September 19

“Japanese-designed spectacles? That's foreign policy experience!!!!

--A reader of Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: I keep track of Condoleezza's hairdo so you don't have to, commenting on presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s eyeware

"Trabi-safari"

--Involves a Berlin sightseeing tour in the notoriously rickety Trabant, ubiquitous passenger car of the GDR.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Bloggers’ Conference: James K. Glassman, Under Secretary For Public Diplomacy And Public Affairs, Glen Roberts, Moderator, Via Teleconference, Washington, DC September 17, 2008 – U.S. Department of State: Under Secretary Glassman: “Actually, there are two things that I wanted to talk about today. One is in keeping with our overall strategy and approach, where we believe that in the modern era public diplomacy doesn't work very well if it’s simply preaching at people. And so we want to be a facilitator, a convener; we want to bring people together. … The second thing that I wanted to mention, which I think is a really amazing story, we have … the Digital Outreach Team, which many of you may know about, that started under Karen Hughes’s regime. And the Digital Outreach team … it’s either eight or nine people who are on it who blog. And I say 'blog' advisedly. They don’t have their own blogs, but they enter into digital conversations online either on other people’s blogs or other websites. And they identify themselves as working for the United States Government and they are participating in the conversation.”

Listen to This: Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Hosts Bloggers’ Call - DipNote Bloggers, Dipnote, U.S Department of State

Blogger Roundtable with Under Secretary Glassman (Updated with links and transcript) - MountainRunner

The Russian bear in America's backyard - Bernd Debusmann, Reuters: "As insults to national pride go, it was a classic -- the American response to Russian plans to send a nuclear battle cruiser and other ships to the Caribbean for exercises with the navy of U.S. enemy Hugo Chavez. 'We'll see if they actually make it there,' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news conference questioner. ... Public diplomacy at its finest? It was in line with the Bush administration's generally dismissive attitude towards Russia and conjured up images of ageing rust buckets, not the flagship of Russia's Northern Fleet, the Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great), which entered service 10 years ago."

Secretary Rice Addresses U.S.-Russia Relations At The German Marshall Fund Hotel, Washington, DC - Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Renaissance Mayflower - U.S. Department of State: “[W]e will continue to sponsor Russian students and teachers and judges and journalists, labor leaders and democratic reformers who want to visit America.”

Lamenting the loss of VOA Hindi radio - Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy - India has always been a difficult target country for VOA. Television seems to be the route to success for international broadcasting to India.

Jeffrey Gedmin: "Our Iranian Colleagues Believe in Radio Farda's Mission" - Middle East Quarterly: Jeffrey Gedmin,president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL): "We're doing 'surrogate broadcasting,' providing the Iranian people with news and information their government denies them, information not available through other media. We're using new technologies, too, such as SMS [text messaging]. The regime works hard to jam and block everything we provide. That's one kind of market test.” SEE ALSO: Radio Farda promotes democracy and reports half the news - Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy

Transparency is the Antidote to Marketplace Chaos, Says UB Law Scholar - UB News Center, NY: University at Buffalo Law School: Professor David A. Westbrook: “…as a matter of public diplomacy and in its negotiations, the United States has done quite a lot to encourage transparency and to encourage what we see as a favorable business climate, in a range of countries. Of course the U.S. government wants the business climate to be favorable for U.S. investors. But we also believe that a healthy business culture is in everybody's interest -- surely beats numerous familiar alternatives.”

Bad luck, Spain - David Steven, Global Dashboard: "One way or another, it’s bad news for Spain if John McCain makes it to President. Either he doesn’t know where the country is, or he’s going to refuse to meet Spanish leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, until he shows a greater dedication to ‘human rights, democracy and freedom.’ This bizarre story, which is going viral in the Spanish language press, springs from an interview where McCain appeared to lump Zapatero with Castro and Chavez - leaders he would be cold shouldering until they mended their wicked ways."

Signal of Shame? – Editorial, New York Sun: Senator Clinton would be wise to reconsider her decision to pull out of a protest rally against President Ahmadinejad. The rally has been called by the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and other Jewish groups, who are planning to gather on September 22 outside the United Nations. The Jewish groups are acting because they recognize that the nature of the Iranian's public diplomacy is at its core anti-Semitic in a way more pointed than any such campaign since Hitler.

Business for Diplomatic Action & Thunderbird Team to Offer Program on Global Corporate Diplomacy - Business Wire, MarketWatch: In an age of hyper-globalism and a waning economy, U.S. business must be surefooted in knowing how to engage with the rest of the world to maintain a competitive edge. In response, the nation's top business-led public diplomacy advocate and the No. 1 school of global management education are joining forces to help multinational corporations better understand foreign cultures in order to operate more successfully and diplomatically across borders. Keith Reinhard, president of Business for Diplomatic Action, and Dr. Angel Cabrera, president of Thunderbird School of Global Management, today announced the global launch of CultureSpan: A Workshop in Global Corporate Diplomacy.

USTDA: Director Larry Walther signs grant promoting Romania's energy security - ISRIA, DC: Director Walther awarded a grant today that will assist in diversifying and augmenting Romania's energy supply. The grant was conferred during a signing ceremony held at Public Diplomacy Hall at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, Romania.

Dubai's Movie Diplomacy – CD News, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy: Last week, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, a government backed subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Media Company joined Participant Media, a U.S. media company focused on producing movies with a message, among them “Fast Food Nation” and “DarfurNow.” This is one of many steps Dubai has taken in establishing a strong regional and global media presence through successful implementation of public diplomacy, reports Dubai based Khaleej Times.

