RUSH: Now, as you know, Algore has sold his TV network, Current TV, to Al Jazeera. A couple things about this. Yesterday morning, the staff, the still shell-shocked staff at Current TV, was called to an all-hands staff meeting at their headquarters in San Francisco, and that meeting was teleconferenced to their offices in Los Angeles and New York City, where the staff at Algore’s network could meet their new bosses from Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera sent two of its top guys, Ehab Al Shihabi, the executive director of international operations, and Muftah AlSuwaidan, the general manager of the London bureau of Al Jazeera. Algore was not there. His partner, Joel Hyatt, was. Joel Hyatt, just so you know, is the son-in-law of the late senator from Ohio, Howard Metzenbaum. And the story in the New York Post about this is about how the staffers at Algore’s network were not happy. They’re disillusioned. They can’t believe that Algore would sell the network to Al Jazeera. They can’t believe they’re working for Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera, now, stop and think about this, by the way. Al Jazeera was made possible by oil money. It’s owned by the emir of Qatar. And Qatar has money for one reason — oil — which Algore hates, at least publicly. Algore is almost, from what I’m told, almost a billionaire based simply on his positions on global warming. He has monetized a fraudulent, hoax position on global warming to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. Al Jazeera was purchased for $500 million, and of that $500 million, Algore got $100 million. Al Jazeera has 75,000 viewers. There is no way this network is worth $500 million. There is no way it’s worth a hundred million to Algore, not in the standard ways using multiples, billing, audience, the standard ways that you would measure value of a media property.
There is no way Al Jazeera or anybody else would pay $500 million for a network that nobody watches. And yet they did. And there’s a reason why they did. By the way, at this staff meeting, Jennifer Granholm, who, you know, I wondered the other day if Jennifer Granholm and Joy Behar, who also has a show there, are now gonna be made to wear burqas and what impact that might have on audience ratings. If Granholm and Behar wear burqas, it might improve ratings. But former Vice President Algore has almost called for terrorism against oil companies. This is no small thing, folks.
Let me tell you the reason that $500 million is not really the audience. It’s the number of homes that the network reaches, it’s the potential audience that might justify $500 million. But even that’s a stretch. Algore succeeded in getting this network on a bunch of Big Cable systems so that theoretically Al Jazeera reaches 80% of the eyeballs in the country, via cable. Not that that many watch it, but that it’s on their cable systems. Now, many of these cable systems took the network simply because of Algore. They’d love to get rid of it. They don’t want to pay anything for it. They don’t want it occupying space, and they’re using this as an opportunity to get rid of the network, which is where Algore comes in and why he was paid $500 million for this.
Look at it this way. Think about it this way. If you were going to sell yourself for millions of dollars to a movement that has as its goal to infiltrate and overcome the United States of America, who better than Algore to partner with? If you’re Algore and you have value, here is a way to demonstrate it. Look at what’s happening, folks, in our country. We’re currently using light bulbs, compact fluorescent light bulbs that are filled with mercury. They have now been found to cause skin cell death and cancer and of course there’s the hazmat danger.
If one of these things breaks in your home you’ve got to call hazmat people to come and have it removed. There’s no reason that we should have compact fluorescents mandated. There’s no reason to ban the incandescent light bulb other than the political pressure brought to bear by the advancement of a hoax issue, i.e. global warming, saving the planet, saving the climate.
Algore has succeeded in profound ways in furthering this hoax.
He’s got people convinced that driving is bad, all because of the movie that he made that’s filled with things in it that are not true. In fact, you could say (and I will say) that as far as many children are concerned — and susceptible, gullible adults — the fraudulent picture in Gore’s movie, Earth in the Balance, of a polar bear on a small sheet of ice probably has had more impact and more effect and more success in “convincing,” quote, unquote, people that there’s global warming.
That picture of a polar bear on a small sheet of ice conveyed that the ice is melting, that the natural habitat for the polar bear is melting, and it’s melting because of us. It’s melting because of the cars we drive, the light bulbs that we use, the amount of fossil fuels that we use. It’s all there in Gore’s movie. The problem is stuff isn’t melting. The polar bears are not threatened, their population’s exploding, and that picture was fraudulent. Polar bears can swim 60 miles. Polar bears frolic on those little slivers of ice.
