The dynamic of democratic, nationalist and class struggles throughout the Muslim world has set in motion a new constellation of alliances between the imperial West (US and European Union) and Islamist parties, leaders and regimes, dubbed "moderate" by US officials, propagandists and academics.

This essay analyzes the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, especially the demise of longstanding client regimes. It then examines the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes and the basis of 'historical collaboration'.

The third part of the paper will outline the political circumstances in which the imperial powers embrace "moderate" Islamists in government and utilize "armed fundamentalists" in opposition to secular regimes. We will critically analyze how "moderate" Islam is defined by the Western imperialist powers. Is this a tactical or strategic alliance? What are the political "trade-offs"? What do imperialism's neo-liberal clients and their new 'moderate' Muslim allies have in common and how do they differ?

In conclusion we will evaluate the viability of this alliance and its capacity to contain and deflect the popular democratic movements and repress the burgeoning class and national struggles, especially in regard to the 'obstacles' posed by the Israel-US-Zionist ties and the continued IMF policies which promise to worsen the crises in the Muslim countries.

The Transition from Neo-Liberal Client Rulers to Power-Sharing with Moderate Islamists

The key motivation in Washington's and the European imperial troika's (England, France and Germany) embrace of what their press and officialdom hail as "moderate" Islamist parties has been the collapse or weakening of their long-term client rulers. Faced with the ouster of Mubarak, in Egypt, Ali in Tunisia and Saleh in Yemen, mass protests in Morocco and Algeria, the US-EU turned to conservative Muslim leaders who were willing to work within the existing state institutional framework (including the army and state police), uphold the capitalist order and align with the empire against anti-imperial movements and states. In Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood), in Tunisia the Renaissance Party, in Morocco the Justice and Development Party have all indicated their willingness to serve as reliable partners in blocking the pro-democracy movements that challenge the socio-economic status quo and the long-standing military-imperial linkages.

The Islamist collaborators are called "moderate and respectable" because they agree to participate in elections within the boundaries of the established political and economic order; they have dropped any criticism of imperial and colonial treaties and trade agreements signed by the previous client regions - including ones which collaborate with Israel's colonization of Palestine.

Equally important "moderate" means supporting imperial wars against nationalist and secular Arab republics, such as Syria and Libya, and isolating and/or repressing class based trade unions and secular-left parties.

"Moderate" Islamists have become the Empire's 'contraceptive of choice' against any chance the massive Arab peoples' revolt might give birth to substantive egalitarian social changes and bring those brutal pro- western officials, responsible for so many crimes against humanity, to justice.

The West and their client officials in the military and police have agreed to a kind of "power-sharing' with the moderate/respectable (read 'reactionary') Islamist parties. The Islamists would be responsible for imposing orthodox economic policies and re-establishing 'order' (i.e. bolstering the existing one) in partnership with pro-multinational bank economists and pro US-EU generals and security officials. In exchange the Islamists could take certain ministries, appoint their members, finance electoral clientele among the poor and push their 'moderate' religious, social and cultural agenda. Basically, the elected Islamists would replace the old corrupt dictatorial regimes in running the state and signing off on more free trade agreements with the EU. Their role would keep the leftists, nationalists and populists out of power and from gaining mass support. Their job would substitute spiritual solace and "inner worth" via Islam in place of redistributing land, income and power from the elite, including the foreign multi-nationals to the peasants, workers, unemployed and exploited low-paid employees.

Why the Empire Arms Fundamentalist Anti-Secular Muslims

While the US and EU have backed respectable "moderate Islam" in heading off a popular upheaval of the young and unemployed, in other contexts they have enlisted violent, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists to overthrow secular independent anti-imperialists regimes - like Libya, Syria - just as they had done earlier in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. The US, Qatar and the European troika financed and armed Libyan fundamentalist militias and then engaged in a murderous eight months air and sea assault to ensure their client's 'victory' over the secular Gaddafi regime. Fresh from NATO's success, the US, the European 'Troika' and Turkey, with the backing of the League of Arab collaborator princes and emirs, have financed a violent Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Syria, intent on destroying the nationalist economy and modern secular state.

The US and EU have openly unleashed their fundamentalists allies in order to destroy independent adversaries in the name of "democracy" and 'humanitarian intervention', a laughable claim in light of decade long colonial wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. All target regimes have one crime in common: Using their national resources to develop modern secular states - independent of imperial dictates.

NATO implements its campaigns through conservative 'moderate' or armed fundamentalist Islamist movements depending on the specific needs, circumstances and range of options in any given target nation. With the fall of pro-Empire 'secular dictatorships' in Egypt and Tunisia, pliable conservative Islamist leaders are the fall back "lesser evil". When the opportunity to overthrow an independent secular or nationalist regime arises, armed and violent fundamentalist mercenaries become the political vehicle of choice.

