Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by 10/02/2014. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #812.  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748.)

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE. 

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

Lis­ten: MP3

Side 1   Side 2   

Ser­pen­t’s Walk: Fore­casts a Nazi takeover of U.S. in mid-twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, after WMD ter­ror­ist attacks.

Intro­duc­tion: In pre­vi­ous posts, we have not­ed that Al Jazeera is run by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. We have also dealt with the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, which focus­es on a Nazi takeover of the U.S. in the mid-21st cen­tu­ry. After a series of ter­ror­ist attacks fea­tur­ing WMD’s results in the dec­la­ra­tion of mar­tial law and the descen­dants of the SS–who have infil­trat­ed the military–take over.

Fun­da­men­tal to the sce­nario pre­sent­ed in the book is the Under­ground Reich/SS mon­ey com­po­nent buy­ing into the opin­ion-form­ing media in order to swing the Amer­i­can peo­ple’s point of view in a pro-Nazi direc­tion.

With Al Jazeera among those media out­lets gain­ing grav­i­tas in the U.S., it is worth exam­in­ing the net­work in detail to under­stand its rela­tion­ship with the Broth­er­hood, an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion.

The Al Jazeera net­work’s shep­herd­ing of a report about the late Yass­er Arafat hav­ing been poi­soned with polo­ni­um 210 affords us an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to eval­u­ate the out­let’s jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty. (Polo­ni­um 210 is a high­ly radioac­tive sub­stance.)

The media were all a‑flutter for a day or two about a report that PLO leader Yass­er Arafat was mur­dered by polo­ni­um poi­son­ing, with the report itself being essen­tial­ly an Al Jazeera “op.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

• The report is an Al Jazeeera project from start to fin­ish.
• The project was launched and exe­cut­ed by Clay­ton Swish­er, head of Al Jazeer­a’s so-called inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism divi­sion.
• Swish­er is a for­mer body­guard of Arafat’s.
• Swish­er has a back­ground in State Depart­ment Secu­ri­ty (trans­la­tion: “Spook”).
• He was giv­en the items on which the polo­ni­um was found by Arafat’s wid­ow in 2011, sev­en years after Arafat’s death.
• Polo­ni­um 210 has a half-life of 138 days! Experts quot­ed below do not believe that any mea­sur­able trace would be left after this much time. If mea­sur­able traces of polo­ni­um 210 were found after this much time, the amount in Arafat’s body would have to have been enor­mous!
• The symp­toms of polo­ni­um poi­son­ing are read­i­ly detectable and not con­sis­tent with Arafat’s con­di­tion.
• Poi­son­ing and radi­a­tion poi­son­ing in par­tic­u­lar were ruled out at the time of Arafat’s pass­ing.
• The chain of han­dling of the evi­dence giv­en to Swish­er by Arafat’s wid­ow is unclear.
• The ques­tion of why so much time was allowed to elapse before con­duct­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion sug­gests itself.
• A Russ­ian team found no evi­dence of polo­ni­um, although they have now back­tracked on their report.
• Evi­dence of Al Jazeer­a’s close rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mounts, with the net­work pay­ing for the res­i­dence of Broth­er­hood exiles stay­ing in Qatar, the home of the net­work.
• What we are wit­ness­ing with the uncrit­i­cal accep­tance of a media out­let effec­tive­ly con­trolled by an overt­ly fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario that we have dis­cussed so often.
• So overt and brazen are Al Jazeer­a’s links to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that Qatar is launch­ing a new news chan­nel to com­pete with it, appar­ent­ly because the net­work’s Broth­er­hood links are dis­cred­it­ing the pro­gram­ming’s cred­i­bil­i­ty.
• One won­ders if this gam­bit is intend­ed to derail Israeli/Palestinian peace talks?
• A French foren­sic team has arrived at the con­clu­sion that Arafat was NOT mur­dered. It is inter­est­ing to note that Arafat’s wid­ow saw to it that there was no autop­sy at the time of death. Then, she gives the hos­pi­tal bag and cloth­ing to Swish­er of Al Jazeera. Nice.
• Arafat’s per­son­al physi­cian stat­ed that Arafat died of AIDS. Check out this YouTube seg­ment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y89pfwDRAV0

1.  Among the many prob­lems with the alle­ga­tion devel­oped and flogged by Al Jazeera is the fact that polo­ni­um-210 has a half-life of just 138 days. Detect­ing the pres­ence of polo­ni­um after eight years is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult.

“Report: Tests ‘Mod­er­ate­ly Sup­port’ that Yass­er Arafat Poi­soned by Polo­ni­um”; CNN; 11/7/2013.

 . . . . The Swiss cen­ter point­ed out some caveats: The test­ing was based on “very small spec­i­mens.” The cen­ter not­ed that blood, urine and oth­er spec­i­mens were destroyed after Arafat’s hos­pi­tal­iza­tion.

