Perfect Job For Some of Speakers Corners' Finest?

[nerdgirl 0]

Wednesday the State Dept’s Under Secretary For Public Diplomacy And Public Affairs, James K. Glassman, held an informal press conference. One of the programs about which he spoke was the Digital Outreach Teams, essentially multi-lingual Americans who engage productively … & occasionally pointedly … in Arab, Farsi, and Urdu language blogs to advance US interests and to communicate US ideals.

Under Secretary Glassman:

“Digital Outreach team – I believe there are eight – it’s either eight or nine people who are on it who blog. And I say “blog” advisedly. They don’t have their own blogs, but they enter into digital conversations online either on other people’s blogs or other websites. And they identify themselves as working for the United States Government and they are participating in the conversation. And you know, at times they will push back and say, you know, that’s not accurate, here’s the truth about U.S. policy and here’s a link, you can go to America.gov, you can go somewhere else. But they’re entering – they are participating in the conversation. They do this in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and by the way, we hope soon, in Russian.

“Now, one of our Digital Outreach Team members back in – back last month participated – well, what he did was he went on to Mr. Ali Akbar Javanfekr’s personal blog and he is President Ahmadinejad media advisor, Javanfekr. And so he has his own blog. Ahmadinejad has his own blog. And blogging is big, as I’m sure you all know, in Iran.

“Anyway, he went on in response to some of the things that this gentleman had put on his website, and there ensued an exchange of, on our side, five postings. I guess it was ten postings in all back and forth. And first of all, we were very surprised that an Iranian official would engage in this kind of back and forth. We also think that our guy made some very telling points. We were surprised from that point of view that it was published. And we were also surprised that the entire transcript was printed in the Persian language newspaper Iran on Mr. Javanfekr’s instigation on August 27th of this year

“So I think we – we either have made this transcript available or we will make it available. And anyway, I just thought this was a good story. And this is only one example of the kind of public diplomacy engagement that we are having with Iran. Now, it’s mostly at the level of the Iranian public.”

“And let me just say that the war of ideas aspect of this is that our opponents in the war of ideas can’t stand this kind of thing. They use the internet for a completely different purpose. They are broadcasting, exhorting, teaching people how to make bombs, banging them over the head with their ideology, and they don’t want feedback that may be negative. We, on the other hand, are encouraging this kind of conversation with the confidence that people will arrive at the kinds of answers that make the world a better place.”

Short article from NY Times on the program here.

Fabulous!

Public diplomacy – the promotion of better understanding of the United States among the peoples of the world and to strengthen cooperative international relations – is a skill at which the US has not excelled recently. We used to be very good at public diplomacy. Activities must stay truthful and transparent, e.g., identification as USG employees.

To echo UnderSec Glassman’s words (from later in the informal press conference), public diplomacy is not a goal unto itself. Public diplomacy is a means to inform and to advance US goals.

For example, last week, a poll covering 17 states – including allies like Turkey, Britian, Germany, Mexico, ROK, – found considerable doubt regarding who was behind the September 11th attacks. And it’s not Saddam Hussayn. Overall only 46% responded that al Qa’eda was responsible (!) The remaining 54% asserted they didn’t know or asserted that US or Israel were responsible for 9-11. That’s just f%&ked!

Connection with public diplomacy:

“Though people with greater education generally have greater exposure to news, those with greater education are only slightly more likely to attribute 9/11 to al Qaeda.

“A stronger correlate of beliefs about 9/11 are respondents' attitudes about the United States. Those with a positive view of America's influence in the world are more likely to cite al Qaeda (on average 59%) than those with a negative view (40%). Those with a positive view of the United States are also less likely to blame the US government (7%) than those with a negative view (22%).”

Lack of effective public diplomacy makes advancing US strategic interests much more difficult and costly.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[SpeedRacer 1]

hmmm. lots of people say the 9/11 attacks were caused by "DK" (the brown portion of the bar graphs).

DK = Denmark!! OF COURSE!!
Fucking Danes. I always knew they were up to something.

I think we should go over there & blow up that stupid mermaid statue. That'll show 'em!!

Speed Racer
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[nerdgirl 0]

Quote

hmmm. lots of people say the 9/11 attacks were caused by "DK" (the brown portion of the bar graphs).

DK = Denmark!! OF COURSE!!
Fucking Danes. I always knew they were up to something.

I think we should go over there & blow up that stupid mermaid statue. That'll show 'em!!

Aaah! I think you may be onto something. It's not a global Salafist movement to re-establish a 7th Century Islamic Caliphate (w/sat phones, RPGs, and AK-47s ) ... but a Scandinavian berserker uprising to re-establish global Norse dominance. It started with Ikea. (Don't let the superficial Swedish origin of Ikea fool you ... pretty soon it will nothing but meatballs, lingonberries, and gelled fish.)

[/silly-sarcasm]

Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying