Tag: Al Jazeera

American Atheists to Launch Their Own Television Channel

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics2 Comments

atheismDo you remember a woman named Madalyn Murray O’Hair?

Born in 1919 to a poor family in Pittsburgh, she was raised by church-going parents but claimed she became an atheist after reading the complete Bible in her early teen years. Madalyn Murray O’Hair became a household name when she contested the required moment of prayer and Bible reading in her son William’s Baltimore-area public school in 1960. The Supreme Court, then under Chief Justice Earl Warren, delivered its 8-1 verdict in favor of O’Hair on June 17, 1963, expanding an earlier school prayer decision in the 1962 Engel v. Vitale case. Murray v. Curlett, along with Abington v. Schempp, eliminated not only obligatory school prayer but also mandatory Bible readings in public schools.

Though the Schempp case got top billing, O’Hair quickly became a hero among secular Americans. “The Schempps did not want to be in the limelight,” O’Hair biographer and University of Missouri-Kansas City dean Bryan LeBeau told Beliefnet in a 2004 interview. “Madalyn walked right out to the front of the Supreme Court building, her son by her side, and grabbed the microphone from the press and insisted that this was a major case and she was responsible for it. She took credit and then went on to say that she wasn’t done, that she was going to go on and challenge all kinds of other church-state matters.”

Undeterred by the backlash (O’Hair received death threats and was the victim of vandalism long after the 1963 decision), O’Hair continued to insert herself into church and state legal battles as the country’s atheist-in-chief. “I am an Atheist,” she wrote in the “Why I Am an Atheist” pamphlet. “I am a bit more than that–an Atheist. I am, in fact, the Atheist. The Atheist who made Americans stop to take a little stock of their accepted values.”

Later in 1963, O’Hair founded American Atheists, which remains one of the most activist atheist groups in the U.S. today.

Back in the 1980s, when I was working for a national Cable Television Provider, one of my jobs was to run the syndicated show of the American Atheists, hosted by Madalyn Murray O’Hair. I found her to be a bitter old woman, who spent her life fighting against Someone whom she believed did not exist.

Now, the group she founded plans on taking things a step further.

The New York Daily News reports that

Believe it.

A New Jersey-based atheist group is starting the first on-demand TV channel dedicated to godlessness.

AtheistTV will be launching this summer with big plans to reach out to atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and folks who are looking for a way out of faith.

Members of American Atheists, the organization behind the endeavor, think it’s about time.

“There’s a glut of religious TV programming out there, from televangelists to Christmas specials,” spokesman Dave Muscato told The News. “But there’s no atheist channel. We wanted to fill that void.”

The American Atheists plan to launch their new TV channel this summer.

American Atheists already has a production studio at their national headquarters in Cranford, N.J., where they film their public access cable show “Atheist Viewpoint.” The show is in its 20th season and is distributed to 50 markets across the country.

AtheistTV will make use of content from their homegrown show, as well as their archive of footage from the past 50 years of its activist history. But they’re also seeking to join forces with other content providers—non-profit secular organizations such as the Richard Dawkins Foundation and atheist YouTube stars with big fan bases.

So, will this venture be successful, or will it be as unpopular as Air America and Al-Jazeera America?

According to a Pew Forum Survey, more than 13 million Americans are self-described atheists and agnostics, comprising less than 6% of the U.S. public.

I have never understood Atheists, especially the so-called activists among them.

Our Constitution provides for Freedom of Religion.

According to the Supreme Court, in their Ruling abolishing School Prayer, Atheism is a religion, which the Americans who embrace this nihilism are free to practice.

So, why are Atheist Activists continuously launching a full-blown attack on the Faith which our Founding Fathers wrote so eloquently about, and which has sustained this “shining city on a hill” through times of internal and external strife?

In other words, why are activist Atheists (and Progressives) so intent to either limit or completely eliminate Christianity’s influence on everyday American Life?

Why can’t they be content with their freedom to practice their own Religion?

Why don’t they attack the political/religious ideology of Islam with the same fervor?

The answer to this question is simple:  Cowards will always tell you whom they are afraid of. They will avoid them, like one avoids a child with Chicken Pox.

Additionally, they expect Christians to allow them to take control by “turning the other cheek.” Evidently, they never read the scriptures which describe Jesus running the “money lenders” out of the temple, overturning tables, and expressing his righteous indignation in a way in which no one could mistake it for anything else.

Or, perhaps, it’s the overwhelming overestimation in their own intelligence, which results from ignoring the influence of the God of Abraham in their life.

So, what drives them in this “Unholy Crusade”?

Bitterness, emptiness, and an unfulfilled hungering in their soul which they cannot put a finger on, is the only explanation.

Otherwise, why would you fight so hard against the influence of and worship of Someone you claim not to believe in?

