ABC News' Kate O'Brian Picked as President of Al Jazeera America

breitbart

By Warner Todd Huston  

With the announcement that Kate O'Brian of ABC News will take over as president of the fledgling cable network, Al Jazeera America has bagged another high-profile name in American journalism.

O'Brian moves from senior vice president of news-gathering operations at ABC to helm Al Jazeera America, just ahead of the network's 2013 debut in the former slot held by Al Gore's Current TV Network.

"Al Jazeera America will demonstrate that quality journalism is alive and well in the United States," O'Brian said in a statement about her new position.

Last December, Gore sold his cable network to Al Jazeera just ahead of Obama's new tax changes, netting the former Vice President a profit of more than $100 million.

Joining ABC's O'Brian in leadership roles at Al Jazeera will be two CNN and one CBS operative.

David Doss, formerly a senior executive producer for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, and Shannon High-Bassalik, another CNN producer, have been tapped as senior vice president for news programming and senior vice president of documentaries and programs, respectively.

Also, former CBS News exec Marcy McGinness, who most recently has been teaching, will be joining the start-up network as its senior vice-president for newsgathering.

In the same announcement of the new hires, Al Jazeera also announced that executive director for international operations, Ehab Al Shihabi, has also been promoted to interim chief executive officer of Al Jazeera America.

Recently, the new network's parent company, Al Jazeera News, saw a spate of resignations of employees upset over the pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias that the Qatar-based network has shown in its coverage of the recent developments in Egypt.

In May, the nascent network announced that it wanted to hire "800 American journalists"; it since has hired several high-profile Americans such as one-time NBC correspondent Michael Viqueira, former CNN business reporter Ali Velshi, and former CNN host Soledad O'Brien.

Gore’s Al Jazeera Deal Now a Major Scandal

Trevor Loudon's New Zeal Blog

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

While the lawsuit over the sale of Al Gore’s Current TV to Al Jazeera is making headlines, a close reading of the legal complaint provides additional evidence that a congressional investigation into the curious transaction is urgently needed and necessary.

The media executive who claims to have arranged the sale says the idea was to make the Terror TV channel “palatable to U.S. lawmakers,” a formulation that suggests foreign lobbying on Capitol Hill in order to protect the $500 million payoff to Gore and other owners and investors in Current TV.

The suit says that media executive John Terenzio also proposed smoothing things over with “pro-Israel factions, cable operators and, most importantly, the American public.”

The other controversial aspect of the deal, as noted by Fox News contributor Lisa Daftari, is that “Al Jazeera America” has announced plans for bureaus in eight cities, including Detroit, Michigan, and that “Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat community of Muslim-Americans where [Jihadist] sleeper cells have been detected.”

Detroit has been called the Arab capital of North America.

Because of the danger of inciting Arabs and Muslims into anti-American violence, Accuracy in Media has called on the House Homeland Security Committee, under the chairmanship of Texas Republican Michael McCaul, to investigate the sale and look at the evidence that the channel is a foreign terrorist entity that can be outlawed on U.S. soil. He has refused to do so.

The Al Gore lawsuit constitutes another reason why Congress has to investigate. If Al Gore had paid Terenzio for his services, as the suit alleges, it is likely that the nature of the deal and the private discussions that went into it would never have been made public. Now, however, all of this is on the public record and more damaging details, if Gore doesn’t settle the lawsuit, will almost certainly come out.

The revelations demonstrate how sensitive the deal was in the first place. Terenzio says one of his objectives was to develop “strategies to overcome Al Jazeera’s negative image and make Al Jazeera acceptable to American viewers.” Many members of the public associate Al Jazeera with the videos of Osama bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. Al Jazeera aired those videos, as well as interviews with bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, and is today still regarded as the voice of the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.

In short, the plan was for a massive propaganda campaign to play down the channel’s ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and its financing by the pro-Jihadist Arab government of Qatar.

Terenzio says he came up with “Al Jazeera America,” a name obviously designed to mask the foreign and Arab nature of the propaganda channel.

The revelations in the suit follow reports that the new channel has been feverishly hiring expensive K Street lobbying firms to stop Congress from investigating the deal, and is hiring dozens of American journalists.

