"While the civic, commercial context of the seventeenth-century public sphere was founded on rational exchange and the expectation that one's utterances would be accepted as truth, by the modernist period this 'ideal speech situation' had splintered; ... we have social disconnection rather than empathy, and a trustworthy interlocutor cannot be trusted."
--Alexandra Lawrie, "Enter the Genraniums" [Review of Kate McLoughlin, editor, The Modernist Party], The Times Literary Supplement (December 20 and 27, 2013), p. 29; image from
EVENT
Youth Exchange Program Value to be Discussed at February 2014 PDAA ["an association of Public diplomacy Professionals and formerly the USIA Alumni Association,'] Lunch Program - pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org
BLOG OF INTEREST
Public Diplomacy two [scroll down link for item] - Public Diplomacy two: "PD20 (Public Diplomacy 2.) is the central place for news and info on the use of social media for public diplomacy. The internet site is a custom WordPress theme and features numerious customized functions, which includes Tasty and Twitter API integration. It is at the moment in development."
IMAGE
Image from, with caption: April 11, 2013 “Chuck Kennedy photographed the First Lady as she takes a ‘selfie’ with Bo, the Obama family dog, for National Geographic.” (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy); also see below "Related Items," as well as "OMG."
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
PD Honorable Mention - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "Not quite a public diplomacy bronze medal or a Grammy, but my tour with Keola Beamer and Jeff Peterson, with Moanalani Beamer on American Music Abroad to Brazil received an
honorable mention for the Year in Public Diplomacy by the Public Diplomacy Council." Rockower image from
Ronald McAyatollah - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "American-style burger joints are all the rage in Tehran. Maybe the next round of nuclear negotiations should be at In and And Out. If ever there was room for some gastrodiplomacy, this is it..."
VOA English News finds its ‘journalism-light’ niche - BBG Watcher, BBG Watch: "It appears that Voice of America (VOA) English website has finally found its 'journalism-light' niche. Every, even the most serious media outlet, needs to have a bit of tabloid in it. The questions are how much, what, and to what purpose? VOA English website has had a lot of fluff journalism in increasing quantities in recent years as a substitute for reporting and posting hard news and breaking news — all in an apparent attempt to increase online traffic and engagement through social media."
Turkey reshuffles envoys in Washington, London and Paris - hurriyetdailynews.com: "Turkey’s current ambassador to Tokyo, Serdar Kılıç, will be posted to Washington D.C., replacing Ambassador Namık Tan who has been representing Turkey in the U.S. since 2010. Tan is well-known for his expertise in Turkish-American relations and in public diplomacy, as he had served as the ministry’s spokesperson for years."
Love on the Road: 5 Questions to 5 Digital Nomad Couples: Uncornered Market [scroll down link for item] - Nomad is Beautiful, nomadisbeautiful.com: "Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott are an American husband-and-wife couple, full-time storytellers, photographers and adventurers.
Their passions are creativity, personal development, technology, public diplomacy, travel and street food. They hit the road six years ago to begin deep and off-beat trips around the world. Uncornered Market provides also New Media Marketing Consulting and training for the travel industry." Image from entry
RELATED ITEMS
How Al Qaeda Terrorized Its Way Back in Iraq: As the country edges closer to civil war, much of the blame goes to Prime Minister Maliki -- and the White House - Max Boot, Wall Street Journal: Washington should make clear that military and intelligence help, which Baghdad has requested, will be forthcoming only if Mr. Maliki extends an open hand, rather than a clenched fist, to his country's Sunnis. Image from
Don’t Create a New Al Qaeda - Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, New York Times: Western governments must recognize the real possibility that a new cycle of conflict in North Africa could produce more terrorists who wish to target Americans and the West. Rightly or wrongly, Islamists view the status quo as supported — even engineered — by the United States. America has no good options at present.
The Costs of U.S. Retreat: Al Qaeda revives in Iraq and Syria's contagion spreads to Lebanon - Review and Outlook, Wall Street Journal: President Obama and the Rand Paul Republicans want Americans to believe we can avoid the world's conflicts with good intentions and strategic retreat. The costs and consequences of that retreat are now becoming clear in
Taliban’s propaganda war - Tausif Kamal, pakistantoday.com.pk: Whenever there has been a face-to-face battlefield confrontation between the Pakistan forces and the Taliban combine, the latter have been pummeled and unable to fight and to withstand the punishing blows of Pakistan forces.
As a result, Taliban have resorted to adopting a strategy of vicious, false and misleading war propaganda so as to create an illusion of invincibility and fighting capability in the gullible, naive and sympathetic minds of our simple people. Image from
Another Step Forward on Okinawa - Editorial, New York Times: If the U.S. military is to remain in Okinawa for the long term, the United States and Japan must make a more compelling case to Okinawans for why the American presence is still needed. They also must be responsive to Okinawans’ concerns about jet crashes, crime, environmental degradation and noise.
Backlash Against Israel Boycott Throws Academic Association on Defensive - Peter Schmidt, New York Times: With its recent vote to boycott Israel’s higher-education institutions to protest the country’s treatment of Palestinians, the American Studies Association has itself become the target of widespread criticism and ostracism. It has gone from relative obscurity to prominence as a pariah of the United States higher-education establishment, its experience serving as a cautionary tale for other scholarly groups that might consider taking a similar stand on the Middle East. In sharp contrast to the international campaign for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, which had been slow to gain a foothold in the United States, the campaign to rebuke the American Studies Association has spread rapidly since the group’s mid-December boycott vote. The presidents of more than 80 United States colleges have condemned the vote.
