"Propaganda has always been vital for the Chinese Communist Party. Mao Zedong understood its power very clearly, and since the beginning he made sure that it was taken very, very seriously by all. But in propaganda . . . everything is fake, of course. A lot like in advertisements, and today China has both -- advertisements and propaganda!"
--Chinese artist Zhang Dali; image from
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: BOOKS, ARTICLES, WEBSITES #49
Intended for teachers of public diplomacy and related courses, the above is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome. Bruce Gregory Adjunct Professor George Washington University Georgetown University (202) 994-6350 BGregory@gwu.edu. Posted at MountainRunner.us.
WATCH THE LECTURE LIVE - 20 JANUARY 2010, 1830 (GMT)
On the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, US political theorist Joseph Nye will give a lecture at Portcullis House, London, available to view live here on 20 January 2010. The talk begins at 6.30 p.m. The player will be active a few minutes before that. Courtesy AK.
FOUND ON THE WEB
Philosophical Directions: The effort of understanding: Can propaganda and pornography ever be art? - Rob van Gerwen, Ph.D.
BELOW IMAGES (WITH SOME EXCEPTIONS) FROM
WWII Allied Propaganda Posters - Whatismatter's Blog
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE NEWS
Things to Remember While Helping Haiti - Jim Roberts, The Foundry, Heritage.org: “[T]he U.S. must be prepared to insist that the Haiti government work closely with the U.S. to insure that corruption does not infect the humanitarian assistance flowing to Haiti. Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.
Congress should immediately begin work on a package of assistance, trade, and reconstruction efforts needed to put Haiti on its feet and open the way for deep and lasting democratic reforms. The U.S. should implement a strong and vigorous public diplomacy effort to counter the negative propaganda certain to emanate from the Castro-Chavez camp. Such an effort will also demonstrate that the U.S.’s involvement in the Caribbean remains a powerful force for good in the Americas and around the globe.” See also. Image: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Reach Out to Haiti Earthquake Victims. Ima 
We want the arms but no arm-twisting. A natural corollary of this parallel desire to ‘befriend’ the US is that the pro-American lobby in Pakistan is growing in direct proportion to the scaling up of suspicions about the US. The main task of this lobby is to reduce the complexity of the US’s objectives towards Pakistan to romantic levels of trust. More than mere friendship, members of this lobby want a lovers’ embrace, regardless of the fact that the temporary joys of such arrangements are fraught with frightening and unhappy consequences. These lobbyists assiduously work with US diplomats and visitors from Washington to ‘combat’ anti-American sentiments in Pakistan. A motley crew of former diplomats, retired generals, socialites, slick civil society begums, self-styled analysts, businessmen, journalists, and now also lawyers — they are the darlings of the US embassy staff. They are the instruments of positive outreach and public diplomacy that US diplomats are so keen to expand in Pakistan. But both the anti- and pro-US lobbies have one thing in common: they are offshoots of the confusion in our decision-making apparatus about the nature and substance of our relations with Washington.”
Hear ! Hear! MountainRunner on Reforming State - zenpundit.com: "State’s perverse dysfunctionality and empty pockets budget (blame Congress here) has crippled public diplomacy, international development aid and the interagency process in which State too often plays the role of bureaucratic obstruction or hapless bystander."
Freedom 'on the march'. Not. – posted by Kalevalatar, Christian Forums - Quotation from a report cited in this blog, evidently "Freedom in the World": “The leaders of the world’s democracies and especially President Obama, should reject the premise, often unstated, that engaging with authoritarian adversaries means ignoring their policies of domestic repression.
Democracies have numerous and nuanced instruments – including the tools of traditional diplomacy, public diplomacy, and assistance programs – that can de deployed to register diapproval, censure acts of persecutiion, or shine the light of publicity on a regime’s dark corners. In a period when democracy’s antagonists are increasingly assertive and its adherents are filled with doubt, the American leadership in particular should develop creative strategies to carry forward the struggle for freedom.”
Enrollment is up at VOA - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: "’After a year in operation, the Miami University Voice of America Learning Center kicked off its second year Monday, Jan. 11, serving about 200 more students than it did in 2009. Officials from the branch said 374 undergraduates now attend, up from 267 last year. Graduate enrollment grew from 92 to 166.’ The Oxford (OH) Press, 11 January 2010. [Elliott comment:] Located at the old VOA Bethany shortwave transmitting station, connected to the present-day VOA in name only.” Posted: 13 Jan 2010
Recounting the arrests of VOA reporters in Cabinda - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: "'The rebel attack late last week that killed at least two Togo soccer officials that had been headed for the tournament in Cabinda underscores the challenges Angolan democracy faces. I had already had an early warning of those challenges a month earlier, when I was briefly detained for photographing the very same stadium the soccer officials were headed for.
