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John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.

PDPR FOR FEBRUARY 9-10
by John Brown

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW, FEBRUARY 9-10

QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

“MUHAMMAD APPEARS ON THE NORTH FRIEZE IN THE COURTROOM OF OUR VERY OWN SUPREME COURT! HE’S THE MAN WITH THE SCIMITAR, BETWEEN JUSTINIAN AND CHARLEMAGNE.”

--Katha Pollitt, “About that Ban on Drawing Muhammad ...” (Nation)
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ESSAY

For “A Russian Dream in Washington: The Hillwood Museum,” by John Brown, please scroll down to Section F.

A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

1. PROGRAM ASSESSMENT: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY – (EXPECTMORE.GOV): A critique of State Department public diplomacy, with recommendations for improvement. NOTE: The content on ExpectMore.gov is developed by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Federal agencies.
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SEE ALSO
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2. SACRIFICE ESSENTIAL LIBERTIES AND SAVE! – (WONKETTE): Heads oughtta roll at another agency that made the shitlist [the expectmore.gov critique cited above]: the State Department’s Public Diplomacy program. Headed by Karen Hughes, who, we’re totally 100% confident, will be cleaning out her desk by the end of the day.
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3. U.S. TO SHIFT ENVOYS TO CHINA, INDIA: RUSSIA, GERMANY TO LOSE DIPLOMATIC POSTS IN EARLY RESTRUCTURING - BRADLEY GRAHAM AND GLENN KESSLER (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 10): The new jobs listed so far have been confined to political, economic and public diplomacy positions.
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4. US BLAMES SYRIA, IRAN AS PROPHET CARTOONS ROW RAGES ON – (MIDDLE EAST TIMES, EGYPT, FEBRUARY 9): Observers say that the United States has a difficult task in balancing a respect for press freedom with the needs of public diplomacy to reach out to the Muslim world enraged by caricatures of Islam’s holiest figure.
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5. RICE IS FAULTING SYRIA, IRAN FOR STOKING RIOTS - ELI LAKE (NEW YORK SUN, FEBRUARY 9): The reaction from America yesterday struck a new tone in the public diplomacy over the cartoons. Only last week the State Department spokesman called anti-Muslim images “unacceptable.”
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PAID SUBSCRIPTION

6. CONDOLEEZZA RICE IS A LIAR: BLAMES SYRIA, IRAN FOR INCITING VIOLENCE OVER CARICATURES OF PROPHET – JUAN COLE (INFORMED COMMENT: THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY, AND RELIGION, FEBRUARY 9): This irresponsible charge is another in a long series of propaganda ploys whereby the Bush administration manipulates public opinion in the United States.
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7. BUSH URGES END TO VIOLENCE SPARKED BY CARTOONS: PRESIDENT SAYS FREE PRESS HAS A RESPONSIBILITY ‘TO BE THOUGHTFUL ABOUT OTHERS’ - KEN HERMAN (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, TX, FEBRUARY 8): Rice echoed Bush’s support for press freedom and religious tolerance, a message crafted in the past by Karen Hughes, the State Department’s undersecretary in charge of working toward better U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
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SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED
SEE ALSO
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8. U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY REQUIRES MIDEAST PEACE - STEPHEN VAN EVERA (ALTERNET, FEBRUARY 8): The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the sole cause of Arab/Muslim popular hostility toward the U.S. The war in Iraq and the impact of virulent anti-American propaganda from al-Qaeda and other Islamist movements also stoke the fire. Winding down the Iraqi occupation would help, as might stronger public diplomacy to counter al-Qaeda’s propaganda.
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9. BUSH BOOSTS MIDDLE EAST BROADCAST FUNDING - JOHN EGGERTON (BROADCASTING & CABLE, FEBRUARY 6): While non terror-related language services under Broadcasting Board of Governors will get the knife, or even the outright axe, the Middle East services are getting a 13% increase and VOA a 5.3% increase, which more than offsets the cuts elsewhere.
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10. AMERICA MUTED: FROM THE DIARIES - KREMPASKY (REDSTATE, VA, FEBRUARY 9): For many millions, the VOA speaks America’s voice: English. However the President’s 2007 budget proposes to completely eliminate the VOA global English service. 
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11. NEW AMERICAN ENVOYS TO AFRICA WILL FOCUS ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: AMBASSADORS-DESIGNATE SPEAK AT SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING - JIM FISHER-THOMPSON (WASHINGTON FILE, FEBRUARY 9, 2006)
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12. US MILITARY AS AMERICAN PUBLIC DIPLOMATS [IN AFRICA] – (MOUNTAIN RUNNER: OBSERVATIONS ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, SECURITY POLITICS, PRIVATE MILITARY FORCE, AND A FEW OTHER THINGS, FEBRUARY 8)
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13. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY BY THE NUMBERS: REPORTS FROM MULTI-NATIONAL OPINION SURVEYS ON U.S. STANDING OVERSEAS - PUBLIC DIPLOMACY WEB SITE (SPONSORED BY UNITED STATES INFORMATION AGENCY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, UPDATED FEBRUARY 4)
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14. THE TOOLS OF THE GAME - NORA BOUSTANY (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 10): Since 1961, the Concordia Language Villages program, a kind of summer camp in Minnesota for young people, has offered immersion programs in 13 languages and cultures. Now the program is adding another village: Al-Waha, the Oasis, to teach Arabic, thanks to $250,000 in the proposed federal budget for the fiscal year ending in October 2007. Christine Schulze, Concordia’s executive director, will meet with State Department officials soon to discuss the budget for the new program.
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15. STRATEGIC PRAGMATISM - KHALED AMAYREH (AL-AHRAM, FEBRUARY 9-15): In political matters, Hamas said it wouldn’t seek to terminate political contacts between the PA and Israel even though the movement had no faith in the Oslo peace process and its derivatives, which Hamas leaders are convinced is more about public diplomacy and public relations than about genuine peace making.
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B) RELATED ITEMS (Al-Jazeera, 16; Guantanamo, 17; cartoongate, 18-49; Iraq, 50-57; Iran, 58-60; Palestine, 61-63; democracy in Muslim lands, 64-66; Afghanistan, 67-69; Latin America, 70; Venezuela, 71; China, 72-74; Korea, 75; Dafur, 76; France, 77; long war aka war on terror, 78-82; U.S. Foreign Service, 83-84; Peace Corps, 85; others, 86-88)

