November 18

“[A]n established pedigree of undead Brits terrorising their transatlantic victims.”

--The UK Ambassador to the United States, Nigel Sheinwald, identifying a trend of bloodsucking Brits on American television screens; cited in the article by Mark Leon Golberg, “Does the UK have a public diplomacy problem?” UN Dispatch; image from

“[I]t was not in the habit of Englishmen to peer far into the future.”

--Douglas Brown and Christopher Serpell, If Hitler Comes (1941); cited in Times Literary Supplement (November 13, 2009), p. 16, no link

BELOW IMAGES FROM

How Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine tried to take Christ out of Christmas, dailymail.co.uk

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

President Obama in Asia: The Bow, the Handshake and the Smile - Steven W. Lewis, Baker Institute Blog: "Is President Obama 'advertising weakness" in Asia? Conservative critics, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have accused Obama of practicing a destructive 'diplomacy of deference' in which American supremacy overseas is weakened by inept public diplomacy. Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor, his handshake with Myanmar's prime minister at the APEC conclave in Singapore, and his town hall meeting with university students in Shanghai are exhibits A, B and C, according to this analysis.

A bow and a handshake are unlikely to inspire either the Japanese or Myanmar military to invade the U.S. anytime in the foreseeable future. But by focusing on President Obama's town hall in Shanghai, American hawks may have, inadvertently, stumbled upon what is in truth a serious concern: Chinese students. They may sport trendy eyeglasses, wear day-glo sweaters and carry Hello Kitty notebooks, but in fact they constitute one of the most destructive political forces in recent history. ... Nobody today can say exactly how the American and the Chinese people may come to trust each other such that they both cut back on the ways they waste energy and foul the environment. But it is clear that such trust will require a sustained conversation between Americans and Chinese, something a 48-year-old American president is both capable of initiating and maintaining: The young Chinese in the room must have known this intuitively. And it is also clear that such a conversation should begin with a smile, and that smile should not be met with derisive laughter. So far, so good. "

Creating a Next-Generation State Department - James Locher, worldpoliticsreview.com: "The current Department of State was not designed to manage the increasingly diverse responsibilities of the U.S. government in a globalized world. While the department occupies center stage of the civilian foreign affairs community, it remains narrowly focused on, and resourced for, traditional diplomacy. It neither possesses nor exercises sufficient authority to manage the full range of international civilian programs effectively. ...

To remedy this situation, the United States needs a Next-Generation State Department that can apply an integrated approach to the management of global civilian affairs. The transformed department should continue to conduct the traditional core activities of bilateral diplomacy and consular functions. But it should also have the organizational capacity to develop, field, and manage a broad range of integrated civilian capabilities and programs -- including such 'soft-power tools' as foreign assistance, public diplomacy, and stabilization and reconstruction -- to meet the new security challenges and opportunities of the 21st century."

U.S. Department of State Launches Second Annual ExchangesConnect Video Contest to Amplify U.S. Public Diplomacy: 'Change Your Climate, Change Our World': press release, PR Newswire: "People all over the world, ages 14 and older, are invited to submit their 2-minute videos to ExchangesConnect at http://connect.state.gov/. Two international and two American winners (one in each of the two age categories: 14-17 and 18 and older) will receive one of four Grand Prizes: an all-expense-paid two-week international exchange program. Last year's contest drew over 8,400 new ExchangesConnect members from 170 countries and the winners were featured at http://exchanges.state.gov/news/ovc.html."

Number of Students Studying Abroad on Rise Globally - Laurel Bowman, Voice of America - "A Washington-based educational institute says the number of university students who study abroad is on the rise.

The Institute of International Education reports a 60 percent increase in the number of students studying outside their native country since the year 2000. ... Judith McHale, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, approves."

Ramaoes – Paul Rockower, Levantine: "Punk's not dead, it is rockin' out in the Middle Kingdom. First I saw a report on NPR about a Chinese punk rock export. I emailed the story over to my friend Peter Winter, who is editor at the US-China Today Magazine and a fellow public diplomacy student. He quickly sent over two links to stories the magazine did last year on Punk and Hip Hop. Ah, the universality of punk and hip hop. Truly America's soft power forces. Punk rockers were ubiquitous in Argentina, and I found some great ska clubs in La Plata. Meanwhile, I found Chinese hip hop during my adventures to clubs in Beijing and Shanghai. I saw some dynamite hip hop clubs there, with Chinese b-boys, b-girls and djs. In Japan, my friend Fuji was a fantastic freestyler, while I heard some great reggae from Ryu the Skywalker (although I guess that is Jamaican soft power). It's too bad the State Department is still a little too stodgy to really pick up on real American cultural soft power, and the fact that American music is what moves the global youth. I know from Mark Smith, our Public Diplomat in Residence last year, that State was doing more to promote hip-hop in its outreach. But minuscule compared to what could really be done if made a priority like jazz was during the VOA heydays of Willis Connover."