Terenzio says in his lawsuit that he “created a sophisticated PowerPoint presentation” describing the deal and that the structure was “based in large measure on the strategies developed by Terenzio in adapting CCTV [China Central television] for American distribution.”

CCTV is the Communist-government funded Chinese state TV channel that has also penetrated the U.S. media market, although in a more limited manner than Al Jazeera.

It appears that Terenzio is an acknowledged expert at getting media access for foreign propaganda channels. His background is quite impressive, as reflected in his official biography. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, he is described as “a visiting lecturer at the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications graduate program in Los Angeles, and at the Tsinghua University School of Journalism in Beijing.”

In the case of Current TV, his idea was to get Al Jazeera into 40-50 million homes through the acquisition of an existing cable channel, Current TV, an unprecedented development that Terenzio maintains he was not compensated for. It is because of this media coup and the failure of Al Gore and the other owners and investors to pay him for his services that Terenzio has launched his lawsuit demanding at least $5 million in damages.

While the suit proceeds in the courts, the legal questions about the deal provide another opportunity for Congress to exercise oversight and investigate the curious transaction. But the fact that prominent Democrats are involved makes it politically sensitive for Republicans who want to avoid confrontations.

The suit says Terenzio made his presentation to Richard Blum, husband of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, and an investor in Current TV. The suit says that Blum and others involved in Current TV were “concerned about the prospect of losing their shirts” and wanted to find a buyer for their little-watched channel.

The suit says that it was believed that Al Gore would find a sale to Al Jazeera “politically unappealing” but that Blum promised to present it to him.

“Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Gore was adamant in his rejection of the proposal to sell his liberal environmentally friendly network to the oil rich Qataris who owned Al Jazeera,” it says.

Al Gore apparently changed his mind. Perhaps the $500 million price tag, with $100 million going to him personally, was a factor.

When the sale was announced, Terenzio says he was caught off-guard and that he had not been informed in advance about it, even though he devised the sale and conceived the name “Al Jazeera America.” He says Current TV “insiders” concede his role in the transaction.

Jerry Kenney, a critic of Al Jazeera, says, “I have requested a copy of that PowerPoint presentation from his lawyer. I would love to see his game plan of how to make propaganda from a country that denies free speech to its own citizens and possibly provides material support to terrorists, ‘palatable’ to Congress and the American public.”

Kenney says Congress should request a copy of this PowerPoint as well.

The new developments add impetus to the effort by Rep. Tim Murphy for answers as to what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did or did not do regarding the deal.

Congressman Murphy Seeks Probe of Al Jazeera

NewZeal

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Rep. Tim Murphy, who holds a senior position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, has called on the Obama Administration to explain whether Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV from former Democratic Vice President Al Gore was given any federal review and scrutiny.

But Al Jazeera is working furiously to stop the mounting congressional interest and now has three lobbying firms working to stop any hearings or investigations into the deal.

Once known as the voice of Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera is the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood and its various terrorist affiliates. Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, supports foreign Jihadists, including Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

Rep. Murphy told Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Julius Genachowski in a letter that “foreign ownership of media outlets” in the U.S. should be reviewed by the FCC and he questions what, if anything, the FCC did in regard to the Al Jazeera transaction. He says “the rules governing foreign ownership of U.S. news networks” would seem to apply in this case.

Murphy notes that the deal “would increase Al Jazeera’s broadcast footprint ninefold, beaming the channel into 40 million American homes.”

A news release quotes Murphy as saying, “There are legitimate concerns about the sale of an American news channel to a media corporation owned by a foreign government. And under this Administration, the FCC has been especially sensitive to consolidation efforts by television networks and other outlets, which has prompted me to make this inquiry.”

“The Federal Communications Commission has in the past moved assertively to define its role in media-consolidation efforts,” notes the Murphy letter. For example, he says, “in the case of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger, the FCC conducted an aggressive legal review of the matter resulting in a settlement of $800,000 to the U.S. Treasury by Comcast, according to records made public by your Enforcement Bureau.”

