RUTHFULLY YOURS

For a good rundown on Richard Falk, a special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council, see the scathing coverage by Geneva-based UN Watch ^[1], which blew the whistle last week on Falk’s  article blaming America for the terrorist bombings in Boston.

But let’s connect a few more dots. Falk’s article ran not only on the boutique venue of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist’s blog site ^[2], where it appeared April 21st under the headline “A Commentary on the Marathon Murders ^[3].” The same article by Falk — in slightly shorter version — ran two days earlier on the web site of Al Jazeera, under the headline “Collective Self-Reflection in the Wake of a National Tragedy. ^[4]” On Al Jazeera ^[4] the sub-headline, plucked from the text, was precisely Falk’s contention that America is to blame: “The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.” (One of Falk’s points being that “In some respects the U.S. has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks…” — In other words, the two Chechen brothers who received asylum in America, and then used bombs packed with nails to murder and maim Americans, were simply engaging in a bit of post-colonial response, brought on by American policies.)

That Al Jazeera would carry such stuff is no surprise. Falk has lots to offer a Qatar-based news network prone to whipping up anti-American sentiment. He is American — presumably the basis on which he presents his views as an exercise in “collective self-reflection” — and he comes wreathed in credentials as a Princeton University professor emeritus and a UN special rapporteur for Palestinian rights (though the result of his labors has been less to support the rights of Palestinians than to support the interests of the thugs who run Hamas).

And that brings us to former Vice President Al Gore, who just this past January, in a $500 million deal, sold his Current TV cable channel to Al Jazeera — the recent outlet for Falk’s meditations. Having acquired access to an American cable TV audience, thanks to Gore and his business partners, Al Jazeera is now preparing the launch of Al Jazeera America ^[5].  When Gore came under fire for this deal, he vigorously defended Al Jazeera as a marvelous addition to news coverage in America, describing Al Jazeera as “respected…capable ^[6],” and comparing favorably with American networks as an “honest-to-goodness ^[7] news channel.”

Really? Will Al Jazeera America, like its mothership network, soon be bringing us the ravings of Richard Falk? Would Al Gore perhaps like to comment on this brand of commentary, and whether giving it a platform is a service to the American public?