The launch of Aljazeera International on November 15, the English arm of Aljazeera Satellite Television was hardly an ordinary event.

It was another notable addition to the growing global efforts aimed at counterbalancing American-European domination over world media: deciding on what story is to be told and how, thus shaping public opinion, reinforcing Westerns policies, disseminating its own ideas and ideals, at the expense of the almost entirely neglected and utterly hapless audiences that neither relate nor wish to identify with such discourses.