for modern-day reporters. Meanwhile, America’s oldest media watchdog group is showing what makes Al-Jazeera run. “Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite network, showed global media how to cover a people’s uprising—by getting right into the thick of things and keeping the cameras running, both witnessing and propelling events,” an editorial in the March/April Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) read. The CJR is published by the Columbia University Journalism school. Apparently, Al-Jazeera’s unblinking cameras still managed to miss the sexual assault of a CBS reporter by demonstrators in the...

Here's an interview with UN Watch's Hillel Neuer on al-Jazeera English slamming Libya and the United Nations' treatment of Libya.

An analysis of the propaganda campaign to get Al-Jazeera carried by more cable and satellite systems reveals an interesting fact. The terrorist TV channel is already available through something called MHz Networks. And it turns out that the MHz Networks is supported by the American taxpayers at the federal and state levels. MHz Networks is a division of Commonwealth Public Broadcasting and receives over $2 million a year from federal and state governments. In this case, because Commonwealth is based in Virginia, the culprit is the state of Virginia. However, Governor Robert F. McDonnell has proposed eliminating state funding of...

So, Hillary Clinton thinks Al Jazeera is the only "real" news network? Well, we took a look at the top stories at Al Jazeera on 3/4/11, and here is what we found: * Israel, Where are you? * Till September: The PA’s meaningless deadlines * Israeli army will cash in on Egyptian revolution * Game over brother Muammar * From the gulf to the ocean’: The ME is changing So far, in this "top news" section, the game appears to be stacked against...wait for it..Israel! Who would have guessed? In the following section, we looked at what was even slightly...

Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: Al Jazeera is 'Real News', U.S. Losing 'Information War' March 02, 2011 5:36 PM ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear today that she is worried the United States is losing what she calls the “information war” abroad. China and Russia, she says, have started English-language networks that push their message overseas and even the Taliban controls the airwaves in Afghanistan. And in the Arab world? Al Jazeera is king, and Clinton says she can see why. “Al Jazeera has been the leader in that are literally changing people’s...

Hillary Clinton was defending her department budget in front of the U.S. Foreign Policy Priorities committee this morning on C-Span. She says a major reason the State Department needs money is because "we are in an information war and we are losing that war." Clinton said private media is not good enough to handle the job: "Our private media cannot fill that gap. Our private media, particularly cultural programming often works at counter purposes to what we truly are as Americans. I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all...

. . .Al Antsey of the Al-Jazeera network came to the Comcast building on Tuesday [Feb 22] looking for a major U.S. platform for the 24-hour, Qatar-based news channel that at one time was viewed as just a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden. It's time, he told officials with the nation's largest cable operator, to cast aside misperceptions of the Arabic news station as tainted with anti-American bias, and join the rest of the world. . . The network has viewership in three U.S. markets: Washington; Burlington, Vt.; and Toledo, Ohio. . .

Libyana, Libya's largest cell phone provider, sent out a mass text message to all of its subscribers in the last hour. The message: a local cleric had issued a fatwa against watching Al Jazeera. This had been reported by independent Libyan bloggers. Their posts are below. From LibyanAffairs: From the Truth Network: In Arabic it warns that there is an "advisory" against watching Al Jazeera. And from flyingbirdies: Update: The New York Times is now confirming the story.

Aircraft, cargo ships and fishing boats are moving towards Libya to evacuate Chinese nationals living in the North African country. Tunisian, Turkish and other workers are fleeing the country as well. Tripoli – China will send a jet, ships and fishing vessels from nearby waters to evacuate some 33,000 Chinese nationals working in violence-torn Libya. The government has set up an emergency unit headed by Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang to coordinate the repatriation of mainlanders, as well as people from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The State Council (cabinet) “decided to immediately deploy...

The Rape of a Reporter by Ari Bussel In the News: LARA LOGAN’S ASSAULT DETAILED IN LONDON TIMES : What happened to CBS News’ Lara Logan in Tahrir Square? She suffered a “brutal and sustained sexual assault,” according to the network, and over the weekend the Times of London offered the first details on exactly what she went through: A source tells the paper Logan was stripped of her clothing by a crowd of 200 men, punched, slapped, and then pinched in a way that left red marks all over her body. She was also whipped with flagpoles and taunted...

The top oil exporter and U.S. ally is an absolute monarchy that does not tolerate any form of public dissent, does not have an elected parliament or any political parties. Saudi Islamists and opposition activists this month launched a political party called the "Islamic Umma" in a rare challenge to authority inspired by unrest triggering regime change in Tunisia and Egypt... New York-based Human Rights Watch demanded the release of the activists, some of whom have been campaigning for several years for greater political freedom in Saudi Arabia.

AL Jazeera is filled with anti-American propaganda. It is also awash in anti-Semitism. The material broadcast stokes terror and violence. Why would the person who Barack Obama appointed to be the Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, advocate American cable companies carry the channel-a channel that cannot help but inflame tensions and anger and one that is not known for unbiased accuracy.From an op-ed by Kayyem in the Boston Globe: FOR THE past few weeks, a parallel plot line to the revolutions in the Arab world has been playing out in the media. With rare...

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told US general David Petraeus in June 2009 that Syria and Qatar sabotaged the Shalit prisoner swap deal, Norwegian media reported Wednesday. According to the report, which is based on a WikiLeaks document, Mubarak claimed that Syria and Qatar offered Hamas $50 million to keep soldier Gilad Shalit in captivity in order to impede a prisoner swap deal with Israel brokered by Egypt. The US general quoted Mubarak in a cable sent to Washington... According to the Norwegian report, which was quoted in Al Jazeera and Palestinian media, WikiLeaks papers provide additional details regarding Egypt's involvement...

Originally posted Sept. 29, 2003; reposted June 18, 2004 Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not have had details of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, he "gave assistance for whatever al-Qaeda came up with." That assistance, confirmed independently, came in a variety of...

(CBS/AP) PARIS - Al-Jazeera's offices in Cairo were stormed and torched and its Website hacked Friday, says the Pan-Arab broadcaster, while the top U.N. human rights official complained that media covering Egyptian pro-democracy protests are being arrested "in a blatant attempt to stifle news." Qatar-based Al-Jazeera - widely watched in the Middle East - portrayed the attack on its office as an attempt by Egypt's regime or its supporters to hinder its coverage of the uprising in Egypt. Al-Jazeera said the office was burned along with the equipment inside it.