“Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.”
--Attributed to Salvador Dali; image from
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
White House State Department Russia Today John Kerry: Russia's Propaganda Channel Just Got A Journalism Lesson From The US State Department - Brett Logiurato, businessinsider.com: The State Department tried to take Kremlin-backed television network to journalism school Tuesday — and they brought in a former major magazine editor to do it. The media-centric melee began last week when Secretary of State John Kerry called Russia Today a 'propaganda bullhorn' for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia Today subsequently demanded an 'official response' from the State Department. That response came from Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel, the former managing editor of Time magazine, who wrote a blog post Tuesday accusing RT of a 'disinformation campaign.' Stengel used his background in journalism to break down his definitions of the differences between news, opinion, and propaganda. 'Propaganda is the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading in order to influence an audience,' Stengel wrote. ... Kerry, for his part, sent out a "must read" tweet:
See also, "Propaganda and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Stengel: An Exchange."
U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy condemns Kremlin propaganda and ban on Voice of America in Russia, but VOA English News fails to report his comments - BBG Watcher, BBG Watch: Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel has published on the State Department Blog an opinion article condemning the Kremlin, and specifically Russia’s RT television/multimedia outlet, for engaging in propaganda, which he defined as 'the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading in order to influence an audience.' ... Even though Under Secretary Stengel
specifically mentioned the Voice of America in his article, VOA did not report his comments on its main English news website. Because no central VOA news report or news item was produced in English about his article, the vast majority of VOA language services also did not report on it. ... He should not feel too bad about his comments on the Kremlin’s propaganda being ignored by VOA English News. The Voice of America also ignored President Obama’s statements on the Holocaust Memorial Day, the Armenian Remembrance Day (1915 genocide), and the Canonization of Pope John XXIII and John Paul II. Previously, VOA also missed, was late in reporting, or provided only superficial coverage of numerous White House, State Department, and U.S. Congress statements and actions on Ukraine and Russia. The VOA news coverage has improved slightly due to relentless criticism from its own journalists and BBG Watch, but VOA still misses important news stories, especially after business hours in Washington and on weekends." Uncaptioned image from entry
Original Mandela Autobiography Advocates Violence, Communism - Alex Newman, thenewamerican.com: " [Harry Booyens, Ph.D. :][Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs] Richard Stengel, the current senior-level Obama official ... ‘massaged’ Mandela’s biography
‘to make it palatable to Americans and expunge Mandela's real convictions on and leadership in matters of Communism.’ Stengel, Booyens continued, ‘must have known full well those convictions would have sunk both the book and Mandela like a lead balloon. This gave the murderous live-human-torching ANC a ‘messianic’ figurehead and made them somehow acceptable to
Exclusive: New Bill Requires Voice of America to Toe U.S. Line - John Hudson, Foreign Policy: "A powerful pair of lawmakers in the House of Representatives have agreed on major legislation to overhaul Voice of America and other government-funded broadcasting outlets that could have implications for the broadcaster's editorial independence, Foreign Policy has learned. The new legislation tweaks the language of VOA's mission to explicitly outline the organization's role in supporting U.S. 'public diplomacy' and the 'policies' of the United States government, a move that would settle a long-running dispute within the federal government about whether VOA should function as a neutral news organization rather than a messaging tool of Washington.
'It is time for broad reforms; now more than ever, U.S. international broadcasts must be effective,' said Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement. The bill is the result of a year's worth of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans working hand-in-glove with their counterparts in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It has the support of the committee's most senior Democrat, New York Congressman Eliot Engel, and will get a vote on Wednesday in the committee. Corresponding bipartisan legislation is currently in the works in the Senate. Besides clarifying VOA's mission, the bill reorganizes the federal agency responsible for supervising U.S.-funded media outlets, the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Instead of being led by a group of part-time board members, the bill establishes a full-time, day-to-day agency head. It also consolidates Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Network -- other foreign-facing broadcast outlets -- into a single non-federal organization, and aims to save costs by downsizing the number of federal contractors at the outlets in the years to come. Uncaptioned image from entry
Reform bill would require Voice of America to trumpet US policy objectives -- report - rt.com: "Members of the US House and Senate are working together to craft legislation that would reform US-government-funded broadcasting outlets like Voice of America. The bill would require the channels to 'support'
will have left. ... News of the reform bill comes days after the Sec. of State Kerry accused RT of being a state-sponsored 'propaganda bullhorn' that is 'deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground' amid unrest in Ukraine. Furthermore, he said RT spends almost all its time 'propagandizing and distorting what is happening, or not happening, in Ukraine.' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced Kerry’s latest comments about RT as 'uncivilized' and 'prosecutorial.' '[The West] was convinced for some time that it had a full monopoly on mass media,' said Lavrov in a statement. 'Russia Today has won a large audience in the US and Western Europe, not to mention in Latin America and the Arab world.'" Image from entry; see also (1) (2) (3) (4 -- scroll down link for item) (5).
