"persuasion, intimidation, deceit, corruption, penetration, subversion, horse-trading, bluffing, psychological pressure, economic pressure, seduction, blackmail, theft, rape, battle, murder, and sudden death."
--According to George Kennan, the "varieties of skullduggery" employed by nations when they compete; he added that "Don't mistake that for a complete list." Kennan image from
ESSAY
A Final Nail in the USSR Coffin? Thank You From NATO, Vladimir Vladimirovich! - John Brown, Huffington Post: "Even from the most cynical Cold-War, money-is-money, dog-eat-dog capitalism-is-capitalism
perspective, a redrawn Ukraine would be far more in the West's, rather than strictly "Russian ... ethnic" interest." Thank you card from
VIDEO
Хор МВД - Let My People Go (Russian Red Army Choir)
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
Uzbekistan, U.S to discuss strengthening of bilateral relations in education area - Demir Azizov trend.az: - Trend: "U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia and Senior Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy in the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Eileen O'Connor will visit Uzbekistan on April 15-20, the U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan said on April 14. During the visit O'Connor will meet with the representatives of the
Uzbek government and education sphere to discuss a wide range of bilateral and regional issues, including the cooperation in the field of education aimed at broadening and intensifying the relations between the U.S. and Uzbekistan, according to the report." Image from
Travel of Assistant Secretary Frantz to Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, and Turkey --
Media Note, Office of the Spokesperson, Washington, DC, April 7, 2014 - state.gov: "Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Doug Frantz will travel to Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, and Turkey from April 8 to April 18, 2014. In Tbilisi, Assistant Secretary Frantz will visit the Multimedia Education Center and the S.A.F.E. regional security training hub for journalists. He will also meet with journalism students and media analysts to discuss the media climate in Georgia. In Kyrgyzstan, Assistant Secretary Frantz will travel to Bishkek and Osh, where he will meet with Kyrgyzstani Government officials, journalists, and members of civil society to discuss press and internet freedom and the role of social media in Kyrgyzstan. He will also speak with students at a university and at our American Corner about the relationship between the government and the news media in the United States. Assistant Secretary Frantz will proceed to South Africa, where he will visit the Public Affairs Africa Regional Media Hub in Johannesburg and meet with journalism students to discuss the intersection of foreign policy and the media. He will continue on to Cape Town where he will participate in a panel discussion at the International Press Institute World Congress. Assistant Secretary Frantz will end his travels in Istanbul, where he will meet with journalists, members of civil society, and university students to discuss press freedom and the importance of digital diplomacy."
Department of State Public Schedule, April 14 2014 - posted at rockyocastnew.blogspot.com: "UNDER SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS RICHARD STENGEL 10:00 a.m. Under Secretary Stengel attends the swearing-in ceremony for Under Secretary Sewall
hosted by Secretary Kerry, at the Department of State. 1:45 p.m. Under Secretary Stengel delivers remarks at the MENA Young Leaders Active Citizen Summit 2.0, at the Department of State. 3:00 p.m. Under Secretary Stengel joins Secretary Kerry and Vice President Biden at the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour Ceremony, at the Department of State." Image from
It's time for Congress to hit the 'reset' button on public diplomacy - James Jay Carafano, washingtonexaminer.com: "One important tool for pushing back against propaganda, disinformation, and dirty tricks is public diplomacy — a government's program for communicating directly with foreign publics. During Kennan's time, public diplomacy was a major American initiative, spreading the gospel of freedom to people in trapped behind the Iron Curtain. But U.S. public diplomacy has been on the decline since the end of the Cold War. And it has continued to decline even as countries like Russia and China have ramped up their global outreach. Much of the blame for America’s crumbling ability to tell its story may be laid at the doorstep of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which overseas almost all of our public diplomacy broadcast assets. By many accounts, it’s just plain dysfunctional. ... It’s time for Congress to hit the 'reset' button on public diplomacy. One reform idea that’s gathering steam: abolish the BBG. The Voice of America would then be stood up as an independent organization, operating under a clear, concise charter and the direction of a long-serving nonpartisan CEO. Radio Free Europe and other BBG-managed services that operate mostly as independent contractors could be placed under the direction of the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED could then keep them focused on promoting democracy and freedom of expression. Along with better oversight, our public diplomacy needs better investment strategies. Washington needs to stop cutting language services, radio and shortwave broadcasting and start acting like a serious superpower."
