July 16-17

"We're not perfect, and phones aren't perfect either, but we want to make all of our users happy."

--Apple CEO Steve Jobs; image from

VIDEOS

Countering Terrorism With Mockery - Robert Mackey, New York Times (blog)

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Hillary Clinton to arrive Pakistan on Sunday for Strategic dialogue process - Associated Press of Pakistan: ‎"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will arrive here on Sunday for two days visit to Pakistan to consult with leaders on bilateral and regional issues. She will also participate with her delegation in a meeting of the bilateral Ministerial-level Strategic Dialogue with Pakistan being held at Foreign Office here on Monday, said a statement issued by U.S. Embassy here on Saturday. ... The Ministerial-level bilateral Strategic

Dialogue that was launched in Washington on March 24 this year has 13 separate working groups that have met in Islamabad over the past three months on the subjects of agriculture; communications and public diplomacy; defense; economics and finance; education; energy; health; law enforcement and counterterrorism; market access; science and technology; security, strategic stability and nonproliferation; water; and women’s empowerment." Image from

No vacancy at the US Embassy in Islamabad - Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post: “The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad might want to hang a ‘No Vacancy’ sign at the front door every so often, according to auditors. As if the tight space and small staff weren't bad enough, embassy workers are devoting a significant portion of their time to the hundreds of lawmakers and senior administration officials who visit each year, the State Department inspector general said in a new report. Dignitaries made almost 700 visits in fiscal year 2009, requiring the embassy to hold hundreds of planning meetings and make use of more than 300 vehicles. It also had to provide drivers, note takers and beds for all of the visitors. The visits put a special strain on the embassy's reporting and public diplomacy officers, who have to devote time to the visits despite ‘Washington's voracious reporting and outreach requirements,' the report said."

Teenage ambassadors seek to promote cross-border understanding - The Hindu: “Green T-shirts flooded the State Department on Wednesday during an event that celebrated the graduation of teenage ‘Peace Ambassadors’ from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan from a programme aimed at promoting cross-border understanding in the leaders of the future.

Indian graduates of the Seeds of Peace programme who spoke to The Hindu said the three weeks they had spent at a camp in Otisfield, Maine, provided some critical foundations for empowerment of young people through deeply personal interactions with their counterparts from ‘the other side.’” Image from article: Robert Blake, U.S. Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs, and Judith McHale, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (in red suit) with Seeds of Peace delegates in Washington on Wednesday.

A World Expo flop by the U.S.: Our pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is a huge disappointment, failing to showcase the best of the United States - Fred A. Bernstein, Los Angeles Times: “The U.S. pavilion has all the appeal of a suburban multiplex. ... What will the millions of Chinese who visit the Expo think of the United States? The most sophisticated of them, especially the 45,000 a day who get inside the U.S. pavilion, will see a country determined to promote its corporations rather than its people or its political system. The rest — and this is even scarier — may visit the Expo, a microcosm of the world in 2010, and not think about the U.S. at all.” See also John Brown, “America as a Shopping Mall? U.S. Cultural Diplomacy in the Age of Obama,” Huffington Post

Military should be exempt from White House policy - Cecil Lee Clark, Shreveport Times: "Recently John Brennan,

the president's chief national security adviser for counterterrorism, announced a shift in White House policy. Mr. Brennan says the White House will no longer refer to Islam when discussing certain terror organizations or individuals (i.e. al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden). I respect Mr. Brennan and White House policy but argue that policy is unsuitable for the U.S. Department of Defense. This policy is an obvious political initiative to appease American Muslims and the estimated one and a half billion Muslims worldwide. From a public diplomacy perspective it's entirely sensible; however, such a precautionary policy would prohibit our military a commonsense means by which to openly identify and accurately characterize our enemy. ... [N]o rational person can deny we are locked in a worldwide conflict against transnational Islamic militant organizations." Brennan image from

The Fatwa: Ayatollah Khomeini and the legacy of the Salman Rushdie affair - Kenan Malik, Foreign Affairs: “Many analysts expected Islamists to sweep to power across the world. The former U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Christopher Ross, who in the wake of 9/11 would become a ‘special coordinator for public diplomacy and public affairs,’ declared in 1993 that the Middle and Near East were ‘fated to witness a wave of Islamist revolutions, successful or failed, over the next decade.’ A decade later, a CIA report predicted that Islamists would ‘come to power in states that are beginning to become pluralist and in which entrenched secular elites have lost their appeal.’ It never happened."

