What's Wrong with Aljazeera?

Lately I've been noticing more and more bad reporting by Aljazeera. (I'm speaking of the English language broadcasts here.) By “bad reporting,” I mean misleading or false. Factually false, or misleading such as by using the standard media technique of omitting key facts in order to present a false picture. Also too often they adopt the mendacious terminolog of U.S. propaganda, which is verbiage designed to brainwash. (“National security” is a perfect example.)

Here are two recent examples.

On July 10^th one of their American reporters, Kimberly Halken, presented a piece on the nomination hearings for the egregious secret police supervisor James Comey for FBI director (a gig with a ten year term in office- no longer lifetime as J. Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI, had). She uses the officially-approved euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” at one point instead of the true word, torture. And the words “national security” roll off her tongue, that never-defined term that is magic, like “abracadabra” or “open sesame” or “war on terrorism” (or in the old days, “anti-communism”) that has special powers to fog men's minds and endow government gangsters who invoke it with superhuman powers. (Literally superhuman: the magic words give them power over us humans.) She also mouths the standard blather about striking a “delicate balance” between so-called anti-terrorism and “not infringing on rights.” Same thing Obama himself says every time he's caught erecting another piece of his police state, and what every other architect of repression (and their defenders) says when they're on the spot.

This is boilerplate propaganda. Halkin just bolted the chunks of mendacity in place.

Second example:

Kat Turner, another American, reported the first court appearance of surviving Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (The 19-year-old survived despite the efforts of the police to summarily execute him when his presence hiding under a tarp in a small boat in someone's backyard was reported by the homeowner. Initially, and even later, the media kept calling it a “shootout.” But it was soon admitted that Tsarnaev was unarmed.) Tsarnaev has been in captivity since mid-April. Turner claimed that “the only obvious sign of injury was a cast on his arm.” Well maybe she's just not very observant. Even the U.S. media described a disfigured jaw, and noted his constant touching of it. Even if she was too far back in the peanut gallery to notice, she could have gotten the information from numerous other media reports. In fact, how could Aljazeera miss it? On July 11^th Aljazeera ran her uncorrected report. A small point, perhaps, but not one that inspired confidence in Aljzeera's reliability.

Worse, however, she “reported” that Tsarnaev was “injured in a shootout.” No he wasn't, Kat. There was no “shootout,” because Tsarnaev WAS UNARMED. That fact has been known for months. [1]

Now, reactionary jackasses will think I'm being “pro-Tsarnaev.” Apparently they think I should lie and say Tsarnaev had a machine gun and was holding a baby at knife-point when he was shot, to make him look as bad as possible. (And not incidentally to justify the failed summary-execution attempt. by the police.) To think accuracy- that is, faithfulness to reality- matters, must mean that I “like” Tsarnaev.

Just to briefly respond to such a brain-dead, knee-jerk reaction: I'm not even sympathetic to Tsarnaev. I think he's an idiot, a puppet of his now-dead older brother (who apparently was one of these fanatical Chechen terrorist types) who had exceedingly poor judgment (an unfortunate and common pitfall of being 19). He helped kill three people who had nothing to do with Chechnya. Because they happen to live in the U.S., apparently that makes them guilty of “waging war on Muslims,” in his mind. A dozen or so people will also have to get on with their lives minus a limb or two. Nothing concrete is accomplished to end hostility towards Muslims by such an act. (Quite the contrary.) Nor does this in any way weaken the U.S. So without material value, there is only symbolic value left to consider as a possible gain for Tsarnaev's “cause.” (I get the impression he's as unclear as to what exactly his cause is as I am.)

I can think of innumerable better ways to make a symbolic point. I think the political “message” is lost on the victims and on the American public. All they see is some vicious violence. And if this is meant to inspire other Muslims to similar acts, a lá the Al-Qaeda strategy of provoking greater conflict, that of course means more of the same, making everything worse. The Chechens have pursued a strategy of more and more nihilistic violence in Russia, and so far the result has been the razing by Russian bombardment of Grozny and the installation of a sadistic terrorist as Chechen ruler as Russian client. I'd recommend trying something else.