As with European empires in the past, the modern Western imperial countries have relied on retrograde religious parties and leaders to collaborate and serve their economic and military interests and to provide mercenaries for imperial armies to savage any anti-imperialist social revolutionaries. In that sense US and European rulers are neither 'pro nor anti' Islam, it all depends on their national and class position. Islamists who collaborate with Empire are "moderate" allies and if they attack an anti-imperialist regime, they become 'freedom fighters'. On the other hand, they become "terrorists" or "fundamentalists" when they oppose imperial occupation, pillage or colonial settlements.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Collaboration

The historical record of western imperial expansion reveals many instances of collaboration and cooptation as well as conflict with Islamist regimes, movements and parties. In the early 1960's the CIA backed a brutal military coup against the secular Indonesian nationalist regime of Sukarno, and encouraged their puppet dictator General Suharto to unleash Muslim militia in a veritable "holy war" exterminating nearly one million leftist trade unionists, school teachers, students, farmers, communists or suspected sympathizers and their family members. The horrific 'Jakarta Option' became a model for CIA operations elsewhere. In Yugoslavia the US and Europe promoted and financed fundamentalists Muslims in Bosnia, importing mujahedeen who would later form part of Al Qaida, and then backed the Kosovo Liberation Army, a known terrorist organization, in order to completely break-up and ethnically 'cleanse' a modern secular multi-national state - going so far as to have Americans and NATO bomb Belgrade for the first time since the Nazis in the Second World War.

During President Carter's administration, the CIA joined with Saudi Arabia's ruling royalty, providing billions of dollars in arms and military supplies to Afghan Muslim fundamentalists in their brutal but successful Jihad overthrowing a modern, secular nationalist regime backed by the USSR. The murderous fate of school teachers and educated women in the aftermath was quickly covered up.

Needless to say, wherever US imperialism faces leftists or secular, modernizing anti-imperialist regimes, Washington turns to retrograde Islamic leaders willing and able to destroy the progressive regime in return for imperialist support. Such coalitions are built mainly around fundamentalist and moderate Islamist opposition to secular, class- based politics allied with the Empire's hostility to any anti-imperialist challenge to its domination..

The same 'coalition' of Islamists and the Empire has been glaringly obvious during the NATO assault on Libya and continues against Syria: The Muslims provide the shock troops on the ground; NATO provides the aerial bombing, funds, arms, sanctions, embargoes and propaganda.

These Islamist-Imperialist coalitions are usually temporary, based on a common secular or nationalist enemy and not on any common strategic interest. After the defeat of a secular anti-imperialist regime, militant Muslims may find themselves attacked by the colonial neo-liberal regime most favored by the imperial west. This happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the overseas Islamist fighters (Afghan Arabs) returned to their own neo-colonized, collaborating home countries, like Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt and elsewhere.

Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Conflict

The relation between Islamist regimes and imperialism is complex, changing and full of examples of bloody conflict.

The US backed the "modernizing" free market dictatorship of the Shah in Iran, overthrowing the nationalist Mosaddegh regime. They provided arms and intelligence for the Savak, the Shah's monstrous secret police as it hunted down and murdered tens of thousands of nationalist-Islamists and leftist resistance fighters and critics in Iran and abroad. The rise to power of the fundamentalist-anti-imperialist Khomeini regime fueled US armed attacks and provoked retaliatory moves: Iran backed and financed anti-colonial Islamist groups in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (the Shia parties).

Subsequent to 9/11 the US invaded and overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime, re-colonized the country, establishing a puppet regime under US-European auspices. The Taliban and allied Islamist and nationalist resistance fighters organized and established a mass guerrilla army which has engaged in a decade long war with armed support from Pakistani Islamist forces responding to US military incursions.

In Palestine, Washington, under the overweening control of Israel's Zionist fifth column, has armed and financed Israel's war against the popularly elected Palestinian Islamist Hamas government in Gaza. Washington's total commitment to the Jewish state and its colonial expansion and usurpation of Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) lands and property in Jerusalem and elsewhere reflects the profound and pervasive influence of the Zionist power configuration throughout the US political system .They secure 90% votes in Congress, pledges of allegiance from the White House, and senior appointments in Treasury, State Department and the Pentagon.

