`Allawi versus Ja`fari: AlJazeera versus AlArabiyya. AlArabiyya went too far in trying to campaign for `Allawi in the recent under-occupation Iraqi elections. And `Allawi was very insistent on banning Al-Jazeera, along with US occupation authorities who assumed that the ban of AlJazeera would end the insurgency in Iraq. But the hagiographic promotion of `Allawi on Al-Arabiyya only displeased `Allawi's rivals in Iraq who have been informally and unofficially but very clearly allowing AlJazeera to operate freely in Iraq. The Ja`fari government, and the various Shi`ite groups, felt so angry at AlArabiyya for its biased coverage of the Iraqi under-occupation elections that they now trust AlJazeera to cover their perspective. So much so that when I wanted to watch AlArabiyya's live coverage of Ja`fari's inaugural speech this week I was shocked that the speech was translated from an American station and a translator was translating from the English translation of the Arabic speech. When I switched to AlJazeera, they had it live in Arabic. I later read that the Ja`fari government banned AlArabiyya, but allowed AlJazeera, which is still officially banned in Iraq. Go figure.