January 12-14

"[T]he Declaration of Independence is, in effect, a work of propaganda -- or, to put it more politely, an exercise in public diplomacy."

--Former Broadcasting Board of Governors Chairman Walter Isaacson, in a 2004 article

VIDEO

State Dept Wants You to Join the Foreign Service — Start Now So You’re on Board on/about 2015 - Domani Spero, DiploPundit

CALL FOR PAPERS

Public Diplomacy in Context: Past and Present of National Image Management among the Small Nations of Northern Europe --- Conference in Helsinki and Turku, Finland 26-27 April, 2013 --- Call for papers open!

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Get Poland Out of the Waiting Room and into the Visa Waiver Program - Rosie Brinckerhoff, heritage.org "Last week, Heritage and The Wall Street Journal released the latest edition of the Index of Economic Freedom. Among its top performers is Poland, up seven spots in the global rankings. Poland’s economy is the only one in Europe that has expanded every year over the past two decades. In fact, Poland has become one of the EU’s strongest economic performers, with private industry accounting for two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP). Yet despite the fact that Poland is above the world average in terms of economic freedom and is a longtime U.S. ally, the U.S. continues to shortchange the nation in terms of membership in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). The VWP allows citizens from member nations to travel to the U.S. for up to 90 days visa-free, which offers tremendous benefits to the U.S., including increased public diplomacy, facilitated tourism to the U.S., and a reduced workload for U.S. consulate offices. In 2008, roughly 17 million VWP visitors traveled to the U.S., spending $100 billion in tourist dollars on shops, hotels, and restaurants in the U.S., infusing much-needed capital into the U.S. economy. Not only that, but security measures added since the program’s inception have made it an important counterterrorism tool. With benefits such as these, it’s hard to see why the U.S. is not fully using this program and capitalizing on all it has to offer. Yet since 2008, expansion of the VWP has largely been put on hold. In other words, key friends and allies such as Poland have been made to wait, and wait, and wait. So what’s the holdup? Well, due to a congressional mandate, the Department of Homeland Security is prohibited from admitting any country to the VWP if it has a visa refusal rate exceeding 3 percent. Poland has a 9.8 percent visa refusal rate. Instead of continuing to hold VWP expansion hostage to ridiculous mandates, Congress should move to use visa overstay rates, rather than visa refusal rates."

Burma’s Junior Basketball Players Get Tips from NBA Stars - Lalit K Jha, The Irrawaddy: “'It is a big step for the future and building people-to-people relationships between Myanmar and the United States,' said Min San, ... [a] player of the 12-member junior Burmese basketball team that is visiting the US on the invitation of the State Department. The team, comprising players of 15 to 17 years of age, were offered a chance to meet with players of the Washington Wizards, a National Basketball Association (NBA) club on Saturday. ...'This is an opportunity to increase our relationships through sports diplomacy,' Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine told The Irrawaddy. 'It is quite amazing to see these young people from Burma here in Washington at a Wizard’s game,' she said. 'It is really a dramatic moment standing here with the future leaders of Burma.'

The first ever basketball exchange program with support from the NBA is a follow up to the US Sports Envoy program, which brought several American managers and former players to Burma for the first time in August 2012. Image from article, with caption: NBA star Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards poses for a picture with Burma’s junior basketball team in Washington on Saturday, together with State Department official Tara Sonenshine and Burma’s Ambassador to the US Than Swe.

New Law Allows Domestic Use of VOA Reports - From the [VOA] Director: Voice of America will soon be able to make its programs available to the U.S. public following passage of new legislation signed by President Obama Wednesday. The legislation, which is part of the National Defense Authorization Act, eliminates the longstanding ban on domestic distribution of VOA programs that was part of the original U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (known as Smith-Mundt). In the coming months, Voice of America and other U.S. international broadcasters will draft regulations governing how they will fulfill domestic requests for release of original programs and materials. The legislation will not change the focus of the agency’s broadcasts, which are aimed exclusively at international audiences.  The new rules will only affect programs broadcast after July 1st, 2013. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has hailed the new law, which updates one of the founding statutes of public diplomacy in the United States, a change that the Board has long supported and had incorporated into its strategic plan.

