Avuncular American

Recognizing propaganda

American "soft power," so often undermined and derided by the current occupant of the White House, is on display in Brussels right now, at the European Parliament's "Parlamentarium," its exhibition area for outreach to European and other publics.  I'm sure that Trump loyalists would see it as another emanation of the so-called "Deep State."

On loan from the USHMM, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, "State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda" is a montage of posters, images and other documentation, expertly explained to a public - there are lots of school groups - used to getting its information through a hand held screen.

As you stroll by the exhibits, tracing the rise of Nazi antisemitism in the aftermath of World War I, through the outbreak of World War II and the Final Solution, and finally to Nuremberg and denazification, you can't help but see parallels to our current situation.

Just consider one of the questions posed by the USHMM:

Q: Is propaganda what you think it is?

A: Propaganda is biased information designed to shape public opinion and behavior.

Propaganda:

• Uses truths, half-truths, or lies
• Omits information selectively
• Simplifies complex issues or ideas
• Plays on emotions
• Advertises a cause
• Attacks opponents
• Targets desired audiences

See what I mean?  Can't help thinking of a certain tweeter...

As Hitler said in 1924, "Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert."  Of course, he's the one who also coined the term "the Big Lie."  No fact-checkers were left alive to counter him.

Now, fast forward to April 2018, and look at the Goebbels-lite effort of Sinclair Broadcast Group to impose Trump Think throughout its vast network of local television stations in the United States.

Suggestion for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: after "State of Deception" finishes its run in Brussels next month, repatriate it to be shown in all of the nearly 200 broadcast markets served by Sinclair.  American audiences deserve all the tools they can get to recognize - and counter - the propaganda onslaught that has only just begun.

 

 

Cartoonists as the Footsoldiers of Democracy

If ever there was a time to watch this 2014 film, it's now.

If ever anyone doubted that political cartoonist is a high-risk occupation, yesterday's Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris is devastating proof.

"Les Caricaturistes: Fantassins de la Démocratie" is the definitive documentary on political cartoonists from every part of the world.  It's a chance to discover an NGO which helps defend their efforts on behalf of free speech, "Cartooning for Peace," begun in 2006 under the auspices of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Le Monde's "Plantu" is the star of both film and NGO, never missing a chance to explain the art behind the message or to share the spotlight with his cherished colleagues throughout the world.  Last night he was on the TV news, with his same message of perseverance in the face of the terrorism perpetrated in Paris.

This short (1.5 hours) documentary sketches sympathetic portraits of this diverse group of heroes, who all face, in varying degrees, the threat of violence (or at a minimum, exclusion) in their countries.  A Syrian cartoonist whose hands are broken by Assad's thugs.  A Venezuelan journalist who's called a whore and a lesbian for daring to ridicule Chavez & Co.  Russia's premier political artist, who can't publish anything in Putin's Russia, and drives a night taxi to earn a living.

 

http://www.bedetheque.com/

In the early '90s in Algeria, I remember cartoonist "Slim" taking on the establishment and the reigning social (dis)order, even before he took on the rise of Islamism (which eventually led to his exile).  In a former one-party state, Slim's cartoons were of an amazing candor, and really funny: in a country where orphans of slain moujahid freedom fighters from the 1950s and 60s were provided great advantages (which led people to invent a heroic forebear), he had a 1990s baby in carriage saying, "some day, I'll be the son of a moujahid."  Today, in Algeria, Ali Dilem in Liberté continues to wield his pen, and is appropriately biting about the assassination of the Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Caricaturistes of course can't include every political cartoonist; Steve Bell, the often outrageous and sometimes unfathomable (he was very clear on the Paris killings) Guardian veteran, isn't featured, nor is our own Brussels favorite, Pierre Kroll of Le Soir (here's Kroll on yesterday's murders, Morts de Rire).

Belgian-Israeli cartoonist Michel Kichka believes that political correctness, even more than censorship by authorities, is the greatest threat to the freedom of expression practiced by his profession.  For his part, Plantu paraphrases Franklin Roosevelt's admonition to Americans after Pearl Harbor: "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."  Plantu, like his slain counterparts at Charlie Hebdo, fears nothing, except this: "I am afraid of the fear of others."

That's the wonderful thing about the wave of solidarity shown in the face of this assault on the freedom of expression, and it's the uplifting message of Caricaturistes: those in power (and those who would like to wield power at the point of a gun) fear ridicule, and the Cartoonists are there to show that the (fill in the blank) has no clothes.

