The Bogus Alibi For Banning Al-Jazeera English in America

The U.S. Corporate oligarchy which controls what is broadcast on television in America has virtually banned Al-Jazeera English in this country. It is only available on two small cable providers (one in Vermont, the most normal state in the U.S.) plus the capital city of the empire, Washington, D.C., where the Imperialist elites have used it to get their information on the uprisings in their middle eastern client states. (How ironic, the network they revile, which their military has repeatedly bombed, is where they go to get a realistic view of the "facts on the ground." To escape their own propaganda system, they turn to one of their hated enemies. Al-Jazeera's crime, of course, is being too honest.)

The lie, which you can read in places like The New York Times, is that there is no demand for Al-J in America, that it's merely a business decision, all about ratings, nothing more. The bogusness of this bullshit is easily revealed. For one, millions of people in America have tuned in to Al-J English via the Internet during the past couple of months. For another, as anyone with cable well knows, there are hundreds of channels on cable, many of them empty, and many of them filled with unbelievable sludge that no one watches, plus a lot of duplication. Ergo, this is another Lie designed to disguise the ideological and political motivation of the oligarchs.

In the same vein, Rupert Murdoch's reactionary motives are ALWAYS denied in the media, including the "liberal" media like the aforementioned NY Times. He is said to be motivated solely by business factors. Pure bullshit, as anyone who has observed him at all can see. Just two examples: keeping the NY Post for decades, which loses millions of dollars a year, but provides a platform for vile reactionary agitprop in New York City, and his Fox "News," which contains no objective news at all, but functions as a 24 hour platform for incessant reactionary ideological drumbeating. Murdoch personally appointed lifelong GOP political operative Roger Ailes, who masterminded Nixon's media strategy in 1968, among other crimes, to run it. Ailes is a hardcore, dogmatic fanatic.