Al-Hurra is a useful tool, all right, but not for the U.S. "Mad TV: U.S. taxpayers subsidize terrorist propaganda and Holocaust denial in the Arab world," by Joel Mowbray in Opinion Journal, with thanks to Gnosis:
Testifying under oath recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice misled Congress in her strong defense of Al-Hurra, the taxpayer financed Arab TV network. It was unwitting, though. She herself was misled.During the March 21 House Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Rep. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) pressed Ms. Rice on the wisdom of providing a platform to Islamic terrorists, citing Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's Dec. 7 speech, which Al-Hurra aired live. The broadcast speech "went on for 30 minutes," she responded, "followed by commentary, much of which was critical of Nasrallah."
In fact, Mr. Nasrallah's speech was carried in its entirety, roughly an hour and eight minutes. The commentary that followed--a 13-minute phone interview with Wael Abou Faour, a member of Lebanon's governing coalition--was indeed critical of Mr. Nasrallah. He accused the Hezbollah leader of not being anti-U.S. and anti-Israel enough. While Mr. Nasrallah had claimed Lebanon's governing coalition was aligned with the U.S. and had backed Israel during the war last summer, Mr. Abou Faour said that Hezbollah was actually closer to the U.S and added that any Lebanese faction that assisted "the Israeli enemy" should not be allowed to engage in political discussion because "the only place they should be [is] in prison."
The secretary of state's testimony was without doubt delivered in good faith. But the same cannot be said of the information about the broadcast Al-Hurra provided to the State Department.
Read it all.
Stop the Jiziyah!
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/04/30/hamas-leader-warns-of-new-palestinian-uprising/
Includes 'Pali Work Accident Report'- from the 'mysterious objects department'...
Nasrallah.."You are too friendly with the US"
Abou Faour.."No I am not, you are"
Nasrallah.." No I am not, you are"
Abou Faour.."No I am not, you are"
Nasrallah.." No I am not, you are"
.....typical Muslim cooperation....
Who are these people accountable to?
"Who are these people accountable to?
Posted by: Godefroi"
....generally the person who promises the quickest death to those who even thing about anything other than the 7th century writings of a 7th century caravan raider...and is capable of delivering the promised death...
....this happen to be Iran's Ayatollah Khemeini at the present....
The stations that are funded to beam into the Arab and Muslim world should not carry Arab and Muslim propaganda. Nor should they carry any of those programs on how wonderful life is for Muslims in America *is the government crazy? Does it want still more Muslims flocking here>),
They should be largely engaged not in current evenets but in instruction: instruction about the American Constitution, and other aspects of the American legal and political system. Let Arabs find out about the ideas behind the Bill of Rights. Give them the history of the idea of Free Speech, and do not scant Milton's Areopagitica, or the story of John Peter Zenger, or any other details. Have material on the history of Constitutional adjudication right up, from Holmes and Brandeis (Abrams, Gitlow, and the rest) to the present Brandenburg Test. Have on, with translators, intelligent historians and legal scholars. Do the same, but much more of the same, with the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.
Then let them know about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And have on those who will compare that Universal Declaration with the Muslim version, the Cairo Declaration.
Have interviews with Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Azam Kamguian, Irfan Khawaja. Have interviews even with those who, while they never dare to write or speak about, or distance themselves openly from Islam, are nonetheless what one knows are "cultural" Muslims (as the phrase has it), that is to say "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims, such as Fouad Ajami, speaking say about the Arab Muslim refusal to contemplate Infidel sovereign states as the basis for its permanent opposition to Israel, and Kanan Makiya on how he, and other Iraqis in exile, failed to recognize the primitive state of the masses, failed to recognize the failuire of the entire political class in Iraq.
And show the Muslim audience that we in the West are keenly aware of what Islam is all about. Have on those who discuss Muslim treaty-makinig and the model of Al Hudaibiyya. Have on those scholars of Islam -- not Esposito, but real scholars -- who will discuss the long history of conflict between Islam and Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism.
Do not stint or hold back. Discuss with art historians the destruction of Buddhist and Hindu statuary in Hindustan and Aghanistan, and catalogue the destruction, perhaps starting with video footage of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and then the threat to destroy them, and then the threat carried out, with no one stopping it, no one intervening, and protests coming only from the non-Muslmi world. Explain that it was not the work of the Taliban alone, but of Pakistani and Saudi engineers who helped make the destruction so successful.
Have interviews with non-Muslims who have lived under Muslim rule, and with scholars of the history of dhimmitude. And have round-table discussions, without a single apologist being allowed in, the reality of the attitudes and mistreatment of non-Muslims today.
And have other programs on Muslims, Arab and non-Arab. Relate the al-Anfal campaign against the Kurds by the Arab government in Iraq to the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs in North Africa, of which the victims have been Berbers (do not forget Kateb Yacine), and to the mass murder of black African Muslims in Darfur.
Indeed, have a "Berber hour" and a "Kurdish hour" and a "West African" and "East African" hour several times a week.
In all things, be guided not by Americans, but by such people as Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Wafa Sultan. Have programs about their books. Have programs about those who have decided to leave Islam, and enjoyed the freedom to leave Islam only in the West.
