A Little Historical Perspective

"We came from the people, we remain part of the people, and see ourselves as the executor of the people's will." - Josef Goebbels

Montaser Marai, a producer for al Jazeera, whining again in al Jazeera's allegedly independent Don't Bomb Us blog:

When I heard about the Daily Mirror report about the Bush-Blair memo, it made me question what we, in the Aljazeera news room, were doing that made the U.S. Administration want to bomb us.

Good lord, The old "When did you stop beating your wife?" question. And then Montaser has the nerve to whine about being labelled a propaganda tool?

But what the hell, I'll play along. Uncritically accepting the Daily Mirror report as fact, then using the reports for propaganda purposes might have something to do with it. Of course, starting this "blog" and calling it "Don't Bomb Us" might give you another clue as to why you have more in common with Josef Goebbels than you do with Horace Greeley.


"We have helped ourselves, creating real things, not illusions."

Montaser continues: I knew that they were not happy about our reporting on events in Iraq, but I always felt it was a professional disagreement in the way they saw the war from the way we saw the war. These different perspectives were part of an important debate, and our right to voice our perspective was as important as their right to state theirs'. Even though we may have disagreed, I still thought this was part of the media's job, our job, and if we were doing our job professionally, then maybe the U.S. could be upset with our stories, but they would understand our duty to our audience.

We certainly understand your duty to your Islamist masters. We also understand that the Islamic principle of taqqiyeh provides you with all the justification you need to lie and cheat, so long as it's done for the furtherance of Islam.

"We have always said: We will succeed only if we use our full energies."

I have read a lot of comments on this blog in which people mistakenly believe we are part of some sinister anti-West conspiracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I agree that we may have a different editorial angle on a story, - and it seems only natural that an Arab viewpoint might be different than the U.S. viewpoint - but our reporting is at least as objective, impartial and professional as any other international new [sic] organization including BBC, CNN and Sky.

BBC? CNN? Damn, you set your sights pretty low, don't you? And then don't even manage to live up to those meager requirements.

Regardless, is it your "different editorial angle" that compels you to ignore inconvenient video like the craven, Islamist murder of Margaret Hassan, while endlessly replaying Kevin Sites' tape of a Marine killing a wounded terrorist insurgent?

Give it up, Montaser. Even the Spaniards have recognized your "reporters" for what they are. That's why al Jazeera "correspondent" Taysir Alluni is serving seven years in a Spanish prison for helping finance al Qaeda.