Despotism, Despair, Degringolade At Al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera America, the English-language propaganda organ of the House of Al Thani, the absolute rulers of little Qatar, where 200,000 Qataris are waited on, hand and foot, by two million foreign wage-slaves, many mistreated with a cruelty that some intrepid Western reporters have managed to describe, is diffferent from the Arabic-language Al Jazeera. That version, in its nastiness, its hysteria, its conspiracy-theory worldview, its use as a mouthpiece for the absolute despots whose entire claim on the world’s attention is the result of an accident of geology (Qatar sits on lots of natural gas reserves), despite being deliberately cleaned up from the Arabic-language version (which helped whip up local Arabs against the Americans in Iraq, and is no different from any other appalling Arab station in the hysterical and conspiracy-theory coverage of the world)is what may be called “the real Al Jazeera.” Yet even the cleverly cleaned-up version that is presented to the American audience offers a steady diet of anti-Israel, anti-American, and anti-Infidel articles, among other stuff designed to provide camouflage, as if Al Jazeera were a real news network, and not merely an organ of the Qatari rulers.

Nonetheless, the habits of despotism, secrecy, antisemitism, contempt for women are apparently affecting the morale of the staff — many of whom, in joining Al Jazeera, showed an initial naivete about the operation, or in some cases a deliberate willingness to morally compromise, by joining such an enterprise.

Take a look, at today’s tip-of-the-iceberg report, in The New York Times, here.