The point here isn't about Tsarnaev; it is about reliable, honest reporting; the point is whether we can trust Aljazeera as an information source. It has nothing to do with one's attitude towards Tsarnaev, which in any case should not guide the reporting. That would not be objective reporting, it would be propagandistic.

But back to Aljazeera: Why the pandering to U.S. propaganda norms, and worse?

Perhaps the American reporters of Aljazeera are simply too brainwashed by their experience to be more objective.

Or perhaps Aljazeera, and the Emir of Qatar, have inferiority complexes. Perhaps they crave acceptance by the U.S. media and political establishment, which that imperialist power combine defines as “legitimacy.” Perhaps Aljazeera's bosses are brainwashed into feeling that legitimacy is controlled by the U.S. power system, to bestow or deny at their pleasure. (That certainly is a big problem in domestic U.S. politics. Prime examples: the pathetic sell-out U.S. labor unions, which have been slowly self-destructing for over 60 years now, and the “respectable” environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, which are lapdogs and pets of the corporate establishment.) The craving for acceptance from the U.S. power structure, (so-called “respectability”) is existential death to anyone who wants to follow a moral path in life.

The only possible value of Aljazeera, to an American or to ANY audience, is as an alternative to Western establishment propaganda. If all Aljazeera is going to do is echo and mimic that propaganda system, because it wants to “be part of the conversation,” i.e. to try to influence Western elites by saying Hey, we're one of you! Accept us!- in that case, no Westerner has any reason to tune in to or read Aljazeera online. If it's just going to present more of the same twisted worldview of Imperialist elites, it has no value. It's just an off-brand version of the brand name propaganda entities. And since the price is the same, why buy it?

Of course, given that Qatar functions as a well-remunerated oil spigot for “the West,” is it not intimately tied to the U.S. system? And who is the ultimate guarantor of the Emir's continued hold on power? Obviously the U.S. Hence we should expect Aljazeera, being a media operation of the Emir, to be basically in line with U.S. propaganda. Perhaps the only surprise is that it has displeased the U.S. as much as it has, mainly in its Arabic language broadcasting. [If it didn't tell the truth and report on people and events and conduct interviews of interest to Arab audiences, it would be as irrelevant as U.S. Arab-language propaganda ops are. The U.S. expects Aljazeera to parrot U.S. military propaganda, an absurd demand. Had Aljazeera functioned as the U.S. military and government wanted, and been a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq and the horrors inflicted there, it would have totally and permanently discredited itself with Arab audiences and thus made itself irredemably irrelevant in its part of the world. The moronic “hearts and minds” mentality of the U.S. military is that their crude, cynical propaganda can actually change the attitudes of the people it bombs and maims and of those who can see plain facts. They think that if only ALL media would broadcast the same bullshit and lies as U.S. military propaganda ops, everyone would be fooled. Hey, these are the cretins who are convinced the U.S. media lost the Vietnam War!]

Qatar's ultimate dependency on the U.S. would explain Aljazeera's very muted responses to the repeated bombings of its facilities by the U.S., the murder of its employees, the kidnapping of at least one of them (imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay military gulag for six years) and lesser attacks.

In any event, the Emir just squandered $500,000,000 in oil money buying Al Gore's failed cable TV channel, in an attempt to force its way into the U.S. market, from which it has been banned by the U.S. corporations that control what Americans can see and hear. (This oligarchic media system is known as “the free press.” See what I mean about mendacious terminology?) Others have commented on the irony of global warming Cassandra Albert Gore Jr. making a personal killing of $100,000,000 from oil money. (Burning oil releases carbon dioxide, the increasing atmospheric concentration of which is raising the temperature of the planet.)

I'll bet the inhabitants of Qatar might have thought of other uses for that money. But in a Kingdom, even the oil in the ground is the personal property of the ruler.

