Free Republic

Twenty journalists, including four foreigners, have gone on trial in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. They face charges including aiding a terrorist organisation - as the Muslim Brotherhood was designated in December - and endangering national security. Eight defendants are in custody, among them al-Jazeera's Egyptian-Canadian bureau chief Mohamed Adel Fahmy and Australian correspondent Peter Greste.

An Australian journalist, who is being held in an Egyptian jail with two colleagues, says their detention is an “attack on freedom of speech”. “We have not been formally charged, much less convicted of any crime,” Peter Greste wrote in a letter. The Al-Jazeera journalists were arrested on 30 December in Cairo for allegedly holding illegal meetings with the banned Muslim Brotherhood. …

Yes, they really said that. Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Tom Gross).

By shifting the spectrum of debate, here's how America's rightward march has been normalized throughout history. From Nixon to Reagan to Gingrich to Bush to Paul Ryan and Chris Christie today, leaders who’ve shifted America to the right have been aided by moderating misrepresentations. In the case of Reagan, it was not just the man, but conservatism itself that received the flattering reinterpretation. That was a difference that mattered; it goes to the heart of why Reagan is the American right’s touchstone. But the more general process of misrepresenting and reinterpreting increasingly radical ideological figures as if they were normal,...

Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian secret police have arrested an award-winning Australian journalist and an Egyptian reporter for the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channel suspected of illegally broadcasting news harming "domestic security," the interior ministry said. The arrests come amid a widening crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, which the military-installed government declared a "terrorist organisation" last week. Al-Jazeera confirmed the arrests, and said police also detained a producer and a cameraman. Officers of the National Security service raided the broadcaster's makeshift bureau at a Cairo hotel on Sunday, arresting two of the journalists and confiscating their equipment, said...

As if Al Gore doesn’t already have enough money after selling his failed CURRENT TV channel to the dupes at Al Jazeera for a cool half billion dollars, only to have the viewer numbers crash down so low that Nielsen won’t even rate them anymore, we have this shameless pitch from him in my inbox this morning.

The number of viewers tuning into Al Jazeera America is on par with public access programing, drawing an average audience of 13,000 a day despite its availability to millions of American cable subscribers. That's according to the New York Post, which notes the U.S. ratings of the Middle Eastern-based news agency are so low, Nielsen doesn't consider it important enough to report. Al Jazeera America purchased the channel space from Al Gore after the former vice president's Current TV project failed. Al Jazeera pulls in just half the ratings of Gore's venture, although it is available to 44 million American...

<p>After just two months on the air, Al Jazeera America is losing ground in the US.</p> <p>The US offshoot of the Mideast news outfit managed fewer than half of the viewers who tuned in to its predecessor, Al Gore’s Current TV.</p>

From one Nobel Peace Prize winner to another, this whole Keystone XL thing is an “atrocity.” Al Gore has been calling on Barack Obama to step up the fight against climate change and Keystone, most recently during an interview with The Guardian: The former vice-president said in an interview on Friday that he hoped Obama would follow the example of British Columbia, which last week rejected a similar pipeline project, and shut down the Keystone XL. “I certainly hope that he will veto that now that the Canadians have publicly concluded that it is not safe to take a pipeline...

A fiery Al Gore urged President Barack Obama on Thursday to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline, calling the controversial project an “atrocity.” “This should be vetoed. It is an atrocity. It is a threat to our future,” the former vice president said during a Center for American Progress 10th anniversary event in Washington. Gore criticized the Canadian oil sands that the pipeline would carry, arguing that approval of the project would be akin to a desperate drug addict looking for fresh veins. “Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and legs give out,” said...

Al Jazeera gets exclusive access to Boko Haram terrorists and then complain that self-proclaimed members of this group should either be charged or released by the Nigerian government. For those who don’t know, Boko Haram is a particularly barbaric Jihadist organization. They have made a practice of targeting Christian worshippers on Christian Holy days, such as Easter Sunday and Christmas. We have covered these horrible atrocities from time to time on TTB… http://terrortrendsbulletin.com/2012/04/08/boko-haram-islamikaze-car-bomb-kills-38-christians-outside-easter-service-in-kaduna-nigeria/ Boko Haram has sometimes been described as an Al Qaeda affiliate, but it is actually an independent organization. It may have received forms of support from Al...

