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Posted under the exact same title - "Is Google the New Microsoft" - but I referenced an article written by Rory O'Connor in (of all places) Al Jazeera. It was in the "recent articles" queue for about five minutes, then disappeared. Maybe it triggered the "Islamic propaganda" filter?

BTW the O'Connor article is quite good, he draws the parallel quite well. O'Connor was the managing editor of a counter-culture arts weekly in Boston called the Real Paper which had a nice run during the '70s.

Wahabbism, had you ever made a proper study of it - or any of the topics you gloss - had no significant impact, following or currency until the late 20th century. The doctrines were anathema to most Muslim cultures (plural), until reaction to post-colonial conditions (politics not ideology) and the utility it provided for the Saudi despotism established and supported by the UK and later US.

Your worldview is built on misinformation and the self-seeking rationalizations of post-colonial era empires.

The towers were crashed by Saudis, inspired by a former CIA asset, funded by royals, who were and still are under sponsorship of your own government. No Afghans were even peripherally or logistically involved. They offered a host country after Sudan ejected a few dozen zealots

The Taliban were not tremendously happy with the Arabs and were eager to rid themselves of them PRIOR to 911. They actually wanted to extradite Bin Laden to international justice before Sept.- but were turned down by the US. The US ALSO rejected such an offer AFTER 911!

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2011/09/20119115334167663.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5

By the way, do you SPEAK Pashtun or Dari?

Ke suhma chereh nagoo, kharajee?

It's very convenient to claim an authoritative view of a people's character, intentions and meaning - when one can only receive this knowledge through intermediaries with an antagonistic agenda.

The saddest thing is that you will wake up, crying in the middle of the night, for the rest of your life. And the institutions that fed you this shit and pointed you to the kill won't have time for your troubles. They'll be too busy burning though more screws like yourself, in some other trillionaire's adventure - while they make the States resemble a gulag evermore closely by the day.

Any attacks aiming purely for civilian targets are terrorists in my book.

Civilians living on land that was stolen from you. Civilians who, thanks to Israel's laws on compulsory military service, are either 1) active duty soldiers defending the occupation 2) future active duty soldiers defending the occupation 3) reservists who can be called back into service to defend the occupation.

And even, then, there is no comparison in the levels of civilian-killing even if you want to call it terrorism. Israelis stand a higher chance of being murdered by another Israeli than dying in a "terrorist attack". You have a higher chance of being killed by a bus colliding with your car in an accident (not car accidents overall, but accidents involving buses) than in being killed by a Quassam rocket.

Whether the Judean desert is stolen and occupied is IMHO a big grey area which I don't want to discuss

Any particular reason why? The U.N. partition plan that the Palestinians (rightfully) rejected would have given the majority of the land to a minority of the population. The vast majority of whom were not people to the area, but immigrants. Furthermore, blockades are an act of war according to Israel. Meaning that according to Israeli logic, attacks on Israel in response to the far more draconian blockade of Gaza are perfectly justified.

As for your accusation of the IDF terrorism, I'll have to go for a [Citation needed].

Sure thing. This isn't the most ironclad example as both the attacks (did shelling hit the building directly or indirectly?) and the death tolls are heavily disputed. So I'll talk more about things that are not in dispute:

What could the IDF even gain from just massacring a school with no military target as you suggest?

What would the IDF have to gain from full scale bombardment and invasion when even the IDF admits that Hamas had stopped firing rockets and that Quassam rockets are more of a psycological than military threat?

And furthermore, if terrorism is the bane of Israel's existence, then why has the current prime minister celebrated the 60th anniversary of an Irgun (Zionist terrorist group) attack on a hotel used by the British as a headquarters before Israel's "independence"? How about the nuclear scientists assassinated in Iran, undoubtedly carried out or funded by Mossad?

Get 'em right here.

