January 21

[The] head of kitchen services [at the Savoy was] a blacksmith's son called George-Auguste Escoffier, who wore high heels so that he could peer into pans at the back of the ranges, and refused to learn English because he feared that the language would spoil his cooking."

--Richard Davenport-Hines, reviewing "The West End Front: The wartime secrets of London's grand hotels" (Times Literary Supplement, January 13, 2012, p. 7); Escoffier (1846-1935) image from; Savoy is a region of France; it comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south.

VIDEOS

a) Graffiti Philosophy: The YouTube Video - inewp.com: "It starts out juxtaposing Bush with Obama – essentially one just took the kleptocratic baton from the other without missing a beat. Then it touches on the downtrodden and disenfranchised.

It then moves into the mass media propaganda machine, then mindless consumerism, our oil addiction, empire’s oil-centric/exploitive foreign policy, the corporate driven military industrial complex, the environmental consequences of fossil fuels, and then the evolution (fate) of man."

b) Learn Russian with Soviet Propaganda, 2 - theeasytease.com

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Ambassador McFaul Runs into Putin’s TV Buzz Saw - Ariel Cohen and Anton Altman, Heritage Foundation: "Russian state television has launched an all-out assault on the new U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul—undeservedly so, although not unexpected. ... America-bashing has become a knee-jerk reaction for the Russian leadership. In the Heritage Backgrounder 'Russian Anti-Americanism: A Priority Target for U.S. Public Diplomacy,' Ariel Cohen and Helle Dale explain: 'Russian anti-Americanism remains an entrenched and politically expedient phenomenon among the country’s governing elites. This may seem puzzling, given the rapprochement between Russia’s political leadership and the Obama Administration.

Yet the idea of 'resetting' the relationship between the two, as conceived by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rests on the profound fallacy that the current Russian leadership and the United States share common values. From the Kremlin’s perspective, anti-Americanism is a strategic tool for pursuing domestic and foreign policy goals. It has remained this way for almost the past 100 years.' Mike McFaul, despite his genuine desire to improve U.S.–Russian relations, ran into the buzz saw of America-bashing, his past activities notwithstanding. He is the chief architect of the Obama Administration’s 'Reset' policy with the Kremlin, which aims to strengthen ties between Washington and Moscow. In fact, as we predicted, McFaul’s reset policy, betting on the wrong horse—President Dmitry Medvedev—caused the acerbic reaction by Vladimir Putin. Furthermore, it may endanger his ability to interact with Russia’s presumed next president. Most probably, this personal antipathy is the reason behind the unprecedented attack. The Obama Administration should denounce this unprovoked attack and make a strong show of support for its ambassador. However, this is not its style. The President would not stand up for his Secretary of State when Putin attacked her and accused her of giving a signal to popular protest in the aftermath of stolen parliamentary elections. Let’s hope that Ambassador McFaul would get more support than the Secretary of State. But don’t hold your breath." Image from

To Russia with suspicion - Jill Dougherty, CNN: "Just before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swore in Mike McFaul on January 11 as the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, she told the audience packing the State Department's Benjamin Franklin Room that 'Mike's reputation precedes him."'

Yet it's that very reputation that has Russia eyeing McFaul with suspicion, wary that the ambassador, who arrived last Saturday, is looking to create a Russian version of the Arab Spring. ...  McFaul's closeness to Barack Obama could serve him well in his new post; Russia's leaders know he has the ear of the president. But his expertise in democracy issues and regime-change in non-democratic states could raise questions in Moscow. They probably won't be asking for autographed copies of his book 'Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can.'" McFaul/Clinton image from article

