we got no eyes, ears or tongues, and we're winning the war and winning hearts and minds

Couple of posts ago was the story of New York City's public school system trying to find a home for an Arabic-oriented high school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Though the school has been approved and ready to launch, and school administrators are enthusiastic that it fills a genuine need, it's such an unpopular idea among many New Yorkers that it can't find a building to start teaching in.

Elsewhere in an America determined to wage an Asian war while deaf, dumb and blind, we get this curious piece about an Arabic-language television network the USA government has paid for and set up to broadcast pro-American news and information to the Middle East.

The TV network has government-appointed bosses.

The bosses don't know how to speak Arabic.

Most of the time they have utterly no idea what their station is broadcasting to the Arab world.

Apparently the rocket scientists in Bush's inner circle who launched the War in Iraq never considered that the American military and the American government have almost no Arabic speakers, and can hire almost no Americans who speak Arabic.

Nob schmoz ka-pop. Mairsy doats and dosie-doats and little lambsy-divy. Akiddlediedivy too.

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The New York Times
Thursday 17 May 2007

Unfriendly Views
on U.S.-Backed Arabic TV

by HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, May 16 -- Toward the end of a Congressional hearing on Wednesday on American efforts to win more popular support in the Arab world, Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, got sidetracked.

Mr. Ackerman was in the middle of chastising representatives from the United States-financed Middle East television channel Al Hurra for broadcasting the views of leaders of the militant Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. But when a Hurra executive mentioned in the station’s defense that it broadcasts uncut, live versions of President Bush’s speeches, Mr. Ackerman interrupted.

"You carry President Bush live?" he asked. Then, incredulously, "Hopefully we find this helpful to the mission?"

There was laughter throughout the committee room, but the exchange highlighted the central quandary surrounding American public diplomacy efforts.

In recent weeks both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats have attacked Al Hurra for, in the words of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page last week, providing "friendly coverage of camera-ready extremists from Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups."

In particular, critics of the network, which was founded in 2003 as an Arabic-language, American-financed counter to Al Jazeera, are particularly annoyed that the network broadcast a 30-minute speech by the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, in December.

Mr. Ackerman also complained during the hearing that the network gave extensive coverage to Iran’s conference in December on denying the Holocaust and, more recently, showed Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister (and Hamas leader), discussing the faltering Palestinian unity government.

"How does it happen that terrorists take over? Is there no supervision?" Mr. Ackerman asked.

But there was also tacit acknowledgment, even from Republican critics of Al Hurra, that blaming the network might be a little like shooting the messenger. The State Department has devoted many resources lately to public diplomacy, including taking Muslim students to the World Cup games in Germany, serving as host for Arab journalists at training seminars in Washington, and dispatching the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, Karen Hughes, to talk to Muslim women around the world.

But those efforts do little to counter the rising anger among Arabs over the American role in Iraq and the Bush administration’s refusal to shut down the military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

"One witness before this subcommittee last week argued that, ‘Quote, "It’s the policy, stupid," close quote,’ -- acknowledged Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, although, he added, "I’m not one who believes we should significantly reorder our policy toward the Middle East."

For decades, the United States has provided funds for radio and television stations dedicated to promoting American values and views. During the cold war, Radio Free Europe sought to counter the state-controlled Soviet media by broadcasting pro-American views.

The first President George Bush created TV Martí, to beam American programming into Fidel Castro’s Cuba, though Mr. Castro managed to jam it for years so people in Cuba could not actually see it.

Al Hurra was supposed to follow that tradition. But the station’s executives admitted Wednesday that they could not be completely sure that Al Hurra was doing so, because none of the top executives speak Arabic.

"How do you know that they’re being true to the mission if you don’t know what’s being said?" Mr. Ackerman demanded.

Joaquin F. Blaya, a Hurra executive, testified that network officials made sure to question the Arabic-speaking staff about what went on the air. Mr. Blaya and State Department officials acknowledged that the speech by the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Nasrallah, violated the network’s policy not to give a platform to those whom Washington considers to be terrorists.

But Mr. Blaya also contended in an interview on Wednesday that Al Hurra would lose all credibility if it did not give air time to people who disagree with American policy. He said that complaints about air time for Mr. Haniya were unjustified because he legitimately holds the post of Palestinian prime minister.

Mr. Blaya also said it was ironic that the government was seeking to promote American values like democracy and a free press while at the same time trying to censure what is shown in the station.

"That’s the difference between a free media and propaganda," he said.

He said during the hearing that Al Hurra had appointed a new vice president for news, Larry Register, to make sure the mistakes did not happen again. But he admitted that Mr. Register did not speak Arabic either.

State Department officials acknowledged that the lack of Arabic speakers remained a major failing of American public diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.

Gretchen Welch, the director of policy, planning and resources in the State Department’s public diplomacy department, said part of the problem was that the standard source of Arabic language instruction is two years, while the department’s "hardship" postings, a label applied to many in the Middle East, last only one year.

To meet the need, she said, the State Department is putting people into language training who would otherwise be filling overseas posts, and those posts are going empty. "It is absolutely a priority," she said.

But Representative David Scott, Democrat of Georgia, expounded on the problem of trying to promote America in the Arab world. "It begs the question, then, in spite of all the myriad programs that the State Department has initiated to win over foreign peoples, why does the world -- the Muslim world in particular -- continue to hate us so?" he said.

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==============

Gets better.

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The Associated Press
Wednesday 16 May 2007

Hezbollah Speech
Not Properly Screened

by BARRY SCHWEID

WASHINGTON -- Overseers of the United States government's Arabic-language satellite television network say a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was not screened for anti-Israel content before broadcast because no supervisor spoke Arabic.

"Mistakes were made," Joaquin Blaya, of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, told the House Middle East subcommittee Wednesday, referring to the broadcast last December and others by the network, Al-Hurra, that he said "lacked journalistic or academic merit."

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y., said in several instances Nasrallah used the U.S. government's satellite television network as a platform for inciting a crowd to violence against Israel.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia which is considered a terror group by the State Department, fought a war with Israel in Lebanon last summer.

In another Al-Hurra broadcast, Ackerman said, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya lent support to the Iranian assertion that the world War II Holocaust against European Jews was a myth.

"Why are American taxpayer dollars used to spread the hate, lies, and propaganda of these nuts, when our goal was to counter them?" Ackerman asked.

Focusing especially on the Nasrallah speech, Ackerman said the Hezbollah leader spoke for more than 30 minutes live on the U.S. network inciting violence against Israel.

"Doesn't anybody watch the broadcasts?" he asked.

"I can only conclude, based on the trend of the last few months, that Al-Hurra's news executives have decided that pandering is the way to greater audience share," Ackerman said.

Blaya, fellow board members D. Jeffrey Hirschberg and Brian Conniff, head of Al-Hurra's Mideast broadcasting department, called the incidents intolerable and due largely to an absence of Arabic speakers in supervisory positions. "With these program errors standing as painful indicators of the need for additional controls, we are moving forward to shore up our management structure," Blaya said.

A new vice president for news, Larry Register, has been appointed, and editors are now accountable for monitoring news items before and wile they are delivered.

[See NY Times story above: Larry Register doesn't speak Arabic.]

Hirschberg said he knew of no recurrences of a few anti-Semitic incidents. "The Broadcasting Board of Governors promotes freedom and democracy," he said.

But Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., said about the Nasrallah broadast: "At some level for some people this was not a mistake. It was intentional."

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