On a superficial level, the story revolves around the Emirof Qatar, Hamad bin-Khalifa, who founded and owns the world wide network, and funds it in the hundreds of millions. At the very same time, possibly wearing his other hat as head of state, the Emir has donated more millions to the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and continues to fund the uprising in Syria. His secret service has been notoriously active in Libya in conjunction with the British and French, and also in building the Syrian insurgency with Britain, France and Turkey. “But,” Eldar continues, “it is Al Jazeera’s satellite broadcasts and online news sites that are the unconventional weapon influencing the Arab uprisings, more than any combat plane squadrons and tank division wielded by the old regimes.”
This is true as far as it goes, but the real truth is lies a bit deeper. Eldar begins his piece by noting that the entrance to the Al Jazeera compound in Doha, Qatar, resembles a closed military base, where security personnel closely examine a driver’s passport and identity papers, open the car’s glove compartment and carefully check the trunk. Al Jazeera has turned tiny Qatar, which has 250,000 citizens and another 1.5 million foreign workers, into a regional power. BRITISH PRIME MINISTERTONY BLAIR REPORTEDLY PERSUADED U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH TO DROP A FOOLISH PLAN TO BOMB THIS MEDIA COMPOUND SIX YEARS AGO.
The real power of Al Jazeera is not the Arabic-language television network, piped into 70 million homes, but the autonomous English-language television network, Al Jazeera English, or AJE, piped into a growing 250 million homes in 130 countries worldwide. Eldar rightly calls Al Anstey who runs it,”one of the world’s most influential journalists.” (Not an Arab,”Al-Anstey,” but an Englishman named “Al.”)
Anstey gave Eldar an interview. “Squirming uncomfortably,” he insisted that, “We report on events. Under no circumstances do we create events.”
Who is Al Anstey? He is a lifelong Arab handler for the British, based for most of his career in Bahrain, where he headed up a multifaceted communications empire before briefly working for ITV in Britain and then joining Al Jazeera in 2006.
A well-informed Washington intelligence source maintains that the British have by now milked the Arab-Israeli conflict for just about all they can get out of it. Their new cause is are religious war between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims. This is what Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov starkly warned of on Dec. 23, saying that he saw that conflict taking off, but that once it got going, it would be unstoppable. But this is exactly the way all the Arab revolts and pseudo-revolts are now being steered,–among others by “Al Jazeera,” or more appropriately said, by Al Anstey and British Intelligence.
The Washington source went on to say that this Thirty Years War-like religious mayhem was not intended mainly for Southwest Asia or the Middle East, so-called. The Middle East is only the launching-ground; the target is Asia as such, with its billions comprising most of the world’s population.
That is why Al Anstey went to New Delhi, India, this Nov. 17 for a gala meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to inaugurate AJE’s grand entry into Indian television, with an initial audience of 150 million Indian homes. [ap] http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/al-jazeera-covering-the-revolutions-or-fueling-them-1.401762
HUSSEIN ASKARY OF SWEDEN’S LAROUCHE MOVEMENT ON AL JAZEERA Dec. 26, 2011 (EIRNS)–Al-Jazeera, since its inception in 1996, was nothing but the Arabic BBC TV which was moved to Qatar after the Sheikh Hamad coup which was blessed by the Queen, against his father. It has been a tool of British Pan-Islamic (although dressed as liberal) anti-American propaganda. I have written a lot about this for our intelligence staff through the years. The Qataris are the not-so-Saudi British agents in the region. They had quarrels with the Saudis and Egyptians, they supported the Palestinian cause, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and looked like anti-imperialists (anti-American and not anti-British) to get the support of frustrated and gullible people around the world. It has functioned as a military-intelligence organ from the beginning of the Arab uprisings, to deflect them from peaceful, legitimate revolutions against the global financial and economic order, into bloody confrontations against local “dictators.” They have been a center of communication for the armed rebels. Their studios host the films of so-called defecting Syrian soldiers. And who knows, maybe the beheading of Americans and other hostages in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were conducted there! This is a typical British disinformation and cultural warfare operation. [hus]
Dec. 26, 2011 (EIRNS)–Akiva Eldar, a veteran journalist whore presents the saner factions in Israel, has a well-grounded expose in {Ha’aretz} under the title, “Al Jazeera: Covering the Revolutions or Fueling Them?”