Murphy continued, “I would expect that foreign ownership of media outlets in this country falls under a similar category of scrutiny and interest. Concerns over the deal have already been raised by carriers such as Time Warner, and the cable company has announced that it will drop the newly proposed ‘Al Jazeera America’ channel from its packages.”

But in addition to hiring the K Street lobbying firm of DLA Piper to lobby on its behalf, the channel has hired Global Policy Initiatives and TCK International to represent it on Capitol Hill, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.

On January 4, AIM released a statement calling the transaction “an unacceptable danger to American citizens by further adding to the potential for home-grown Jihadists inspired by Al Jazeera’s inflammatory programming.”

In addition to Al Jazeera’s collaboration with terrorist groups, AIM said the hearings should examine:

• The fact that 30 public television stations around the U.S. are already airing Al Jazeera in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules.
• Al Jazeera is not complying with the Foreign Agent Registration Act and labeling its broadcasts as foreign propaganda paid for by the pro-jihadist government of Qatar.

Michael Thompson of WorldNetDaily recently reported on our efforts, while conservative talk radio host Michael Savage has denounced the deal and urged congressional hearings into the transaction.

AIM previously reported on Al Jazeera’s hiring of the K street lobbying firm, DLA Piper, to stop any plans by Congress to investigate the sale. DLA Piper was hired by Qatar and even has an office in the Arab state, where it works on such matters as “Sharia finance” and tapping into Arab oil wealth.

As part of this expanding effort, Al Jazeera has hired two Republican lobbyists, Tom Korologos and George Salem, to lobby on its behalf, according to a report from Jacob Fenton of the Sunlight Foundation.

Korologos is identified as a “heavyweight Republican lobbyist” whose ties to Capitol Hill “are so legendary he has been dubbed the 101st senator,” while Salem is identified as co-founder of the Arab American Institute who worked on various Republicans campaigns and has donated $166,000 since the 1990 election, almost all of it to Republican candidates.

The apparent purpose of hiring Republicans is to prevent Republicans in Congress from investigating the Al Jazeera deal with prominent Democrats.

Gore and two other prominent Democrats, Joel Hyatt and Richard C. Blum, husband of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, are making money from the deal, valued at $500 million, from the oil-rich Middle Eastern dictatorship of Qatar.

Jacob Fenton reports the deal “has drawn plenty of suspicion from conservative Republicans” and that the lobbying activity is an indication that “the TV network is taking some big steps to smooth over those differences.”

The Sunlight Foundation notes that DLA Piper has hosted at least 20 fundraisers for members of Congress at its Washington, D.C. offices over the past few years. Those fundraisers were for many prominent Republicans.

However, the Tim Murphy letter demonstrates that some Republicans are resisting the pressure and taking their oversight responsibilities seriously.

On the other hand, Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has failed to announce hearings into the transaction.

House Conservative Leader Gives Al Jazeera Deal a Pass

NewZeal
By: Cliff Kincaid

Accuracy in Media

Rep. Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana who is the new chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), believes Al Jazeera has a First Amendment right to expand its broadcasts in the United States and that a congressional investigation of Al Gore’s deal with the channel is not warranted.

Scalise, a self-described “staunch conservative,” is the new chairman of the RSC, which is the “caucus of House conservatives.” His action makes it increasingly unlikely that the House will exercise any oversight of Al Gore’s controversial sale of his Current TV channel to the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The buyer is the Middle Eastern regime of Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera. The Qatar regime advertises itself as “America’s Strongest Partner in the Gulf” but has supported terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Osama bin Laden aide and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is currently in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay for acts of terrorism, lived and worked in Qatar but was allowed to leave for Pakistan as U.S. authorities were trying to apprehend him, according to the report of the 9/11 commission.

In Pakistan, Mohammed planned 9/11 and decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped while investigating the al-Qaeda networks in the Middle East.

Sarah E. Makin, Director of Conservative Coalitions and State Outreach at the House Republican Study Committee, told this journalist on Tuesday afternoon that she received an explanation of Scalise’s position on the Al Jazeera deal after consulting with aides to the congressman.

Conservatives had been asking Scalise to support an investigation on the grounds that a foreign-funded channel based in the Middle East, with a reputation for airing terrorist propaganda, should be examined for its ties to terrorist groups.

