Radio M Affair: Acrobats And Fourth Generation Warfare

By Ahmed Bensaada

The sealing of Radio M and the arrest of its director caused the release of all the acrobats of the adulterated Hirak! We thought they had disappeared, slumped in a distant corner of cyberspace or having finally decided to do something interesting for themselves, for their country or even for humanity (why not dream at the start of the year?). But no, they woke up from an abyssal media slumber. They came out accompanied by a deafening din of slogans as hollow as plastic calabashes and a charivari of arguments as empty as they were fallacious. “Glou, Glou, Glou”, as one of my college professors said so well.

We were treated to journalists with stringy verbiage whose thickness of ideas stems from nanotechnology, “droitdelhommistes” as ridiculous as scarecrows on an arid land and, above all, “freedom-expressionists” as false as white teeth of a wax doll.

Obviously, I was not spared from the nauseating attacks. But coming from these acrobats with very primitive argumentation, it would have made me smile if the situation had not been so serious. How is it that after 60 years of independence, Algeria does not have a quality journalistic class, capable of debating serious subjects with serenity and respect? How come the Algerian school has produced an inbred media tribe mostly concentrated in Algiers? A tribe fundamentally subservient to foreign interests who stare at each other’s navel all day long and who, when they happen to raise their face, brush aside anything that disturbs their miserable business.

Supporters of Radio M

Obviously, this collaborating tribe benefits from a powerful foreign protection, that which we owe of course to its cronies when they are caught red-handed. It should be understood that these politico-judicial misadventures are, on the other hand, a godsend for the professionals of fourth generation warfare (G4G). This technique specific to the media war against a targeted country makes it possible to demonize an institution, a government or a country by brandishing at arm’s length the “fake” banners of human rights, freedom of expression or even freedom. short. A gateway for other accusations ranging from dictatorship to tyranny to nepotism.

But this is not enough. The demonization of the enemy must necessarily be accompanied by the sanctification of the protege by playing on the string of pathos while concealing or minimizing that of the logos. Indeed, what could be more pathetic than the imprisonment of an honest journalist or the closure of a professional media respecting the rules of professional ethics? Without forgetting to focus on these families deprived of income because of this situation. The defense of “the widow and the orphan” with a touch of tremolo, what could be more pathetic? That would bring tears to a statue, wouldn’t it?

But beware: not a word about the objective causes that led to this arrest-closure, nor to the facts and documents that prove the criminal practices prohibited by law.

Let it be said once and for all: although I am personally, and in principle, against the imprisonment of journalists in the exercise of their function, Radio M should have been closed in 2014 (and not in 2022!) , date of its financing by Canal France International (CFI), a French organization financed by the Quai d’Orsay.

Radio M funding flowchart

Bannière de CFI

As can be seen in the organizational chart above, CFI is also linked to the French state media. For more details and to consult the references, the reader is invited to read my detailed article on the subject [1].

In its mission of dubious financing of the media in targeted countries, CFI collaborates directly or with organizations having solid relations with American organizations, experts in the “export” of democracy “made in the USA”: USAID (Agence des Etats United for International Development), NED (National Endowment for Democracy), NDI (National Democratic Institute) and Open society by G. Soros [2].

Les partenaires de CFI

When the projects selected by CFI were announced in July 2014, the participants (including Radio M) benefited from training provided by BBC Media Action [3].

BBC Media Action was founded in 1999 by the BBC. It is an organization similar to the CFI which is also funded by the British Foreign Office (Foreign an Commonwealth Office) and, coincidentally, by USAID (among others) [4].

In summary, the entities that gravitate around the Radio M financing program are, for the most part, French, American or British. After this overview, we can therefore easily predict the list of those who are likely to defend the existence and sustainability of this “barbouze” media.

Here are some examples:

Media / Organization	Title and Hyperlink	Date
RFI	Algérie: 2022, une « année noire » pour le journalisme	31/12/2022
France 24	La détention d’Ihsane el-Kadi, un nouveau coup dur pour la liberté de la presse en Algérie	29/12/2022
Monte-Carlo Doualiya	Algérie : le journaliste Ihsane el-Kadi est emprisonné dans l’attente de son procès	29/12/2022
TV5 Monde	Algérie : avec la perquisition de Radio M, le pouvoir achève de museler la presse libre	27/12/2022
Le Monde Afrique	Dernier espace médiatique libre en Algérie, le siège de Radio M a été mis sous scellés	25/12/2022
AFP	Algérie: le patron de presse Ihsane El Kadi en détention provisoire	29/12/2022
BBC News Arabic	Émission sur l’affaire « Radio M »	27/12/2022

 

Remember that Le Monde Afrique is also funded by the Open Society of G. Soros.

The newspaper Le Monde is financed by the Open Society of George Soros

We thus note that the titles of the articles are so eloquent, that it is not even necessary to read them to understand that they are against “Algeria” and that the journalist and his radio are victims of the “dictatorship”. But you will have noticed that all these articles come from French or British state media which are directly or indirectly linked to the financing of Radio M.