Iraq: Sovereign, Secular, Saddamless?

The trigger - a loaded word in this context - was the release in Brussels of The Hurt Locker, an excellent film in my book, and worthy of its Oscars.

What did it set off?  Well, my first mention of Iraq in this blog in about 6 months.  We should think about Iraq more often - the US does have close to 100,000 troops still there.

Democrats Abroad Belgium (DAB) organized a screening and discussion at the Cinéma Styx, an institution like no other here.  Tucked away in a residential district, it offers space for about 35 people - just right for a discussion.

I came prepared, having read a couple of interviews with Mark Boal, the journalist whose two-week embedding with an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in 2004 was the basis of an article that he then turned into a screenplay.  It was the embedding that put me on guard, but Boal was very conscious of the "controlled and antiseptic" coverage of the war on American TV.

Here, I think his stint with the EOD guys yielded the right perspective.  As George Packer - the New Yorker writer who also spent time in Iraq - says, “The Hurt Locker isn’t an Iraq movie—it’s a war movie."  Specifically, a war movie about three guys in a bomb disposal unit.  Period.

That said, our DAB audience found a few inklings of political sensibility.  A comment from one of the soldiers about turning possibly innocent civilian suspects into insurgents.   A disoriented moment back in a Stateside supermarket on R&R and other hints of the PTSD that afflicts thousands of troops (and civilians) who never get used to the everywhere-all-the-time war zone.

Some of the Democrats' comments about authenticity echoed those of veterans, especially the depiction - for dramatic purposes - of EOD experts breaking out of their assigned duties to chase suspected insurgents down dangerous Baghdad alleys, without even those famous night vision goggles, let alone infantry backup.

And the film's depiction of the Iraqis?  George Packer again:

There are no Iraqi characters to speak of, but the walk-ons and extras behave, with one or two exceptions, exactly as their real counterparts would—that is, they treat the Americans with wary hostility, ingratiation, or bafflement.

I think that gets it about right, and I think Robert Scheer's calling The Hurt Locker "chauvinistic" is a bit off the mark, despite its US-centric focus.  It's clear that the main character is addicted to war ('war is a drug," the Chris Hedges quote, opens the film).  The final scene gets you thinking - is the US addicted too, to military adventures in the Middle East?

Which brings me back to Iraq, which The Hurt Locker, though set in 2004, rightly reminds us of.  Can it be sovereign with those tens of thousands of US troops there, even after withdrawal from the major cities?  Can it ever again be secular (recent elections provide no conclusive answer), or has the US intervention made a Shia theocracy inevitable?  And even though Saddam Hussein and his family pose no threat, history would indicate that strong men are never ruled out.

So, where does that leave us with The Hurt Locker?  It's a good film, accurate (up to a point) in its portrayal of a highly specialized unit at a given time in 2004.  But the Iraq war didn't end in 2004, and American EOD people continue to ply their trade in Iraq.  It's a good war film, but it's not the definitive Iraq war film, despite the Oscars.  Not yet.

Just like Vietnam and Apocalypse Now and Platoon, we'll have to wait until the war is really over.

US To Lose Its World Focus

On April 2, to be precise.

That's when PBS channel WNET will broadcast the final airing of its international TV news program World Focus.  Full disclosure: Avuncular American is on World Focus' "Blogwatch" roll, and I'm not sure what will become of its eclectic and world-spanning collection of blogs.  Like the TV program, the Blogwatch people at World Focus sought out blogs from every corner of the world.

These days, interesting websites come and go - Baghdad Burning and The Hegemonist were two excellent blogs 'til they just stopped in their tracks - with such regularity that some people might not get worked up about the loss of a TV news program.  The difference being the international focus of WF, and that it was on American TV screens.  American audiences have already seen the steady diminution of international coverage from the heydays of network news in the 60s and 70s, when the Big Three of CBS, NBC, and ABC fielded correspondents across the globe.

The sad announcement from World Focus explained that it was all about money: great concept, growing audience, but expensive to produce in recessional America, when all kinds of great ideas must scrounge for dwindling philanthropic resources.  How many former donors were burned by Bernie, or lost it all with Lehman?

Worked up about a TV program that I don't even watch (my capacity for video streaming in a two-inch square box is limited to cute kitty videos that last 90 seconds)?  No, it's especially about a lost opportunity for Americans to learn more about the world than breathless anchor coverage of Haitian disasters can provide.

