November 1

"Reacting to a Nepali TV channel's reports that hundreds of Indian women had been brought to Nepal to perform obscene dances in the nude, Nepal Police Monday said it was baseless propaganda."

--mangalorean.com; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

America’s Blind Side: As the terrorists find new tactics, political correctness is hindering the fight against radical Islam - Michael Hirsh, nationaljournal.com:


"At a time when both al-Qaida and its tactics are evolving—U.S. officials believe the Yemen plot was launched by a relatively recent incarnation of the group known as 'al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula'—the focus of U.S. officials continues to be on interdicting plots as they happen, as a matter of law enforcement, rather than attacking the underlying ideology of Islamism. This radical ideology embraced by terrorists is distinct from the religion of Islam. ... Scott Carpenter of the Washington Institute for Near East Peace believes the heart of the problem is an inability to confront the real culprit -- the ideology of radical Islamism -- for fear of offending Muslims. ... Instead U.S. officials tend to speak non-religiously of extremists and to treat the problem as one of law enforcement. Indeed, apart from a few meager efforts by the Department of Homeland Security, most agencies continue to play their old roles: the CIA gets involved only if the threat emanates from overseas, not bothering with homegrown terrorists; while the FBI continues to track and arrest suspects. Carpenter says the Obama administration 'is doing some interesting things on the public diplomacy side [outreach to the Muslim world], and on the counterterrorism side. But in this big, fat middle, radicalization, they’re doing zero.'” Image from

Bombs from Yemen (Updated) - Gregory, Waq al-Waq: "Unfortunately, the US seems overburdened in Iraq and Afghanistan and unable to pay enough attention to Yemen. Just look at the resources (particularly diplomatic) that the US is putting into the country. US public diplomacy in Yemen is a joke. The US has ceded the field to al-Qaeda. Is it any wonder that its message is carrying the day?"

Islam and Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan - Khalil Nouri and Matthew Cappiello, Salem-News.Com: "PRELIMINARY DOCUMENT – FOR INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS ONLY ‘A MUSLIM APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE’ ... While the United States has made sincere attempts to integrate Islamic leaders into international counterterrorism and public diplomacy efforts, these efforts have primarily been small in scope and uncoordinated, utilizing a somewhat parochial selection of leaders and providing them with a significantly limited window in which to voice the concerns about foreign policy towards Muslim-majority societies around the world. With regards to countries with significant levels of American troops such as Afghanistan and Iraq, this need is especially apparent. Globally respected Muslim leaders, such as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf from the Zaytuna Institute,


have publicly commented that their services were not properly utilized by the American government in order to win Muslim hearts and minds in American military engagements abroad. Reflexively, the failure of this diplomatic opportunity also leaves these leaders open to demagogic 'smearing' by terrorist and extremist forces around the world, potentially as 'Western imperialist sympathizers' or colluding forces with personal self-interest in maintaining disorder in these countries. There must be a better way to utilize religious leaders in peace building and conflict resolution within these regions, in order to bring about win-win outcomes for all parties involved." Image from

Lionel Richie Diplomacy - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "Traveling around the jukebox time warp that is the Philippines, I have come up with great US public diplomacy towards this country. Filipinos love 80s glam rock and soft rock hits. Bus rides sound like those old commercials for soft rock best of albums. Everyone seems to know the words to every song, and they sing endlessly. Air Supply is still huge. The Outfield jams. The Scorpions are still rock gods. On that last note, I was in a mall, descending the escalator and saw prob half a dozen people singing along to Winds of Change as I passed different floors.


So, I think VOA's tagalog service would be smart to run a soft rock, glam rock program with news in between. All Journey, all the time. Kinda like al-Hurra, only people would actually listen." Image from article

War Propaganda on the Taxpayers’ Dime: Jamie Kirchick must go - Justin Raimondo, Behind the Headlines: "Amidst the brouhaha over Juan Williams getting fired from his job at National Public Radio, and subsequent calls by conservatives to defund NPR, the broader issue of how government-funded media influences the American discourse needs to come into sharper focus. As a glaring example of how the taxpayers are forced to subsidize political propaganda, there is none better than Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. A relic of the cold war, when it looked like the Soviet Union was about to swallow up all of Europe (or so we were told), RFE/RL was conceived as a counter-propaganda effort to help prevent a Soviet takeover. It’s highly debatable just how much good it did, but, in any case, the alleged threat it was founded to counteract has long since passed into oblivion: the Soviet empire is no more. Yet, unsurprisingly, RFE/RL has continued to function, at taxpayers’ expense, to this day, because …. Well, because that’s what government programs do – they persist, long after the ostensible reason for their existence is gone from the scene. Bereft of an enemy, at least within range of its radio transmitters, RFE/RL is apparently now taking on those closer to the home front, namely Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. A recent article by RFE/RL 'reporter' Jamie Kirchick – who possibly got sick of his job as Marty Peretz’s water-boy over at The New Republic –


not only attacks Assange for failing to practice 'dispassionate journalism,' but also plumbs for war with Iran. ... I’ll tell you what he [Kirchick] is: a little bastard who’s getting paid to churn out war propaganda on my dime and your dime and everybody’s dime, a free-loading warmonger whose job shouldn’t exist. He needs to be fired, pronto, for directing his propagandistic efforts at the American people, rather than the poor, oppressed, and deservedly minuscule audience of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty." Image from

