2 Reasons to Watch Aljazeera
1. "Maged," their rooftop guy in Baghdad, is in the middle—and I mean right in the fucking center—of whatever area we're trying to pulverize. For a good twenty minutes tonight his camera picked up blinding flashes from explosions no more than a few blocks away, on at least two sides. One particularly close hit sent the camara reeling, and after it settled down, there was a long, stationary, eerily silent shot of a rising mushroom cloud of smoke, while the anchorman kept asking, "Maged?…Maged?" It looked like Maged hadn't made it, or that maybe the whole crew had been neutron-bombed, leaving only the buildings and the camera standing, but eventually he came back on the line.
2. There's been plenty of footage of crazy riots in Yemen, Cairo, Bahrain and other places I didn't know, all of them being terminated with extreme prejudice by the local cops. The riot in Cairo looked pretty touch and go. Maybe I'm not tuning in at the right times, but I haven't seen any of this stuff on EuroNews, BBC or CNN (where pathetic New Murrow Walter Rodgers is still riding around like Custer with the 7th Cavalry).