Foreigners are entitled to First Amendment protections in the United States, except when they run afoul of existing laws and engage in criminal or terrorist activities.

By offering the First Amendment excuse in favor of the deal, Scalise is ignoring the evidence that Al Jazeera is not a legitimate news operation but rather a conduit for propaganda from terrorist groups, with whom it has intimate and ongoing relations.

In the United States, it is against the law to provide material support to terrorists, with “material support” defined as including expert advice or assistance and communications equipment.

In World War II, Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally broadcast their anti-American diatribes from overseas and were apprehended by U.S. authorities after the war and sent to prison for treason. In the more shocking Al Jazeera case, the U.S. is officially still at war with global terrorism, but Al Gore is giving the channel a base of operations on American soil with access to 40-50 million homes.

Although it will be called “Al Jazeera America,” the channel will still be totally controlled and funded by the government of Qatar, which doesn’t permit freedom of the press in its own country.

Existing federal law requires that foreign propaganda broadcasts in the U.S. be labeled as such, a provision of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) that the Obama Administration has decided to ignore.

Independent television producer Jerry Kenney has filed complaints over the non-enforcement of the FARA law, as well as violations of Federal Communications Commission rules that have given Al Jazeera access to taxpayer-funded public television stations.

Despite these outstanding legal questions, Scalise, the top conservative leader in the House, doesn’t even want an investigation of the deal. “Who got to him?” is the question being asked by conservatives.

It is a known fact that Big Oil interests in the U.S.-Qatar Business Council are very powerful on Capitol Hill, and that the regime and/or Al Jazeera have used expensive public relations firms to lobby Congress and the federal government, and manipulate the press. These firms include Barbour Griffith Rogers, Fenton Communications, and Qorvis Communications.

Another law being ignored in the Al Jazeera case is CFIUS, named for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. When the Chinese bought AMC movie theaters last year, they went through CFIUS. Al Jazeera has decided, apparently with the acquiescence of the Obama Administration, that it can ignore the law.

In 2006, members of Congress from both political parties, including then-Senator Barack Obama, objected to a company based in the Arab state of Dubai operating U.S. ports. Public criticism forced the company to drop the deal.

Al Jazeera’s ties to al Qaeda are highlighted in the new film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” where the plot involves the CIA locating Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in part by examining his courier’s proximity to an Al Jazeera office, where terrorist tapes were dropped off for worldwide distribution.

After 9/11, the terrorist attacks on America that claimed almost 3,000 American lives, Al Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni conducted an interview with bin Laden in which he denied being involved in terrorism. Alouni was later convicted of being a courier for bin Laden and al Qaeda.

In his book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century, Philip Bobbitt described how, in the 2004 case of the kidnapping and murder of Margaret Hassan, a humanitarian aid worker in Iraq whose captivity was taped by an Islamist group, Al Jazeera “appears to have carefully screened and edited the tapes to protect the deteriorating image of the Iraqi insurgency.” He wrote that Al Jazeera “moved from being passive collaborators in achieving the political objectives of torture to acting as editorial advisors for the terrorists.”

More recently, Al Jazeera ran a story about the “gentle” al Qaeda terrorists in Mali who kidnapped and killed three Americans.

Another major concern about Al Jazeera’s presence in the U.S. is the danger of inciting home grown terrorism.

Dr. Judea Pearl, father of the slain journalist Daniel Pearl, has been committed to increasing understanding with the Arab/Muslim world, but he recognizes that Al Jazeera does not contribute to real dialogue. He supports an investigation of Al Gore’s deal with Al Jazeera.

His statement supporting an investigation was included in a letter to Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and reads as follows:

“A decade of watching over its programs has left me no doubt: Al Jazeera is the main propaganda machine of the Muslim Brotherhood. Posing as a benign alternative communication medium, Al Jazeera choreographs a world stage in which the West is a perennial villain, Hamas is the ultimate role model, and entire societies are dehumanized to a lower form of life, stripped of any mark of dignity or empathy. While refraining from explicit incitement to violence, Al Jazeera weaves the ideological structure and combustible angers from which Jihadi recruits eventually emerge.”

