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Israeli's bid to buy Al-Jazeera from Qatar Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:16:21 GMT An Israeli media tycoon has offered to buy the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera satellite television network from the government of Qatar. Haim Saban, has submitted an offer to the Qatari government in a bid to purchase half of the Doha -based Al-Jazeera satellite network. The Egyptian newspaper al-Mesryoon reported Wednesday that the Israeli billionaire is currently engaged in negotiations with Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, over the partial purchase of the media outlet. The talks are said to be conducted through an Egyptian mediator. The account comes...

Reporters from the controversial Arab TV channel Al Jazeera - infamous for broadcasting video messages from Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - are to be allowed to report for the first time alongside UK troops from the frontline in Afghanistan. Until now, so-called 'embeds' in Helmand Province, where most UK troops are fighting, have been restricted to British media outlets such as the BBC, ITV and Sky, plus US TV stations. But the Ministry of Defence confirmed last night that Al Jazeera - dubbed 'terror television' for broadcasting hostage executions and the deaths of British and US soldiers -...

Egyptian-born Jewish businessman Haim Saban is negotiating with Qatar's emir the purchase of 50 percent of the Al Jazeera television network, the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesryoon reported earlier this week. Saban was first reported to be negotiating the purchase of half the Doha -based network in 2004, after visiting the emirate with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. The media mogul, estimated to be worth more than $3 billion, brought the Power Rangers franchise to the Arab world and made a fortune out of developing and selling the Fox Family cable network together with News Corp. In Israel, Saban owns a...

I always miss the good memos from the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy Headquarters, and this was just one of them. According to the Religion of Peace, apparently Jews are the world's experts in sex. So says Muslim Scholar Ibrahim Al-Khouli. When we last saw Mr. Al-Khouli he was looking silly in a debate with Wafa Sultan. Recently, Ibrahim participated in a debate about sex education on Al-Jazeera TV. There he came up with some very unusual theories about Sex Education such as "Sex Was Given Moral Values and an Existential Role in the Life of Mankind Only In Islam" and "Everything...

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "That's the way Nick George, a senior at Pomona College, in California, sees what happened to him at the Philadelphia airport two Saturdays ago. George, of Wyncote, Montgomery County, was about to catch a Southwest flight back to school when stereo speakers in his backpack caught the eye of screeners at the metal detector. When they looked though his bag, George said, they found his Arabic/English flash cards, and escorted him to a side screening area. He figures it didn't help that his passport had stamps from Jordan, where he'd studied a semester, and Egypt and...

An al-Jazeera reporter who was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay plans to launch a joint legal action with other detainees against former US president George Bush and other administration officials, for the illegal detention and torture he and others suffered at the hands of US authorities. The case will be initiated by the Guantánamo Justice Centre, a new organisation open to former prisoners at the US base, which will set up its international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month. ... Al-Haj, who is back at work for the Arabic satellite channel in Qatar, is in frequent contact with Guantánamo detainees,...

The Palestinian Authority has closed down the West Bank offices of Arabic satellite news channel al-Jazeera. The self-rule body said al-Jazeera promoted a negative view of its work and that the coverage is biased. It comes a day after a guest on the station accused Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas of collaborating with Israel to have Yasser Arafat killed. The channel - based in Doha - said it was "stunned" by the Palestinian Authority's decision. But the BBC's Arab Affairs Analyst, Magdi Abdlehadi, says the controversy surrounding al-Jazeera's broadcast reveals more about the crisis within Mr Abbas's group than about the...

Apparently, YouTube doesn't think that a conservative journalist has anything to say to help all you budding citizen journalists out there. A glance at the denizens of the Old Media offered up as journalism experts on the Internet video giant will show a long list of well known lefties with not a single center or center right professional in the mix. On April 30, YouTube set up a channel dedicated to a sort of how-to instruction manual or an online media 101 class that folks interested in becoming citizen journalists can watch to help them learn some of the tricks...