I had arrived in Cabinda to visit an offshore platform over one of Africa's largest oil reservoirs. Passing by the stadium by chance, I took a photo of it. A half dozen plain-clothed police officers came out of the blue, seizing my camera and taking me and Voice of America journalist José Manuel Gimbi away for questioning. I've reported in a few high-profile hot spots such as Israel and the Palestinian territories but this is the first time I'd been detained for taking a photograph. ... My fellow detainee's predecessor at Voice of America in Cabinda, José Fernando Lelo, was also jailed for two years and convicted 'for crimes against the state' in what Amnesty International called an unfair trial.' Benoit Faucon, Wall Street Journal, 11 January 2010. See previous post about same subject."
Death of saxophonist Georgy Garanian recalls his VOA jazz education - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: "’George (Georgy) Garanian was born in Moscow on August 14, 1934. He belonged to the 1950s jazz engineers generation a circle of musicians, mostly graduate and postgraduate students at Moscow and Leningrad's technical and engineering universities, with no background in classical music training, but with sheer admiration of the new, post-WWII jazz styles. Their jazz education consisted of endless careful transcriptions of American jazz stars' solos using not the original American records, which were not legally available behind the Iron Curtain, but either taped transmissions from the Voice of America (and its host Willis Conover, whose special English became the source of English education for those enthusiasts,) or the jazz on the bones records the self-made 78s cut on used X-ray film, with somebody's broken ribs in the background. ... In the 1960s, he worked in Moscow Radio's Vadim Lyudvikovski Big Band, where he showed a considerable passion for arranging the music. In 1973, the new Soviet Television and Radio Committee Chairman, Sergey Lapin, who hated Western music, fired the entire Radio Big Band and got rid of all jazz in the Soviet TV and radio programming; Garanian, and a few chosen instrumentalists from the former Lyudvikovski Big Band, formed the core of the new studio band, Melodia, which worked for the U.S.S.R's only record label with the same name.’ All About Jazz, 11 January 2010."
Understanding and Engaging Now Media – Feb 8, 9, 10 - Matt Armstrong, MountainRunner.us: “Just a reminder, Understanding and Engaging Now Media takes place next month at AOC in Alexandria, VA, just outside of DC. This is a professional training seminar-style course taught over three consecutive evenings, 6p-9p.
The modern, global information environment is reviewed as a blended environment marked by the convergence of ‘new media’ and ‘old media’ into ‘now media.’ The goal of the seminar is to make the participant more capable of operating in the ‘now media’ environment and to be able to explain needs and justify requirements for preactive and proactive engagement to senior leadership.’ “
Big Brothers Big Sisters Elects Williams J. Hybl to National Board of Directors - press release, PR Newswire: "William J. Hybl, Chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation, was elected to the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America effective January 1, 2010 and will hold a two-year term. In addition to his work at El Pomar Foundation, Hybl is President of the Air Force Academy Foundation and Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Public Diplomacy."
Bush's policy institute at SMU will do TV show - Houston Chronicle: "Former President George W. Bush's new policy institute is getting into the TV business.
The Bush Institute is co-producing a weekly television show called 'Ideas in Action' that will air on public television and noncommercial cable stations beginning next month. The host is James K. Glassman, the head of the Bush think tank affiliated with the planned presidential center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The show will explore topics such as public education, global health and domestic economic policy. Glassman was Bush's undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs."
Czech Republic - MFA - NATO discusses its new Strategic Concept in Prague - ISRIA: "An international conference 'NATO Strategic Concept: Response to Our Concerns?' was held in Prague on January 12, 2010. The conference has been organized by the Prague Security Studies Institute in cooperation with the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-sponsored by NATO Public Diplomacy Division as part of a series of seminars to define basic parameters of a new NATO Strategic Concept."
'PMO, Foreign Ministry failed at hasbara' - Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post: “Citing a major failure, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss slammed the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday for not creating an effective Arab-language public diplomacy team. In a report released Wednesday, the comptroller said that the lack of Arabic speakers to address the relevant media was a 'national failure' that was demonstrated during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last year.