– Eight years passed between the death and the exhuma­tion. Because polo­ni­um-210 has a half-life of just 138 days, its detec­tion after eight years is “very dif­fi­cult and sub­ject to uncer­tain­ties.”

– The “chain of cus­tody” of Arafat’s per­son­al effects — from the time he died and when the cen­ter began to study them in 2012 — is unclear, it said.

Pad­dy Regan, a pro­fes­sor of radionu­clide metrol­o­gy in the physics depart­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sur­rey in Guild­ford, Eng­land, agreed that the years that have elapsed since Arafat’s death make it more dif­fi­cult to esti­mate how much iso­tope was there orig­i­nal­ly.

“It’s like a blind­fold­ed man hold­ing the tail of an ele­phant and using that to esti­mate the weight of the ele­phant,” Regan told CNN in a tele­phone inter­view. “You can do it, but there is a huge amount of extrap­o­la­tion involved.”

And the mere pres­ence of the iso­tope — in amounts sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than what occurs nat­u­ral­ly — does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that that is what killed Arafat, he added, cit­ing the sci­en­tists’ mea­sure­ment of a urine stain on Arafat’s under­wear. “If you were being cyn­i­cal about such a thing, if you want­ed to put a false trail out there, you could put a tiny amount of polo­ni­um 210 on that urine stain,” he said. “That does­n’t mean that the urine stain came from inside him.” . . . .

2. A Russ­ian foren­sic team found no evi­dence of poi­son­ing in Arafat’s death.

“Swiss Report Sup­ports The­o­ry Arafat Was Poi­soned” by Isabel Ker­sh­n­er; The New York Times; 11/7/2013.

. . . . Yet last month the head of the Russ­ian team told the Inter­fax news agency that Russ­ian experts had found no traces of polo­ni­um in Mr. Arafat’s remains. Soon after, the Rus­sians denied hav­ing made any state­ment. . . .

3. The top French physi­cian in the hos­pi­tal in which Arafat died dis­miss­es the notion that Arafat was poi­soned.

” ‘Absolute­ly No Way’ Arafat Was Poi­soned, Says Top Doc­tor Who Teach­es at Hos­pi­tal Where Pales­tin­ian Leader Died” by Anni­ca Pomer­ay; The Times of Israel; 11/13/2012.

. . . .    A lead­ing French doc­tor who teach­es at the Paris hos­pi­tal where Yass­er Arafat died in 2004 has bro­ken the offi­cial French med­ical silence sur­round­ing the case to tell The Times of Israel, based on Arafat’s med­ical report, that there is “absolute­ly no way” the Pales­tin­ian leader was poi­soned.

Dr. Roland Masse, a mem­ber of the pres­ti­gious Académie de Médecine who cur­rent­ly teach­es radiopathol­o­gy at Per­cy Mil­i­tary Train­ing Hos­pi­tal in the Paris sub­urb of Cla­mart, where Arafat was hos­pi­tal­ized two weeks before his death on Novem­ber 11 eight years ago, spoke to The Times of Israel to scotch the alle­ga­tions of polo­ni­um poi­son­ing two weeks before a group of sci­en­tists are set to take sam­ples for test­ing from Arafat’s body.

Masse said the symp­toms of polo­ni­um poi­son­ing would have been “impos­si­ble to miss,” not­ed that Per­cy had test­ed Arafat for radi­a­tion poi­son­ing, and revealed that the hos­pi­tal spe­cial­izes in the relat­ed field of radi­a­tion detec­tion. “A lethal lev­el of polo­ni­um sim­ply can­not go unno­ticed,” he said, speak­ing as work­ers in Ramal­lah on Tues­day began the process of prepar­ing Arafat’s grave for exhuma­tion.

Dr. Thier­ry Rev­el, the head of the Hema­tol­ogy Depart­ment at Per­cy who signed the med­ical report on Novem­ber 14, 2004, has refused to com­ment on the case. Indeed, med­ical con­fi­den­tial­i­ty laws pre­vent doc­tors in France from divulging any infor­ma­tion on their cur­rent or past patients. It was Arafat’s fam­i­ly that chose to make pub­lic the late Pales­tin­ian leader’s med­ical report; Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news out­let, said in July that it had received the report from Arafat’s wid­ow Suha.

In a tele­phone inter­view with The Times of Israel, Masse said flat­ly that “there is absolute­ly no way the symp­toms described in Yass­er Arafat’s med­ical report match those of poi­son­ing by polo­ni­um.”

Masse elab­o­rat­ed: “When in con­tact with high lev­els of polo­ni­um, the body suf­fers from acute radi­a­tion which trans­lates into a state of ane­mia and a severe decrease in white blood cells. And yet Arafat did not present any of those symp­toms. What did decrease was his platelets, not his white blood cells,” said Masse, who may have been pre­pared to dis­cuss the case because he does not treat patients at Per­cy, only teach­ing there. (He said the med­ical team at Per­cy would have had no need to con­sult with him, giv­en their high lev­el of exper­tise.)