China’s wrongheaded crackdown on the media - Editorial, Washington Post: China’s leaders lord over information to preserve their monopoly on power. They fear that openness and freedom pose an existential threat to their control. They are right to be afraid; the digital revolution is only gathering force. President Xi Jinping would be better advised to let China’s journalists prepare themselves for tomorrow — to get in sync with the globalized information revolution — than to retreat behind the red banners of yesteryear. But he doesn’t dare.
Iranian Women Find Stylish Ways to Abide by the Government's Strict Dress Code - Pinar, mymodernmet.com: The Tehran Times is a blog devoted to documenting the style of Iranian women found on the street who have creatively approached the strict government enforced laws placed on how women dress.
Retaining a fashionable and artistic flair, the images reveal a generation of women who have taken the restrictive dress codes head-on, challenging the boundaries of their freedom. Though they may be expected to cover their heads, these young women do so by inching their headscarfs just a little further back. Image from entry. Via KA on Facebook
Propaganda or posterity? The photos the White House wanted you to see - Thomas Seymat, euronews.com: Soviet-style propaganda? On November 2013, 38 of the biggest news organisations in the United States sent a letter to White House Press Secretary James Carney to express their grievances. “Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the president while he is performing his official duties,” the letter said.
“As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the executive branch of government.” News agency AP Vice President and Director of Photography Santiago Lyon phrased the dispute in harsher words: “The photos […] are visual press releases and are carefully vetted by administration employees before distribution. Such images are increasingly offered to the media by the White House in lieu of real journalistic access and we and other media organisations find this unacceptable. “Media organizations generally do not reproduce written press releases verbatim, so why should we settle for these official images?” he asks. A Washington Post editorial went as far as accusing the White House of practices almost akin to Soviet propaganda. Perhaps inspired by the controversy, Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant published side-by-side on a double page pictures of the American president and of North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un
in similar poses The title of the article translates to “Propaganda-selfies to help,” Obama’s pictures are all Pete Souza’s. Above image from entry, with caption: March 23, 2013 “I was on the second helicopter which landed minutes before Marine One, and then photographed the President’s helicopter as it descended into a landing zone outside of Petra, Jordan.” (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
The Third Reich's Celluloid War: Propaganda in Nazi Feature Films, Documentaries and Television, by Ian Garden [2012] - A. A. Nofi, strategypage.com: A critical look at the Nazi use of the moving image for propaganda purposes. After a chapter on the importance of propaganda to Hitler and the Nazi regime, and another on the control of film propaganda during the Third Reich, British film historian and critic Garden examines two principal types of movies produced during the Nazi era, films made primarily to serve propaganda and those made primarily for entertainment purposes.
Some of Garden’s conclusions will come as a surprise. For example, in a point made by some other historians of the German motion picture industry during the Nazi era, Joseph Goebbels appears to have been a perceptive critic who could appreciate the skill of Allied film makers, and even urged German producers to measure up to the standards of Mrs. Miniver. Image from
Blackadder star denies show is 'leftist propaganda' - Paul van der Werff, 3news.co.nz: "As the centenary of the start of World War I approaches, a fresh battle has broken out over how the conflict is being taught to children in Britain. The Government there has criticised the use in the classroom of fictional TV shows such as Blackadder Goes Forth, saying it's leftist propaganda creating unpatriotic myths."
FROM THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR OF THE BLOG DIPLOPUNDIT
"As it turns out, your blogger had reached a milestone this year, too. She has counted more than a dozen strands of gray hair and discovered that she is officially old. Okay, ADEA or AARP old, but not dead. But, hey, the last time she looked in the mirror, she was, well … a babe and now, ugh! she’s not. Anyway, whenever she start obsessing about that stranger in the mirror, one of you inevitably pulls out from somewhere a white rabbit that runs around, muttering something like, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! Something is happening over there!' And there we go with another chase down the hole; sometimes it’s pretty and fun, and sometimes it’s really not – especially the heartbreaking bits. In any case, your blogger is not sure how much longer Diplopundit will be able to stay around chasing rabbits."
That will depend principally on you, our readers. Your blogger has been entertaining thoughts of running off to Colorado to join the weed stampede of 'potpreneurs.' Apparently, that is the greatest new business opportunity since the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, your blogger has no idea which weed is pot and which weeds are not, so — the learning curve would be pretty high. She would much rather continue to follow the goings on in international affairs and the institution of our Foreign Service. But following these interests can no longer be exclusively the chasing of a diplomatic white rabbit down a hole to learn what delightful or frightful adventures might be discovered there. Pardon me? Oh, well, yes, she’s grown up and is now required to balance her check book and pay her bills. On average, roughly 130,000 visitors return to this blog each year. If everyone reading this gave $1, we would not have to worry sustaining this blog and your old blogger for three years. But we all know, it’s not as simple as that. If you find our work interesting or useful, or even entertaining at times, we hope you will support Diplopundit’s crowdfunding for 2014 via RocketHub."
--From: Domani Spero, "Help Diplopundit Continue the Chase — Crowdfunding for 2014," DiploPundit. Image from entry
AMERICANA
From: "This Arizonan Heartily Endorses Steven Seagal As GOP Gubernatorial Candidate," Princess Sparkle Pony's Photoblog
OUTERSPACIANA
Captain Kirk watches Miley Cyrus performance [video] - youtube.com. Via TB on Facebook; image from. See also and also.
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