November 5

“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”

--Walt Whitman; Whitman image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Economic Public Diplomacy for the Middle East - Philip Seib, Huffington Post: "The U.S. State Department's public diplomacy leadership is turning over, and the new policymakers have a great opportunity to ratchet up the efforts to help stabilize Arab economies.

This means helping Arab states redesign their economic infrastructure." Image from

Why America needs to fund the next generation of Russia scholars - Laura Adams, russiadirect.foreignpolicy.com: "The U.S. State Department’s recent decision to end funding for Title VIII, which supports area studies related to Russia, Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union, will weaken America’s ability to think strategically about a critical part of the world." Via LO-S on Facebook

U.S. Universities Help Chinese Dictatorship Spread Propaganda - Noel Brinkerhoff, allgov.com: "American universities of all sizes and pedigree have been helping China spread its propaganda to college students through Chinese-government-funded programs known as Confucius Institutes (CIs). Since 2004, China has funded

CIs around the world, including throughout the United States’ system of higher education. The institutes, which provide Chinese language and cultural studies, can be found at prestigious private schools like Stanford and the University of Chicago and at public colleges like San Diego State, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Middle Tennessee State. Why are so many four-year institutions accepting CIs? Money. China subsidizes the programs, and in return, the Chinese government dictates what can—and cannot—be taught at the CIs." Image from

Zarif, Iran's veteran diplomatic troubleshooter - Agence France-Presse, globalpost.com: "Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, could be the key to solving Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West, having worked to resolve various crises in the Islamic republic since the 80s. ... An advocate of public diplomacy, he has years of experience in multilateral negotiations after serving as a diplomat to the United Nations for more than 20 years. He is also well versed in American culture and knows how to negotiate with the 'Great Satan.'"

Hamas Appoints English-Language Spokeswoman - jewishhigh.com: "The Hamas government’s information center in Gaza has appointed a spokeswoman, Asra Al-Mudallal, for English-language media. The center’s director, Ihab al-Ghussein, said that the appointment of a media liaison who is fluent in English is

part of the effort to improve Palestinian public diplomacy, particularly in the international media." Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Mr. Kerry Fumbles in Egypt - Editorial, New York Times: Mr. Kerry misfired on the tone and content of his talks with Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the country’s strongman and ringleader of the coup. The Morsi trial never came up. And they undercut whatever cautionary message President Obama had hoped to send last month when he suspended the delivery of major weapons systems to Egypt and withheld $260 million in aid. “It is not a punishment,” Mr. Kerry said.The United States and Egypt share many important interests, including peace with Israel, security in Sinai, the free flow of traffic through the Suez Canal and cooperation against terrorism. It is important for both nations to keep trying to work together. But they also need to be clear about their differences, especially on what the word democracy means. Mr. Kerry has muddied the waters. Image from

Mr. Kerry’s diplomatic games in Egypt - Editorial, Washington Post: A Freedom House report released Monday concludes that “there has been virtually no substantive progress toward democracy . . .since the July 3 coup,” despite the military regime’s supposed “road map.” But that’s not how Secretary of State John F. Kerry sees it. “The road map is being carried out to the best of our perception,” he pronounced during a quick trip to Cairo on Sunday. A liberal constitution and elections? “All of that is, in fact, moving down the road map in the direction that everybody has been hoping for.” What is it that Mr. Kerry doesn’t perceive? To judge that Egypt is headed toward democracy is to ignore the fact that its last elected leader and thousands of his supporters are now political prisoners facing, at best, blatantly unfair trials.

Strange silence on success in removing Syria’s chemical weapons - Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post: Last week, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) quietly reported that Syria “has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable.” What the OPCW accomplished is no small victory. It’s a meaningful step toward meeting what has long been a major U.S. foreign policy goal – eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

Media Fabrications and the War on Syria: How the Western Press Parrots Israeli Propaganda - Phil Greaves, globalresearch.ca

Iran to America: Let's Do Business: The new Iran America Chamber of Commerce is ready to build on Obama's desire for a deal - Sohrab Ahmari, Wall Street journal: A regime long comfortable with operating in the gray zones of the global economy is already positioning itself to profit from Washington's softening approach. Let's hope the bargain is worth it.