New Bill Would Demand VOA Serve US Propaganda - John Glaser, antiwar.com: "VOA has always been a propaganda outlet, broadly speaking, but it reportedly has taken an adversarial stance in some cases. ... Every government has some form of propaganda outlet. But the U.S.A. and the people within it have always thought of themselves as different. Propaganda is a dirty word and a filthy activity that only governments less divine than ours engage in. We are benevolent and good, which makes the need for self-serving and inaccurate propaganda obsolete. But if we have bipartisan legislation moving through Congress that explicitly calls for VOA and other U.S. funded news outlets to toe the fallacious government line, then perhaps we’ve lost even that level of pretense."
Social Media in Afghanistan Takes On Life of Its Own - nytimes.com: Afghans have long been resistant to central authority — as the United States has found to its frustration — with Afghanistan divided along tribal, cultural, religious and linguistic lines. Its mountains and valleys have stood in the way of communications breakthroughs that have unified other societies. But a social media network initially financed by the
Macon Phillips: We need to talk about America - Russell Brown, publicaddress.net: "Macon Phillips has had quite a career path. He was director of strategy and communications at Blue State Digital, the web and communications firm that helped Barack Obama to the US Presidency in 2008 and was a key internet strategist for the campaign. He was then hired as the White House director of new media, where he had responsibility for first the Presidential transition and then for the operations of the Whitehouse.gov website. Late last year, he was tapped by US Secretary of State John Kerry to head the Bureau of International Information Programs and tasked with the overhaul of
Young ASEAN Leaders Put Ideas into Action [scroll down link for item] - nayheak.wordpress.com: "More than 100 young Southeast Asian leaders aged 18 to 35 from ten ASEAN Member States attended the opening ceremony of the 'Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Generation-Ideas into Action' workshop held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last week. ... The workshop, funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by StartupMalaysia.org, is the inaugural training program under President Obama’s YSEALI. The opening ceremony was attended by U.S. Department of State Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel . ... More information on the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) can be found online at youngsoutheastasianleaders.state.gov."
CNAS Report: American Influence in the Middle East - pomed.org: "In a Center for a New American Security policy brief, Dafna Hochman Rand asserts that the idea of declining
The Daily: Celebrity Diplomacy Still Trumps - Michael Ardaiolo, thepublicdiplomat.com: "Our round-up of news, notes, tips and tweets exhibiting
how public diplomacy affects the world each and every day." Uncaptioned image from entry
Araz Azimov: “Development of information environment has led to the creation of new opportunities for public diplomacy” - Anakhanim Hidayatova, en.apa.az: “Public diplomacy can not play a decisive role by itself and consequently much depends on Armenian leadership. This country should take measures and its leadership should express its readiness to reach strict decisions, Azerbaijan Deputy Prime Minister Araz Azimov told journalists, APA reports. 'Public diplomacy is a popular term. This diplomacy includes various methods and mechanisms. Development of information environment has led to the creation of new opportunities for public diplomacy', Azimov noted. The Deputy Minister regretfully emphasized that no pluralism on Karabakh issue is observed in Armenia."
Zardusht Alizadeh to attend two events along with Armenians - en.apa.az: "Politician Zardusht Alizadeh will participate in an event to take place in Istanbul within the framework of 'Impact of the three states on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict' project implemented by Chairman of the Analytical Centre of Globalization and Regional Cooperation of Armenia, political scientist Stepan Grigorian with the support of Friedrich Ebert Foundation. ... Zardusht Alizadeh said the Constitution of Azerbaijan or any other laws do not forbid 'public diplomacy'. He also noted that he had played an active role in public diplomacy since 1989, when Karabakh War began, and that he had regularly been attending events in Russia, Georgia, and Armenia."