They are certainly not going to publicize their involvement or the purpose of their funding. Nor to say that if the opposite would have happened in one of these countries, that is to say that Algeria finances a media which systematically denigrates the host country, this media would be banned and its owner accused of intelligence with a foreign power.

But these givers of lessons who are so talkative when it comes to “Algeria”, why are they silent when professional Russian media, employing Western journalists, have been closed down manu-militari by their countries? Would these countries not be dictatorships?

Can they also explain to us why they are so inaudible in the case of Julian Assange who is slowly dying in a British prison awaiting extradition to the United States, a country expert in electric chairs? Aren’t the United Kingdom and the United States “dictatorships”?

And why were they not moved when the journalist Shirine Abou Akleh was assassinated at point-blank range by the Israeli army and did they not call the Jewish state a “dictatorship”? No, they continue to refer to it as a “democratic beacon”.

And what can these mainstream media tell us about the summoning of French journalists by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI)? Where have the sacrosanct human rights and freedom of expression gone?

We have to face the facts, as Pierre Rimbert [5] puts it so well, “freedom of expression is too precious a good to be shared with our adversaries, isn’t it? “.

In addition to the demonization of the enemy and the sanctification of the protege, the G4G technique is based on another failing of Western mainstream information: the circular circulation of information dear to Pierre Bourdieu. The articles on the “Radio M affair” laid by those who finance and protect this media are taken up without any verification or additional investigation. If the French state media apparatus says so, it’s true, isn’t it?

In the United States, the “famous” New York Times (NYT), a great defender of the “export” of democracy and of the Arab “spring”, also got involved, using the same rhetoric and the same clichés in the Radio M case: “Algeria cracks down on the last remaining independent media” [6].

The daily did not ask itself the question of the independence of the media, for example, when it was involved up to its neck in the crusade led, under shameful false pretexts, by the Bush administration against the Iraq [7]. That only killed a few hundred thousand, didn’t it? Iraqis, of course.

More recently, this same NYT did not hesitate to lend a serious hand to the election of Joe Biden by denigrating a serious investigation by the New York Post incriminating Hunter Biden, the son of the current tenant of the White House. This investigation could have seriously harmed candidate Biden, but “just weeks before the presidential election the New York Times was among the powerful institutions that ignored, downplayed or suppressed the story” [8].

So what about the independence of the press, ethics and freedom of expression? They can be put on the backburner from time to time to give “friends” a boost?

So please shut up and don’t come and give us advice on principles that you blithely flout when it’s your business!

Radio M and journalistic ethics

Contrary to what is muttered in the articles cited above (and many others that it would be tedious to analyze in this work), Radio M is not a free media and does not respect basic journalistic ethics in any way for many reasons :

1- Radio M invites to its programs only people who share its point of view and those of its supporters. This is “inbred” journalism that produces only sterile debates and inevitable intellectual degeneration. In this sense, this medium uses the techniques of the Western mainstream media that support it. Indeed, just look at their media coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: biased, partial and dishonest, it gives a poor idea of the journalism of these lesson-giving countries;

2- Throughout the Hirak period, Radio M and the people invited were all for the famous “transition phase”, a solution that was far from unanimous among the population;

3- Radio M was the tribune, even the “official” press organ of the “brotherhood” of self-proclaimed Hirak tenors [9];

4- The people who basely attacked, denigrated and insulted me in articles or on social media (mostly without having read me) were regularly invited by Radio M. In fact, it turns out that Radio M is an (influential) member of the journaling tribe I mentioned in the introduction to this article.

5- Personally, I have never been invited by Radio M, even after having written dozens of articles and a book on Hirak. On the contrary, I was insulted and derided “live” and in the presence of the “tenors”;

6- My articles and my book on the Hirak have never been discussed in any of the Radio M programs, nor any review even to criticize the content. On the other hand, Radio M used one of the principles of war propaganda: the demonization of the author by calling him a “barbouze”. It is still amazing to call a citizen “harki” who gives lectures to the main institutions of his country to avoid a collapse of the nation and “mujahid” a journalist who receives subsidies from a foreign power to denigrate his country. . This is exactly what the sycophants of Radio M and its boss are doing, who want to erect a bronze statue to the latter in the pantheon of world journalism. Blinded by the laudatory epithets, they do not even realize that Radio M and its mustachioed boss are only a weapon in the arsenal of the G4G which we will get rid of once the obsolescence has been noted;

7- Radio M is a media that practices the technique of “Manchar” (“saw” in Arabic), that is to say the systematic denigration and belittlement of everything related to Algeria, from the point of view social, political, economic, etc. For this media and its supporters, there is nothing good in Algeria and those who say the opposite must be ignored, fought against, even discredited by treating them as “DRS collaborators”, “government agents”, “mercenaries to the balance of the system”, etc.

Misery of rickety argument

Despite the radio silence (pardon the easy pun) on the part of Radio M following the publication of my article on his “barbouzerie” [10], many members of the journalist tribe took it upon themselves to take the defense.