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Al Jazeera America: More Anti-American Propaganda Coming Into Our Homes

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

aljazeeraAmericaI am sure that you have heard the name Al Jazeera, before

Al Jazeera (AJ), means “the peninsula” in Arabic. It is 24-hour, Arabic-language satellite TV news network based in Qatar, The station began programming on November 1, 1996, succeeding the Saudi-based BBC World Service Television (whose broadcasts also were in the Arabic language) had shut down its operations in reaction to the Saudi government’s efforts to censor the station.

The network was created using a $150 million grant from the Emir of Qatar, who, when he took over  in 1995, ended his country’s Ministry of Information; governmental bodies which are usually the source of media censorship in most Arab states. Pledging to let AJ “report the news as they see it,” the Emir, said in 1997:

I believe criticism can be a good thing, and some discomfort for government officials is a small price to pay for this new freedom.

AJ’s founding slogan was (and still is): “The opinion and the other opinion.”

When it began,Al Jazeera hired some 120 of the 250 employees who had worked for the closed BBC station. AJ created a stir among the censored Arab Nations because of its openness in criticizing Middle Eastern Leaders.

AJ’s criticisms of Eastern governments, however, are few and far between in contrast to the network’s railing and whining as pertains to the United States and Israel.

In fact,AJ treats Islamist terrorists, anti-Semites, and other fanatical foes of those two nations, as almost mythological heroes.

AJ’s newscasts and on-air discussions are propagandized to such an extent that it leads their mostly-Islamic audience to believe that  Jews, Israel, and Americans are the most heinous villains, infidels, and evil-doers one would ever come across in their lifetime.

And, guess what Americans? Now these Propagandists are going to have their own network here in the United States of America!

Of course, The New York Times speaks about the new Network in glowing terms…(You just have to love the naivete of the Liberal Dhimmis, don’t you?)

Fourteen hours of straight news every day. Hard-hitting documentaries. Correspondents in oft-overlooked corners of the country. And fewer commercials than any other news channel.

It sounds like something a journalism professor would imagine. In actuality, it is Al Jazeera America, the culmination of a long-held dream among the leaders of Qatar, the Middle Eastern emirate that already reaches most of the rest of the world with its Arabic- and English-language news channels. The new channel, created specifically for consumers in the United States, will join cable and satellite lineups on Tuesday afternoon.

Al Jazeera America is the most ambitious American television news venture since Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes started the Fox News Channel in 1996. It faces some of the same obstacles that Fox eventually glided over — including blanket skepticism about whether distributors, advertisers and viewers will give it a chance. But that is where the parallels to other channels end, because Al Jazeera America is going against the grain of seemingly every trend in television news.

“Viewers will see a news channel unlike the others, as our programming proves Al Jazeera America will air fact-based, unbiased and in-depth news,” said Ehab Al Shihabi, the channel’s acting chief executive, on a news conference call last week. He was explicit about what will be different, saying, “There will be less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings.”

Mr. Al Shihabi and other Al Jazeera representatives say proprietary research supports their assertions that American viewers want a PBS-like news channel 24 hours a day. Originally the new channel was going to have an international bent; now its overseers emphasize how much American news it will cover and how many domestic bureaus it will have, which some see as an effort to appease skeptics.

Comparing Al Jazeera to Fox News?! Just how naive and un-American has the NYT become?

Don’t ask.

Propaganda, such as Al Jazeera will offer, is nothing new.

Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister in 1933. This position bestowed power over all of Germany’s radio, press, cinema, and theater.

In 1925 Goebbels met the leader of the NAzi Party, Adolf Hitler. In 1926, he was made Gauleiter, or party leader, for the region of Berlin, In 1927 he founded and became editor of the official Nazi periodical Der Angriff (The Attack).

Goebbels was elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1928. By exploiting mob emotions and by employing all modern methods of propaganda Goebbels helped Hitler into power.

In the book, “Public Opinion and Propaganda; A Book of Readings edited for The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues”, Leonard W. Doob wrote a chapter titled “Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda”.

Here are some of those principles:

1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.

2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.

a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.

b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.

c. It must oversee other agencies’ activities which have propaganda consequences.

3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.

4. Propaganda must affect the enemy’s policy and action.

a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence.

b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions.

c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself.

d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity.

5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign.

6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

Al Jazeera’s purpose in coming to America is to promote Islam, obfuscate known facts, undermine Americans’ Patriotism, and propagandize the evil committed by Islamic Terrorism.

Propaganda is a very effective tool, used by evil, barbaric men. to lower the defenses of the naive among us.

Make no mistake about it.

If you don’t believe me, ask a Holocaust Survivor…or go to Egypt and ask a Coptic Christian…before they have all been slaughtered.

Forewarned is forearmed. Stay vigilant, Americans.

Until He Comes,

KJ