← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Happy Hacker
Thread ID: 10002 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-09-24
2003-09-24 01:51 | User Profile
[B]Aljazeera has been banned from covering the US-installed Iraqi Governing Councilââ¬â¢s activities ââ¬â for allegedly inciting violence against US occupation forces and its supporters.[/B] [URL=http://english.aljazeera.net/Articles/News/ArabWorld/Aljazeera+banned+again.htm]Aljazeera article[/URL]
Aljazeera banned for not being a puppet of the US puppet government.
2003-09-24 04:16 | User Profile
Yes, I heard. Later on I started laughing when one of the idiots on the t.v. started hollering about "liberating 25 million people" and how they now have freedom of the press , ha!
Orwell would love the Neo-cons. Hell, what am I saying? Far too many of the idiot callers I hear on the radio remind me of "Parsons," with their slavish devotion to all things "W."
2003-09-24 19:25 | User Profile
"Freedom of the press". If it's [B]our [/B] press they're referring to, good night Iraq!
The article:
[url]http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030923/1/3eeaq.html[/url]
Iraq's US-installed Governing Council announced its decision to close down the Baghdad offices of two leading Arab satellite TV stations as the violence they were accused of inciting raged on.
A spokesman for council chairman Ahmad Chalabi said it was discussing the legal means of shutting down Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, which compete for the world Arab audience and deny accusations of bias.
Officials of both stations said they had not been informed of any decision to close their bureaus in Iraq, where attacks on US forces and lawlessness make daily -- and often controversial -- headlines.
In the latest bloodshed, US forces backed by air power killed three Iraqi villagers Tuesday north of the hotspot town of Fallujah, hospital officials said. The US military confirmed one dead and called it self-defense.
US officials have accused the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya of giving too much prominence to anti-US attacks and providing a forum for backers of ousted president Saddam Hussein.
Entefadh Qanbar, Chalabi's spokesman, said the Governing Council was cracking down on the stations for allegedly inciting violence against council members and coalition soldiers, and encouraging terrorism.
"Yesterday, the Governing Council issued a decision to close Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya," Qanbar told a news conference. He later said the closure would be temporary but did not say how long it would last.
While the move was specifically aimed at Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, Qanbar said the council was also keeping an eye on other Arabic broadcasters. "This will send a clear message to those other stations," he said.
Qanbar said the council was meeting Tuesday with an aide to US civilian administrator Paul Bremer to go over the legalities of the action against the television stations.
The council's decision was announced three days after one of its members, Akila al-Hashimi, was shot and critically wounded. It came a day after the UN offices here were rocked by a second deadly bomb attack in as many months.
Ayad Allawi (eds: correct), head of the council's security committee, lashed out at the stations after Hashimi was ambushed while leaving her western Baghdad home in a car Saturday.
Allawi said they "broadcast images of masked criminals calling for the liquidation of council members, which encourages acts of terrorism."
Al-Arabiya last week broadcast a message, purportedly from Saddam, calling for Iraqis to take up arms against the occupiers. The message was followed by a spate of attacks and clashes with the Americans.
A new incident was reported early Tuesday outside of Fallujah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, where hospital officials said three Iraqis were killed and three seriously wounded in a US ground-and-air operation.
Residents of the village of Al-Sijr said tanks surrounded the community and troops opened up with machine-gun fire before helicopters launched rockets, apparently targeting one or two houses.
A 40-year-old farmer was killed and two of his children wounded while they slept in their home, the residents said. Two other people were killed about 50 meters (yards) away from the house.
The bloodshed came just hours after 250 people staged a pro-Saddam demonstration in Fallujah and US forces resumed the circulation of leaflets offering to buy weapons from local residents.
A US military spokesman, Specialist Anthony Reinoso, provided a different account of the incident, which he said started when members of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division came under attack.
They returned fire while pursuing some of their assailants who fled into a building, and "a crowd formed. Weapons were seen in the crowd," Reinoso said.
The crowd tried to block several intersections, and "one enemy was killed" in the clash, the spokesman said. He said "there was a coalition aircraft involved" but did not give details.
2003-09-29 03:05 | User Profile
Bush Sucks!
