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By a sheer stroke of luck, I happened to catch a documentary about Al-Jazeera on CNA this afternoon. After my stupid presentation on Thursday, all the material I had gotten online seemed to suggest that Al-Jazeera was a terrorist propaganda machine happily spreading anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. The Al-Jazeera, which has been called "the CNN of the Middle East", is also one of the most trusted news stations, with 41% of the population of the opinion that 80% of it is true.
However, after watching the documentary (I think it was called "The Control Room"), you've got these guys who are former BBC reporters in the station, and the senior producer actually hopes he can send his kids to the US to study and he can "exchange the Arab nightmare for the American dream". What anti-American sentiment? The only thing they seem to really hate about America is the way Bush is just screwing up these people's lives with his stupid "smoke them out of their holes" strategy (which basically translates to bomb everything in sight and out of sight, and if we drop enough bombs maybe we'll hit them). And then there's Hassan Ibrahim (I believe he also uttered the immortal "Democratize or I'll shoot you."), former journalist for BBC's Arab News service, who asserts that he has absolute faith in the American people, and that "the United States will stop the United States Empire".
It's like what the US Marines Corp Comms officer said, that every station is just reporting for their people. I mean, these guys are there and they're watching their people die. You expect them to be shiny happy people asking you questions politely when your commarades are out there bombing their country into smithereens? There was plenty of anti-MidEast sentiment on the media when 9/11 happened, so what makes Americans so justified to say they're not in the wrong?
Sometimes I think America is completely delusional. They think the world bloody revolves around them or something. Look at the kind of arguments they put out; EU can't sell arms to China, 'cause that would "threaten U.S. security interests". WTF? And the US happily building up their own military power isn't threatening the security interests of other countries? Fascinating logic. And the next thing you know, Bush is going to be reading very sincerely from his script about how Osama bin Laden is suspected to have spent the last few months digging an underground tunnel through one of his caves, and now he's in North Korea convincing them to use weapons of mass destruction on the US.
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