Al Jazeera Promotes Libya's "Crown Prince" Who Calls for Military Intervention in Libya {VIDEO -text}

Is wonderful Al Jazeera suddenly
veering into non-dependability, like many other media sources?

By Yoshie Furuhashi

[print_link] Crosspost http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/furuhashi250211p.html

Al Jazeera received a lot of kudos for its exciting coverage of the intifadas in Tunisia and Egypt.  Many of us in the West in particular found it to be a useful source of information, since the Western media’s coverage of them, largely shaped by imperialist preferences as always, was quantitatively lesser and qualitatively worse than Al Jazeera’s.

¹) uprising in Bahrain, made up of 100,000-strong demonstrations in a nation whose population is only about 800,000.  Having paid close attention to Al Jazeera’s role in the Arab Revolt, As’ad AbuKhalil criticized its about-face in his blog Angry Arab News Service:

National Front for the Salvation of Libya, an outfit funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia during the Cold War, as credible sources of news and views, much as the Western media have been doing.²

“the international community to help remove Gaddafi from power and stop the ongoing ‘massacre’.”  By the “international community,” of course he doesn’t mean those of us who might organize protests at Libyan embassies or that kind of thing.  He means the great and not-so-great powers that may be persuaded to deploy their armed forces in Libya.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjdUS36_-oE[/youtube] 

sections of armed forces have already joined the revolt, isn’t what’s going on in Libya now less the regime mowing down unarmed protesters than a civil war between two armed camps, each controlling large territories with valuable resources?)

large parts of it — if foreign powers get to enter the country at the urging of its would-be king, to take it all away from you again?  Is Al Jazeera for revolution . . . or counter-revolution?

Women at the vanguard of a political strike!  Chants for unity across sects!  Muslims and secular leftists out in the streets together!

“Deadly ‘Day of Rage’ in Libya” (quoting “Mohammed Ali Abdellah, deputy leader of the exiled National Front for the Salvation of Libya,” Al Jazeera, 18 February 2011); “Libya’s Lucrative Ties” (interviewing “Dr. Mohamed al-Magariaf, the co-founder of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya,” Al Jazeera, 22 February 2011); “Libya on the Brink” (interviewing “Ibrahim Sahad, the secretary-general of the National Front for the salvation of Libya,” Al Jazeera, 23 February  2011); صحيفة ليبية تهاجم قادة “التجمع” بتونس (Al Jazeera, 21 January 2011); ليبيون يطالبون بتنحي القذافي (Al Jazeera, 14 February 2011).

Yoshie Furuhashi is Editor of MRZine.