What determines whether the US Empire will have a collaborative or conflict-ridden relation with Islam depends on the specific political context. The US allies with Islamists when faced with nationalist, leftist and secular democratic regimes and movements, especially where their optimal choice, a military-neo-liberal alternative is relatively weak. However, faced with a nationalist, anti-colonial Islamist regime (as is the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Washington will side with pro-western liberals, dissident Muslim clerics, pliable tribal chiefs, separatist ethnic minorities and pro-Western generals.

The key to US-Islamist relations from the White House perspective is based on the Islamists' attitude toward empire, class politics, NATO and the "free market" (private foreign investment).

Today's 'moderate' Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco (and elsewhere), which have offered their support to NATO and its wars against Libya and Syria, uphold 'private property' (i.e. foreign and imperialist client control of key industries) and repress independent working class and anti-imperialist parties: They are the Empire's "new partners" in the pillage of the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa.

The US-brokered counter-revolutionary alliance among moderate Islamists, the previous military rulers and Washington is fraught with tensions. The military demands total impunity and a continuation of its economic privileges; this includes a veto on any legislation addressing the previous regime's brutal crimes against its own people. On the other hand, the Islamist parties uphold their electoral victories and demand majority rule. Washington insists the alliance adhere to its policy toward Israel and abandon their support for the Palestinian national struggle. As these tensions and conflicts deepen, the alliance could collapse ushering in a new phase of conflict and instability.

Emblematic of "moderate Islamiist" collaboration with US-EU imperialism is the role of Qatar, home to the 'respectable' Arabic media giant, Al-Jazeera, and the demagogic Qatari "spiritual guide" Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi. Sheik Youssef quotes the Koran and Islamic moral principles in defense of NATO's 8-month aerial bombing of Libya, which killed over 50,000 pro-regime Libyans (themselves Muslims). He calls for armed imperial intervention in Syria to overthrow the secular Assad regime, a position he shares comfortably with the state of Israel. He urges the "moderate Islamists" in Egypt and Tunisia to cease any criticism of the existing economic order, ( see "Spiritual guide steers Arabs to moderation", Financial Times, December 9, 2011 - p5). In a word, this respectable Muslim cleric is NATO's perfect Koran-quoting "moderate Islamist" partner - a dream come true.

The Strategic Utility of "Moderate" Islamist Parties

Islamist parties are approached by the Empire's policy elites only when they have a mass following and can therefore weaken any popular, nationalist insurgency. Mass-based Islamist parties serve the empire by providing "legitimacy", by winning elections and by giving a veneer of respectability to the pro-imperial military and police apparatus retained in place from the overthrown client state dictatorships.

The Islamist parties compete at the "grass roots" with the leftists. They build up a clientele of supporters among the poor in the countryside and urban slums through organized charity and basic social services administered at the mosques and humanitarian religious foundations. Because they reject class struggle and are intensely hostile to the left (with its secular, pro-feminist and working-class agenda), they have been 'half-tolerated' by the dictatorship, while the leftist activists are routinely murdered. Subsequently, with the overthrow of the dictatorship, the Islamists emerge intact with the strongest national organizational network as the country's 'natural leaders' from the religious-bazaar merchant political elite. Their leaders offer to serve the empire and its traditional native military collaborators in exchange for a 'slice of power', especially over morality, culture, religion and households (women), in other words, the "micro-society".

For their part, they offer to marginalize and undermine the left, anti-imperialist secular democrats in the streets. In the face of mass popular rebellion calling into question the imperial order, a 'moderate' Islamist-imperial partnership is a 'heavenly deal' praised in Washington, Paris or London (as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv).

Conclusion: How Viable is the Imperial-Islamic Coalition?

Those who thought that the spontaneous pro-democracy movements spelled the end of the imperial order left out the role of organized "moderate" Islamist electoral parties as able collaborators of Empire. The brutally repressed mass mobilization of unemployed youth was no match for the well-funded grass roots community organization of the moderate Islamists. This is especially true when politics shifted from the street to the ballot box, a process that the Islamist parties facilitated. In the absence of a mass revolutionary party, seeking state power, the existing military-police state was able to work around the mass protesters and put together a power sharing agreement at least in the short-run.

In the November 2011 elections, the radical Egyptian Islamist party, Nour, gathered one-quarter of the vote in Cairo and Alexandria. Their showing was even higher among the urban poor districts, which promises even greater support among poor rural constituencies in the coming elections. Essentially a Salafist Islamist party, Nour, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, combined denunciations of class abuses and elite corruption with mass appeals to a return to a mythic harmonious life. They used effective grass roots organizing around basic services in order to gain a greater proportion of the working class vote than all the leftist parties combined. Nour's message of "class retribution against the ...abuses of Egypt's elite fueled Nour's new found popularity", (Financial Times December 10, 2011 p6).