Idiocy Watch, Steve Benen, The Washington Monthly: [Posted by: cmdicely:] "If the US State Department is tweeting 'to' (or, more accurately, about, regardless of the superficial phrasing), its using it as a method of mass communication with the demographic that Twitter reaches and trying to shape perceptions. It's what is often referred to as 'public diplomacy' (or, when the military does it, 'psychological warfare'.)

Find the Right Balance Between Civilian and Military: Don't Just Strip the Department of Defense of Capabilities to Inform, Influence, and Persuade - Christopher Paul, MountainRunner.us: "[A]ll parties would like to see greater U.S. capability to inform, influence, and persuade abroad, with the Department of State as the robust leader of American public diplomacy and the Department of Defense as a valued and supporting partner. Get the balance right,


and get there the right way." Image from

Ted Sorensen, JFK's Speechwriter: A Tribute - Nancy Snow, Huffington Post: "Just yesterday I was reading about Ted Sorensen and his involvement with choosing the head of America's propaganda agency, USIA, after Kennedy's election in 1960. Sorensen, who died today at age 82, put together an outline of the qualifications needed for telling America's story to the world: Experience in world affairs and knowledge of foreign peoples [;] Should comprehend the 'revolution of rising expectations' throughout the world, and its impact on U.S. foreign policy [;] Pragmatic, open-minded, and sensitive to international political events, without being naïve [;] Understand the potentialities of propaganda while being aware of its limitations. It was, as Alexander Kendrick writes, 'an excellent, almost a hand-tooled description of Edward R. Murrow [head of USIA during the Kennedy administration].'"

Chinese-checker: African safari with US‎ - Archis Mohan, Calcutta Telegraph: "India and America are looking to dovetail their African projects to offset China’s lengthening footprints in the continent, marked by multi-billion-dollar mining and oil contracts. America is willing to learn from India’s 'good work' in Africa, foreign ministry officials said, adding that the two countries would discuss such collaboration during President Barack Obama’s visit. ... In a coordinated move, the foreign ministry’s public diplomacy section launched a website on Friday showcasing India’s agricultural aid to Senegal. It also publicised India’s 'Pan African e-network', launched in 2007 to provide tele-education and tele-medicine to 53 African countries in five years. The first two phases, covering 24 countries, have linked 1,700 African students with Indian universities and 33 African hospitals to 11 Indian super-speciality hospitals."

Pakistan Youth Leadership Forum 2010 - Seemal Jamshed, Ink Magazine: "The aim of the program is to create a platform where the bright students of Pakistan will be given an opportunity to enhance their Leadership, Oratory and Presentational skills through a series of workshops.


The objectives that the group aims to achieve through the Pakistan Youth Leadership Forum 2010 are the empowerment of youth through tools of public diplomacy, to create a sense of peace, security, responsibility and commitment amongst them. The program also aims to bring together those Alumni, who have represented Pakistan at International forums, so that they can come forward on a single platform and share their experience with young leaders of the future generation." Image from

China holds closing ceremony for Shanghai Expo [China Daily/Xinhua] - Wandering China: "The first Expo to be held in a ‘developing’ country (China continues to play this card close to the chest), I guess it was no surprise a PR spiel such as this - ‘The gala is eyed in China as another event of national splendor after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games showcased China’s status as an economic and political power to the world’ was reinforced. China’s charm offensive and public diplomacy would have most certainly gained another powerful agent with this event."

State of change: 2000 graduate Victoria (Conner) Nibarger’s life is constantly shifting as works to protect peace and diplomacy in foreign countries - smnw.com: "Becoming a Foreign Service Officer To become a foreign service officer, you must be a U.S. citizen between the ages of 21 and 59. You also have to pass the Foreign Service Officer test.