 (See BBG Press Release) Presiding BBG Governor Michael Lynton said the new law will allow the BBG to accept requests to provide its programs to organizations which, until now, it could not share them with, including U.S.-based broadcasters, publications, universities, non-governmental organizations, and others that have requested these materials over the years.  Lynton said the new law will allow ‘greater transparency as more people in this country come to know what U.S. International broadcasting is about.’ ‘The new law is a major breakthrough for U.S. international media,’ said Susan McCue, a member of the BBG Board’s Communications and Outreach Committee. ‘All Americans will now have access to the vital and informative reporting of our accomplished journalists around the world who are working under difficult circumstances in closed societies and developing countries.’ For more information about this release contact Kyle King at the VOA Public Relations office in Washington at (202) 203-4959, or write kking@voanews.com.  For more information about VOA visit the Public Relations website at www.insidevoa.com, or the main news site a twww.voanews.com.” Image from entry. Via

VOA director David Ensor: "The best answer to propaganda is not more propaganda" - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting: "Voice of America, Straight Talk Africa, 9 Jan 2013, VOA director David Ensor as interviewed by host Shaka Ssali: 'What over the years, over the 70-odd years of VOA's history we have learned, is that -- and I say this often to people who say why aren't you hitting harder on the ayatollahs in Iran or something like that -- I say, look, the best answer to propaganda is not more propaganda. It is truth. We're in the truth business at the Voice of America. We may not get it a hundred percent right all the time, but that's always our goal. That is our goal. And, you know, when America sometimes has a story to tell that isn't altogether positive about itself, you know, issues of race, or Abu Ghraib, actually our credibility, Voice of America's credibility, we've discovered, grows when we tell the truth about ourselves. And that is when we build an audience around the world, when people say, ah, these Americans realize they're not perfect, they are analyzing their own flaws, trying to figure out how to make their selves a better country. That makes the Voice of America, which talks in these terms, worth listening to on other subjects, besides America, perhaps what's going on my country. So I think there's a real power to old fashioned journalism. We have to do it on an increasing number of different media. We have to stay with the times. But the old-fashioned values of journalism I believe in. And that I think is what we're really based on now. [Elliott comment:] Mr. Ensor was responding to the other guest on the program, a communication professor who was, as communication scholars are wont to do (and is a reason I am no longer a communication professor), obfuscating the role of international broadcasting. The transaction between the listener and the broadcaster is really quite simple, and has nothing to do with persuasion theories: the audience wants news that is more comprehensive, reliable, and credible than the news they get from the state-controlled or otherwise deficient domestic media. International broadcasters that provide such a product attract an audience. That's International Broadcasting 101." Via

A Domestic Victory for Public Diplomacy - Matthew Wallin, American Security Project: "Included in the passage of the FY13 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), was an interesting addendum updating the law that governs America’s public diplomacy efforts. The passage of the Smith-Mundt Modernization act as part of the NDAA removes the restriction on the State Department and Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) banning the broadcast or distribution of materials produced for overseas consumption inside the US. This is NOT the equivalent of passing a law approving the production of propaganda for domestic use. These materials must be produced for use overseas, and not made for a domestic audience. Even if this passage meant that Americans could potentially be 'propagandized' by their own government, so what? In reality, Americans could already access a great deal of these broadcasts through the internet. And as Heritage’s Helle Dale points out, it is ironic that Americans could legally access the broadcasts of foreign nations, but not our own. Ultimately, this is good news for the people of the United States, opening up our nation’s public diplomacy for more oversight and allowing us to better understand what is being 'said' in the name of the American people.