Despite the successes of the Islamist-Imperial partnership, the world economic crises and especially the growing unemployment and misery in the Arab countries will make it difficult for the 'respectable moderate' Islamists to stabilize their societies. They are inextricably constrained by their alliances to function within the confines of the 'orthodox neo-liberal framework' imposed by the Empire. For that reason, the "moderate" Islamists will try to co-opt some secular liberals, social democrats and even a few leftists as 'minority partners', so that they won't be held solely responsible for dashing the expectations of the poor in their countries.

The fact of the matter is that the pro-imperial Islamist parties have absolutely no answer to the current crises: Charities delivered from the mosque during the dictatorship won them mass support; now more austerity programs imposed from their ministerial posts will certainly alienate and infuriate their mass base. What will follow depends on who is best organized: Liberals are limited to media campaigns and tied to economic orthodoxy; the leftists have to advance from protest movements in the downtown squares to organized political units operating in popular neighborhoods, workplaces, markets, villages and slums. Otherwise radical fundamentalist, like the Salafists, will exploit the people's outrage with moderate Islamist betrayals and promote their own version of a closed clerical society, opposing the West while repressing the Left.

The US and EU may have 'temporarily' avoided revolution by accommodating electoral reforms and adapting to alliances with "moderate" Islamists, but their ongoing military interventions and their own growing economic crisis will simply postpone a more decisive conflict in the near future.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

I don’t know how many of my friends around the Gulf received this alert from Greenpeace, however, here it is for the use of everyone:

From: Hussein Fakih [hfakih@diala.greenpeace.org]
Date: Feb 4, 2007 10:20 PM
Subject: Greenpeace: opinion poll
To: [haitham.sabbah@gmail.com]

Dear Mr Haitham Sabbah,

I am an activist in Greenpeace (the international environmental independent organization). Greenpeace have recently discovered that some of the products that are now in the markets in Qatar Kuwait and the UAE are contaminated with Genetic engineered organisms. And in parallel with our work with the authorities there, we are currently conducting a web survey on Genetic Engineering for people in Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE. It would be great if you can take a minute of your time to fill out the survey at http://www.greenpeace.org.lb and then pass it on to your friends and colleagues.

In case you have any question please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best regards and i hope i am not disturbing you.

Hussein Fakih,
Greenpeace Internet communications:
Website:http://www.greenpeace.org.lb
Weblog:http://weblog.greenpeace.org/diwan/

عزيزي هيثم الصباح،

أنا ناشط في منظمة السلام الأخضر العالمية (غرينبيس وهي منظمة بيئية عالمية مستقلة) وقد اكتشفنا مؤخرا وجود مواد ملوثة بالكائنات المهندسة الجينية في اسواق كل من الامارات والكويت وقطر. وبموازة عملنا مع السلطات المختصة نسعى الى استطلاع رأي سكان الامارات والكويت وقطر حول موضوع الهندسة الوراثية. لذا نرجو ان نأخذ من وقتك أقل من دقيقة لاستطلاع رأيك حول هذا الموضوع. يمكنك ان تجد رابط صفحة الاستطلاع على عنوان مدونة منظمة الوارد اعلاه او على موقع المنظمة باللغة العربية (http://www.greenpeace.org.lb) اذا احتجت اي معلومات اضافية فلا تردد بالاتصال بي على عنواني البريدي.

مع جزيل الشكر,
حسين فقيه
غرينبيس

Sounds scary, I know. While I personally don’t prefer any Genetic engineered food, some still says that it is safe! (Read Ziad comments following one of my posts around two years ago).

On the other hand, I’m sure that this goes beyond the three countries mention in the report. In fact, I have at home (living in Bahrain) the same Corn Flour example they are showing, and it doesn’t say anywhere that it is Genetic engineered, and I’m sure that plenty of other Genetic engineered food is around the place, ‘unidentified,’ all around the Middle East.

Are we cheated internally or externally or both? What is the position of our health officials about this type of food? How can they allow to display such food without forcing the supplier to mark it clearly as Genetic engineered? And last but not least, any one with experience who can give us the pros and cons of this myth?

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In the fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index, in between 168 indexed countries, our beloved Arab countries makes sure to be among the worst.

Here is the list in order from "best" to "worst":

Kuwait - 73
United Arab Emirates - 77
Mauritania - 77
Qatar - 80
Morocco - 97
Lebanon - 107
Jordan - 109
Bahrain - 111
Algeria - 126
Egypt - 133
Palestine - 134
Sudan - 139
Tunisia - 148
Yemen - 149
Libya - 152
Iraq -154
Syria - 153
Saudi Arabia - 161
Oman - ?

