May 2

"Good bye, America, oh,
Where I’ve never been.
...
I’ve grown out
Of your battered jeans.
We’ve been taught so long
To adore your forbidden fruits.

Good bye, America, oh,
Where I’ll never be.
Will I ever hear a song,
To remember forever?"

--Words of the iconic 1985 hit by “Nautilus Pompilius,” a popular Russian rock group, that became a hymn of the informal pro-Western movements of the perestroika period; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Rebranding America? - Robert R. Reilly, The National Strategy Forum Review: "[T]he first thing ... [to] address [is] the moral critique of the United States as a godless, secular society immersed in materialism. Just when the moral basis of American life may be eroding, it is precisely this basis that we most need to present to the Muslim world if we are to defuse the contempt and anger our popular culture provokes. With this in mind, there should be a version of the Hippocratic Oath required of all practitioners of public diplomacy – 'first, do no harm.' As it is, we are haplessly inciting the very thing we are fighting. All U.S. public diplomacy programs need to be reviewed with this in mind. If we want to win the 'war of ideas,' only those programs that are in some way engaged in providing a moral defense of the United States and its principles should be continued and increased. We used to able to do this in the Cold War, and do it very well.

If we are no longer able to, we had best remain silent." Image from

Stop playing with fire - Times of Malta: "Israeli Ambassador Gideon Meir tells Herman Grech that a Maltese activist shot in Gaza last week played into the hands of Hamas. [Question:] Last week, Maltese activist Bianca Zammit was injured by Israeli soldiers during a protest on the Gaza border. What went through your mind when you heard of the incident? [Grech:] First of all it's very sad when an innocent civilian is hurt. But we have to understand that the International Solidarity Movement is a very anti-Israel movement. I remember the days when I was responsible for Israel's public diplomacy and going into the website of the ISM - there were instructions to activists how to cheat the Israeli border police and attack the Israelis; how to participate with Hamas. They're taking part in all the violent movements of Hamas - and Hamas is very happy. Every time an activist is hurt, for Hamas it's fuel for its propaganda machinery. They are using innocent people and sending them to a combat zone. I'm sorry about what happened but she was sent by Hamas and the ISM to the border. This is a combat zone. You don't send innocent people to a combat zone. They are using them to plant bombs at the border."

G, C: The New Diplomacy 2010 - A reflective group blog by some of the students on The New Diplomacy module at London Metropolitan University

RELATED ITEMS

The American Image in Russia - Alexander A. Belkin, The National Strategy Forum Review: Russians understand that their country is far less relevant to the United States than was the late Soviet Union, and are not surprised that America is less actively engaged with Russia. Still, they don’t want America to exploit Russia’s comparative weakness, as it has been doing during the twenty post-Soviet years.

By not doing further harm, the United States could improve its image and win back Russian friendly feelings. ... [T]he United States should apply its image concerns not to current generations of Russians, but mainly to the future ones, those who are high-school and college students today. Young Russians would not be as susceptible to anti-American propaganda if they had personal knowledge of the country, its political and judicial systems, business ethics, public life, diversified culture and habits, etc. To this end they must leave[live?]/study/work in the U.S. Are Americans ready to invest a mere percentage of the sums wasted for the Cold War into bringing Russian youth to America? Image from

Bollywood propaganda machine at work (part 1) - DiGiTaL SiTe: The junction point of information: “Every Pakistani and every Muslim MUST watch this clip [shown in entry]. Here we expose the bollywood propaganda machine at work against Muslims and Pakistanis, to distort reality and paint an unreal picture of Islam, which helps spread Islamophobia. Remember these faces, remember these …actors and actresses, for they have united against us. Now its time to unite against them!”

'Unlike Europe, Iran never hurt Jews' - presstv.ir: An Iranian lawmaker representing the country's Jewish minority says Iran has never harmed its Jewish community, condemning Western propaganda against Iran.

"While Jews were hurt by European churches during the Middle Ages, no case of a crackdown against Jews by Muslims has been reported in historical records," Siamak Morsadegh said in a conference on religious minorities that was held in Paris on Saturday. ... He also condemned Western propaganda against Iran calling it "baseless", IRNA reported. Image from

The Art of Compassion or Compassion as Art? - Christal Smith, Huffington Post: It wasn't the only reason Barack Obama won the presidential election, but the fact that the original now resides in the Smithsonian gives you some indication as to the important role the then-ubiquitous and now-iconic Shepard Fairey poster had to have played. It is safe to say that Fairey's HOPE image

will forever be embedded in our collective consciousness as emblematic of a moment in politics when change was in the air. Fairey's distinctive take--is it art or is it propaganda?-- is a idiosyncratic blend of Chinese propaganda mixed with elements of street art with his skateboard culture roots often clearly showing. Image from article.

ONE MORE QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

“In February 1750, Queen Elizabeth was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

In league with London merchants, Elizabeth responded by seeking alliances – strategic, diplomatic and commercial – with those inveterate enemies of Christian Europe, the Ottomans. ... By 1620, the formerly insignificant Atlantic archipelago had become Christian Europe’s supreme trading partner with the 'terrible Turks', ousting Venice and France. ... What bound Englishmen and Ottomans together was a mutual desire for profit and a common enemy, the Catholic nations. Trade trumped traditional Christian-Muslim antagonism, bringing unprecedented wealth to a group of London merchants ... . From their regular commercial dealings with local Jewish, Armenian and Muslim communities, they learned that religious difference was no barrier to peaceful coexistence, while many came to admire the social matters and customs of those they had been brought up to despise. ... In seeking to disable arguments favouring belief in some inevitable 'clash of civilizations' between Christian West and Islamic East, Mather ... [has] shown such arguments to be bad history.”

--Gerald MacClean, review of James Mather, Pashas: Traders and travelers in the Islamic world; Times Literary Supplement (April 23, 2010), p. 12; image from