Provocative Peninsula — Al-Jazeera Blazes a New Trail in English

“If it’s newsworthy, it gets on the air, whether it’s Bush or bin Laden.”

So began the first few days of Al-Jazeera‘s English language news channel, a stream of glitzy slogans and swirling views of the Doha newsroom, punctuated by the occasional ad for a Qatari development corporation or Gulf state-based airline.

The news reports show footage that in the United States one could only get watching sensational Spanish language shock shows. On the day Pierre Gemayel was assassinated (undoubtedly a “good” break for Al-Jazeera English’s kick-off), I must have seen the Lebanese minister’s brains splattered in clumps on his passenger seat 15 times.

But supported by the impressive production quality are news and analysis shows which seem to still be trying to find their groove.

One of the touted strengths of the channel, for example the fact that its Middle East experts would actually be from the Middle East, seems to also be a weakness: the guests many times can’t seem to finish articulating the answer to a question before, due to time restraints, the host must interrupt them to move on to a new subject or point of view.

My favorite shows so far are Riz Khan — sort of like Larry King but not obnoxious — and People and Power, a magazine-style news program. A recent show on the Palestinian government and political prisoners was fascinating and in-depth, if only because it showed and told me things I’d never have seen or heard on CNN. And for those of you who saw Control Room, former US mouthpiece Josh Rushing is now refreshingly “with them.”

There is also plenty of non-Middle Eastern coverage. Just today I saw exclusive Al-Jazeera footage of battles in Chad, and a fluff piece on a show called 48 about Havana, which was (irkingly) light on the Castro regime. Last week I saw disturbing footage from 1994 of Argentine Jews staring in horror at the pile of rubble and bodies that was made of their community center in Buenos Aires.

There’s a lot I am leaving out because I simply don’t have time to watch TV all day, but also because I want you to go to Al-Jazeera today and subscribe to the broadband service for $6/month. Of course, this is only if you’re in the US — most other countries have companies which have agreed to provide the channel to their subscribers.

The verdict is: Al-Jazeera rocks, and for now, I’m addicted. There’s definitely room for improvement, but at least it’s not full of the puke-inducing blatherings of self-important morons like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly and Joe Scarborough.

The New New Anti-Semites

[O]ur leaders may be so demoralized that we could just surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the realists and the antisemites desire.

That’s Michael Ledeen over at The Corner. Now, using the standard neocon definition of anti-Semite (anyone, Gentile or Jew, who doesn’t carry around wallet-sized photos of Bibi), this means that to oppose the ongoing war in Iraq (and what the hell, let’s throw in Afghanistan too, just for symmetry) is wrong because Likud should get what Likud wants. Whew, glad we have that out in the open now – you could get called an, er, anti-Semite for saying that a few years ago.

Ledeen lunacy via Arthur Silber, who has much more.

Free to good home: One Ceasefire

A remarkable article in tonight’s Haaretz, remarkable not so much in that it talks of a ceasefire between the Israelis and the Palestinians, because those are certainly common enough, but remarkable in how succinctly it illustrates just how close the two sides are.

An Islamic Jihad leader is quoted as saying (and claiming that Hamas and Fatah are also on board), that they are willing to halt the incessant Qassam attacks on Israel if Israel stops it’s attacks on Palestinian territory. Pretty cut and dry offer of a ceasefire, right?

Then an Israeli government spokeswoman is quoted as saying they are willing to halt their attacks once the Qassams stop.

And therein lies the rub: both sides are willing to stop, but neither wants to go first. Why should that matter? Locked in a seemingly eternal stalemate and with scores of innocent people being killed: there seems so little to lose and so much to gain. All that needs to happen is for one side or the other, and it doesn’t particularly matter which one, but one side or the other to accept the offer, tell their army to take a long weekend, and see if maybe this thing will stick.

The ceasefire that eluded so many is sitting there on the ground like a lost coin, will anyone bother to bend over and pick it up?

Playing With Fire

Several people have written to inform me that Charlie Rangel’s draft proposal is merely a ploy to make war supporters squirm. Well, if it’s a ploy, then Rangel is playing with fire, because there are plenty of liberals out there who have rushed to defend his proposal on egalitarian grounds – and there are plenty of right-wingers who will be happy to read those arguments back to the libs when the Pentagon finally decides it needs more fodder than it can hoodwink into voluntarily enlisting.

Moreover, unless Rangel is simply a liar, it’s not a ploy:

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq … if, indeed, we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said Sunday.

Rangel floated the same idea in Congress two years ago, but ended up voting against his own bill, along with 401 other Congress members, when the measure came up just before the presidential election.

At the time, he accused Republicans of rushing it out as a stunt against Democrats instead of giving it a legitimate hearing.

But the soon-to-be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee said Sunday a draft bill will be no stunt this time, insisting he’s very serious about it.

“You bet your life; underscore serious,” Rangel said on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday.

Fortunately, Rangel’s constituents, unlike sophisticated liberal know-it-alls, seem duly alarmed:

Along 125th Street in New York City on Sunday, Rangel’s draft plan was met mostly with derision.

“What, he was smoking pot or something?” said 58-year-old James Brown.

“He doesn’t represent the people of Harlem if he’s for the draft,” Neil Davis, 48, said.

Militarism + Manichaeanism + Conscription = Peace?

Charlie Rangel and other liberals want a return to the draft on the basis of some ahistorical notion that it will prevent future wars. (See here for some background on all the wars conscription hasn’t prevented.) For one thing, as Scott points out below, no draft would ever be imposed without all sorts of loopholes and exemptions the powerful and politically connected could exploit – and if Charlie Rangel is so convinced the conscription of “fortunate sons” would do the trick, then why not propose a targeted draft? Children of elected officials only…

Not that I would support that, either. It’s quite legitimate to ask why – if this war is so critical to America’s well-being – Jenna, Barbara, Chelsea, et al. (not to mention the children of pro-war pundits) aren’t “serving.” But there’s no justice in forcing Jenna, Barbara, Chelsea, et al. to go kill or die because their parents are a**holes.

The draft should be opposed on first principles of individual rights. Besides, the utilitarian antiwar argument for conscription avoids unpleasant fundamental truths. There’s no quick procedural fix for American militarism. Radical cultural changes are necessary to shift this country from an aggressive, imperial posture to a defensive, noninterventionist one. Switzerland is a peaceful country with no expansionist tendencies; Israel, not so much. Mandatory military service in both countries is a rights violation, of course, yet it leads to very different results because Switzerland and Israel have very different societies. Anyone want to guess which of those two societies American elites (and, it must be said, many, many regular folks) believe we should be more like?

[youtube]2aC2eunpbSw[/youtube]