16. AL JAZEERA: ‘DEFENDING FREEDOM’ OR PROMOTING ITSELF? - ALVIN SNYDER (WORLDCASTING, FEBRUARY 8): Al Jazeera held its “2nd Aljazeera Forum” Jan. 31 through Feb. 2 in its headquarter city of Doha, Qatar. The conference was titled “Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility,” but its goal seemed to be to trash U.S. media and celebrate everything Al Jazeera.
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17. CLOSE GUANTANAMO NOW – EDITORIAL (BOSTON GLOBE, FEBRUARY 10): The United States suffers internationally by holding some 500 detainees in indefinite confinement.
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18. IN EUROPE, ANTI-CARTOON VOICES RISE – JULIO GODOY (ASIA TIMES, FEBRUARY 10): A growing number of European journalists and political caricaturists are condemning the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed that have deepened the schism between Europe and the Muslim world.
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19. UNITED STATES—MINUS UNITED STATES - EHSAN AHRARI (ASIA TIMES, FEBRUARY 10): The Europeans might not know this, but the United States would not want the “return” of the “West” that would sow seeds of intense resentment and hatred toward that very idea in the world of Islam.
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20. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE - PETER BEINART (NEW REPUBLIC): When conservative American Christians lose their ability to identify with conservative Muslims—to imagine their faith as in some basic way the same and deserving of the same basic respect—the United States will find itself less able to speak to the Muslim world, and less able to listen to it. It will find itself, in other words, in the place Europe is now.
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21. FAITH-BASED: DEPICTING MOHAMMED: WHY I’M OFFENDED BY THE DANISH CARTOONS OF THE PROPHET - REZA ASLAN (SLATE): Most Muslims have objected so strongly to the cartoons because they promote stereotypes of Muslims that are prevalent throughout Europe.
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22. DON’T YIELD TO EXTREMISTS - MONA ELTAHAWY (INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 9): Cartoongate is not a clash of civilizations but a battle between the extremists—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—and the rest of us who refuse to allow them to speak for us.
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23. CARTOONS STORY USES A TIRED SCRIPT - MAYA M. BERRY (BALTIMORE SUN, FEBRUARY 9): The vast majority of the approximately 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide take great exception with the intimidation, the violence and the very intolerance we are confronted with that has surfaced in response to these cartoons.
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24. THE MOROCCAN STREET: NO TO VIOLENCE, NO TO WESTERN DISRESPECT: FROM TAXI DRIVERS TO PROFESSORS, MOROCCANS WEIGH IN ON THE CARTOON CONTROVERSY - MARK MACNAMARA (SALON): The consensus among Moroccans, contrary to the apocalypse on television, is that the cartoons are highly disrespectful, but violence is neither warranted nor part of Islam.
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25. CARTOON CONTROVERSY: THE PERSPECTIVE OF A WESTERN MUSLIM - AHMED M. REHAB (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 9): These cartoons have been exploited—if not devised—as agents to drive a wedge between a predominantly Christian Western society and Muslims in the West and around the world. Both civilizations have contributed much to our world, each can offer much to the other.
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26. ALL CARTOON POLITICS ARE LOCAL: MUSLIM OUTRAGE REFLECTS SPECIFIC NATIONAL CONFLICTS—MOST OF THEM EXACERBATED BY BUSH’S POLICIES - JUAN COLE (SALON): The Bush administration’s impulsive intervention in Middle Eastern affairs has heated up the internal Muslim culture wars to the boiling point—and ironically strengthened those very radical, pan-Arab and Islamist forces that Bush wanted to check.
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27. THE ROW OVER THE DANISH CARTOONS - HARSHA WALIA (ZNET, FEBRUARY 6): The construction of the Arab terrorist in a Danish cartoon is not harmless or a simple experiment in free speech, it is deeply hateful and affects the inherent dignity of all Arab and Muslim people.
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28. MOCKING MUHAMMAD – EDITORIAL (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 8): It’s arrogant and disingenuous to claim the high moral ground for insulting an entire religion just because you can.
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29. THE CARTOON BOMB – EDITORIAL (NATION): The point is not Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s right to publish but its editorial wisdom, its sense of civic responsibility.
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30. BALANCING FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY: USING OUR RIGHTS RESPONSIBLY MAY MEAN NOT SHOWING OFFENSIVE CARTOONS - DANIEL SCHORR (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, FEBRUARY 9)
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31. THE RIGHT TO BE OFFENDED - GARY YOUNGE (NATION): There is nothing courageous about using your freedom of speech to ridicule the beliefs of one of the weakest sections of your society.
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32. WAMC ROUNDTABLE: ON THE CARTOONS CRISIS - MARC LYNCH (ABU AARDVARK, FEBRUARY 8): The papers had the right to publish the cartoons, but probably should have considered how they would insult Muslims; and that Muslims had the right to be upset, to boycott, to write letters, to demonstrate, but not to engage in violence.
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33. BEHIND THE CARTOON PROTESTS - MONITOR’S VIEW (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, FEBRUARY 9): While the West can do more not to antagonize Muslims, it is really up to Muslims to resolve their internal conflict.
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34. WHAT WOULD MUHAMMAD DO?: HISTORY SUGGESTS THE PROPHET WAS MORE PRAGMATIC THAN FOLLOWERS RIOTING IN HIS NAME - JAMIL MOMAND (LOS ANGELES TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): The prophet cared deeply about public opinion. Now if only Muslims would follow his lead.
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35. FEAR FACTOR : GIVING IN TO RADICAL ISLAM WON’T HELP MODERATE MUSLIMS - EDWARD MORRISSEY (WEEKLY STANDARD): The Muslim world has erupted in anger and indignation over the publication of a series of editorial cartoons in Denmark that criticize Islam and its prophet Mohammed. The great hope is that moderate Islam will, over time, blunt the dangerous edge of the radical fringe.
