Radio Liberty and Voice of America Should Broadcast Here at Home to Emigres and Americans

My great idea today after pondering the problems of the Board of International Broadcasting AND the problem of the occasional jihadists that turn up among the former-Soviet emigre population was that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America and other broadcasters for overseas audiences should all broadcast at home.

This would help engage new immigrants in particular but also help compete against the active propagandists at RT, Al Jazeera and other foreign stations that are increasingly capturing both emigre and American audiences with their "line".

Back in the Cold War, a law was passed called the Smith-Mundt Act which barred these radios from broadcasting at home, because it was worried about "blowback" -- the effect of broadcasts made for war and intelligence purposes overseas, and how they would sound at home or affect audiences here.

This is now described in a skewed manner, it seems to me, by the CJR, which claims the motivation was fear that Communists could infiltrate at home and that would affect the broadcasts needed to fight the Commies abroad. That doesn't make sense to me.

The fear was always about "blowback" -- you know, don't piss in the wind sort of thing.

This was kind of ridiculous even in the era before the Internet, simply because the content of the programs got around -- in samizdat, that was then reprinted abroad, in various articles, in the radiios' publications issued overseas but available in libraries, and so on. The imperative of the anti-blowback laws seem to me to have been motivated more about how certain things sounded when said abroad, and how they might sound at home when in warfare. This disconnect may have subsided after WWII and the Vietname War.

Even so, I remember when I helped Ludmila Alexeyeva, the chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, who was its Representative in Exile in the 1970s and 1980s, to compile her critical study of bias and problems at RFE/RL and VOA, in order to analyze some of the scripts she knew existed and knew were problematic (extremist, nationalist, antisemitic, etc.), she had to arrange for staff to mail them to people in Canada, and then have Canadians mail them back to us in the States. I am not kidding. This is what we did to technically comply with that law.

This became even more ridiculous to enforce in the Internet era. I worked for two years on two publications on the Internet at RFE/RL that were visible to audiences in the US, not only overseas. There were programs broadcast in Russian that were put up on the Internet that I or any other writer could quote from -- any of these could be read or used or reprinted here. It really became a fiction to police "blowback" and few bothered.

So I came up with my idea -- there really is a problem with anti-Americanism among both students and professors visiting the US that is only exacerbated on some of their lefty college campuses; there really is a problem with alienation and even hostility among emigre populations -- and the cases of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Uzbeks Mukhtorov and Kabilov really bring this home. Obviously the overwhelming majority of students and emigres aren't hostile to their temporary or permanent host country.

But a lot are, and I find a fair number of students and young adults with this mindset because they've grown up in Eurasian societies with zombifying televisions -- and they don't read samizdat, or listen to foreign broadcasts, or read even opposition Live Journals.

Today, I'll get into a Facebook fight with an Uzbek studying at the taxpayer's expense here in the US about her admiration for the propagandistc video "Collateral Murder" -- she simply won't grasp that her emotions have been manipulated and the context stripped away. Or I'll get into a Twitter fight with some Kazakh loyalist or Kyrgyz nationalist who discounts the human rights violations in their country and doesn't accept somebody else on Twitter as an authority. But what if VOA and RFE/RL could be heard, or better yet, not merely accessed, but which targeted people specifically in the emigration?

I first began to see this problem about 20 years ago when I asked all the members of a delegation led by Grigory Yavlinsky for the "500 Days" economic program sponsored by Yeltsin if they had read either Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn.

Most of these reformers in their 20s and 30s had not.

All of Brighton Beach watches Russian-language TV that they get as cable or as a radio combined with American stations that translates some of the programming for them. A lot of the people simply watch Kremlin TV. Or if they watch some emigre-based station, it's one that focuses more on entertainment than on politics.

I always think when I ride in a cab in Washington or New York how it's funny that cab drivers who just got off the plane from Uzbekistan or Belarus are listening to NPR or some extremist right- or left-wing radio talk show host they barely understand, or sometimes one in their own language that isn't anything remotely like the VOA or RFE/RL content.

So why not make it available? So that taxi drivers -- truck drivers and pizza deliverers! -- have it to listen to.

This wouldn't cost a lot more money, but it would mean some re-purposing. I just think that visitors and new arrivals need more *debate* about their world views, plus more *information*. Propaganda doesn't work, people tune it out. But people will watch talk shows with point/counterpoint and they'll listen to news with weather on the ones.

