Al-Jazeera English turns one and has proven that the Western-centric perspectives of CNN, BBC and a host of other news networks is only one way to view the world. Despite limited availability in the US and Australia, the Arabic service regularly upstages rival channels in terms of coverage, perspective and challenging establishment power:
Showing all posts in June 2019
Free for all
OpenNet Initiative (ONI) has conducted a report on Nigeria’s 2007 election, the use of the internet and access to media: ONI has shown through its past research that countries that do not filter Internet content on a regular basis may nonetheless control Internet communications during election periods, and may use methods subtler than outright filtering…
Fox News porn
Rupert Murdoch must be so proud. On the one hand, his Australian broadsheet declares victory in Iraq – after all, ethnic cleansing isn’t really that important to leader writers in Sydney – and elsewhere his Fox News channel promotes conservative values by showing as much female flesh as possible:
Making them pay
Tom Segev, Haaretz, November 15: Nobody can calculate accurately how much the Germans paid for their crimes against the Jews: By any account, they paid neither too much nor enough. Most of the money was paid before the euro was introduced. If 60 million Germans for 60 years paid some 12 billion Deutsche mark –…
More futile silencing
Just another oppressive day in China: Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned a five-year prison sentence and 40,000 yuan (€4,000) fine imposed today by a district court in Tianhe (in the southeastern province of Guangdong) on cyber-dissident Yang Maodong (better known as Guo Feixiong) for “illegal commercial activity.” “We are shocked by this harsh and unjustified…
From Clinton to Bush
Greg Palast, November 12: Just months before he left office President Clinton paid a sudden visit to Musharraf. Congressional Democrats were stunned. Musharraf had quickly shown himself to be a Taliban-loving, unbalanced dictator who violated US treaty terms by exploding a nuke and threatening to incinerate our ally India. Notably, the Ambassador with Clinton made…
The enemy speaks
Simplicity rules: A Somerville peace activist with a knack for political theater set up a display yesterday with a simple proposition: Let anyone who passed by pick up the phone and talk to Iranian citizens, giving regular citizens in both countries a chance to do what the activist said the country’s leaders have failed to…
Public eyes are watching you
Who do you trust? Chinese Olympic officials defended on Tuesday the collection of information on journalists, saying such databases would be used to help the media at Beijing 2008, not to create blacklists or hinder reporting. The comments came a day after state media said authorities were building a database of information on about 30,000…
A bridge too far
There is trouble in the bridge world: In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States…
Analysis of a blind man
Rupert Murdoch says he “knows a bit about” Iraq and Afghanistan, thinks Australian troops should remain in Iraq and believes that Western victories in the ravaged countries are at hand. Would that prediction be accurate as his belief in 2003 that one of the benefits of the Iraq war would be US$20 barrels of oil?…