Sunday, January 8, 2012

January 8


"[J]azz was a sharp thorn in the sides of the power-hungry men, from Hitler to Brezhnev, who successfully ruled in my native land.”

--Recently deceased Czech writer Josef Vaclav Skvorecky; image from, with comment: Internationally acclaimed novelists Josef Skvorecky and Zdena Salivarova went into exile following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV: US Owned Mass Media in Arabic Speaking Countries - 1muslimnation.wordpress.com: "Many Muslims are talking about US and Israel underhand propaganda by planting agents and intemidating rulers and broadcasters of Muslim owned mass media like AlJazeera. But while we are on the subject of media and going by the saying forewarned is forearmed, I’d like to point out two of the most effective US Weapons of Mass Manipulation currently used in the Arab world. It’s called Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra.

Unlike Al-Jazeera and other big TV channels in Arabic speaking countries, in the case of these two, you find they have openly stated they are operating to manipulate Arabic speaking Muslims into their way of thinking. The sad thing is they are succeeding in their efforts some extent!"  Broadcasting Board of Governors image from. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) encompasses all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television.

It is never too late - praywithisrael.com: "Proving that it is never too late, Moshe Burnstein, 82, celebrated his Bar Mitzvah on Wednesday at the Western Wall. Burnstein, a Holocaust survivor, was taken to a concentration camp in May 1943, together with his family, and was not able to celebrate the traditional rite of passage. ... Beyachad Chairman Gidi Avraham attended the ceremony and party for Burnstein and said, 'We are familiar with this group of Holocaust survivors from


our ‘Holidays in the Community’ project, which is sponsored by the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry. The organization attempts to bring the experience of Jewish holidays and rituals to less observant sectors of Israeli society. Within that framework, it has adopted Holocaust survivors from Tiberias and nearby kibbutzim and worked to heighten their Jewish experience.[']" Uncaptioned image from article

Yummy Food! - James and Emily, sinkovicfamilyadventures.blogspot.com: "I have been looking for a while into a career with the U.S. Department of State. Sound boring? Well, Emily and I love to travel, love different cultures, and love foreign languages. Coming to Japan has been a test to see how well we would do living abroad, and I think we pass. Although the Japanese language can be difficult at times, the culture and living style has [sic] been pretty easy to adjust to. The cool jobs I have researched in the U.S. Department of State have been to become an foreign service officer (FSO) or to work for the US Agency of International Development (USAID). In either case, we would get to live abroad and travel all around the world working in US Embassies.

Sounds pretty exciting right? We think so! If you are interested in learning more about my research and preparation, keep reading. ... First of all, every time I read stuff about the Foreign Service and USAID, I get so excited and giddy, it's not even funny. FSO's are the people that run the US Embassies and Consulates all around the world. They are split into five different tracks: consular, economic, management, political, and public diplomacy."  Image from entry

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
(Other items on Cultural Diplomacy have appeared in PDPBR Jan 2-7)

American Music Abroad seeking musicians - Media release, hawaii247.com: "The American Music Abroad program recently announced its call for applications for the 2012-2013 touring season. The American Music Abroad program sends American music bands from a wide variety of musical genres on month-long musical exchange tours.

The program is the flagship cultural diplomacy program of the U.S. Department of State, and is administered by American Voices. We are trying to reach out to more Hawaiian musicians to take part in the program. American Music Abroad engages with people across the world through music. Working in partnership, American Voices and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs will produce a series of month-long, multi-country cultural exchange programs for approximately 10 ensembles drawn from a wide variety of American musical genres." Image from

India’s Diplomatic Outreach To Far Abroad –- Analysis - Rajeev Sharma, eurasiareview.com: "People-to-people interaction and exchanges constitute an important part of India’s bilateralrelations with Trinidad and Tobago. People of Indian origin constitute about 42 percent of the population there, and are part and parcel of the economic, political and social fabric of the country. These historic and cultural linkages have become stronger with time. In 1966, India established the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Cultural Cooperation in Port of Spain. The Indian Council of Cultural Relations

(ICCR), an important tool for cultural diplomacy, has also set up long-term Chairs on contemporary Indian studies . ... Indian cultural troupes regularly visit Trinidad and Tobago. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago, since January 2011, has relaxed visa requirements for Indian nationals for tourism and business purposes, if the period of stay does not exceed 90 days." Image from

Kyrgyzstan: China Expanding Influence, One Student at a Time - Chris Rickleton, eurasianet.org: "Among its Central Asian neighbors, China these days is more often feared than loved. This attitude is perhaps most apparent in Kyrgyzstan, where despite an overwhelming dependence on Chinese imports, Chinese-owned malls and mining pits have been the subject of attacks in recent years; nationalist editorials in the local press play on fears of the Middle Kingdom. But all the negative press isn’t deterring Beijing’s efforts to win friends and promote Chinese culture in the region. A cornerstone of China’s cultural diplomacy is Confucius Institutes at both Bishkek Humanities University and the Kyrgyz National University.

