April 13

"The adversary is no longer homogeneous, one’s own people may be puzzled and divided."

--Michael Howard, "Narratives of war," The Times Literary Supplement

VIDEOS

North Korea threatens to strike Colorado Springs but doesn’t know where it is - Max Fisher, Washington Post: The latest ridiculous North Korean propaganda video includes threats to launch that nation’s (untested) KN-08 missiles at four U.S. cities: Washington, Colorado Springs, Colo., Los Angeles and Honolulu. The only problem is that the video, released by the state-run media organization Uriminzokkiri, misidentifies Colorado Springs’ location by about 1,000 miles.

The new documentary Juche Strong (trailer) - Foreign Policy

Conan: North Korea's Latest Propaganda Isn't Very Threatening (VIDEO) - Huffington Post

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Afghanistan like Benghazi: New reports of U.S. deaths clash with official story - Patricia Campion, examiner.com: On Sunday, April 7, The Associated Press reported that Taliban militants in Afghanistan killed six Americans on Saturday -- including a 25-year-old female diplomat from the Chicago area named Anne Smedinghoff – after being hit by a suicide car bomb explosion while traveling in a convoy of vehicles to donate books to a new school in Qalat. But a local ABC affiliate in Chicago reported Thursday that Smedinghoff 'was on foot when she was killed.' This account clashes with the official story issued at the time of the attack. ... McClatchy's report on Wednesday -- cited by the local ABC affiliate in Chicago on Thursday – said interviews of witnesses and U.S. officials

revealed that Smedinghoff and her group 'were on foot and not in an armored vehicle when they were killed last weekend.' ... McClatchy also identified the critically wounded State Department officer as 33-year-old Kelly Hunt, a former Tennessee’s Knoxville News Sentinel staff member who was serving as a public diplomacy officer in Kandahar. An aunt told McClatchy that Hunt had been taken to the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for surgery during which doctors induced a medical coma and removed part of her skull to help fight swelling in her brain. ... While six days have passed – and new reports conflict with with the official version issued by U.S. and Afghan officials -- the president has yet to issue a statement about the American deaths or to even acknowledge that the attack took place." See also. Image of Zabul, Afghanistan (where Americans came under attack) from

Department of State Public Schedule, April 12 - posted at rockycoastnews.blogspot.com: "UNDER SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS TARA SONENSHINE Under Secretary Sonenshine is on foreign travel to Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia from April 8 through 16."

U.S. government using Twitter, Facebook to counter propaganda - politico.com: "A group of U.S. government workers called the Digital Outreach Team is countering extremist propaganda on sites like Twitter and Facebook. The team posts tweets, updates on Facebook and video to YouTube in Arabic, Punjabi, Somali and Urdu. The 50-member team is comprised of Americans and foreign nationals who are native speakers of the four languages. The unit had more than 7,000 what they term 'engagements' — postings, updates or uploads.

The top official on the team, Alberto Fernandez, says the goal of the team is to contest space that had previously been ceded to extremists. Fernandez says that in years past groups like al-Qaida could monopolize online discussions, but that the U.S. Digital Outreach Team is now in the online space to rebut false claims." Image from

Liberal Peacebuilding as Zombie: Workaround Strategies - Sara Cobb, unrestmag.com: "Since the liberal peace paradigm runs parallel to the military industrial establishment in the US, I am working to infiltrate into the very machinations where the liberal peace narrative is anchored—in war and war making. I am supporting the development of an interagency process that would alter the way the military conducts their analysis of their own plans; when confronted with the need to integrate USAID and State Department actions, on the ground, in contexts that are not only unstable, but complex in terms of dynamics (unintended consequences, non-linear processes), uncertainty is increased, and that is one of my goals.

