September 3

"Losing wars is a bad thing."

--Pundit Max Boot; image from

VIDEO

Glenn Beck Finds "Communist" Art At NBC Headquarters At Rockefeller Center - Huffington Post; courtesy MP

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

With Putin in Poland for WWII Anniversary, Many Poles Feel Snubbed by Obama

- TedLipien.com: "The New York Times correspondent in Moscow Michael Schwirtz reported that many Poles saw the low-level U.S. representation at the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II observances in Gdansk as a snub from the Obama Administration. … [I]t was yet another public diplomacy mistake by the Obama Administration to send a relatively low-level US delegation to Poland. It was led by President Obama's national security advisor General James L. Jones, USMC (Ret). So much so, that according to the New York Times Moscow correspondent, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has taken pains to play down the fact that neither President Obama, Vice President Biden nor Secretary Clinton were present at the anniversary observances in Gdansk." Image from

Top commander differs over US strategy to placate Muslim world - Arshad Mahmud, bdnews24.com: "A major figure in the Obama administration has voiced deep skepticism about the government's efforts to counter extremist Islamic ideology through 'strategic communication', saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also suggested that America must live up to its values in order to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. …


The admiral's views are widely shared by many in the Muslim world despite the fact that President Obama has sought to differentiate himself from George W. Bush, his predecessor, by publicly declaring that America doesn't want to lead by force but by its values. … [A]nalysts say the perception of America as an arrogant oppressor has not changed noticeably, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, where United States forces remain engaged in war, and in Pakistan, where American-launched missiles aimed at militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda have killed civilians. That perception was conveyed last week to Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy, by the Pakistani authorities." Mullen image from

Understanding Islamic Culture Vital in Dealing With Its Problems - Tawfik Hamid, Newsmax: "In an Op-Ed published Aug. 27 in the New York Times, Thom Shanker mentioned that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has written a intense critique of government efforts at 'strategic communication' with the Muslim world. The critique comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology. … Members of Congress also have also expressed concern about the government’s programs for strategic communication, public diplomacy, and public affairs. ... Understanding Islamic culture and types of Muslims is vital to develop effective strategic communication approaches."

...But Smooth Talk Feels So Good - Josh Meah, Real Clear World Blog:

"[I]t seems naive to just dismiss the public diplomacy gains of the Obama administration. … Giving the world a little bit less of a reason to hate America, at little cost to U.S. blood and treasure, sounds like a good thing to me. In between politics and policy, there are people -- it's too bad that this is far too often forgotten." Image from

Strategy for Iran- Bruce Clarke, examiner.com: "Diplomatic isolation, except on our terms, should further the overall containment of Iran. In this regard the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Turkey and others is critical and should not be difficult to mobilize through private and public diplomacy."

US seeks to better protect foreign exchange students - Michael Matza, Philadelphia Inquirer - "The U.S. State Department is looking for ways to better protect the 30,000 teenagers who come to America annually as foreign exchange students.

In a notice yesterday in the Federal Register, the department asked the public to contribute ideas on how it could better vet, select, and monitor the thousands of host families that participate in the half-century-old federal program. The goal: to prevent a repeat of a scandal this past spring in Scranton, where as many as a dozen foreign students were found to be either malnourished or living in deplorable conditions, including one home littered with dog feces and another later condemned by the city. … The federal foreign exchange program, created during the Eisenhower administration, is a 'public diplomacy' initiative designed to promote America's image abroad." Image from

Visas Options for Training in the United States of America - Vinay A. Shah, MD, Pearls in Ophthalmology: "J1 Visa (Clinical) This is the most common visa used by foreign national physicians, a temporary nonimmigrant visa reserved for participants in the Exchange Visitor Program. As a public diplomacy initiative of the U.S. Department of State, the Exchange Visitor Program was established to enhance international exchange and mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other nations. In keeping with the Program's goals for international education, J-1 exchange visitor physicians are required to return home for at least two years following their training before being eligible for certain U.S. visas."

