Top Floors Read the Consular Corner

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From FS blog, SassAndSweet "“Observations about working as a Diplomat. Thoughts on living in Israel. Comments on life, the universe and everything.” Extracted from entry What to Write, What to Write?

I have to send a shout out to & word of appreciation LS who kindly congratulated me a couple weeks back via the Consular Corner re: my Olympics Posting to Whistler.

[…]

so my thanks to LS is for posting the word and congrats that I'd heading to Whistler for the Olympics because THAT got noticed by Public Affairs & Consular Affairs and last week an email popped into my inbox at work...

I'm hardly the only one but ... among other imminently more qualified people than myself. I've been asked to write a blog entry to be published by the Department of State about my posting to Whistler. We've negotiated subject and timing so I'll be writing it 48 hours after my arrival - and discussing first impressions, my role up there for the upcoming Olympics, and probably some "Ra Ra State!" wordings. Which I'm cool w/because I like my job and my employer. Most days... :)

Active links added above. The writer has been tapped to open State's first temporary consular office in Whistler, Canada to provide support for the U.S. Olympic Committee and consular assistance to American tourists attending the Olympic Games.



The up floors as much as the down floors probably read Liam's Consular Corner (newsletter and Facebook). Now that's something to think about, ya?

Thanksgiving Around the Foreign Service

I wanted to do this last week but did not get around to it (turkey’s fault). Here is a quick round-up of FS folks who marked Thanksgiving last week in their own special way:

US Ambassador to Moscow, John Beyrle posted a brief note on Thanksgiving last week. Check this out if you read Russian.

US Embassy Tokyo DCM, James Zumwalt of the “Z Notes” blog, also wrote about Thanksgiving here.

US Ambssador to Canada, David Jacobson blogged about family and Thanksgiving traditions and had the Marines over for fried turkeys with lots of Cajun spices.

Anne Frej of the Public Affairs Section of U.S. Embassy Kabul blogged in DipNote about celebrating both Thanksgiving and Eid e Qurban, the Muslim days of sacrifice in Kabul.

Josh Glazeroff, the visa chief at U.S. Embassy New Delhi wrote in in the official blog about Thanksgiving in India as also a day of remembrance and how 26/11 will always be remembered as an infamous day in the country for the Mumbai attacks last year.

In Germany, Ambassador Philip Murphy carved the turkey after he gave a speech during the Annual Fulbright Thanksgiving Dinner.

US Embassy Berlin Photo

On Thanksgiving Thursday, a small group of embassy volunteers led by Ambassador Ertharin Cousin (UNFAO) visited an orphanage and served and shared a Thanksgiving meal, complete with the uniquely American cheesecake donated by Eli’s in Chicago, to immigrant families from all over the world. Read more here.

Photo from DipNote Blog

Over at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and wife, Ching, visited U.S. service members and civilians and thank them for their service on Thanksgiving Day.

Photo by U.S. Army Capt. Michael Greenberger

In the Southern Philippines, Ambassador extraordinaire to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney served food to our troops in Mindanao and wrote about her family’s Thanksgiving tradition in her blog:

Photo from Amb Kenney's Blog

“This year, I traveled from Manila to celebrate Thanksgiving lunch in Zamboanga with temporarily deployed U.S. troops. The makeshift dining hall was festooned with streamers and turkey cut-outs. In accordance with tradition, I served the food to our troops, joined by the most senior U.S. military officer present and visiting U.S. Congressman Bob Filner.” Read her whole post here.

We also have post-Thanksgiving “thank yous” for the following generous souls:To the ambassadors and deputy ambassadors who we heard had invited single folks and newcomers to their Thanksgiving events this year, thank you. It makes a difference when you did not have to go and “catch-your-own” turkey at a farm or “cook-your-own” turkey in borrowed kitchenware when you just arrived in town.To the Foreign Service families who opened their homes to Peace Corp volunteers, some of whom have been on forced diet of rice and beans or fried fish for many months, we thank you for your generosity.To the Consular Section chiefs who made every effort to invite the local staff to their thanksgiving gigs, we appreciate your gestures. Some of these local national employees have worked for the USG for 5-10 years and have never ever been to a thanksgiving dinner. Thank you.

