September 12

"Just look at the number of Indians who went to America during the Cold War versus those who went and settled in Russia. That is how effective [American] propaganda was."

--N. Bhaskara Rao, chairman of the Center for Media Studies in New Delhi, speaking about the Voice of America

“You see, many textbooks are written by those who are paid in foreign grants. And naturally they are dancing the polka ordered by those who pay them. Do you understand?”

--Russian President Vladimir Putin

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

James Glassman: In a HARDtalk interview broadcast on 11 September, Stephen Sackur talks to James Glassman, the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy – BBC News: The architects of America's global war on terror acknowledge that the conflict cannot be won by bombs and bullets alone. They say it is also a defining war of ideas in which a key weapon against Islamist extremism is 'public diplomacy' and the power of persuasion.

Afghanistan: Taliban accused of using civilians to provoke US attacks – Media Center adnkronos: The Taliban are trying to induce American forces to kill civilians, including women and children, in Afghanistan, a senior US government official said on Thursday. James Glassman was speaking in response to the controversial air strike carried out by American forces that allegedly killed at least 90 civilians in western Afghanistan in August.

The New Age of Public Diplomacy – Aiban, A Little Something: “The title of the talk was catchy and I decided to attend this lunch hour (1-2 pm) Chatham House event … The speaker, James K Glassman is the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. It's the first time I heard of 'public diplomacy' and sure enough, as Mr. Glassman completed a few introductory sentences, he explained what this meant.”

Talk by James K. Glassman Under Secretary, Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, London Sept 11th 2008 - Shanedillon’s Weblog: “The talk was interesting and poignant give[n] th[at] it was on the anniversary of September 11th. .... Why is that a substantial number of people in Europe and other parts of the world believe that the U.S. government complicit despite overwhelming evidence. Glassman's take on this was to acknowledge but realised that some of the conspiracy theories are beyond the power of public diplomacy to shift ideas.”

Broadcasting Board of Governors Refuses to Vote on Restoring Voice of America Radio to Russia – Ted Lipien, Free Media Online Blog

India Set to Lose Voice of America: After 53 Years, Radio Service Will End - Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post: The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors has decided that VOA's seven-hour Hindi-language radio service will end this month, after 53 years. VOA will also eliminate radio broadcasts in three Eastern European languages. Radio broadcasts in Russian went off the air in July.

Internet Freedom Facing New Threats – VOA News Blog: A workshop organized by the Broadcasting Board of Governors focused on “New Media vs. New Censorship: The Authoritarian Assault on Information.”

9/11 and Future Jihad - Walid Phares, American Thinker: The 2004 9/11 Congressional report "was a revolutionary text. It named names. While most world governments are still stuck with public diplomacy and 'diplomatic' language, never crossing from the concept of 'terrorism' to the 'j' word, the commission told us there is another 'world' out there, a space ruled by ideologies and terrorist strategies aiming at our cities, towns, countries, laws, peoples, and cultures."

9/11 anniversary: Afghanistan still holds the key to war on terror - telegraph.co.uk: The unilateral decision, reportedly taken by George W. Bush in July, to pursue terrorists into Pakistan is bound further to inflame anti-American feeling. The charge of breach of sovereignty levelled by General Ashfaq Kayani, the moderate, part-American-trained Chief of Army Staff, is a severe indictment of Washington's public diplomacy.

Poverty of Policy-Making on Terrorism - Nasim Zehra, Media Monitors Network, CA : “It was striking that the Afghan president felt confident enough to stand by strong allegations made by him in the recent past against Pakistan's institutions, yet Pakistan's President underscored that a chunk of the problem also flowed from the political and security disarray that currently prevails within Afghanistan. Whatever the private conversation public diplomacy, conducted for example through the joint press conference, required the President, like his Afghan counterpart, to put across the Pakistan-Afghan problem in the broader context.”

Transcendent warfare: Human consciousness the key? - Steve Hammons, American Chronicle: “The term ‘transcendent warfare’ was used by a U.S. Navy SEAL officer several years ago to describe the use of leading-edge knowledge and methods that could be helpful in achieving many important objectives. … [they] may assist ‘public diplomacy’ and constructive psychological operations.”

RELATED ITEMS

Launch of the Democracy Video Challenge - Media Note, Office of the Spokesman, US State Department, Washington, DC - The U.S. Department of State will announce the launch of a worldwide competition aimed at enhancing the global dialogue on democracy. The launch will take place on the United Nations’ first International Day of Democracy, September 15, 2008. The Democracy Video Challenge asks budding filmmakers, democracy advocates, and the general public to create video shorts that complete the phrase, “Democracy is…” The winners will be selected by the online voting public.

National service, not lip service – Editorial, Boston Globe: Today, Washington's favorite bipartisan couple, Ted Kennedy and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, will file legislation to dramatically increase opportunities for Americans to volunteer, making it as integral a part of citizenship as voting. Using the model of AmeriCorps, the bill establishes five new "corps" for volunteers, including areas such as international service, disaster relief, and a green energy corps, as well as the traditional focus on education and poverty.

BBC Poll: In 22 Nations, Obama preferred over McCain: World Views of the Elections: So What? – Melinda Brouwer, Foreign Policy Association: Public Diplomacy and the 20008 Presidential Elections: That people abroad think an Obama presidency would improve US relations with the world will have no effect on American voting patterns in the least, but it will serve as an important indicator of how we can expect the world to sit with the U.S. decision, or what foot Obama or McCain will start off with -- whichever candidate Americans choose.

Blame America First: Around the world - Michelle Malkin, National Review: Seven years after Mohamed Atta, Hani Hanjour, and their Allahu Akbar-screaming team succeeded in slaughtering nearly 3,000 innocent men, women, and children, large numbers of our putative allies in the civilized world still blame America and Israel.

Palin on World Affairs: Just not Ready for Prime Time – Juan Cole, Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Palin and the Bush Doctrine - Richard Kim, The Nation: In her first public test, Sarah Palin exhibits a stunning ignorance about national security and the Bush doctrine. Will it matter?

The day America was born again: Nothing Sarah Palin and her followers can do will prevent America's steady movement away from social conservatism - Justin Webb, The Times (London): No, America is changing and a new era is beginning: a post-Reagan era in which social conservatism (galvanising Republicans and terrifying Democrats) is replaced as the driving force in US politics by... Well, we don't know.

A new president and a wake-up call - Philip Stephens, Financial Times: If the new US president will discover that the most powerful leader in the world is not quite as powerful as he was, Europe will find the new world disorder equally discomfiting. America’s mistake has been to disdain multilateralism and to overreach itself. Europe’s misjudgment has been to assume the inexorable advance of the rules-based system that it presents as a model to the world.

Afghanistan After Seven Years of War: You Call This a Good War? - Sharon Smith, Counterpunch: The Afghan people have endured seven long years of misery thanks to U.S. occupation, and it is high time to take a principled stand against U.S. imperial aims in Central Asia. The war on Afghanistan is no more justified than the war on Iraq.

Putin Stunned by Power of Western Propaganda – Kommersant: Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he was surprised by the power manifested by western propaganda after Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia, RIA Novosti reported from Sochi.

Asia's Georgian Cold : The repercussions of Russian aggression - Michael Auslin, Weekly Standard: When autocracy sneezes, Asia catches cold. Russia's naked power grab in the Caucasus will have global repercussions, nowhere more so than in Asia.

Ossetia-Georgia-Russia-U.S.A.: Towards a Second Cold War? - Noam Chomsky, Counterpunch: A new cold war seems unlikely. To evaluate the prospect, we should begin with clarity about the old cold war. Fevered rhetoric aside, in practice the cold war was a tacit compact in which each of the contestants was largely free to resort to violence and subversion to control its own domains: for Russia, its Eastern neighbors; for the global superpower, most of the world. Human society need not endure -- and might not survive -- a resurrection of anything like that.

Saudis arrest 5 accused of Internet propaganda – The Associated Press, International Herald Tribune: The arrests announced Wednesday are part of a campaign against militants that began five years ago. In June, authorities said they had arrested more than 700 suspected al-Qaida-linked militants since the beginning of the year.

Yes, even college English teachers fall for Facebook: I knew I was in deep when I spelled 'you' as 'u.' - Jan Worth-Nelson, Christian Science Monitor

Quotes on Propaganda - Quotations Book

AMERICANA

The De-Elitification of the USA - Cartoon by Mark Fiore, Mother Jones

Death Of A Nation: ‘The American People Take The Choice Of A New President Very Seriously’… - Wonkette