Critical Analysis on “Soft Power and [Global] Politics” III - Kiyul Chung, 4thmedia.org: "Nye’s language of soft or smart power concept, no matter how Nye further argues, elaborates and justifies, it’s all about how to effectively get what America wants, by any means necessary! ... Nye’s talk of 'public diplomacy' seems most likely fall into the same line where those sophistications and deceptiveness of America’s 'imperial ambitions,' with specific purposes of how its 'raw power politics' could be best possibly 'hyped' would well function! ... Nye plainly argues how and what 'public diplomacy' should look like by saying, 'Other goals, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights are better achieved by soft power.' 'Soft power resources such as culture, public diplomacy, global mass media, international communications, and so on should be wisely' (Nye’s language) employed in order to 'carry out big sticks' [sic] (Roosevelt’s language) or 'America’s strategic goals to be successfully met' (the Pentagon language). In fact, Nye’s soft power concept seems to have continually enjoyed more spot lights, even when America’s hard (economic and military) power has been humbled and in some aspects defeated. Again, he’s not still honest enough to plainly admit what America has really wanted from its invasion of Iraq, by calling it 'coercive democratization.' ... Wow! It’s indeed quite surprising to realize again a high-powered figure like Nye, who is anyway considered a globally-recognized scholar and strategist, though mainstream, how far he could go with his distortions and misinformation which seem extreme! Again, this is the very example how much deceptive, divisive, and cunning American/Western colonial powers could be! Right here, Nye, like many of his colleagues in mainstream media, academia, church, and government positions, seems no different from President Bush’s arbitrariness, arrogance, denials, distortions, lies, oversimplified dualistic worldview of good or evil, Christian fundamentalism (exactly like that of Islam!), willful misidentification, misinformation, and/or finally self-righteousness."

Pakistan Taliban: "All reporters of Voice of America are our targets and should resign" - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting

Isaacson Hails ‘Historic’ BBG Restructuring Plan - Paul McLane, Radio World: "[T]he BBG has planned, requested or is considering some big changes overall. ... [T]hose changes include a further 'sharp drawdown' of U.S. shortwave capacity outside of a half-dozen key target countries; proposed repeal of the 1948 ban on 'domestic dissemination' of content to listeners and viewers in the United States; de-federalizing some of the agency’s work; ending language services in countries that have more developed, independent media; and moving substantial news and production assets from Washington, nearer target nations.

A merger of the staff of the BBG and the International Broadcasting Bureau is already in progress. BBG has said it wants to integrate elements of U.S. international broadcasting into a single organization while preserving its familiar brands. BBG has promised 'wholesale changes' in how content is distributed. Also among its plans: to create a global news network out of its 59 language services; develop automated translation to help users; expand delivery technologies such as satellite video for China, Central Asia and Southeast Asia; explore new ways to counter Internet blocking and other forms of censorship; launch a prototype TV channel in Latin America that features 'crowd-sourced' content for young people; and place FM antennas at U.S. embassies in Africa as a low-cost additional radio outlet." On BBG, see. Via LJB. Image from

News flash from North Korea - Alex Beam, Boston Globe: "I seem to be developing a specialty of chronicling dictators and their ridiculous propaganda.

A while back, I mined Fidel Castro’s silly newspaper columns, which are not published in an actual newspaper, for their unintended hilarity. ... More recently I spent a couple of weeks listening to China Radio International, Beijing’s answer to the BBC and the Voice of America. Sample idiocy: 'Thirty-five percent of the binding targets' of the country’s National Human Rights Action Plan 'had been met ahead of time or exceeded.' Bravo. ... So what’s in the morning paper in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang? Here is the lead story: 'Kim Jong Un Enjoys Music and Dance Performance' at the April 25 House of Culture. The show, 'We Will Hold Our Supreme Commander in High Esteem for All Ages,' 'included colorful numbers like brass band and mixed chorus ‘Comrade Kim Jong Il Is Our Supreme Commander,’ female solo and mixed pangchang of immortal masterpiece ‘Where Are You, Dear General?’ male solo and male chorus ‘Song of Comradeship,’ male chorus ‘Leader, Just Give Us Your Order,’ and mixed chorus ‘Strength of Korea.’' "Image from