Not­ing that radi­a­tion detec­tion hap­pens to be one of the areas in which Per­cy mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal excels, Masse said that while Arafat’s med­ical report con­tains no spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to a test for polo­ni­um, it does spec­i­fy that a num­ber of tests were con­duct­ed to check if the patient had been sub­ject­ed to radioac­tive sub­stances.

Polo­ni­um-210, which Yass­er Arafat’s wid­ow Suha believes may have caused her husband’s death, is a rare chem­i­cal that became more famil­iar to the pub­lic a few years ago when it was used to mur­der Alexan­der Litvi­nenko, the for­mer Russ­ian spy, in Lon­don in 2006.

If “abnor­mal lev­els of radioac­tive polo­ni­um” were found on Arafat’s cloth­ing by sci­en­tists in Switzer­land in July, eight years after his death, Masse said, the Pales­tin­ian leader would have had to be in con­tact with an extreme­ly high lev­el of the chem­i­cal before his death. This would have been impos­si­ble to miss for any doc­tor at the time, Masse said, not to men­tion dan­ger­ous for oth­er peo­ple sur­round­ing Arafat. “Remem­ber the Litvi­nenko case,” Masse con­tin­ued. “We dis­cov­ered after his death that hun­dreds of peo­ple had been sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous lev­els of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, in the UK and oth­er coun­tries.”

 Masse was in charge of “nation­al radioac­tiv­i­ty super­vi­sion” in France in the 1990s — as head of the Office de Pro­tec­tion des Ray­on­nements Ion­isants (OPRI — the Bureau for Pro­tec­tion against Ion­iz­ing Radi­a­tion), which worked under the author­i­ty of the French Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Labour to pro­tect French cit­i­zens and the envi­ron­ment from the effects of ion­iz­ing radi­a­tion. In the job, he said, he received dai­ly alerts about the pres­ence of far low­er lev­els of radioac­tive ele­ments than would have been nec­es­sary to kill a man; these alerts came from waste col­lec­tion sites, for exam­ple, and from peo­ple who had recent­ly under­gone med­ical treat­ments involv­ing the appli­ca­tion of radioac­tive sub­stances. . .

4. A Ger­man expert also is dis­mi­sive of the notion that Arafat was poi­soned with polo­ni­um.

“Polo­ni­um Would be Hard­ly Detectable”; Deutsche Welle; 8/7/2012.

. . . . [Prof. Dr. Thomas Fanghänel is direc­tor of the Insti­tute for Transura­ni­um Ele­ments (ITU) in Karl­sruhe, Ger­many, a joint research cen­ter with the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Among oth­ers things, the ITU car­ries out nuclear foren­sic test­ing.] “I assume that it would be very dif­fi­cult to prove poi­son­ing after eight years,” he said. “Around 20 half-life peri­ods would have passed since then. After 20 half-life peri­ods, only a few mil­lionths of the orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al will still be present.”… “The ques­tion is this: Is the amount detect­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than that which is nat­u­ral­ly present in the envi­ron­ment? Due to the half-life peri­od and the peri­od of time which has since elapsed, I’m assum­ing it would be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to prove with any cer­tain­ty that this is the polo­ni­um-210 which came into con­tact with the cloth­ing ten years ago.” . . . .

5. Of pri­ma­ry sig­nif­i­cance is the out­line of how the “sto­ry” came to pass. Arafat’s wid­ow, who blocked an autop­sy when the PLO leader died and who did not live with her hus­band, gave some of Arafat’s per­son­al effects to one of his for­mer body­guards. Clay­ton Swish­er (the body­guard) had pre­vi­ous­ly been a State Depart­ment Secu­ri­ty func­tionary (trans­la­tion: “Spook.”). Swish­er was an Al Jazeera offi­cer at that point in time, and it was he who ini­ti­at­ed the “inves­ti­ga­tion.”

The point is that this was an Al Jazeera “op” in its entire­ty.

” ‘What Killed Arafat?’: Neshan­nock Grad Nom­i­nat­ed for Pres­ti­gious Award for Inves­ti­ga­tion of Late Pales­tin­ian Leader” by Kayleen Cub­bal; New Cas­tle News; 5/10/2013.

 . . . . The 36-year-old Neshan­nock High grad­u­ate, the man­ag­er of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism for Al Jazeera Media Net­work, led a group that released a film, “What Killed Afafat?” (Al Jazeera Inves­ti­gates), which is nom­i­nat­ed for an award for best Cur­rent Affairs doc­u­men­tary at Sunday’s British Acad­e­my of Film and Tele­vi­sion Arts at Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall in Lon­don. The BAF­TAs are the equiv­a­lent of the Emmy Awards in the Unit­ed States. . . .

. . . . While at Pitt, Swish­er served in the Marine Corps Reserves with a Mil­i­tary Police Com­pa­ny in North Ver­sailles, and fol­low­ing his grad­u­a­tion, spent three years as a spe­cial agent with the U.S. State Depart­men­t’s Diplo­mat­ic Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice.  