Al Jazeera Coming Attractions by: Brittany Fortier and Anthony Kang, June 30, 2009 Al Jazeera English is preparing for its July 2010 major-market American debut. The channel has previously experienced static in trying to penetrate the North American market, but plans are currently under way to prime this new audience. Recently, Washington D.C. correspondent Shahnaz Pakravan stated that October 7th, 2001 was the beginning of an “unfortunate era” of Al Jazeera when they were the first network to broadcast Osama bin Laden's initial message after the 9/11 attacks. Most Americans are not familiar with Al Jazeera’s brand of news coverage,...

Middle East news giant Al Jazeera has gained its first big foothold in the U.S. TV market. Now it has to overcome perceptions of bias. At the headquarters of the Al Jazeera news network in Doha, Qatar, staffers were getting ready for the big news event of the day: Barack Obama's speech in Cairo. "Watch, he's about to announce he's converted to Islam," joked one of them. More Arabs watched Obama's speech on Al Jazeera (the name means "the island") than on any other news network. The Arabic language channel boasts 53 million viewers--CNN has 70 million in the U.S.--while...

Note: Video included. SNIPPET: "In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Mustafa Abul-Yazeed, al-Qaeda's third in command, gives a rare insight into the group's campaign. He even said al-Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons against the US should his group get hold of them."

Al Qaeda says would use Pakistani nuclear weapons 21 Jun 2009 21:01:19 GMT Source: Reuters By Inal Ersan DUBAI, June 21 (Reuters) - If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday. Pakistan has been battling al Qaeda's Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands. "God willing, the...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Blog Details Syrian Journalists To Train At Al-Jazeera Qatari Culture Minister Hamad ibn Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Kuwari has responded to a request by Syrian Information Minister Muhsen Bilal to have Syrian journalists train at the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV. At a June 17 meeting between the two in Damascus, Bilal said that his country was interested in utilizing the experience of the Al-Jazeera training center. Source: Teshreen, Syria, June 18, 2009 Posted at: 2009-06-19

Al Jazeera English which has struggled to gain a foothold in the U.S. will be hosting what is likely to be a very one sided panel on the media next week at the Newseum. From Fishbowl DC Just days before Al Jazeera English makes its debut on the U.S. TV airwaves, the network will hold a panel discussion to investigate the media's role in covering the United States from home and abroad, and the challenges faced by international news networks.

SNIPPET: "Qais Azimy and Hamedullah Shah, who work for the station's English and Arabic services, have been held by Afghan authorities since Sunday, the station said in a statement."

In a speech during celebrations of his country's reunification, Yemen's President called for a national dialogue between the north and the south. Deadly clashes errupted in the port city of Aden, highlighting the explosive mood in the South...

Al Jazeera, the most viewed satellite channel in the Arab world, has become a weapon in the hands of the ambitious Emir of Qatar who may be driven by the Muslim Brothers and who is threatening the stability of the Middle East. With the Muslim Brothers increasingly aligned in recent years with Iran, by repeatedly attacking the Sunni Arab regimes and inciting against them, Al Jazeera is serving as an important instrument for Tehran and its effort to undermine their internal stability.

SNIPPET: "Hezbollah-controlled Al-Manar television reported that the suspects' job was to collect information on potential targets such as the group's installations and the homes of its leaders. The suspects are among 17 people allegedly belonging to six espionage cells who have been arrested in Lebanon in the past two months on suspicion of transmitting intelligence information to Israel...." SNIPPET: "Israel has expressed reservations about American aid to the Lebanese army and security services, saying those organizations will ultimately be unable to contend with Hezbollah and that any aid is liable to serve Hezbollah's interests."

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2009 – A report broadcast by the Arab news network Al Jazeera about U.S. servicemembers proselytizing in Afghanistan is just plain wrong, Pentagon officials said today. The Al Jazeera story showed an evangelical religious service on Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and a discussion about distributing Bibles that had been translated into Dari and Pashtu – the two major languages of Afghanistan. “American servicemembers are allowed to hold religious services,” a Defense Department official speaking on background said. “The clip shows one of those services with an American chaplain leading a religious service for American servicemembers. In it,...

