January 5

“Having started with 13 employees in January 2002, the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] now employs 60,000.”

--Columnist Anne Applebaum; image from

NEW BLOG

♪Rockstar Diplomat♫: On Music, Travels, and Public Diplomacy in Latin America

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE NEWS

One First Line of Defense - Julie Gunlock, Town Hall: “Instead of the typical slow holiday news cycle, the week between Christmas and New Year's featured near non-stop coverage of the Christmas Day terrorist attack on Delta Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam. Yet in all of the talk, one aspect was relatively unexplored: The brave actions of Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, the respected Nigerian banker


who contacted American authorities to report his son’s disturbing radicalization, and what the U.S. government's failure to take his warnings seriously means for others who might be considering reporting love ones who have joined the jihad. ... The State Department spends millions of dollars each year on high-gloss public diplomacy campaigns which include radio and television programming, news articles, billboards and other advertizing and in some places polling and focus groups. The point of these campaigns is to improve the image of America abroad and to help build trust between Americans and people around the world. Failing to act on information brought to Embassy officials by concerned parents of radicalized children is not only a security failure; it’s a public diplomacy failure." Alhaji Umaru Mutallab image from

Expert Weighs In On New Security Steps For US-Bound Flights - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: “As of today, travelers from the four countries that Washington considers state sponsors of terrorism (Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria) and 10 others of interest to counterterrorism officials (Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen) will be required to undergo ‘enhanced screening’ at checkpoints, including pat downs and higher scrutiny of luggage. RFE/RL's correspondent Abubakar Siddique speaks to Shadi Hamid, a Middle East and security-policy expert at Brookings Institution's Doha Center, to gauge how the procedures will be implemented and how they might affect Washington's future relations with some of the countries on the list. ... RFE/RL: Four of the countries -- Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan -- are on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. What kind of fallout do expect from the other 10 countries on the list, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia -- countries whose cooperation is central to countering Al-Qaeda and other extremist networks? Hamid: There is certainly the risk of some fallout but it's worth keeping in mind that these countries have already been targeted for additional security post-9/11. So, this kind of targeting of certain countries has been there for a while; it is worse now with additional regulations. I am sure there will be greater concerns expressed in the coming weeks. And that's something certainly for the U.S. to keep in mind that this affects [President Barack] Obama administration's public diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.”

Security concerns opportunity for private jet companies - Richard Newman, NorthJersey.com, “The head of the U.S. Travel Association, which represents about 1,700 travel companies and organizations, said Monday that the latest changes to airport security procedures underscore the importance of a Travel Promotion Act that would create a non-profit corporation to explain security policies to travelers from other countries and promote U.S. travel. Roger Dow, the group's president and chief executive officer,

said in a statement that making the United States ‘a less desirable place to visit’ will ‘hinder our economic recovery and our public diplomacy efforts around the world.’ The effort would be funded by $10 fees charged every two years to individual foreign air travelers. That money would be matched by private U.S. travel companies. The bill was passed last year by the House of Representatives and is awaiting action by the Senate.” Image: U.S. Travel Association President and CEO, Roger Dow welcomes the media to U.S. Travel's 40th Annual International Pow Wow during the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Press Brunch on Sunday, June 1. Photo courtesy of the Las Vegas News Bureau/LVCVA.

Al-Qaeda Is Like An Arcade Alligator, Or Financial Regulation- Tim Fernholz, Tapped, American Prospect:

“There is no doubt military operations in Afghanistan put a huge dent in al Qaeda's capabilities, but there are also diminishing marginal benefits to escalating our military presence there compared to other arenas -- including intelligence, law enforcement and public diplomacy -- that might have a greater long-term pay-off in terms of keeping Americans safe. This is by no means a settled argument, and while the Obama administration's Afghanistan strategy is the product of some smart thinking, but broader questions of how we fight terror remain unanswered.” Image from

Arabs in Dubai: Still Hopeful About Obama -- Want Him to Travel More Widely in Region - Steve Clemons, Washington Note: [Comment by] Dan Kervick, Jan 05 2010, 1:04AM - Link "... [S]ince I am not an employee of the State Department, I just don't want any part of lying for my country. I'll leave that to the professional diplomats and their ‘public diplomacy’ schemes. If our Middle Eastern friends want a healthy dose of hopeful claptrap, they can always navigate to the State Department website.”

