public diplomacy – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Empire’s “Mimic Men”

Imperialism by Invitation or Imitation? US efforts in remaking the international system according to an image reflecting the US are not usually in complete vain since the track has already has already been cut. To continue with the analogy, US policy planners and military analysts are concerned about widening and then paving the track so […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Realism or Iconography? The Pentagon’s Implicit Theory of Visual Representation

The following is an extract from my chapter, “A Flickr of Militarization: Photographic Regulation, Symbolic Consecration, and the Strategic Communication of ‘Good Intentions’,” published in Good Intentions: Norms and Practices of Imperial Humanitarianism (Montreal: Alert Press, 2014), pp. 185-279: US military documents make it quite clear that, for the military, a photograph is a straightforward, […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

What Ahmadinejad Did Not Say at the UN, that Some People Instead Chose to Hear

First, let’s start with what should be the starting point, not someone’s preferred interpretation, not a gloss, not a twist, nor an inventive rewording or taking of words out of context–but the actual spoken statement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the 65th session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2010, with particular attention to […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The Military’s Media Whores: On Ethics, Power, Rapport and Responsibility

First, my thanks to Erik Davis (colleague, long time friend of this blog) for directing my attention to this brilliant piece by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone: Lara Logan, You Suck, from which I will quote extensively in the extracts that follow. This is a “notes and quotes” feature of this blog, apart from this […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Militainment: U.S. Military Propaganda in the News Media, Hollywood, and Video Games

“Propaganda is at its most effective when the audience does not know it is being manipulated and one of the best, glitziest examples of that is when propaganda is delivered on the big screen in the guise of a Hollywood blockbuster.”–The Listening Post, 12 June 2010 Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post had an excellent review […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Obama as Opiate: Imperialism Denies Itself as Imperialism

A very incisive article by John Pilger was brought to my attention (thanks again @rodolfob): “Power, Illusion, and America’s Last Taboo,” Dissident Voice, September 2nd, 2009. It is the written version of an address by Pilger this summer in San Francisco, presented in the video above. Here are some of my favourite passages from the […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Public Propaganda, The Human Terrain System, and Staged Democracy in Afghanistan

Some interesting reports have surfaced over the past three weeks concerning initiatives with links to the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), along with reports about control exercised over U.S. journalists, both of which come under the rubric of public propaganda (what proponents call “public diplomacy” and others call “strategic communications”). Gary Langer of ABC […]