The government also failed to set up proper radio stations that could be used to transmit Israel's message to the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. ‘This has harmed Israel's public relations to these populations,’ the report claimed. In the report, Lindenstrauss said he found that the government decision to establish a National Information Directorate was not fully implemented, particularly with regard to setting up a team of Arabic-speaking spokespeople in the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign Ministry and the IDF. Seer also. Image from article: Michelle Stein-Teer coaches French-speaking residents of the Sderot area (left to right: David Mamou, Avi Kadoch, Georges Adjedj, and Miri Levine) on the do's and don't's of advocating for Israel abroad, Tuesday.
A world of difference - Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post – “Following a week in which the top stories in the Hebrew press were about the deterioration of relations with key allies, a surprising anniversary will be marked in Budapest on Friday. The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus will mark six years since its founding by the late MK Yuri Shtern by inaugurating its 16th sister caucus in Hungary. An expansion to 30 sister caucuses is expected by the end of the year. The parliament members in the caucuses, who come from all faiths, lobby their governments and constituencies to support Israel and Judeo-Christian values, providing a powerful army of allies that can be deployed for public diplomacy when push comes to shove.“
RELATED ITEMS
China Responds To Google: Go To Hell - Henry Blodget, businessinsider.com: Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office and deputy head of the Communist party’s propaganda department, said internet media “must live up to their responsibility of maintaining internet security”, including censoring content.
“We must do our best to intensify self-discipline among internet media to guarantee internet security... Online media must treat the creation of a positive mainstream opinion environment as an important duty,” he said. Image from
Chinese internet users say Google's exit would be a 'tragedy': Many Chinese internet users and analysts have reacted with dismay to the news that Google was considering pulling out of China, describing it as a 'tragedy' that would further entrench internet censorship and choke innovation on the Chinese web - Peter Foster, telegraph.co.uk: "Finally the internet will be dominated by the brain-washing Central Propaganda Administration" said one 'netizen', deploying characters with the same pronunciation but different meaning of 'Zhong Xuan Bu' (Central Propaganda Administration) when posting the message, a common tactic to avoid comments being censored and deleted.
Chinese Propaganda Uncensored - Ilaria Maria Sala, Wall Street Journal: Chinese artist Zhang Dali’s show "A Second History," which juxtaposes historical political photos before and after the intervention of the censors, has just opened at the SZ Art Center, at 798, an arts hub in northern Beijing that has taken over the grounds of a former military factory.
It is a project that has kept Mr. Zhang—famous for having brought graffiti art to China and for threading the fine line between social and overtly political art -- busy for more than five years. He has spent countless hours combing libraries and photographic archives around the country, searching for published propaganda pictures and the original negatives and prints from which they were produced. Image from article: Zhang Dali's installation, pairing propaganda images with their unaltered originals.
Scenes from the North Korean Film Front - Johannes Schönherr, dailynk.com: North Korea is an extremely reclusive and hostile entity which tries to hide even the most banal facts about the daily life of its inhabitants from the outside world.
Visitors are strictly monitored and prohibited from even stepping outside their hotel on their own, all media disseminate nothing but mind-numbing propaganda. Some of that mind-numbing propaganda consists of mind-numbing propaganda movies. Image from
Haiti earthquake time, clinton foundation haiti, haiti breaking news & wyclef jean haiti earthquake - Khabrein.info: ”Assistant Secretary for public diplomacy P.J. Crowley told reporters that the US administration is ‘going to do everything possible to not only help the people of Haiti but look after our American citizens as well’.” Image from
VIEW: Engaging with the US - Syed Talat Hussain, Daily Times, Pakistan: “Parallel to our extreme distrust of Washington, is an equally intense desire to keep the US in good humour, and win the prize of its friendship. In a manner of speaking, we want the payment but do not want to become the piper.
We want the arms but no arm-twisting. A natural corollary of this parallel desire to ‘befriend’ the US is that the pro-American lobby in Pakistan is growing in direct proportion to the scaling up of suspicions about the US. The main task of this lobby is to reduce the complexity of the US’s objectives towards Pakistan to romantic levels of trust. More than mere friendship, members of this lobby want a lovers’ embrace, regardless of the fact that the temporary joys of such arrangements are fraught with frightening and unhappy consequences. These lobbyists assiduously work with US diplomats and visitors from Washington to ‘combat’ anti-American sentiments in Pakistan. A motley crew of former diplomats, retired generals, socialites, slick civil society begums, self-styled analysts, businessmen, journalists, and now also lawyers — they are the darlings of the US embassy staff. They are the instruments of positive outreach and public diplomacy that US diplomats are so keen to expand in Pakistan. But both the anti- and pro-US lobbies have one thing in common: they are offshoots of the confusion in our decision-making apparatus about the nature and substance of our relations with Washington.”Hear ! Hear! MountainRunner on Reforming State - zenpundit.com: "State’s perverse dysfunctionality and empty pockets budget (blame Congress here) has crippled public diplomacy, international development aid and the interagency process in which State too often plays the role of bureaucratic obstruction or hapless bystander."