US State Department Inspector General Refers Complaint Against USA Pavilion at Expo 2010 to Secretary of State’s Executive Director – Adam, Shanghai Scrap: “Shanghai Scrap has viewed documents revealing that last week the US Department of State’s Office of Inspector General [OIG] forwarded a request for investigation into the Department’s stewardship of the USA Pavilion at Expo 2010 to the US Secretary of State’s Executive Director. The complaint requests a ‘full and fair recounting of the events that transpired … in the US Pavilion process over the last three years.’ As reported on Shanghai Scrap, both the State Department and the private organization managing the US pavilion, have refused repeated requests to produce documents related to the pavilion selection process, pavilion fund-raising, and the basic rules governing operation of the pavilion (the “action plan”), among other essential details relating to the oft-troubled US pavilion at Expo 2010. ... Secretary of State Clinton has taken a keen, personal interest in the US Pavilion since at least mid-2008, including a personal appeal from the Chinese Foreign Ministry to do something about the troubled effort led by Ms. Eliasoph and her colleagues in the USA Pavilion. Whether or not she’d like to see an investigation into the enterprise in advance of the Expo itself is a political question as much as a governance question. At a minimum, it would seem reasonable to expect that State – now under a mandate to improve the conduct of public diplomacy – would want to know what it did wrong as contemplates US participation at Expo 2015 in Milan.”

Book Review on Internationalizing Campuses - James Ketterer, Global Engagement: “[W]hile it is heartening to see that educational and cultural affairs have been mentioned by both President Obama (especially in his Cairo speech) and Secretary Clinton as they call for more student exchanges, it remains to be seen if funding and focus will re-invigorate the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

after years of cuts and neglect. Updating public diplomacy will require patience and long-term investments in exchanges and cultural diplomacy (slow media) - and that will require an attention span beyond what Twitter can offer (fast media). Helping our college campuses to internationalize in a meaningful way is a good place to start to invest where the payoffs last decades.” Image from

Public Diplomacy: The State of Play - Patricia Lee Sharpe and Patricia H. Kushlis, Whirled View: ”Given the urgent need for improving every aspect of the U.S. government’s public diplomacy effort, WhirledView recommends that everyone having any interest in our interface with the world read the report issued by the Congressional Research Service released on December 28. It’s a concise but thorough survey of the state of play with a refreshingly straightforward title, U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and Current Issues. It’s far from exhaustive, of course, but for those who need to get up to speed on the issue—and for those who need to make the decisions as well, it makes a good starting point.”

Postmortems for Worldspace in India rouse the ghosts of VOA Europe - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: “Voyager! As in Radio Voyager! Which was the the privatized successor of VOA Europe, started in the 1980s when Representative Dante Fascell, then chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that VOA should broadcast to America's friends as well as its enemies. VOA Europe eventually became VOA Express, before becoming the non-VOA Radio Voyager. (For some history, see my VOA Communications World script, 8 May 1999.) Meanwhile, Radio Voyager is still listed among the Worldspace channels, but I have no idea if it's still actually being transmitted on Afristar and Asiastar. For an audio sampling of Radio Voyager, go to this Worldspace page.”

50 years of fostering relations - Christie Wilson, Honolulu Advertiser – “[Charles] Morrison who has served as president since 1998 ['an expert in Southeast Asian international relations of the East-West Center in Mānoa'],

said the ... Center is similar in some ways to the U.S. Department of State in that it encourages public diplomacy and strengthens relations and understanding among the people of its constituent countries.” Morrison image from

Davutoğlu sees Turkey among top 10 world players by 2023 - Today's Zaman: “In a brainstorming session held in Ankara for about 200 current and former ambassadors under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry on Monday, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Ankara needs to come up with a systematic and coherent vision unique to Turkey in its dealings with regional and international affairs, without forgetting public diplomacy, to draw support from the public audience both domestic and abroad.”