But it was portrayed as its home.
That picture’s been everywhere, not just in Algore’s movie, but it was prominently there. So because of that picture, you could say — and all of Algore’s movie and the 20-plus years that make up this hoax — we’ve got light bulbs that are threats. We got light bulbs that are not nearly as effective as the ones they were mandated to replace. Now, if you’re Al Jazeera and you have as an objective to have your chance at influencing the American people to accept your worldview of things, who better than the guy like Algore to buy to do it?
Look at all he succeeded at doing! We have been forced into these crappy light bulbs. We have been forced into a number of lifestyle choices, and there will be more coming. We are forced into manufacturing and buying automobiles nobody wants under the false premise that we’re destroying the planet and these new light bulbs and cars will save the planet. We are being forced into accepting higher taxes, bigger government.
Because we must pay the price for our extravagant lifestyles which have led to the death of the polar bear and the destruction of the climate. We’re forced into all of these laws by our elected officials, passed after being lobbied by environmentalist wackos. That image of a lost polar bear floating on the last remaining piece of ice on earth, which was the message behind that picture? All of this fraud is based on a made-up hoax, global warming, climate change, and sold to us by Algore who’s become almost a billionaire in the process.
He has been a relentless advocate and promoter of this thoroughly disprovable concept of manmade climate change and global warming. So if you pull yourself away from it, you have to say, in an objective way, he’s done a hell of a job promoting this hoax that he believes in. He’s done one hell of a job making it accepted. He’s done one hell of a job convincing entire governments and populations that his hoax is real.
If he’s that effective for the environmentalist wackos at spreading countless numbers of lies, you gotta think that Al Jazeera has gotta be asking themselves, “What could this guy do for us?” And so, they’re thrilled to pay him $500 million for a network that nobody watches. You might say it’s a brilliant move on their part business-wise. Look who they’ve got as a lobbyist now! Look at how effective he is, and look at the credibility he still has projecting a hoax.
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RUSH: No, seriously, folks, stop and think of this. Here’s Algore, who has become extremely wealthy perpetuating and personifying a hoax that is in large part based on the dangers of oil. Oil and fossil fuels are destroying the climate. Our use of these fuels is destroying the climate, is creating global warming, and there’s nothing good about that in Algore’s view. Yet who does he accept money from?
He sells his network for $500 million to the grand pooh-bahs of Qatar, which only have that money to give or to buy it with because of oil. You could say, “Well, he’s taken them to the cleaners, Rush! He sold them something that’s not worth anything.” No, no. That’s not what’s happened. That is not what happened. Algore has accepted money from an industry, a nation state and industry that he tells everybody else needs to be shut down. And what did he sell them?
He sold them a propaganda arm!
He sold them a cable network that does reach 70% or 80% of the eyeballs in this country. So he took oil money. Anybody think that that’s not on the up and up? Why would Algore want to have anything to do with Big Oil? He hates ’em. They’re the reason that we are threatened. They are the reason that we’re endangered. They’re the ones that have been lying to us. They’ve been the polluters! I think the reason they bought him is because he’s obviously good at spreading propaganda.
Al Jazeera obviously has a worldview. Al Jazeera, like any other news network, would love to be able to persuade everybody that watches it to agree with their worldview. Their worldview is not one friendly to us as a country rooted in Western Civilization. Al Jazeera doesn’t have much to say about Western Civilization that’s good. And yet they partner with Algore, who supposedly hates oil.
So he gets even richer, gives them a propaganda arm, and remains involved perhaps as a consultant. And then Jennifer Granholm? What’s funny about this staff meeting is Jennifer Granholm asked about severance packages for people like her who are quitting. And Joel Hyatt, Algore’s partner, told her to shut up. “We’re not talking about the at this meeting! Bring it up later.” Total, total, disrespect.