Letter: Letters containing propaganda are bad for American business - tcpalm.com, Kirk Kirkpatrick, Palm City: "When I was younger, I worked for Radio Free Europe, where we fought against propaganda being spewed by both the Soviet government and the most brainwashed of their citizens. As such it saddens me when I read the same propaganda drivel from Americans. You printed a such a propaganda letter from Frank DeGregory of Palm City. In the letter, DeGregory deplored the time President Barack Obama spends on vacation. Obama has taken just more than 60 days of vacation in his presidency. At the same point in their presidencies, George W. Bush had taken more than 180 days of vacation; Ronald Reagan, 110. The only recent president who took less vacation was Bill Clinton. Americans used to be the most practical people on Earth. Now we are filled with people like DeGregory, who have opinions but eschew facts. ... Americans who writer letters like this scare me. We used to be considered some of the most competent people in the world; now, persuading foreigners to buy American becomes harder as they all assume we have difficulty processing information. This lack of concern for the truth is killing the U.S. economy."

The [New York] Times and the Jews: A vocal segment of American Jewry has long believed that the paper has been unfair to Israel. Here’s why—and why they’re wrong - Neil Lewis, cjr.org: "The Israelis have always had a strong appreciation of the importance of shaping their story for the world. They even have a word for it in Hebrew, hasbara, which translates roughly as 'explanation' but encompasses a wider conception of public diplomacy. There was, for many years, no equivalent effort on the part of the Palestinians. 'People began to appreciate that the Israeli government had the smooth machine for propaganda and the other side had nothing in that regard,' said Hundley. But by the time of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Western news reporters and outlets began regularly citing dispatches from Wafa, the Palestinian state news agency, as to what was occurring in Lebanon. In March, 1988, during the first Intifada, Israel closed down Wafa’s operations inside the country. A Reuters dispatch on the shutdown described Wafa 'as the main source of information for the foreign press on the 16-week-old Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.' The emergence of something like the Palestinian news service paralleled a larger development, the growth of a distinct Palestinian national consciousness. ... Many of Israel’s American Jewish supporters say that the [New York] Times

and other media overdramatize and feature Palestinian death and suffering relative to the death and suffering of Israelis. The people who make this argument acknowledge that Palestinian casualties are usually greater but say that the Israelis killed are targeted as civilians while Palestinian civilians are not intended targets and are more properly characterized as unintended victims. So what is to be made of such statistical comparisons and efforts to compare the relative balance sheets of suffering? Any individual death, be it a Palestinian or Israeli, evokes by itself somewhere an infinity of grief. Perhaps we might begin with the idea that measuring with precision how one kind of suffering compares with another may be beyond the capacity of mortals." Image from

Comprehending the incomprehensible – Part II - Martin Sherman, martinsherman.net: "In the first part of this analysis, the reasons for Israel’s feeble performance in the conduct of public diplomacy and in countering its accelerating international delegitimization were investigated. The causes were traced to a lack of resolve to prevail among those charged with the conduct of Israeli diplomatic strategy. ... Deprived of material resources and motivational drive, Israel’s public diplomacy is doomed to anemic, ineffectual failure. ... [P]rofessionals, charged with the conduct of Israel’s public diplomacy – and who are drawn from, and interface with, these elites – cannot adopt a winning strategy. In his seminal opus, The Art of War, the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Zu stipulates '…the ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.' The battle on the public diplomacy front is no different – to win one must go on the offensive. But in public diplomacy, launching a strategic offensive entails portraying Israel’s adversaries as they truly are. If not, the public will have no way of understanding Israel’s security constrains and imperatives, and why certain measures which otherwise might seem unwarranted and excessive are crucial for the protection of its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike. However, if one presents the Palestinian society as it really is – a society with behavioral norms and societal values very different from those that prevail in