McCaul received this letter, signed by media critics, journalists, academics, and national security and Middle East experts, on January 9. He has yet to respond.

The Scalise response to calls for an investigation may shed light on McCaul’s striking failure to act against the Al Jazeera deal. It appears to some observers that Republican leaders in the House have made a conscious decision to let the deal go through without a peep of protest.

Another House member who has decided to do nothing is Rep. Paul Broun, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee preparing to run for the U.S. Senate from Georgia as a strong conservative.

Friends of Broun have asked him to take a stand against Al Jazeera but he has told them that his staff doesn’t want him to.

Critics of the deal say that if Congress won’t do its job and prevent the emergence of this homeland security threat, the American people will pressure the cable and satellite providers and the advertisers.

The cable and satellite providers of Current TV/Al Jazeera America currently include Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse.

• If you wish to protest his wrong-headed position in favor of a “hands off” approach to the Al Gore deal with Al Jazeera, Scalise and the House Republican Study Committee can be contacted at (202) 226-9717.

Al Jazeera and the Global Jihad in America

New Zeal

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

By refusing to investigate the Al Gore/Al Jazeera deal, it would appear that Capitol Hill “conservatives” like Republican Reps. Michael McCaul, Steve Scalise, and Paul Broun are adopting the view that we have nothing to fear from the global jihad and its instruments of propaganda being positioned on U.S. soil.

This view finds support from Scott McConnell, writing in Patrick J. Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, who says there should be no “national loyalty oath” for a new cable channel in America and that the transaction is “welcome news.”

Al Jazeera is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood and the various terrorist groups it has spawned, including al Qaeda and Hamas.

In all seriousness, McConnell calls the sale of Al Gore’s Current TV to the Al Jazeera channel a “public service.”

In an endorsement of the deal, McConnell writes that the channel, which he admits is “Qatar government-funded,” can be “quite good.” However, he admits, “I don’t watch it often.”

He fails to point out the elementary fact that there is no freedom of the press or speech in Qatar.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of uninformed commentary that we have seen all too often in regard to the Al Jazeera deal. It is significant that a self-described “conservative” would adopt this view and that a magazine called “The American Conservative” would publish such nonsense.

During the Cold War, Patrick Buchanan, who served as President Reagan’s White House communications director, was an anti-communist who combatted and helped expose Soviet disinformation and propaganda activities. But in the face of the global jihad, such defenses are apparently being dropped. Indeed, Buchanan has himself been featured in a sympathetic light on Al Jazeera, discussing why he opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

This is, of course, a legitimate conservative point of view, even if going on Al Jazeera is not the proper place to make such an argument. But McConnell’s idea that Al Jazeera somehow has a right to enter the U.S. media market without scrutiny is not supported by the evidence.

There is no “national loyalty oath” for a cable channel. But there are various laws that are supposed to apply to this transaction which are being ignored. These include the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Federal Communications Commission rules, and the review process of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

But the basic hurdle that the channel cannot overcome, based on the evidence of its collaboration with al Qaeda, is that it provides material support to terrorism and, therefore, cannot legally operate on American soil. The Hezbollah TV station Al Manar was outlawed in the U.S. on this basis.

If there is some doubt as to Al Jazeera’s relationship with al Qaeda, then Congressional hearings can set the record straight.

Even if the deal was legitimate and had received the necessary approval, there is every reason in the world for true conservatives to oppose the channel’s entry into the U.S. on the grounds that it spews propaganda which can misinform, mislead, and inspire violence.

There is nothing much we can do about foreign propaganda that is based overseas. But allowing our enemies to operate on the U.S. mainland is a prescription for The Suicide of the West, which is the name of a book by James Burnham I read growing up and which I know is familiar to Pat Buchanan.

For some reason, however, there are some conservatives today who don’t regard the global jihad to be as menacing as Soviet communism.

For those in denial, take some time to look at the case of Lars Hedegaard, the Danish journalist, who was almost killed on Tuesday by a jihadist. I met him at Pamela Geller’s 9/11 conference in New York City last year. He had been prosecuted in Denmark for thought crimes against Islam, in a court battle that went on for two years and eventually saw an acquittal on charges of racism and “hate speech.”