Janis Karpinski, the former commander of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison who was demoted in the wake of the revelations of abuse there, tells Al Jazeera about her reaction to a report that says senior Bush administration officials were involved in approving torture. Report also says Cheney and Rumsfeld were behing the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. Scott Horton, a human rights lawyer and writer on national security issues based in New York, tells Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi a new senate report links the White House to the abusive techniques used in US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was given permission to telephone a relative instead called the al Jazeera television network and gave the channel its first interview from inside the prison. The young detainee, from Chad, said he was being beaten and abused at the US detention camp. Transcripts of the recorded interview with Guantanamo captive Mohammad el Gharani were posted on the Qatar-based television network's English-language website on Tuesday. ....He told al Jazeera he had been beaten with batons and teargassed by a group of six soldiers wearing protective gear and helmets after refusing to leave his cell. "This treatment...

Al Jazeera television is known for airing Islamic extremist videos and even hosted an on-air birthday celebration for convicted Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar who murdered four Israelis in 1979. "It is a professional institution but it is a militant institution that wants to convey an ideological Jihadi message," said Walid Phares, a terrorism analyst for FOX News. Critics charge that the Jihadist message now is making its way to public broadcasting in America.

Obama wins praise from many Muslims But some remain skeptical, say they're awaiting concrete action CAIRO - The Middle East is finding, to its amazement, that it may actually like America's new leader. Barack Obama has impressed many Arabs and Muslims with promises to open a new page after years of distrust during his first presidential venture to the Islamic world this week. It's a startling change for a region where they chucked shoes at his predecessor George W. Bush and still want to burn Bush in effigy even after he's out of office. But Obama's charm has hiked expectations...

April 6, 2009 Al-Jazeera reports that Obama said he was a Muslim This is what is going out in the Islamic world. I have no idea if Al-Jazeera did this deliberately or not, although it's hard to imagine something like this would have slipped by their editors -- even though it is buried many paragraphs down in their account. "Obama: 'US not at war with Islam,'" from Al Jazeera, April 6 (thanks to all who sent this in): [...] Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Istanbul, said: "This was the address we had all been waiting for, it hit all...

Via TheObamaFile, Al Jazeera originally reported the actual phrase when the President was speaking to the Turkish parliament. The original story, now scrubbed, can be seen here (as stored on TheObamaFile’s site) with the following original verbiage: Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught, reporting from Istanbul, said: “This was the address we had all been waiting for, it hit all the right notes. “He talked about the contribution of the Islamic faith in the life of American Muslims and then he personalised that message by saying ‘I know because I am one of them‘. It was a message that reached out to...

APRIL 06, 2009 Aljazeera Reports That Obama Is Muslim The Arab press was excited about Barack Obama's speech in Turkey today. Aljazeera even called him a Muslim. The Aljazeera website reported today that Barack Obama is Muslim. They included this in their report on Obama's talk to the Turkish Parliament: Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Istanbul, said: "This was the address we had all been waiting for, it hit all the right notes. "He talked about the contribution of the Islamic faith in the life of American Muslims and then he personalised that message by saying 'I know because...

Turkish security services have arrested a Syrian man who was planning to assassinate US President Barack Obama during his current trip to Turkey, the Saudi daily Al Watan reported Monday. According to the report, the man, who was arrested on Friday, was carrying a press card identifying him as an employee of Al Jazeera. He reportedly confessed to his intention to stab Obama with a knife and said that he was aided by three accomplices. The report stated that Turkish authorities were still unsure as to whether the press card was a fake or whether it had actually been issued...

EXCERPT: This story provides a perfect demonstration of the corruption of the American media. What else can it be called when Al-Jazeera’s coverage of tinhorn dictators is more honest than the coverage provided by Associated Press. Just look at the difference in how the two services each covered the recent…uh…election in North Korea:....

Al-Jazeera aired a public flogging in Somalia last weekend. While it wasn't anywhere near as violent as I had expected, it still maxed out my weird scale. I guess this is the Al-Jazeera version of reality TV. These two boys had violated sharia law by committing "abominable acts."