Oh yeah, there's music there too. Have I said enough to get Slashdot shut down for linking, and armed men in black uniforms sent to my house to terrorize me? No? Well, how about a few more links:

• Project Gutenberg
• MusOpen
• Library of Congress
• A used bookstore
• An audio file format with no DRM
• The Pirate Bay
• The Pirate Bay via an IP address
• A porn site
• An Arabic news site
• A hacker magazine
• Wikipedia article on 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/04/2012417142921275408.html

[...]The alleged poisoning on Tuesday is being blamed on hardline conservatives who oppose female education.

Since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban, which banned education for women and girls, females have returned to schools, especially in Kabul.[...]

Taliban are just another brand of conservatives who abuse religion to manipulate people.

[...]In the past acid has been thrown in the faces of women and girls by hardline Muslims while walking to school.[...]

I think religion is a mental disease. Just listen to the shit hardline Christians say.

I definitely think it's a valid criticism that NASA has it's priorities wrong. However, it should be noted that the above comment if from an interview with Al Jazeera - it seems clear to me that Mr. Bolden was tailoring these remarks to the Al Jazeera audience. Again, it's fine to argue that this is wrong regardless, but context does matter. Judge for yourself:

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html

"It seems to be right out of the FBI playbook. It is almost identical to a number of prior arrests, where the FBI finds some vulnerable young man ... They then basically encourage him to get involved in a campaign to be recruited, in this case by some sort of al-Qaeda creation, which really isn’t al-Qaeda. And then arm him weapons and then arrest him. “We've seen things along these lines for years now, of entrapment as a technique supposedly for investigative purposes, but actually for prosecutorial purposes."

Freedom of the press is an illusion, has been for a long time now.

Freedom of the press is reserved for those who have one, and most of the press is controlled by a few companies which also just happen to be the big content companies.

Lack of imagination detected, on both your parts.

Democracy Now

PBS

Al Jazeera

No one needs to limit themselves to the likes of MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, Forbes, Fox, Mother Jones, ..., not to mention the plethora of webbish stuff (blogs & etc.). Anyone who does is just being lazy (or has kids, so no time :-).

British montage
I have no fixed British paper currently I use this to find them. I look for ones with high online presence who are not pernicious asses about subscribing and who keep the tabliod pablum low. I choose one and read it for a week if I can stand it then pick another. Newspapers that are not professional are ignored. I don't provide a list as others may like ones I would not. I also pick single British news articles off google news if it looks like it wasn't written by a rabid wombat.
ahref=http://www.wrx.zen.co.uk/britnews.htmrel=url2html-7729http://www.wrx.zen.co.uk/britnews.htm>

The Times of India in English.
Good articles and better written than most US news sources. Their RSS feeds are fine and there are enough choices to be daunting at first.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Middle east
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz in English.
http://www.haaretz.com/
and Al Jazeera in English
http://www.aljazeera.com/
Picking the peanuts out is trying. Read these together and make comparisons between them and other sources.

Pravda in English.
I've read enough stories they've written that provide a lot more information than other news sources that has shown to be accurate. I'm more impressed with them than propaganda would lead me to believe. They cannot be as free about in country reporting but international reporting can be very good. You have to read them with an eye to government propaganda but where they can they do fine original work.
http://english.pravda.ru/

Japan
I don't have one.

Some of the rest.
Finding a newspaper that is not censored or self-censoring to protect itself in some areas is difficult. A lot of newspapers have no choice. If I see an article I find interesting that occurred in a country known for censorship I also check surround countries news sources and others in country. I don't rigorously do this as I can only dedicate a fixed amount of time to being a news junkie.

If anyone has a pointer to a small, well written, non-tabloid, smart Australian online news source post it. I'm not seeing much I care about as most of it is cut and paste from others or is tabloid pablum.

no, no. it is way, WAY more disgusting than that.

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/hamzahkashghri-sparks-polarising-debate-twitter-0022029

Hashtags dedicated to pursuing the lowlife (or despicable) Hamza Kashgari. And raise this to the authorities for insulting our prophet. Retweet.