Main Points of Netherlands' Foreign Affairs Budget - NIS News Bulletin, Netherlands: To improve relations between the West and the Islamic world, more work will be done with public diplomacy and intercultural dialogue.

RELATED ITEMS

The Irrationality of Anti-Americanism : A world gone mad - Joe Loconte, Weekly Standard: Images of America as international gangster gush forth daily from the print and broadcast media of Europe and the Arab world. They help shape the narrative of these societies.

US Hands Over Seized Antiquities to Iraq - Michael Bowman, VOA: Home to what was once ancient Mesopotamia, Iraq has long been a target of looters and thieves intent on stealing the country's treasure trove of antiquities. But a large cache of priceless artifacts has been returned to Iraq's government, thanks to a multi-year initiative by U.S. customs authorities to intercept items being smuggled into the United States.

Bolivia: The Spies Who Spun Me – Spin of the Day, Center for Media and Democracy: USAID "is looking to hire a PR firm to tout its work in Bolivia as diplomatic relations have strained with the left-leaning South American country," reports O'Dwyer's. USAID will pay $500,000 for the first year of an up to three year contract, "to highlight its emergency supply efforts, opportunities for the poor, and other economic and social welfare programs it has funded in Bolivia."

Keep Military Aid Separate From Aid Organizations: Even the perception of bias undercuts humanitarian help - Ken Hackett, Christian Science Monitor: Putting a military veneer on aid violates that basic principle of aid work, the one about alleviating the suffering of all -- not just those on one side of a conflict but anyone affected by it. Ken Hackett is president of Catholic Relief Services.

Why Foreign Language Education Matters - Rep. Rush Holt, Huffington Post: It is no exaggeration to say that bolstering foreign language education for ensuing generations is vital to the U.S.' economic and national security. We could create an Assistant Secretary for International and Foreign Language Education in the Department of Education, who would provide leadership in directing efforts aimed at international and foreign language education.

Obama's Foreign Policy Advantage - Matthew Yglesias, American Prospect: Even though economic issues have elbowed foreign policy out of the headlines, Obama shouldn't forget it.

Has the 'Surge' Brought Us Any Closer to 'Victory'? – Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post: If people continue to think the surge is a success, the result could well be Bush leaving office with a widespread public perception that we're winning in Iraq. But then what happens? What happens is that when things start to get ugly again, when there's a civil war, or a partitioning, or an anti-American strongman comes to power -- i.e. when we inevitably start to "lose" -- Bush could avoid the blame.

Ten National Security Myths – The Editors, Nation: The central lesson of the Bush era: the world does not need strong U.S. leadership so much as it needs constructive U.S. participation as a great power.

Name That Doctrine - Michael Gerson, Washington Post: The idea that America benefits in the long run from the spread of a liberal, democratic, free-trading world order is not a Bush innovation, it is a post-World War II consensus. Not every tyrant in recent history has been an enemy of America. But every major enemy of America in recent history has been a tyrant. Bush's true innovation was to apply this consensus -- at least occasionally -- to the Arab Middle East.

Reality Catches Up to the Free Market - William Pfaff, Truthdig: Unregulated free-market capitalism may be said to have killed itself by greed, vanity and excess, all amply evident before and at the death scene, but the ultimate guilt must be attributed to the vacuity and perversity of market ideology, which contradicts human nature. In this, it exactly resembles the American national foreign affairs ideology, that democracy will always eventually triumph over all else. Regrettably, this is an illusion, clung to in American governmental, political and, to a considerable degree, academic circles.

Bolivian Crisis in the New South America: The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table - Benjamin Dangl, Counterpunch: Though working to overthrow leftist governments is unfortunately nothing new in South America, region-wide cooperation between left-leaning governments, without the presence of the U.S., is new.

Joined at the Hip: America and China - Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch: America is looking increasingly like China, a country where the state has been gradually getting out of the business of directly owning companies. Chinese citizens may actually be better informed than Americans, having lived for decades under a propaganda model, since they know that they are being lied to by their newsmedia, whereas few Americans realize the extent to which their own media are controlled and acting as government mouthpieces.

The Generals Go Cyber? - Aung Zaw, Wall Street Journal: Burma's military junta has so successfully suppressed the media that Internet sites based outside the country are one of the few remaining sources of reliable news for Burmese people. Now it appears not even those sites are safe.

Russia's Ekho Moskvy Under Mounting Pressure - Daisy Sindelar, RFE/RL: Despite being partially owned by the state gas giant Gazprom, the Ekho Moskvy radio station -- like the "Novaya gazeta" newspaper, as well as the vast, as-yet uncontrolled Internet arena -- forms the last bastion of independent information in Russia.

Russian lawmakers target Halloween, Valentine's Day - Jeffrey Stinson and Yulia Ochetova, USA TODAY: The State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, will consider a measure this month to guard students from what the government considers destructive Western influences, such as the two festive celebrations that are growing more popular in Russia.

Letter From Russia: What's in a street name? Moscow is finding out - Sophia Kishkovsky, International Herald Tribune: The office of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov announced that Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Ulitsa, or Big Communist Street, actually one of the prettiest, quietest and most well-preserved streets in Moscow, full of elegant pre-revolutionary mansions, is now Ulitsa Solzhenitsyna, or Solzhenitsyn Street.

Caricature and Propaganda: Works by the KuKryNikSy Group of Artists from the Mamontov Collection – artdaily.org: In the USSR, the artists comprising KuKryNikSy were universally popular and received numerous official decorations and awards. Their artistic aims, their choice of subjects and their compositions surely transcend the limits of the official doctrine of Socialist Realism, and their relationship with the pictorial traditions of eighteenth and nineteenth century European art are increasingly being appreciated.