MEDIA

Independent: America Increasing Pressure on Al-Jazeera TV by Robert Fisk in Baghdat

"The unprecedented dispute between an Anglo-American occupation authority and an Arab station once praised for its services to free speech in the Arab world comes at a time when the US administration appears to be laying the ground work to close down Al-Jazeera’s operations in Iraq .."

BAGHDAD - Only a day after US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel was “inciting violence” and “endangering the lives of American troops” in Iraq, the station’s Baghdad bureau chief has written a scathing reply to the American administration, complaining that in the past month the station’s offices and staff in Iraq “have been subject to strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried out by US soldiers...”

The unprecedented dispute between an Anglo-American occupation authority supposedly dedicated to “democracy” in Iraq and an Arab station once praised by Washington for its services to free speech in the Arab world comes at a time when the US administration appears to be laying the ground work to close down Al-Jazeera’s operations in Iraq — along with those of the Arabia channel — for alleged “incitement to violence”.

America’s senior occupation proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has officially stated that he would close down newspapers or television stations guilty of “incitement to violence” — without, of course, explaining exactly what this phrase means.

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"Ironie Ironie. Die Befreier der Welt wollen den einzigen freien Nachrichtenkanal in der neuen Kolonie Irak unter fadenscheinigen Begründung resp. Lügen verbieten. Die Besatzungsmacht mag nicht wenn jemand die Wahrheit berichtet. Democracy the american way"