Spineless little fuckers. That whole article, including that he "repented" of his awesome, beatiful, and TRUE tweets, makes me want to choke someone. And I'd do well to remember all the Muslims who are just as appalled as this as me. Islam is a big thing, and Saudia Arabia is just a desert hole with oil and a bunch of clueless old fucks who wear towels and spent breadcrumbs of what they don't understand on things they don't understand. I'm not a racist, and I try real hard to not be a bigot, but this just makes my blood boil.

see this link someone else posted.. it does explain a lot, and details his as well as other reactions in the aftermath, too:

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/hamzahkashghri-sparks-polarising-debate-twitter-0022029

Hamza Kashgari is a Saudi. The offense was committed in Saudi Arabia, from which he fled to Malaysia. That's a standard fugitive situation. He was in transit to New Zealand where he apparently intended to request political asylum.

Al Jazeera has images of his Twitter feed, with English translations. Here's the full text:

"On your birthday I find you in front of me wherever I go, I love many things about you and hate others, and there are many things about you I don't understand. On your birthday I won't bow in front of you, I won't kiss your hand. Instead, I will shake it as an equal, I will smile at you and you will smile back and I will talk to you as a friend, no more. All the great gods that we worship, all the great fears that we dread, all the desires that we wait for impatiently are but figments of our imagination. No Saudi women will go to hell, because it's impossible to go there twice."

It's amazing how touchy the Islamic theocracies are about this sort of thing. It's as if they're terrified that their whole religious edifice will collapse if there's any criticism. Islam has never had a Martin Luther.

You probably believe that. So here is a very recent counter-example form Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/201221084241265250.html
If you tell me AJE is American, I will have to beat you.

Yes, but is the experience worth an extra $90,000 a year? The value of experience usually hits a plateau, but workers still want wages to continue increasing.

First off, I'll ignore your ignorant and prejudiced views about older workers [i.e. workers who aren't in their 20s]. This discrimination is something that industry leaders should be put in jail for, but that isn't going to happen, and everybody should know by now the reason why. To continue...

Nope, for all you free market capitalists out their, wages should be market driven, which means that the United States government should not be artificially flooding the market with cheap foreign labour.

Ironic how the bourgeoisie don't have a problem with denying entry to cheap unskilled Mexican labour, but when it comes to cheap skilled labour from Europe or India, these wealthy corporations want the U.S. government to spread its legs wide open.

BTW, it's not just technology firms that asks for government intervention to help subsidize their industries with cheap foreign trained workers. In Canada the construction industry has always pressured the government to let in experienced labour while claiming that there is a labour shortage in Canada (despite the high unemployment rate).

Nope, all these so-called labour shortages are industry manufactured and government sanctioned. The people who gain are the share holders and executives. Everybody else loses.

On a somewhat related note, there is an interesting article on corporate welfare at AlJazeera.

References:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122164215194680.html

I have already seen those and no script marked then as untrusted including the advertisers they use, and blocked their cookies. Cato of course is a right wing stink tank not a journalism site and NLPC,well, you can practically feel the oil oozing from that site. Of course there are tens of thousands of choices so why not try http://www.aljazeera.com/ or http://rt.com/.

[L]ook at Al-Jazeera's long fight to get a foothold in US [...]

Fortunately they've made headway:

Al Jazeera English launches in New York

In a communist economy, the population are slaves. Literal whips are replaced by the Type 56 and threats to your family.

In the Laogai they beat people if the production quotas are not met. Americans celebrate Christmas with Laogai made Christmas lights.

China is not communist. China is capitalist. Often the corporations and the government are controlled and influenced by each other, just like in the United States of America.

These two countries bad-mouth each other, and yet they have so much in common. Economically they are both in favour of exploiting an underclass to indulge the 1 percent of the population.

They also have censorship in China as well, like the censoring of "indecent" images and religious content.