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RUSH: Palm Coast, Florida, with Alex. Welcome, sir. Nice to have you here with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Listen, I’d like to touch in on this issue about Al Jazeera.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Okay. First off, I would like to say that I am a Republican. I recently took a trip, my first trip to Europe. The only English channel that I was able to watch was the Al Jazeera network. I had my preconceptions from the United States on the credibility of the network and everything, and I kind of took it with a grain of salt when I started watching, but the more I started watching, the more I started realizing it wasn’t the terrorist network that I think that Americans think that it is. They take a very hands off —
RUSH: Hang on just one brief moment.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: You started out by saying that you are a Republican.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Now, that’s cool, but why is that important?
CALLER: I think that particularly the Republican Party has these views. I think that the people who are more liberal don’t have as hard a line on the idea that Al Jazeera is a terrorist network. I think that’s kind of pushed more by the Republican side of our country.
RUSH: It is? Okay. Republicans push the idea that Al Jazeera is a terrorist network?
CALLER: Well, particularly conservative people like Bill O’Reilly. I’ve seen his show, you know, pushing the idea that it’s more of a terrorist network and that it can’t be taken seriously.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I haven’t seen so much of that on CNN. But I would like to just touch on the issue that I think that they are a very credible network. I think that they’re more along the lines of BBC World News in the way that they portray news. So the fact that —
RUSH: Uh —
CALLER: — Algore would —
RUSH: BBC?
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Is as almost admittedly now far left as you can get.
CALLER: Well, far left, I mean, look, there is a conservative and liberal point of view. But at the same time, you know, Algore is a Democrat. He sold it to somebody that he thought was in line with his, you know, beliefs, which is, you know, more of a liberal ideology. But to say it’s anti-American is to say something different than saying that it’s liberal.
RUSH: Wait a minute, who says they’re anti-western? Do you really want to make the case that Al Jazeera is objective, un-opinionated, that they don’t represent a worldview?
CALLER: Well, look, everybody represents a worldview. Every network that you’re gonna watch is gonna represent a worldview. I just think that the way that they portray news, you can be from either side of the aisle, you can be in the United States and you can watch their news and you can judge it fairly. You can watch it like you can watch any other network. I don’t think that it’s anything ridiculous that they are coming to the United States. I think that they do have a worldview, but, you know, viewers can tune in, they can assess, but they’ll —
RUSH: Have you ever heard of a journalist named David Marish?
CALLER: Yes, I have. And I saw him on CNN after — I remember, he was a journalist for the network after he quit.
RUSH: He was. And after he quit, he resigned from his position as the Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — in 2008. He cited reflexive, adversarial editorial stances against Americans and anti-American bias as the reason that he resigned.
CALLER: Right. I watched him, too. I remember he went on Fox News, he went on CNN, and he talked about that and, you know, he said a couple things. One thing that he said was that some of — first off, there has been a power shift in the network recently, you know, since the time that he started there and all that, and he said that it wasn’t so much American bias, it’s not like they injected it in the news. He just felt that in the newsroom and, you know, you can still take that, whatever.
RUSH: Now, wait, see, he did say that. You’re taking what he said and you’re telling me that he didn’t say it or that he didn’t mean it, and he did say it. But that’s not my point with this. You said it: Algore shares a worldview, Democrat-Democrat with Al Jazeera, and you’ve called here to make the case it’s no big deal. They’re fairer and better and more balanced than American news. That’s not my point. That was not the point at all. I think it’s fascinating, though, that you wanted call and defend Al Jazeera editorially.
But that’s not what I was talking about. My whole monologue on this has to do with the fact that Algore has demonstrated himself to be a class AAA propagandist. Al Jazeera has a vested interest in the part of the world they represent triumphing. That is undeniable. They’ve hired a guy, they bought a guy who will now become a lobbyist for them to help expand their footprint or their influence.
Now, here’s Algore, who has made his name post-politics as being anti-oil, anti-fossil fuels, anti-conventional energy who just got in bed with conventional energy. He just got in bed with oil wells. He has gotten rich condemning them, and yet he’s now taking their money to further enhance his own wealth and to help them expand their footprint, whatever their footprint is, whatever it ends up being.
