766 Al Jazeera and Al Pacifica

766 Al Jazeera and Al Pacifica

WBAI Radio in New York was a gift from the previous owner to the Pacifica Foundation and has a powerful signal that you can hear from Poughkeepsie to Philadelphia from its perch on the Empire State Building on 34th Street. WBAI and the four other Pacifica stations -- in Berkeley, California, Los Angeles, Houston and the District of Columbia brand themselves as the "free speech" alternative. Actually, they are college radio stations without the colleges. It's a group of amateurs with the begging capacity of NPR and the listenership of a ten watter broadcasting to either cattle or fish, depending on location. If you corner these folks, they'll admit they're "liberals."

Now, all five of the stations are carrying parts of the daily Al Jazeera English radio "service." Al J is known for its hatred of Israel, of Jews in general and of America.

Okay, there's room for all voices in this country. And among liberals, there are two major schools, these days, one real and one fake. The "real" one needs no description. It's the people who voted enthusiastically for Barak Obama, who want a single payer health care system, who believe in the power or organizing and of unions. The fake one gets its marching orders from Al Jazeera and Jimmy Carter.

One certainly doesn't have to embrace either Jews or Israel to realize that the whole Jazeera/Carter faction is a dirty and cheap cover for the old Protestant saw that we're all equal and all entitled to whatever whim it is we cherish at the moment. Today's Jimmy-zeera fans are the same as the guys who wanted to give the Nazis equal time, and maybe still do.

This story recently appeared on a New York radio chat board. Many of the posters argue that Zera is relatively unbiased. This is true here in the US but not so much elsewhere. It's a propaganda machine overseas. The only good part is that they don't need to beg for funds like the rest of the broadcasters on Pacifica stations and they don't need to sell time. Not as long as the oil wells work.

Shrapnel:

--Here's to the firefighters of Obion County, TN, who charge an advance fee for services outside Fulton city limits and who watched a house burn to the ground because the home owner didn't pay his 75 bucks. A natural consequence of the tea party mentality. The Guardian of London calls it "Ayn Rand's... dream come true;" the liberal blogs are aghast and even the National Review cautiously calls the incident "bad for libertarians."

--How'd this slip by without notice. Ford is closing the Mercury division as of this coming Sunday, 10/10/10, not that there's much to close or even a reason for any to have been built in the past ten or 15 years or maybe since the founding year, 1939, because they were all Ford clones. And please remember, this is the healthiest of the domestic automakers, the one that didn't get a bailout.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

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