It was there that he came to meet Arafat, while serv­ing as a body­guard to him on four occa­sions in 2000 dur­ing attempts by the Unit­ed States to nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment to the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. The first time was dur­ing Arafat’s June vis­it to the Unit­ed States; the sec­ond was lat­er that month dur­ing then-Sec­re­tary of State Madeleine Albright’s vis­it with Arafat to Ramal­lah, in the Occu­pied West Bank, to plan the July Camp David Sum­mit; next was dur­ing the Camp David Sum­mit, attend­ed by then-Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, Albright, Arafat and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak; and, lat­er that year, the final chance arose dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing at the res­i­dence of the U.S. Ambas­sador to France with Albright and then-CIA direc­tor George Tenet. . . .

. . . . In 2007, Swish­er joined Al Jazeera. . . .

. . . . In late 2011, Swish­er, who lives in Doha, Qatar, head­quar­ters of the Al Jazeera Media Net­work, ini­ti­at­ed a cold-case inves­ti­ga­tion into Arafat’s death. He trav­eled to Mal­ta and obtained his entire med­ical files from Arafat’s wid­ow, Suha Arafat.

Suha lat­er pro­vid­ed Swish­er with a gym bag that con­tained her husband’s last per­son­al belong­ings, which were in his pos­ses­sion at a French mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal where he died on Nov. 11, 2004. Swish­er took all the items Suha had giv­en him to Europe’s lead­ing foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ry, the Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tre for Legal Med­i­cine in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land. . . .

6. More about the French dis­sent from the Swiss/Al Jazeera “poi­son­ing” con­clu­sion:

“French Experts ‘Rule out Yass­er Arafat Poi­son­ing The­ory’” [AFP]; The Tele­graph [UK]; 12/3/2013.

French experts have ruled out a the­ory that Yass­er Arafat was killed by poi­son­ing, a source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Pales­tin­ian leader’s 2004 death told AFP.

“The report rules out the poi­son­ing the­ory and goes in the sense of a nat­ural death,” the source said.

The French experts’ find­ings dif­fer sig­nif­i­cantly from those of Swiss sci­en­tists, who said last month that their research offered some sup­port for the sug­ges­tion Arafat was killed by polo­nium poi­son­ing.

Rumours and spec­u­la­tion have sur­rounded Arafat’s death since a quick dete­ri­o­ra­tion of his health saw his pass­ing at a mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal near Paris in Novem­ber 2004 at the age of 75.

French doc­tors were unable to say what killed him and an autop­sy was nev­er per­formed, at the request of his wid­ow.

Many Pales­tini­ans believed he was poi­soned by Israel — a claim repeat­edly denied by the Jew­ish state.

Israeli for­eign min­istry spokesman Yigal Pal­mor told AFP the results of the French probe were “no sur­prise”.

France opened a for­mal mur­der inquiry into his death in August 2012, a month after an Al-Jazeera doc­u­men­tary linked his death to polo­nium poi­son­ing.

Some 60 sam­ples were tak­en from Arafat’s remains in Novem­ber 2012 and divid­ed between Swiss and Russ­ian inves­ti­ga­tors and a French team car­ry­ing out a probe at his widow’s request.

Both the pros­e­cu­tors’ office in the Paris sub­urb of Nan­terre, which is con­duct­ing the French probe, and a lawyer for Arafat’s wid­ow Suha refused to com­ment on the investigation’s find­ings Tues­day. . . .

. . . . Pales­tin­ian Jus­tice Min­is­ter Ali Mhan­na last month urged France to release the results of its probe, say­ing the Pales­tini­ans were sure Arafat had been poi­soned and that Israel was the “only sus­pect” in his death.

Israeli Pres­i­dent Shi­mon Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat and Israeli prime min­is­ter Yitzhak Rabin, said last month that the reports of polo­nium poi­son­ing were unbe­liev­able.

“If some­one had want­ed to get rid of Arafat, it would have been eas­ier to do it with a bul­let,” he said.

The Swiss team’s find­ings sparked fresh accu­sa­tions from the Pales­tini­ans and increased ten­sions with Israel at a del­i­cate time.

US-bro­kered peace talks resumed at the end of July after a three-year gap, but have already hit a dead­lock over Israeli set­tle­ment expan­sion in the occu­pied West Bank on land the Pales­tini­ans want for their future state. . . .

7. Note that Qatar has been pro­vid­ing shel­ter to some of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers who fled after the coup against Mor­si.

“Egyp­t’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Finds Havens Abroad” by Abi­gail Haus­lohn­er; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 11/5/2013.

. . . . Cast out by — or, per­haps, saved from— the harsh­est polit­i­cal crack­down in recent Egypt­ian his­to­ry, a hand­ful of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oth­er Islamist lead­ers found refuge here in the Qatari cap­i­tal, while oth­ers trav­eled to Istan­bul, Lon­don and Gene­va.

