Al Gore and Al Jazeera: Do These Als Really Belong Together?

Al Gore and Al Jazeera: Do These Als Really Belong Together?
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The sale of Current TV by Al Gore and his partner Joel Hyatt to Al Jazeera which is owned by a billionaire sheik of Saudi Arabia is troubling to many progressives. On the surface it looks like Gore to a degree sold out his principles to make a profit and possibly avoid some big losses on his investment in Current TV. Al Gore is the poster boy for the movement to stop global warming. Al Jazeera's owner and chairman is Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer bin Mohammed bin Thani Al-Thani. He is worth over $2 billion and is the seventh richest royal family member in the world. He says that he is a moderate and is considered progressive by Muslim leaders. Obviously, his wealth was had by the selling of oil that ultimately fuels the gas guzzling autos which populate dear Mother Earth. The use of these fuels of course is a major major cause of air pollution and this in good part has led to the subsequent thinning of the top layers of our atmosphere which has lead to drastic reductions in our global temperatures. Mother Earth is a self-healing entity much like our human bodies. I believe the the extreme weather conditions we have experienced the last few years is the Earth's way of healing itself from the poisons that have been injected into her over many many years. At the moment, she is an angry lady so try not to get in her way as she fixes herself.

Back to Gore and Al Jazeera. Gore's defense of the sale is that no news organization has done a better job of making the dangers about global warming known to the world. He makes a very powerful point on this. If you compare the U.S. mainstream media's overall efforts in addressing this important issue and compare it to Al Jeezera's efforts regarding global warming, the U.S. media should hang its head in shame. So being a vehicle for bringing Al Jazeera into the U.S. market and the potential it has to educate the ignorant and uneducated on global warming could have a major impact. It's possible their coverage of global warming could be a big factor in catalyzing a substantial groundswell of support in U.S. citizens, for our county to vastly upgrade its commitment to fixing this enormous problem.

As far as the karmic nature of Gore's sale of Current TV, first off his real intentions in this sale are a major factor but not the only factor in determining whether this business deal will lead to good or bad karma for him. If you do not really believe in karma just replace that word with morality. The intention of an action and the result of an action determine whether it creates good or bad karma. The thing about intentions is that they are not always obvious when an action takes place. For example a person may appear to be behaving kind and helpful toward another but really have a very selfish immoral intent behind those actions. The good news is that in time if you pay close attention, a person's intentions will be revealed. Given Gore's previous record as a man and politician, its seems very reasonable to conclude that his intentions are good. Yes, it's possible he feels the value of this business deal trumps the fact that he is selling his company to someone who has become wealthy because of the sale of a commodity that is a major polluter of our atmosphere and yet, he decided to do it anyway. However, it seems likely he has weighed the pros and cons and believes the good Al Jazeera can do in the U.S. market outweighs the bad of empowering a company owned by someone who is already disgustingly rich because of the selling of oil regardless of whether he cuts a deal with him.

The real karmic or moral question here is whether he is right about his judgment that Al Jazeera can educate the American public beyond what the existing U.S. media has done in regards to global warming and other important issues our media continually sweeps under the rug. It's possible Gore is deluding himself in believing this could happen as it is also possible he is right about this. If his expectations come to be, then he will not have sold out his principles and the karma he created for himself from this should be very good for him. If this sale ultimately plays a role in scaling back or even stopping global warming, then Gore's action helped everyone on this planet and Mother Earth as well.

I believe a big reason the makers and shakers of Al Jazeera want to get into the U.S. market is to give a more balanced viewpoint about the Arab world then U.S. citizens currently get from the mainstream news media. From my perspective, the big players in our media seem much more interested in getting and keeping their six- and seven-figure salaries then they are committed to informing the general public about what is good for them and what is bad for them. The world of duality that we live in is filled with paradoxes. God created us and also gave us choices. These choices have positive and negative consequences. These choices also result in the material God has to work with in protecting us quite often from ourselves. If a benefactor of massive air pollution also plays a role in stopping global warming, it wont be the first or the last time such paradoxes exist in this world.

More thoughts about karma, spirituality, politics and pop culture can be found at www.karmapoliticspop.com.

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