December 26

"Victor Hugo used to work in the nude, telling his valet to hide his clothes so as to prevent him from going outside when he was supposed to be writing."

--Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author, Katherine Ellison; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Delivering humanitarian aid in Bamyan, Afghanistan - Mahtab Farid, Public Diplomacy in Afghanistan: "It is has been a heart warming gift for me during Christmas to be able to witness the public diplomacy among Afghans and American and also be able to share the warm experience of giving in the cold winter."


Image from article with caption: The director of women affairs in Bamyan, Fatimeh Kazemi was the local official to receive the aid. However, some of the back packs, warm clothes, and praying rugs were delivered to the local mosques, schools, and the local orphanage in Bamyan.

Soft Power in China Public Diplomacy through Communication Edited by Jian Wang - us.macmillan.com: "Palgrave Macmillan, December 2010 ... Soft Power in China describes and explains the scope of the country’s pursuit of soft power through public diplomacy and international communication. What kinds of images does China want to refashion and project?


What is the role of the government vis-à-vis that of other institutional and social actors in these efforts? What kinds of tensions and pressures has China experienced? Where do the programs stand in terms of their impact on the country’s image? What do all these efforts mean to the broader discussion on the study and practice of public diplomacy and national image management? This book represents a collaborative effort to address these questions." Image from article

Question 35 - Adi, Scratch Thy Head: "X diplomacy is both a method of diplomacy and an alternative approach to international relations designed for the globalization age. It is situated at the far end of the diplomacy spectrum that features traditional diplomacy at one end and public diplomacy near the centre (WHATEVER THAT MEANS)."

IFRC Operations Manager Job - ebipade-enienghan.blogspot.com: "an Operations Manager in the East Africa Regional Office in Nairobi ... Skills: ... Excellent communications skills and public diplomacy." Below image from


Research Officer - Australian Embassy & Mission to the EU - naombakazi.blogspot.com: "The Australian Embassy & Mission to the EU in Brussels has a vacancy for a Research Officer. ... Duties Include: ... •Providing support for public diplomacy events and official visits."

RELATED ITEMS

Where Mr. Obama's order on terrorism detentions falls short - Editorial, Washington Post: The administration should propose legislation, and its bill should cover future detainees as well as current inmates.

Faith and Modernity [Review of Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways By Olivier Roy] - Alan Wolfe, New York Times: If religion is in decline in the modern world, Roy argues, so is culture. On the one hand, we have multiculturalism, celebrations of diversity that somehow wind up making all cultures look and feel alike.


More important, we face globalization, today’s true universal faith, which subjects all local customs to the laws of the market. Under the influence of both, religion loses whatever affinities it may once have had with the cultures that sustained it. Image from

Cuban Wikipedia most elaborate propaganda creation ever - Alexis Levinson - The Daily Caller: Last week, Cuba launched EcuRed,


its own version of Wikipedia. It was an intriguing move for a country whose population has very minimal Internet access. But the Cuban regime produces a large amount of propaganda targeted at the outside world, and EcuRed fits neatly into that framework. Image from article

Georgians insulted by government’s anti-Soviet propaganda - Russia Today: A series of anti-Soviet cartoons have appeared in Georgian newspapers - the latest move in a campaign launched by President Saakashvili.


A number of Soviet monuments have already been dismantled across the country, and schoolchildren have been obliged to watch a documentary likening the USSR to Nazi Germany. The Georgian government is leading an anti-Soviet campaign. But both the timing and methods of implementation have led many to question its real motives. Image from article

Ending the War to End All Wars - Margaret Macmillan, New York Times: Many if not most Germans came to believe that World War I was a sort of natural catastrophe, with no human authors. The arms race, nationalism, imperialism, fear, hatred: all were seen in retrospect as impersonal forces that had simply swept Europeans along in 1914. The German Foreign Ministry in the 1920s even had a propaganda unit that took every opportunity to encourage attacks on the the Treaty of Versailles and, by selectively releasing documents, to suggest that Germany bore no more responsibility for the war than any other nation. All were guilty or none were.

Trailer: 1925 "Battleship Potemkin" Gets Theatrical Re-Release - worstpreviews.com: Kino International has decided to re-release Sergei Eisentein's 1926 silent film "Battleship Potemkin" in theaters January 14.

Image from article