On the other hand, Aljazeera must be doing something right in Egypt, because the military oligarchs there have so far arrested 28 Aljazeera employees since the coup of a few days ago. Meanwhile the Egyptian media is strenuously vying for the title of World's Worst Media. The horrible hacks who work for it (the opposition media has been expeditiously shut down by force by the military- but don't call it a coup!) not only have acted as enthusiastic cheerleaders for the military so far, but they shouted down and ejected an Aljazeera reporter from a press conference. Man, those vermin make the U.S. media look good by comparison! (But not very. See the loathsome David Gregory's attack on Glenn Greenwald on NBC.)

1] The U.S. media can be quite lousy too. Consider this example of exiguous, manipulative “reporting” by the CBS radio network (aired July 11^th at 6 am Eastern Standard Time). “Reporting” on Tsarnaev's court appearance, other than the fact that he was in court, there is literally no information. No mention of his injuries, no mention even of the plea entered, which was the main purpose of the hearing! (“Not guilty” was the plea, I can report, in case you relied on CBS for your info.) Instead, aside from the introductory sentence- that Tsarnaev was in court yesterday- the entirety of the CBS “report” was the opinion of the M.I.T. campus police chief (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), one of whose officers was shot and killed by the Tsarnaev brothers when they were on the lam after the bombing. The chief was in court to glare at Tsarnaev, and he opined: “He was a punk. [His emphasis.] He showed no remorse.” Not sure how Tsarnaev would “show remorse” in a preliminary hearing, but no matter. The chief hates him. I think we all could have figured that out without being told. It is rather like reporting “the sun rose in the East today.” No kidding. So there's literally no information here, nothing nobody doesn't already know or assume, but rather an attempt to generate public hostility toward Tsarnaev by feeding people the feelings and attitude of an understandably angry and contemptuous man. (Guess CBS figures the American public doesn't hate Tsarnaev enough.)

In other words, this was pure propaganda, an attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than provide information- as I pointed out, even the most basic facts of the court appearance were omitted by CBS. So they did worse than Aljazeera. Hey, maybe we do need Aljazeera after all!

Lying By Omission

One of the tricks the U.S. media uses to dupe people into believing the false picture of the world, of reality, that the propaganda system promotes is the omission of key facts. Instead of giving false information (which they also do quite a lot), important information is suppressed which results in the creation of  false impressions and a false image of the world that blots out the real world, like a permanent solar eclipse of the mind. The advantage of this mendacious method of misrepresentation and misleading is that technically the propagandists aren't “lying” in the sense the word is usually understood. But that's a con artist's rationalization. The technique is intended to fool the target by misrepresentation and deception. There may be an argument about whether it is “lying.” There can be no argument that it is dishonest and designed to dupe and mislead people, and therefore is reprehensible. This is an awful and destructive state of affairs that has the consequence of causing tremendous, avoidable human suffering and death.

Adding an extra twist to the sleazy and unethical nature of the scam is the fact that the establishment media presents itself as a reliable (indeed the only reliable) source of information, and is allegedly objective and unbiased to boot. (Yeah, I know, that's pretty brazenly cynical of them.) As hundreds of millions of people rely on these propagandists for grasping reality and understanding the world, this is an awful state of affairs. These propagandists literally promote mass false consciousness, trapping the minds of millions in a web of illusion.

Here are some examples of the phenomenon of lying by omission.

“Iranian hostage crisis.” They're still milking this one, and they won't stop until they overthrow the mullahs ruling Iran. Then when they've installed a client regime as they did in 1953, or a satrapy, Iran will be “our friend” again and the U.S. can let bygones be bygones. Hollywood creepoid Ben Stiller just mined that particular propaganda pit for a movie that is being hailed, predictably, by the corporate media. ("Argo." It concerns the CIA “rescue” of some U.S. “hostages.” I'm waiting for Hollywood to make a movie about the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup, the horrible reign of the Shah, during which he killed a quarter of a million Iranians, the CIA-spawned and nurtured Iranian secret police, the SAVAK, and so on. Unfortunately for the Iranian people, the overthrow of the Shah created an opening for the only remaining organized political force in Iran to seize power, the mullahs. Unless Oliver Stone, say, makes it, I think I'm in for a very long wait.)

A telling omission- besides the entire history I just mentioned: Western propagandists never mention WHY the U.S. embassy was seized. It was in reaction to the U.S. letting the Shah into the United States. You'd think that would be an important fact. It was the CAUSE (justified or not) for the seizure.

Another fact assiduously omitted from the periodic harping on the “Iranian hostage crisis” is that the U.S. immediately stole all Iran's money (in the billions of dollars) from the banks under U.S. financial control, and used the money to pay off businesses that had (unfulfilled) contracts with the dictator Shah.

Here's another example of how the U.S. and other media distort people's impression of the Middle East:

“Rockets raining down on Israel from Gaza.” You hear that a lot. Well, there's plenty they omit here. The most important thing they always omit here is that Israel consistently provokes the rocket fire by murdering Palestinians. Whenever there's a unilateral truce by Hamas, Israel raids Gaza to murder some Palestinian “militants.” This pattern began under Ariel Sharon, and has continued under his successors. U.S. media always glosses over this and pretends that the resulting rocket fire is unprovoked, vicious terrorism aimed at civilians. (By the way, all the Palestinians Israel kills, and there have been thousands and thousands over the years, are by definition civilians, since the Palestinians have no army. And “militant” can mean anything- someone who throws a rock, someone who hates Israeli occupation and repression, whatever. But the specific assassinations are probably aimed at members of “militant” organizations. Since the U.S. and Israel brands these organizations “terrorists,” anyone connected to them is automatically a “terrorist.” “Terrorist” is a political curse word, like “communist,” which has the same meaning as “Jew” in Nazi lexicon- an evil subhuman scumbag worthy of nothing but death, in fact killing them is an imperative.)

I'm not making an argument about whether Palestinian retaliation for the murders and kidnappings of activists and others is justified or not. The point is the media reverses cause and effect, and removes the source of provocation from Israel and transfers it to the evil Palestinians. This allows the media (and Israel) to put Israel on a high moral plane and paint the Palestinians as immoral. (Even though Israel has killed over the decades about 100 Palestinians for every Israeli killed by Palestinians- and most of those Palestinians were "civilians," i.e. not operatives of armed factions- aka "terrorists.")

Here's a third example of chronic distortion by the corporate propaganda system (aka “the media”):

“CIA agents.” Most “CIA agents” are in fact foreign traitors. They aren't employed by the CIA, although they may be paid by the CIA for providing info or doing dirty deeds on the CIA's behalf, like overthrowing the democratic government of Iran in 1953, the one in Guatemala in 1954, murdering General Rene Schneider in Chile in 1970, organizing strikes and sabotage and mayhem there and elsewhere, and etc. (I know the CIA and its media protectors like to pretend all the CIA does is “gather information,” that it's a “spy” agency, not an international terror and subversion agency that trains torturers, organizes death squads, and provides lists of people to be tortured and murdered, but that is heinously dishonest. Yes, it does spy too, mostly not to “protect America,” and certainly not to advance “freedom and democracy,” but to harm others using the information it gets. As has been thoroughly documented over the decades, this is ultimately to advance U.S. corporate interests, abbreviated as “U.S. interests,” a term that is never defined or explained, despite being used daily by the U.S. media and politicians, an interesting omission in itself.)