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36. MORAL ATOMIC BOMB - BERNARD-HENRI LEVY (WALL STREET JOURNAL, FEBRUARY 8 ): Insidious forces have brought these drawings to the attention of the Muslim masses. Moderate Muslims are alone these days, and in their solitude they more than ever need to be acknowledged and hailed.
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37. CURSE OF THE MODERATES - CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 10): The worldwide riots and burnings are instruments of intimidation. The Islamic “moderates” are the mob’s agents and interpreters, warning us not to do this again.
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38. DRAFTING HITLER - DAVID BROOKS (NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): Islamic fundamentalists have turned themselves into a superpower of dysfunction.
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39. ARSENAL OF IRRATIONAL OUTBURSTS - R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. (WASHINGTON TIMES, FEBRUARY 10): The peoples in such a rage over Danish cartoonists are a deeply troubled people. The Islamofascists are as great a danger as was Adolf Hitler, who left Europe in the kind of desolate chaos the Islamofascists adumbrate.
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40. THE CARTOON BACKLASH: REDEFINING ALIGNMENTS - GEORGE FRIEDMAN (STRATFOR GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT, FEBRUARY 7): The sight of Muslims arguing the need for greater sensitivity among others, and of advocates of laws against racial hatred demanding absolute free speech, is truly marvelous to behold. The Muslim strategy of splitting the United States and Europe—and using Europe to constrain the United States—was heavily damaged by the Muslim response to the cartoons.
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41. THE END OF CIVILIZATION WAS ACTUALLY A JOKE - KATHLEEN PARKER (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 8): Instead of publishing the cartoons and explaining why free expression is central to the West’s survival, editors with few exceptions have swaddled themselves in the blankie of “sensitivity.”
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42. THEY’RE JUST CARTOONS: CHILL OUT JIHADIS - CHRISTOPHER FONS (COUNTERPUNCH, FEBRUARY 9): Many “leftists” have taken the position that the cartoons published in the Danish paper and elsewhere are primarily a representation of Western racism and should be condemned. Nonsense. Chill out Jihadis; fly a kite, smoke a joint and flip through the pages of Playboy if you are so uptight.
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43. FOOLISH PREOCCUPATIONS NEAR POINT OF NO RETURN - THOMAS SOWELL (BALTIMORE SUN, FEBRUARY 9): Has anyone been paying attention to the audacity of the terrorists? Some in the media seem mildly amused that Palestinian terrorists are threatening Denmark because of editorial cartoons that they found offensive.
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44. SOMETHING IS ROTTEN OUTSIDE THE STATE OF DENMARK - CINNAMON STILLWELL (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, FEBRUARY 8): When free speech is chipped away in the name of avoiding offense, all else is soon forfeit. Western countries will have to decide where to draw the line—or find themselves overtaken by tyranny. With the controversy over the Muhammad cartoons, Europe seems to be awakening to this struggle. Will we follow?
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45. DANISH COURAGE: ABOUT “BOTH SIDES” – JOHN O’SULLIVAN (NATIONAL REVIEW): The argument that we must all censor ourselves to avoid offending others in a multicultural society is a highly ironic commentary on the liberals’ promise that multiculturalism meant a more lively, colorful, and argumentative society.
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46. CARTOON CHARACTERS: WHOSE FAULT IS IT THAT THE MEDIA PRESENTS MUSLIMS AS FANATICS? - GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT (SLATE, FEBRUARY 9): In Britain the cartoon debate has widened into other and maybe more ominous fields: the limits of multiculturalism as a basis for public policy and especially for policing, and the place of Islam in pluralist societies.
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47. CARTOON RAGE - DIANA WEST (WASHINGTON TIMES, FEBRUARY 10): Regarding Cartoon Rage 2006, we have watched the Muslim meltdown with shocked attention, but there is little recognition that its poisonous fallout is fear, including fear in the State Department, which, like Islam, called the cartoons unacceptable.
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48. THE AYATOLLAH JOKE BOOK - MICHAEL KINSLEY (FEBRUARY 10): The shameful American position on cartoongate is boilerplate endorsement of free expression combined with denunciation of the cartoons as an “unacceptable” insult.
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49. WHAT THE ISLAMIC MILITANTS NEED TO HEAR – LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (WALL STREET JOURNAL, FEBRUARY 7)
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MORE ON CARTOONGATE AT
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50. STATE DEPARTMENT CONTRACTORS KILL 2 CIVILIANS IN N. IRAQ - JONATHAN FINER (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 9): Iraqi government officials and U.S. commanders have condemned what they have termed indiscriminate and unpunished shootings of Iraqi civilians by some of the estimated 25,000 private security contractors operating throughout the country.
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51. KALASHNIKOVS FOR HIRE IN IRAQ – NATHAN HODGE (MOTHER JONES, FEBRUARY 9): Security contractors in Iraq—in the view of U.S. Central Command—are noncombatants, restricted to “defensive” roles. But if you can hire someone to guard a convoy or provide site protection, why not outsource aggressive security patrols?
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52. DANGER? DRABNESS? NO DATE? IRAQIS FIND AN OUTLET ONLINE - ROBERT F. WORTH (NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 10)
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53. WESTERN TARGETS: THE IRAQI INSURGENCY IS STILL PRIMARILY AN ANTI-OCCUPATION EFFORT - FRED KAPLAN (SLATE, FEBRUARY 9): What have we been doing over there for nearly three years? Have we mucked things up entirely?
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54. WE LOST IRAQI HEARTS AND MINDS LONG BEFORE THE CURRENT OCCUPATION - BERT SACKS (SEATTLE TIMES, WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 9/COMMON DREAMS): Congressman John Murtha recently said that we’ve already lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. What chance did we have for Iraqi hearts and minds after all those years and all those deaths? Not much at all.
