Some war links

Worrying. American missiles hit the Al Jazeera Arabic-language cable network TV station in Baghdad. From the NY Times:

“Al Jazeera, the most watched television channel in the Arab world, is generally considered by the Bush administration to be hostile to the war in Iraq … Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television were the only international media organizations to operate in their headquarters in Baghdad … Since the war began, Al Jazeera has given close coverage to Iraqi civilian casualties, and generally refers to them as "martyrs." ”

Intriguing. Do our intelligence analysts know what they’re listening to? Radio National’s Background Briefing had an excellent recent program (audio stream available, transcript soon) on the issue of language, culture, intelligence and translation. It highlighted some Pentagon failures to understand Koranic references and context in the speeches of Osama Bin Laden, and also the cultural nuances and references that may contain vital information that will be missed in literal translation. It’s an interesting issue to think about. How often would what we say to our friends be so littered with shorthand phrases and Australian cultural allusions that they might be almost incomprehensible to a foreigner who spoke English, without any effort to speak in code? The “intelligence gap” is as much an issue of culture as language.

The show also raises interesting issues about how dependent (rather than dominant) we as speakers of the supposed “world language”, English, become on others to give us information if we do not speak the local language.