Next lost opportunity to mourn: the world's ability to learn about America through sites like the New York Times, which, after an apparently unsatisfactory pay-as-you-go experience a couple of years ago, is going to give it a go again.  Yes, I know that journalists have to be paid and the lights kept on, but readership will inevitably shift to those papers, like The Guardian, which plan to remain free.  I love The Guardian, and it has excellent coverage of US topics through columnists like Gary Younge and Michael Tomasky.  But it's a UK-based paper.

World focus, both inbound and outbound, is an activity that also needs to have its US practitioners.

Image: FocusTestChart.com

Blogs - Consider Your Sources

Think B4 U Post

Last week's "Safer Internet Day" was largely devoted to protecting children from the ravages out there online, but this year's theme - "Think B4 U Post" - is good advice for all of us. Even as eminent (but a mite too publicity-hungry) a philosopher as Bernard-Henri Lévy can fall for hoaxes, given his eagerness to pontificate.

Mother Jones ("Dr. Evil's Payday") reminded us that in the US, even the mainstream press is regularly hoodwinked by very private profiteers posing as nonprofit "public interest" groups.

Perhaps inspired by the need to warn people of the dangers of believing everything you see or read, Franco-German TV channel Arte carried a scary program, which you may still be able to see here.  Scary because of the kinds of things that pass for "news" or "fact" on the web, such as a whole lot of 9/11 conspiracy stuff.  Ludicrous as it is, many people apparently take it for gospel truth.

Meanwhile, a group of European journalists spent five days in a French farmhouse with Twitter and Facebook as their only source of information.  Along with the "flotsam and jetsam" of the "pointless babble," they reported, they also got repeated huge does of American headlines and little else.

Which brings me to sourcing.   Many years before I started blogging, before there was even something called the internet, I took a short course in "writing to order" at the Foreign Service Institute, and it was mostly about a core competency in diplomacy - reporting.  Prior to email's informalization and instantization of diplomatic communication, diplomats had to draft "cables" or telegrams from the field, reporting on developments in bilateral relations, the internal political scene - anything that might impact on US interests.

Every year, the State Department judged cables according to criteria that bloggers would do well to keep in mind:

• Sourcing: Is this first hand observation, based on a discussion with someone in the know, or is it derived from newspaper reporting?
• Relevance: It may be beautifully written, but is it important?
• Accessible: It better have a clear summary up front - even better if the title summarizes the message.

Our group was shown examples of what, at first glance, might have seemed award-winners, but the prose often covered up serious shortcomings in sourcing.  There was an awful lot of derivative stuff from newspapers, which came to be lumped in under "open sourcing."  The prizewinners were those who had gone out into the field and observed for themselves.

Recently, I read the late, great Polish correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski's last book, Travels With Herodotus.   Herodotus' Histories was Kapuscinski's travel companion for his years reporting on war and coups from Accra to Zanzibar, and Mr. K. considers him not just the first historian, but the first reporter:

But how could Herodotus, a Greek, know what the faraway Persians are saying?  It was because he traveled to where they were, asked, observed, and collected information from what he himself saw and what others told him.  His first act, therefore, was the journey.  But is that not the case for all reporters?

Not all bloggers can hope to imitate Herodotus or Kapuscinksi, and even armchair generals have some good ideas.  But consideration of the source is essential.  It is still up to the reader of newspapers or blogs - as Whirled View's Patricia Lee Sharpe has shown - to separate the wheat from the chaff.

A Cartoon Worth 1000 Words

Britain's Guardian newspaper has a couple of our favorite political cartoonists, whose ability (and eagerness) to go for the jugular is more finely honed than most of their North American cousins'.  Case in point: Martin Rowson from Saturday's Guardian, on "Bones and Bonuses," a haunting depiction of contrasting values in the 21st century.

The full title of Rowson's drawing is "The World As It Is, or, Bones and Bonuses."  Be sure to check out Rowson's colleague Steve Bell's take on Haiti, "Perhaps if Haiti were a bank..."

Renewable Resource: 2,000 Years of History

"2000 Ans d'Histoire," the name of the most podcasted radio program in France, celebrated its tenth anniversary today (apologies to Roman numeralists if I got the X's and the C's misplaced).

I've been listening to Patrice Gélinet off and on for the last decade, but that's normal for a quinquagenarian who used to beg his father for stories from the war in the Pacific.  What's more instructive is the podcasting fame - people in their twenties and thirties for whom history is no less fascinating.  If you want to subscribe, here's the link.