Demand surges for medical, security, other critical skills - Stephen Losey, FederalTimes.com:

"The State Department and Agency for International Development will need to hire more than 5,000 Foreign Service officers, including experts in health, information technology, economics, security and public diplomacy." Image from

NATO Seeks to Expand into Virtual Worlds – Joshua S. Fouts, DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age: "Tateru Nino reports that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is seeking vendors to assist it with developing a virtual world presence, 'to augment or replace existing technologies for education and training of NATO staff.' This dovetails nicely with our 'Digital Diplomacy' policy recommendations, which encouraged the use of virtual worlds to augment the work being done by foreign policy practitioners by engaging cultures and communities in virtual worlds. NATO has been doing a number of creative public diplomacy outreach efforts to help make its identity more accessible to a contemporary audience and redefine the narrative around NATO." Below image from article.


NATO's Second Life - Mike Innes, CTLabcomplex terrain laboratory: "I've been tracking NATO's public diplomacy engagement with social media for a couple of months (here, here, here, and here), and this is an interesting tweak in the program. Tateru Nino reports via Massively that NATO 'is presently seeking tenders for the construction of a proof-of-concept site in a virtual environment.' … I have to wonder whether Second Life brand recognition and popularity have hooked the senior leadership. I also wonder what the troops on the ground (or the operations folks in ACO) might think about the NATOcracy fiddling around with the sort of time, effort, and funds needed to develop this kind of project, much less spending time within it. That's not a fair or mature criticism - the organization, as harsh as it might sound, is about more than just Afghanistan, hence the whole public diplomacy thing. But still. I can't see ISAF troops in the wilds of Nuristan, for example, being ... even remotely sympathetic to this."

Director – Ukraina - omnix.vel.pl - Praca, oferty pracy z Polski: "NATO The Public Diplomacy Division (PDD) of NATO plays a key role in explaining NATO’s policies and activities to the public and, as such, is NATO’s main public interface with audiences worldwide."

Bad Story + Good Coverage = Good Public Diplomacy - erinkamler, Life in Progress: "As a student of Public Diplomacy, I am particularly sensitive to the coverage of transnational stories involving cross-border actors or institutions. … From a Public Diplomacy standpoint, this is a critical time and the implications for the new media are equally vital."

Cultural Relations : Creating Opportunities for the UK – colmmcgivern, Cultural Relations Blog: "Cultural Relations at its best soars beyond national image-projection and can be much more than a narrative created for ‘foreign publics’ in the service of public diplomacy.

Engineering international cultural relations activities to have direct benefits for people at home and abroad adds to its worth and value as part of a country’s overall international relations offer, and illustrates CR’s differences to other interventions made by countries trying to get others to trust them." Image from

The Kennedy Character Assassination - Matt Osborne, Websire of Media Deconstruction: "Before Ted Kennedy was even in the ground, the conservative blogosphere was abuzz with an article in Forbes portraying the late senator as a Russian stooge -- and of course, a pinko fellow-traveler by implication. Call it a posthumous character assassination. The facts: Kennedy attempted to form a relationship with Yuri Andropov, the Soviet Premier.

He offered to visit Moscow and help Soviet public diplomacy, even suggesting Andropov should be interviewed on American television. Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Profiling the Messengers – Editorial, New York Times: Some good news from Afghanistan is that American commanders have wisely canceled a contract with a public relations firm accused of profiling correspondents with negative-to-positive ratings to help determine whether they may report in the war zone with troops. War propaganda is as old as warfare, and the Washington company involved in the profiling, the Rendon Group, was used by the Bush administration in various communication strategies for the Iraq war. Still, the Pentagon would be well advised to pay attention to -- and adopt as a sound operating principle -- advice recently offered by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an essay critical of government information strategies directed at the Muslim world. “We need,” he said, “to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.” These are words the Pentagon can hardly ignore. Image from

Barackaganda - Nancy Snow, Huffington Post: Brand Obama remains the most powerful brand in the world. But the omnipresident faces a citizenry that is finding its voice separate and equal from his own. And that gives us energy.