Established in 2007 and 2008 respectively, the Beijing-funded institutes have infused their host universities with a Chinese flavor, paying for instructors and tailor-made course books that help some three thousand local students grapple with the tonal challenges of the Chinese language. Wang Zhe, director of the Confucius Institute at the National University, claims there are now 38 native Mandarin-speakers teaching in schools and universities across the country." Image from article, with caption: As Chinese businessmen increase their influence in Central Asian markets, their cultural impact expands as well. Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, is host to many Chinese restaurants, such as "Frunze," which is often packed with Chinese nationals.

Art of creating an independent point of view - Jennifer Dempsie, Scotsman: "2012 has been declared as the year of Creative Scotland. ... [W]e should not underestimate the cultural impact

and opportunity of Scotland being promoted on a world stage, with Scottish cultural diplomacy forging relationships as equals with other countries and showing the very best of what our creatives can offer." Image from article, with caption: Singer and musician Annie Lennox has championed both political independence and creative arts. Now 2012 offers a new perspective as the year of Creative Scotland.

The problem-solver - Jorge Valero, europeanvoice.com: [Bernardino León] [t]he EU's Special Representative to the southern Mediterranean has won praise throughout his career. ... For part of his early career, he worked (and played football) alongside Miguel Ángel Moratinos, and in 1998 Moratinos, by then the EUSR to the southern Mediterranean, made León his chief of staff. Over the next three years, the Quartet on the Middle East was set up and agreement reached on a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops.

He left the Cyprus-based post in 2001 because of the difficulty of combining constant travel with a young family (he and his wife Regina, a lawyer, have three children). He replaced shuttle diplomacy with cultural diplomacy, becoming head of the Seville-based Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation that Spain and Morocco set up after al-Qaeda's attacks on the US." Image from article, with caption: Bernardino León, as seen by Marco Villard

RELATED ITEMS

Thousands of US troops deploying to Israel - Russia Today: Without much media attention, thousands of American troops are being deployed to Israel, and Iranian officials believe that this is the latest and most blatant warning that the US will soon be attacking Tehran. Tensions between nations have been high in recent months and have only worsened in the weeks since early December when Iran hijacked and recovered an American drone aircraft. Many have speculated that a back-and-forth between the two countries will soon escalate Iran and the US into an all-out war, and that event might occur sooner than thought.
Under the Austere Challenge 12 drill scheduled for an undisclosed time during the next few weeks, the Israeli military will together with America host the largest-ever joint missile drill by the two countries. Following the installation of American troops near Iran’s neighboring Strait of Hormuz and the reinforcing of nearby nations with US weapons, Tehran authorities are considering this not a test but the start of something much bigger. Image from article. Via TH.

More shadow play in Persian Gulf - M K Bhadrakumar, low-intensity-conflict-research.blogspot.com: Iran will be hugely wary of the western propaganda about the US Navy rescuing the Iranian sailors from Somali pirates. The Iranian media downplayed the event, while the western media played it up. Iran is far too experienced with the booby traps on the propaganda front. The US-Israeli propaganda will strive to cast Iran as unreasonable in the face of west's 'friendly' acts.

From the PRT Diaspora: Nation-Building in One Sentence - Peter van Buren, We Meant Well: From a development professional looking at State’s work in the reconstruction of Iraq: To do it right takes some time and expertise. Blow in, blow off and blow out doesn’t work.

That about sums it up. Image from entry

Legacy: Who Is Accountable In Iraq? - Peter Van Buren, Huffington Post: Before we throw away the life of a kid who shot when he should not have done so, why don't we demand justice for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the others for creating a war that created such fertile ground for atrocity? The chain of responsibility for the legacy left behind in Iraq ran higher up than us. In this rare moment of American reflection about Iraq that the military pull-out offers us, ask the bigger question, demand the bigger answer. Those Iraqis -- and those Americans -- killed and died because they were put there to do so by the decisions of our leaders. Hold them accountable for their actions, hold them accountable for America's legacy in Iraq.

