WASHINGTON SCENE:

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/09: Just a few years ago, after the original Camp David agreement in 1978, the joke around Cairo was that the "Voice of America" was really all those loud muffler-broken U.S-supplied buses helping choke, or unchoke depending on your perspective, Cairo's teeming streets. The other well-known joke of course was that the Cairo Tower was "Nasser's Erection", a reference to what Nasser did with some of the money the CIA tried to use to enlist him back in the 1950s.

Now the Cold War-less American propaganda experts are finding new ways to expand the real Voice of America, as well as Radio Free Europe, to try to undermine the growing anti-American sentiments around the world, especially in the Middle East. RFE has actually be reborn in Prague, given a lot of money by the U.S. Congress, is headed up by none other than the former head of the Israeli/Jewish lobby, Thomas Dine, and has a redirected mission aimed toward Iran, Iraq and other peripheral countries the U.S. is busy trying to twist toward American thinking. VOA it seems, still headquartered in downtown Washington, is following in the same mold. And the role of Israel, and the notorious Israeli/Jewish lobby in the US, in all these developments is quite considerable.

The following report about the current expansion of VOA toward the crucial Middle East region is from today's right-wing settler-supported Israeli news source, Arutz 7:

With pervasive anti-American sentiment in the Arab world threatening President Bush's Middle East policy, the Voice of America wants to completely remake its Arab-language broadcasts to appeal to a younger, more radical audience." So began a report in the LA Times last week, describing a new proposed plan under which much of VOA's programming would be targeted to "the under-30 [Arabic-speaking] crowd that is most likely to blame the United States for the region's ills." Daily broadcast hours would be increased from 7 to 24, the mostly shortwave broadcasts would be upgraded to FM, AM, and digital satellite broadcasting, and different geographical areas would be more directly targeted. For the key morning and early evening broadcast hours, the planner proposed to split the network into five geographic segments focusing on local-interest news and regional accents; one of the separate broadcasts would be aimed at Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan.

If the plan works, the Times reports, VOA's expanded presence in the Arab world "reinforce Bush's strategy of rebuilding the U.S. relationship with moderate Arab governments such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and others - a change from former President Clinton's intense focus on Israel and the Arab-Israeli peace process."

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/4/144.htm