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55. IRAQ PR: SAME AS IT EVER WAS - SPIN OF THE DAY (CENTER FOR MEDIA AND ACCURACY, FEBRUARY 9): The PR firm Burson-Marsteller’s lobbying unit, BKSH & Associates, “has added the Republic of Iraq to its client roster,” reports O’Dwyer’s. Burson-Marsteller has already “helped the deputy military attache do outreach to key media outlets,” including the Wall Street Journal and CNN, and has contacted the U.S. State Department and National Security Council on behalf of the Iraqi Embassy.
Source: O’Dwyer’s PR Daily (sub req’d), February 9, 2006
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56. EX-CIA OFFICIAL FAULTS USE OF DATA ON IRAQ: INTELLIGENCE ‘MISUSED’ TO JUSTIFY WAR, HE SAYS - WALTER PINCUS (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 10)
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57. OUTSIDE VIEW: THE END OF SOFT POWER - AMITAI ETZIONI (UPI, FEBRUARY 7): Down the road, either military force will have to be employed or—if this is impractical—Iran will become a full-fledged nuclear power. In either case, soft power will be shown up for what it is: by itself a very insufficient instrument of international relations.
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58. WOULD IRANIANS RALLY ‘ROUND THE FLAG?: VARIOUS ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS FACTIONS MIGHT SEE LITTLE TO GAIN IN SUPPORTING TEHRAN IF THE COUNTRY’S NUCLEAR FACILITIES WERE BOMBED - EDWARD N. LUTTWAK (LOS ANGELES TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): The bombing of Iran’s nuclear installations may still be a bad idea for other reasons, but not because it would strengthen the hold of its rulers.
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59. AN IRANIAN TRANS TORTURE VICTIM SPEAKS FROM INSIDE IRAN - DOUG IRELAND (DIRELAND, FEBRUARY 8): For gay people, today’s Iran has become the world’s largest religious prison.
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60. ‘NEW POPULISTS’ VS. THE WEST: CAN THE LEADERS OF IRAN AND VENEZUELA FORGE A POLITICAL COUNTERWEIGHT TO US POWER? - HOWARD LAFRANCHI (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, FEBRUARY 9): Some might call it the axle of anti-American populism. With linchpins in Tehran on one end and Caracas on the other, a new brand of international populism is rising by fanning flames of division between Western powers and the “powerless” of the developing world. SEE BELOW ITEMS 70-71.
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61. RATTLING THE CAGE: PANICKING OVER PALESTINE - LARRY DERFNER (JERUSALEM POST, FEBRUARY 9): If the democratic world actually follows through on its hysterical threats against Hamas, it’s going to turn a bad but tolerable situation into something like a disaster, and not just a humanitarian one.
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62. REVENGE IS THE WORD IN THE BACKGROUND - AMIRA HASS (HAARETZ, FEBRUARY 8): On a daily basis, Israel attacks every Palestinian with systematic variety. The aggregation is lethal.
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63. THE HAMAS VICTORY: ANOTHER VIEW - STEPHEN ZUNES (COMMON DREAMS, FEBRUARY 7): The refusal of the United States to deal with the elected Palestinian government will likely add to the cynicism within the Arab and Islamic world that the United States supports democratic elections only if the results support U.S. policy aims. The best means to stop terrorism is to deny the agenda which propels it, such as foreign military occupation.
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64. DEMOCRACY’S SKEPTICS - MONA CHAREN (WASHINGTON TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): For decades, the American government took a benevolent view of the authoritarian (and in some cases totalitarian) governments of the Middle East. They did so in the name of stability. The result was an incubator of terrorism. Democracy will not easily take root in that rocky soil, but the Iraqis and Afghans who proudly display their ink-stained fingers are a rebuke to those who sniff that it’s a fool’s errand.
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65. DEMOCRACY NOT AN EXPORT ITEM - LEON HADAR (ANTIWAR.COM)
The U.S. push for democracy in the Middle East has been a self-defeating strategy that has made the region safe for nationalism and other radical forms of ethnic, religious, and tribal movements that regard the U.S. and its allies in the region as the source of all evil.
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66. NO RED LINES: A REASON INTERVIEW WITH MIDDLE EAST TRANSPARENT’S PIERRE AKEL - MICHAEL YOUNG (REASON): Lebanese Pierre Akel hosts the popular Web site Middle East Transparent, which receives 50,000-60,000 hits a day. While the Paris-based site is trilingual (Arabic, English, French),its particular value is that it has become a forum for Arab liberals who would otherwise have no outlet for their writings.
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67. LOSING HEARTS AND MINDS IN AFGHANISTAN - CURT GOERING (MINUTEMAN MEDIA, FEBRUARY 8/COMMON DREAMS): The patience of many Afghans with the U.S. presence is wearing thin.
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68. A BRAIN DRAIN THREATENS AFGHANISTAN’S FUTURE - OBAID YOUNOSSI (INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 9)
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69. DUTCH TO BOLSTER NATO - BOUDEWIJN VAN EENENNAAM (WASHINGTON TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): The United States and the European allies will stand by the people of Afghanistan and help them rebuild their country. (Boudewijn van Eenennaam is ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United States.)
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70. ANTI-AMERICAN TURN - DAN BURTON (WASHINGTON TIMES, FEBRUARY 10): Opponents of freedom are systematically creating a new block of leftist-run, anti-American states across Central and South America.
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71. FOR VENEZUELA, U.S., A (VERY) LITTLE CIVILITY - PAMELA CONSTABLE (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 10): In an interview Wednesday, the senior State Department official for Latin America, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., described the U.S. differences with Chavez as “a battle of ideas ... a battle that we shouldn’t be afraid of.”
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72. PENTAGON PLAYS UP “CHINA THREAT” TO SECURE MORE MILITARY FUNDS: EXPERTS – OPINION, XINHUA (PEOPLE’S DAILY, BEIJING, FEBRUARY 9)
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73. DUELING TITANS: CHINA, THE US AND BATTLE TO LEAD A GLOBALIZED WORLD - FRANK HORNIG AND WIELAND WAGNER (SPIEGEL, FEBRUARY 3): As the heyday of U.S. hegemony passes, is the “New Chinese Century” about to begin?