This creates transparency, and gives the American people and Congress the ability to better understand how public diplomacy is being conducted by the State Department and the BBG. Inevitably, this will lead to the discovery of reporting by American news outlets such as Voice of America or Alhurra that is not necessarily flattering to U.S. policy. Yet in the course of providing objective, credible news, it is vital that we do not restrict our overseas broadcasters from reporting on the truth, even when it may not initially appear beneficial to the U.S. Consistent and accurate reporting helps establish these outlets as a credible, trusted messengers, ultimately reducing the damage of potential disinformation by our enemies and helping to build trust relationships between the U.S. and foreign audiences. While those Americans who choose to view these broadcasts will likely find things that upset them, it is crucial that this oversight be used to ensure accurate and truthful reporting, and not merely used to weed out those stories we simply 'don’t like.'” Via

RFE/RL Russian "kerfuffle" continues as "a battle of the narratives" - Kim Andrew Ellliott reporting on International Broadcasting

Evolution of Britain’s Soft Power: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office - Candance Ren, Ren's Micro Diplomacy ~ public diplomacy and soft power: "The Foreign Secretary gave a speech on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as part of the Speaker’s lecture series on great offices of state. This is a transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, gave a speech on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office recently. While he didn’t expressly talk about public diplomacy, his speech describes how the FCO has become a center of UK soft power."

The Big Challenge with the EEZ [Google translation] - Costas Loukopoulos, capital.gr: Mention of public diplomacy

English Writings of Hu Shih: National Crisis and Public Diplomacy (Volume 3) (China Academic Library) - nicechina118.blogspot.com: "Buy on the merchant's on-line searching and scan reviews. If you're trying to seek out English Writings of Hu Shih: National Crisis and Public Diplomacy (Volume 3)

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Envisioning a Multidisciplinary Research Agenda for Public Diplomacy - Craig Hayden, e-ir.info: "It is evident that the study of public diplomacy invites perspectives and methods from across disciplinary boundaries in ways that build on the considerable insight of historical and practitioner accounts. It has grown as a concept beyond a euphemism for propaganda into a diverse (and at times contradictory) set of practices by international actors seeking to leverage the resources of communication for strategic purposes. Public diplomacy as a field of study does not require a rigid theoretical template to flourish, but rather a broader audience for its relevance to pressing questions that scholars continue to grapple with at the borders of communication, international politics, and culture."

Doubtless these gentlemen are talking about the USIA - John Brown, Notes and Essays: In the photo, from left to right:

William Wilson, Ronald Reagan, Walter Annenberg, William French Smith, and Charles Wick [United States Information Agency Director during the Reagan Administration].

Triple Creek Guest Ranch CEO Barbara Barrett appointed to Smithsonian Board of Regents - artdaily.org: Barbara Barrett has been appointed a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. President Barack Obama signed the resolution Jan. 10 appointing her as a citizen regent. Barrett’s six-year term begins immediately. ...Barrett

has also served as senior advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration and vice chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board. She chaired the State Department’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Working Group, the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and the Secretary of Commerce’s Export Conference. As a member of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, she founded a program to train and mentor Afghan women entrepreneurs. Barrett image from article

RELATED ITEMS

America is not in decline or retreat - E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post: Preserving America’s influence abroad depends on first restoring economic growth, upward mobility, fiscal stability and enhanced social solidarity at home. This will require a somewhat leaner defense budget for a time, but the idea that Obama will slash it indiscriminately is absurd. The declinists are wrong because they underestimate the resilience of the American economy, the magnetism of our culture, the continuing appeal of the democratic idea and the difficulties our competitors, particularly China, confront.

Bonehead at New York Times Completely Fails to Get Counterinsurgency - Peter Van Buren, We Meant Well: Counterinsurgency will always fail without a legitimate government and Afghanistan does not have one. The Afghan government was created by the U.S. for our own domestic political purposes. It is corrupt. It cannot secure its people and cannot provide them with a way of living.

To a family in Iraq, I owe a debt I can’t repay - Blake Hall, Washington Post: Congress created a “special immigrant visa” program as part of the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act of 2008, aimed to relocate tens of thousands of Iraqis — including former interpreters and embassy workers and their families — who helped us during the war. Though a few thousand visas had been issued as of early last year, the process has been painstakingly slow for many, in part because of security concerns in the United States. Now, 10 years after the conflict in Iraq began and more than a year after our last troops departed the country, it’s inexcusable that any of those who risked so much are still waiting.

Time for Congress to build a better drone policy - Keith Ellison, Washington Post: A just, internationally accepted protocol on the use of drones in warfare is needed.