Now, all I’m trying to do is explain, you know, because people said why would they pay $500 million for a network nobody watches? That’s not what they were buying. They were buying distribution of this network. They’re buying an opportunity to program it the way they want, and they’re buying Algore as a means of helping them. So Algore is going to end up, already has, offered considerable assistance to a bunch of people he’s gotten rich condemning, is my only point.
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RUSH: I’m gonna go back to Al Jazeera for a second because of the call we had. I don’t think the caller that we had on Al Jazeera is a disconnected consumer of news. I think he was calling here to defend Al Jazeera on the merits as a news network, as a news organization. He was calling to defend them. He compared them to BBC. They’re better than CNN and so forth. A number of people agree.
Colin Powell, ladies, the titular head of the GOP, says he watches Al Jazeera. Hillary and Obama have both said they watch Al Jazeera and they praised it. They’ve said that it is great. Hillary said Al Jazeera is the model of news reporting, and that’s exactly what Al Jazeera wants people to think. Now, in addition to the connection that I’ve made between Algore and Al Jazeera — and I think that’s the big story here, not what kind of news network Al Jazeera is.
I’m gonna get into that here, but the real thing that people wonder is, “Why would they pay $500 million?” Literally, folks, they’ve got 64,000 or 65,000 viewers tops. You don’t pay $500 million for that. You do pay $500 million to get a good lobbyist, and that’s what they got with Algore. Look, whatever you think of Algore, objectively we have to say the guy is pretty good at what he does. He has perpetrated a hoax. He’s gotten rich off of it. He has persuaded millions of people that it’s true.
If you are Al Jazeera and you are seeking similar success in having people think that you are what you want them to think, who better than a guy like Gore? He comes already with (to a lot of people) credibility. He does that movie, he does that book, he puts that fraudulent photo of the polar bear up there on a little sheet of ice and little kids all over the country (impression), “Mommy! Mommy! We got to stop killing polar bears!”
And parents go out and buy cheap little cars and light bulbs, and people start blaming themselves for climate change when there isn’t any manmade climate change. They start blaming themselves for global warming, start accepting big government, accepting tax increases, accepting the notion that they gotta buy things they don’t want in order to save the planet. I mean, it’s really been successfully well done. The irony is, Gore has become what he has become targeting Big Oil!
Big Oil, fossil fuel! It is the number one enemy. It is who Algore has attempted to get everybody to hate. And yet who did he just get in bed with? The important thing is what Gore is going to do for Al Jazeera going forward. Now, about Al Jazeera. To understand Al Jazeera, you have to understand the difference between “Islamist” and “Islamist” terrorist. An Islamist is not “a Muslim.” You must understand this. Terms are specific and they have meaning.
Words mean things. An Islamist is any Muslim person or institution that wants to impose Sharia law. An Islamist terrorist wants to do it via terrorism. An Islamist terrorist will accomplish the objective, or seek to, by pursuing radical objectives through terrorism. Now, Al Jazeera is not Islamist terrorist, but they are openly Islamist. They’re not who they’re not. They’re not an island in the world of Islam that’s not Islamist.
They are who they are.
Now, you may not be comfortable hearing it, you might not want to hear it, but it is what it is. Remember, I’m the mayor of Realville. The most popular show on Al Jazeera is called Sharia and Life. It is hosted by a sheik, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. And he happens to be the top jurist in the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now running Egypt, who, by the way, Mr. Morrissey has now gone public again with demanding back the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, who’s in jail here.
That was the first thing that he said when he was elected president, in his campaign. The first thing he was gonna do is demand tax return of the blind sheik. That will happen. Mark my words. We will release the blind sheik, and we’ll do the under the guise, “The poor guy’s diabetic! He can’t see. He’s blind. He’s wasting away.” Just like the Brits gave away the Pan Am bomber, we’ll give away the blind sheik.
“It’s supposedly the last days of his life. So he can live ’em out at home with family and friends,” blah, blah. I know this is gonna happen. But I am wandering off course a bit here. Al Jazeera is openly Islamist. Their most popular show is Sharia and Life, and it’s hosted by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who’s the top jurist in the Muslim Brotherhood. The network, just like the Muslim Brotherhood, pretends to be opposed to terrorism. But they support Hamas; they support Hezbollah. They do it by rationalizing that these are just resistance and political organizations, not terrorist groups.