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74. LETTER FROM CHINA: DESPITE WEB CRACKDOWN, PREVAILING WINDS ARE FREE - HOWARD W. FRENCH (NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): If the Internet is at the center of today’s struggle over press freedom, it is only the latest in a series of fights that the government has so far always lost.
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75. KOREAN REUNION PROJECT AIMED AT AMERICANS: MANY DON’T KNOW WHETHER RELATIVES IN THE NORTH SURVIVED THE WAR. PROGRAMS THAT FIND LOST LOVED ONES GENERALLY EXCLUDE U.S. RESIDENTS - BARBARA DEMICK (LOS ANGELES TIMES, FEBRUARY 9): The Eugene Bell Foundation, which operates out of Washington and Seoul to support tuberculosis clinics in North Korea, said it would start by collecting family information from Korean Americans who belong to separated families.
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76. WISHFUL THINKING: STATE DEPARTMENT DISHONESTY ON DARFUR - ERIC REEVES (NEW REPUBLIC): Why has the Bush administration chosen this moment to suggest that genocide is no longer taking place? Some of the answer lies in the awkwardness of having declared Darfur to be the site of genocide—which Colin Powell did in September 2004—but subsequently proving unable to do anything about it.
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77. FRENCH CULTURAL IMPERIALISM - REVIEW & OUTLOOK (WALL STREET JOURNAL, FEBRUARY 9): The largest market for French cinema is none other than Hollywood’s home turf.
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78. THE LONG WAR - WILLIAM S. LIND (ANTIWAR.COM): Since most Americans would rather be dead than Talibs and most pious Muslims would rather perish than lose their souls to the Brave New World, Mr. Rumsfeld has proclaimed a war of mutual annihilation. That will indeed be another Thirty Years’ War, with little chance of a renewed Westphalian order as the outcome.
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79. US DIGS IN FOR ‘LONG WAR’ - EHSAN AHRARI (ASIA TIMES, FEBRUARY 8): “Long War” is the Pentagon’s latest template to fight the “war on terror.” It holds considerable promise of being catchy and martial in tone and and a sound propaganda tool.
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80. IT’S A WAR ON TERRORISM, NOT ON POVERTY - ROBERT SCHEER (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, FEBRUARY 8/COMMON DREAMS): Like the Cold War before it, the “war on terror” is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.
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81. IS U.S. MILITARY DOMINANCE OF THE WORLD A GOOD IDEA? - PETER PHILLIPS (COMMON DREAMS): The leadership class in the US is now dominated by a neo-conservative group of some 200 people who have the shared goal of asserting US military power worldwide.
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82. THE DELUSIONAL MEANING OF WAR - DANIEL SCHWARTZ (COMMON DREAMS): The current Administration promotes a militaristic consciousness which stresses peace through strength and the nobility of war.
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83. FOREIGN SERVICE AND RICE’S INITIATIVE - AMBASSADOR J. ANTHONY HOLMES, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE ASSN., WASHINGTON (LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, LOS ANGELES TIMES, FEBRUARY 9 ): Re “Goodbye Paris, hello Chad,” [Current, Jan. 29; PDPR, January 27-30]: “The image of America’s Foreign Service as largely deployed to the “cushy ... fleshpots of Europe” to spend “restful years” has not been accurate since the 19th century, if it ever was ... Two-thirds of our missions overseas are classified as hardship posts. More than half of all Foreign Service personnel overseas serve in them. This year they will fill 700 positions in “unaccompanied posts”—places so dangerous their families must remain behind. They have in fact been practicing “transformational diplomacy” for decades.”
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84. OUR MAN IN MEDAN: THE ACTUAL FACE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IN NORTHERN SUMATRA – PAUL D. KRETKOWSKI (BEACON, JANUARY 7): “Hi! My Name’s Paul. I’ll Be Your U.S. Diplomat Today” by Jane Perlez [New York Times, February 3; PDPR February 2-3] shows a model for a more distributed form of American diplomacy that values interaction with the host country. Paul Berg’s efforts are a credit to himself and the State Department and a boon to U.S. interests in Indonesia, but I can’t help but worry about this diplomat in a way that I don’t about those in countries where protests stop with banners, placards and slogans, rather than firebombs that could easily destroy a modest, Dutch colonial-style house.
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85. PEACE CORPS WORK EFFECTS A WIDE CULTURAL IMPACT - GADDI H. VASQUEZ, DIRECTOR, PEACE CORPS (LETTER TO THE EDITOR, WALL STREET JOURNAL, FEBRUARY 9): The Peace Corps today works in tandem with local and national governments to ensure that volunteer projects augment, and not replace, the work of local citizens.
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86. THE BELIEVER: GEORGE W. BUSH’S LOYAL SPEECHWRITER - JEFFREY GOLDBERG (NEW YORKER): White House speechwriter Michael Gerson frames issues in stark moral terms. The three most famous words he has ever set to paper are “axis of evil,” a phrase referring to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea that made its first appearance in the 2002 State of the Union Message. A speechwriter then on Gerson’s team, David Frum, had proposed “axis of hatred,” but, according to Frum, Gerson substituted “evil” for its more theological resonance. “Evil exists, and it has to be confronted,” according to Gerson.
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87. THE PRESS CLUB’S DINNER OF RIBS - MARCIA DAVIS (WASHINGTON POST, FEBRUARY 9): In a gag on this city’s never-ending spin cycle, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer played off the Bush administration’s renaming of its controversial wiretapping program, which it recently dubbed the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Hurricane Katrina, he said, had become the Terrorist Submergence Program, and K Street would be renamed Anti-Terror Avenue. Bush poll results would henceforth be described as terrorist propaganda.
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88. FAUX DOCUMENTARY: THE TIRED SAGA OF LEFT AGITPROP – VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (NATIONAL REVIEW): Eugene Jarecki’s “Why We Fight” is a reprehensible film in its intellectual dishonesty. But it is so poorly cobbled together that it never rises above the propaganda level of Fahrenheit 9/11. It purports to be a serious documentary not about soldiers in the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, or even Iraq, but about all sorts of conspiracies of how they got there.
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C) ONLY IN AMERICA?