State Department Spending $400,000 on a Camel Statue in Pakistan - Zenon Evans, Reason: "The State Department sure is in anguish from 'deep' budget cuts (like every year). Heck, the cupboards are so bare, they even bled $30 million from the Fulbright Program this month. What can the department still afford? How about a ‘500 lb. fiberglass, aluminum, stainless steel, acrylic and painted’ statue of a camel to be put on display at the American embassy in Pakistan ? And it only cost $400,000. And it's not even a one-of-a-kind work. Buzzfeed got access to a document about the procurement of ‘Camel Contemplating a Needle’ and has an exclusive report: The work, by noted American artist John Baldessari, depicts a life-size white camel made of fiberglass staring in puzzlement at the eye of
an oversize shiny needle — a not-so-subtle play on the New Testament phrase about the difficulty the wealthy have in entering the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I thought the camel's expression was more like ‘a smug realization of its own sticker price,’ but I digress. To emphasize Baldassari’s fame, the contracting officials pulled a section from Wikipedia. ‘John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images.’ In a statement, State Department press spokeswoman Christine Foushee said the proposed purchase comes from the department’s ‘Office of Art in Embassies.’ In new construction projects, she said, a small part of the total funds, about 0.5%, is spent on art purchases. The State Department may have gotten a pretty good deal on the camel, since Baldessari has sold even less inspiring works for millions. But they could have done even better if they had opened the opportunity to competition. The department didn't do that though, insisting that only this camel could satisfy the ‘unique artistic criteria’ for the embassy.” Image from entry, with caption: Beyer Projects
an oversize shiny needle — a not-so-subtle play on the New Testament phrase about the difficulty the wealthy have in entering the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I thought the camel's expression was more like ‘a smug realization of its own sticker price,’ but I digress. To emphasize Baldassari’s fame, the contracting officials pulled a section from Wikipedia. ‘John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images.’ In a statement, State Department press spokeswoman Christine Foushee said the proposed purchase comes from the department’s ‘Office of Art in Embassies.’ In new construction projects, she said, a small part of the total funds, about 0.5%, is spent on art purchases. The State Department may have gotten a pretty good deal on the camel, since Baldessari has sold even less inspiring works for millions. But they could have done even better if they had opened the opportunity to competition. The department didn't do that though, insisting that only this camel could satisfy the ‘unique artistic criteria’ for the embassy.” Image from entry, with caption: Beyer Projects
The Show Must Go On - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "My time working in Sarajevo began in earnest today, and I met this morning with the U.S. Embassy's CAO Eric and Cultural Affairs Specialist Lejla (FSN, ie local hire).
In the afternoon, we went over to the National Theater to scope out the location. As we entered the theater, Lejla was greeted with kisses and greetings from a number of people we passed. Once inside, she explained that she used to be an actress and a producer of theater." Sarajevo image from
Going to the Well: Public Diplomacy and H2O - Tara Sonnenshine, takefiveblog.org: “We need a public diplomacy campaign about water that is consistent, and reliable.
It is why projects like Planet Forward which networks young people in an active, engaged way, to tackle sustainability issues are so critical. NOW is the time to rise to the challenge and meet the world’s needs for water. ... Tara Sonenshine ... served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs." Image from
Voice of America English news, most of its language services fail to report on anti-Kremlin protest in Moscow - BBG Watcher, BBG Watch: "U.S. taxpayer-funded Voice of America (VOA) English news website and websites of most of VOA’s more than 40 language services failed to report on a large anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow on Sunday.