Calling China "communist" gives the ignorant masses something to hate. It is a great diversion from the slavery of the American prison system and the War on Drugs.

Actually from what i have read. That is true with one exception. The one exception is a new one. Is that during all out war nukes are tolerable. from Aljazeera http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/20121212653433219.html In the 1980s, the revolutionary leaders of the new Islamic Republic of Iran swore off weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as un-Islamic. During the course of the war, however, Saddam Hussein's Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian troops, spurring Ayatollah Khomeini to reverse his position and restart the country's chemical weapons programme. In the process, Khomeini established the philosophical foundation for a key principle within the Islamic Republic known as "maslahat-e nizam" or "expediency of the system", by which the needs of the Islamic Republic as a political institution might trump even Islamic law. This suggests that Iran's commitments not to develop WMD in the early 1980s carried an implicit understanding that the religious prohibition on such weapons does not necessarily apply in a state of war. So far, Tehran's leaders have declared that they have no interest in nuclear weapons, citing the same religious opposition as before. The US intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that if Iran wanted to develop atomic bombs, it has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to do so. Then why hasn't Iran put its technical know-how to use building up a nuclear arsenal? Experts widely agree that Tehran has yet to form a consensus in favour of actually building the bomb, and in the absence of such a consensus prefers merely to keep the option open for the future. Whether or not Iran builds a nuclear weapon, then, will be based on Tehran's cost-benefit calculation. Fundamentally, the future of Iran's nuclear programme will be decided within the context of Iran's larger foreign policy strategy, which Iran's leaders have characterised as a policy of responding to pressure with pressure. Therefore, the easiest way for Iran to arrive at a consensus in favour of building nuclear weapons would be in response to a provocation from the West.

Dr. Majid Shahriari, Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi, Dr. Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Dr. Ardeshir Hassanpour. Those are just the known ones.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/killing-irans-nuclear-scientists/story?id=14152453
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11860928
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2010/11/201011297228879910.html
http://www.eurasiareview.com/03102011-ahmadinejad-accuses-iaea-of-releasing-list-of-iranian-scientists/

Errr, about Ron Paul and the dominionists: Religious Fundamentalism in the Republican Party.

Usually when people (or corporations) rant against "slavery", they are ranting against "white slavery" or prostitution. Like the article says; "... intervention and rescue of people being held, forced to work or provide sex against their will...". Of course these same people are in denial of the fact that many people deliberately get into "sexual slavery" (i.e. prostitution) because the money is good. Of course, there will be people coercing their employees, just like in the industrial sector.

Too bad all (or at least most) of the talk about "slavery" is only about prostitution. Too bad, because a lot of large corporations like the Fox television network use Chinese prison slaves to make novelty products for distribution in the United States (like Homer Simpson slippers).

Not to mention that industrial slavery is rampant in North America. It's a crime that nobody in the Conservative movement wants to talk about.

Additional References:
The Virgin Trade
AND
Youtube

Well, duh, what could you expect from a group called "gaffe"?

Now, I don't see what's particularly embarassing about the number "422". And the rumor about some (or all) of the founding Zetas having been trained in the US is just that, as no source that claims it can provide a single name, not even Wikipedia's (omg!): US-trained cartel terrorises Mexico. The Embassy in México is much more credible in this respect:

The Embassy conducted an extensive
cross-check of our database of Mexican military officials who
participated in U.S.-funded training programs against lists
of known members of Los ZETAS. The comparison of databases
did not produce any hits. However, intelligence from other
sources yielded the name of one individual was reportedly
trained by U.S. forces, retired from the Mexican Military,
was forcibly recruited into Los ZETAS

It's not even surprising to find some tabloids that use this same cable as proof that "several US trained soldiers switched to the ZETAS."

