Letter Never Sent

I watched a Brookings Institution forum on CSPAN, “The Propaganda
War” [full transcript], which aired on January 16. It is part of their project on the role of the press in the anti-terrorism campaign. The panel included: Christopher Ross, Special Coordinator for the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs; Joe Duffey, Former Director, United States Information Agency; Thomas A. Dine, President, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.; and Karen De Young, Associate Editor, The Washington Post.

Now, of course, 3 out of 4 members of the panel are either current or former members of the government propaganda apparatus, either employed in the government proper or in the case of Mr. Dine employed by a corporation which is directly funded by the US Government. The 4th member of the panel Karen De Young, is an Associate Editor of one of the largest mainstream news outlets, The Washington Post. Due to the composition of the panel one could hardly expect to hear anything halfway decent or informative. It mostly resembled a commercial for the American position tailored to the demographic with college degrees. However, there were some interesting things worth noting. One thing worth mentioning is the subtle hint that the US may seek to push the educational systems of nations around the world to support the US viewpoint:

(from the transcript)

MR. ROSS: I would answer from a slightly different vantage point, Steve, to say that the new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Charlotte Meers [ph], has now been on the job a matter of a few months and has been very conscious of the point that Tom made that there is an absolute necessity for a guiding strategy. She is currently involved in crafting such a strategy and is consulting within the government and outside the government, is soon to travel abroad to consult our embassies there and to touch base with local opinion leaders. What she’s sketching out at this point is a strategy of total communication on three essential themes.

One is to re-present the basic American values that unite this country. The second theme is to present democratization and openness as a vision for a better future, a future which does not require people to resort to terrorism. And a third theme which hits at what we are coming to consider increasingly to be perhaps the most important audience for our work, young people, those who are going to create the future who’s world views and mind sets are not yet fully formed. The third theme focuses on them through a look at educational systems and how they are structured.

So you have values, you have democratization and openness, you have education as three focal points of a total communications plan that would mobilize the resources of public diplomacy in all their aspects both on the information side and on the educational and cultural exchange side. …

MR. HESS: But Karen De Young is taking notes like mad over there. And when she…

MS. DE YOUNG: I was just writing down the three themes…

MR. HESS: She writes that, you will write your story tomorrow on what U.S., the strategy of U.S. public diplomacy, what’s your lead going to be?

(Laughter)

MS. DE YOUNG: Gosh. This is knee-jerk on my part. I just write things, so it goes in here, comes out here.

What would be the lead on that? I think, the lead would be how they’re going to go about trying to influence the education systems in other countries.

Senator Levin made a statement the other day about something that’s not new, but about Saudi Arabia, saying that in their education systems they teach people to hate. He said some fairly extreme things. The Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, who happens to be in Saudi Arabia at the moment where he seems to have been most of the time since this started, but issued a statement this morning and said we don’t teach anybody to hate in our school, our schools conform to our own values and our own traditions, and basically said I like Senator Levin but he’s completely off base and please stay out of our education system.

And I guess my question would be how are you going to do that? How is that a matter of public diplomacy? I would ask more about how you’re going to go about that.

MR. ROSS: It’s one of the aspects of, it’s one of the sectors in which our existing educational and cultural exchange program has always been active. Of course the resources available in that program are minuscule compared to the task. So part of this strategy involves encouraging other agencies within the U.S. government that have much greater resources to work along a common task to focus on this problem.

It’s essentially an effort to make sure that educational systems, particularly in the current campaign against terrorism, particularly in the Muslim and Arab countries, evolve in a way that provides to young people the tools needed for modern life so that they are not attracted to the apocalyptic kind of vision that Osama bin Laden and others have proffered.

We recognize it’s an enormous task, but the fact that it’s enormous doesn’t make it not worth pursuing. As a matter of fact there are some government officials in the region who have already expressed an interest in seeking our help on this point.

MS. DE YOUNG: And this would be primarily bringing students here for visits, or helping them form their own school systems there?

MR. ROSS: It would depend very much on the results of consultations with those foreign government officials who are seeking this kind of assistance. We have nothing to impose. It’s a collaborative process…

Saying one thing and doing another. China has discovered 20 spying devices in a plane they purchased from Boeing that was built for President Jiang Zemin. The spy devices worked through satellite communications. They would most likely be used for positioning and listening and who knows what else. Missile guidance? Causing mechanical failure? Gee, I wonder how those got there? “The devices were detected after the plane emitted a strange static whine during test flights in China in September, shortly after it was delivered. One device was found in a lavatory and another in the headboard of the presidential bed.”