By Monday morning Moscow time, VOA English news website still had no report on the protest. Other U.S. and international media outlets reported on the demonstration in Moscow at least 12 hours earlier." Image from
U.S. eyes on Japan’s security 5 / Soft power capabilities of China, S. Korea on the rise - the-japan-news.com: "In this fifth and final installment of an interview series on Japan’s diplomacy and military strategy in East Asia, Kent Calder, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies in Washington, stresses the need for Japan to keep up with the rising soft power capabilities of China and South Korea. Japan once had a high profile in Washington, D.C., but in recent years it has been eclipsed by China and South Korea. ... [A] problem is that Japanese diplomacy tends to operate in a classic, in some ways rigid, style that is tightly focused on the State Department. I think this focus is too narrow.
The problem is broader, so Japan needs more exposure and broader networks. ... China’s soft power capability has risen very fast in the last five years—this is one of the challenges for Japan. The Chinese capacity rose and their intentions began to widen just as the period of disarray occurred in Japanese policymaking, with a rapid succession of prime ministers and uncertainty while the DPJ was in power. It was difficult for Japan to respond in the middle of that situation, and the Chinese pulled ahead. The last five years have produced a new world of public diplomacy and a new set of challenges. In a way, the Senkakus are just the tip of the iceberg. Japanese people both in the government and among the public should think more about the relationship between Asia and Washington." Calder image from entry
Announcement Modified for $25,000 Funding for Public Diplomacy Grants Program in Western India 2014-04-14 [subscription] - Varalaskshmi Pulugurtha, targetednews.com
$600,000 Funding Available for Planning for Safeguarding Heritage Sites in Syria 2014-04-14 [subscription] - Mary Grade Dejucos, targetednews.com
Brainstorm for the Future of Asia - bjreview.com.cn: "The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) 2014 was held in Boao in China's southern island province of Hainan from April 8 to 11, with Asia's New Future: Identifying New Growth Drivers as the theme. ... The forum was held against the background of the United States speeding up its return to the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, sensitive topics related to regional security, such as public diplomacy, international relations, international strategy and cooperation in the South China Sea, were also raised.
Guests reached a general agreement that intelligence support and strengthening cooperation in various areas and reducing disputes in the Asia-Pacific region would be beneficial. The United States' so-called 'pivot to Asia' overemphasizes its political and military influence, and thus inflames regional tensions and frictions. Instead, BFA stresses communication and exchange. As Zhou Wenzhong, secretary general of the forum said, Asia and the world as a whole need to focus their attention on common development." Image from
AUCC introduces course in global communication - ghanaweb.com: "The African University College of Communications (AUCC) has introduced a new course- Public Diplomacy and Global Communication- designed to equip communicators to play proper advocacy roles. The course is aimed at turning trainees into ambassadors to enable them to play advocacy roles in the promotion of goods and services put under their control by their institutions or companies both on the domestic and global markets."
RELATED ITEMS
Fact checking Russia’s claims on Ukraine - Terrence McCoy, washingtonpost.com:
in the last two months, the U.S. State Department alleged Sunday in this listicle called, “Russian Fiction the Sequel: 10 more false claims about
Comment: One nation, one voice -- press control and propaganda in Putin's Russia - Maxine David, sbs.com.au: Even in times of relative stability, the world had reason to lament Russia’s less than impressive record on media freedom. But as the United Nations, NATO and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)continue to debate where Russian foreign policy will go in the future and what the effects will be for its neighbours, the increasing suppression of freedoms is even more worrying.
Currently, an anti-western narrative is developing in Russia. If this takes hold amongst the majority of Russian people, it has the capacity to draw another curtain between East and West; further east, it is true, but no less destabilising and depressing for all that. Image from entry, with caption: The Kremlin has significantly ramped up its propaganda activity since Putin’s return to the presidency.