HRC: Up and about with an elbow cast ...

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leave the Oval Office after a meeting on June 22, 2009. Secretary Clinton broke her elbow last week and had surgery on Friday. Some of her 18 million supporters and proud Hillary villagers have posted their well wishes in DipNote.

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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Office of the Spokesman: Ian Kelly Signs On

Secretary Clinton came down to the briefing room and spoke to the media at the State Department to announce the release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi from prison in Iran. She then introduced Ian Kelly as the new State Department spokesman, thanked Robert Wood publicly and turned over the briefing to the new spokesman. This video of State Department Press Briefing with Secretary Clinton & Spokesman Ian Kelly is from c-span as it has not been posted in state.gov yet.

Ian Kelly is a career Foreign Service officer, a Russia hand, who has recently served as the director of State’s Office of Russian Affairs. He has also served in Milan, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Belgrade, Vienna, Washington, Ankara, Rome and Brussels. He was spokesman at US Embassy Rome and I think did the same gig at the US Embassy Ankara. He will reportedly serve as the chief spokesman and daily briefer. Will post the official bio when it becomes available.


I understand that career FSO, Robert Wood who has been acting spokesman since Sean McCormack’s departure will stay on as his deputy. Meanwhile, their soon-to-be boss, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs-designate, PJ Crowley, will appear at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his nomination hearing this week.

Update 4:06 PM EST
Video of Secretary Clinton & Spokesman Ian Kelly's first daily press brief is below; transcript for this DPB is here. Transcript of Secretary Clinton's introduction of the new spokesman is here. Then Mr. Kelly blogs about his first day at the podium over at DipNote.

Ambassador Kenney: Under the Sea and More

Last month, I did some quick posts on US Ambassador to Indonesia Cameron Hume with the sharks -- here, here and here. I am happy to report that he is not the only one who can do "under the sea" gigs. Our ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney can also dive (this one was taken in Boracay). Helped free a green sea turtle, did a soccer drill, more...

Ambassador Kenney is a career diplomat and is the first female U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines. She is also one of our very few diplomats ambassadors who maintains an official blog (US Ambassador to Korea Kathleen Stephens is another one), and the first to have a blog hosted by www.america.gov; I supposed DipNote will not blogroll these official blogs, huh? Blame it on Smith-Mundt?

One thing I must say, I think she has a good ear on the ground over in those islands. When Manny Pacquiao KO Ricky Hatton at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas last week to join the short list of boxing's quintuple champions, Ambassador Kenney's US Embassy was quick to laud Pacquiao for 'dedication to excellence'. The ambassador herself blogged about it in her Sports and Champions post. Anyway, check out her blog here. Not much in terms of foreign policy there but that is to be expected, I think.

Photos below are all screen captures from the US Embassy Manila website (they don't make it easy to download or copy these photos). Hey, guys, it's time to move to Flickr!

Ambassador Kenney in Boracay, Philippines

Related Item:

The Ambassador is having a ball
Manila Bulletin: May 10, 2009, 2:07pm

DipNote Has Turned Green for Earth Day

The State Department's official blog, DipNote got a splash of colors today, just in time for Earth Day. There is also a video post from the Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern. Check it out here.

Diplomatic Blogs: Truth, Power and Authenticity

The FCO hosted a digital diplomacy event yesterday. You can read Stephen Hale’s post here or check out their Bringing Foreign Policy Home page here. The FCO has linked to some bloggers who have offered reflections, not all positive, on their digital diplomacy efforts: Tony Curzon Price, Simon Dickson, Ian Brown, John Duncan.