Yemen (149th) slipped four places, mainly because of the arrest of several journalists and closure of newspapers that reprinted the cartoons. Journalists were harassed for the same reason in Algeria (126th), Jordan (109th), Indonesia (103rd) and India (105th).

But except for Yemen and Saudi Arabia (161st), all the Arab peninsula countries considerably improved their rank. Kuwait (73rd) kept its place at the top of the group, just ahead of the United Arab Emirates (77th) and Qatar (80th).

[...]

Lebanon has fallen from 56th to 107th place in five years, as the country’s media continues to suffer from the region’s poisonous political atmosphere, with a series of bomb attacks in 2005 and Israeli military attacks this year. The Lebanese media - some of the freest and most experienced in the Arab world - desperately need peace and guarantees of security. The inability of the Palestinian Authority (134th) to maintain stability in its territories and the behaviour of Israel (135th) outside its borders seriously threaten freedom of expression in the Middle East.

Reporters Without Borders compiled the Index by asking the 14 freedom of expression organisations that are its partners worldwide, its network of 130 correspondents, as well as journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists, to answer 50 questions about press freedom in their countries. The Index covers 168 nations. Others were not included for lack of data about them.

- Questionnaire for compiling a 2006 world press freedom index
- How the index was compiled

Evaluation of Middle East can be found here (and Middle East Index - PDF).

This is the first post of few I'm going to write about The 2nd Aljazeera Forum - 2006.

Now that I'm back from Doha after attending The 2nd Aljazeera Forum, and after swallowing all the sweet and the bitter of such a huge gathering, I can share with you some of my views and conclusion.

Three things that I would like to talk about mainly:

1. Aljazeera and the Arab media
2. The Forum
3. Blogging in Arabia

First of all, the Arab media:

Honestly, first impression I got about the Arab media was a disappointing one. The first person I meet was a Chief Editor of an Arabian newspaper. We arrived at the same flight, but we never met before, so we only came to know each other while we were leaving the airport together when we were escorted by some nice people from Aljazeera PR to our limousine.

Later that day at the hotel, we sat and talk. When I explained what I do as blogger, his first response was that he "heard" about blogging, but never actually known much of what it is all about and why is it related to the forum which we are going to attend.

Surprisingly, he didn't know that he was supposed to be one of the panelist in the same panel which I'm also joining (The New Media: Bloggers and Participatory Journalism). In fact he got worried when he heard the confirmation that he is one of the panelists of the blogging panel. He declared that he will ask the coordinators to change his participation to some other panel, since he does not know anything about blogging.

The good thing is that Aljazeera coordinators refused to replace him and explained to him that it was intended that he should be there to reflect what, how and when, why, etc... our Arab traditional media will interact with the 'citizen media.'

Later that day, I was lucky to meet more influential and very well know journalist and Chief Editors of Newsweek (Arabic version), Al Hayat (London), Alwasat (Bahrain) and Al Safir (Lebanon) and many more.

As expected, some "heard" about blogging, other didn't, but no one actually ever had the chance to dig more and see where it stands, and how important blogging is outside the boundaries of the Arab world and Middle East. I also didn't miss the chance to criticize them for ignoring the fact of presence of Arab bloggers and how relatively it is powerful and important for the Arab media to make use of it, also how they should develop their own 'electronic media' to match and catch the new standards of 'Main Stream Media' and the "New Media" (also was called, citizen media, future media and alternative media; throughout the forum). I was not surprised to find that they all agreed that they are not utilizing the million readers a month they receive on their Internet version of the newspapers (one of chief editors mentioned that they get more than 1/4 million reader a month).

The press conference:

Waddah Khanfar and Nigel Parsons gave welcome messages respectively to the attendees and answered some of the tough questions.

Khanfar announced some of the new projects that Aljazeera will launch. Among these are the re-launch of aljazeera.net, launch of Aljazeera Research Centre, Launch of Aljazeera channel translated to Urdu and few more things.

So, as you can guess, the most interesting thing to me was the re-launch of http://aljazeera.net/. He mentioned that the re-launch is needed to incorporate a new format that will present the editorial material as well blogging and podcasting. Now, this is good news. Aljazeera seems have done their homework and came up with the conclusion that they can develop their main stream using the edge media technology as well incorporating the blog phenomena in their philosophy of work. I was extremely happy to hear this from Aljazeera, and it didn't take me more than 30 min later to find out and meet the team who are all behind it. They are expected to re-launch aljazeera.net with the launch of Aljazeera International (English version of Aljazeera Arabic. Will talk about later).

