{"id":586,"date":"2005-02-27T22:19:03","date_gmt":"2005-02-28T04:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=586"},"modified":"2005-02-27T22:21:01","modified_gmt":"2005-02-28T04:21:01","slug":"us-arabic-channel-to-expand-to-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=586","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Arabic Channel to Expand to Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

While much of Europe seems quite willing to ignore the growing danger to its future coming from Islamic radicals in its midst, the U.S. is already moving against the threat by confronting it over the airwaves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration is planning to expand the reach of its Arabic-language satellite channel, Alhurra, into Europe, an official overseeing the network said Sunday.<\/p>\n

Alhurra, which means “the free one,” began beaming programming to the Middle East about a year ago.<\/p>\n

Home to an estimated 15 million-20 million Muslims, many of Arab descent, Europe is a “significant location for Arabic-speaking people,” a U.S. official said.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. agency in charge of Alhurra, said Sunday that the channel’s goal is to “foster and support debate” and to give Arabic speakers the chance to hear the “Western side of arguments on women’s rights, economic opportunity and freedom and democracy.”<\/p>\n

Officials said Alhurra is intended to provide competition to the Arabic-language channel Al-Jazeera, which they contend is biased against the United States.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Tomlinson said U.S. officials hope to begin beaming Alhurra programming into Europe this fall.<\/p>\n

Just before the channel’s launch last February, Bush said, “We are telling the people in the Middle East the truth about the values and the policies of the United States, and the truth always serves the cause of freedom.”<\/p>\n

“As long as that region is a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce men and movements that threaten the safety of Americans and our friends,” he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the war against Islamist terror, the U.S. has two key advantages — it cannot lose any significant engagement on the battlefield and it cannot lose when ideas and ideologies are communicated and contrasted. Are these advantages enough to continue the fight or will they be undermined by defeatism and myopia, both at home and abroad? Ay, there’s the rub.<\/p>\n

The article also notes that the $2 million cost for expanding Alhurra to Europe will come out of the pending $81 billion supplemental budget request for Iraq and Afghanistan, further demonstrating that Europe is indeed viewed as a theater in the war against Islamist terror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While much of Europe seems quite willing to ignore the growing danger to its future coming from Islamic radicals in its midst, the U.S. is already moving against the threat by confronting it over the airwaves. The Bush administration is planning to expand the reach of its Arabic-language satellite channel, Alhurra, into Europe, an official […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-general","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}