As I pointed out in an article about the event, what is happening in Europe is coming to the United States, as the Obama Administration openly sides with global Islam against our God-given First Amendment right of free speech.

That First Amendment does not give Al Jazeera the “right” to operate on U.S. soil, especially when the evidence implicates the channel in violence and terrorism against Americans.

We cannot lose our rights on the pretext that our sworn enemies deserve them more than we do.

McConnell writes enthusiastically about how, “two years ago, when much of the world was riveted by Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Egyptian revolution,” without noting the purpose of the coverage and what has transpired since then.

In her article, “Al Jazeera: Non-Arabs Should Not Be Fooled,” Najat Fawzy AlSaied writes that, “The Emir of Qatar, an absolute ruler, and Al Jazeera, have not covered the ‘Arab Spring’ to advance democracy, but to support the Muslim Brotherhood, which is aligned with the Qatari regime. Al Jazeera has as its chief goal Muslim Brotherhood domination.”

She adds, “Early in the ‘Arab Spring,’ in Egypt and other countries, Al Jazeera promoted the Muslim fundamentalists. Regarding Syria, Al Jazeera publicizes the demands for power by jihadists.”

However, McConnell seems blind to what is happening right before his eyes in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East and the role that Al Jazeera is playing in it.

Those being fooled today include people like Scott McConnell. During the Cold War they were called dupes.

Media coverage of the Al Gore-Al Jazeera story

Congress Must hold Hearings into the Al Jazeera Deal

ijreview.com

NewZeal

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

If Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) lets the Al Jazeera-Al Gore deal go through without scrutiny, then every broadcast entity or communications facility in America is ripe for the plucking by any of our nation’s enemies and adversaries.

For those who haven’t been paying attention lately, the government of Qatar has announced a deal through Al Jazeera with former Democratic Vice President Al Gore for his Current TV cable channel, in order to transform it into an arm of its Jihadist or “Terror TV” network, once known as a mouthpiece for mass murderer Osama bin Laden. They are planning to call it “Al Jazeera America,” when the oil money for the transaction is coming from abroad. This is part and parcel of the deception, which is designed to make it appear as though Al Jazeera is as American as apple pie and simply has a foreign-sounding name.

To be sure, the deal was not technically announced by Qatar, a Middle Eastern dictatorship where freedom of the press is not permitted. Instead, Al Jazeera made the announcement. But that is part of the deception. Al Jazeera is an arm of the Qatar regime and is not in any sense of the term an “independent” news organization. It is government-funded with “advertising” from such entities as Qatar Airways, the national airline partly owned by the regime. Qatar and Al Jazeera are one and the same.

The purpose of this transaction is to soften the American people up for more Middle East revolution, including within the borders of the U.S. Dr. Judea Pearl, the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, supports an investigation of the deal and says, “Al Jazeera weaves the ideological structure and combustible angers from which Jihadi recruits eventually emerge.”

Qatar postures as a friend of the United States and hosts a U.S military base. But Qatar also served as the base for anti-American and anti-Semitic “cleric” Yusef al-Qaradawi before he returned to Egypt to help consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood revolution there. Al-Qaradawi is a leading television personality on Al Jazeera.

You may have missed the news that Qatar just extended another $2.5 billion in economic aid for Egypt, following a gift of $400 million that the emir of Qatar made to the terrorist group Hamas.

Al Gore and his partners, including Joel Hyatt, got more than that—$500 million, according to reports. Whether or not that is an accurate figure, any amount is a drop in the bucket to the emir, who is worth billions of dollars and lives in opulence.

By the way, Muslim Brotherhood leader and president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, just told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he wants the release of the Blind Sheikh, sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City. This first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center killed six people and injured over 1,000 others.

Dr. Pearl calls Al Jazeera “the main propaganda machine” of the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. It is no surprise, therefore, that Qatar would underwrite the Egyptian regime and Hamas, and that the Obama Administration would voice no public objection to the sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera.