Freedom 'on the march'. Not. – posted by Kalevalatar, Christian Forums - Quotation from a report cited in this blog, evidently "Freedom in the World": “The leaders of the world’s democracies and especially President Obama, should reject the premise, often unstated, that engaging with authoritarian adversaries means ignoring their policies of domestic repression.
Democracies have numerous and nuanced instruments – including the tools of traditional diplomacy, public diplomacy, and assistance programs – that can de deployed to register diapproval, censure acts of persecutiion, or shine the light of publicity on a regime’s dark corners. In a period when democracy’s antagonists are increasingly assertive and its adherents are filled with doubt, the American leadership in particular should develop creative strategies to carry forward the struggle for freedom.”Enrollment is up at VOA - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: "’After a year in operation, the Miami University Voice of America Learning Center kicked off its second year Monday, Jan. 11, serving about 200 more students than it did in 2009. Officials from the branch said 374 undergraduates now attend, up from 267 last year. Graduate enrollment grew from 92 to 166.’ The Oxford (OH) Press, 11 January 2010. [Elliott comment:] Located at the old VOA Bethany shortwave transmitting station, connected to the present-day VOA in name only.” Posted: 13 Jan 2010
Recounting the arrests of VOA reporters in Cabinda - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: "'The rebel attack late last week that killed at least two Togo soccer officials that had been headed for the tournament in Cabinda underscores the challenges Angolan democracy faces. I had already had an early warning of those challenges a month earlier, when I was briefly detained for photographing the very same stadium the soccer officials were headed for.
I had arrived in Cabinda to visit an offshore platform over one of Africa's largest oil reservoirs. Passing by the stadium by chance, I took a photo of it. A half dozen plain-clothed police officers came out of the blue, seizing my camera and taking me and Voice of America journalist José Manuel Gimbi away for questioning. I've reported in a few high-profile hot spots such as Israel and the Palestinian territories but this is the first time I'd been detained for taking a photograph. ... My fellow detainee's predecessor at Voice of America in Cabinda, José Fernando Lelo, was also jailed for two years and convicted 'for crimes against the state' in what Amnesty International called an unfair trial.' Benoit Faucon, Wall Street Journal, 11 January 2010. See previous post about same subject."Death of saxophonist Georgy Garanian recalls his VOA jazz education - Kim Andrew Elliott Reporting on International Broadcasting: "’George (Georgy) Garanian was born in Moscow on August 14, 1934. He belonged to the 1950s jazz engineers generation a circle of musicians, mostly graduate and postgraduate students at Moscow and Leningrad's technical and engineering universities, with no background in classical music training, but with sheer admiration of the new, post-WWII jazz styles. Their jazz education consisted of endless careful transcriptions of American jazz stars' solos using not the original American records, which were not legally available behind the Iron Curtain, but either taped transmissions from the Voice of America (and its host Willis Conover, whose special English became the source of English education for those enthusiasts,) or the jazz on the bones records the self-made 78s cut on used X-ray film, with somebody's broken ribs in the background. ... In the 1960s, he worked in Moscow Radio's Vadim Lyudvikovski Big Band, where he showed a considerable passion for arranging the music. In 1973, the new Soviet Television and Radio Committee Chairman, Sergey Lapin, who hated Western music, fired the entire Radio Big Band and got rid of all jazz in the Soviet TV and radio programming; Garanian, and a few chosen instrumentalists from the former Lyudvikovski Big Band, formed the core of the new studio band, Melodia, which worked for the U.S.S.R's only record label with the same name.’ All About Jazz, 11 January 2010."
Understanding and Engaging Now Media – Feb 8, 9, 10 - Matt Armstrong, MountainRunner.us: “Just a reminder, Understanding and Engaging Now Media takes place next month at AOC in Alexandria, VA, just outside of DC. This is a professional training seminar-style course taught over three consecutive evenings, 6p-9p.
The modern, global information environment is reviewed as a blended environment marked by the convergence of ‘new media’ and ‘old media’ into ‘now media.’ The goal of the seminar is to make the participant more capable of operating in the ‘now media’ environment and to be able to explain needs and justify requirements for preactive and proactive engagement to senior leadership.’ “Big Brothers Big Sisters Elects Williams J. Hybl to National Board of Directors - press release, PR Newswire: "William J. Hybl, Chairman and CEO of El Pomar Foundation, was elected to the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America effective January 1, 2010 and will hold a two-year term. In addition to his work at El Pomar Foundation, Hybl is President of the Air Force Academy Foundation and Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Public Diplomacy."