Cold War Propaganda: Russia’s “Secret” Military Bases in the Western Hemisphere - Nil Nikandrov, Global Research: The propaganda hype regarding Russia’s creation of military bases in Latin American and the Caribbean is not dying down. At the instigation of ‘cold war’ centres in the US, lies about ‘secret’ Russian naval and air force bases operating in Nicaragua, Venezuela and even Argentina regularly appear in the media. Plans for a collaboration between Russia and Nicaragua to explore and use space is also being regarded by the Pentagon as "quite suspicious" in terms of its "military component". Among other things, the agreement provides for the building of a GLONASS satellite monitoring system in Nicaragua. Through the country’s media under its ‘wardship’, the US Embassy is waging a hostile campaign against the project, placing emphasis on its ‘probable’ use by Russia for the purposes of espionage. This concern of the Embassy, an embassy in which the majority of its 200 diplomats are US intelligence agency employees who are intentionally working against the Ortega regime, is nothing but ironic.
What Ukraine Propaganda Looks Like - Stephen Lendman, sjlendman.blogspot.com: It's like US propaganda. Like other Western propaganda. Big Lies repeat. They proliferate. They follow one after another. Truth is systematically buried. The Ukrainian News Agency (UNA) is Kiev-based. It's part of the UA Inter Media Group Limited. It owns 61% of the Ukrainian TV channel Inter. The National New Agency of Ukraine (Ukrinform) provides state-sponsored propaganda. Originally it was called the Bureau of Ukrainian Press (BUP). Responsible Russian proposals fall on deaf ears. Washington prioritizes imperial conquest. Western media scoundrels march to the same drummer. So do Ukrainian propagandists
Inside the Turkish Government's Propaganda Machine - Kate O’Sullivan and Laura Benitez, vice.com: Established in 1920, the AA (Anadolu Agency) was once a point of national pride. Today, it's at the end of one of the many sets of strings in the ruling AK Party’s puppet parade. Most of Turkey’s TV stations are heavily influenced by the state, and the few opposition channels can expect to have their licenses revoked at any time or be banned from broadcasting key events, such as live election footage or anything that might detract from how fantastic the government is doing.
Media outlets that aren't being hounded by RTUK, Turkey’s media regulator, can always look forward to direct intervention from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan himself. It's notoriously difficult for foreign press to get an inside look into Turkish events; even the BBC has only one official correspondent in Istanbul. According to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) in the UK, there are still 44 journalists being detained in Turkey for the heinous crime of doing their jobs. Image from entry, with caption: A Turkish protest for internet freedom in February.
Animated History: Doctor Propaganda - americanstudier.blogspot.com: It’d be very difficult to argue that Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), didn’t have a substantial and generally very radical impact on the world of children’s books and animation—not just in his voice and style, his silliness and playfulness, his breaking of virtually every formal and generic rule, but also in
his subtle but frequent inclusion of progressive themes and morals, including prominently the anti-Cold War (and anti-war period) ethics of The Butter Battle Book, among many other such messages. Geisel got his start crafting animated propaganda films for the military during and after World War II. But he did—first making army training films (featuring the cautionary tales of one Private Snafu) as part of Frank Capra’s Signal Corps (the organization that produced the most prominent U.S. WWII propaganda, the epic eight-part Why We Fight series), then branching out into even more overt anti-Axis propaganda works. Geisel even continued to make such films in the aftermath of the war, creating works to be distributed to soldiers in occupied post-war Germany. To call these films propaganda isn’t to critique them, necessarily—the term has come to be used pejoratively much of the time, but at its core it’s simply descriptive, a categorization of works that are overtly designed to further political purposes. Geisel’s World War II works were precisely that, and achieved their purposes clearly and convincingly. As the Capra reference indicates, Geisel was far from alone as an artist who enlisted in the war effort—in fact, he was more the norm than the exception. Moreover, it’s even possible to link his World War II works directly to (for example) his later anti-Cold War messages, since in both cases he could be seen as opposing the proliferation of violence and war (in the first case by the Axis powers, in the second by the Cold War superpowers). Image from
Sorry, that's NOT your father: Police 'super-recogniser' who has nailed hundreds of criminals from CCTV sheds new light on nameless hero in WWI propaganda film - dailymail.co.uk: The Battle of the Somme was shown around Britain just four weeks after it was filmed on the battlefield. It was a huge success, and 20million people had flocked to cinemas to see the footage just six weeks after it was released. A single film would not reach so many viewers again until Star Wars in 1977. Photographs and descriptions of life on the front had been available previously, but this was the first time a moving picture of modern warfare was widely shown. Many audience members would never have seen a film before.