By creating and abiding by our own set of reasonable standards, the United States will demonstrate to the world that we believe in the rule of law. Image from

New Russian law forbidding U.S. adoptions draws major Moscow protest - Sergei L. Loiko, latimes.com: The adoption law signed by Putin in late December has split Russian society and re-galvanized the Russian protest movement, which fell dormant after Putin took office following a controversial election. The law, rushed through parliament in record time, is seen as retribution for the Sergei Magnitsky Act passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Obama in December, which imposed visa restrictions and financial sanctions on

Russian officials believed involved in the death of an imprisoned lawyer who blew the whistle on Russian officials allegedly involved in a multimillion-dollar tax refund scam. Image from article, with caption: Thousands of demonstrators opposed to a law banning U.S. families from adopting Russian orphans took to the streets of Moscow with signs showing President Vladimir Putin and other politicians who supported the law with "Shame" written on their faces.

Russia Beyond the Headlines and its Lies - Dying Russia: There is a consistent trend of increasing hostility towards Russia by Americans as Russia becomes ever less democratic.

The US, Saudi Arabia, propaganda and tyranny in the Middle East - Glenn Greenwald, muslimvillage.com: The most significant problem in political discourse is not that people embrace destructive beliefs after issues are rationally debated.

It’s that the potency of propaganda, by design, often precludes such debates from taking place. Consider how often one hears the claim that the US is committed to spreading democracy and opposing tyranny in the Middle East in light of this fact from a New York Review of Books article by Hugh Eakin reviewing three new books on Saudi Arabia (via As’ad AbuKhalil): “The US does more trade – overwhelmingly in oil and weapons – with Saudi Arabia than any other country in the Middle East, including Israel, and depends on close Saudi cooperation in its counterterrorism efforts in Yemen.” Indeed, President Obama has repeatedly touted what he calls ”the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia” and “the importance of our bilateral relationship” and often vows ”to continue cooperating closely on a range of issues." In other words, the single most repressive regime in that region is also America’s closest ally. Image from article

The Arabs’ Betrayal of the Palestinians - Joseph Puder, frontpagemag.com: The Arab states have stuck to the familiar rhetoric of Western responsibility for the Palestinian plight, and therefore the West should pay for the Palestinian Authority upkeep as well as the Palestinian Arab refugees cared for by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In fact, it was the Palestinian leadership and leaders of Arab states that encouraged the Palestinian plight in 1948, and are largely responsible for the Palestinian refugee problem. The Arab states moreover, refused to absorb the Palestinians, and have used them for propaganda purposes. Kuwait has expelled 450,000 Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, while Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria have refrained from giving the Palestinians citizenship. It is the same Arab states who have encouraged the Palestinians to resist accommodation with the Jewish State, and gave lip-service to the Palestinian cause, while they fall short on deeds when it comes to helping the Palestinians.

The Struggle for the Fertile Crescent: Syria's sectarian civil war has upended the political equation across the region, from Baghdad to Lebanon - Fouad Ajami, Wall Street Journal: The Fertile Crescent's protagonists do not fight alone: On one side, there is the Iranian state, influential in Iraq and committed to the Syrian regime and to Hezbollah. On the other is the Sunni pact of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Egypt is of course a Sunni country but it has, due to its immersion in its own troubles at home, remained largely neutral in this struggle. This is a Sunni-Shiite fight, but religious devotion is not the measure of things. This is a very worldly grab for power and wealth and trade routes, and it is fought without sentimentalism or scruples. This is a malady of that greater Middle East—its atavisms and ambitions. And to this malady, the United States today is a spectator. Image from article

Publish and be damned - irishtimes.com: The apparent success, albeit partial, of striking Chinese journalists against overbearing Communist Party censors may be an important straw in the wind for press freedom. The journalists on the liberal Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Weekly walked out last weekend in a dispute with provincial propaganda officials whom they accused of tampering with an outspoken New Years Day editorial. They complain that interference in the paper, which has a reputation for in-depth reporting and exposing official corruption, has increased substantially in recent years with more than 1,000 of its articles censored or spiked under the direction of the province’s top propaganda official.

