(sigh)

It's just too much.

Al-Jazeera English gets CRTC approval (scroll down the page for comments)

Why?

The mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden gets approval from the CRTC. The pro-Arab, pro-Islamic news agency with its biased reporting and incredible claims match a more familiar, more publicly-funded network. Why such a decidedly controversial network has been given approval so easily beggars the imagination. The Fox News Network was allowed only after the CRTC was satisfied a combined network effort would not produce Fox News Canada. Even EWTN had to jump through hoops to get approval. Yet, Al-Jazeera will be coming to a channel near you. It's one thing to have many sources of news to choose from; it's quite another to have this particular news source.

Stupid comment of the day (from the comments at 3:45 PM ET):

It is not much of a suprise to see the amount of racist spoutings coming out
to this story. People making these comments need to remember that Canada is a
multicultural country, which does not mean we are a white anglosaxon christian
views country only. Al Jazeera would not be the first multicultural station in
Canada, we already have a Chinese language network, also the Omni stations.
There is also multicultural shows broadcast on Vision TV. The negative
commentators need to get their heads out of the sand and drag themselves into
the 21st Century. It has been less then 100 years since Women were allowed to
vote, and we still beat, torture and kill people who are different then
ourselves. Look at the issues still going on with bullying in schools and
attacks on Gays and Lesbians.Also, the negative commentors need to look more
into what Islam stands for, instead of what they see on TV and hear from other
racists around them.

Where do we start with this drivel?

I object to the word "racist". The contemporary use of the word is as hollow as the person using it. When once it accurately described an irrational and ignorant person or attitude, the word "racist" now finds itself as a plug for any debate that seems to go south for one side. Suddenly, it's "racist" to criticise Obama's inaction or- as the case may be- the approval of a pro-Islamic and evidently biased network which airs bin Laden's cave ravings. Did it not occur to the writer that objection to Al-Jazeera might stem from pan-Arabic bigotry? How, then, would the comment writer explain the truly horrid belief of some Arabs that black skin is "evil" (Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks of this bigotry and pan-Arabism) or tolerating the existence of the Arab-backed janjaweed? Would this Arab-drawn cartoon of Condoleezza Rice be allowed anywhere else (with all apologies to Miss Rice)? Let's not forget that ARAB does not equal PERSIAN. Would the CRTC allow state-run news from Iran or a freedom-loving Iranian blogster hiding in Turkey? How does the writer feel about these issues?

People making these comments need to remember that Canada is a multicultural
country, which does not mean we are a white anglosaxon christian views country
only.

Too stupid to comment on. Moving on.

There are channels on Canadian television that include news shows and documentaries in other languages, including Chinese. To my knowledge, though, Canadians of Chinese descent haven't tried to manoeuvre planes into buildings. The inclusion of this fact in the aforementioned comment is some poor attempt at a red herring.

The negative commentators need to get their heads out of the sand and drag
themselves into the 21st Century. It has been less then 100 years since Women
were allowed to vote, and we still beat, torture and kill people who are
different then ourselves. Look at the issues still going on with bullying in
schools and attacks on Gays and Lesbians.

Again, too stupid to comment on. It seems that the comment-writer used this particular issue as a hobby-horse for typing up irrelevant and unsubstantiated muck and it will still come back to bite him. Yes, there are people (including homosexuals) tortured and killed- in the Islamic world. The cruelty there isn't in the same ballpark as North America where women can not only vote but be educated and get justice if someone wrongs them.

I still don't understand having a biased new agency for a handful who long to glean meaning from bin Laden's next "death to America" rant or why CRTC thought it was in Canada's best interest. It's about as sensible as the comment.

**

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will still attend the Copenhagen conference despite the bunk. Deal with it in your own way.

**

At the trial of one of Cambodia's worst criminals, Kaing Guek Eav (also known as Duch), Cambodians hear once more how their population was brutally decimated.

It's this paragraph that gets me (emphasis mine):

Just getting to this point has not been easy. This UN-backed trial was established in 2003 and has been teetering with uncertainty for the past two years as the current government resisted expanding the docket and the international community balked at the growing financial tab.

In fact, the trial opened in a near state of bankruptcy after widely corroborated allegations that Cambodian staff were forced to pay kick-backs to secure their jobs put a freeze on international funding.

Pol Pot fled after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 (the US' refusal to recognise their former enemy's, Vietnam, backing of an erstwhile Cambodia government ended up helping the Khmer Rouge). The UN finally set up a trial five years after Pol Pot died. Even then, the international community, which still labours under "carbon footprint" bunk, froze funding impeding the efforts to try the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders. Would the international community like to put its dibs in the Manhattan trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Priceless.