In praise of Malbec diplomacy - Andrés Federman, buenosairesherald.com "[I]n terms of influencing, World Malbec Day is ideal. Addressing non-government but influential audiences has become vital.An embassy can spend hours in drafting and sending letters to editors in order to rebuke disagreeable press coverage. But, unless the rebuke has to do with very hard facts, it will be wasted time. However, a quiet 10-minute chat hosted by an ambassador, a councillor or a minister, while sipping good wine can do wonders in terms of changing perceptions. And it so happens that the interlocutors to be found in an event like this one are also attentive readers of The Wall Street Journal, The Economist or the New York Times. ... In short: glasses up for the Malbec Brigade. Interest declared: the author is totally unrelated to the wine industry. But has a 20-year-long, love affair with public diplomacy."
The Negative Unintended Consequence in Public Diplomacy - Nicholas J. Cull, uscpublicdiplomacy.org: "In communication as in physics every action a reaction even if the complexity of environment makes it hard for us to tell whether it is what Isaac Newton so elegantly termed ‘an equal and opposite reaction.’ The task for scholars of public diplomacy is to build the active search for unintended consequences into the analysis of public diplomacy."
Azerbaijan: Treason and other charades: The arrest of a leading political activist is another sign the oil-rich country is nowhere near democracy - "
diplomacy or people-to-people diplomacy. Yunus and the Peace and Democracy Institute have spearheaded such efforts. Whether it was her advocacy work or her involvement in track two initiatives which resulted in Yunus' detention, it is not yet clear. However, in light of the recent arrest of another well-known public diplomacy advocate and respected journalist, Rauf Mirkadirov, it might well be the latter." Image from entry, with caption: Azerbaijan has been criticised by Human Rights Watch for its dubious election practises and ongoing violent crackdown on freedom of expression, writes Geybullayeva
Op-Ed: The Pope’s Anti-Semitic Plan for Jerusalem [scroll down for item]- "For Israel, as with most states, the ability to assess diplomatic relations with a state that is lacking economic relations, cannot be quantifiable. Furthermore, since the Vatican is not a full member of any international organisation but only an observer and since official Vatican statements are phrased in extremely nuanced language, much public diplomacy amounts to interpreting papal statements. Thus, In order to understand this unique relationship, traditional parameters must be replaced with a framework that employs a totally different set of parameters."
Open Letter to Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs - worldexpositionssnapshot.blogspot.com: "30 April 2014 The Honourable Ms Tanya Plibersek MP Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs Commonwealth Government of Australia Dear Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs: ... I write to you on this occasion further to previous correspondence concerning next year's World Exposition at Milano Italy and Australia's representation there. ... Australia has a proud and long record of hosting and being represented at World Expositions . ... Already over 150 nations have committed to Milan, including the UK, USA, China, Japan, Korea - in fact most of our major trading partners and the developed and developing world. Australia's absence from Milan 2015 would be a major loss for our nation's trade and foreign affairs branding, in this decade's major cultural public diplomacy opportunity. ... Yours sincerely, John McGregor Founder Celebrate 88 http://celebrate88.com/ Progressing Brisbane's World Expo 88 and Australia at World Expositions"
DANIDA brings comedy to Hifa - newsday.co.zw: "The Hifa 2014 DANIDA comedy programme features high-profile regional and international comedy practitioners . ... 'One in three girls in Zimbabwe experience sexual violence before they turn 18. And almost half of all women in Zimbabwe experience either physical or sexual violence at some point in time in their lives. Addressing gender-based violence is, therefore, a key development priority and a human rights imperative. 'The engagement with Hifa is part of our renewed commitment and engagement towards Zimbabwe and its people as we respond to the challenge of gender-based violence in this country.
We believe the programme provides an innovative platform for public diplomacy, debate, and engagement on this serious issue,' said the head of mission at the Royal Danish embassy office Erik Brøgger Rasmussen. ... In a statement, Hifa said comedy had the power to make a contribution to the changing behaviours of and attitudes through satire, compelling social messages and commentary that challenges the status quo. 'The comedy programme is designed to engage with gender-based violence in a way that catalyses discussion, debate and motivates attitude change within the community. Comedy can be used to foster richer and more open conversations about social, political, economic and environmental challenges facing Zimbabweans, particularly gender-based violence,' said the statement." Image from, with caption: DANIDA brings comedy to Hifa
Danish queen's Nanking visit a crowning moment for China amid row with Japan: Despite Danish FM saying visit was non-political, queen's visit may encourage Beijing to place Nanjing on world leaders' itineraries as a mark against Japanese aggression - "China is expected to encourage more world leaders to visit the Nanking Massacre memorial after the Queen of Denmark’s landmark visit, which mainland analysts say may increase awareness about this period of Chinese history and Japan’s past military aggression. ... 'This visit sends out a good signal. I hope the world will have a better understanding of this history, to learn lessons from it,' former ambassador to London Ma Zhengang, who is now with the China Public Diplomacy Association, told The Beijing News."
