Passport 2006 says that Voice of America will be eliminated entirely and
resources shifted to other radio and TV ventures of the US govt. This
means that real programming will be dumped in favor of music services
and that lame Al Houri satellite TV channel that nobody watches.

Al Houri was a good idea, especially considering that more Arabs watch
satellite TV than listen to shortwave, but like everything else in the
war on terror the Bushies have completely ****ed it up. EVERYBODY knows
that it is a propaganda arm of the US govt, and therefore NOBODY watches
it except when Saddam's trial is on. Don't get me started on Radio Sawa.

It seems that SW services around the world are severely being curtailed
except for countries like China which are far from an unbiased source.
At least Radio Havana is interesting (sometimes) and occasionally drops
a real bombshell that makes it on to the US evening news three nights
later.

In today's unstable geopolitical environment, I think cutting back on
shortwave will prove to be a real mistake. The BBC didn't bother to
serve Nepal except on FM until the king clamped down. The Beeb's FM
station in Kathmandu was shut down and the reporters arrested. Suddenly,
the Beeb was redirecting SW transmissions to Nepal to serve the
Nepalese.

SW has proven its utility in places like Zimbabwe and China where the
populace is limited in the news they can get from the outside world and
where asking the wrong questions can make you disappear. Don't think
that a clampdown can't happen in America, or a revolution in Saudi
Arabia, or an insurgent victory in Iraq. Then people would see how much
of a mistake it was to cut shortwave.