My note: I read the following report:
“Al Jazeera’s English and Arabic websites are reported to have been blocked in Ethiopia”
…and thought that it’s a wonderful thing! They should also do the same thing with the redundant news source of Al Jazeera TV – a biased Islamic propaganda machine, which pushes arab viewpoint, instead of reporting news or airing programs in an objective way. Al Jazeera is blocked even in the United States. Every Ethiopian should remove it from his/her channel listings, and refrain from everything “Al”, like in Al-Jazeera, Al-Gore, Al-Thani, Al-Saud etc. The prefix “Al” in the Ethiopic grammer, like in “Mewuded” “Al’mewuded” is negation, and it always means trouble.
It’s a shame that the despotic nation of Qatar – which just sentenced its own Poets to Life in Prison for a Verse – is active in promoting its own version of freedom and justice across Africa.
The following articles perfectly give a description of one of the most dangerous medias of our time. Ethiopians should be warned to not tune in to this misleading media organization which was created with the help of some greedy western media makers.
The collapse of Al-Jazeera
The fact that the channel is owned and tightly controlled by the undemocratic and authoritarian Qatari royal family, that jails independent journalists who criticize the regime at home, seems to have gone unnoticed and ignored by many. But since the start of the Arab Spring, that is slowly starting to change.
According to an article that appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel, many leading journalists and TV anchors have started to leave the channel in recent months. According to one of those that has recently left, the German based Aktham Sulimen, “Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change…a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster.”
According to another Beirut based correspondent, “Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports – not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar……In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.”
In truth, Al-Jazeera was never an independent media outlet and always had a political bias.
I can remember watching its Arabic language coverage of the revolution in Egypt and noticing that it dedicated two hours to a rambling speech by Muslim Brotherhood-allied cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who also happens to be based in Qatar. The speech didn’t even attract a large crowd in Egypt and was largely irrelevant to what was happening on the streets. It was merely propaganda for the Muslim Brotherhood, which did not lead the revolution but is close to the Qatari royal family.
Al-Jazeera’s “Alternative Viewpoint” in Qatar’s Paradise
Al-Jazeera is not, however, a communications medium in the Western sense; it is a psychological warfare medium. Its cameras are always turned outward; they never criticize Qatar’s tyrannical, dictatorial, corrupt, plutocratic leaders or their exploitation of foreign workers, who have neither the status nor rights of Qatari nationals. Al-Jazeera’s ongoing propaganda campaign against the Arab states in the Middle East is a move chosen by the rulers of Qatar to deflect Arab, Western and effervescent local attention from what is happening in the corrupt Al-Thani family’s dark, closed emirate of wealth.
Although it promises aid to financially needy Islamic countries, it sends just the occasional pittance when t feels a need to bolster its popularity. Meanwhile huge unreported sums go to support Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Jabhat Alnusra Al Islamiya in Syria. The rest of country’s enormous oil revenues are channeled into the coffers of the rulers and their close associates, and are used to pay for their entertainment or for building enormous towers. The rest of the population — most of which are foreign workers whose labor they exploit and who have no civil or social rights — is not invited to join the party.
Although Al-Jazeera incites Muslim masses around the world to revolt against “repressive regimes,” while calling for “democracy,” “pluralism,” and the ousting of totalitarian rulers, Qatar itself does not hold elections, has no political parties, has no democratic institutions, and its citizens have no political or social rights. What Qatar does have, with the help of Sharia [Islamic religious law], is a strong, family-run system of enforcing internal security and suppressing opposition. Al-Jazeera is the well-oiled and well-funded machine of a family employing armed mercenaries who call themselves “media personnel”: Propaganda warriors who use cameras and microphones as weapons. Qatar therefore has every reason to hide what happens within its borders and look for defects in other places.
Al-Jazeera takes two editorial routes: its English-language programs present a moderate, cultured version of its propaganda, different from what is broadcast by its Arabic-language programs. Nonetheless, its purpose seems to be to spread Islam and undermine secularism.
Al-Jazeera’s reporting is unbalanced in that it gives favorable coverage to Islamic regimes and movements it wants to strengthen, and slanders those it wants to weaken. Its sights are set on changing regimes. Al-Jazeera effectively created the Arab Spring by endlessly rebroadcasting footage of the fruit-seller in Tunisia who set himself on fire to protest his government. Every time there was a small demonstration, Al-Jazeera would cover it and air it time and again until the people of Tunisia were sufficiently whipped up.
Al-Jazeera’s reporting is also unbalanced when it is turns to the religiously-motivated activities of Islamist groups in other countries, where the Arab Spring was turned into an Islamist Winter, and where the good intentions of democratically-minded young Muslims were exploited and perverted as, after the revolutions, Islamists seized power. Al-Jazeera’s bias is also evident in its support for the dictatorship of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt at the expense of the country’s moderate, secular, democracy-seeking opposition, on whose back the Islamization of the country is taking place.
As a TV channel, Al-Jazeera does not operate under accepted Western norms. It is a fundamentalist terrorist communications base operating under Qatari political cover, with a pretense of pluralism. While in the other Arab countries, to reach the Islamic paradise, people need to kill Jews and be killed in wars, dying as shaheeds [martyrs] in the battles of Islam, according to Al-Jazeera only Qatar is already a genuine paradise on earth. Everything there is perfect, so there is no need to report the news.
When America’s enemies invade America’s media
It would be interesting to get an update on enemy penetration of today’s mainstream media. Such a review won’t happen (at least in public) because HUAC/HISC and its Senate counterpart the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISC) are long gone, thanks to pressure from Communists, fellow-travelers, and embarrassed liberals.
There are government entities today that are supposed to be looking out for us with regard to chinks in our internal security armor. Their ability to do so is questionable at best.
But now, with the Al gore/Al-Jazeera deal, our current enemies have gone way beyond the sneak-around, undercover methodology utilized by Stalin’s secret agents. Here we have in broad daylight an enemy takeover of a telecommunications medium with the capability of reaching millions of homes right here in the USA.
As Cliff Kincaid said at his February 5 news conference, Al-Jazeera is not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment because it is global terrorist entity – a front for Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
A foreign entity desiring to own telecommunications operations in the U.S. is supposed to go through a vetting process by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). None of that has taken place, so the Al-Jazeera takeover is a violation of the law right there.
The legal process is known as CFIUS – the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an inter-agency panel of the U.S. Government, chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury and including members from 16 departments and agencies. No legally-required application by Al-Jazeera has been made to this body.
Under the transfer arrangement, the name of the channel under its new ownership is to be Al-Jazeera America. That, in and of itself, is labeled by Kincaid as “a complete and utter fraud,” especially given that Al-Jazeera is fronting for people whose fondest wish is “Death to America.”
Addis Ethiopia Weblog 