Who Remain in the Past Will Have Ukraine’s Fate! - Dan Dima, caleaeuropeana.ro: "We hear from a while, if it happen to be heard, that Romanian diplomacy, I would add even Eastern European diplomacy, need pragmatism, mobility and versatility. Even here, in principle, I would agree, but I always wondered what binds our feet, what blinds us and how we can become more open minded in the diplomatic practice.
Like any declared and deeply passionate about diplomacy (public diplomacy, in my case) I could not resist to scroll thirsty 'the doctrinal source' of the science of Romania’s foreign relations management – 'Diplomacy, Schools and Institutions', work signed by Mircea Malita. If somebody will ask any Romanian diplomat today, maybe with very few exceptions, from the oldest and to youngest ones, they will tell you that 'Diplomacy – Schools and Institutions' is the bedside book for a career diplomat. ... An old system, an exaggerate formality diplomatic corps grafted in typology of Malita’s diplomacy as is described in that book appeared in 1970. Which makes Polish diplomacy different is the acceptance of additional diplomacy ( the new diplomacy practice, public diplomacy ) since the 90s when Poland made the first steps along the road of public diplomacy and on responsible management of foreign perception. ... Today the foreign public is one of the most important players in international affairs and in front of this player we cannot bring with a tightly kept secret counterpart , an conventional diplomat only because the conventional diplomatic speaker suffer from the perspective of credibility at the contact with civil public." Image from
InterExchange Foundation Announces Christianson Grantees for Spring 2014: Funding supports young Americans who are committed to helping solve important humanitarian issues around the world - prweb.com: "The InterExchange Foundation is pleased to announce the first three recipients of Christianson Grants in 2014. ... Ecuador [:] Lee B. began serving as a program coordinator for the Arajuno Road Project in Puyo, Ecuador, in February 2014. The Arajuno Road Project provides educational opportunities to 10 small schools in the rural Arajuno region of Ecuador. Lee combines her Spanish-language skills acquired during travel in Mexico, Argentina and Chile with her strong background in education as an English teacher for Ecuadorian children. Lee also works as a liaison with local school directors, assists English teacher volunteers from around the world and monitors and records class progress. 'Teaching English abroad can contribute to better cross-cultural understanding anywhere,' Lee says. 'I see my work as part community service and part public diplomacy. I cannot represent my entire country while I am abroad, but I can act with integrity, honesty, and an open mind to demonstrate the diversity of American opinion. ... Visit us at http://www.InterExchange.org."
Yaba Tech’s Erg holds 3rd biennial conference on environmental issues - spurmag.com:" Keynote speaker on the theme; Professor Anthony O. Nwafor, Professor of Law, University of Verda, South Africa, highlighted the need for soft power diplomacy by governments and organisations to achieve environmental growth. 'Of soft power, monetary, hard power and public diplomacy, the most peaceful diplomatic solution that would lead to reversal of environmental problems and appeasement of communities whose interests are not adequately factored or outrightly disregarded
in the course of corporate operations over the years, is soft power diplomacy.' Soft power approach would require coming together of the people, government and organisations in decision- making. Nwafor explained that 'soft power diplomacy is seen as the ability to attract and co-opt rather than to coerce, use force or give money, as a means of persuasion.'” Image from entry, with caption: From left: Mr. Godwin Ovioma, Mr Martins Nzekwe, Dr. Loretta Ofodile, Mr Banji Okesoto, Mr N.M.C Nwakanma, Mr Kayode Oluyo and Dr Funmi Doherty, members of ERG, Yaba Tech
Instant Issues to Feature Haroon Ullah - Cynthia Melcher, worldaffairscouncil.com: "Haroon K. Ullah currently serves on Secretary John Kerry’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department, where he
focuses on public diplomacy and countering violent extremism. He grew up in a farming community." Ullah image from entry
RELATED ITEMS
Americans Want to Pull Back From World Stage, Poll Finds: Nearly Half Surveyed in WSJ/NBC Poll Back Anti—Interventionist Stance That Sweeps Across Party - Lines [subscription] - wsj.com: Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.