The actual CIA employees, who are always Americans, are called “officers” or “case officers,” not “agents,” except in the popular media, which seems to want to deliberately confuse people. Further adding to the confusion (obfuscation), FBI agents are indeed card-carrying members of the FBI, with badges and guns and arrest powers. (The CIA has no legal arrest powers, so it just kidnaps people- or simply murders them. Despicably, 54 foreign nations have recently been identified as helping them do this since 2001, when "the world changed," because- boo-hoo! the U.S. was attacked. The Guardian has the list of “rendition program” aiders and abettors. [guardian.co.uk] So much for “rule of law,” much beloved rhetorically by U.S. blowhards and propagandists.) 

The outsiders the FBI relies on for spying and subversion are called “informants” (i.e. informers), a word coined by J. Edgar Hoover to try and avoid the taint of “informer.” It's a distinction without a difference. Hoover articulated a specious distinction between the two words, to ennoble his police state spies. But there isn't any difference. Except some of these so-called “informants” are actually agents provocateur. The media always obfuscates this fact too.

In the case of CIA officer (employee) Aldrich Ames, who was caught selling information to Russia on CIA operations there, including the identities of Russian traitors working for the CIA, “the media” said over and over that Ames“sold the names of American agents to Russia, which executed them.” So the propaganda system converted Russian traitors into American agents, leaving the false and inflammatory impression that Ames caused the deaths of fellow Americans. This is not a defense of Ames, or a judgment on Russians spying for the CIA and thus betraying their own country and committing treason. It is just a statement of FACT. There is no moral judgment required of us concerning Ames or of Russian CIA spies (traitors by any definition, and you can apply your own attitude to treason here, that is not the point of this essay) to see that the U.S. media's completely dishonest and misleading mislabeling of Russian traitors as “American agents” is designed to dupe the American public about the facts of the matter. Yes, these Russian turncoats were “American agents,” but refusing to explain the details prominently, and consistently blaring with emphasis the “American agents” mislabeling, obviously obfuscates reality for the targets of this propaganda.

In this example, the U.S. media isn't just lying by omission, but is also using tendentious and tricky nomenclature designed to deceive (another common trick they employ). Thus we were told over and over (and are still occasionally reminded) that Aldrich Ames' “treachery” “led to the death of numerous American agents.” Most people reading or hearing the words “American agents” would naturally think that Americans were killed as a result of Ames' “treason.” But in fact only Russians were killed, Russian traitors that is. As Russian citizens, their duty of loyalty (if you believe in such things) was to Russia, and they committed the capital crime of treason, for which they were duly tried and executed. By the way, treason is a capital crime in the U.S. too.

The CIA's “American agents” weren't Americans, but Russians who spied for the CIA, giving away Russia's secrets. By persistently calling them “American agents,” the U.S. media knowingly tricked people into believing that Americans were killed because of Ames, and that these victims were noble heroes, not traitors to their own country.

Not that I care. Russia, America, indeed nation states mean nothing to me. I believe that nations are antithetical to having a human race. And like Ames, the Russian “traitors” were likely doing it for the money, at least in some cases. Given the glorification of materialism in America, indeed the very word “success” is usually a euphemism for “making a lot of money,” I think Ames deserved to be cut some slack. But anyone who joins the CIA, an evil, criminal organization, deserves whatever he gets, except in the case of reformed whistle-blowers like the heroic Philip Agee, and others. Some of those Russian traitors aka "American agents" were perhaps ideologically deluded by resentment of their own oppressive system into falling for American propaganda about the "land of the free and the home of the brave" "we love democracy so much" and blah blah blah. If so, they were fools who paid a heavy price for their foolishness. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Might be a temporary ally of convenience in some cases. (Like, say, oh, I don't know, the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. in World War II? Might that be a good example, hmmm?)

But then, the U.S. media's definition of “patriotism” is loyalty to the U.S. Everyone in the world is supposed to pay fealty to the U.S. Other nations don't have patriots, or patriotism. They have “nationalists” and “nationalism.”

Isn't language fun? You can do so many things with it!

There are undoubtedly thousands upon thousands of additional examples of American corporate media mendacity employing the technique of lying by omission. I know I come across such examples constantly, and have for decades. Find your own! Collect them! Trade them with your friends!

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