So I would tell you to leave the flag burning aside and stick to the facts, lest you end like Michael Moore. But fact is, we don't have enough. Yes, we know that the cartels could not grow so big without being in direct collusion with the government. Heck, some of them are demanding equal treatment, as it seems they are envious of the high connections of the Sinaloa's cartel! (which seem to be working, if you're to believe the pretty maps in the NYT or BBC News, which show it controlling the whole west half of México)

We know that corruption reaches on every level of government and military. Just look at Raúl Salinas, brother of former president Carlos, which ended up in jail, not for his crimes, but for political vendettas. And it was also politics what eventually led to his acquittal. We know he's guilty, we know where his hundreds of millions came from. But the people that could provide the proof won't, if they value their life style, or life itself.

And that's the real problem, me thinks: values. When we're bombarded from every angle with the idea that the only life worth living is in the numb comfort of expensive stuff, wild sex, hip drugs and sugary rock, then it just follows that you will have lots of people trying to obtain money by the easiest means available so they can fill their emptiness with shiny things and/or get wasted in style every weekend, be it on Tijuana or New Jersey. The common good can't compete with a 20mil house, honesty is just another commodity (on a sharp downward trend), and why read a boring poem when you can freaken hallucinate your own. "It was the envy of virtue, what made of Cain a criminal / Glory to him as it's vice, what is envied most today!"

But daydreaming aside, the only way to have truth and justice right now, is to buy them. And as long as the rich kids keep paying with fat wads and big guns, the drug and political cartels will outbid the rest of us. Still, outgunned as we are, we should aim for the truth and search for the facts, however tempting it is to brandish rumors and propaganda.

Sure. Or maybe Iran decided to claim to have shot down a US drone because they need a propaganda boost.

The Iranians have released no photos. This is probably because there are no pictures of a RQ-170 except for a handful of grainy photos from Afghanistan. If they'd actually shot one down, they'd have plastered the media with photos of the thing.

It gets better if you read Al-Jazeera: they're claiming that Iran's elite cyberwarfare unit brought down the plane. No kidding. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2011/12/20111241599102532.html

Is there really such a thing as "free" trade amongst authoritarian countries? Do the Chinese economic practices of the laogai qualify as a fair trade practice?

Maybe we should give up this farce of free trade. The only people who benefit from "free" trade are the gangsters and criminals who own and control major corporations and the bankers who fund them.

As they're primarily in Arab normally nobody references them as a source.

Al Jazeera English is massive, worldwide, and an excellent source of domestic (American) news. I highly recommend it.

They're far more known by reputation than by people that actually read any of their journalism and is qualified to say whether it's biased or not.

True enough.

That's proving a bit difficult, because there's just so much violence. It wasn't this attack I was thinking of. (It also definitely wasn't this one, or this, though both did involve the IDF standing by and doing nothing. This act of sabotage under the supervision of IDF troops is interesting but irrelevant.)

Note that Palestinians don't get off so lightly if they attack settlers; sometimes the whole messy business of trial and evidence is skipped and they're just shot in their beds.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll find the right link eventually, but it's a lot like searching for a needle in a haystack.

The 'Live on scene' is pretty rare already. Almost everything is taped and edited. And even now many people believe what they see as they will have only one (if that) source of information. How many people will actually look at what others have to say? http://aljazeera.com/ as an alternative? Nah, because that is propaganda from the enemy. Better just watch Fox News.

People do not want to be informed. They want to be entertained.

What are they afraid of, some guy might exchange Blackberry PINs with an unmarried woman?

Prince warns S. Arabia of apocalypse

'He warned that the Saudi royal family is no longer able to "impose" itself on people, arguing that deviations in carrying out the religious concepts that make up the basis of the Saudi government "have gotten out of our hands," so that the opposition views our acts as "interfering in people's private life and restricting their liberties."

"If we are wise, we must leave this country to its people, whose dislike for us is increasing," said Prince Turki, advising Saudi officials to escape with their families.'

This looks to me like a small local story being talked up to a level of importance it simply doesn't warrant in order to make the author seem more important or insightful.

This follows on the exhibition of "1001 Inventions" that toured the UK last year which claimed such 'Islamic inventions' as "flying with wings and rocket flying." It's part of a drive to show Islam as a progressive force.