Having discussed this move with Aljazeera staff, I also came to know that they are actually in touch with so many pro's in this field, as well they are open for new ideas and would love to work together with well known projects (not going to name them here so that they will not be tagged as pro-Aljazeera since the West sees Aljazeera as the voice of terrorist, like we all Arab and Muslims are tagged too, nothing new). In fact, I was personally excited to accept their invitation for corporation in future projects related to blogging and blogsphere, locally and internationally. We discussed few projects, but please allow me not to mention them now as they are still in very early stages.

Anyway, back to Aljazeera International.

For good reason, blogging and Aljazeera International were some of the most important topics that kept the guests and their hosts busy discussing throughout the forum. In fact, I guess Aljazeera International subject is now resting in peace after everyone returned back home, but not Blogging.
Starting from the first day of the forum and until today morning, everyday there was something on Aljazeera Forum and TV channel about blogging and bloggers. Several interviews and reports were broadcast. More will be coming soon. In fact I was told after recording with them that a 45 minutes documentary program will be broadcast soon. Among the guests, Shaden, Ethan and I. They also told me that more interviews will take place at Egypt and Bahrain.

But, back to Aljazeera International, again. Well, this subject was one of the most controversial ones in the forum. The reason is that Aljazeera Int'l manager failed to answer basic questions, which are "Why, when and how?"

Why do we (Arab world) need to have the first English Channel broadcasting internationally? Of course the question might sound silly or even negativity skeptical. But those who asked the question has very strong point of view. Which is that the 'West' does not actually see or care enough to see their 'Local News Channels', so what would motivate them to see Aljazeera? Plus, Aljazeera having very bad reputation in the 'West', it sounds as a waste of money, lot of money, to invest for nothing.

Also, Aljazeera Int'l failed to answer, when? They don't know when exactly it will launch. It seems that they have some technical issue in getting license to get through cable/satellite networks through out the 'West' (roamers said), as well their offices around the world are still not 'dust free' to start installing equipments, etc.. as Nigel Parsons - Managing Director of Aljazeera Int'l said.

Last but not least was the question of, how? This was and still is one of the most difficult questions. How will Aljazeera Int'l present the Arab and Muslim world? Will they look at it from Arab point of view and just put that in ‘English’ words and outreach the ‘West’ so that they can understand Arab culture and values? Or is it going to put some makeup on our region stories in a way that would be acceptable to the ‘West’.

On the other hand, who will reach the other? Is it the taking ‘East’ to ‘West’ or bringing ‘West’ to ‘East’?

And the terminology; this is one of the tough questions. What will they name Suicide Bombers? Terrorist? What will they call the ‘invasion and occupation forces’; ‘freedom fighters’? How about ‘National Resistance’; will they call them ‘Insurgents’? etc... You know how terminology is so different from the western media, and while the Arab media has fallen in the trap of terminology many times, yet, it still preserved most of its terminology.

In short, Aljazeera Int'l had a nightmare at the evening of that infamous press conference. It also showed some conflicts already floating over the relationship between Aljazeera Arabic and Aljazeera Int'l.

The Forum:

Gathering 180 journalists and more than 300 participants is not an easy job. The forum was one of the most organized forums I ever attended. The entire event toke place at one of the biggest theater halls at Sheraton Doha.

From the moment we stepped out of the plane until we boarded back on the way home; all the time, someone from Aljazeera was around to make sure that all the guests are getting all what they needed in no time. The service was excellent, and the accommodations were luxuries.

The only two problems I noticed throughout the forum were the sound system, which was not functioning as expect most of the time, and the time per session, which was always short in terms of time given for panelist to say all what they need to say, as well answer the ton of questions asked. In the evaluation form given to us at the end of the forum, I suggested that next year they make it in workshops format so that more discussions can take place, and maybe come out with more results.

Over all, on a scale from poor to excellent, I give them 'very good.'

Later, will take a little about some of the Panels and some of the outcomes.

In the wake of Boris Johnson, Blairwatch and many other bloggers have put themselves down as being prepared to publish the 'Bush-Blair Al Jazeera memo' should it become available.

To join the growing call for disclosure and internet publication visit Blairwatch here, and get "I�ll publish the al Jazeera memo" button from here.

On the other hand, Mohammed (along with his colleagues) is doing a great job by keeping us updated on 'Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers' campaign. Get "I Stand With Aljazeera" button from here.

Al-Jazeera Managing Director, Waddah Khanfar, is on the way to London this weekend to find answers. Mr. Blair, will you grant Al-Jazeera Staff request for an urgent meeting? [Hat tip: Mohammed]

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Brussels, accuses US Over Killing of Al-Jazeera Journalist in Baghdad. IFJ calls for re-opening of investigation into 2003 US attack on Al-Jazeera; fears the media may have been deliberately targeted. (details here)

"Don't Bomb Us - A Blog by Al Jazeera Staffer"

Opss... did I say Bin Laden? Correction: BUSH sought to bomb Aljazeera!