Bush's policy institute at SMU will do TV show - Houston Chronicle: "Former President George W. Bush's new policy institute is getting into the TV business.
The Bush Institute is co-producing a weekly television show called 'Ideas in Action' that will air on public television and noncommercial cable stations beginning next month. The host is James K. Glassman, the head of the Bush think tank affiliated with the planned presidential center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The show will explore topics such as public education, global health and domestic economic policy. Glassman was Bush's undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs."Czech Republic - MFA - NATO discusses its new Strategic Concept in Prague - ISRIA: "An international conference 'NATO Strategic Concept: Response to Our Concerns?' was held in Prague on January 12, 2010. The conference has been organized by the Prague Security Studies Institute in cooperation with the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-sponsored by NATO Public Diplomacy Division as part of a series of seminars to define basic parameters of a new NATO Strategic Concept."
'PMO, Foreign Ministry failed at hasbara' - Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post: “Citing a major failure, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss slammed the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday for not creating an effective Arab-language public diplomacy team. In a report released Wednesday, the comptroller said that the lack of Arabic speakers to address the relevant media was a 'national failure' that was demonstrated during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last year.
The government also failed to set up proper radio stations that could be used to transmit Israel's message to the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. ‘This has harmed Israel's public relations to these populations,’ the report claimed. In the report, Lindenstrauss said he found that the government decision to establish a National Information Directorate was not fully implemented, particularly with regard to setting up a team of Arabic-speaking spokespeople in the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign Ministry and the IDF. Seer also. Image from article: Michelle Stein-Teer coaches French-speaking residents of the Sderot area (left to right: David Mamou, Avi Kadoch, Georges Adjedj, and Miri Levine) on the do's and don't's of advocating for Israel abroad, Tuesday.A world of difference - Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post – “Following a week in which the top stories in the Hebrew press were about the deterioration of relations with key allies, a surprising anniversary will be marked in Budapest on Friday. The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus will mark six years since its founding by the late MK Yuri Shtern by inaugurating its 16th sister caucus in Hungary. An expansion to 30 sister caucuses is expected by the end of the year. The parliament members in the caucuses, who come from all faiths, lobby their governments and constituencies to support Israel and Judeo-Christian values, providing a powerful army of allies that can be deployed for public diplomacy when push comes to shove.“
RELATED ITEMS
China Responds To Google: Go To Hell - Henry Blodget, businessinsider.com: Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office and deputy head of the Communist party’s propaganda department, said internet media “must live up to their responsibility of maintaining internet security”, including censoring content.
“We must do our best to intensify self-discipline among internet media to guarantee internet security... Online media must treat the creation of a positive mainstream opinion environment as an important duty,” he said. Image fromChinese internet users say Google's exit would be a 'tragedy': Many Chinese internet users and analysts have reacted with dismay to the news that Google was considering pulling out of China, describing it as a 'tragedy' that would further entrench internet censorship and choke innovation on the Chinese web - Peter Foster, telegraph.co.uk: "Finally the internet will be dominated by the brain-washing Central Propaganda Administration" said one 'netizen', deploying characters with the same pronunciation but different meaning of 'Zhong Xuan Bu' (Central Propaganda Administration) when posting the message, a common tactic to avoid comments being censored and deleted.
Chinese Propaganda Uncensored - Ilaria Maria Sala, Wall Street Journal: Chinese artist Zhang Dali’s show "A Second History," which juxtaposes historical political photos before and after the intervention of the censors, has just opened at the SZ Art Center, at 798, an arts hub in northern Beijing that has taken over the grounds of a former military factory.
It is a project that has kept Mr. Zhang—famous for having brought graffiti art to China and for threading the fine line between social and overtly political art -- busy for more than five years. He has spent countless hours combing libraries and photographic archives around the country, searching for published propaganda pictures and the original negatives and prints from which they were produced. Image from article: Zhang Dali's installation, pairing propaganda images with their unaltered originals.Scenes from the North Korean Film Front - Johannes Schönherr, dailynk.com: North Korea is an extremely reclusive and hostile entity which tries to hide even the most banal facts about the daily life of its inhabitants from the outside world.
Visitors are strictly monitored and prohibited from even stepping outside their hotel on their own, all media disseminate nothing but mind-numbing propaganda. Some of that mind-numbing propaganda consists of mind-numbing propaganda movies. Image from