Normally I give press interviews to just about anybody who asks - even Pravda and MSNBC. But when a pesky little guy from Al Jazeera kept trying to get me to talk to him, I drew the line. This week a producer from Osama bin Laden's favorite propaganda outlet called and emailed me at my office, and again at my magazine. I ignored him. He tracked down some of my friends and associates, some of whom frantically called me: "Al Jazeera wants to talk to you." Something about Blackwater. Phinney heaped praise on an article I'd written about Blackwater's great...

A professor from Kuwait, the country liberated from Saddam Hussein's attack squads by the United States in the first Gulf War, has outlined on Arab television a potential terror attack that would involve smuggling anthrax from Mexico into the U.S. and killing 330,000 people in 60 minutes.

Surprise and even shock were among the reactions to my recent column about how elite members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, were considering a proposal for a new global television network to usher in a state of "global governance." It sounded authoritarian, even totalitarian, to some. Here are more of the troubling details. The media proposal, which was included in "The Global Agenda 2009" report, is to create "a new global network" with "the capacity to connect the world, bridging cultures and peoples, and telling us who we are and what we mean to each...

[b]President's first interview since taking office Obama tells Al Arabiya peace talks should resume[/b] In his [i]first interview since taking office[/i], President Barack Obama told Arab satellite station Al Arabiya that Americans are not the enemy of the Muslim world and said Israel and the Palestinians should resume peace negotiations. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy,” Obama told Al Arabiya’s Hisham Melhem in an interview broadcast Tuesday morning.

It's biased, gruesome, and totally compelling. How Al-Jazeera makes one American think differently about war DAMASCUS - This morning, while I made my coffee and eggs, I tuned in to the best show on television. When I went next door to buy my milk, the owner of the Rawda Grocery Store was already watching it, and down in the Sha'alan neighborhood, at the restaurant where I ate breakfast yesterday, customers are sitting over their bowls of fava bean soup, eyes glued to the screen. Millions across the region are following it along with us. The show is the conflict in...

NEW YORK - The Al Jazeera Network plans to announce on Thursday that it has signed a deal to run its news on Worldfocus, a syndicated nightly news program produced in New York and distributed throughout the United States. The deal would help the international news network, one of the top services in the Arabic-speaking world, broaden its reach in the United States, where it so far has been available to only a limited audience. Worldfocus, hosted by former NBC News correspondent Martin Savidge, is produced by New York City public broadcaster WLIW and syndicated to a number of Public...

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, says he is breaking off ties with Israel in protest against its war in Gaza, which has left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead. Morales said on Wednesday that he would seek to get top Israeli officials, including Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, charged with "genocide" in the International Criminal Court. The Bolivian president also dismissed the United Nations and its "Insecurity Council" for its "lukewarm" response to the crisis and said the general assembly should hold an emergency session to condemn the invasion. "Considering these grave attacks against ... humanity, Bolivia will stop...

In a televised speech on Saturday, Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader, said Israel's offensive on Gaza, had failed because Hamas was still firing rockets at Israel. "You have finished off the last chance and breath for settlement and negotiations," Meshaal said. "Has it stopped the rockets?" he asked of Israel's declared aim in launching the offensive. Meshaal said that Israel was covering up the true nature of its losses by saying that troops had been killed by friendly fire and accidents. Meshaal said that any international monitoring force in the Gaza strip would be treated as "occupation" force.

Many Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, maintain staunch support for Israel, despite its military crackdown on Hamas in Gaza over the past two weeks, but a few Minnesotans — including Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman — have taken more independent approaches. Discussing the conflict with Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi yesterday, Ellison expanded on his statement of last Friday, which accused the Bush administration of passively ignoring the strikes and ground offensive that have killed nearly 600 people in Gaza and during which he said he supported actively engaging both sides to find...

Sony one of the worlds largest electronic companies has teamed up with the Islamic propaganda giant of the world Al Jazeera. Now Sony cellphone owners in the Middle East and North Africa can have the news feed from Al Jazeera pre-installed on their phones.