89. PUCKER UP: BRITESMILE FOR BUNGHOLES; INVESTIGATING THE LATEST CRAZE IN BODILY BEAUTIFICATION: ANAL BLEACHING - TRISTAN TAORMINO (VILLAGE VOICE)
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VIA
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90. FIRST-GRADER SUSPENDED FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT – AP (USA TODAY, FEBRUARY 9)
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D) NOTE FROM A VALUED PDPR SUBSCRIBER

I have now finished reading the John L. Gaddis book, “The Cold
War” (Penguin Press, 2005), and the only thing I could find in it related in any way to public diplomacy is the following, on the next to last page (265) of the book:

“Education too played a role: levels of literacy and years spent in school increased almost everywhere during the Cold War, and although educated societies are not always democratic societies—Hitler’s Germany revealed that—it does appear that as people become more knowledgeable about themselves and the world around them, they also become less willing to have others tell them how to run their lives.”

And on the same page:

“The information revolution reinforced the spread of democracy because it permitted people to inform themselves and react to what they learned more quickly than in the past. It became more difficult during the Cold War to withhold news about what was going on in the rest of the world, as well as to what was happening within one’s own country.”

And there is no reference at all to my book, “Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain” (Penn State Univ Press, 2003) Richard T. Arndt’s “The First Resort of Kings” (Potomac Books, 2005) in the notes, bibliography, or index. But we are in good company. There is also no reference to Jack Matlock’s book, “Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.” I wonder if Gaddis and Matlock disagree.

Yale Richmond

E) MORE QUOTATIONS FOR THE DAY

“EVERYONE SUPPORTS THE FREE SPEECH THEY AGREE WITH.”