Now, I don’t want anybody to think that I have just said that every Muslim is an Islamist. They’re not. It’s why I’m making the point here. The difference here is between “Islamist” and “Islamist terrorist.” Islamists and Islamist terrorists have the same objective. They just go about it different ways. Al Jazeera wouldn’t get on one cable network if they’re openly advocating terrorism to achieve their objectives. So they’re doing it under the guise of news.
You can’t blame them!
If you’re part of the Muslim Brotherhood or if you are an oil sheik in the Middle East and you’re looking at ways to spread the word about what you believe in your heart of hearts, and you study the rest of the world and look at people who’ve succeeded, you would eventually find the American mainstream media. And in your study of how to effectively, peacefully — inform, indoctrinate, propagandize, whatever — get people to accept your worldview, you have to admit that studying the way the American mainstream media has done it is pretty effective.
The lowest-information people in the United States determine who wins elections. That is made to order. “The lowest-information people” is not to say the stupidest. The lowest-information people are the least engaged, those who don’t pay much attention. But when they do, you got ’em. There happen to be more of those than there are of us, folks. You and I being wonks. We live and breathe this stuff. The low-information crowd doesn’t. The low-information crowd, in fact, needs electric cars to make noise so they don’t get run over by ’em.
So if you’re Al Jazeera, you study various places around the world that have been effective in spreading their word, and you would come across the mainstream media in the United States, and you’d have to admire them. Look at what they’re doing here. They got a guy elected president that nobody knew anything about. They got a guy reelected president by literally destroying the character, image, and reputation of his opponent: Mitt Romney.
The mainstream media, if you’re an outsider studying this country, would have to be something you really admire. You’d look at how they did it, and they’ve done it by ostensibly being in the news business. But they’re not any longer. The mainstream media is not in the news business; they’re part of the Democrat Party. But they’re so good at it that as far as the low-information voter is concerned, they’re still in the news business. They’re objective. They’re fair.
The low-information voter really believes Mitt Romney is a felon, really believes Mitt Romney was fine with a guy’s wife dying of cancer, that Mitt Romney really doesn’t like dogs. You might disagree with me here as, “Come on, Rush, they don’t really believe that.” I’m telling you that they did. I’m telling you that when the head of the Chicago teachers gets up and starts talking about the rich and how they took everything from everybody and how they’re never gonna give it up legislatively, we’re going to have take it back from ’em, they believe it. This is what we’re gonna have to admit.
So Al Jazeera is what it is. That’s who Algore accepted money from, and that’s who Algore is now going to be lobbying for. And I think among all the things I’ve mentioned, the fact that Al Jazeera exists because of oil, which Algore has gotten wealthy despising and making other people despise, I just find it fascinating that nobody is calling Gore a hypocrite, that nobody is questioning whether Gore now has any credibility at all. If oil is rotten to the core, why in the world would you help them? Why would you enrich them? Why would you facilitate whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish? Big Oil is bad whether they’re making gasoline or whether they’re doing news, I would think.
Now, the caller also mentioned that Al Jazeera’s not much different than the BBC. And he’s right. He mentioned the BBC World Service, but it doesn’t matter. The BBC is the BBC, and they are as leftist as any news organization is. But this guy doesn’t think so. And I don’t know how many people that listen to the BBC World Service or watch it on TV, I don’t know how many people think it’s as leftist as it is, but clearly not a majority. It, like the mainstream media in this country, is perceived as news and objective and fair and truthful and all that.
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RUSH: Here’s Valerie in Richardson, Texas. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hey. Rush?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: How are you today?
RUSH: Good. Fine. Thank you very much.
CALLER: It’s a wonderful Tuesday here. We’re getting rain.
RUSH: You must need it, then.
CALLER: We must need it very badly. Yes. It’s very nice.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad you’re if we go to it.
CALLER: Yeah, me, too, and we got our kids back at school from Christmas break. That’s wonderful.
RUSH: Ha ha! I can relate to that.