Manhattan or

Mayfair; a cruel, violent society that suppresses its women, oppresses it [sic] homosexuals, represses its political dissidents; a society that, while not legally permitting it, at least socially condones the 'honor killing' of young women, the brutalization of political rivals, and the summary execution of homosexuals – if one presents the Palestinian society as its true, unvarnished self, it makes nonsense of the worldview of Israel’s empowered elites. ... Sadly, this is essentially the position to which Israeli civil society elites have mortgaged themselves – and their personal prestige and professional standing. Accordingly, they cannot permit portrayal of Palestinian society as it really is, i.e., permit Israel to go on a strategic diplomatic offensive. Clearly this precludes the captains of Israel’s public diplomacy from adopting a winning strategy, as this would disastrously undercut their own worldview. As a result, Israeli endeavors are inevitably reduced to defensive tactical responses, chasing events rather than preempting them, and doomed to failure. This – far more than international animosity, global anti-Semitism or George Soros – is the underlying reason for Israel’s abysmal performance on the public diplomacy front." Above image from; below image from

IMANI tops Africa in global ranking of think tanks -ghananewsflash.com/ "IMANI Center for Policy and Education, a public interest, research-driven, advocacy organisation based

in Accra, Ghana, featured strongly in the 2011 ranking of think tanks across the globe released by a joint United Nations University (www. unu. edu) – University of Pennsylvania (www. upenn. edu) team. ... IMANI (www. imanighana. org) is a public interest, research-driven, advocacy and activism organisation that works to influence government and public policy with a view to facilitating broad prosperity based on freedom, open markets, critical enquiry and an efficient and accountable public service. It increasingly specialises in public diplomacy and engagement through broad alliances with civil society and the public-spirited media (see: www. Africanliberty. org)." Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Don't defend Marines in Taliban desecration video - Editorial, USA Today: The four men — and the

knucklehead who videotaped them, ensuring that the world would see this — violated a rule of war that's as old as war itself. Even amid the savagery of battle, there are centuries-old honor codes that forbid desecrating the bodies of those who fall in combat. Does it happen? Of course. That doesn't excuse itEven worse, the image of these Marines witlessly gave aid and comfort to an enemy whose greatest weapon isn't battlefield prowess but its campaign to cast Americans as outsiders who trample Islam and disrespect the Afghan people. Image from

Don't punish brave Marines - Michael Savage, USA Today: Most of the "men" in the news media — the same journalists orchestrating the attack on Marines who allegedly urinated on Taliban terrorists they killed in battle — have never even been in a fistfight, let alone a firefight. And yet here they are, piling on the real men who have the guts to go into combat against 15th century radical Islamist throwbacks.

Does Social Media Help or Hurt Terrorism? blogs.voanews.com: - A new study by University of Haifa communications professor Gabriel Weimann asserts that “…90% of terrorist activity on the Internet takes place using social networking tools,” a claim also previously made by researcher Evan Kholmann. But are terrorists winning or losing their wars in the social networking realm? Many researchers say that’s simply the wrong question. “Terrorists use the Internet just like anyone else. They use it to communicate, to share ideas, to share tactics and seek out new followers,” says McCants. “I think the Internet is particularly effective for finding like-minded people and coordinating with them.

But I am very skeptical about its utility in generating new recruits.” Researcher Kholmann, however, sees the web becoming an ever more potent tool for “soft” psychological warfare – militants boasting of accomplishments and creating the aura of a successful group that others may want to join. Whatever the most accurate view, it’s a fair bet that as long as we have terrorists operating in the real world, they will find their way to cyber-space as well. Image from article: Undated image of terror suspect Colleen LaRose, who used the online name "Jihad Jane." [Please note this is a VOA report].

On Iran NYT Introduces New False Propaganda Line - moonofalabama.org: Isabel Kershner, an Israeli reporter working for the New York Times, is introducing a new propaganda term about Iran's nuclear program. She writes: "Though Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes, Israel, the United States and much of the West are convinced that Iran is working to develop a weapons program." "Working to develop a weapons program"? What is that supposed to mean? Since the

NYT ombudsman has admonished the paper for being to casual with references to the non existing Iranian nuclear weapon program, Kersher can no longer refer to it directly. Instead she now comes up with "is working to develop a weapons program." This phrase has, to my best knowledge, never been used in any official language and I have never seen this accusation before. What is the factual base for Kershner's assertion? U.S. and Israeli officials have loud and openly said that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. They have never said that it is "working to develop a weapons program." They say flat out that Iran has not taken any decision towards a nuclear weapon program. That is what U.S. defense secretary Panetta said on January 8 at CBS's "Face The Nation": "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us. ... But the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them to force them to do the right thing. And to make sure that they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon." Image from