I should note that the FCO probably has the largest number of ambassadors who have waded into blogging. In addition to the Foreign Secretary, there are about a dozen of them (check out this page) plus other FCO officials. By contrast, in the State Department, outside of the occasional postings you see in DipNote by US ambassadors, only a couple have official blogs (Ambassador Kinney in the Philippines and Ambassador Stephens in South Korea). There are a few other blogs run by PD sections -- like the ones in London and Sri Lanka, but there is no aggregator for all of them.

I am republishing Tony Curzon Price’s piece below (with permission) entitled Blogs, truth and power at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office because his point on an agency seeking to influence in a transparent and authentic way should be food for thought for the State Department and its bloggers as it expand into digital engagement.

Tony Curzon Price is Editor-in-Chief of openDemocracy. He received a PhD in economics from University College London (UCL), and worked as a jobbing economist for more than ten years. He founded a high-tech electronics company, Arithmatica, in 1998 and lived in Silicon Valley from 2001 to 2004.

Blogs, truth and power at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
By Tony Curzon Price

I went to a fascinating meeting at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office on their "digital diplomacy" initiative. The ambassadors are blogging -- you can see them aggregated here.

You might think that encouraging blogging at all levels by the foreign office would be a marketing disaster waiting to happen: surely someone was going to put a foot into a pretty well-laid trap very soon. How can "our man in Lisbon" (blogging here, in Portuguese) avoid being drawn into a debate on the state of the PIGS or the Portuguese criminal justice system that will reflect badly on the brand --- UK Plc, mostly --- he is promoting and representing?

Well, the question answers itself: it is not for nothing that he is "our man". Actually, the FCO has always needed a culture of "presumption of competence" because representatives were sent many days' travel away from any check on their power. Delegation had to be real. So there is almost no institution in the world (the Catholic Church springs to mind as a contender for that title) more suited to showing off its organisational discipline under decentralisation than the old imperial foreign ministries.

The result of all this is fascinating. Read John Duncan, for example, on Arms Treaty Negotiations. Remember that it was the failure of the chemical and biological weapons negotiations that left the door wide-open for the accusation that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. A working treaty here could have prevented the Iraq war. Will the sort of transparency that comes from this sort of blogging raise these issues to the level of importance they should have?

Ian Brown, from the Oxford Internet Institute, raised the question of how an Ambassador's blog could be authentic. Surely they're just shilling for her Majesty's government, even the blog from news-poor Zimbabwe?

This is obviously the big question for government use of new media. Just as technology allowed disintermediation of finance---and so all the excesses that we are now paying for---so that disintermediation is now hitting the production of knowledge. And we don't want to happen to knowledge what happened to money ...

My own take on this is that there are two views of the business of knowledge making: you are either trying to influence outcomes, or you are trying to "speak truth to power". In the new media, you can't afford to pretend to be doing the one when you're doing the other. The FCO cannot - just cannot - speak truth to power, because it is power. But it can transparently and authentically try to influence.

The bigger question of whether there is anyone left who has the legitimacy to speak truth rather than simply seek influence is a big question for our time. Like the analogy with finance, we now operate, as it were, without a gold standard. Beware, therefore, the inflation of all claims.

Diplomatic Bloggers: The Absent is Always Wrong

That “Official Concern” Thingy/4

There are slightly over a hundred private blogs maintained by diplomatic personnel and their family members (Digger of Life After Jerusalem also has an extensive list). Mostly, the blogs were set up to stay in touch with family members and friends back home or as catalogs of their uncommon experiences overseas (local food, exotic travel, foreign culture, etc.). Sometimes, the blogs are a “thinking out loud” online journal on the challenges of life abroad – falling ill overseas, assisting in the repatriation of a deceased American, adjusting to life abroad, tackling 12-hour work in a mass casualty incident, trying to find one’s place amidst constant relocation - in the case of family members, flooded houses, horrendous traffic, eating salad seasoned with Clorox, or just the blahs of life when one is way from family and friends …

E. Wayne Merry recently wrote an op-ed in Washington Times: “In most developed countries, the diplomatic service enjoys a stature sorely lacking here. In part this is because the Foreign Service does not engage the American public, press and Congress.”