Downloading a narrative lens into the military’s analytic community, not so they can 'kill off' other narratives, requires and enables an epistemological shift that allows military to learn from locals, from partners, engage in ways that makes sense for those locals, and adapt to them. I have a second project, with the State Department’s Center for Counterterrorism Communication, challenging the way they are responding in their digital outreach—instead of launching counternarratives at extremists in digital forums, counternarratives which function to deny, justify or excuse the US’s actions, I am using narrative theory to imagine how to shift the interaction such that engagement, rather than contestation, would be the outcome. Many might call me naïve arguing that from within the “belly of the beast” I will never be able to make a difference. But I am working in a location where narratives about Others are created, instantiated, and materialized in military plans and public diplomacy efforts. And indeed I will not be able to make huge changes overnight, but rather than sit on the sidelines, avoiding the Liberal Peace Zombie where possible, I prefer to work, conversation, by conversation, to make sense, with others, including the US government agencies, about how to make sense of their Others." Image from heading of blog

Beyonce, Jay-Z trip stirs debate on 'people-to-people' visa - Alan Gomez, USA Today: "George W. Bush severely restricted travel to Cuba during his presidency, but President Obama re-opened the doors. Now, professors and students can go frequently on educational visas. Visas are also available for people going on religious trips and to visit relatives on the island. But the visa category that has drawn the most criticism is the "people-to-people" visa that was shut down by Bush and reopened by Obama. At the time the administration explained that it was designed to increase personal relationships with people in Cuba to give Cubans a better understanding of the outside world and help them fight for independence from an oppressive Cuban regime. But Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami, said this week that the program 'skirts the law' by providing propaganda and hard currency for the Communist regime, while giving Americans a nearly clear avenue for tourism. ... The number of U.S. visitors to Cuba has shot up in the last two years, topping 500,000 in 2011, the Cuban Tourism Ministry says.

Most were Cuban Americans visiting relatives, but about 90,000 were other Americans mostly traveling on licensed visits, Cuban officials say. Jesse Horst, a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, took his third trip to Cuba in January to continue working on his thesis about the history of slums in Cuba and other Latin American countries. He went on an educational visa, not the 'people to people' visa. 'They want to know about the U.S., about popular culture,' said Horst, 28. 'They're also concerned about the types of difficulties there are living in the U.S.' Another visa category is the cultural exchange trips, available to artists and athletes. The Westfield State University baseball team, a small, Division III squad from Massachusetts, went in March to play against Cuban teams. They faced off against the Havana Industriales - the Cuban equivalent of the New York Yankees - and lost both games." Image from

Ambassadors of Aloha - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "OMG, I just had the most immaculate vision of Brazilian girls learning to Hula. That will be my public diplomacy contribution in a few weeks.

I leave next week for Venezuela with the Ambassadors of Aloha, as the embassy hath proclaimed." Image from

Hollywood’s Dangerous Afghan Illusion: “Charlie Wilson’s War” - Robert Parry, globalresearch.ca: "[T]he White House saw a need to step up its domestic propaganda operations in support of President Reagan’s desire to intervene more aggressively in Central America and Afghanistan. The American people – still stung by the agony of the Vietnam War – were not eager to engage in more foreign adventures. ... To hide the ugly realities and to overcome popular opposition to the policies, Reagan granted CIA Director William Casey extraordinary leeway to engage in CIA-style propaganda and disinformation aimed at the American people, the sort of project normally reserved for hostile countries. ... Even after the Iran-Contra scandal was exposed in 1986 and Casey died of brain cancer in 1987, the Republicans fought to keep secret the remarkable story of this propaganda apparatus. ... Thus, the American people were spared the chapter’s troubling conclusion: that a covert propaganda apparatus had existed, run by one of the CIA’s most senior specialists, sent to the NSC by Bill Casey, to create and coordinate an inter-agency public-diplomacy mechanism [which] did what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might do."