Of course, the US has a policy of not discussing these matters. Openness is only good for other countries they seem to think. Although, one would suppose that if these allegations were baseless the US would have no trouble proclaiming their innocence. It will be interesting to see how the US will deal with China in the future. Many of the nutjobs who run the defense establishment are extremely paranoid about China and have an apocalyptic vision of a future conflict with China. This is mainly governed by a potential scenario where China, propelled by its Malthusian population growth starts to expand into Russian territory as Russian population is on the decline. Of course, Russia has a bounty of natural resources. This fear seems to inform the American strategy in Asia. The US seems to be working under a tactic of quiet containment. Building up ‘allies’ in the region. Helping the Philippines against ‘terror’ while helping themselves to the petroleum resources, selling arms to India, and trying to get Japan to change its pseudo-pacifist constitution so that the US will have a puppet military power in the region.

As part of the Bush administration’s continued efforts to destroy the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution they have taken the position that the federal government has the power to copyright “public domain” works. In other words, they feel that the government has the right to restore the copyright of works whose copyrights have lapsed. As works now take almost 100 years to revert to the public domain this is clearly a benefit to vast, undying corporations who would seek to own everything.

There may be a day when every work of science, art, and culture is owned by an undemocratic corporate entity. Think about it, who does copyright benefit? If you violate the copyright of a work I have produced on my own what then? Do I have the resources to police for infringement? Do I have lawyers I can throw at you? Obviously not. Copyrights and patents, as they stand today, are largely used to transfer the benefits of creativity and invention from individuals to large institutions (in most cases corporations). All culture and progress has been created by individual people. Corporations do not make music, or art. They do not invent things. Certainly, they fund research for new technology but instead of creating a benefit to humanity they create a revenue stream.

This is a power grab by business. Not content with physical resources they have moved to accumulating ideas and all aspects of our culture. I think it is possible that we may head toward a future resembling a Philip K. Dick novel where you will be monitored for what sort of calls you make or what sort of television programs you watch and where you will own nothing. While I do think this is a leap from the idea of copyright law I think it is important to be vigilant about how ideas are commodified.

There are inherent dangers in violating a law regardless of how wrong it is. However, I think people should push the limits of fair use and copyright. This means reinvigorating old ways of doing things. Lend your books, music, and movies to your friends. Make people copies of things if you’re willing. It would also be helpful if more people rejected consumerism as a habitual way of life. Think about how you’re spending your money and where it ends up. Reject the encroachment of advertising. Deface public advertising. Send back credit card applications in the postage paid envelopes. Use your imagination.

At about 2:30am on the way home from work I nearly hit a deer. I was going maybe fifty miles per hour at the time. It was very dark and I suddenly saw a young doe about fifty feet ahead of me illuminated by my headlights. I swerved to the left to avoid hitting it and turned the wheel back again as I hit the brakes and my car did a 180 and stopped facing the opposite direction. It happened so sudden I didn’t have a moment to think. It’s as if some part of me went into autopilot. I saw the deer back on the grassy shoulder with its friends as I turned around to continue on my way.

America is its own worst enemy. As we build our interventionist global empire we are unintentionally sowing the seeds of future conflicts. Expanding our military will destabilize the entire globe and has ominous consequences for individual civil liberties as we are already seeing.

U.S. Expands Military Ties Worldwide:

Already, American special forces train armies across Africa. The Pentagon fights war games in the Middle East. U.S. soldiers engage in scores of joint training exercises from South America to Southeast Asia. …

Even before Sept. 11, the military had a presence in 140 countries worldwide. …

“Overall, the American military global presence is more pervasive today than at any point in American history,” said John Pike, a military analyst in Washington.

In some cases, as it courts a country’s military forces, the United States is willing to set aside human rights or other problems.

U.S. officials want to help Indonesia fight possible member clusters of bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, for example, but are under restrictions because of human rights abuses there, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz recently told The New York Times. Those restrictions “really need to be reviewed in the light of Sept. 11,” he said.