August 21

NOTE: THERE WILL BE NO NEW POSTINGS OF THE PDPBR AUGUST 22-28; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Asia Society: Pakistani Flood Response Event: Richard Holbrooke Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan His Excellency Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Foreign Minister of Pakistan; Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development; Judith McHale, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy New York City August 19, 2010 – U.S. Department of State: “Under Secretary McHale: ... Information is absolutely critical, and one of the things that we have learned from these tragedies and from these events is the importance of providing people with the information that they need. So we will be working with the government of Pakistan to provide people throughout the country with the information they need to find the resources that they are going to need to help them rebuild their country. And we look forward to working with all of you to provide that critical information on the ground to people so they know where to go to get the assistance that they need most immediately. ...I also want to quickly say that we at the State Department have put up on our web site, state.gov/PakistanFlooding, a list of all the organizations which will be accepting donations, and we will be pushing people to that web site to get them the information." See also

The Daunting Prospects for Mideast Talks - Robert Danin, cfr.org/publication: "The challenge of making progress in negotiations for the United States will require not only devoting considerable effort, but reaching out through tireless public diplomacy and making the case to the peoples of the Middle East. Peace

will require real leadership in the negotiations. But it will only be truly possible if Middle Easterners are convinced that peace is attainable and will deliver the security and justice they have long sought." Image from

Dostar Rural Orphanage Project, Summer Youth Leadership School 2010, & Becca’s Birthday (Part I) – Becca's Blog - Peace Corps In Kazakhstan: "This year our camp was funded by PEPFAR (the U.S. President's Fund for AIDS Relief) through Peace Corps (thank you!). Our camp was extraordinary throughout, and it opened in a particularly extraordinary way. We had the honor of hosting U.S. Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith, who was specially appointed to this pilot position by Secretary Hillary Clinton. The embassy contacted me about helping to arrange her public diplomacy trip to engage with youth in the Muslim regions of South Kazakhstan, and as luck would have it she was able to open our camp with an inspirational speech and an illuminating focus group/Q&A with our kids. SR Pandith talked about Muslim identity, technology and information sharing, intercultural experience, and the importance and potential of youth leadership worldwide. It was a great pleasure to meet her and the trip's support staff from the State Department and the Embassy in Astana."

The American Documentary Showcase: Documentary Diplomacy Across the Globe - Business Wire: "Award-winning contemporary American documentary films and filmmakers are giving audiences around the world new insights into life and culture in the United States.

A touring program of about 60 independently produced documentaries is traveling to almost 25 countries worldwide, where U.S. filmmakers and film experts will introduce the films and conduct seminars and workshops on filmmaking and emergent media at U.S. embassies, international film festivals, universities and other venues. Curated and administered by the University Film and Video Association, the American Documentary Showcase is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs." Via; image from

Radio/TV Martí: "One cannot say it is a total failure" – Kim Andrrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting

The Narrative Battle & Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century - John Marke, Prologue: "Warfare in the 21st century is about the battle for the mind – it is about ideas and perceptions. Understanding how people make sense of what’s happening around them, i.e., socially constructed reality is a key element of this dynamic. ... I choose to look at Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield as the context for exploring the importance of the narrative in war because it is timely but has also passed into history, as contrasted to Iraq or Afghanistan which are battles still in play as of this writing."

Introduction to Digital and its impact on diplomacy, foreign policy (2) - http://boustan.blogfa.com: Mention of public diplomacy

This Time Last Year... - Bowe9778, A Scrapbook Redefined: "I worked this past summer next to a castle... technically it's a water tower, but it's cute anyway.

I did anything from accounting to 'public diplomacy' I loved it!" Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Should USA Keep Bases in Colombia? - Mark Falcoff, Family Security Matters: The big news from Latin America last week was the finding of Colombia’s constitutional court that the granting of base rights to the United States military in that country was in violation of the constitution. Rather, the court found, the deal between Washington and Bogota “requires the State to take on new obligations as well as an extension of previous ones” and that it should be executed in the form of an international treaty subject to congressional approval. Though the court probably did not have Hugo Chávez in mind, the decision is a large propaganda victory for the Venezuelan strongman. For some years now he has been hysterically claiming that U.S. troops in Colombia—whose numbers he habitually inflates by several orders of magnitude—are stationed in the neighboring republic with a view to eventually invading and deposing his government.

How Stephen Colbert's Poking Fun at Iranian Culture Helps America Lube the Wheels of War: Laughter at Iran's expense is not quite as harmless as it seems. Cultural judgment helps dehumanize a country, making it easier for a society to go war - Ali Gharib, AlterNet: The fact that Americans feel free to laugh about Iran in a climate where a former CIA chief tells CNN he thinks attacking Iran “may not be the worst of all possible outcomes” speaks to the likelihood that Americans administer their empire from their unconscious minds. Humor, of course,

is a gentle way to convince people – propaganda for the unwitting part of the brain. Image from

US teen visits North Korea to talk peace - Myanmar News.Net: An American teenager who wants to plant a “children’s peace forest” in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, has returned from a mission to North Korea where he met with officials and was told the ongoing hostilities between the countries prohibited the plan. Thirteen-year-old Jonathan Lee of Ridgeland, Mississippi, wants to have a park established midway between the two countries where children of the North and South could play together and mingle at a casual level, in order to build understanding and remove the notion of "the other" or "the enemy". Many political analysts in South Korea and the United States have dismissed the boy’s trip as falling victim to the North Korean propaganda machine. Such a peace park is, in their opinion, beyond the realms of possibility.

Films, media being used subtly to further propaganda - merinews.com: Many Contemporary communication scholars believe that media has been used and still continues to be used as one of the most potent tool to form opinions, whether at home in a smaller sphere of audience or the entire world with international audience. Much of it is true and verified by innumerable researches. This very aspect of media, therefore, has been capitalized by some of the notable institutions, the Central Intelligence Agency of America, being among the prime most agencies. It all started with the development of new media – television and cinema.

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