Matt Armstrong to the BBG! - To Inform is to Influence: IO, SC, PD, what's in a name?: "Today [April 12] the White House announced that Matt Armstrong is being nominated to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, here. Previously Matt was the Executive Director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. On a personal note, this is really good news. ... On a professional note it is good to see President Obama nominate someone who is not coming out of the broadcast industry, as Matt is an expert in

Public Diplomacy and will surely energize and help evolve the BBG’s practices." 1937 Image  from

Obama II And Indo-US Defence Relations – Analysis, Rahul Bhonsle, eurasiareview.com: "Delivering a talk on, 'The U.S. Defense Rebalance to Asia', at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. on 08 April (2013), amongst other facets Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, outlined importance of India in US rebalancing as a, 'key part,' of the strategy. ... On India’s role in the Asia Pacific, Mr Carter in his speech at the CSIS stated that the Indian and US security converged with particular reference to maritime security and other regional issues. He outlined the support to India’s, 'Look East,' policy.

Mr Carter said, 'Our security interests with India converge on maritime security and broader regional issues, including India’s 'Look East' policy [']. There is limited clarity on how this will manifest much less in the US than in India due to lack of clear articulation of policy objectives in New Delhi. This has created apprehensions amongst Americans of India’s commitment to playing a larger role in practice, even though India has been quite active in expansion of its interests in the region with a strategic partnership agreement inked in December with ASEAN. Greater public diplomacy on the Indian side may be in order." Image from

What Appears to be Politics is, after all, Just The Politics Of Appearance? - The Soapbox View: "A while back, you know, last Spring/Summer when Kim Jung-un just came into his own, some hope was put into this idea that he was exclusively schooled in Switzerland. Apparently elitism isn't the problem?  Maggie [Thatcher], as I had never referred to her, in part staked her flag-waving credentials on refusing to let a military regime take the Malvinas Islands. So maybe what Kim has learned is the importance of militarized nationalism conveys token justification for treating public diplomacy as if it were the chest-thumping of professional wrestling."

Post ISA Thoughts  - Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence: “I’ve been having a few days off recovering from last week’s trip to the International Studies Association convention in San Francisco.  Three observations. -- Public diplomacy research is developing.  More of the papers that I heard/read this year had more data, more attention to issues of comparison,  greater engagement with questions of diplomacy and diplomatic studies and with debates in International Relations more broadly. For instance the idea of practice and practices has been attracting greater attention in the IR theory community over the past few years and several of the PD papers that I heard/read are explicitly engaging with the development.  However, there’s still a lot more room for development, comparative studies are still underdeveloped and I was pleased to hear that Eytan Gilboa has a major comparative project in the works. -- Realism vs idealism:  To what extent is public diplomacy an instrument of foreign policy and to what extent does it offer a way of generating transformation in international relationships?  This is a theme that has been bubbling under the surface for a while but really became explicit in some of the panels this year – particularly in a couple of roundtables on deriving from the volume on relational public diplomacy edited by Rhonda Zaharna, Amelia Arsenault and Ali Fisher.  Kathy Fitzpatrick explicitly  proclaimed herself an idealist so I couldn’t resist coining the term ‘networked realism’ to label my own position. -- The identity of public diplomacy. There was some discussion about the implications of  the rapidly developing fusion between diplomacy and public diplomacy for the identity of public diplomacy as practice and as a research area. Somebody made the point that secret diplomacy is a tiny subset of an increasingly public diplomacy. One idea that was floated was that the State Department should merge its Political and Public Diplomacy career cones. This might be read as the ‘end of public diplomacy’ but how many other foreign ministries have separate PD career tracks?  I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is none and there still seems to be plenty of PD going on."

On 16 April We Remember Hungarian Victims Of Holocaust - [A]t the Holocaust Memorial Center, Monika Balatoni ([Hungary's] Minister of State for Public diplomacy and Relations at the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice) will open the temporary photographic exhibition 'Memorial Pictures – Unforgettable 20th-Century Life Stories.' This has been organised for Holocaust Memorial Day to emblematically commemorate those outstanding figures of Hungarian culture whose fate was sealed by the tragedy of the Holocaust, but whose work still moves us and lives among us."

