August 4

"Familiarity, Likability, and Similarity."

--The pillars an advertisement endorser must follow in order to be successful, according to a well-established branding model; noted in Lindsay Abrams, "Sex Doesn't Always Sell: Why Female Olympians Fail in Advertisements," The Atlantic; image from Abrams article

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Iran sanctions, US diplomacy’s weapon of mass destruction - Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, presstv.ir: "There has been little resistance to sanctions in the false belief that sanctions are a tool of diplomacy and preferable to war. Enforcement of this belief has been a major victory for American public diplomacy. The reality is otherwise. Sanctions kill indiscriminately - they are far deadlier than 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy' - the two atomic bombs that took the lives of over 200,000 people.

In the case of Iraq, the United Nations estimated 1.7 million Iraqi civilians died as a result of sanctions; 1.5 million more victims than the horrific atomic bombs dropped on Japan. ... Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is a Public Diplomacy Scholar ["with a Master's in Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication"- JB] , independent researcher and blogger with a focus on US foreign policy and the role of lobby groups." Image from article, with caption: In 1945, the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately killing 120,000 civilians.

A Public Diplomacy Teaching Moment - Brian Carlson, Public Diplomacy Council: "Mitt Romney had a painful public diplomacy teaching moment last week in London.  No question about it, Romney stepped off the airplane and put his foot squarely in it. ... Public diplomacy advice, grounded in local knowledge, is available to any prominent American visitor, of any party, at any time. Embassy officers probably would, if asked, willingly held a 'murder board,' a mock interview, to test questions and responses.

But, I am willing to bet that neither Romney nor any member of his advance team sought that kind of specific, on-the ground, finger-on-the-pulse advice from the Public Affairs Officer or anyone else in the embassy. ... As an American ambassador, I was able to insist that no visiting USG official of any level would have any contact with any host country press, officials, or any public audiences before we at the embassy had a chance to brief the visitor and discuss the issues. To do otherwise is to send the visitor walking boldly through a minefield -- without a map." Image from

Culture Post: More Than You Know - Donna Oglesby, PD News–CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: "The Culture Post series began with the intent to explore the cultural underbelly of public diplomacy. I like the phrase. It suggests to me that, whether we are aware of it or not, we always carry our culture with us. Soft and vulnerable, the underbelly both gives birth and is easily wounded. Culture, in its universality, creates, and by its differences, ruptures, the cords of connection across the human dimension of our global life. ... To help Mr. Romney become more thoughtful about the complex importance of culture on the world stage to which he aspires, I would like to suggest he add a few more titles to his 'culture matters bookshelf. ... I suggest he might begin by taking the advice in an earlier Culture Post and read Raymond Cohen's Negotiating Across Cultures: International Communication in an Interdependent World."

Owner of VOA and RFA affiliate radio station in Phnom Penh in prison, facing anti-state charges - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting

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Report by Australia India Institute has ideas for Australian international broadcasting - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting

Reexamining the Confucian Institutes - Peter Mattis, thediplomat.com:  “The Beijing-backed Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese culture internationally, have been no stranger to controversy since their launch in 2004. Critics have charged they are platforms for Chinese espionage and propaganda."

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RELATED ITEMS

State Department Counterterrorism Efforts [video] - C-Span: Alberto Fernandez testified on the mission, operations and impact of the State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. Via

War Child Porn: Exploitation of Kids for Propaganda - Peter Van Buren, We Meant Well: "Foreign Policy has an excellent photo essay on how images of children are exploited by the US military and others for propaganda purposes.

The image shown here, by the way, is from the Doura Art Show, chronicled in my book [We Meant Well]. The US spent over $20,000 of your tax money (thanks 99%!) to hold an art show in the beleaguered city of Doura, in southern Baghdad. In addition to exploiting kids, your tax money also paid for this piece

of sculpture."

US Embassy Kabul Cheers for Afghan Olympic Team - Peter Van Buren, We Meant Well: Since we US taxpayers more than likely paid for the Afghan Olympic team, we might as well cheer for them. And, oh yes, “like” the Facebook page so as to inspire Afghan girls

who no doubt are viewing Facebook in between drone strikes on their non-existent computers in their without-Internet homes without electricity. Image from entry

Remember the war in Afghanistan? Obama and Romney don’t seem to - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post: The war is not going away anytime soon. It will continue for the first half of the next presidential term. Then the situation gets even more complicated. The Pentagon will probably want to keep some troops there to conduct counterterrorism missions and continue training the Afghan army. And the Afghan government is going to need substantial U.S. financial support to sustain its security forces, run its ministries and provide basic services to its people. That could cost as much as $4 billion a year, by some estimates. Given the size of the tab — about $1 billion more than we provided last year to Israel, the next-largest recipient of U.S. assistance — whoever resides in the White House next year will need to make the case to Congress and the American people about the importance of supporting Afghanistan. This is the time to begin laying that groundwork. Below image from article

Obama and Romney are ignoring the Afghanistan war - Jackson Diehl, Washington Post: Contrary to Obama’s campaign rhetoric, the “tide of war” in Afghanistan is not “receding.” The number of insurgent attacks for the three months ending June 30 was up 11 percent over last year; in June, when 39 coalition troops died, there was an average of 110 attacks per day. Though both troop and civilian casualties are down compared to 2011, the summer fighting season is showing that, far from being defeated, the Taliban may be gaining some momentum. Yet this may be the first presidential campaign in U.S. history in which an ongoing war fails to produce a significant debate.