Today's special anniversary broadcast gathered some of France's finest TV and radio historians, an interesting subset of a discipline which has been much in the news of late.  Why?  Because the Sarkozy/Fillon government has floated two related but contradictory themes: (1) the removal of history and geography from part of the secondary school (baccalaureate) curriculum; and (2) launching an emotion-charged debate on "the national identity."  The question has been posed before: how can people who lack historical perspective appreciate the genesis of their nation's identity?

Gélinet's guests included Patrick Rotman (documentary film maker), Alain Decaux (the father of French radio and TV historical programs), and Marc Ferro, whose "Histoire Parallèle" series took us back 50 years, day by day, during the 90s commemorations of World War II and early Cold War history.  These gentlemen could be expected to come to the defense of teaching history in schools, but they pointed out that in poll after poll, a huge majority of French people not only remain attached to the lifelong study of history, but also wanted their children to be exposed to it, especially as future voting citizens.

2000 Ans d'Histoire has hit upon a formula that works.  Broadcast at 1:30 PM, it catches a number of people during their lunch hour on weekdays.  Then there's the podcast for those who can't listen to the live or taped broadcast.  Black marketing during the Occupation; Harkis during the Algerian war for independence; any subject in the last couple of millennia (give or take a few years) is good for a half hour's attention.

Gélinet (photo at right from the site), a former history professor, says he always knew "when I was boring my students."  His series never does: replete with sound archives, excerpts from old films, or period music, his interviews of historians and authors are researched and scripted with utmost care.

Between France Inter and France Culture, two non-commercial public stations, radio audiences in France have a similar choice as American listeners to National Public Radio and British audiences of BBC's Radio Four.  With the Franco-German TV channel Arte, audiences in both countries get quality documentaries and other cultural programming during prime time.  In a range of channels that for most households does not exceed 5 or 6 choices, such a concentration of culture is bound to have more effect than a lone PBS channel lost among hundreds (thousands?) of American cable/satellite channels that are available to some Americans.

If the populace wants bread and circuses, well, what politician is going to deprive them?  But what if they want something better?  If Sarkozy, for reasons known only to him, wants to deprive 17-18 year olds from delving into the lessons of history, maybe the 80% of French citizens who approve of the teaching of history (many of whom listen to programs like 2000 Ans d'Histoire or who watch Arte's "Les Mercredis de l'Histoire") should provide him a history lesson.

Man Of the 20th Century, Walter Cronkite

When legendary BBC/PBS commentator Alistair Cooke died a few years ago, it was like losing your grandfather, whose wisdom you would now have to do without.  Now we've lost Walter Cronkite, who told us every night "And that's the way it is."  Great was the impact of these authoritative chroniclers of the Twentieth Century.

Cronkite, who hosted a weekly documentary series "The 20th Century" as well as two decades' worth of the evening news for CBS, epitomized the best of broadcast journalism.  His presence was reassuring, even if the news he was relating was of the most jarring sort: war (Vietnam), assassination (the Kennedys, MLK), or revolution (Iran, and the ensuing hostage crisis).

In TPM, David Kurtz provides a touching remembrance of a childhood influenced by this father figure.

The passing of Walter Cronkite also reminds us of the demise of The News, as in "did you see The News last night?"  It was mainly a reference to Cronkite's CBS Evening News, and it invariably included reports from a string of American correspondents positioned across the globe.

Cronkite and his international team are now gone, replaced by pretty boy (or girl) anchors who rely on technicians whose prowess with pixels cannot patch over the lack of depth or analysis.  Cronkite had an amazing team of journalists, reporters like him who had covered World War II with Edward R. Murrow: men like Eric Severeid, who died in 1992, and Richard C. Hottelet, whose work had landed him in a Nazi jail.  Cronkite and his colleagues were literate, homespun, authoritative, and must have been appalled in ensuing years by the downward spiral of TV "journalism" that is embodied by the likes of Fox News.

Readers in the US will be able to watch the CBS tribute, "That's The Way It Was: Remembering Walter Cronkite" (image), tomorrow Sunday 19 July at 7:00 PM EST; for the rest of us, they have put up a nice page of text and video here.

Walter Cronkite, the original "avuncular American."

Charles Bowden, Chronicler of Mexico's Drug War

"Gunmen Boldly Attack Federal Forces In Mexico," reads the AP article after yesterday's multi-city attacks.  Reminded me of two essential-reading articles by American journalist Charles Bowden.  If you want to learn about Mexican realities, you can't find a better source.

