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Created: 8:54pm on 12-08-2005
Modified: 3:55pm on 07-26-2007 | |
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Entry #441353, added on 07-17-06 @ 10:44 pm EDT.
[Entry Access Restriction] None.
Title:
Al-Jazeera stokes the fires
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Today I read an alarming report from Accuracy in Media. Al-Jazeera International is constructing a Washington, D.C. bureau on K Street in the nation's capital. Former ABC Nightline anchor Ted Koppel interviewed for a job there but said he would have nothing to do with it. I have been writing about bias in the media, and I have heard nothing good of Al-Jazeera which was labeled the terrorist channel because of its habit of airing al-Qaeda videos. One of its correspondents was sentenced to seven years in prison for being an agent of al Qaeda and another is in prison at Guantanamo Bay. Its first managing director was exposed as an agent of the Saddam Hussein regime and appears in a captured video singing the praises of Uday Hussein. In the same way that Al-Jazeera has made things difficult for soldiers in Iraq it is stirring up the terrorist threat against Israel.
The article Al-Jazeera Stokes Fires in the Middle East by Cliff Kincaid states that:
Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau has been closed since August 2004 because of its sympathetic coverage of terrorist acts. The channel, however, is operating in the Kurdish-ruled area of the north and still broadcasts into Iraq. Indeed, it was reported last week that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, during a visit to Kurdistan, refused to entertain questions from the Al-Jazeera correspondent, saying, "I told him that I will not reply because we have position against Al-Jazeera." Al-Maliki added, "I blame my brothers in Kurdistan to allow Al-Jazeera to work although it is banned from that because it incites sectarianism day and night in Iraqi circles." This statement reflects recognition that Al-Jazeera, like al Qaeda, has been trying to spark a civil war in Iraq.
In the war-torn Middle East Al-Jazeera has been doing whatever it can to thwart a reasonable approach to a peaceful settlement. Despite unilateral Israeli concessions, Al-Jazeera has provided what sympathetic observers call "intensive coverage" of the Palestinian cause. Its coverage has encouraged violence against Israel, and its "reporters" refer to Palestinian suicide bombers as "martyrs." Honest Reporting, a media watchdog group, has documented how Al-Jazeera has run inflammatory articles on its website referring to President Bush as giving the government of Israel a "license to kill" and suicide bombers as "self-sacrifice operations."
Al-Jazeera has played a role in the rise of Hamas and its Palestinian election victory. From the start, the network has been accused of undermining Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in order to build up Hamas. Arafat even closed down the Al-Jazeera bureau in Ramallah after it aired an "unflattering image" of him. Fatah supporters in May burned three cars belonging to Al-Jazeera because the channel did not cover an anti-Hamas demonstration in the city.
As part of its pro-Hamas bias, Al-Jazeera broadcast a conference in Yemen where a supporter of al Qaeda praised Palestinian suicide bombers and called on the crowd to support Hamas. In May Al-Jazeera aired a Hamas fundraising event in Gaza, where a jacket worn by the "martyred" former Hamas Chief Sheikh Salah Shehada was auctioned off. Shehada was responsible for hundreds of attacks on Israeli citizens and security forces. He was killed by Israel in 2002.
Al-Jazeera also promotes ludicrous conspiracy theories that Muslim terrorists were not really behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Al-Jazeera recently ran an article about a Los Angeles conference that viewed the 9/11 terrorist attacks as "an orchestrated U.S. attempt to incite world war." One of the participants was identified as Webster Tarpley, who wrote a book, 911 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. As the title implies, Tarpley insists that the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon were an example of "state-sponsored, false-flag terrorism," undertaken by a faction of the U.S. Government in order to "start the war of civilizations." Tarpley is a long-time associate of "anti-Zionist" and former Marxist activist Lyndon LaRouche, who himself has appeared on Al-Jazeera.
The mention of 9/11 touches an emotional spot in me as it does so many around the world. Al-Jazeera knows that the report is a bunch of bunk because its own reporter Yosri Fouda interviewed the al-Qaeda architects of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and co-authored a book about it entitled Masterminds of Terror.
According to my understanding Al-Jazeera’s often biased reports incite people to violence which is why I can’t understand how they can be allowed to expand to the US and build offices in the nation’s capital.
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© Copyright 2006 J.P. Farris (UN: jpfarris9 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
J.P. Farris has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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