War Toys for Kids: Back to the Future in Afghanistan - Peter van Buren, We Meant Well: Hit the Google with the search term “iraq giving toys to children” and you’ll come up with pages of photos.
And they are all the same: a U.S. service member dressed like a Space Marine handing over some plastic piece of junk to some kid. Sometimes one or both are smiling, often times not. The images feel more like some freakish form of pedophilia than even decent propaganda. Image from entry
InfoWar over Ukraine - from sad to ridiculous - Yelena Osipova, Global Chaos: In conflict situations and in cases
where there are dueling and parallel narratives, we have to be weary of anyone who claims to have "the truth" (and no, "patriotism" or Hollywood stereotypes should not be dictating our perceptions here...). Image from entry
Why Did Gunmen So Easily Take Over in Eastern Ukraine? Umm, Here’s Why [includes video] - Irena Chlupa, atlanticcouncil.org: How have pro-Russian militants taken over city halls and police stations across eastern Ukraine with such surprising ease? Ukrainian journalist Valentyn Chernyavsky decided to test that question in his hometown, the provincial capital of Cherkasy, about 125 miles south of Kyiv. He donned the uniform of a Russian separatist militant, grabbed a (fake but realistic) AK-47 assault rifle and got a friend to drive him downtown to explore his chances of seizing power.
Kinder, Gentler Russian Propaganda Shifting to Disrupting Ukraine Election - Craig Mellow, minyanville.com: Russia will almost surely keep up its psychological warfare and will probably try to spark some new local uprisings in the East immediately before election day.
Messages from Moscow: Don’t Trust. Definitely Verify - Patricia H Kushlis, Whirled View: A propaganda/disinformation blitz is only as effective as the lack of knowledge and gullibility of the intended recipients. The most effective antidotes are clear, rapid and credible refutation of whatever the content might be and a simple telling of the truth. Over and over and over again.
John Kerry’s Sad Circle to Deceit - John Parry, consortiumnews.com: Secretary of State John Kerry is framing the Ukraine narrative to make the U.S. side – despite neo-Nazis overthrowing an elected president – the good guys and Russians the bad guys. But Kerry’s strident propaganda is a sad ending to a career that began as a truth-teller. The facts and context of the Ukrainian events have been forgotten or bowdlerized to such an extent that the American people are being systematically misled. Whenever the fuller context is mentioned, it is dismissed as “the Russian narrative.”
Another Sucessful American Propaganda Effort - Timothy Gatto,opednews.com: Russia needs a civil war or a confrontation in Ukraine like most people need cancer. There is nothing in it for them. They sell natural gas to Ukraine and I'm sure they don't want that income to stop. The provinces that are protesting against the people that pulled the coup in Kiev were given to Ukraine by Russia. Kerry is lying, Obama is lying and nobody seems to care.
Window on Eurasia: Would You Like Pelmeni with Your McShchi? - Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia: One of the more notorious if somewhat humorous aspects of high Stalinism was
Promoting propaganda - israelhayom.com: One key element of global jihad is propaganda aimed at turning lies into truth and vice versa. Trained by the Soviets masters of this art, Arab-Muslim apparatchiks have taken it to a whole new level. Their success lies in their two-pronged self-portrayal as downtrodden victims of Western imperialism and as destined victors against the "infidels." Chief among these are the "Great Satan" (America) and the "Small Satan" (Israel). That Europe's response is to sell its soul to appease the beast is bad enough. But when the administration in Washington follows suit, the sense among the sane is that even science fiction couldn't do justice to the horror of it all.
Syria: Iran Propaganda “Insurgents Used Chemical Weapons Near Homs” - eaworldview.com: In a propaganda move echoing the attempt to shift blame from the Assad regime for last August’s mass killing with chemical weapons, Iranian media is accusing insurgents of using “poison gas” near
Royal tour of Australia is soft propaganda - David Marr, dawn.com: The royals are proving all over again how charming and durable they can be. All but the diehards agree the republic has to be forgotten for a few years: nothing until the Queen dies.
7 June: Propaganda in Wartime – where do we draw the line? The Index on Censorship Magazine Big Debate: Censorship and Propaganda in Wartime: where do we draw the line? - David Heinemann,
Join Index on Censorship Magazine at Leeds Big Bookend Festival to debate whether it is acceptable for governments and others to withhold information from the public during a conflict. Is it always unreasonable not to tell the public the whole truth? Is propaganda sometimes necessary? Maybe the USA wouldn’t have entered WWII without it… Does propaganda or censorship matter?