The exiles’ com­mu­ni­ty is small, dis­or­ga­nized and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly diverse, rang­ing from rel­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate Islamist politi­cians to hard-line Salafists — groups that less than two years ago com­pet­ed against each oth­er in Egypt’s par­lia­men­tary and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

Now, as they push back against the July coup that top­pled their country’s first demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, Mohamed Mor­si, they are on the same team.

At the same time, an exile lead­er­ship is start­ing to take shape here among the shim­mer­ing high-ris­es of Doha. Sev­er­al of the exiles live tem­porar­i­ly in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Ara­bic satel­lite net­work Al Jazeera — and it is in those suites and hotel lob­bies that the future of Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and, more broad­ly, the strat­e­gy and ide­ol­o­gy of polit­i­cal Islam in the coun­try may well be chart­ed. . . .

8. Based in Qatar (which is uti­liz­ing I.G. Far­ben’s Fischer/Tropsch process), Al Jazeera is grow­ing its pres­ence in the Unit­ed States.

In addi­tion to its pur­chase of Al Gore’s “Cur­rent TV” and result­ing entry into the U.S. cable TV mar­ket, Al Jazeera had been broad­cast­ing for some time on the Paci­fi­ca Radio net­work, which caters to the so-called pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty.

One place where Al Jazeer­a’s influ­ence is NOT wax­ing is Egypt.  (See text excerpts below.) In addi­tion to the fact that many of their jour­nal­ists have resigned in protest over the net­work’s bla­tant pro-Broth­er­hood bias, the Egypt­ian army has been arrest­ing some of its staff in the crack­down on Mor­si’s sup­port­ers.

In addi­tion, Al Jazeera cor­re­spon­dents have been barred from news con­fer­ences by fel­low jour­nal­ists, because of the net­work’s pro-Broth­er­hood stance.

In an update, we note that the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to be at log­ger­heads with the net­work.

“Al-Jazeera Egypt Staff Resign Over Orders To “Favor” The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood” by gmb­watch; Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch; 7/9/2013.

Gulf media is report­ing that 22 mem­bers of the Al-Jazeera Egypt­ian bureau have resigned in protest over what they say were instruc­tions from the man­age­ment to “favor the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.” Accord­ing to a Gulf News report: The news chan­nel Al Jazeera Mubash­er Misr saw 22 mem­bers of staff resign on Mon­day in Egypt over what they alleged was cov­er­age that was out of sync with real events in Egypt.

Anchor Karem Mah­moud announced that the staff had resigned in protest against what he called ‘biased cov­er­age’ of the events in Egypt by the Qatari broad­cast­er.

Mah­moud said that the res­ig­na­tions had been brought about by a per­ceived lack of com­mit­ment and Al Jazeera pro­fes­sion­al­ism in media cov­er­age, adding that ‘the man­age­ment in Doha pro­vokes sedi­tion among the Egypt­ian peo­ple and has an agen­da against Egypt and oth­er Arab coun­tries.’

Mah­moud added that the man­age­ment used to instruct each staff mem­ber to favour the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

He said that ‘there are instruc­tions to us to tele­cast cer­tain news’.

Hag­gag Sala­ma, a cor­re­spon­dent of the net­work in Lux­or, had resigned on Sun­day accus­ing it of ‘air­ing lies and mis­lead­ing view­ers’.

He announced his res­ig­na­tion in a phone-in inter­view with Dream 2 chan­nel.

Mean­while, four Egypt­ian mem­bers of edi­to­r­i­al staff at Al Jazeera’s head­quar­ters in Doha resigned in protest against what they termed a ‘biased edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy’ per­tain­ing to the events in Egypt, Ala’a Al Aioti, a news pro­duc­er, told Gulf News by phone . . .

In 2009, Egypt­ian author­i­ties were report­ed to be in the process of revok­ing Al-Jazeera’s license to broad­cast and that the net­work was plan­ning to close its bureau office in Cairo.

Leaked US State Depart­ment cables indi­cate that Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar and fund­ed by the Qatari gov­ern­ment, oper­ates as an arm of Qatari for­eign pol­i­cy which has recent­ly been strong­ly sup­port­ive of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the recent­ly deposed Mohamed Mor­si. . . .

8b.  Note that the gov­ern­ment of Qatar sub­si­dized the Mor­si regime. It is no sur­prise, there­fore, that Al-Jazeera, also sub­si­dized by the Qatari gov­ern­ment, man­i­fest­ed a strong pro-Broth­er­hood/pro/­Mor­si bias.

RECOMMENDED READING: “Why Does Al Jazeera Love A Hate­ful Islam­ic Extrem­ist?” by gmb­watch; Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch; 7/11/2013.