No wait...we should have let Saddam get nukes...no wait...we should let President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad get nukes so he can blow up the Israelis *then* us as he has said. Because we all know the Holocaust was a myth.http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/ira n.israel/ And any who would help the 'Zionists' should be wiped off the face of the earth. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/26/ahma dinejad/index.html/ http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=9898/

Because we should wait until something happens to us first...no wait http://www.september11news.com/111wtcreutersitaly. jpg/ we did already. Maybe our country *is* wrong and we should listen to better leaders http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/09/20/chave z.un/index.html/ as our leader is obviously the devil incarnate.

Maybe we've lost too many soldiers and should pull out...no wait...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_toll#War _and_military_action/...we've lost more in those than any other time...wait wait...might we have lost close to as many in Katrina? Where are the war drums beating for those people? Where are the people complaining that those families still don't have homes to move back into?

But I digress.

Why people like you terrorize themselves into believing that we need to give up what makes America America escapes me.

You know, it would make us a lot safer if we rounded up all the Muslims (no, better make it everyone who looks remotely middle eastern) and put them in "internment camps." If the TSA started handcuffing everyone who flies to their seat, we wouldn't need to worry about anyone hijacking a plane ever again. I'm sure officials could catch at least a few terrorists if they were allowed to search anyone they found suspicious. There's even a chance that they might be able to beat some names out of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. I'm pretty sure that we'd catch a few more terrorists (or at least people who hate America) if the FBI were to round up everyone who ever entered "al quaeda" into Google. Perhaps the NSA should preemptively wiretap everyone who requests http://www.aljazeera.com? Yet none of these things have been seriously proposed, except the torture one (because torture is no longer a debasement of everything America holds dear if they're terrorists). Care to think why?

You would have hated the Founding Fathers for the laws they wrote. You think they didn't know that the 2nd Amendment would make the police's job harder? You think they didn't know that the 4th would seriously impede legitimate investigations? That the 5th gave conspirators a free hand to stonewall investigations? That the First Amendment, giving anyone the right to say whatever they wanted (except in condition of causing immediate danger), would let all manner of sickos and hatemongers spew their filth without fear of reprisal?

Do you want to know why they would write such laws, which the Bush administration would no doubt (correctly) denounce because they "impede legitimate investigations" if they were proposed today? Exactly BECAUSE the Bush administration, or the Clinton administration, or the Reagan or Carter or Ford or Nixon or Hoover or Grant administrations would denounce such gaurantees in the name of efficiency and convenience. The Founders KNEW that power breeds corruption, and they knew exactly where the powers unequivocally denied to the government in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights would lead on very, very short order because they'd just overthrown such a government. They intentionally hog-tied the Federal Government because they knew where anything else would lead, and they knew how many people died getting back their rights the first time.

And here you are, cheering the Bush administration as as they try to renounce the very laws that have assured historically unprecedented freedom for hundreds of millions of people for centuries in the name of expediency. In the words of Samuel Adams, "We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

At this point, I finish with a snide comment about the Emergency Clause in the Soviet constitution. You may now proceed to rationalize wholesale attacks on the Bill of Rights in the name of expediency to prevent your worldview from imploding, certain that Stalin will renounce his powers as soon as The Emergency is passed.

Then I guess we can suppose you're not living in The Beacon of Democracy (TM), the U.S.A.

Try being a Muslim in the United States and voicing the opinion that 9/11 happened because of the U.S. foreign policy. See what happens.

Or try wearing a shirt with Arabic script *and* being a Muslim in a U.S. airport. http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_fu ll_story.asp?service_ID=12362 (Oh, by the way, you can find this in other news agencies - Western, that is.)

"Mees thinks all hell is about to break loose when the real world kicks in and ripps these people a new one."