For MPD’s Considering Public Service—Take a Second Look at the Presidential Management Fellowship - Cari Guittard, PD News–CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: Renee Lee, former Master of [in? -- JB] Public Diplomacy (MPD) student: "Roughly one year after accepting my position with the Forest Service, I accepted a permanent assignment at the State Department where I am currently posted at the Bureau of Public Affairs’ Office of Strategic Planning. I can describe my current position as one similar to a public relations account holder.

I work with 'client' bureaus in helping plan their communication strategies and efforts. I’m part of a fantastic team and this job is a terrific opportunity to learn about the department and its wide range of regional and functional missions." Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Russia bans 18 Americans after similar US move - Jim Heintz, AP, wsmv.com: Russia on Saturday named 18 Americans banned from entering the country in response to Washington imposing sanctions on 18 Russians for alleged human rights violations. The list released by the Foreign Ministry includes John Yoo, a former U.S. Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques; David Addington, the chief of staff for former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney; and two former commanders of the Guantanamo Bay detention center: retired Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Adm. Jeffrey Harbeson.

The move came a day after the United States announced its sanctions under the Magnitsky Law, named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates. He died in prison the next year, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment. Neither Washington nor Moscow put high-ranking or politically prominent figures on their lists, perhaps aiming to limit the effect on U.S.-Russian relations that have deteriorated, despite President Barack Obama's initiative to "reset" relations with Moscow. Image from

Academic freedom sold cheap - Daniel Brook, Washington Post: Rather than investing in poor democracies such as India, U.S. universities are erecting their sparkling new campuses in rich dictatorships. Through a cynical strategy, Western universities are getting the good PR of sharing their resources with the “developing world” — assuming most Americans are ignorant of the fact that the United Arab Emirates is as rich as the United States on a per-capita basis, and Singapore is even richer. Universities would better serve their missions, if not their endowments, by opening up campuses in poorer, freer cities like Mumbai, Istanbul or Bangkok.

Ex-Soviet elite struggles with 'first lady' role - Andrey Kondratyev, BBC: Belarusian expert Valeriy Karbalevich says the Soviet tradition of "not putting the wives of leaders on display" is deeply rooted in the public consciousness. Paradoxically the first ladies in Central Asia, a region considered patriarchal and conservative, enjoy rather more prominence.

Azerbaijan's Mehriban Aliyeva, a dazzling fashionista, is arguably the most prominent among the eastern first ladies. With her hand in a variety of cultural and "charitable" programmes she has arguably overshadowed her husband, President Ilham Aliyev. Via OM; Aliyeva image from article, with caption: Azerbaijan's Mehriban Aliyeva is said to be more popular than her husband.

N. Korea's campy propaganda has gone viral - Chico Harlan, philly.com: The reclusive, impoverished state that denies Internet access to all but a handful of its citizens has, improbably, become an online sensation. With North Korea's chubby dictator, campy propaganda videos and near-daily threats of attack against its neighbors and the United States, the secretive police state has never been more searched for, tweeted or discussed. Some semi-chagrined analysts say the North, for the first time, has gone viral.

Although Pyongyang tries every few years to drive up regional tensions and win political concessions, this latest saber-rattling has more forcefully captured global attention, in part because the mysterious and potentially dangerous North so perfectly feeds the appetites of the Internet and social media. Image from article, with caption: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and former NBA star Dennis Rodman watch North Korean and U.S. players in an exhibition basketball game at an arena in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Rodman arrived in Pyongyang on Monday with three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team to shoot an episode on North Korea for a new weekly HBO series.

Does it matter if North Koreans believe their own propaganda? - Joshua Keating, foreignpolicy.com: "[I]f North Koreans really believe their propaganda, shouldn't that make us more worried about the security threat the country poses? I generally think the threat from Pyongyang is a bit overhyped and that if war does break out, it will likely be do to accident rather than intention. But if you wanted to convince me that the United States needs to maintain its current military commitment to the region, a good place to start would be by making the case that it's a nation of true believers willing to die for their government rather than one of cowed and terrified people who will abandon their leaders at the first sign of weakness." Includes trailer of the new documentary, Juche Strong.