Iran's Press TV loses UK licence - BBC News: Iranian news network Press TV has had its licence revoked by the media regulator Ofcom and will no longer be allowed to broadcast in the UK. Ofcom said the state broadcaster's English language outlet had breached several broadcasting licence rules over editorial control of the channel. Press TV has also failed to pay a £100,000 fine imposed last year. The channel called the decision "a clear example of censorship".

It will be removed from Sky on 20 January. Image from article, with caption: George Galloway is one of the more well known faces who presented on Press TV

Listening Post: New channel or propaganda tool? - aljazeera.com: In 2005, the Kremlin created Russia Today, or RT, as it is now known. RT is an international news channel set up to rival western news channels and to provide a Russian perspective. The network has since added two more channels, broadcasting in Spanish and Arabic. RT's English-language project is getting mixed reviews. Its criticism of Washington's political agenda is relentless and it has a penchant for off-beat stories and conspiracy theories. In this week's feature, Listening Post's Ana de Sousa looks at a channel that seems more interested in reviving the Cold War than reporting what is really happening in Russia, today.

Violent Class War Coming Soon: How to Prepare Yourself - gawker.com:  Kremlin backed propaganda artists Russia Today have predicted that the United States could erupt into a violent class war within two years. "With an assumption that a strong or very strong conflict exists increasing in only two years time, at this rate 85 percent of Americans would sense a class war in two years' time," reads the barely coherent missive.

The economy is down and jobs are hard to come by, so pretty soon we'll all be killing each other in the streets. Should you be scared? You should probably not be scared. Our Soviet friends are not the only ones predicting an imminent violent class war. Some of the fringe elements of the Occupy Wall Street folks, mostly anarchists, regularly voiced their gleeful anticipation of the street wars to come. Who says ridiculous fear mongering is just for right wing Islamophobes? Image from article

Egypt's Tahrir Square activists fight back against military propaganda: Armed with projectors and damning video, Egypt's activists combat state media - Erin Cunningham, globalpost.com: "3askar kazeboon," or "military liars," is a media campaign organized by some of Egypt's most dedicated revolutionaries to combat the military propaganda aired on state television and that paints the activists as destructive thugs. Armed with projectors and damning footage, the kazeboon organizers hold impromptu screenings of films compiling photos and video of army and police beating protestors since they assumed power in Feb. 2011, spliced with statements made by Egypt's ruling generals denying culpability.

With nearly daily events in neighborhoods across Cairo and also in other cities in Egypt, the activists say they want to refocus their efforts from Tahrir to educating people outside the square. But the results have so far been mixed. In several neighborhoods, kazeboon organizers say, they have encountered paid thugs who used rudimentary weapons to attack the screenings or tear down the projector. In other areas, kazeboon is booted by local residents who say the activists just want to sow chaos in Egypt. Image from article, with caption: An Egyptian protester holds a sign reading 'Soldiers are liars' during a demonstration against the country's military rulers in Cairo's Abbassiya district. Activists are now using "military liars" as a name for their guerrilla media campaign to combat army propaganda.

North Korean tourism: it costs more than you think - Peter Hinton, abc.net.au: The death of Kim Jong-il just one month ago wasn't meant to be a surprise. For at least the last four years, images of the now Dearly Departed Leader had revealed a truth that even the North Korean propaganda machine could not hide. He was ill and it wasn't likely to be the result of a cold or a bad batch of recently smuggled lobster. While the embalmers were busy draining the fluid from the Dear Leader's body, the Western media had begun selling North Korea as the world's new adventure tourism destination. A North Korean stamp in your passport not only granted you entry to the most isolated country on Earth, it guaranteed you the title of Most Interesting Dinner Guest of 2012. ("Burma! No-one's visiting Burma anymore.