A Field Guide to Losing Friends, Influencing No One, and Alienating the Middle East: Obama’s Washington Is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Region - Bob Dreyfuss, TomDispatch: Right now, imagine the Obama administration as one of those vaudeville acts that keep a dozen plates spinning atop vibrating poles. At just this moment in the Middle East, those “plates” are tipping in every direction. There’s still time to prevent them all from crashing to the ground, but it would take a masterful effort from the White House -- and it’s far from clear that anyone there is up to the task.

Two-Faced Allies: Pakistan and the U.S. - Shahan Mufti, New York Times: A Pew Research Center poll in July found that America is more disliked in Pakistan than anywhere else. A Gallup poll a few months earlier found that the countries most disliked by Americans are Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. The lies that were meant to hold Pakistan and America together in a time of war, are now imperiling the alliance they were meant to protect.


AP Editors: White House Pushes Propaganda Photos - Madeleine Morgenstern, theblaze.com: Top Associated Press editors criticized the Obama administration for essentially pushing propaganda photos rather than allowing news organizations independent access to

photograph the president. Image from entry, with caption: Official White House photographer Pete Souza takes photos of President Barack Obama greeting family members of the victims and survivors of the 9/11 attacks during a ceremony at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2013

Chinese propaganda film accuses US of trying to overthrow ruling communists: Film made by the People's Liberation Army espouses view that increasing Hollywood presence is 'infiltration' - A film made by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) claims that the US is planning to overthrow the country's ruling communist party through political infiltration and the export of culture, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The 90-minute film, entitled Competition Without Sound, was made as an internal propaganda piece for China's 2m-strong military, and apparently claims that the US now views China in the same way as it did Soviet Russia during the cold war.

The film was leaked online, and the influential Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao summarised its contents. As well as attempting to influence China through its films, the film claims America is recruiting spies inside China, and that high profile dissidents such as Mao Yushi and He Weifang were agents of the west. Video on film at. Image from entry, with caption: Hearts and minds? ... Cinemagoers in China

China to stamp out Dalai Lama's 'propaganda' in Tibet - Ben Blanchard, Reuters, worldnews.nbcnews.com: China aims to stamp out the voice of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in his restive and remote homeland by ensuring that his "propaganda" is not received by anyone on the Internet, television or other means, a top official said. China has tried, with varying degrees of success, to prevent Tibetans listening to or watching programs broadcast from outside the country, or accessing any information about the Dalai Lama and the exiled government on the Internet. But many Tibetans are still able to access such news, either via illegal satellite televisions or by skirting Chinese Internet restrictions. The Dalai Lama's picture and his teachings are also smuggled into Tibet, at great personal risk. Writing in the ruling Communist Party's influential journal Qiushi, the latest issue of which was received by subscribers on Saturday, Tibet's party chief Chen Quanguo said that the government would ensure only its voice is heard.

Prof who aims to research ‘Zionism and propaganda’ is denied sabbatical by NY school - Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net: Jewish Voice for Peace has put up a petition on behalf of member Harriet Malinowitz, an English professor at Long Island University who is researching Zionist propaganda.

In a nutshell: professor Harriet Malinowitz gets support from her department for proposal to take sabbatical and write about Zionism and Propaganda. University administration inexplicably denies proposal. Union gets involved, and University accepts sabbatical if professor takes early retirement and “agrees that the deal ‘not be used or introduced as evidence’ in the future.” Evidence for what? Malinowitz image from entry

Is there any similarity between Nazi and Zionist propaganda films? A conference in Jerusalem will examine the continuing impact of Nazi cinema, 80 years after the rise of Hitler - Avner Shapira, haaretz.com: The academic conference “The Triumph of Nazi Cinema: 1933-2013,” organized by the Hebrew University’s Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History, will examine the diverse and surprising influences of movies produced in the Third Reich, effects that still endure many decades after the curtain

fell on the big star of “Triumph of the Will” − Adolf Hitler. The conference in Jerusalem will offer an unusual standpoint from which to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazis’ rise. Instead of directly discussing the Nazi Party, its rapid growth and entrenchment in power, the conference speakers will examine the ways in which the Nazis and their ideology and rise to power were depicted in German, European and Israeli cinema. They will show how the Nazis’ ambition to conquer the world went hand in hand with their ambition to conquer the movie theater. Image from entry, with caption: A scene from the Zionist film “Labor” (1935). Some critics compared it to Nazi propaganda films.

IMAGE

--Awesome Art Made From Recycled Skateboards - theatlanticcities.com. Via RM on Facebook