June 5, 2003

Antonia Zerbisias aka Why I don't buy the Toronto Star Antonia Zerbisias wrongly argues that the Arabic news service Al-Jazeera should be allowed to broadcast into Canada, citing that Canadians should be allowed to see how the rest of the world sees things even if it’s is hate, in this case anti-Semitism towards Jews. This argument is wrong because what is on Al-Jazeera is widely known and it is not necessary to give this service additional markets to broadcast to. Hate should not be allows to propagate itself, giving Al-Jazeera room on Canada’s dial may open some people’s eyes, but it could too easily inspire others. A second point is that Zerbisias trivializes what was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. She writes: Almost every time a commentary, editorial or letter supporting the channel is published somewhere, they have a scathing rejoinder, calling the channel a supporter of anti-Israel terrorism and citing a hateful incident from 2001, when a viewer opinion, read on air, referred to Jews as, brace yourself, "apes and pigs". (my link) The first step in genocide to argue that your targets are not human and that killing them is not killing people but animals or subhumans. To ignore this by trivially a clear example of this type of hate is to be blind to events throughout the last century. 11:06:30 PM

The United States has announced that it will move its troops from bases near South Korea’s border with communist North Korea to bases at least 75 miles south of the border, out of range of the North’s large concentration of artillery. $11 billion in defence upgrades including missile defence were announced. The next move could be a withdrawal of some troops from Okinawa; a small island whose residents are getting upset with the number of US troops taking up large amounts of scare land. 10:51:08 PM