Setback in Afghanistan: The right response is not a retreat – Editorial, Washington Post: Given that the Taliban and al-Qaeda now also aim to overturn the government of nuclear-armed Pakistan, the risks of a U.S. withdrawal far exceed those of continuing to fight the war -- even were the result to be continued stalemate.

Yet if Mr. Obama provides adequate military and civilian resources, there's a reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate, as it did in Iraq. Image from

How to Win in Afghanistan: We tried the 'offshore' strategy before. The result was 9/11 - Max Boot, Wall Street Journal: Many Pakistanis still regard the U.S. as a fickle superpower—here today, gone tomorrow. The Taliban and related groups are tough, tenacious foes but they are hardly invincible. Their Achilles heel is lack of popular support. Until now international forces and their Afghan partners have lacked the will and resources to implement a classic counterinsurgency plan designed to secure the populace. But that is precisely what Gen. Stanley McChrystal will undertake -- assuming he gets the resources he needs from Washington. Image from

Iran's Propaganda Game - Matt Gurney, AINA: On August 23rd, a huge majority in Iran's parliament passed a bill authorizing $20 million to fund an investigation into American human rights abuses. Iran claims the move is in response to a recent American bill providing $50 million to fund efforts to defeat Iran's censoring of Western new broadcasts. A further $5 million was set aside to document Iran's human rights abuses. Even while his guards rape and torture their way through Iran's large and growing supply of political prisoners, Ahmadinejad seeks to deflect attention from these and other crimes by rallying the world around the cause of American injustice. Image of "Iran - Tehran - anti American propaganda" from

Vile propaganda against Armed Forces - Sajjad Shaukat, Pakistan Observer: Pakistan’s armed forces have achieved a landmark victory by dismantling the command and control system of the Taliban in Swat, Dir and Buner and other adjoining areas. This fact was witnessed in the recent weeks, when renowned militant commanders were captured, and most of them surrendered. But our misfortune is that some external and internal elements have always acted upon a deliberate propaganda campaign against the security forces under one or the other pretext.

Why Libya Welcomed Megrahi: We are standing with America in the fight against terrorism - Ali Aujali, Wall Street Journal: It is important to reiterate that the Libyan people stand firmly and unequivocally alongside America and the West in the fight against terrorism.

Film fest's focus on Israel 'propaganda,' artists say Michael Posner - Globe and Mail: More than 50 prominent filmmakers, writers, artists and academics -- including Ken Loach, David Byrne, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker, Jane Fonda, Wallace Shawn and Danny Glover -- have signed a letter protesting against the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv and the work of 10 Israeli filmmakers.

The letter is to be published online today, with a call for more signatories. "As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by [TIFF's] decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv," the letter begins. "We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine." Tel Aviv map from

Britain's World War II films were more than just propaganda: As a new television series explores the archives of British wartime films and documentaries, Gerard Gilbert discovers an intimacy and artistry that go far beyond public information – Independent: If the British propaganda film-makers of the period had to stretch their creative powers to the maximum, then that is surely only an illustration of the differences between making propaganda in a democracy and making it under a dictatorship. It's the difference between being deftly persuasive and lazily indoctrinating. And, of course, hateful.

War, Propaganda, and Art in Inglourious Basterds - Al Barger, Blogcritics.org: More than anything, the Inglourious Basterds movie is about movies -- war movies and propaganda films.

Tarantino tends to obsess in his movies over other movies and TV shows. Sometimes those things are little sidetracks, but the nature of war movies and propaganda films is a central theme of this film. Image from

WWII: Intense Propaganda Posters - Life.com; via

Twitter propaganda poster – Super Punch