North Korea propaganda machine: U.S. like ‘a boiled pumpkin’ - Cheryl K. Chumley, Washington Times: North Korea’s propaganda machine has been in full-speed-ahead mode lately, using Stalin-era techniques that appear whimsical to the West but are nonetheless effective on the domestic front — and at garnering international attention. Some of the latest messages, as reported by Bloomberg: The former South Korean president is a “rat.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is a “funny lady” who’s “by no means intelligent.” And the mainland United States is “similar to a boiled pumpkin.”

North Korea Propaganda Paints Image Of Permanent War - Giles Hewitt, Agence France Presse, Huffington Post: To maintain a siege mentality, which it can exploit in numerous ways, the North Korean elite not only relies on a pervasive propaganda programme, but also a tight national information cordon.

France launches military, propaganda offensive in Mali - Ernst Wolff, wsws.org: Contrary to the claims of the French president that his country planned a lightning response to a terrorist threat, the intervention in Mali was planned and carefully prepared long beforehand.

WikiLeaks: Vatican Dismissed Pinochet Massacre Reports As 'Communist Propaganda' - Peter Finocchiaro, Huffington Post: Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship was responsible for the deaths of as many as 3,200 people in Chile in the 1970s, but the Vatican dismissed reports of bloodshed at the time as "communist propaganda," according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Monday. In a 1973 diplomatic cable addressed to Henry Kissinger, then serving as the United States' Secretary of State, high-ranking Vatican official Giovanni Benelli was quoted as relaying "his and the pope's grave concern over successful international leftisf campaign to misconstrue completely realities of Chilean situation." Benelli dismissed reports of massacre as "unfounded" and "possibly [the] greatest success of Communist propaganda," while explaining away whatever violence had occurred as "unfortunately natural following coup d'etat."

The cable was written five weeks after the coup, during the reign of Pope Paul VI, with reports already surfacing that political opponents of the regime were being arrested and killed. Image from entry, with caption: Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Monday show a Vatican official during the papacy of Paul VI (above) downplaying reports of massacre under Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War: Revising the Past, Revisiting the Lies - Mark A. Ashwill, Huffington Post: In his proclamation that set the stage for this commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War President Obama noted that: ['] We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away from everything they knew and everyone they loved. From Ia Drang to Khe Sanh, from Hue to Saigon and countless villages in between, they pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans.['] Instead of a historical whitewash, why not take this opportunity, perhaps one of the last in this overwrought national melodrama, to indulge in some long overdue soul-searching

and ask the hard questions? Why not make an honest and concerted effort to deal with, learn from, but also overcome the past? Why not confront the monstrous reality that the Vietnam War, or the American War, as it's logically known in Vietnam, was unjust, unnecessary, and immoral? Image from

English assignment using Nazi propaganda embarrasses Albany, N.Y. - Michael Muskal, latimes.com: An upstate New York school district has become the latest to learn that some approaches create special sensitivity problems, as in this case in which a high school teacher asked students to make a written argument good enough to “convince me you are loyal to the Nazis" by exhibiting a belief "that Jews are evil." The assignment, sent to some students in English classes at the Albany High School called on the children to research

Nazi propaganda and then assume the teacher was a German official who needed to be convinced of their loyalty. “You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!” according to the assignment posted on the newspaper website of the    Albany Times Union, which first wrote about the assignment. About a third of the students refused to do the work. Image from, with caption: A photographic copy of the cover of the deluxe edition of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" sent by General George Patton to the chairman of the Huntington Library.

Bernays Propaganda - Zabraneta planeta - thesoundofconfusionblog.blogspot.com: Moonlee Records are doing a great job of bringing us music from the Balkan countries, not much of which usually filters through to British or American press, so props to them.

Judging by what we've heard from their label so far, there's a thriving punk scene around that area, perhaps not surprising considering that tensions are still running high following the dissolution of Yugoslavia two decades ago. Macedonia's Bernays Propaganda are one of the country's more successful acts and have even had moderate success abroad. This is perhaps not surprising given that they split their songs between English and their native tongue. Image from entry