There are those who, by Pavlovian reflex and without reading my article, called me a conspirator, a mercenary in the pay of “the system”, etc. : the zero level of argumentation.

Others have taken the next step, that is to say, to refute the thesis of foreign financing of Radio M, but without any argument.

But faced with indisputable documentation, something more convincing had to be found. This is how an absurd argument appeared: that of saying that if the Algerian government (or another state body) receives subsidies from abroad, there is no harm in Radio M receiving them. .

First of all, there is no comparison to be made between the two cases because, for the first, it is a matter of state-to-state relations, recorded in conventions and official texts.

In the case of Radio M – as well as for all Algerian NGOs that receive foreign subsidies – four questions must be asked: Who funds? Who is funded? What is it funded for? What was the funding used for?

1- Who finances? As far as Radio M is concerned, the funding comes from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, therefore directly from an official institution of the French government.

2- Who is funded? Radio M was created within a media group based in Algeria. This type of group is targeted for its potential to influence society in the context of G4G.

3- For what purpose is it financed? According to the description provided by “Ebticar Media”, Radio M is a “project presented by the company Interface Media aims to fill the gap of independent information in Algeria” [11].

The vagueness deliberately sprinkled in this sentence is clarified in the description of a Syrian project that was one of the eleven selected by “Ebticar Media” in 2014 (including Radio M). Remember that in this year, Algeria had escaped the sirens of the Arab “spring” while in Syria, the war had unfortunately bloodied the country.

The Syrian project, named “New Syrian Voices” is described as follows [12]: “The repression of the media imposed in the authoritarian context of Syria and the protracted conflict have led to the development of citizen journalism in the country, the only possibility to produce independent information on the besieged towns and villages. In this situation, New Syrian Voices, the project presented by i2mind, DKB Productions and a group of independent Syrian citizens, aims to capture the Syrian reality through quality reporting – currently missing in the information and ideological chaos generated by the Bashar Al Assad’s regime – combining precision and innovation in order to also attract the attention of the international media. »

It is enough just to replace the terms relating to Syria by others referring to Algeria to understand the purpose of the financing of Radio M.

4- What was the funding used for? As explained above, Radio M has been a forum for the “self-proclaimed tenors” of Hirak and, above all, the exclusive mouthpiece of the “transition phase” to the detriment of the constitutional option. This “transitional period” which would have amalgamated groups as antagonistic as the Western-loving NGOs, the offshore Islamawists and the separatist makists would inevitably have led the country towards chaos and ruin.

On this subject, it is useful to remember that the Western mainstream media, the very ones who currently support Radio M, were all, and without exception, for the “transition phase” and those who advocated it.

In the light of all this information, it goes without saying that Radio M would have been closed in any country in the world, including in this lesson-giving West which skilfully uses the notion of freedom of expression with variable geometry. .

In conclusion, it is clear that Algeria is currently undergoing a G4G with a firepower worthy of a Blitzkrieg.

Operation name? “Save the ‘barbouze’ soldier”.

 

References

[1] Ahmed Bensaada, “Hirak: la barbouzerie de Radio M”, ahmedbensaada.com, April 5, 2021, http://www.ahmedbensaada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=555:hirak-la -barbouzerie-de-radio-m&catid=46:qarabic-springq&Itemid=119

[2] For more details on these US agencies, please see my many articles on the subject. Example: http://www.ahmedbensaada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=475:2019-04-04-22-50-13&catid=46:qprintemps-arabeq&Itemid=119

[3] CFI, “EBTICAR Media: candidates received in Marseille”, July 7, 2014, https://cfi.fr/fr/actualites/ebticar-media-les-candidats-recus-marseille

[4] BBC Media Action, “Where Our Money Comes From”, https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/about/funding/

[5] Pierre Rimbert. “Don’t touch my navel”, Le Monde diplomatique, January 2023, https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2023/01/RIMBERT/65412

[6] Vivian Yee, “Algeria Cracks Down on Last Remaining Independent Media Outlet”, The New York Times, December 29, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/world/middleeast/algeria-free -media-radio-m.html

[7] The Sydney Morning Herald, “The New York Times’ role in promoting war in Iraq,” March 23, 2004, https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-new-york-times-role- in-promoting-war-on-iraq-20040323-gdilbl.html

[8] Susan Shelley, “Finally, the New York Times acknowledges the truth about Hunter Biden”, The Orange County Register, March 26, 2022, https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/26/finally-the- new-york-times-acknowledges-the-truth-about-hunter-biden/

[9] Ahmed Bensaada, “Who are these self-proclaimed tenors of the Algerian Hirak? », APIC Editions, Algiers 2020

[10] See reference 1

[11] Babelmed, “The first 11 innovative projects selected by Ebticar”, August 20, 2014, https://www.babelmed.net/fr/article/72083-the-first-11-innovative-projects-selected-by- ebticar

[12] Ibid.

Translated By JazairHope from French from : https://www.ahmedbensaada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=623:2023-01-05-05-15-10&catid=46:qprintemps-arabeq&Itemid=119