Briefly, Ethiopia has issued broadcasting licenses to private FM radio in the Horn of Africa:

Radio Ethiopia, the national radio network of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, yesterday announced the award of contracts for seven turnkey FM tower and antenna installations to Jampro Antennas/RF Systems of Sacramento, California.

Continue reading “Private Radio Stations in Ethiopia
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Who is in charge of our public diplomacy? It was supposed to be the State Department when the USIA was rolled into in 1999. However, Remarks by Secretary Rumsfeld at the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. indicate something else. He is talking about USIA and our foreign image. State and Condi is not for they ‘do not talk directly to the people’, leaving it the military to do our person to person communication.

Read the transcript below and ask yourself if it sounds like the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State talking. I would have highlighted a few items, but the entire speech and the Q&A requires your attention if you want the full impact of the cross-over from Defense to State. Rumsfeld clearly sees himself, with the acquiesence of the President and Cheney, as the guy to best communicate our strategy and direction directly to the people of the world. Between the Rendon Group and CENTCOM reaching out directly to bloggers (no, not me), among other examples, perhaps USIA should be reconstituted within DoD? (Just joking… kind of.)

After
the September 11th attacks the United States fashioned a very large
global coalition who worked together to protect our people and protect
their people. This coalition is probably the largest in the history of
the world, with some 80 or 90 countries working together to make it
more difficult for terrorists to do everything they need to do to be
successful. More difficult to train, to recruit, to raise money, to
establish sanctuaries, to acquire weapons, to cross borders,
communicate.

But the strategy must do a great deal more to
reduce the lure of the extremist ideology, like standing with those
moderate Muslims advocating peaceful change, freedom and tolerance.

Progress is being made. Afghanistan has gone from a
country where the government protected terrorists and imprisoned women,
to one that imprisons terrorists and protects women.  Iraq has gone
from Saddam’s mass graves to mass participation in democratic
elections. A recent survey showed that a large and growing number of
Muslims believe that free systems can work in their country.

The extremists see these changes and they’re desperate
to prevent that progress. One suspects that the terrorists preferred
the battles before September 11th when they were often the only ones on
the offensive.

Today there are some who want America to go back on the
defensive, to the strategy that failed before September 11th. They say
that a retreat from Iraq would provide an American escape from the
violence. However we know that any reprieve would short lived. To the
terrorists the West would remain the great Satan. The war that the
terrorists began would continue. And free people would continue to be
their target.

From time to time one hears the claim that terrorists’
acts are reactions to particular American policy. That’s not so. Their
violence preceded by many years operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and
their violence will not stop until their ideology is confronted by the
values millions on every continent take for granted. The ideas that
liberated moderate Muslims are risking their lives every day to defend
including free systems, individual rights. We must recognize this and
steel ourselves for the long struggle ahead.

QUESTION: [Inaudible]. My question has to do with the war on terror as a war of ideology. The National Defense Strategy, QDR (Quadrennial Defense Review), talks about the war on terror having a significant component as a war of ideology. What do you think we’re doing well with respect to the war of ideology, and what do you think we could do better?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD:
If I were rating, I would say we probably deserve a D or D+ as a
country as how well we’re doing in the battle of ideas that’s taking
place. I’m not going to suggest that it’s easy, but we have not found
the formula as a country.

It’s
basically a struggle not between the West and Muslims. It’s a struggle
within the Muslim faith. There are a relatively small number of violent
extremists and a very large number of moderates who do not believe in
violent extremism in that faith. We’re going to have to find ways that
we can encourage and support those moderate voices because they’re the
ones who are in the struggle.

In the
20th century when I went to Washington fresh out of the Navy in 1957
and we had something called the United States Information Agency. It
wasn’t perfect, but it had libraries around the world, made movies, had
various seminars and opportunities for people to learn more about the
United States. I don’t know what the 21st century version of that is,
but we need it badly and we haven’t got it.