**SNIP** “What specific things are you doing in life to lower your personal carbon footprint? And what is the biggest one specific thing I as an individual can do to reduce mine?” Gore responded by saying, “I use only carbon-free electricity. Have 33 solar panels on my roof, seven deep geothermal wells under my driveway, LED lights and highest-grade energy-saving windows, max insulation, hybrid plug-in car, etc. No fountains, btw. What you can do? Make smart choices for low-carbon options in the marketplace, make sure you divest from carbon-intensive stocks; be a smart and active citizen! Let politicians know the...

The low-rated Current TV is off Bright House Networks after the announcement that the channel was being sold to Al Jazeera. “Our agreement with Current TV has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service,” Bright House spokesman Donald Forbes said Friday. He added that the service ended Wednesday and that Bright House has not yet replaced Current TV on Channel 156.

For a man with a carbon footprint the size of a dwarf planet, Al Gore takes the hypocrite's cake for his ignorant statement that there is "no such thing as ethical oil." He was in Canada this week to sell his new book, of course, so what better way to get media attention than to insult both the host country and one of its major resources? If you want to know the name of his book, look it up. We're not going to shill for him, even if he is a former vice president of the United States as well...

But he was most animated, his voice pitching higher and lower and the volume steadily increasing, when he spoke of global warming. "This is for real. It is not made up. The scientists are not in a conspiracy to lie to us," Gore nearly shouted. "The generation of people alive today will be held accountable," he said. "Our children and grandchildren ... if they exist in a world that has been devastated by these consequences that have been predicted and are beginning to unfold -- they would be well justified in asking of us: 'What in the hell were you...

A cable television network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore is facing at least two lawsuits challenging its use of the name Current TV. A Maryland company is suing in federal court in Cincinnati claiming trademark infringement. Minnesota Public Radio has made a similar complaint in a Minneapolis court. "This is a straight-forward case of trademark infringement," according to briefs filed last month in U.S. District Court by Current Communications Group of Germantown, Md., a provider of broadband Internet services that relies on a Cincinnati company to help distribute its service. Current Communications contends that it had registered several...

Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover Not long ago, he was the butt of jokes--lockbox, earth tones, a postelection beard. Then he dusted off an old slide show and jumped with both feet into the private sector. The untold story of how an epic loser engineered what may be the greatest brand makeover of our time. From: Issue 117 | July 2007 | Page 70 | By: Ellen McGirt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A l Gore is a funny guy. And, for his $175,000 speaking fee, he tells this story: after leaving the White House and heading back to Tennessee sans motorcade--"in a rented...

Someone finally has done all the math on the recent sale of Al Gore's Current TV to the Arabic language channel Al-Jazeera for $500 million. Jobs were lost, buzz created, employees angered, but the former vice president had little to say about it. He did walk away with a reported $100 million — a tidy sum for a man who had less that $2 million in assets when he ran for president more than a dozen years ago, says Forbes magazine. "Taking into account taxes to be paid on the deal, possible earlier debt and the fact that Gore's representatives...

With the sale of Current TV, the former vice president's fortune is pegged at more than $300 million. A lot has changed for former Vice President Al Gore, who left the White House with a reported $1.9 million net worth. With an estimated $100 million gross profit from the sale of his Current TV to pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, Gore is now worth more than $300 million, according to an estimate from Forbes.com. That puts his net worth well ahead of that of former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has an estimated fortune of $230 million and was often mocked for...

Al Gore, the man who first introduced the idea of blaming “the wealthiest one percent” for all of America’s ills, is continuing to embarrass himself in the sale of his low-rated Current TV channel to the Al Jazeera. First, we learned that Current’s management believed that the favorite news channel of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists is closer to its own viewpoints than conservative media mogul Glenn Beck; now comes news that the former Democratic presidential candidate was insistent that the sale to the Qatari channel be completed before December 31. That date was important to Gore because he was trying to...