Bloomberg colum­nist Jef­frey Gold­berg has pub­lished an arti­cle titled “Why Does Al Jazeera Love a Hate­ful Islam­ic Extrem­ist?” that sum­ma­rizes recent devel­op­ments adverse for Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Youssef Qaradawi. The arti­cle begins:

So, it hasn’t been the best week for Al Jazeera, the tele­vi­sion net­work owned by Qatar’s despot­ic rul­ing fam­i­ly, for the same rea­son that it hasn’t been a great week for the despot­ic rul­ing fam­i­ly itself: the ouster of Egypt’s pres­i­dent, Mohamed Mur­si, the bump­kin fun­da­men­tal­ist.

Qatar pumped a lot of mon­ey into Mursi’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment, and for what? The Qatari roy­al fam­i­ly should sue the Broth­er­hood for malfea­sance. So much hope was rid­ing on Mursi’s exper­i­ment in polit­i­cal Islam. Although Qatar spreads risk around a bit — it has pro­vid­ed mil­lions of dol­lars to Islamists in Syr­ia and to the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group Hamas (now there’s an invest­ment in the future) — Mur­si rep­re­sent­ed its main chance to advance the cause of Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism.

And now, to add insult to finan­cial injury, Sau­di Ara­bia just promised post-Mur­si Egypt $5 bil­lion, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, anoth­er of Qatar’s main rivals, has kicked in $3 bil­lion.

As for Al Jazeera, which is sched­uled to intro­duce its Amer­i­can net­work next month in place of Al Gore’s hap­less Cur­rent TV, well, let’s put it this way: It will cer­tain­ly be more pop­u­lar among Amer­i­cans than it is among Egyp­tians. Which isn’t say­ing much.

Jour­nal­ists Protest

The mil­lions of Egyp­tians who rose up against Mursi’s rule also aired their feel­ings about Al Jazeera’s breath­less pro-Mus­lim Broth­er­hood cov­er­age. The harsh crit­i­cism direct­ed at the net­work prompt­ed Egypt­ian reporters to expel Al Jazeera reporters from a recent news con­fer­ence, and led sev­er­al jour­nal­ists to quit Al Jazeera’s Egypt oper­a­tion, appar­ent­ly to protest its obvi­ous bias.

One of the cor­re­spon­dents who quit, Hag­gag Sala­ma, accused his ex-boss­es of ‘air­ing lies and mis­lead­ing view­ers.’ The jour­nal­ist Abdel Latif el-Menawy is report­ed to have called Al Jazeera a ‘pro­pa­gan­da chan­nel’ for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. It’s pos­si­ble that some of the jour­nal­ists who quit did so as a mat­ter of self-preser­va­tion; the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary is behav­ing in pre­dictably heavy-hand­ed ways toward jour­nal­ists it doesn’t like. But it’s also entire­ly plau­si­ble that they quit because they couldn’t abide Qatari gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in their report­ing. . . .

8c.  “RECOMMENDED READING: Al Jazeera Faces Crit­i­cism In Egypt Over Its Cov­er­age Of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood”; Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Watch; 1/8/2014.

The Wash­ing­ton Post has fea­tured a sto­ry titled “Al Jazeera Faces Crit­i­cism In Egypt Over Its Cov­er­age Of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood” which looks at crit­i­cism of Al Jazeera over its rela­tion­ship to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The sto­ry begins:

“Ever since the military’s ouster of Egypt­ian pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si in July, Al Jazeera, the pio­neer­ing Arab-lan­guage news broad­cast­er, hasn’t shrunk from call­ing his removal some­thing the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment won’t: a coup.

That high­ly loaded dec­la­ra­tion, as well as its relent­less and, crit­ics say, sym­pa­thet­ic cov­er­age of Mor­si and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood move­ment, has turned Al Jazeera into a vir­tu­al ene­my of the state in Egypt. Its jour­nal­ists have been harassed and banned, and five remain in cus­tody, includ­ing three who were arrest­ed last week for alleged­ly harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty. Al Jazeera’s local TV stu­dios in Egypt, though not its transna­tion­al satel­lite trans­mis­sions, have been shut down, forc­ing its few remain­ing Egypt­ian jour­nal­ists to work from makeshift facil­i­ties, such as a Cairo hotel room. . . .

. . . . Since then, Egypt­ian author­i­ties and Al Jazeera’s crit­ics — includ­ing some of the network’s own employ­ees — have accused it of being a mouth­piece for Mor­si and the now-out­lawed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

Al Jazeera has giv­en a lot sup­port to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. There’s no doubt about that,’ said Hugh Miles, a free­lance jour­nal­ist in Cairo and the author of ‘Al-Jazeera: The Inside Sto­ry of the Arab News Chan­nel That Is Chal­leng­ing the West.’ . . .”

. . . . The GMBDW report­ed ear­li­er this week that Egypt had sum­moned the Qatari Ambas­sador to the Egypt­ian for­eign min­istry in order to object to Qatari crit­i­cism of the crack­down on the Broth­er­hood as well as to Qatari broad­cast­er Al-Jazeera’s cov­er­age of events.