When I was in Congress I remember
President Kennedy was president.  The USIA made a film about the
Kennedy family going to India. It was very promotional and favorable to
them.
It was played back in the United States and Congress got all excited
because taxpayers’ dollars were being used to propagandize the American
people. So the USIA was highly criticized and eventually it was
abolished for all practical purposes.

We had
various other things at Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other
activities that we engaged in. But this is a wonderful country, the
United States of America. The American people are enormously generous.
And we are tolerant as a country. We accept diversity and differences.
We’re far from perfect. But the image that the United States has in the
world as a result of the characterizations by others is unfortunate.
And when people are leaning toward you, as you all know, things are
easy. When people are leaning away from you, things are much more
difficult.

We’re
conducting a war today that for the first time in the history of the
world, in the 21st century, where with all of these new realities —
video cameras and digital cameras and 24 hour talk shows and bloggers
and the internet and e-mails and all of these things that have changed
how people communicate. And as a result, everything anyone says goes to
multiple audiences.  Every time the United States
tries to do anything that would communicate something positive about
what we’re doing in the world we’re criticized in the press and in the
Congress, and we have a reappraisal and say oh, my goodness, is that
something we should be doing? How do we do it in a way that is
considered acceptable in our society?

Right
now we have this issue about some folks out in Iraq working for General
Casey hired a contractor and they wanted to get some truth out — true
stories, not inaccurate stories, not disinformation, but true stories
and the contractor wanted to get those placed in some papers and they
wouldn’t take them, and he paid, apparently paid, the report hasn’t
come to me yet but as I understand it, the contractor apparently paid
some newspapers to run, without putting the word advertisement on it.
It was the truth. They were not lies that were being put in the paper.
They were accurate. But the fuss and the concern in the country has
just been a frenzy over it, so we’re having an investigation. General
Casey ran an investigation of it. He’s now going to send it back and
I’ll look at it and we’ll have to figure out whether that’s something
we ought to do.

If you
put yourself in the shoes of the people in the theater, and they’re out
doing decent, good things frequently day after day, and the press is
just reporting bad things about you in the Iraqi press, the
neighborhood press for example, and they want to get something good
about the fact that they did build a hospital, or they did put a
generator in the school, or they did something else because their
patrols are going out and they want the population to have a balanced
view of what the troops are doing. So they worked with a local
newspaper to try to get those stories in because they felt it would
save lives if the community understood what it is we were doing
completely and not just negative things that were being said through
al-Jazeera or one of the networks that tend to be negative on the
coalition forces.

You can understand their desire to do that. Then you look at the reaction.

So
we’re going to have to find better ways to do it and thus far we
haven’t as a government. The government’s not well organized to do it.
I worry, frankly, about people because of the fact that we do need the
ability to communicate more effectively as a country, and people in the
military have to be willing to do that. If every time anyone in the
military sticks their head up they get penalized for having touched the
third rail, namely done something with the media, that’s not a great
incentive for you folks. Right? But it’s critically important that each
of you have the ability to communicate, to deal with the press, and to
understand where the red lines are and where the lanes are that we have
to stay in because in our society we have to find them. The problem is
that we’ve not yet adapted to all of these new realities that exist and
we’re going to have to do a much better job of it.

Is this a drawing by someone in the Administration of what the Baghdad embassy should look like? Has it entered the blogosphere through FOIA? Alas, no. It does represent "imminent triumph" but not of America or even the West, but of Communism. More here

"The competition for the Palace of Soviets in
Moscow was one of the most extensive and impressive of this century.
The idea of constructing a building which could be a symbol of the
"imminent triumph of communism" in the capital of the world’s first
state of workers and peasants was mooted in the 1920s. The chosen
location was the site of the demolished Church of Christ the Saviour.
The competition was launched in 1931 and carried out in stages.
Overall, 160 entries were submitted, including 12 commissioned ones and
24 which were fiors concours, as well as 112 project proposals. Twenty
four proposals were received from foreign participants, among whom were
such universally acclaimed architects as Le Corbusier, W.Gropius and
E.Mendelssohn."