However, there is no reason to believe this sale is legal. The circumstances surrounding the sale clearly require Congressional hearings and this is where the Republican House of Representatives and its new chairman of Homeland Security, Rep. Michael McCaul, come in.

If ever there was a time for Congress to take action, this is it. This is not a time to let the Obama Administration take the lead, since it has already approved the questionable deal, which fattens the coffers of two prominent Democrats.

There are many things about this deal that stink and which require an investigation by McCaul’s committee.

towleroad.com

First, there are unresolved complaints to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) about Al Jazeera’s operations in the U.S. Jerry Kenney of Kenney Broadcasting has asked that the DOJ enforce the law by requiring that foreign propaganda pumped into American homes by Al Jazeera be labeled as such. He says, “Why is it that if I buy a pair of tennis shoes made in China, it has to be labeled made in China? But foreign propaganda which is being aired in the U.S. is not being labeled as foreign propaganda, with its country of origin, in violation of the law? I want to know what I am getting. If you know who has produced something, you look at it differently.”

Secondly, it appears that Al Jazeera has evaded the law requiring federal approval for foreign investments in America that have national security implications.

Al Jazeera has issued a 26-page document in which it claims that the deal “does not involve any federal communications licenses or other assets subject to FCC approval.” Again, this is deceptive, since broadcaster Jerry Kenney has filed an FCC complaint about Al Jazeera programming being illegally aired on taxpayer-supported public TV stations. Al Jazeera also claims that “None of the statutory factors that trigger a CFIUS review—e.g., production of important technology, production of military goods, operation of critical infrastructure—are implicated in this transaction.”

CFIUS is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and is under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department. It is described as “an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (‘covered transactions’), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.”

What “covered transactions” come under the review of CFIUS? We have learned through press reports that CFIUS approved China-based Dalian Wanda Group Corporation’s purchase of AMC Entertainment, one of the nation’s largest movie theater chains.

The CFIUS process is secretive but we learned about this approval from the Chinese entity, which announced it in a press release in July of 2012.

The writer Zach Coleman notes, “News broadcasting is more politically sensitive than cinema operation and Al Jazeera is a much more controversial acquirer than Dalian Wanda, which was previously unknown in the US.”

This is precisely the case. Yet, Al Jazeera claims it had no obligation to obey the law in this case.

I asked the Treasury Department whether Al Jazeera was required to apply for approval of the purchase and all I got was a run-around. A spokesman said, “I will decline to comment. By law, information filed with CFIUS may not be disclosed by CFIUS to the public. Accordingly, the Department does not comment on information relating to specific CFIUS cases, including whether or not certain parties have filed notices for review.”

How’s that for transparent government? Mark Jaskowiak, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Investment Security at Treasury, should be called before Congress to explain the double standard.

If the Chinese buying a movie theater chain comes under the auspices of CFIUS, then a takeover of a cable channel reaching 40-50 million homes has to qualify as well.

Jerry Kenney, president of Kenney Broadcasting, says, “It’s even more insidious in the case of Al Jazeera because cable companies bundle these packages of channels and deliver them to your home, whether you watch them or not. You end up subsidizing the channels you don’t want. Current TV was actually getting a fee from the cable operators to run the channel. So subscribers who pay for that package will end up paying money to Al Jazeera for its new channel.”

In the case of a movie theater, Kenney points out, “you have to make an effort to get out of your home to drive to a theater to watch a movie. With Al Jazeera, you will be forced to pay for it coming into your own home, whether you want it or not.”

It is time for Rep. McCaul to do his duty and announce hearings into this curious transaction. The Committee on Homeland Security can be reached at 202-226-8417.

Glenn Beck's inside story on failed Current TV bid

Hagel To Al Jazeera: America 'World's Bully'

Al Jazeera/Al Gore TV Launches Campaign to Promote Hamas

FrontPageMag/ Daniel Greenfield

Do you know what America needs more of? News networks that support terrorists. And I don’t just mean terrorists who claim to be innocent or terrorists who claim to want to negotiate peace deals. I mean 100 percent unfiltered homicidal non-stop killing machine terrorists.

Do you know what America really needs? A news network that favors Hamas and Al Qaeda.