At first was feared that the graphic depiction of war might damage morale, but instead the images of brave British soldiers struggling on the front line brought about a huge swell of support. A newspaper report at the time said: "Crowded audiences ... were interested and thrilled to have the realities of war brought so vividly before them, and if women had sometimes to shut their eyes to escape for a moment from the tragedy of the toll of battle which the film presents, opinion seems to be general that it was wise that the people at home should have this glimpse of what our soldiers are doing and daring and suffering in Picardy." Image from entry, with caption: Mystery: The soldier in this image, taken from The Battle of the Somme, has never been identified.
The Propaganda Never Stops - Walt Gelles, opednews.com: Reflections on how the corporate-controlled media's endless flow of propaganda manufactures consensual reality, limits the terms of debate, and makes us passive automatons:
Propaganda
night and day
Propaganda
The American way
Propaganda
TV news
Block out any
alternate views
Propaganda
Bush/Obama
Propaganda
Fake Osama
Propaganda
CIA
All the pundits
in their pay
Propaganda
24/7
Propaganda
about 9/11
Propaganda
New York Times
Cover up
Establishment's crimes
Propaganda
Mainstream media
Propaganda
Wikipedia
Propaganda
Worship sports
Propaganda
Weather reports
Propaganda
Glamorous stars.
No news about
The Face on Mars.
Dumb you down
Get you dumber
Make you passive
Numb and number
Propaganda
Hip-hop, rap
Propaganda
Tons of crap
Propaganda
Hollywood product
White House/Pentagon
does the edit
Propaganda
That's our song
Propaganda
We do no wrong
Propaganda
You believe it
Propaganda
Brain retrieves it
Propaganda
flows like vomit
Propaganda
has no limit
Hard to jam it
Try to jam it
Image from entry
AMERICANA
National Grilled Cheese Day: Celebrate with a 20-layer grilled cheese! [Video] - latimes.com
LANGUAGE (via LJB)
AMERICANA
National Grilled Cheese Day: Celebrate with a 20-layer grilled cheese! [Video] - latimes.com
LANGUAGE (via LJB)
Texting codes for seniors
Young people have theirs, now Seniors have their own texting codes:
* ATD � At the doctor's
* BFF � Best friends funeral
* BTW � Bring the Wheelchair
* BYOT � Bring Your Own Teeth
* CBM- Covered by Medicare
* CUATSC � See You at the Senior Center
* DWI - Driving While Incontinent
* FWIW - Forgot Where I Was
* GGPBL - Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low
* GHA - Got Heartburn Again
* HGBM - Had Good Bowel Movement
* LMDO - Laughing My Dentures Out
* LOL - Living on Lipitor
* OMSG - Oh My! Sorry, Gas
* TOT - Texting on Toilet
* WAITT - Who Am I Talking To?
Hope these help.
GGLKI (Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking in!)
BACK IN THE USSR
Image from, with note: "в СССР колбаса была гораздо большим, чем просто продукт питания." (loose translation: In the USSR sausage was far greater than simply a food product."
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