Like starting to trade oil in Euros and Roubles? Yeah, that will create sort of an interesting situation, considering it's mostly the fact that all the debt the US ows the rest of the world is in dollars thats keeping the american economy afloat at the moment -- imagine what would happen if Japan and China, for instance, started dumping their dollars for euros...

(OT:can you help me with a survey? will take one minute! )

of course the http://www.geocaching.com/ concept is smallfry, but no, a school in USA has the biggest right ?

this is like the "World Series" where the winners are "World Baseball Champions" when only teams from USA play, most American kids dont even know what the world is.

But Al Jazeera said prisoners were abused in Guantanamo, so it must be true!!

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=8723 :)

(Added the ':)' in case any lunatics out there thought I was serious).

We have been going down this road for a long time. The Bread and Circuses are coming to a stop soon. This is a very interesting read (sorry PDF).

With Iran opening their oil exchange in late March, the US will most likely be forced into some sort of military action.

If oil trading in non-dollar assets catch on, our debt will no longer be sustainable. The powers that be know this. If you read the first link you'll see just how bad the situation is. The goal right now is to stretch the game out as long as possible.

I think its inevitable that we will find some reason to hit Iran soon after their exchange opens.

what's wrong with al-Jazeera?

It's a propaganda mouthpiece for the jihadists of the world. Every time some Islamofascist swine slices someone's head off, you can count on al-Jazeera to broadcast the snuff video far and wide.

Consider, too, this example of what passes for "news" at al-Jazeera that I pulled off of Google News just seconds ago.

it is interesting to hear viewpoints from "the other side."

When "the other side"'s goal in life is our total annihilation, there is no use in paying heed to its propaganda mouthpieces. Islam offers just two options for those of us who don't believe as they do: convert or die. That is all you need to know, and you would do well to keep it in mind.

Imagine for a second that satellite radio existed back during WWII. Google News carrying al-Jazeera is no different than if XM or Sirius had carried Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose.

I don't know what Al-Jazeera is, as I don't read arabic, ...

Check out english.aljazeera.com and judge for yourself. Here in the US, just aljazeera.com gets you the English page, but in other countries, you might need the "english." part.

Their English page is more oriented to international news than their arabic pages, of course. So you won't get much of the local crime/scandal/celebrity news. But the English pages will give you a pretty good idea of what they consider of interest to "international" readers.

Their English site has been online for some years. At first, there was a lot of trouble with it, as various agencies tried hard to keep them off the Net. But this failed, of course, and they now have a number of mirrors scattered around the world, so you can read them as easily as you can any other big news agency.

They're really just another major news agency, with an emphasis on the Middle East. They are well worth reading, for a view of events that's often somewhat different that what you get from American or European sources. They include editorials and opinion pieces, of course, and those are often especially interesting for Western readers. There are also several south Asian news sources that will give you yet another viewpoint.

Rather than their biases, the most annoying thing about them is their "active" web pages. On my 1 GHz Powerbook, firefox soaks up 10% to 15% of the cpu when the main aljazeera.com page is displayed. If you're using your cpu for anything else, you might want to turn off JS and other scripting. This won't cut out any of the articles; it'll just kill the cute moving banners and such.

I'm also a bit annoyed that they don't include their logo on their English pages. It's just their name, but it's a well-done example of traditional Arabic calligraphy. Too bad they don't show it on their main English page.

BBC News

Gay rights activist and Slashdot editor Zonk came under increasing pressure today to explain references in his new book "Pink Box Blogging" that alleges Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens was a homosexual guerilla fighter who worshipped Satan.

The Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie condemned Zonk's book as "outrageous blasphemy" and ordered a fatwa on Zonk's head.

The book was also denounced by Trevor Phillips, head of the Commisson for Racial Equality who said he was "extremely concerned by the unacceptable language used in the publication"

Zonk was unavailable for comment, but the Secret Lesbian Organization of Jihad Organization of Europe said "we must not rush to judgement without an informed debate"

For those who are interested, http://www.aljazeera.com/ is a fake site registered in the UK and slanted to provide Western/Israeli propaganda. I don't know which agency runs it, but it's quite well done, provided the viewers have no knowledge of Arabic culture (the graphical styles are a dead give-away ). Compare and contrast the two.