Have you been to North Korea?"). What these editors overlooked, failed to understand or simply didn't care about however was that tourism in North Korea is not a benign activity. It has the potential to literally kill. This is because a large percentage of money spent by tourists in this part of the world is channelled to the Kim regime through what has become known as Room 39. Room 39 is the name given by Western intelligence agencies to the arm of the Kim regime responsible for raising the hard currency needed to preserve its grip on power. Even in the world's last Stalinist regime, money is power and the Kims have never had good credit. North Korea stopped paying its bills over 20 years ago and its own currency, the Won, is so worthless that not even North Koreans use it. Companies supplying Kim with the bling needed to stave off a military coup sensibly demand upfront payment in cold, hard cash. Image from article

Korean Artist Connects Propaganda and Pop Art - hancinema.net: An exhibition by Mina Cheon titled "Polipop" at the Sungkok Art Museum focuses on the junction of political propaganda and pop art. Cheon is a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In the middle of a wall entirely painted in red hangs "Pokeman", a picture of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il satirically represented as the Japanese game character Pokemon.

Cheon said she wanted to caricature the propaganda of the North Korean regime. "Coincidentally, the English phrase 'poke fun at' starts with the same letters as the cartoon character, so I made Kim Jong-il into that", she says. Cheon is the daughter of Kim Hong-hee, the director of the Seoul Museum of Art, and majored in arts in Ewha Womans University before going on to MICA for further studies. Originally, her works mostly dealt with philosophical exploration of the universe. It was a trip to Mt. Kumgang in North Korea with her American husband in the summer of 2004 that made her turn to sociopolitical themes. Cheon image from article

Study: IDF officers less committed to Jewish values after visits to Nazi death camps: Some 3,000 career officers a year make the trip, which is preceded by a mandatory seminar at Yad Vashem or the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum - Chaim Levinson, Haaretz: The Israel Defense Forces has been "stunned" by the findings of a new study which says an officers' visitation program to Nazi death camps, meant to reinforce Jewish and national values, has had the opposite effect on up to 20 percent of the soldiers.

The program, called Witnesses in Uniform, was founded in the 1990s and involves IDF officers visiting death camps in Poland. It was greatly expanded in the mid-2000s, under former Chief of Staff (and current Vice Prime Minister) Moshe Ya'alon.  Today, some 3,000 career officers a year make the trip, which is preceded by a mandatory seminar at either the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem or the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum in the Western Galilee. Altogether, some 25,000 officers have participated in the program over the last decade. The study found that before going on the trip, officers expressed a very high level of commitment to the Jewish people and to preserving their Jewish heritage, and high levels of solidarity with the fate of other Jews. In contrast, they expressed a lower - though still high - level of commitment to more universalist ideas, such as understanding the universal context of the Holocaust. After they returned from the trips, however, the researchers found a drop in commitment to all values related to Jewish identity, including the importance of the Land of Israel for the Jewish people, the importance of the IDF's existence, feelings of national pride in being Israeli, and a sense of a shared Jewish fate. The new study was conducted by Dr. Nitza Davidovich and Prof. Dan Soan, together with Brig. Gen. (res. ) Amir Heskel. It was recently published in a book edited by Davidovich and Soan called "Remembering the Holocaust - Issues and Challenges." Image from article, with caption: IDF officers during a visit to Auschwitz last year.

Anti-Bulgarian Propaganda in FYROM Targets Stanishev, Reaches New 'Heights' - novinite.com:Media in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia have proclaimed Bulgaria's former Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev to be a member of the supposed Macedonian ethnicity, misinterpreting Stanishev's words. Several Macedonian news sites, including mkd.mk, have published a "sensational" news story claiming that Stanishev, currently the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist

Party and President of the Party of European Socialists, admitted that he was a "Macedonian" during a talk show broadcast on TV on January 14, 2012. The Macedonian media who are well known for their hate speech and anti-Bulgarian propaganda sprees originally rooted in the policies of the former communist Yugoslavia, and still surviving today, misinterpret – apparently on purpose – Stanishev's words. Image from article, with caption: screenshot from a Macedonian news site with the "sensational" headline, "Ex Prime Minister of Bulgaria Openly Says He Is Macedonian".