Exhibition on communist Czechoslovakia opens - CTK: "The Czech National Museum in Prague is opening an exhibition highlighting the four decades of communist Czechoslovakia on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, its director Michal Lukes told journalists Monday. … The exhibition describes the history of broadcasts of free foreign radio stations that fought against totalitarian propaganda. It is divided into two parts on display in two halls of the former parliament. … The building at the head of Wenceslas Square that was originally the seat of the Czechoslovak parliament served the U.S. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) after Czechoslovakia divided into the independent Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. At the beginning of this year RFE/RL moved to its new premises in Prague's Hagibor and the building was transferred to the National Museum whose original 19th century historical building stands just across the street."

Denmark is lagging behind in public diplomacy: New study of magazine K shows that Denmark scraping the bottom of the Scandinavian measurement of resources for public diplomacy - Journalistforbundet

Public Diplomacy and Soft Power – Nick, SIS640 Manic:

"I really enjoyed the articles for this week and found most of the arguments regarding the relationship between public diplomacy and soft power to be logical, intuitive, and very relevant to the current administration's agenda."

Voice from former USSR - hi.baidu.com - "Dear Fellow Students, In honor of the recent 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars would like to invite you to a discussion featuring four Maxwell students who lived in the Soviet bloc during the fall of communism. The event will take place Friday, November 20, from 11 am - 12 pm in Eggers Room 225."

RELATED ITEMS

The Internet, Obama and the Chinese Censors - Patricia H. Kushlis, Whirled View: The US government needs to use as many venues as possible to reach the Chinese people – the Internet and its social networks can’t do it alone.

Obama: Aim is to put U.S. on path to end Afghan war – AP, USA Today: President Obama said Wednesday his upcoming strategy in Afghanistan will "put us on a path towards ending the war" and that his goal is not to pass the conflict on to the next president.


Vision for victory -- Part I - Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Times:
Success in Afghanistan should be defined realistically - as weakening the insurgency rather than defeating it outright, while providing Afghans the tools to continue the fight primarily on their own. Achieving this goal requires neither complete eradication of opium, nor a thriving economy, nor a political class free from corruption. But it does require better security, as well as a government able to deliver some basic services to its people.

Retired military officers cash in as well-paid consultants - By Tom Vanden Brook, Ken Dilanian and Ray Locker, USA TODAY: • Of the 158 retired generals and admirals identified as having worked for the military as senior mentors, 80% had financial ties to defense contractors, including 29 who were full-time executives of defense companies. Those with industry ties have earned salaries, fees or stock options as consultants, board members or full-time employees of defense firms.• Mentors are paid from about $200 to $340 an hour, plus expenses — many times the rate of pay for active-duty generals, who typically make $170,000 to $216,000 a year, including a housing allowance.

Why We Should Put Jihad on Trial - Steven Simon, New York Times: The Justice Department’s decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in a federal court in New York City has elicited several criticisms. Most are pointless.

When the Sheikh walks: guilty verdict isn't guaranteed for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - Editorial, Washington Times: Because

Mr. Obama promised that Mr. Mohammed would enjoy the most exacting demands of justice, they probably will be given a full airing. We await a further explanation from the president to clarify how this makes the country safer, particularly if Mr. Mohammed leaves New York a free man.

Holder's trials and errors - Michael Gerson, Washington Post: Wartime American presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt have understood that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. So enemy combatants consistently have been judged by a different and harsher legal standard than American citizens.

A marriage made in China - Harold Meyerson, Washington Post:

So as we try to rebalance our relationship with China, let's not entertain any illusions that our growing dependence on that nation was the result of an unalterable tectonic shift in global power. Our economic elites wanted the higher profits that came with cheaper Chinese labor. They prevailed, and today we are floundering to clean up their mess.

Guantánamo Won’t Close by January, Obama Says - Jack Healy, New York Times: Obama acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that his administration would miss a self-imposed deadline to close the detention center at Bay, Cuba, by mid-January, admitting the difficulties of following through on one of his first pledges as president.

Obama's Asian folly – Editorial, Washington Times: It's ironic that President Obama is ending his weeklong Asian tour in Seoul tomorrow. For a trip intended to help expand ties between the United States and countries in the region, it only focuses greater attention on the president's incoherent trade policy.

Anti-Russian propaganda on Georgian TV channel - RT

The Propaganda of War - Jerry West, opednews.com:

The First World War was a stupid blunder by all parties and the shame of every country that took part. Many of the wars of the century that did have elements of freedom involved were the usual cases of colonized people fighting to be free from the very western powers whose propaganda prominently features freedom as a major component. West image from article.

AMERICANA

'The Americans' Revisited - Richard B. Woodward, Wall Street Journal:

"The Americans" is a daring and, in many respects, bleak portrait of a land that Mr. Frank was in large part experiencing for the first time. Born in 1924, he had arrived in New York in 1947 from Switzerland, where his teacher Michael Wolgensinger had advised him to group photographs by theme. This training proved crucial to the editing of "The Americans," a crazy quilt of images unified by visual motifs such as crucifixes, jukeboxes, automobiles, motorcycles and cowboys. As Jack Kerouac wrote in his introduction to the 1959 edition, Mr. Frank had "sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank with the tragic poets of the world." Image from article