Oh, you object? The audience will be small? We need to give them what they expect, what they want, what will not unsettle them? Nonsense. What they get, what they expect, what will not unsettle them is what they get all the time, round the clock, from their own media and from Al Jazeera and Al Manar and Al This and Al That. A program financed by American taxpayers should not repeat Arab propaganda. It should undermine Arab propaganda, it should punch holes in the curtain, as Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe did. Indeed, those should and could be the models: the people hired were not sympathizers with Soviet Commmunism nor with Russian imperialism. They understood both, and understood that both were a menace, a danger. The people who work at Al Hurra should not be sympathizers with Islam and its duty of Jihad (and the various instruments of Jihad) or with Arab supremacism, but those who understand both, and understand that both are a menace, a danger.
This is what our legislators should be insisting upon.
If you agree, please print this out and send it to your Congressman. Make phone calls. Write to Washington, write in your local papers. Don't stop. The government has, through its own incompetence in this war, forced what one hopes is the temporary "privatization" of the most important part of the war -- the Propaganda War.
Fine. So be it. Help the American government recover, or come to, its senses. There should be no more indulgence exhibited toward the likes of Karen Hughes, and the people who appointed such people as Karen Hughes.
We need foxes, not geese.
There is nothing new under the sun.
foxes with sharp teeth...
Anytime the West funds something like this it always comes back to bite it. That's why tax money needs to quit going to ANY Islamic foolishness. Better safe than sorry.
OT - but GO TO THIS POST: http://polyphonia.livejournal.com/325191.html AND LAUGH!!
Hugh. Great post. I'll send these ideas on to my representative and senator.
Then again, a leading Palestinian official has now called for the deaths of all Americans:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP155307
chsw
To former liberal WF - seconding your move on Hugh's posting.
I think I'll do the same as you: I will pass the ideas on - not to my representative but directly to the PM - after all, Australia has A. multi-lingual TV and radio broadcasting within Australia to most of the immigrant minorities including the Arab community and B. TV and radio beaming out into Indonesia (largest Muslim country in the world) and Malaysia.
If the government won't do it, then at least some of the Christian community radio stations could surely make an interconfessional effort and at least, within the major cities, broadcast some roughly similar programs in all the major languages that we know are spoken at home by Muslim immigrants (e.g. Urdu,Hindi, Malay, Farsi, street Arabic). People like Mark Durie would be able to advise them how to do it so as to avoid being attacked for 'hate speech'. Australia has a LOT of recent immigrants who are here because they are Christians fleeing Muslim persecution (Chinese from Malaysia and Indonesia; Sudanese Anglican and Catholic victims of jihad). Looks like I have a couple more letters to write.
Why should this surprise anyone? How long have we been arming the enemies?
and some of you have the nerve to post on this site that the BNP are a "jew" hating organisation. shame on some of you.
Hugh:
I agree with you 100% on this one. An effective "Radio Free ME" is at least in theory, the most cost effective way to start reversing the tide. It can't do any harm, unlike most things which are capable of backfiring in some way.
Unfortunately however, there is one major distinction between Radio Free Europe and the equivalent for Jihad lands----the unfree people of Europe hungered for even a drop of truth while the Arab world thinks they can get AIDs from a cell phone and that the U.S. attacked itself on 9/11.
What percentage of Muslims in the Middle East do you think are reachable? I.e. capable of being persuaded either "staying neutral" or coming to our side of things?
I sent Hugh's comments to Rep. Virgil Goode and to Rep. Sue Wyrick. They are two who "get it" and were discussed here before.
We need a list of the Islamophiles and the Ameriphiles in Congress. CAIR, the MB, and a bunch of other islamo-orgs are lobbying in Congress every day and they are getting more and more agressive, and successful. Pelosi in Syria is only the tip of the iceberg. We need a list of names, and incidents, a list that we can bring to the fore at election time.
@ exsgtbrown:
What I meant was, to whom in the US government is the current leadership at Al Hurra accountable? Meaning, complaining here is all well and good, but who has the purse strings (and pink slips)?
Then again, a leading Palestinian official has now called for the deaths of all Americans:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP155307
chsw
Posted by: chsw
These are the nice people we give money to. STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES.
What I meant was, to whom in the US government is the current leadership at Al Hurra accountable? Meaning, complaining here is all well and good, but who has the purse strings (and pink slips)?
Posted by: Godefroi
The Dhimmicrats of course! They're too busy "defunding" the war to be bothered with trifling things like taxpayer-funded arab propaganda.
It's nothing new.
Army of so called advisors and other scum is working in State Department for the interests of their Islamist masters. Getting money from diferent funds and international criminals, they are stearing US policy toward abyss, and alocating tax money to the enemy.
Shortsighted US sleeping-with-the-enemy policy has brought nothing good so far. Bin Laden is fine example. Still, there are other, more up-to-date examples of misled policy of the State Department officials, which will proove, I'm sure, as dangerous as Bin Laden.
Here are some new examples from my own interest sphere. In Kosovo. Rice met this guy last year, the same terrorist who was supported by Clinton administration while spreading terror against Christians (even before tax money was used for bombs that helped him win his little intifada in Kosovo):
http://www.savekosovo.org/default.asp?p=6&leader=1
I'm sure that Ms Rice, being decent upstanding lady, was misled on that occasion by the same people who misled her on this issue. Some Congresional Hearing must be held, because it looks like misleading policies are increasing inside State Department. Some people must be held accountable for it.
Last time I checked, we were in the war, aren't we still?!?!?!? Or winning isn't option anymore, now when democrats took over the House?!?!?!?!