25 Feb 2011 | News and features
As the lone eyewitness to events that international news organisations have found difficult to access, Al Jazeera has been an inseparable part of the story in the Middle East and North Africa. For a solid month, US outlets have hummed with borrowed Al Jazeera content and content about Al Jazeera itself.
Meanwhile, the irony grows by the day: most US households still can’t get the English-language version of the network on their TVs.
“Our local cable-TV monopoly Comcast won’t carry Al Jazeera on its service but finds it newsworthy that Al Jazeera has been shut down in Egypt. What’s the difference?” asked a bitter subscriber on a lively Comcast community message board debating the inconsistency.
Comcast’s news site had, in fact, just published an Associated Press story on the closure of Al Jazeera’s Cairo office two weeks ago.
Americans haven’t paid this much attention to the Qatar-based network since Donald Rumsfeld was accusing it of inciting violence in the early days of the Iraq war. For many US news consumers, it’s the first time they’re seeing the network as a serious news operation – and one covering events about which Americans care deeply.
Old stereotypes, though, die slowly – especially those associated with 9/11 in the American imagination. Even as Al Jazeera proves its worth in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya, it continues to face a tough row with US cable distributors.
Providers like Comcast have long insisted that AJE, which launched in 2006, wouldn’t attract enough viewers to justify offering it. But the vast American cable menu makes that argument sound anemic.
“Why do we have Current TV but not Al-Jazeera?” laments a Kansas City Star columnist. Also on offer to most US cable customers: channels devoted exclusively to replays of decades-old sporting events, do-it-yourself home-improvement projects and country music videos. Surely live coverage of key global events could do just as well?
Cable’s aversion to AJE is undoubtedly more calculated. Many Americans have long associated the network with being somehow anti-American, or the go-to distributor of Osama bin Laden each time he puts out a new preachy home video. The suspicion runs deep – and, in the past, it’s run straight to the top of the US government.
George W. Bush singled out the network in his 2004 State of the Union address as a source of “hateful propaganda,” and Donald Rumsfeld called its coverage of civilian casualties in Iraq “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable“. In 2001, the US military even launched a missile at Al Jazeera’s Kabul office, later referring to the building as “a known Al Qaeda facility“. (The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has a fascinating timeline of the troubled relationship between Al Jazeera and the US government).
It’s little wonder, amid such dramatic official pronouncements, that many Americans became wary of the network, and many cable providers are skittish of associating with it. But the stereotype of Al Jazeera as a tool of anti-American terrorists hasn’t survived recent events. Oddly, the perception of bias has been undercut as much by strong reporting in North Africa, as by Al Jazeera’s own role as a victim of repressive regimes.
To critics who still brand the network as a propaganda arm for Middle Eastern strongmen, Wired wrote: “This might come as a surprise to Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who accused the channel of ‘fomenting unrest’. Or to embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi [sic] who in a rambling and defiant speech Tuesday said Al Jazeera was trying to portray Libyans as ‘bad people… a people of turbans and low beards,’ according to one translation.”
Hawkish American commentators may be forgiven for not knowing what’s actually on AJE these days – after all, they can’t tune in to it, either. Bill O’Reilly probably wouldn’t change his mind if he could (nor would the folks behind www.stopaljazeera.org, who push something that looks much more like propaganda than anything AJE airs). But for the rest of US consumers enthralled by events in the Middle East – people who have been rushing, in the absence of anything else, onto AJE’s web feed – things are changing. American news outlets can less and less afford foreign bureaus, and this is one legitimate news source already on the ground that can.
Sensing the opportunity, Al Jazeera has placed a prominent add on its English home page encouraging people to “Demand Al Jazeera in the USA“. Comcast, as of this week, may finally be coming to the table.
21 Feb 2011 | Comment, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
The revoking of arms licences to Libya and Bahrain won’t last. British firms will be back, argues John Kampfner
This piece first appeared on Comment is Free, Guardian.co.uk.
When Robin Cook tried to tighten rules on British arms sales to dodgy regimes in 1997 he was told by Tony Blair’s team to grow up. Planned changes to criteria for weapons exports were so watered down that they made no inroads into the trade. Cook’s professed “ethical dimension” to foreign policy was stillborn.
Downing Street had been heavily lobbied, but it needed no convincing. This is one area where the boardroom and the unions are in harmony, and one that does not change whatever the government. Britain is a market leader in fighter jets, electric batons, sub-machine guns and teargas. Why add to the jobless total for the sake of morals? If we don’t sell the kit someone else will.
The announcement, therefore, of a revoking of licences to Bahrain and Libya should be taken with a pinch of salt; I predict that British firms will be back at it as soon as the coast is clear.
The coalition government’s commendable, but limited improvements in civil liberties at home have not been replicated in foreign policy, which is brazenly mercantilist. Go forth and flog Britain’s wares is the message. The notorious Export Credits Guarantee Department, responsible for some of the most economically foolhardy and unethical business deals of the past 20 years, has been boosted. From arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, to oil and gas pipelines in central Asia, to mega-dams in sub-Saharan Africa, the ECGD has backed projects that have been implicated in corruption, environmental destruction and human rights abuses.
At the weekend, the UK arms industry descended on Abu Dhabi for Idex, the region’s most important weapons fare. A tenth of all the global exhibitors are from Britain. Gerald Howarth, the minister leading the delegation, declared that “we have ambitious plans”.
The most unequivocal message since the election was made by Peter Luff, the defence equipment minister, who told a defence show in June: “There will be a very, very, very heavy ministerial commitment to arms sales. There is a sense that in the past we were rather embarrassed about exporting defence products. There is no such embarrassment in this government.”
Indeed there is not. The regimes currently using brute force to put down pro-democracy protests are all longstanding partners of the UK. As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade notes on Bahrain: in 2010, equipment approved for export included teargas and crowd control ammunition, equipment for the use of aircraft cannons, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and submachine guns. No requests for licences were refused.
Algeria, Egypt and Saudia Arabia have provided rich pickings for UK arms exporters. Of all the bilateral arrangements of recent years, perhaps the most despicable is the one with Libya. Colonel Gaddafi morphed from terrorist sympathiser to friend of the west, which then turned a blind eye to his internal repression. Libya is regarded as a priority partner, with the UK boasting the largest pavilion at the Libya’s arms fair.
CAAT figures show that in the third quarter of 2010, equipment approved for export to Libya included wall-and-door breaching projectile launchers, crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition and teargas/irritant ammunition. No requests for licences were refused.
Earlier this month, the trade minister, Lord Green, announced that ministers will be “held accountable” if companies fail to secure deals and foreign investors favour Britain’s economic rivals. Beside him was business secretary, Vince Cable.
In opposition the Lib Dems were vocal about arms sales. In government they have grown silent. In January 2009, Nick Clegg wrote on these pages that Britain should stop supplying Israel following its bombardment of Gaza. He made a broader point: the UK should not supply weapons to countries involved in external aggression or internal repression. I have heard nothing significant from Clegg on the issue since he became deputy prime minister.
He may believe that if he spoke out, he might suffer a similar fate to Cook. There is too much riding on an industry that abets authoritarian regimes, while providing rich profits for UK firms and jobs. In the current economic climate, who would stand in their way?
30 Mar 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Expatriate Sri Lankan author, Sarah Malini Perera, has been arrested in whilst on holiday Sri Lanka for writing two books— From Darkness to Light and Questions and Answers—about her conversion from Buddhism to Islam. Perara, who has lived in Bahrain since 1985, was detained last week after apparently causing offence to the largely Buddhist Sinhalese population of the country. Authorities have declined to comment on the situation.
20 May 2009 | Resources
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