New Turkish ambassador to DC – Laura Rozen, Politico (blog): “A month after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Barack Obama at the White House, Ankara is sending a new ambassador to Washington, Turkish media report. Deputy Foreign Undersecretary Namik Tan

has been tapped to succeed Nabi Sensoy as Turkey's man in Washington. ... ‘During his long diplomatic career, Tan has served as Foreign Ministry spokesman and Turkey's ambassador to Israel,’ Turkish Press Review says, via the TUSIAD media roundup. ‘He also recently assumed responsibility for coordinating the Foreign Ministry's public diplomacy efforts, a relatively new concept for Turkey. The ministry this week announced a major plan to use public diplomacy as part of Turkey's proactive foreign policy.’” Tan image from

Departing director of BBC world services looks at the future of media - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting

Event Worth Noting: Intercultural Entrepreneurship Conference - Joshua S. Fouts, The Imagination Age: ”An interesting twist on cultural relations conferences just came through the digital transom: A spring conference on InterCultural Entpreneurship. Not surprisingly, it is in The Netherlands,

which seems to recurringly demonstrate new levels of innovation, creativity and activism in understanding the importance of cultural relations at the intersection of new and emergent technologies. The conference thesis smartly integrates an emphasis on cultural relations through the prism of a transforming global economy. The event is organized by Amsterdam's Junior Chamber International.” Image from article

Guate – Paul Rockower, Levantine: “Guatemala City is a city with more arms than charm. It greets you with barbed wire smiles. With that said, there is a bit of beauty under the crumbling facade. I’m trying to give it a fair shake, but it almost seems a city devoid of joy. I am staying the very bowels of the city, literally on a street called Calle del Purgatorio (The Street of Purgatory). ... The most interesting part of my tour was to see the public diplomacy campaign being carried out by UNICEF to try to promote a better understanding of human rights, ‘Todos los derechos para todos,’ via twitter, facebook and youtube. There were billboards all over the transmetro and throughout the city exhorting people to upload videos and photos and post tweets of ‘how you live your rights.’ The most fascinating thing is that it literally felt like I was looking at a 504 project. This was literally ideas taken from our class. I stopped to take pictures at a transmetro stop, which of course gained me consternation by the armed guard. I explained it was my studies, so he called the higher-ups to see if this extranjero could snap a photo of the pd campaign. Request denied. I merely hopped back on the metro and did it at the next stop.”

Keeping Track of What we Read in Class - Andy Sternberg, netzoo.net: “I was looking all over f netzoo.net or the syllabus from a course I was fortunate to take in the fall of 2006 at USC, Set-Top Box: Hollywood’s Secret War on Your Living Room. ...

PUBD 510 Set-Top Cop: Hollywood's Secret War on Your Living Room COURSE DESCRIPTION An examination of the public diplomacy at work in the international standards, legal and normative mechanisms by which technology is restricted in the name of protecting copyright and other exclusive rights over knowledge goods.” Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Are U.S. Forces Executing Kids in Afghanistan? Americans Don’t Even Know to Ask - Dave Lindorff, The Public Record: The Taliban suicide attack that killed a group of CIA agents in Afghanistan on a base that was directing US drone aircraft used to attack Taliban leaders was big news in the US over the past week, with the airwaves and front pages filled with sympathetic stories referring to the fact that the female station chief, who was among those killed, was the “mother of three children.” But the apparent mass murder of Afghan school children, including one as young as 11 years old, by US-led forces (most likely either special forces or mercenary contractors working for the Pentagon or the CIA), was pretty much blacked out in the American media. Especially blacked out was word from UN investigators that the students had not just been killed but executed, many of them after having first been rousted from their bedroom and handcuffed.

Still throwing money at doubtful tools for airport security - Anne Applebaum, Washington Post: Imagine that, instead of relying on full-body X-ray scanners or long-haul flight-blanket deprivation, we had highly paid and trained consular officers in places such as Nigeria.

A terrorism designation Cuba doesn't deserve - Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Cuba presents a threat of terrorism that can be measured at precisely zero.