CALLER: Yeah, well, it’s a good thing. You were talking about Al Jazeera and Current TV?
RUSH: Yup..
CALLER: It hit my mind that we’ve been through this road before with the propaganda from foreign lands. We’ve had that for years. I grew up in Los Angeles, and we watched how the Mexican TV stations took over and how we had two different news organizations that were going on, the English version and the Hispanic version that expanded over to like…
RUSH: Oh, yeah, like Univision.
CALLER: Univision and Telemundo.
RUSH: Yeah, Univision, Telemundo. Like Yasser Arafat. When he would speak to an English audience, he’d say one thing. When he went to speak to an Arabic language audience, it was entirely different, and that’s what you’re saying, right?
CALLER: Oh, absolutely. That’s how you got your propaganda out. We have that when they are trying to do the amnesty. Where do they go first? They go to the Hispanic community. My kids are 14 and 15. I got two boys. And they’re not dodos because we straighten ’em out when they come home from school, and —
RUSH: That’s a never-ending process.
CALLER: It’s hard work!
RUSH: It really is. Look, can you hang on a minute here, Valerie? I gotta take a quick obscene profit break.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: We’ll come back and continue with your point after this.
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RUSH: Back now to Valerie in Richardson, Texas. You were talking about Telemundo and Univision saying different things for different audiences. You know, Obama says different things to different audiences, too.
CALLER: Yes, he does, and it’s hard for people to understand when they’re being propagandized. They’re not able to differentiate anymore.
RUSH: Oh, absolutely right!
CALLER: You used to be able to turn on the news and actually get a news report. You don’t get that anymore. You get what you’re supposed to feel about something.
RUSH: Well, nothing is news anymore. There really isn’t any news. There is a narrative every day that has in it a bunch of agendas that need to be moved forward, be it the debt limit, be it the fiscal cliff deal, be it the presidential election. But in terms of just reporting? You know, journalism is telling people what happened someplace where nobody was. That’s long gone, doesn’t happen. You’re exactly right.
CALLER: No. One of the things that you’re gonna find with this sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera is you aren’t gonna find, you know, the left is gonna go after Algore for his hypocrisy. None!
RUSH: No. No way. No way.
CALLER: They’re just not going to. Because they’re all hook… I was gonna say “hookers.” Is that okay? (chuckles) They’re all prostitutes, all of them. They sell each other out, sell each other to cable.
RUSH: Just —
CALLER: They sell us out.
RUSH: — don’t say “sluts.” Anything but that.
CALLER: Oh. Okay. (laughing)
RUSH: Hee-hee-hee-hee.
CALLER: But it’s true.
RUSH: No.
CALLER: And one of the things that my kids have pointed out is that if you’re gonna have foreign language news reporting, it should have English subtitles underneath it so you can know what’s being said.
RUSH: True. I use subtitles and closed-captioning anyway out of necessity and it is extremely helpful. But that’s a good point, too.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: It really is.
CALLER: It was great talking to you.
RUSH: Same here. I’m glad you got through.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: That really is a good analogy, the Univision and Telemundo, ’cause on the Spanish language versions, they’re advising people. For example, in LA, they’re advising how to get to the emergency room without having to spend any money, how to call an ambulance, how to get around the health care system, how to navigate it. They advise how to do this. The Obama administration actually produced radio commercials for air in Mexico about how to access food stamps once you get to America.
It’s an excellent point. It’s all springing from the fact that we had a caller earlier who wanted to defend Al Jazeera as a just straight-down-the-line news organization that probably was more reliable objectively than CNN, the caller said. So the point here is that Al Jazeera’s what it is. Like I said, you have to know the difference between “Islamist” and “Islamist terrorist” and “Muslim” and the difference in those three terms.
But again I’ll just tell one more time: The real irony here or the hypocrisy is Gore who has literally become almost a billionaire — a multi, multimillionaire — in a crusade against oil and oil companies, and he has just enriched himself hundreds of millions of dollars selling his network to an oil state. Al Jazeera is from Qatar. Al Jazeera gave us the Arab Spring. Look how it turned out. Al Jazeera was the coverage there.
Anyway, Valerie, thanks.