***More updates below***

Kevin Maguire And Andy Lines of the Daily Mirror from the UK broke this story today - apparently Bush planned to bomb the Al Jazeera HQ in Qatar:

PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

Hmmm... No Comments!

Update 1: The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the anti-war-in-Iraq daily.

The transcript of the pair's talks during Blair's April 16, 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel's headquarters.

Update 2: Targeting Journalists? Nah...

Former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle - a leading Labour opponent of the Iraq War - called for the document to be made public.

"I believe that Downing Street ought to publish this memo in the interests of transparency, given that much of the detail appears to be in the public domain," he said.

"I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion.

"If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces."

Update 3: LAW CHIEF GAGS THE MIRROR ON BUSH LEAK
THE Daily Mirror was yesterday told not to publish further details from a top secret memo, which revealed that President Bush wanted to bomb an Arab TV station.

The gag by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith came nearly 24 hours after the Mirror informed Downing Street of its intention to reveal how Tony Blair talked Bush out of attacking satellite station al-Jazeera's HQ in friendly Qatar.

Cowards!

Update 4: UK- It is believed to be the first time the Blair government has threatened newspapers in this way. Though it has obtained court injunctions against newspapers, the government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents, including highly sensitive ones about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Update 5: IFJ calls for re-opening of investigation into 2003 US attack on Al-Jazeera; fears the media may have been deliberately targetted.

SOURCE: International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Brussels

**Updates IFEX alerts on the Tariq Ayyoub case of 14 April 2004, 10 October and 8 April 2003**

(IFJ/IFEX) - The following is a 23 November 2005 IFJ media release:

IFJ Accuses US Over Killing of Al-Jazeera Journalist in Baghdad: "It Could be Murder"

Reports that President Bush and British Prime Minister discussed a plan to bomb the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera add to concerns among journalists world-wide that the United States attack on the station�s Baghdad office on 8 April 2003 in which a reporter was killed was deliberate targeting of media.

"If that is the case, then the US is guilty of the murder of an innocent journalist," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "It is time for the United States to tell the truth about this attack and to take responsibility for its actions which appear to be a gross violation of international humanitarian law."

According to the IFJ, which has been campaigning for justice in some 16 cases where journalists and media staff have died at the hands of US troops in the Iraq conflict, there was no US investigation or proper report on why the attack in which journalist Tareq Ayyoub was killed took place.

"It now looks that more and more this was a vindictive and deliberate attack on a media outlet and one that should not go unpunished," said White. The aircraft missile strike on the Al-Jazeera office took place despite the fact that US officials were informed in advance of the exact location of the office because Al-Jazeera feared a repeat of an earlier US army strike in Kabul during the Afghanistan conflict in 2001, in which the Al-Jazeera offices were destroyed. No one was hurt in that attack.

The controversy over the Tareq Ayyoub case erupted again this week following reports in the British newspaper the Daily Mirror that a secret memo from the Prime Minister�s office in London revealing how US President George Bush was talked out of a military strike on the headquarters of Al-Jazeera in Qatar last year by Tony Blair, who feared a worldwide backlash. Yesterday British parliamentarians called for the publication of the five-page transcript of the two leaders� conversation.

The IFJ supports full disclosure of this conversation as well as the re-opening of an investigation into the attack in Baghdad in April 2003.

The network Al-Jazeera has angered the Bush administration by its frank reporting of the Iraq conflict and its broadcasting of pictures of the victims of violence. The station has also been used regularly as a drop-off point for video messages by the terrorist group al-Qaeda. Some of these have been broadcast by Al-Jazeera and most have been rebroadcast by western media outlets.

"The staff of Al-Jazeera are not a bunch of terrorists who can be regarded as legitimate targets," said White. "They are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists. One look at the professional names who have signed up to work on the new English-language version of Al-Jazeera reveals that this is a media outlet that is taken seriously by serious journalists. To consider bombing them would be as appalling as any similar action by terrorists against the BBC or CNN."

The IFJ says that the British media should not be intimidated by officials� attempts to prevent full disclosure of the memo because a civil servant connected with the case is being prosecuted under the UK�s notorious Official Secrets Act.

"The public have a right to know whether politicians would seriously consider killing journalists to stifle independent and critical voices," said White. "And the family, friends and colleagues of the victims have a right to justice for their loved ones."

The IFJ is supporting a global inquiry into impunity in the killing of journalists by the International News Safety Institute.