I think this is necessary to counter what I see as the top ten or dozen propaganda planks that Russian intelligence services flak very hard around the world (as do Chinese and Iranian), which include the following false or misleading concepts:

1. America has killed the most people in the world.

2. America sponsored bin Ladn

3. America killed most of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. America arms Al Qaeda in Syria.

5. America is racist and has numerous hate attacks against Muslims.

6. Ameria invades countries for their oil.

7. America is backward and stupid as its falling test scores illustrate.

8. America is closing its doors to visitors and emigres after 9/11 and even more after the Boston bombing.

9. Bush is responsible for 9/11

10. America is run by Jews who take orders from Israel.

Well, you get the idea. Every one of these notions is factually untrue on the face of it, or misleading in that it doesn't take into context things like the great innovation of America with companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook, even if some groups of young people's scores are still poor in math.

In any event, the radios need to get *debate* on these topics circulating more with more information to make better informed citizens of their country and the world.

And it turns out that my great idea is one that also, of all people, President Obama has had, because he has now worked to undo the ban on internal broadcasting by the radios. What do you know!

Now, some are very worried that his motivation for doing that is nefarious, as he wants to propagandize Americans at home the way ostensibly they are propagandized abroad.

I think the original fears that prompted the law were misplaced even then, because only certain broadcasts were propagandistic in nature; the radios have in fact strived to be professional and unbiased in newscasting, particularly since their reform and removal from the CIA back in the 1970s.

Whatever Obama's misuses are, I think the transparency we would get from the broadcasting and their presence in the media scene to compete with RT, which has far too much mindshare, and Al Jazeera, is really vital.

Both RT and Al Jazeera are virulently anti-American and tendentious, and while they don't broadcast all of the 10 falsehoods I mentioned as typical, they don't counter them and their comments and opinion pieces are filled with this dreck.

 

Comments

[David McDuff]

This is an interesting topic.

I watch Al Jazeera English here on Freeview here in the UK and find it somewhat less anti-American than RT, which as you say is often virulently so.

As far as I can see RFE/RL is already available in the US via Smart TV:

http://www.rferl.org/content/webby-awards/24991391.html

As cable loses its appeal and more Smart TVs and streaming devices(Roku, Boxee, Google TV, etc,) are sold, the nature of broadcasting seems to be changing.

[mab]

Oh, you forgot:
11. The American “elite” engineered the economic crash of 2008 (to somehow profit and take over the world).
12. Americans adopt Russian kids to exploit them sexually, use their organs, or get the $50K state subsidy and none of the offenders who killed Russian children have been punished.
13. European countries are US “puppets” and always do America’s bidding. (Tell that to the French, eh?)
14. The West, led by the US, is on a crusade to destroy Orthodoxy.
15. The US does not have its own culture.
16. The US dollar is on the verge of collapse.
17. Various secret societies, led by the Jewish American elite, run the world.
Oh, yeah – we’re all fat and our food sucks.
There are more, but my head hurts.
Yes, it would be a start to counter it in the US with broadcasting. I don’t know what would be possible here in Russia. Sometimes it’s just saying the obvious. Someone is yammering about US funded NGOs, how of course all the oppositional protesters are paid by the CIA (or Hillary, or US funded NGOs), etc. And you say, “In the last 25 years, have any NGOs been closed for this activity or anyone jailed or expelled?” Nine times out of ten people are stopped in their tracks. One of the ten says, “It’s because the CIA (Hillary, NGOs, Obama…) bribes the police (judge, prosecutors).” But mostly people simply don’t know that the USAID had an agreement with the Russian govt, that all projects were approved by the Russian govt, that everything was overseen by a “curator.” If your give them facts, they are at least stumped. But of course there isn’t a forum to do that publicly.

When you click on Russian news in WaPo, Russia Beyond the Headlines pops up in the ad space. I assume that happens to everyone, not just folks like me in Russia. How does that work? Can’t we do something like that?

[Mr. X]

4. America arms Al Qaeda in Syria.

16. The US dollar is on the verge of collapse.

These particular two are without a doubt, true. If by on the verge of collapse you mean within a decade.