Debacle! How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower - Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: At the height of what looked like success in Iraq and Afghanistan, American officials fretted endlessly about how, in the condescending phrase of the moment, to put an “Afghan face” or “Iraqi face” on America’s wars. Now, at a nadir moment in the Greater Middle East, perhaps it’s finally time to put an American face

on America’s wars, to see them clearly for the imperial debacles they have been -- and act accordingly. Image from, with caption: American face paint making out mummers

Obama closes the book on the 9/11 era - David Ignatius, Washington Post: When you ask Obama administration officials to explain their foreign policy agenda for 2012, they point first to the defense budget. That’s where they want to make a “pivot” in U.S. strategy — away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and toward the 21st-century priority of China and the Pacific. To underline the importance of this rebalancing, President Obama went to the Pentagon on Thursday for the budget announcement. He began by declaring victory in what used to be known as “the long war,” offering a string of valedictory phrases: The United States is “turning the page on a decade of war”; “we’ve succeeded in defending our nation”; “the tide of war is receding.” Rhetoric about new strategies is standard fare, especially in an election year. But these claims should be taken seriously. The Pentagon budget cuts will make a difference, at home and abroad. They mark a genuine shift, one of the most important since 1945.

New Bureaus and All That Jazz and You Can Still Do More With Less - Domani Spero, Diplopundit: On January 4, the State Department announced the creation of the new Bureau of Counterterrorism. Because the QDDR said so. The new bureau will reportedly "lead in supporting U.S. counterterrorism diplomacy and seek to strengthen homeland security, countering violent extremism, and build the capacity of partner nations to deal effectively with terrorism."

According to a recent official briefing, the new CT bureau will start with some 70 full time government employees including detailees, contractors, and the like but will eventually top off at approximately 120 staffers in all. It has four functional directorates: Homeland Security and Multilateral Affairs; Operations; Programs, Policy, and Budget; and Regional Affairs. Image from

Parallel frontlines: ten years of Soviet and American occupation compared - Bruno de Cordier, opendemocracy.net: American global influence will shrink, but the country will not disappear as a world power. Unlike the USSR, it does not face secessionism. Like the USSR, though, its presence in Afghanistan, however quickly it is brought to an end, will, for better or for worse, leave its marks. As had the USSR, the US has assumed that it could direct social change in a country from outside. In a way, both projects were to some degree sincere and well-meant. Yet both were roughly confronted with the limits of voluntarism, especially as what they wanted to build has and had little social base in the country.

Dynasty, North Korean-Style - B. R. Myers, New York Times: In the past few weeks the country’s propaganda has been quoted more for comic relief than anything else. (A few over-literal readings of its flowery imagery have made it seem even more bizarre than it is.) Meanwhile the race-thinking pervading the official rhetoric has been ignored, as has the imperial-Japanese provenance of so much of it, like the talk in recent weeks of defending Kim Jong-un with “human bombs” if necessary. Most of the news media around the world continue viewing North Korea as it does not view itself, namely as a Communist state. By ultra-nationalist, militarist criteria, which have more to do with North Koreans’ perception of where the country stands in the world than material living conditions, the Dear Leader did a very good job indeed: the Korean Central News Agency may well be correct in saying he made the country virtually impregnable.

For Kim Jong Eun, a choreographed rise - Chico Harlan, Washington Post: Kim Jong Eun, according to propaganda described in a recent Chinese magazine article, learned to drive at age 3. By 8, he could safely maneuver dirt roads at 75 mph. As a teenager, he mastered four foreign languages. He is now learning three more. The emerging biography of North Korea’s new leader, considered fictitious in nearly every country but his own, portrays him as the ultimate quick study, a poet and a marksman, an economics whiz and a military strategist. The mythmaking is particularly important because Kim Jong Eun, handed power in one of the world’s most secretive nations three weeks ago, has yet to publicly prove his acumen. Image from article, with caption:  Following the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, the isolationist state will try to pass power to Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong Eun, who is in his 20s.

International channels allowed to report in Syria -- except Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and France 24 - Kim Andrew Elliott reporting on International Broadcasting

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