In May, the Obama administration denied a visa to world-famous Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez, who had hoped to perform at a concert in New York marking the legendary Pete Seeger's 90th birthday. I suppose it's possible to draw a distinction -- Rodriguez is known as a true believer in the communist system that Fidel Castro installed, while Varela, without explicitly criticizing the regime, uses nuance and metaphor to question the government and express the impatience of Cuban youth. But since when is the United States afraid of exposure to a competing ideology? Image from

An Uneasy Feeling - Bob Herbert, New York Times: We’re escalating in Afghanistan, falling back into panic mode over an attempted act of terror and squandering a golden opportunity to build a better society.

Yemeni officials, fearing backlash, play down partnership with U.S. - By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post: Senior Yemeni officials said in interviews that their partnership with the United States is strong. Yet they are wary of the U.S. focus on counterterrorism without addressing Yemen's social and economic woes. Below image of Wadi Dhar, Yemen, by Languedoc from


Yemen's coming disaster: Its oil is expected to run out in 2017, but Yemen hasn't planned for its young, poverty-ridden population's post-oil future - Richard Fontaine and Andrew Exum, latimes.com: No amount of foreign assistance will cure Yemen's deeply entrenched economic, social and political problems. Yet in light of our compelling national interest in avoiding a failed state in Yemen, the United States has reason to devote even greater resources to the effort than it does today.

Obama sends reinforcements to al Qaeda – Editorial, Washington Times: The New York Times reported on Dec. 31 that some administration officials are questioning whether this is the right time to send more detainees back to Yemen. With the U.S. Embassy locked down and ringed with Yemeni troops to prevent a replay of the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing, the answer to that question should be obvious. It's NO.

A False Nuclear Start: Forty-one Senators vs. Biden on warhead modernization - Review & Outlook, Wall Street Journal: Grand speeches about a world without nuclear weapons are crowd-pleasers at the U.N., but the U.S. Senate has an obligation to inspect the fine print before it ratifies any reduction in U.S. defenses. Senators shouldn't begin to consider a smaller arsenal until the Obama Administration takes the steps to ensure that our remaining weapons will work if we need them.

Has the Obama administration been too tough on Japan? – Editorial, Washington Post:

Under a 2006 agreement, 8,000 U.S. Marines now based on the Japanese island of Okinawa are to be relocated to Guam, beginning this year. But that move depends on implementation of a bilateral deal to close a helicopter base that now lies in a heavily populated area, and to build new facilities in another area near the island's coast. If Japan does not move forward on the base agreement, U.S. officials have warned, the troop redeployment may be derailed. Yet the administration must guard against allowing a diplomatic irritation to escalate into a major crisis with the most important U.S. ally in Asia. Image from

Hate Begets Hate - Editorial, New York Times: Uganda’s government, which has a shameful record of discrimination against gay men and lesbians, is now considering legislation that would impose the death sentence for homosexual behavior. The United States and others need to make clear to the Ugandan government that such barbarism is intolerable and will make it an international pariah.

Four global crisis spots - Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Times: Battlefield trends in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sanctions trends towards Iran, and the fate of the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) in the U.S. Senate would be among my the important indicators to watch on the international front in 2010.

60 Institutes that frighten Iran's ministry of intelligence - iranfacts.blogspot.com

The marketing of a global blockbuster - Martha Bayles, Boston Globe: It’s difficult to know for sure, but look again at the box office figures: “Avatar’’ is earning twice as much overseas as domestically. If it turns out to be Cameron’s biggest juggernaut, then we can expect others to follow suit and include some dollops of anti-American vitriol in the blockbuster formula. Below image from


Is Avatar radical environmental propaganda? Environmentalist and producer Harold Linde weighs in on the Hollywood-izing of the environmental movement – mother nature network

‘Avatar’ Proves James Cameron’s a Secret Conservative - Leigh Scott, bighollywood.breitbart.com: The number one thing to remember about leftist ideas, propaganda and policies is that they produce unintended consequences. The conservative throughput of Avatar is not unlike the economic fallout produced by “Cash for Clunkers.”