Why and when should we care? With Major Ric Cole (Former Royal Marines Commando and Infantry Officer), Dr Chris Paterson(author ‘War Reporters Under Threat: The United States and Media Freedom’), Chris Bond(Yorkshire Post and Legacies of War) and Rachael Jolley (Editor, Index on Censorship Magazine). When: Saturday 7th June, 12:30 – 13:45pm Where: Leeds CentralLibrary , LS1 3AB. Image from entry
Why and when should we care? With Major Ric Cole (Former Royal Marines Commando and Infantry Officer), Dr Chris Paterson(author ‘War Reporters Under Threat: The United States and Media Freedom’), Chris Bond(Yorkshire Post and Legacies of War) and Rachael Jolley (Editor, Index on Censorship Magazine). When: Saturday 7th June, 12:30 – 13:45pm Where: Leeds Central
'Dinner with Goebbels' and the power of propaganda - rabble.ca/news: War requires self deception and someone is always there to provide it. In Red Sandcastle Theatre's production of "Dinner With Goebbels"
we get to spend time and share wine with modern history's most infamous purveyors of the cruelest commodity. The play, by psychiatrist and Physician Against War activist Mark Leith, gives us a short history of public relations (when you're doing it), otherwise known as propaganda (when it's a bad thing). Image from entry
What A Disembodied Finger In Jay Carney’s Photo Says About Media Propaganda - Soopermexican, ijreview.com: In a profile of Press Secretary Jay Carney appearing in the magazine Washingtonian Mom, this photo of the loving family appears:
Cute, isn’t it? But, as savvy Twitter users noticed almost immediately, the picture is photoshopped, and not very well at that. The right side of the book case is a mirror image of the left, which poses a slight problem. A problem I like to call “disembodied finger of a child floating in air”! It’s a common photoshop mistake:
Now we’re used to Jay Carney giving us the finger, but to lop off his kid’s pinkie to prove a point is rather extreme.
Picasso’s Guernica: The Difference Between Art and Propaganda - Richard Bledsoe, westernfreepress.com: Despite the heralding of Guernica as a triumph of political art, is that really the source of its haunting presence? Those who claim it as such bring external knowledge to the piece, being aware of the circumstances of its creation. There is nothing in that work that makes it specifically about the bombing of a Spanish town or the power struggles of the early 20th century. What ideological side is there to be chosen amongst those tumbling ghosts and stricken animals? The power of the piece has nothing to do with a particular time or viewpoint; the audience does not need to know anything about the Republic, the Condor Legion or white phosphorus to feel the horror. It tells a universal story of the tragic violence in life. There are important distinctions between art and propaganda.
Although both are forms of visual communication, their aims are completely different. Great art explores the mysteries of human experience. Propaganda seeks to influence an intellectual decision by stirring up obscuring clouds of emotionalism. Strong art reaches universal, shared experience by honestly presenting the results of self-exploration. Propaganda seeks to substitute that universal appeal with the presentation of ideology it assumes to be commonly held by all right-thinking people. But what if the audience doesn’t share the same convictions, or are indifferent to them? Then the art fails to connect, falls flat. The more blatantly political a work is, the smaller its audience will be. Our contemporary cultural institutions’ strident advocacy is big part of why the visual arts art are suffering such a crisis of relevance now. Guernica image from entry
This WWI propaganda poster has surprisingly good advice about your diet - Matthew Yglesias, I'm seeing a fair amount of enthusiasm on Crunchy Twitter for this 1917 poster from the United States Food Administration that serves as a welcome antidote to the conflicting and often politics-driven advice of the modern federal government:
Bernay's Propaganda (from Macedonia) at Lemp Arts Center Tonight [includes video] - wrongdivision.blogspot.com: Bernay's Propaganda comes from an alternate world
where Fugazi's Red Medicine is the most influential album of all time and post-punk bands outnumber punk bands. Plus, they flew here from Macedonia. Ghost Mice from Indiana is also on the bill, as well as local openers Little Big Bangs and Union Electric. Lots of reasons to go out on a Monday night.
AMERICANA
--From: Donald Sterling's Girlfriend's Visor Game Is Already Legendary, gawker.com
IMAGE, OR LIFE IN THE FOREIGN SERVICE
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SOVIETICA
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