Condemning ‘Islamism’ Denies Ourselves A Valuable Tool – Matt Duss, The Wonk Room, Think Progress: "The Washington Institute for near East Policy has a new report, Fighting the Ideological Battle: The Missing Link in U.S. Strategy to Counter Violent Extremism, that looks at the need to commit more resources to counter violent Islamic ideologies. While recognizing that the Obama administration has done some good work repairing America’s image by rejecting the Bush administration’s 'global war on terror' rhetoric, the report argues — convincingly, in my view — that it’s a mistake for the Obama administration to simply avoid mentioning the role of Islamic faith when discussing violent extremism. ... The WINEP report’s arguments about what the administration can to highlight and isolate offensive Islamic ideologies are seriously undermined, however, by one of its very first 'core recommendations': Ensure that

Islamism — a radical political ideology separate from Islam as a religion — is recognized internally within the U.S. government as the key ideological driver of the violent extremist threat posed by al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups. Meanwhile, U.S. public diplomacy efforts should sharpen the distinction between the Muslim faith and the violent political ideology of Islamism. This is a pretty astonishingly reductive rendering of Islamism, one that seriously undermines the rest of the report." Image from

The New Face of US-China Relations: “Strategic Reassurance” or Old-Fashioned Rollback? - Peter Lee, Japan Focus: “Either by accident or design, U.S. public diplomacy campaigns involving climate change, nuclear proliferation, Internet freedom, Iran, and the Cheonan sinking, while yielding few concrete gains, have succeeded in one key respect. They have placed China at a geopolitical disadvantage, forcing it to line up with pariahs or near pariahs like Iran, Burma, and North Korea in opposition to the Western democracies, Japan, and South Korea. the report said."

How China Is Making Friends and Influencing People - Helle Dale, National Review Online: “Now, as the United States faces a potential double-dip recession, China continues to maintain strong economic growth. The Chinese believe they are winning — that Western capitalism and culture will ultimately fall short of their own model. Many Westerners implicitly believe this too and are convinced that the next decade will be China’s. Today I have a new article that delves into another way that China is beating the United States: public diplomacy.

This fight is one that we are voluntarily losing. The Chinese have invested heavily in making friends and influencing competitors. China has opened 60 cultural centers (called Confucius Institutes) at American universities. The U.S. has nothing comparable in China. China uses its version of the Peace Corps to influence developing countries such as Laos, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. Their diplomats stay in their posts far longer than the U.S. average, which is two years, and their students are studying abroad in ever increasing numbers. China is developing a widespread, highly sophisticated influence machine to demonstrate that Chinese state capitalism is the way of the future.” Image from

The Fall of the Roman Republic: Lessons for David Petraeus and America - bernardfinel.com: “The status of the military has become so elevated that advocates of all stripes already use military ‘validators’ to promote their positions on virtually every public policy issue. Retired general officers are actively recruited to lend their prestige to campaigns to spread awareness of global warming, the need for better public diplomacy, initiatives to improve schools, efforts to combat prostitution, and recently in an effort to improve the nutritional value of school lunches. In the often cynical world of issue advocacy, one of the first steps in any campaign is now to get some brass on board. In this context, the United States needs to engage in some serious reflection about current political choices, but also about civil-military relations.”

US names Thailand envoy - Straits Times: "President Barack Obama on Thursday named veteran diplomat Kristie Kenney as the US ambassador to Thailand, where political tensions are running high after deadly street protests. ... Ms Kenney,

who has also served as US ambassador to Ecuador, was known in the Philippines for her public diplomacy including taking to blogs and Facebook to reach out to Filipinos." Kenney image from

Digital diplomacy? - The Campaign War Room: "Despite all the suggestions that Government agencies could use social media to persuade more people of their case, and take an active role in major global incidents like the Iranian demonstrations, I don't see any prospect of this happening in any meaningful way. ... Just like the Government uses NGOs in development, so it should probably consider outsourcing more of its public diplomacy."

What's important, what's happening, and what's public diplomacy - John Brown, Huffington Post:

"Twitter and other social media can provide an entree into PD discussions, but such discussions should go far beyond 140 characters." Image from

HUD dashboard to evaluate program results - Tom Spoth, Federal Times: "The Obama administration has emphasized dashboards — websites that compile data on which programs are working and which are not — as a way to identify and address projects that aren't getting the job done. ... • The State Department has a dashboard to assess performance in public diplomacy at its embassies worldwide and is using sophisticated modeling software to link spending to concrete results, said Jon Desenberg, senior policy director at the Performance Institute, a think tank that tracks government performance and consults with agencies. State Department officials didn't return phone calls seeking comment."