No college degree or foreign language proficiency is required. ... Public Diplomacy: Public Diplomacy Officers explain American values and policies." Information from http://www.state.gov/. Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Mosque Monitoring’ and Insurgent Banksys: WikiLeaks Details Iraq’s Propaganda War, Adam Rawnsley, wired.com: The Iraq war isn’t just a war of guns, bombs and homebrew weapons. It’s also a war of words, a contest that elevates politics and propaganda to the same plane as kinetics. With the release of Wikileaks’ tranche of Iraq reports, we get a psy-operator’s eye-view of how Iraqis and Americans tried to fight that war with sermons, graffiti, music and talking points. The documents paint a picture of a coalition that paid close attention to insurgent messaging at the tactical level, from places of worship to city walls and overpasses. U.S. patrols, wary of mosques’ potential involvement in the insurgency, often conducted weekly “mosque monitoring” operations to record preachers sermons for signs of incitement, Wikileaks documents show. Sermons deemed to constitute incitement could provoke some official questioning, a stint in jail or in the case of a Fallujah mosque that broadcast the location of coalition forces, a shut-down. Reports detail instances of mosques used for broadcasting incitement against the coalition, telling residents to take up arms against the occupation forces and asking them to “come down and help us kill” troops. At other times, insurgent propagandists used similar methods as their U.S. counterparts. Via; image from article

How Digital Technology Gets the News out of North Korea - Martyn Williams, IDG News: AsiaPress works with six North Koreans they've trained as journalists. They're given instruction in operating cameras, using PCs and how to use cell phones so they don't attract the attention of authorities. Then, every few months, they meet with AsiaPress representatives just over the border in China to hand over their images. "When we started training journalists in 2003 or 2004, getting cameras into North Korea was a real problem," said Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor of the news agency, at a Tokyo news conference on Monday. "Nowadays, within North Korea you are able to have your pick of Sony, Panasonic or Samsung cameras." The digital media revolution isn't one way.


It's estimated that half of all young people in major cities have watched pirated South Korean TV dramas. "Media around the world has gone digital and that's also happened with North Korean propaganda," said Ishimaru. "But even the wealthy and those in authority don't want to watch propaganda films and movies about Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. They want to watch something that's more entertaining." The shows are recorded from South Korean satellite TV broadcasts in China and burned onto DVDs or Video CDs that soon make it over the border and into North Korean markets. Image from

20 Things I’ve Learned From Traveling Around the World for Three Years – The Blog of Tim Ferriss: Among these things: “4) People don’t hate Americans. I haven’t encountered a single case of anti-Americanism in the last three-and-a-half years. Not one. (And no, I don’t tell people I am Canadian.) If anything, people are fascinated by Americans and want to know more about the US. This isn’t to say they love our government or our policies, but they do not have an issue with Americans as people. Even in places you’d think would be very anti-American, such as the Middle East, I was welcomed by friendly people … 11) Culture changes. Many people go overseas expecting to have an 'authentic' experience, which really means they want to confirm some stereotype they have in their mind of happy people living in huts and villages. They are often disappointed to find urban people with technology. Visiting a different place doesn’t mean visiting a different time. It’s the 21st Century, and most people live in it. They are as likely to wear traditional clothes as Americans are to wear stove top hats like Abraham Lincoln. Cultures have always changed as new ideas, religions, technologies sprang up and different cultures mingled and traded with each other. Today is no different. … 18) Modernization is not Westernization. Just because people use electricity and have running water doesn’t mean they are abandoning their culture to embrace western values. Technology and culture are totally different. Japan and South Korea are thoroughly modern countries, but are also thoroughly Asian. Modernization will certainly change a culture (see #11 above), but that doesn’t mean they are trying to mimic the West." Via BM

Propaganda in ads - Catherine Thiel, Kansas City, Letter to the Editor, kansascity.com: Thanks for the Oct. 11 front page article “Worst face forward,” describing the use of unflattering photos by both sides in the Roy Blunt vs. Robin Carnahan campaign for the U.S. Senate. Tasteless Internet postings often use the same technique. Other propaganda examples keep popping up in this campaign. “Card stacking” uses facts but withholds countervailing information. “Plain folks” uses dialect and down-home speech to convince the reader that the candidate is just one of us. “Name-calling” needs no description and is epidemic. Repetition of “we, the people,” ad nauseam, to support any number of cockamamie positions also fits the bandwagon. Many letters to the editor also fall into what my mother would have called “talking through your hat,” as writers bluster about subjects on which they are embarrassingly clueless. Could The Star publish a review of various propaganda tools? It might get our critical-thinking juices going and help us voters cut through the ads and half-truths that clutter our inboxes, mailboxes and TV screens.

ONE MORE QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

“the man of the East cannot take Americans [or other Westerners] seriously.”

--Polish poet Czesław Miłosz

AMERICANA


--From: Alene Dawson, "Black women rewriting the rules on hairstyles: Individuality trumps conformity as locks go long, short, natural, curly and straight," Los Angeles Times


Supporters of Gov. Jan Brewer, from left, Kelli Freeman, Jessica Smith and Mary Murphy pose as World War II icon "Rosie the Riveter" during a rally for Republican Congressional candidate Ben Quayle, at Quayle's campaign headquarters Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Paul Connors)

--From "Fisting for Brewer," Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog



--Image from