Last week the IFJ General Secretary presented to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan a draft resolution against impunity in the killing of journalists in conflict zones. Under that resolution governments that fail to hunt down the killers of journalists could end up before the International Criminal Court.

The United States is already accused of covering up the facts about attacks on journalists after another attack on 8 April 2003 in Baghdad, within hours of the Al-Jazeera attack, when a US tank fired on the journalists� hotel in
Baghdad killing two journalists, Taras Protsyiuk of Reuters and Jose Cuoso of Telecinco, the Spanish TV network.

In September a Spanish judge issued arrest warrants for three US soldiers involved in the attack because the US has ignored appeals to co-operate in an inquiry over the circumstances.

Further Information:
Proposed resolution to the US Security Council (PDF Download):
http://www.ifj.org/pdfs/ProposalUNresolution.pdf

Link to IFJ Report on Justice Denied on the Road to Baghdad:
http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?index=2328&Language=EN

The IFJ represents over 500,000 journalists in more than 110 countries.

For further information, contact the IFJ, International Press Centre,
Residence Palace, Block C, 15 Rue de la Loi, B-1040 Brussels, Belgium, tel:
+322 235 2200 or +322 235 2207, fax: +322 235 2219, e-mail:
robert.shaw@ifj.org, Internet: http://www.ifj.org/

Qatar has donated $6 million to build a soccer stadium in an Arab-Israeli town, the first time that a Gulf Arab state has donated money inside Israel. Ahmed Al Tibi -Arab Israeli MP- said that "It is the first Arab initiative on this scale in support of the Arabs of 1948 [Arab citizens of Israel] against deliberate Israeli discrimination."

The Arab Committee for the Defense of Journalists, received a large number of complaints from journalists and technicians working in Aljazeera TV station , saying that the Saudi Embassy in Doha-Qatar has been refusing to give them any kind of transit or entry visas , including entry visas for pilgrimage ; Haj and Umrra.

Despite embassy officials' denial, the complaints confirm that the Saudi Embassy instructed all Haj and Umrra travel agencies not to accept any applications for a Saudi visa from Aljazeera TV employees ... [via: Friends of Aljazeera]

Egypt said that it would dispatch a legal delegation to Qatar to question a Qatari prince accused of causing the death of five Egyptians in a high-speed illegal car race accident. The Egyptian authorities accuse Suleiman Saud Al Thani, a member of Qatar's ruling family, of killing the five and injuring 14 others when his car flew into a crowd of spectators during an illegal car race on the Cairo airport road on September 23.
The families of the victims accuse the Egyptian authorities of having helped him escape back to Qatar shortly after the accident, during which he was driving his car at a speed of 124 miles per hour (200 kilometers per hour).

Kuwaiti Narcissism and Qatari Democracy.

Sorry, Israel, the clash of civilizations will not happen. Despite all your efforts and the Zionist money to pit Arab against Americans, Arabs Do Not Hate Americans. Contrary to that, Arabs Care About Americans. Have you heard of the donations from Arabs to Katrina victims?

From Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Bahrain, Syria, Morocco, Lebanon and Palestine. Almost $ 3 Billion worth of aid from Arab countries!

That�s not all:

The 22-member Arab League called on Arab nations to provide relief to the U.S. Its secretary-general, Amr Moussa, sent a cable of "deep condolences and regret to the U.S. administration over the effect of Hurricane Katrina."

Even Libya that was bombed by the US because Israel killed Americans and then forged a "message of confession" from Libya. Even Syria that Israel wants America to invade.

Not only that, even Iran Offers to send humanitarian aid to a country that has labeled it part of the "axis of evil".

In spite of all that, U.S. Government gave the Israelis a wall, while New Orleans gets flooded!

The Israeli wall is 455 miles

To put a wall around New Orleans would be 50 miles

Bush knew he had to build a wall, but he didn't know where so they decided to put it in Israel in the middle of the Palestine land.

The U.S. government gave $10 billion from the American taxpayers in 1991 to relocate millions of Russian Jews. The U.S. government gave Israel an apartheid-enforcing wall, built them scores of house in Gaza, and now they get $2.2 billion to move out of their illegal settlements. People are dying in New Orleans while these Russian Zionists get $ 300,000 houses - paid for by the taxpayer.

Now, federal troops are sent in with 'Shoot to kill' orders because people are stealing blankets and baby food and other necessities from Wal-Mart stores...

The U.S. government spent OVER $300 Billion for a regime change in Iraq because of Israel.

Will Americans please stop believing Israeli lies about Arabs and Muslims? Will Americans finally stop trusting Israelis?