--BuffaloWatchdog, in his “12 Cartoons Seen Around the World: Except In the US” (WNY Media Nework, February 8)
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“IF THERE WERE ONLY ONE RELIGION IN ENGLAND THERE WOULD BE DANGER OF DESPOTISM; IF THERE WERE TWO THEY WOULD CUT EACH OTHER’S THROATS. BUT THERE ARE THIRTY, AND THEY LIVE IN PEACE AND HAPPINESS.”

--Voltaire; cited at
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“NOT ONLY ARE WHITES KICKING US; THEY ARE TELLING US HOW TO REACT TO BEING KICKED.”

--South African black nationalist Steve Biko; cited in Gary Younge, “The Right to Be Offended” (Nation)
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“BUSH REFERRED TO THE PLOT AS TARGETING THE LIBERTY TOWER IN LOS ANGELES, BUT WHITE HOUSE AIDES AFTERWARD SAID BUSH HAD MEANT TO SAY THE INTENDED TARGET WAS THE CITY’S LIBRARY TOWER.”

--Cited in Reuters, “Bush Describes Foiled Al Qaeda Attack on L.A.” (Los Angeles Times, February 9)
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NERDPASSIONS.COM AND REDHEADPASSIONS.COM

--The least popular niche personal websites; cited in Susan Carpenter, “For Your Type, Keep Typing: Vegetarians, Pet Fanciers, Truckers, Buddhists and Goths—To Name a Few — Are Looking for Love in All the Specialized Places, As Niche Dating Websites Multiply” (Los Angeles Times, February 9)
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F) ESSAY

A Russian Dream in Washington: The Hillwood Museum

John Brown

You and your companion enter the two-story foyer, and your eyes are seized by imposing portraits of Russian rulers—Nicholas I, Nicholas II, and Catherine the Great in full state regalia. On a commode, you both admire two striking nineteenth-century Imperial Porcelain Factory vases, resplendent in their golden background and adorned with brightly colored pigeons, turning the most ordinary of avians into special creatures.

Entranced, you begin to wander through the richly furnished rooms, the priceless Russian objets d’art continuing to appear before you, as if coming from another world if not, perhaps, heaven.

Some of the treasures that you see will never escape your memory: over twenty porcelain pieces of the famous Orlov Service Catherine the Great commissioned for her then-favorite, the Count Grigorii; the Boyar Wedding Feast (1883) by Konstantin Makovskii, a canvas evocative of Russia’s unique past; and an early 18th century portable iconostasis, a jewel of religious art, evidently commissioned by an Old Believer.

Then there are the famous Fabergé eggs, including the Catherine the Great Easter Egg, by workmaster Henrik Wigströman, and the twelve-paneled Monogram Easter Egg, a gift of Nicholas II to his tsarina. You look at an elegant, understated Fabergé leaf-shaped box of gold, bloodstone, and diamonds and you share thoughts on his statement that ‘’I am less interested in an expensive object, if its high cost is only because many diamonds and pearls have been planted on it.”

Each of you wants to spend hours admiring every object, but an unquenchable desire to discover new ones drives you on. There is no strict order to how the treasures are arranged, and this makes you even more curious. As delight follows delight through a dozen rooms, you reach a display area with colorful icons and richly embroidered Russian liturgical vestments.

The icons reflect images that have existed in Russian religious art since medieval times, and many of them are copies. But they are striking nevertheless, enriching a room with vivid hues where a monumental, diamond-studded chalice from Catherine the Great’s reign demands most of your attention.

Where are you? Are you awake or asleep? Could you be dreaming dreams like Sokurov’s film “Russian Ark,” the director’s hallucinatory peregrinations inside the Hermitage?

Wake Up!

No, no, wake up, you are in the real world, if indeed such a term can be used to describe Washington, D.C. You are in the U.S. capital’s leafy northwest region, a residential neighborhood a 30-minute’s drive from the center of the city. Your location is the interior of the Georgian-style mansion, designed in 1926, that was the residence of the immensely rich cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in the later years of her life. It is known, today, as the Hillwood Museum.

The mansion is located in a 25-acre paradise with gardens, meticulous lawns, and understated waterworks, a recreation of the American country house tradition. Mrs. Post’s American-style palace was “created by wealthy Americans between 1880 and 1930” who “commissioned large houses for escape and relaxation on relatively limited tracts of land near major urban centers.” (These words are taken from Hillwood’s elucidating website, gratefully used in writing this article).

In the late 1930s, Mrs. Post, always fascinated by Europe, spent 18 months in the Soviet Union with her then-husband, Joseph Davies, the American ambassador en poste in Moscow at that time (1937-38). Long interested in art, and armed with sharp eye, she began to collect Russian objects.

In Russia, she wrote, she was able “to see and enjoy the Russian love of color in all forms of art. …The Russian genius in the use of stimulating color is a spiritual quality related to the land itself.” Soon, “she found herself scouring Stalin’s warehouses on hands and knees,” says Frederick J. Fisher, Executive Director of the Hillwood Museum. “The revolutionary government already had sold off much of its confiscated gold, silver and artworks to raise hard currency. But [Mrs. Post] spotted treasures in the remains. ‘She made piles every day,” recalled daughter Dina Merrill Hartley. ‘The prices were so amazingly low [because] they really didn’t know what they had.’”