In Afghanistan, soccer or civil war? - David Ignatius, Washington Post: Two factors would reduce the likelihood of civil war in Afghanistan. One is a commitment for a stay-behind force of, say, 15,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops to prevent a return by al-Qaeda and continue training the Afghan army and police. Second is a political strategy that moves toward national reconciliation and supports elections in 2014 for a new political leadership to replace the corrupt President Hamid Karzai. Unfortunately, this needed political transition is getting much less attention from Washington than the military pullout.

British Allow Anti-Semitic Iranian Propaganda in the UK - Lee Kaplan, gatestoneinstitute.org: Despite convictions for "hate crimes" against Islam, the British government is apparently perfectly willing to overlook the converse: anti-Semitic attacks by Iranian front groups against Jews.

News from the International Broadcasting Unappreciation Society - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting.

Does France deserve its reputation for rudeness? - Thomas Adamson, Associated Press, USA Today: It seems the French themselves, who over centuries have turned

rudeness into an art form, have become fed up with their own incivility, according to recent polls and publicity campaigns. Image from

WWII Radio Heroes [video] - fox2now.com: In World War II, radio propaganda was a tool used by the Third Reich. The Nazi Ministry of Propaganda headed by Josef Goebbels, aimed daily shortwave English broadcasts into the United States. Names of American POWs and the Stalags in which they were imprisoned were part of those broadcasts and the subject of a new book, “WWII Radio Heroes”, by Lisa Spahr. She wrote the book because her grandpa was mentioned in one of those broadcasts in 1943.

Obey Clothing Mens Worldwide Propaganda Graphic Shirts - Obey Clothing, Obey Clothes: "It is no admiration men are so bad-tempered about their shirts. After all, Obey Clothing Mens Worldwide Propaganda Graphic Shirts

are items of accouterment men abrasion the most. They don’t like if something amiss happens to their shirts – a stain conceivably or a rip somehow. Men tend to absorb abundantly on shirts to ensure that they get the best in applicable and quality. And if it comes to shirts for men there is one abode that is artlessly annihilation but ordinary." Image from entry

AMERICANA

"From 1989 to 2007, according to the Federal Reserve, the net worth of the median American family jumped from $79,000 to almost $127,000. But then the housing bubble burst, and the entire gain disappeared. By 2010, median family wealth had fallen all the way to $77,000."

--Lane Kenworthy, "Five myths about the middle class," Washington Post

AFGHANISTANA

"According to U.S. polling, the No. 1 issue today [in Afghanistan] is the high cost of weddings."

--David Ignatius, "In Afghanistan, soccer or civil war?' Washington Post

GORE VIDAL

"Eventually, Vidal’s I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude acquired a troubling subtext. At social events, he took to announcing that he wanted to die.

This unnerved Howard Austen, his companion, who in his agitation sometimes told Vidal to stop talking about it and drop dead."

--Michael Mewshaw, "The Gore Vidal you didn’t know," Washington Post; Vidal image from

LILLIAN HELLMAN

On writer Lillian Hellman: "Collaborators, in Hollywood or Broadway, had to follow her orders. 'No-one,' she wrote imperiously to the director of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, for which she wrote the libretto, 'ever changes a word that Lillian Hellman writes.'

Sexually, Hellman as just as fierce. She flirted aggressively and pursued men all her life; in Elia Kazan's words, 'She went after what she wanted the way a man does'. Never beautiful --- one man said she looked like 'the Ancient mariner in drag' -- Hellman compensated by lying about her age, dressing expensively and well, entertaining lavishly, and acting girlishly. On the beach she was the first in every party to swim nude. But she also posed as a tough broad, 'the kind of girl who can take the top off bottles with her teeth'. Her vocabulary ranged from the kittenish to the high-minded to the repellently crude; she spoke mock baby-talk to her lovers, but liked to shock people by using ethnic slurs like 'kike' and 'Chink' and 'goy'.

Years of heavy drinking, smoking and sunbathing made her a leathery and wrinkled old woman; when she posed jauntily in an advertisement for Blackgama mink costs

in 1976 ('What becomes a legend most?'), she looked a lot more like W.H. Auden

than Elizabeth Taylor. Undaunted, she continued to appear in public and go to parties heavily made up, even if she had to arrive in an ambulance. According to one rumour, she propositioned a young dinner partner the night before she died."

--Elaine Showalter, "What becomes a legend most?" Times Literary Supplement (July 27, 2012), p. 9; Hellman image from; Auden image from

OLYMPICS

"Their charcoal tint glistens beneath a sudden London sun."

--Bill Plaschke, "'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius has an edge, all right -- his spirit," Lost Angeles Times; image from article, with caption: South Africa's Oscar Pistorius, aka the Blade Runner, heads to the finish line in his 400-meter heat on Saturday in London