Freedom for who?

Last Saturday Al-Hurra television channel, trailed by President George Bush in last month's State of the Union speech, began broadcasting. The channel was launched a day after the Greater Middle East initiative. The US claims the latter is designed to promote political reform in the Arab world, though what it promotes most clearly are the interests of the US and its allies.

Both the channel and the initiative are flip sides of the same coin. The Bush administration, which has repeatedly failed to address real issues in the region, is resorting to Cold War tactics to support its policies. It began with US attacks on Arab educational systems and the US media, as expected, was soon busy playing along to the same tune.

There is nothing new here: indeed, it all neatly fits in with patterns established years ago, dove-tailing into America's long-running propaganda record. For decades the US used its media machine to undermine the Soviet system. Hollywood films, commercials for quintessential US products -- the whole panoply of advertising techniques are brought in to play to underline that luxury is synonymous to living in the "free" West, and it carries privileges that those living in the "tyrannical" East can only dream.

The idea of creating an enemy and using it for target practice has become a familiar US ploy. The "axis of evil" was no more than an invention to justify US war- mongering and regime change.

US schemes to change the region, currently being discussed by the G8, do not even mention the Arab-Israeli conflict, nor the US occupation of Iraq. The region will continue to live in conflict as long as its problems go unrecognised. The right to live in freedom and democracy is something all Arabs want. Those aspirations should not be cheapened by being turned into a gimmick to serve US interests.