The GMBDW report­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2013 on the ongo­ing con­flicts regard­ing Al-Jazeera’s cov­er­age of events in Egypt. In July 2012, the GMBDW had report­ed on the res­ig­na­tion of the 22 mem­bers of the Al-Jazeera Egypt­ian bureau in protest over what they say were instruc­tions from the man­age­ment to “favor the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.” In 2009, Egypt­ian author­i­ties were report­ed to be in the process of revok­ing Al-Jazeera’s license to broad­cast and that the net­work was plan­ning to close its bureau office in Cairo.

Leaked US State Depart­ment cables indi­cate that Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar and fund­ed by the Qatari gov­ern­ment, oper­ates as an arm of Qatari for­eign pol­i­cy which has recent­ly been strong­ly sup­port­ive of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the recent­ly deposed Mohamed Mor­si. Our pre­de­ces­sor pub­li­ca­tion exten­sive­ly cov­ered the role of Qatar as a sup­port­er of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and was the first to report on the strong ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas of Wadah Khan­far, the for­mer Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of Al-Jazeera who resigned in 2011 after serv­ing for eight years. . . . .

9.  So bla­tant is the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood bias on Al Jazeera that even Qatar (which finances the net­work) is launch­ing a news chan­nel to com­pete with the obvi­ous­ly taint­ed Al Jazeera.

“Qatar to Launch Al Jazeera Coun­ter­weight” by Justin Vela; TheNational.ae; 5/5/2014.

Qatar is launch­ing a new tele­vi­sion sta­tion as a polit­i­cal coun­ter­weight to Al Jazeera amid con­cern the net­work has become too sup­port­ive of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

The new sta­tion is to be an Ara­bic-lan­guage news chan­nel based in Lon­don and broad­cast­ing across the Arab world. It is one of sev­eral new media ven­tures launched under the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who suc­ceeded his father in June and is seek­ing to put his own stamp on the country’s vast soft pow­er machine.

The dri­ving force behind the new sta­tion is Azmi Bishara, the Pales­tin­ian direc­tor of the Doha-based Arab Cen­tre for Research and Pol­icy Stud­ies, and a close con­fi­dant of the emir.

Mr Bishara is known to be “fair­ly anti-Broth­er­hood” and will­ing to crit­i­cise the group pub­licly, said Michael Stephens, deputy direc­tor of the Roy­al Unit­ed Ser­vices Insti­tute for Defence and Secu­rity Stud­ies Qatar.

“Bishara rec­om­mended that it be start­ed. His own beliefs are that Qatar has been too close to the Ikhwan for too long.”

Mr Stephens said the chan­nel, named AlAra­by Tele­vi­sion Net­work, was sup­posed to launch in Jan­u­ary but kept get­ting pushed back.

It is cur­rently recruit­ing staff, plac­ing job adverts for a satel­lite coor­di­na­tor and a plan­ning pro­ducer and head­hunt­ing from exist­ing Ara­bic news sta­tions such as BBC Ara­bic.

Media out­lets serve as Qatar’s main soft pow­er tool on the inter­na­tional stage, espe­cially the Doha-based tele­vi­sion net­work Al Jazeera.

Since its launch in 1996 Al Jazeera has grown expo­nen­tially but its crit­i­cism of oth­er Ara­bian Gulf coun­tries and will­ing­ness to give voice to mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, in line with Doha’s sup­port for Islamists after the Arab Spring upris­ings, has angered Qatar’s neigh­bours.

In one of the worst diplo­matic spats in the GCC’s his­tory, the UAE, Sau­di Ara­bia and Bahrain with­drew their ambas­sadors from Qatar in March. The protest came after Youssef Al Qaradawi, a spir­i­tual guide of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, who has a show on Al Jazeera, con­tin­ued their poli­cies.

Sau­di Ara­bia con­sid­ers the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to be a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion, a posi­tion backed by the UAE.

The new sta­tion will serve as a way for Qatar to not only boost its already size­able media indus­try, but also allow Sheikh Tamim to step out of the shad­ow of his father, Sheikh Hamad bin Khal­ifa Al Thani, and rebal­ance the country’s poli­cies after draw­ing the ire of its neigh­bours.

“My view is that it’s the emir try­ing to be his own man,” said Andrew Ham­mond, a Mid­dle East ana­lyst at the Euro­pean Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions. “He hasn’t real­ly emerged from the shad­ow of his father.”

While Qatar would risk los­ing face and region­al influ­ence by clos­ing Al Jazeera, the estab­lish­ment of the new out­lets appears part of a strat­egy to gain a new audi­ence.

Instead of com­pet­ing direct­ly with Al Jazeera, the new sta­tion would be more like­ly to com­pete for view­ers with Sau­di Arabia’s Al Ara­biya tele­vi­sion.