How to Create Scapegoats and Target the Media - Martin Zimmerman,  capitaleritrea.com: The Ethiopian propaganda machine gets going and suddenly the subject is no longer “just” murdered and kidnapped tourists, but rather, Eritrea being also accused of instigating a plot in January 2011, to disrupt the annual summit of the African Union (AU) in the Ethiopian capital.

A new generation of political Islamists steps forward - Olivier Roy, Washington Post: The issue is institutionalizing democracy, not promoting liberal policies. Democracy could take hold only if it is based in well-established values. Liberalism does not precede democracy; America’s Founding Fathers were not liberal. But once democracy is rooted in institutions and political culture, then the debate on freedom, censorship, social norms and individual rights could be managed through freedom of expression and changes of majorities in parliament. However, there will be no institutionalization of democracy without the Muslim Brothers.

Movie Review: Red Tails Gives Black WWII Pilots a Propaganda Piece to Call Their Own - Jason Heid, frontrow.dmagazine.com: Producer George Lucas has spent more than 20 years hoping to make a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American U.S. military pilots.

Leave it to the creator of Star Wars to turn the true story of that famed squadron’s World War II heroics into a larger-than-life myth. Red Tails plays, as Lucas himself has noted in interviews leading up its release, like some pseudo-propagandist, let’s-all-rally-around-our-boys-in-uniform picture made in 1942. War is not hell on these battlefields; war is a man’s chance to prove his worth. The plotline is dead simple, as are each of the one-dimensional characters’ emotional motivations, and the script is full of groan-inducing patches of gee-whiz dialogue. Image from article

From Government Propaganda Artist to Government Protest Artist - posted by PunkJohnnyCash: "Many of you may already know I had a career in military propaganda before I came out against the war publicly and came to embrace anarchism. Part of this career greatly influenced my embracing of non-violence and anti-militant ideals. ... I appreciate the great irony of someone trained at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) in Ft. Meade MD being able to use their tent to protest the very institution I was once a part of. There was a time when I did not want to paint or do any art with the image of a desert or a Marine ever again. I now embrace the fact that I have done so for so long, and look forward to showing off the work I have been laboring on.

Of course I have done some pieces for pure aesthetic reasons, but the focus of my painting has been on a series facing violence that is accepted in society. This is focusing on violence of police and military as well as violence against women and race. Image, "Homecoming," from article

Soviet Propaganda Lithograph - Author: Justin Tyler Tate, instructables.com: Justin Tyler Tate was born in Canada, grew up in the United States and now lives in Estonia.

Image from entry

15 Awful Examples of Christian Propaganda | Crack Two - phowi.com:

Image from article

Your Thighs On Cheese’ Billboards: More Vegan Propaganda Than Accurate Nutrition Advice - Briana Rognlin, blisstree.com: ‘Your Thighs On Cheese’ billboards like the one below are causing a commotion in upstate New York, where they’ve been posted along the highway in a smear campaign against dairy. Put out by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a vegan advocacy group, the posters are their latest hook for what’s basically vegan propaganda: Spreading the message that meat and dairy will make you fat… and being vegan will make you thin.

The group is posting billboards in upstate New York partly as an attack on Albany’s use of cheese in public school meals. They believe dairy-laden meals are contributing to the obesity epidemic, which is particularly pronounced in Albany, where nearly 63% of adults are either overweight or obese. Image from article

AMERICANA

"A study in 2002 estimated that about 80 percent of high school students were not asked to write a history term paper of more than 15 pages."

Image from

--New York Times

MORE QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

"Wikipedia is going to shut down at midnight. So you have less than one hour to get most of your facts wrong."

–Conan

"[H]e speaks in impressive paragraphs, not memorable sentences."

--Columnist Jonathan Alter, on President Barack Obama