Coming to Sony Ericsson mobile phones: JihadTV. The Al Jazeera Network has announced a partnership with Sony Ericsson, where RSS feeds of its news content will be pre-installed on four models of its mobile devices in both the Middle East and North Africa. This means that owners of these phones will soon be able to enjoy quality programming like this: a birthday party for a child killer, Samir Kuntar, who forced a little girl to watch as he shot her father, then bashed her brains out with a rifle butt. Sony Ericsson should be ashamed of themselves for promoting this...

"Summary of Overnight Events, 03 January 2009"

As hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe are protesting the US-armed and funded Israeli acts of war and Zionist genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, the slaughter continues with more bombings, siege and a blockade, plus a threatened ground war." So reads a description of the Gaza fighting on the home page of indymedia.org, the Web site of the Independent Media Center, which describes itself as "a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth." It is accompanied by a picture of burned and bleeding children,...

"OPERATION CAST LEAD The IDF's Fight Against Terror in Gaza" # A blessed New Year to everyone here and abroad. Today's thread beginning January 1, 2009 (U.S.A. Time)

A powerful and much needed statement on Al Jazeera about the current "Clash of Civilizations".

What do Iran's ayatollahs, Hamas terrorists, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi have in common? They are all pulling for Barack Obama to win the US presidential election. When Israel's disparate foes manage to rally behind a single candidate, it should set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about the Jewish state. If you think this is just Republican scaremongering, consider the following. Last week, Ali Larijani, the hard-line speaker of the Iranian parliament, told a press conference in Bahrain that "we are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and...

The former press secretary to George Bush has announced he is backing Barack Obama in the race to replace his ex-boss as US president. Scott McClellan said on Thursday that he had decided to back the Democrat because he wanted to support the candidate with the best chance of changing the way Washington - the political heart of the US - works and gets things done. His announcement is yet another blow to the campaign of John McCain, the Republican contender, who is struggling to erode Obama's opinion poll lead. McClellan is the second former Bush administration figure this week...

The Arab television network Al-Jazeera has sent a documentary crew on the road in the United States to talk to voters and they visited the Northwest Indiana town of Chesterton this week. The crew, Graham Meriwether and Chris Henderson, are touring communities in the country, part of the Red Blue Road Trip project, to get a read on voters as the historic 2008 Presidential election. The two drive from town to town in a 2002 Honda and edit the footage together on the go. As for the fact they work with Al-Jazeera, the crew hasn't had much trouble. Henderson said,...

Colin Powell’s predicted and expected endorsement of Barack Obama was transformed into big news by the pro-Obama media. But Arab propaganda channel Al-Jazeera’s intervention in the U.S. presidential contest is also extremely significant.

Colin Powell’s predicted and expected endorsement of Barack Obama was transformed into big news by the pro-Obama media. But Arab propaganda channel Al-Jazeera’s intervention in the U.S. presidential contest is also extremely significant. Al-Jazeera, a mouthpiece for enemies of the United States, aired a Moammar Gadhafi speech praising Obama and followed with a story depicting supporters of Sarah Palin as white racist Christians. The channel is subsidized by the oil-rich Sunni Muslim plutocracy/dictatorship in Qatar The Al-Jazeera “reporter” who did the hit piece on Palin was Casey Kaufmann, who surfaces in Federal Election Commission (FEC) records as a $500 contributor...

Colin Powell’s predicted and expected endorsement of Barack Obama was transformed into big news by the pro-Obama media. But Arab propaganda channel Al-Jazeera’s intervention in the U.S. presidential contest is also extremely significant. Al-Jazeera, a mouthpiece for enemies of the United States, aired a Moammar Gadhafi speech praising Obama and followed with a story depicting supporters of Sarah Palin as white racist Christians. The channel is subsidized by the oil-rich Sunni Muslim plutocracy/dictatorship in Qatar. The Al-Jazeera “reporter” who did the hit piece on Palin was Casey Kaufmann, who surfaces in Federal Election Commission (FEC) records as a $500 contributor...