Yet with so many Ara­bic-lan­guage news out­lets in exis­tence, Qatar’s new ven­tures are unlike­ly to offer Sheikh Tamim the same kind of pow­er that Al Jazeera offered his father Sheikh Hamad.

“This chan­nel is designed to cor­rect the image of Qatar, not to assert its inter­ests,” said Mr Stephens.

The tele­vi­sion sta­tion was reg­is­tered in the UK in Sep­tem­ber 2013, accord­ing to busi­ness records.

Pub­lic doc­u­ments describe the company’s objec­tives as: “To set up and oper­ate tele­vi­sion and broad­c­st­ing [sic] sta­tions and ser­vices, pub­lish­ing and print­ing news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines.”

Sabah Al Mukhtar, the Lon­don-based lawyer who reg­is­tered the com­pany, described Al Jazeera as the land­mark sta­tion, but said it was “less impar­tial than it was before”.

“With­out Al Jazeera you would not have AlAra­by, you would not have the oth­er sta­tions that are flour­ish­ing all over the place,” Mr Al Mukhtar said.

Qatar has also launched a news web­site based in Lon­don and with an office in Beirut. Named Al Ara­by Al Jadeed, the web­site is owned by Fadaat Media Lim­ited, which reg­is­tered in the UK in May 2013, short­ly before Sheikh Tamim took over from his father.

Sul­tan Ghan­im Al Kuwari, a busi­ness­man from a promi­nent Qatari fam­ily, is list­ed on the doc­u­ments as direc­tor.

An employ­ee of Fadaat Media, who refused to give his name, described Al Ara­by Al Jadeed as intend­ed to offer unbi­ased polit­i­cal news focused on “lib­eral free­doms” and the “ideals of the Arab Spring”.

The web­site will be only in Ara­bic for now and aims to even­tu­ally pub­lish a print edi­tion, he said.

The move to estab­lish new media out­lets is like­ly con­nected to a wider Qatari strat­egy that sees Al Jazeera rebrand­ing itself by renam­ing its sports divi­sion beIN and its children’s chan­nel JeemTV.

“I think they are split­ting up the brand,” said Mr Stephens.

While Al Jazeera is open­ly fund­ed by the Qatari-gov­ern­ment, its involve­ment in Fadaat Media and Al Ara­by Tele­vi­sion Net­work is not clear.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Fadaat Media denied any con­nec­tion to a gov­ern­ment, say­ing that the com­pany was invest­ed in by pri­vate busi­ness­men.

“It’s not that they need a writ­ten signed approval from the emir, but of course they would want his tac­tic sup­port,” Mr Stephens said of the new out­lets.

When Emir Tamim came to pow­er in June 2013, there was an expec­ta­tion he would change Qatar’s poli­cies.

Yet, there were few imme­di­ate signs of change. Though he had abdi­cated, Sheikh Hamad was still believed to wield con­sid­er­able pow­er behind the scenes and Tamim did not alter his father’s poli­cies.

Flo­rence Gaub, a senior ana­lyst at the EU Insti­tute for Secu­rity Stud­ies, said the loca­tion and even the name of the new tele­vi­sion sug­gested Sheikh Tamim had big ambi­tions for it.

“It shows the ambi­tion to cre­ate some­thing new and maybe even shows the ambi­tion to cre­ate some­thing big­ger than Al Jazeera.”

Qatar has also launched a news web­site based in Lon­don and with an office in Beirut. Named Al Ara­by Al Jadeed, the web­site is owned by Fadaat Media Lim­ited, which reg­is­tered in the UK in May 2013, short­ly before Sheikh Tamim took over from his father.

Sul­tan Ghan­im Al Kuwari, a busi­ness­man from a promi­nent Qatari fam­ily, is list­ed on the doc­u­ments as direc­tor.

An employ­ee of Fadaat Media, who refused to give his name, described Al Ara­by Al Jadeed as intend­ed to offer unbi­ased polit­i­cal news focused on “lib­eral free­doms” and the “ideals of the Arab Spring”.

The web­site will be only in Ara­bic for now and aims to even­tu­ally pub­lish a print edi­tion, he said.

The move to estab­lish new media out­lets is like­ly con­nected to a wider Qatari strat­egy that sees Al Jazeera rebrand­ing itself by renam­ing its sports divi­sion beIN and its children’s chan­nel JeemTV.

“I think they are split­ting up the brand,” said Mr Stephens.

While Al Jazeera is open­ly fund­ed by the Qatari-gov­ern­ment, its involve­ment in Fadaat Media and Al Ara­by Tele­vi­sion Net­work is not clear.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Fadaat Media denied any con­nec­tion to a gov­ern­ment, say­ing that the com­pany was invest­ed in by pri­vate busi­ness­men.

“It’s not that they need a writ­ten signed approval from the emir, but of course they would want his tac­tic sup­port,” Mr Stephens said of the new out­lets.

10. Arafat’s per­son­al physi­cian stat­ed that Arafat died of AIDS. Check out this YouTube seg­ment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y89pfwDRAV0