The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon by Shannon D. Beebe and Mary Kaldor - The Bowed Bookshelf: "Instead of the 'militarization of diplomacy'

where DOD personnel assume public diplomacy and assistance responsibilities that civilian agencies to not have the trained staff for to fill, perhaps we should think about the ‘diplomization’ of the military, where a civilian-led operation has a policing arm separate from a military arm separate from a construction arm." Image from

Ex-Swiss envoy praises Lebanese 'resilience' - Daily Star, Lebanon: “Driven by his diplomatic experience as the Swiss Ambassador to Lebanon, Dr. Francois Barras profiled the different dimensions of ambassadorship at a panel entitled: ‘To Be an Ambassador to Lebanon: Challenges and Opportunities,’ organized by the Issam Fares Center for Lebanon last week. ... He mentioned key points which enabled him to initiate many programs as part of a bilateral public diplomacy. He told the audience that Switzerland does not have a political agenda for Lebanon. Rather its focus was on cultural, social, and economic objectives. His talk was followed by an intervention from former US Ambassador to Lebanon Vincent Battle, who was among the audience, who considered a lack of a political agenda amounted to a ‘luxury.’”

Young Parliamentarians delegation urges NATO to halt drone attack - Associated Press of Pakistan: “An 18-member delegation of Young Parliamentarians Forum led by Deputy Speaker National Assembly, Faisal Karim Kundi, currently on a visit to Brussels on the invitation of NATO, visited Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), European Parliament, NATO and Kashmir Centre in Brussels. It was an opportunity for Young Parliamentarians to interact with the representative of UK, Ambassador of Turkey, Deputy Assistant General for Public Diplomacy Division, Deputy Assistant Secretary General Political Affairs, Ambassador Robert F. Simmons and Admiral Giameaolo Di Paola, Chairman of the Military Committee. ... The Members of delegation conveyed the feelings of Pakistani public against drone attacks and called for their immediate halt so that the process of dialogue may get a chance to restore peace in the area.”

U.S. Students Join Winners Circle for Prestigious NATO Competition - lifestyletom.com: "The Aliante competition originated five years ago in the Czech Republic with 300 high school students participating that first year. In 2007, more than 4,000 students represented 11 countries in the competition. The purpose of the competitions is to promote greater understanding of international security issues and strengthen transatlantic cooperation amongst NATO members. This was the first time the U.S. has participated in the event.

San Diego-based U.S. Tactical, Inc., working with the program originator, has brought the program to U.S. students. As the sponsor, U.S. Tactical helped organize U.S. participation, and inform potential candidate schools. 'I believe that our students will benefit from greater exposure to our European allies -- especially in these turbulent times,' said Mark Divine, CEO of U.S. Tactical. ... The Aliante project is made possible thanks to a generous support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, the Slovak Ministry of Defence, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, the United States Department of Defence, the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, the Office of the Governor of California, and U.S. Tactical, inc." Image from

US puts a stop to hyphenation - M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times Online: “There is need to shield India's normalization with China from episodic US interference. The worrisome part is that on the sidelines of the recent US-India strategic dialogue in Washington in June, senior American officials resuscitated in their public diplomacy the George W Bush era ideas of the US and India patrolling the Indian Ocean and working together with Japan and Australia - doctrines which seemed irrelevant and quixotic once the world financial crisis erupted and new realities emerged in the international system.”

The choice is as simple as ABC - Hamish Mcdonald, Sydney Morning Herald: “[T]he ABC's 24-hour TV news channel that launches next Thursday will be named after Chester Wilmott, the legendary World War II radio correspondent. The news channel has got Rupert Murdoch's goat up, as it competes directly with his Sky News and has a lot more Australian resources, not least the ABC's 12 overseas bureaus. Coincidentally, many writers in News Ltd newspapers feel the same way about this socialist intrusion into the free market place of news. Murdoch and his men are also exercised about another arm of the ABC, its overseas TV broadcasting operation, called the Australia Network, which, by satellite dish and cable, claims to shower 32 million homes in 44 countries, mostly in Asia and the Pacific, with such samples of Australian culture as McLeod's Daughters, Missing Persons Unit and Play School, sports replays and English language tutorials. This operation began in 1993, under Paul Keating's government.