Among Mrs. Post’s contacts in the Soviet Union was Polina Zhemchuzhina, wife of Chairman of the Council of Ministers Viacheslav Molotov who, as Davies points out in his Mission to Moscow, had established “very chic perfume shops and cosmetic beauty parlors” in Stalin’s harsh proletarian state. The two pigeon-decorated vases at the entrance to Hillwood were gifts of Madame Zhemchuzhina to the wife of the American ambassador.

After her stay in the U.S.S.R., Mrs. Post collected Russian art for the rest of her life. On her death in 1957, Hillwood was bequeathed to the public as a museum—a “museum,” however, which still very much remains Mrs. Post’s residence, for she is there in spirit, “like a whiff of perfume with staying power,” in the words of journalist Gary Tischler.

Hillwood’s collection now contains some 18,000 items, with some 60 percent of them on display—along with paintings and porcelain, there are works in glass, textiles, and metal. Guided by the model of its ever-collecting founder, Hillwood continues to acquire rare Russian items. In 2000, to cite one of many examples, it obtained the Avinoff-Shoumatoff book collection that includes important and hard-to-find volumes on pre-revolutionary Russian religious art, decorative arts, archeology, and art history.

It will not disappoint cosmopolitan Russophiles to learn that a large number of the items at Hillwood are not Russian. Mrs. Post obtained many 18th and 19th century objects made in other countries, including France (especially) and England. Much of the elegant furniture in her residence comes from these two nations, as well as from other places in Europe. Perhaps most famous among these is a 1770 mechanical roll-top desk made in the French tradition with more than 40 drawers and pigeonholes, pop-up candlesticks, shades and snuffers. It may have been meant for Marie Antoinette before she married the soon-to-be Louis XVI of France.

The Empress and the Heiress

The crown jewel among these European treasures, however, is Hillwood’s collection of Russian decorative art, the largest of its kind outside of Russia. Hillwood would not be Hillwood without its Fabergé eggs and portraits of the tsars (and its icons). Mrs. Post was fully aware of this, and her desire to show Russia’s importance in European culture links her to the tsarina one first encounters on canvass upon entering Hillwood—Catherine the Great.

These strong-willed women had much in common. True, they lived in different centuries and in different countries. But they both were entranced by beauty, in the sense expressed by La Fontaine in his memorable verses:

“Ô douce Volupté, sans qui, dès notre enfance,
Le vivre et le mourir nous deviendraient égaux.”

(“Without sweet enrapture, from our infancy on,
Our living and dying would be one and the same.”

A love of art, both Russian and French, is what brings Catherine the Great and Merriweather Post the closest together, but other aspects of their lives were similar. Both represented royalty—different kinds of royalty, to be sure, but royalty nevertheless.

Catherine was an eighteenth-century German princess. Mrs. Post was twentieth-century democratic America’s version of a princess, a person who in her youth had “more than double the clothes, shoes and stuff than any girl no matter how rich should have at seventeen,” her father (the man who gave us Corn Flakes) wrote about his only darling daughter before a 1904 European trip. (The second floor at Hillwood, which contains some of Mrs. Post’s personal sartorial accoutrements, reflects her very haute-couture inclinations).

Both Catherine and Mrs. Post, feminists before their time (while retaining their exquisite feminine tastes), did not let devotion to one man become the determining factor of their lives. Mrs. Post was married and divorced four times, and Catherine’s many love affairs reflect her well-known penchant for masculine diversity. Both women evidently felt men could share their interest in beauty, but Catherine and Merriweather were not ready to sacrifice the latter for the former.

The aristocratic mores of these two princesses, perhaps amoral and libertine to some, may offend our modern bourgeois sensibilities. But it is undeniable that the Empress’s and the heiress’s life-long devotion to the sublime have earned them a special place in the pantheon of esthetes who, to some extent accidentally, have made it possible for us to enrich our lives through art ...

The Dream Continues

Wait! Your Hillwood Russian dreams are yet not over. As you are about to exit the Post mansion, you hear Russian voices: one of the many volunteer guides at Hillwood, originally from Russia, is speaking to a visitor from her native land in their common tongue. You then step outside, en plein air, refreshed by the greenery, flowers, and quietude around you (visits to Hillwood are by appointment only and there is a limit to the number of visitors admitted per day). You think of the verses of Baudelaire:

“ ... tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.”

Strolling unhurried about the inviting grounds, you come upon a dacha—yes, a dacha: are you really in a city associated with the White House, not Russian huts? Inside that quaint one-room log structure (built in 1969), appears another miracle: a temporary exhibit of ceramics by the Hungarian-born Eva Zeisel, who directed a glass and porcelain manufacturer for the Soviet Union before World War II. Her work, though intensely modern, has a softness and gentility reminiscent of the 18th century porcelains in the main building.

You do not want to leave, but it is time to go. It is five o’clock, and Hillwood is closing. You will miss sipping afternoon tea at Hillwood’s welcoming and civilized café, where the polished manners of waiters match those of their long departed Russian imperial confreres.

Your minds are full of beauty, you both are in a daze. But you cannot help but wonder: Should the Russian objects at Hillwood, so carefully preserved, have remained in Russia? Is that where they truly belong? You ask yourselves these questions, and cannot find an answer; but there is one thing that you know: Hillwood is a gentle gift to art and mankind.

John Brown was Cultural Attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow, 1998-2001.

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