I've noticed Pirrong is accusing American paleocons of being pro-Putin. Not true. They are just pro-national sovereignty and anti-Demintern and endless U.S. government sponsored meddling into Russian internal politics. Pirrong, for his part, is a globalist, albiet one who still suffers from the illusion that globalism is in America's national interest rather than that of offshore individuals, corporations, and foreign governments like those of Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have clearly bought America's Syria policy lock stock and barrel.

[Mr. X]

Look at the Sid Blumenthal attack piece on Thor Halvorssen that ran this past week. While I have no use for the Soros-funded Electronic Intifada, isn't it interesting how Sid at least dwelled slightly on Thor and Frank Gaffney's 'trutherism for me, but not for thee' attitude towards the Boston terror bombings, whereby the FSB's refusal to preemptively jail a U.S. citizen with jihadi ties in Dagestan was taken as 'proof' that Putin's security services orchestrated the whole bombing to get America to see the Chechens Moscow's way? As if the U.S. Embassy wouldn't have protested for Tsarnaev's release had the FSB arrested him!

Thor's buddying up to terrorist financier/frontman Ahmed Zakayev while his own father was, according to Buzzfeed a CIA informant is evidence in plain sight that there are those in the Agency who still view Muslims as useful cannon fodder against Russia, more than a generation after the Soviets left Afghanistan. Sybil Edmonds has been talking about this for a decade after hearing the chatter between U.S. silovik handlers and their Islamist assets after 9/11.

Somehow Thor thinks that palling around with terrorists and inviting them to his Oslo confab is getting back at Putin for supporting Chavez. It is no such thing, it is him being a useful idiot for the American silovik-backed Demintern that operates much like the old Comintern through front groups.

[Mr. X]

"And it turns out that my great idea is one that also, of all people, President Obama has had, because he has now worked to undo the ban on internal broadcasting by the radios. What do you know!"

Ha! Obama is doing this because nobody watches CNN or PMSNBC (aka the 'suppress the right wing insurrectionists' channel) anymore. Even Fox has had its ratings dip and true conservatives have only started watching again because Roger Ailes grew a pair and took on these flagrant criminals in the White House and DOJ, starting with that perjurer and gun runner to Mexican drug cartels General Holder.

The corrupt Establishment Fitzpatrick and Pirrong still insist is the last best hope of mankind and equate with our corrupted nation is losing the infowar, hands down. And all Pirrong can do about it is rant at how bad RT and Zerohedge are...as if anybody cared about RT back in 2006 or 2007 before the krizis and TBTF bailouts destroyed the credibility of MSM!

[Mr. X]

Steve Sailer, proven right again: Boston is where America started acting very Checheny - and demonstrated our women love alpha Muslim males:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/officials-man-who-knew-boston-bomber-was-unarmed-when-shot/2013/05/29/21f05b74-c8a8-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

Somehow I don't think this will get the Russophobe crowd so worked up. Maybe they'll just tell themselves this guy had to die because he was part of Putin's false flag in Boston, not because he knew something about Tamerlane the fascisti in D.C. didn't want out in public.

[Mr. X]

If you, Pirrong, and Liberty Kitty Cat are all prepared to stand up to this totalitarian all seeing eye surveillance tyranny, if for no other reason than self preservation or distrust of the man supposedly running it Obama, I give you this pledge: I will never comment or troll against you all again. In fact I will keep this solemn vow starting tonight. This country is either on the verge of a total police state with a false flag or WWIII in Syria as a pretext, or the elites flush Obama Richard Milhous Nixon style. Since 'Anonymous' claims they've hacked Obama's personal Skype account, my money would be on the Watergate option, which at the end of the day, was only possible back in the 1970s because Nixon pissed off J. Edgar Hoover and others in the shadow government too much. Obama similarly is a puppet who's outlasted his usefulness to the elites, and will probably be blackmailed by the globalists into resigning since Congress will never have the balls to impeach him.

Perhaps your long forgotten love for the Constitution really can trump your hatred of Glenn Greenwald, Anons (some of whom really work for Uncle Sam, since Anonymous is such a convenient pirate flag to put up for anybody really), RT, Zerohedge, Ron Paul, libertarians, or anyone who doesn't love Big Brother and think American foreign policy is wholly benevolent and loving.

May God bless these United States of America and save us from the final coup the globalists have planned for us. May we not go back to sleep having peeled back the curtain and been given a peak of the hellspawn's activities in Washington and worldwide.