Although Al-Jazeera incites Muslim masses around the world to revolt against “repressive regimes,” while calling for “democracy,” “pluralism,” and the ousting of totalitarian rulers, Qatar itself does not hold elections, has no political parties, has no democratic institutions, and its citizens have no political or social rights. What Qatar does have, with the help of Sharia [Islamic religious law], is a strong, family-run system of enforcing internal security and suppressing opposition. Al-Jazeera is the well-oiled and well-funded machine of a family employing armed mercenaries who call themselves “media personnel”: Propaganda warriors who use cameras and microphones as weapons.
Recently Al-Jazeera seems to have decided to topple the Palestinian Authority [PA], and transfer to Hamas — Al-Qaeda’s ideological and practical brother-in-arms — the international recognition that the PA received from the UN in September, and to make Hamas sovereign in the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip. To that end, it airs biased programs that are disproportionately favorable toward Hamas, and covers Hamas’s “achievements,” such as its “heroism” in firing rockets at Israeli civilians.
Al-Jazeera is now embarked on a campaign glorifying Hamas at the expense of the PA… It recently cast suspicion on the PA as having collaborated with Israel in “poisoning Arafat,” and broadcast a biased and exaggerated report of the alleged “tortures” inflicted on Hamas prisoners in PA jails, including claims of rape, threats toward female members of Hamas under interrogation and other horrors – all of which are meant to represent the “crimes” committed by the PA in collaboration with, and at the behest of, Israeli intelligence.
Other Al-Jazeera initiatives aimed at toppling the PA include spreading rumors of a third intifada, and encouraging Hamas in the West Bank to hold marches and carry cardboard models of Qassam rockets.

Now coming to America. Courtesy of Al Gore and Current TV.

Al-Jazeera Buys Al Gore’s Current TV

newsmax

Al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab news channel that struggled to win space on American cable television, has acquired Current TV, boosting its reach nearly ninefold to about 40 million homes. With a focus on U.S. news, it plans to rebrand the left-leaning news network that cofounder Al Gore couldn't make relevant.

The former vice president confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV's mission "to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling."

The acquisition lifts Al-Jazeera's reach beyond a few large U.S. metropolitan areas including New York and Washington, where about 4.7 million homes can now watch Al-Jazeera English.

Al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a new channel called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists.

Al-Jazeera spokesman Stan Collender said there are no rules against foreign ownership of a cable channel — unlike the strict rules limiting foreign ownership of free-to-air TV stations. He said the move is based on demand, adding that 40 percent of viewing traffic on Al-Jazeera English's website is from the U.S.

"This is a pure business decision based on recognized demand," Collender said. "When people watch Al-Jazeera, they tend to like it a great deal."

Al-Jazeera has long struggled to get carriage in the U.S., and the deal suffered an immediate casualty as Time Warner Cable Inc., the nation's second-largest cable TV operator, announced it is dropping Current TV due to the deal.

"Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as quickly as possible," the company said in a statement.

Previous to Al-Jazeera's purchase, Current TV was in 60 million homes.

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Time Warner Cable Drops Current TV Upon Sale To Al Jazeera

huffingtonpost

ibtimes.com

NEW YORK –- Time Warner Cable pulled the plug on Current TV just hours after news of the cable channel's sale to Al Jazeera became official.

"This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable," read an on-screen message where Current TV used to be found.

Al Jazeera took a major step into the U.S. cable market Wednesday by acquiring beleaguered Current TV and announcing plans for a U.S.-based news network to be called Al Jazeera America. But while the new channel will soon be available in 40 million households, Al Jazeera faced a setback when Time Warner Cable -- which reaches 12 million homes -- announced it was dropping the low-rated Current, which occupied a spot that could have been switched to Al Jazeera America.

Joel Hyatt, who co-founded Current TV with former Vice President Al Gore, told staff in a Wednesday night memo that Time Warner Cable "did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera."

"Consequently, Current will no longer be carried on TWC," Hyatt wrote. "This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead."

A Time Warner Cable spokesman said in a statement that "our agreement with Current will be terminated and we will no longer be carrying the channel."

Some media observers interpreted the move as motivated by politics.

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