The Howard government chopped it back, along with its vandalism of the shortwave service Radio Australia, and it had a brief and unsatisfactory period under the Seven Network before coming back to the ABC in 2001. It is funded mostly by a $20 million annual allocation from the public diplomacy budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, augmented by a limited amount of advertising. With the Radio Australia budget it means Australia spends only $34.8 million on international broadcasting. By contrast the BBC World Service operates on a $568 million budget (Murdoch hates this, too) and the Netherlands spends $112 million on its overseas radio and TV. Rising powers see broadcasting as an adjunct to strategic and economic projection: China puts an estimated $280 million into making its CCTV available around the world. Australia's politicians are still equivocal.” Image from

Editor's Notes: The word according to Frank - David Horovitz, ‎ Jerusalem Post: “Frank Luntz, communications king ... [has] been imploring Israel ... to avoid the use of unhelpful language and imagery in its public diplomacy. ... Luntz: ... that is what I see missing from so much of the [Israeli] communication: the essence of empathy. If I believe that you have the right intent, then I will believe that you have the right policy. But if I perceive that the intent is wrong, then I will never trust you. ... The Israeli communications strategy is to declare a conclusion and then provide the evidence. And I’m asking [the Israelis I’m working with] for exactly the opposite approach: to provide all the evidence and then demonstrate the conclusion. ... The greatest challenge for the Israeli position isn’t in the media. It’s on the typical college campus. Because there, the truth doesn’t matter. ... That’s what I want to do – to work for Natan Sharansky. To help the [Jewish Agency] ‘ambassadors.’ They are sending 40 of them to college campuses in September. ... Why can’t Israel demonstrate, communicate, the human dimension of all that has happened in this region?”

Record-Setting Half-Year for Israeli Tourism - Baltimore Jewish Times: “Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov

said the increase in tourism ‘is the result of massive investment in marketing activities around the world with significant budgets, especially against the background of the public diplomacy challenges that Israel is facing.’ ... Jerusalem was voted the No. 1Best City in Africa and Tel Aviv No. 3 by the readers of Travel+ Leisure magazine.” Misezhnikov image from

‘Only Israel’ strikes a chord on YouTube: Pro-Israel hasbara song- 350,000 views - David Brinn, Jerusalem Post: “A 22-year-old pianist from the Gush Etzion settlement of Neveh Daniel has become the latest YouTube phenomenon with her pro-Israel hasbara song ‘Only Israel.’ Yedida Freilich, a composition student at the capital’s Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, wrote the mournful piano ballad along with her father, Gabby, and brother Yuval, following the Gaza flotilla incident last month. In only two weeks, the video has attracted over 350,000 views on YouTube and turned Freilich into a celebrity in nationalist circles. ... ‘It was obvious to me that this was a hasbara [public diplomacy] song. Our efforts at explaining what happened with the flotilla were so appalling, and this did so well in explaining our positions, I knew it had to go on YouTube,’ said Freilich.”

RELATED ITEMS

NATO not winning Afghan hearts and minds: poll - Adrian Croft, Reuters: NATO is failing to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan,

according to a poll released on Friday showing most people in Taliban heartlands view foreign troops negatively and believe the Taliban should join the government. However, 55 percent of Afghans surveyed by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) think-tank believed NATO and the Afghan government were winning the war against Taliban insurgents. Image from

Back in Iran, 'abducted' nuclear scientist becomes new propaganda hero for country's leaders - AP: "Flashing a victory sign, an Iranian nuclear scientist who claims he was abducted and abused by U.S. agents a year ago has returned to his homeland and into the heart of the latest crossfire between Washington and Tehran. The conflicting accounts about Shahram Amiri - captive or defector who got cold feet - are unlikely to alter the Western-led pressure on Iran over its nuclear program."


Iranian Scientist's Propaganda Value Booms – Theunis Bates, AOL News: U.S. officials today stepped up their propaganda war with Iran over nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who they say willingly defected to the U.S. last year only to return to Tehran on Thursday. Above Amiri image from

Al Qaeda Goes Viral: The terrorists' latest recruiting device: an English language Internet magazine - Peter Hoekstra, Wall Street Journal (subscription)

S. Korea to resume propaganda broadcast in border areas‎ - Han Jingjing, Xinhua

Abject D’art - Georgina Maddox, Indian Express: Public art in India veers between granite homages to politicians and godawful kitsch.

Public art, to Indians, is still synonymous with political propaganda. Image from article

AMERICANA


--"Best thing to come out of Antennagate? Apple's 'antenna testing chamber porn" (from Boing Boing).