I don't purport to know much about Mexico, other than this: it is the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country, and its 100 million + people share a border with the United States that stretches for more than 3,000 kilometers.

And this: "In 2008, more than 6,000 Mexicans died in the drug violence, a larger loss than the United States has endured during the entire Iraq War."

The quote is from Charles Bowden's article in the July/August issue of Mother Jones, "We Bring Fear."  Nothing tops its portrayal of an honest Mexican journalist who had to flee from the Mexican Army in fear for his life.

Bowden is a master of suspense, of making you care for his subject.  "We Bring Fear" makes the reader share the fear of Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, who has crossed the Army by writing stories about the utter impunity with which it carries out its work.  And the matter of the Army's complicity in the very drug trade that it has been charged to fight.

Read Bowden's article to see if Gutiérrez Soto obtains asylum in the US, and the rest of MoJo for its "Totally Wasted" issue devoted to the never-ending War On Drugs.

For a look inside Mexico's drug cartels, Bowden's "The Sicario: A Juarez Hit Man Speaks" in the May Harper's is riveting reading.

The term sicario goes back to Roman Palestine, where a Jewish sect, the Sicarii, used concealed daggers (sicae) in their murders of Romans and their supporters.

There's nothing "patriotic" in the work of the modern Mexican sicario: just dealing out death, in all of its most horrid forms, to those who fall afoul of the cartel.  Oh yes: Bowden's repentant sicario is a policeman, whose work for the cartel was indistinguishable from that of his day job as a cop.

Bowden's reporting from the field ("Juarez is a death machine") is nothing less than heroic, and he is an acknowledged expert on the war on drugs and undocumented migrants.  He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

With the border - a few miles south of Tucson - as porous as it is, I hope for his sake that he lives in gated community.  Except, as we learned from the Mexican/Uruguayan film La Zona, walls don't afford protection when the barrio is everywhere.

(Map: Mapas-de-Mexico.com)

The News From America

Tomorrow is the official Independence Day holiday, but today is a Federal holiday in the U.S.  Happy Fourth of July!  If you're in New York, you can even visit the crown of the Statue of Liberty, closed since September 11, 2001.  (photo, National Park Service).

But most of the attention instead appears to be focused on the Pacific coast, where what has to be the world's largest concentration of journalists and hysterical sycophants since the death of Lady Di has gathered to follow the minutiae surrounding Michael Jackson's sudden demise. 

Writer James Howard Kunstler sees disturbing parallels between the late Jackson and his country ("bankrupt," "has-been"), as the State of California's travails remind us.  But will the thousands of info-tainment reporters camped outside Neverland use some of their Jackson down-time to cover the story behind California's fiscal crisis?  Don't count on it.  The audiences back home which lap up every detail about Jackson might be bored by a bit of real reporting about real people in the US.

Like the kind pictured standing behind California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as he does battle with budget and banks.  As Jennifer Steinhauer reported for the New York Times,

It was unclear whether the i.o.u.’s, known as warrants, would be accepted by all of the banks in California, which were caught off guard by the move and seemed hesitant to entrust the state to repay the them — at an interest rate of 3.75 percent — in October, as promised.

Now, these would be the same banks that themselves have been receiving billions in government bailout money, some of which comes from those California taxpayers pictured behind the Governor.

I.O.U.s - reminds you of that wonderful rebranding of bailed-out "AIG" into "AIU" (what were they thinking?) - and the haughty attitude of banks in general were on my mind this morning as I sat in a stifling lobby marveling at the (lone) teller behind the glass of her air conditioned space.  On the wall behind her was a poster asking people why - if they owned a computer - they didn't conduct their banking business over the internet?

As it happened, the transaction I needed to accomplish couldn't be done either over the web or at the ATMs arrayed outside this branch.  Otherwise I can assure you I wouldn't have sat a minute more in that sauna.  But why do we have banks?  Have they completely forgotten where their money comes from?  But I digress, sort of.

Back to the US.  On July 4, 1776, representatives of the thirteen colonies signed the Declaration of Independence and set off the process that led to the founding of the United States of America.  They had had it with the "long train of abuses and usurpations" by a distant ruler.

California has often been a trend setter or harbinger for things good and bad.  If banks start biting the hand - government - that feeds them, then it won't be long before taxpayers will act on the resentment against the financial class that has been building up after bailouts, bonuses, Madoff, Stanford...

California banks: better take those State warrants, if you know what's good for you.  Remember who issues your license.  Hint: "I'll be back."