This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Al-Jazeera in chaos in Egypt, as it prepares for big U.S. debut


Al-Jazeera’s Friday coverage of Egypt: Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood pray for the reinstatement of Mohamed Morsi (EPA)

Last week, al-Jazeera reporters were thrown out of a press conferencein Cairo, Egypt. However, they weren’t thrown out by any governmentofficials but by furious Egyptian reporters at thepress conference, who were expressing their anger at al-Jazeera’sArabic network for pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias in its reporting. Ataround the same time, 22 members of al-Jazeera’s staff in Egyptresigned, alleging biased coverage. And now, reports emerged onFriday that Al Jazeera Network channels, which include Al JazeeraEnglish, Al Jazeera Arabic, and Al Jazeera Mubashr Misr, areintermittently being jammed by Egyptian authorities. 

Al-Jazeera (which means “the peninsula” in Arabic) is owned by theroyal family in Qatar. As we recently reported, the ouster of Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsihas brought about a collapse of Qatar’s influence in the Mideast,which had strongly supported Morsi and the Brotherhood and provided$7 billion in aid to Egypt during Morsi’s presidency.This has spilled over into al-Jazeera’s coverage of Egypt,which has polarized the staff and the people.

This comes as Al-Jazeera America, an expanded replacement of AlJazeera English, is to debut in August on cable television networksreaching approximately 50 million U.S. households, thanks to its $500million dollar purchase of the defunct Current TV cable channel fromclimate change saint Al Gore in January. 

Al-Jazeera Arabic has been vitriolically anti-American sinceits founding in 1996, and it provided open support for Osamabin Laden following the 9/11/2001 attacks. Even in recentyears, al-Jazeera Arabic has continued to promote “a jihadideology.” 

Is Al-Jazeera biased? Of course it is. But it’s no more biasedthan the New York Times or NBC News. The BBC was vitriolicallyanti-American during the George Bush presidency, but nowthey’re totally in the tank for President Obama. 

As I’ve written in the past, the interesting thing about al-Jazeera’sbiases is their attitudes towards the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.Hamas is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, so al-Jazeera loves Hamas and hates the Palestinian Authority. In fact, my perception is thatal-Jazeera hates the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas even morethan it hates Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. 

So, over the past ten years of writing about Generational Dynamics,I’ve become pretty familiar with the biases of all the different newsservices, and I try to take them into account when I use them orreference them in order to give as balanced a picture as possible tomy readers. But the bottom line is that professional journalism ispretty much a thing of the past, and each of the mainstream mediaoutlets just uses its news reporting to promote its own ideologicalviewpoint. That’s true of al-Jazeera, the BBC, the NY Times, and soforth. All you can do is what I try to do, which is to read as manyviewpoints as possible until you figure out what’s really going on.Camera and NPR and al-Jazeera

Secretary of State John Kerry announces new Mideast peace talks

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that Israeli andPalestinian negotiators will meet in Washington within “the next weekor so” to resume peace talks. According to Kerry: 

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve reached anagreement that establishes a basis for resuming final statusnegotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. 

This is a significant and welcome step forward. The agreement isstill in the process of being finalized so we are absolutely notgoing to talk about any of the elements now.

According to some reports, the Israelis have agreed to a partialfreeze on West Bank settlements, and the Palestinians postponed theirthreat to push anti-Israeli measures through UN and otherinternational institutions during the talks. 

It was in May 2010 that President Obama’s last special envoy for theMideast resigned, after two years on the job, accomplishingnothing (“15-May-11 News — Mideast envoy George Mitchell resigns, ending one more grand peace process”).

The previous Mideast envoy was Tony Blair, who was appointed by theMiddle East Quartet (United Nations, Russian Federation, UnitedStates, European Union) on the day in 2007 when he resigned as primeminister of Britain. He accomplished nothing. 

In 2005, the Quartet appointed James Wolfensohn to be Mideast envoy.He actually accomplished quite a bit. He negotiated severalagreements between the parties, and, as former President of the WorldBank, he used his formidable list of contacts to get investors topurchase dozens of greenhouses left behind by Israeli settlers whenthey left Gaza so that Palestinians could use them right away to gethard currency by growing food for exports. Unfortunately, thegreenhouses were destroyed by the Palestinians, for which Wolfensohnblamed both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and by the time heresigned in 2006, he’d accomplished nothing. 

And then of course there was President George Bush’s “Mideast Roadmapto Peace,” which was my first major Generational Dynamics analysis (“Mideast Roadmap – Will it bring peace?”). 

In that article, I pointed out that Generational Dynamics predictsthat the Mideast was headed for a major new war between Jews andArabs, refighting the genocidal war between Jews and Arabs thatfollowed the 1948 partitioning of Palestine and the creation of thestate of Israel. There have been four wars since then–the warbetween Israelis and Hezbollah, fought largely on Lebanon’s soil in2006; the war between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah in Gaza in2008 that led to Hamas control of Gaza; Operation Cast Lead, the warbetween Israel and Hamas in Gaza early in 2009; and the war betweenIsrael and Hamas in Gaza in November 2012. 

So let’s look at the recent record of the U.S. administrationand Secretary of State John Kerry: 

Isn’t there some point where we’re allowed to say, “Really, this jokeisn’t funny any more. Could you please stop?” AFP and USA Today

Israel deploys ‘Iron Dome’ as Egypt launches Sinai operations

As Egypt’s army launches a large-scale operation in the Sinai near theborder with Israel, Israel is deploying its “Iron Dome” anti-missilesystem in the southern city of Eilat, near the border with Sinai, forfear that Sinai militants would launch rockets into southern Israel.The system is being deployed at the height of the tourist season. TheIron Dome system was used successfully in November of last year duringIsrael’s war with Gaza to intercept rockets coming from Gaza beforethey could reach populated areas. Ynet

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Al-Jazeera, Egypt, Qatar, Muslim Brotherhood,Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Current TV, Al Gore,John Kerry, Israel, George Mitchell, Tony Blair,James Wolfensohn, Mideast Roadmap to Peace,Afghanistan, Taliban, Iron Dome, Sinai 

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