I'm sure everyone can agree that N. Korea is a clear-and-present danger.

However, according to the lastest poll in late May, most of Europe does not see Iran as a threat. I'm not sure if this poll was conducted before or after the 30+ reporters got access to underground facilities where they were shown 50,000 (yes, fifty bloody thousand) certrifuge rods to process the fuel into bomb making matrial. Obviously, Iran did not say they would make a bomb...but lets just lay the cards on the table and let facts speak for itself. The answer is rather obvious. And as an American, it scares me to hear members of Iran political parties chant "Death to America".

Sites below.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/30/iran.pol l

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=7768

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1374229/p osts

Multiple sites will have different names for the same address. Directory yahoo will name the website for Ford USA, yahoo.ford or something. MSN will decide it will name it msn.fordNA, Google can name it google.32131231321, similar to how phone numbers work. Instead of depending on typing out URLs, they guess at, its better that they use a directory. How many people think http://www.aljazeera.com/ for example represents al jazeera the news organization.

If forced, I'd refuse to comply. Yes, doing so will park you in jail. Blogs are publications and are often widely syndicated; they're often used as sources for major broadcast and dead tree news stories. ThinkSecret is as legitimate as the Talon; well, bad example on the latter.

Trade secrets are not national security. ThinkSecret and the other folks weren't trafficing in them (selling them to competitors) which would be industrial espionage; they were writing news articles about them.

Is The Register a legitimate news service? Is Tomshardware? Is Slashdot? Is Democracy Now? What about al-Jazeera? Fox News? Who gets to decide what constitutes a "legitimate" and an "illegitmate" news agency?

why not just read the english version of al jazeera?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security....

I actually use google news quite a bit and considering all the articles I see pop up from:
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theory
I find that 'conservative' bias a bit hard to believe.

What I keep wondering is where are we going to house all these new-found terrorists?

Diego Garcia.

Preferably, aljazeera.com.

Propoganda? I don't see much in that article other than reporting on facts from both sides, something the likes of Fox News have difficulty with. I don't think anyone will argue that Al Jazeera has bias, but they do not go so far as to cover up one side of the story and make up facts to support their view.

"Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao unveiled new rules that seem to specifically target IT workers..."

How can you discuss "promotion ladders" at a time like this? The Bush administration has just said that you don't deserve to be paid for some of the hours you work.

Bush for President! -- Of Iraq. He made the mess. Let him fix it. And no paid overtime for him.

Bush seems to be close buddies with Osama bin Laden. Bush got war and weapons and oil contracts for his friends. Osama got his dream -- The U.S. invaded an oil-rich Arab country. All the publicity Osama could want, and he didn't have to place even one ad. Bush is a master marketing man, but he's working for the cause of violence.

Mubaryk: "There exists today a hatred of Americans never equalled in the region," he told the newspaper Le Monde in a reference to the Middle East.

"In the beginning some people thought the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred towards Americans. After what happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it," said Mubarak, regarded as one of the Middle Eastern leaders relatively sympathetic to the United States.

He said the first cause of terrorism was injustice. "Look at what is happening in Palestine and in Iraq. Where there is pressure and injustice there are terrorism and attacks," he said.

"It is despair that pushes some people to commit attacks against some American interest or other.

"Despair and a feeling of injustice are not going to confine themselves to our region," Mubarak said. "American and Israeli interests are not safe, not only in our region but in other parts of the world, in Europe, in America, anywhere in the worl."

Mubarak also accused the United States of having helped create fundamentalist Islamist movements to fight the influence of the former Soviet Union.

"It is dangerous to exploit religion. They used Islam against communism. And today they say Islam is a danger. You should not meddle with the faith and beliefs of people."