Hanoi's official bloggers hard at work: The Vietnamese government is using its own official bloggers to post comments on the Internet favorable to the ruling Communist Party and trash pro-democracy bloggers - upi.com: The Vietnamese government is using its own official bloggers to post comments on the Internet favorable to the ruling Communist Party and denigrate pro-democracy bloggers. Propaganda and Education Department head Ho Quang Loi said hundreds of hired "Internet polemicists" are used in the fight against "online hostile forces," a report by the BBC said. The department has more than 400 online accounts and 20 microblogs, Ho reportedly said. The bloggers -- "public opinion shapers" -- take part in online discussions, attacking other bloggers critical of the regime, its policies and who call for greater democracy.

North Korea: Tweeting Its Way to the Future? - Didi Kirsten Tatlow, International Herald Tribune: Twitter in North Korea? It sounds about as likely as snow in the tropics. Yet the fiercely isolationist state, headed by Kim Jong-un, the 30-ish, third-generation scion of its founding family, does appear to have a Twitter account: @uriminzok. It's even following three other users, as the British newspaper The Guardian spotted.

Image from article, with caption: Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, in red scarf, and the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, right, watching soldiers use computers in Pyongyang last week.

North Korea has a new name for North Koreans: ‘space conquerors’ - Max Fisher, Washington Post: North Korean state media present an easy target, but the latest from the official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, is a doozy even by the DPRK’s already-monumental standards of lunacy. A recent editorial in the paper repeats the usual exhortation to each and every North Korean to “devote oneself to building an economic giant with burning patriotic enthusiasm

to fully demonstrate Korea of the sun.” What’s interesting is that the state-run Rodong Sinmun seems to employ a new, unofficial name for the North Korean people: “space conquerors.” In only 365 short words, it refers to North Koreans five different times as “space conquerors,” according to the official English translation. Image from article, with caption: This 1999 North Korean stamp is a small but telling indication of the regime’s obsession with achieving a successful launch into Earth orbit, which it finally got in December.

Labor mural gets a new home in Augusta: The artwork made famous when LePage removed it from an agency lobby is now in the state museum - Dennis Hoey, onlinesentinel.com: The controversial labor mural that once hung in the lobby of the Maine Department of Labor in Augusta -- and became the subject of a lawsuit when Gov. Paul LePage ordered it removed -- has found a new home. The 11-panel labor mural that Gov. Paul LePage ordered removed in March 2011 from the lobby of the Department of Labor in Augusta is shown at its new home on display in the entrance of the Maine State Museum in Augusta.

The long battle over the now-famous mural began in 2011, soon after LePage, a Republican, was inaugurated. The governor criticized the mural as a one-sided view sympathetic to unions. He compared it at one point to Communist propaganda in North Korea. LePage's administration quietly took the mural down over a weekend and stored it at an undisclosed location. Artists, labor advocates and others criticized the decision, saying he had no authority to arbitrarily remove the artwork. Image from article, with caption: A section of the mural depicting scenes from Maine labor history that will be displayed at the Maine State Museum beginning Monday.

Exhibit at Santa Paula museum looks at agriculture in war efforts - Jannette Jauregui, vcstar.com: tories surrounding World War I and World War II often involve tales of heroism on the front lines — troops who served through the harsh winters in France and the sultry heat of the jungles in the Pacific.

Closer to home are stories of patriotism that are often overlooked — stories of the fight to keep the United States. Among the homefront efforts during both world wars were victory gardens, plantings that helped sustain domestic rationing and the food supply to troops overseas. The topic, and some of the original government-issued posters that supported the efforts, are the focus of the Museum of Ventura County's Agricultural Museum's latest exhibit, "When Gardening Was Patriotic." Image from article, with caption: An avid canner, Lucinda Wehrkamp explains the pressure cooker and other goods used for canning Saturday during World War II at the opening of the exhibit "When Gardening Was Patriotic" at the Agricultural Museum of Ventura County in Santa Paula.

Snapshot: State Department’s Permanent Workforce Demographics - Domani Spero, DiploPundit.

Image from entry