[QUOTE][B]"They Hate us because of our Freedom." - Whore-Hey W. Bush[/B][/QUOTE]
Bush Sucks! :furious: :yucky: :thumbd: :gunsmilie
2003-09-30 08:34 | User Profile
Hey, no seriously, it's now [I]officially[/I] A Neat THing - Suleyman vouches for it.
[url]http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10063[/url]
[FONT=Tahoma][COLOR=Red]Democratizing Iraq By Stephen Schwartz New York Post | September 29, 2003
The Iraqi Governing Council has issued a temporary, two-week ban against Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, the two main Arab satellite TV networks - a move that points at center state the question of how to forward orderly free speech in the liberated nation.
"Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya will temporarily be excluded from any coverage of Governing Council activities or official press conferences, and correspondents of the two channels will not be allowed to enter ministries or government offices for two weeks," the council said.
[B]The council condemned the two networks as harmful to democracy [/B] and tranquility in the country. The Baghdad authorities cited the broadcasters incitement of violence and disorders, and "journalism" that simply amounted to recycling the propaganda of the former Ba'ath dictatorship.
The two networks make it seem like every Iraqi is a jihadist "resistance" fighter looking for an opportunity blow him or herself up, taking along as many of the coalition's troops as possible.
[B]Al-Jazeera could just as well be called Al-Jihad: It typically features visceral anti-American and anti-Western propaganda. Having repeatedly appeared on it as a debater, I can say that fairness, balance and even basic good manners have no place when its commentators weigh in on the United States. [/B]
But what do Iraqis outside the Governing Council think? Happily, we can find out - because new voices are being heard on the Iraqi side of the famous "Arab street," from websites to the burgeoning Baghdad daily newspapers.
Representatives of the Arab networks pled innocent to the Governing Council's charges. But some Iraqis were thrilled.
Only days before, [B]an Iraqi commentator named Tayseer Abdul Jabber Al-Alousi wrote, "Most of the Arab satellite channels defend the former dictatorship and justify every one of its degrading crimes against the Iraqi people. This outlook has stimulated certain Arab leaders to pay off dishonest writers with petrodollars.
"Anyone watching these satellite broadcasts will recognize the hatred of our Iraqi people that emanates from them. They encourage terror, assassination, and some of them seek to destroy our national unity through incitement of civil strife between differing religions, sects, and ethnic groups. Some of these satellite networks' correspondents pay people to say things that follow their destructive propaganda line." [/B]
Al-Alousi does not write as a Sunni or Shia Muslim, but as a defender of a single Iraqi nationhood without a specific religious agenda. (If you read Arabic, check his columns out on [url]www.geocities.com/Modern_Somerian_Slates[/url].)
He says, [B]"These satellite networks never explain how to help or support the Iraqis. They never talk about the [Coalition] heroes who did a lot for Iraq and who are working hard to establish safety and security. They concentrate on crime, death, bombings, and destruction." [/B]
His solution: Let the Iraqis start their own satellite network to broadcast their real thoughts.
Another popular essayist, Abdul Rahim al-Refai, seems to express the views of many Shias on the future of Iraq. He also has things to say few audiences in the rest of the Arab world, let alone Westerners, ever hear.
He warns that Iraq remains threatened by the Saudis, who disseminate their state form of extremist Islam, Wahhabism, around the globe. "According to the Saudi view," al-Refai recently wrote, "Iraq deserves to be punished for being different .ä.ä. the House of Saud oppressed us as well as its own subjects, for 35 years, until Allah brought our liberation. Curses on the House of Saud!" (Arabic readers can check out al-Refai's writings at [url]www.nahrain.com[/url].)
As the U.S.-led coalition faces the challenge of Iraq, one thing has become clear: the technique and technology of peacemaking have lagged far behind those of war. Coalition troops enjoy awesome military advantages, making the most of 21st-century technology.
But their methods of winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis remain bogged down in old habits. For example, Western military officers have been trained to deliver information to the Iraqi public through traditional civil affairs practices: loudspeakers mounted on and leaflets thrown from the backs of jeeps.
Extremist incitement is hard to counter by these methods -- or by direct censorship.
Free -expression as represented by writers like Al-Alousi is the solution to the primitive extremism as purveyed by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. It's time to assist Iraqis in creating their own free and responsible media -- delivering a choice, not an echo.
And an Iraq-based satellite network sure sounds like a neat place to start.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[I]Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications. [/I]