I tend to agree. In fact, listening to public officials justifying the lack of funding for the State Department, one often hears about the agency’s and the Foreign Service’s lack of a “natural constituency.” The lack of support in Congress and the American public on State Department and USAID programs is often attributed to the fact that the FS is not supported by a specific voting block (unlike the military with operations across many states, and local jobs, supported by senators and representatives). The USAID funding to development overseas is also often misunderstood even when the US spends less than 1% of the federal budget on development assistance.

But there is also another reason – the State Department, as well as USAID have not figured out how to effectively tell its story. The stories when told are vetted many rungs up so what the American public gets is mostly the “happy talk” and the lighter side of success – you know what I mean, you read them every month in the State magazine.

It’s no wonder that Congress and the American public remains enamored with the notion that diplomats are cookie pushers conducting diplomacy within the cocktail circuits. Have they heard of a family member who lost her hearing for lack of a medical facility, of children suffering from chronic respiratory problems because of bad air, of officers who put in 12-14 hours day with no overtime, of spouses struggling for lack of career options, of officers who are separated from families due to unaccompanied assignments … there are a lot more stories like that …

Figures and charts are nice to look at but people look at them and then forget about them; stories on the other hand, tend to linger longer, connect better and when told well, get passed along.

The Bureau of Public Affairs (PA) carries out the Secretary's mandate to help the American public understand the importance of foreign affairs. But how many citizens went and write to their congressional representatives to help lobby for more funding for the State Department? Makes you wonder how effective it did on this area, considering the anemic funding in the last four years of the previous administration. In fact, I can count with my fingers the times when there were some real public reaction about the Foreign Service or our diplomats in recent memory -- 1) made-up "controversy" (e.g Iraq staffing) , 2) some visa, passport, other scandals and 3) embassy attack or diplomatic casualty. I think empathy for the Service usually runs at the lower end of the stick.


Under PA is a program called “The Secretary's Hometown Diplomats Program.” It is “designed to explain to America what we do and why it matters. We do this by tapping into our best resource: our people. Employees volunteer their time on scheduled trips back to their hometown (during home leave and hometown visits) to talk to local organizations, their elementary and high schools, their college alma maters, meet with state and local elected officials, and to participate in media interviews.”

But think about it -- what if PA develop the Hometown Diplomats Program into a blog aggregator (similar to HuffPo, the Progressive Realist or the FCO) and includes several from the 100 or so private blogs to tell the story of the men and women in the Foreign Service and USAID? Instead of one diplomat reaching out to an audience in his/her hometown, the diplomat has the potential to reach a larger public audience online. It need not be a one-time encounter, it can even develop into an online community with ongoing conversations. Interested personnel can register as bloggers in their private capacity (and work in their own time) and can pre-select subjects that they are willing to write about (e.g. LGBT issues, life in the FS, languages and foreign culture, representing America, development work, transition and relocation, leadership or professional development, etc. etc.).

But those restrictions under the “of official concern” umbrella just would not work in the blogging universe. So if State wants to do this the right way, the regs need some tweaking.

For those who want to blog specifically about policy, PA can open up the official roll of bloggers to diplomats who are not necessarily doing a PA tour of duty. They do have guest bloggers over at DipNote occasionally but then -- you never hear from the same blogger again; except for the Spokesman. The way I see it, the Spokesman already has the podium to talk about the official policy, he/she does not really need to be the primary blogger. Other folks with real names/titles should do that.

The FCO has been experimenting with digital diplomacy since 2007 but it provides some straight-forward rules and guidance: they insist that the bloggers think hard about what they are trying to achieve and who their target audience is before they begin. And they are asked to commit to posting regularly and moderating comments every day. Although they are offered tips on effective use of the medium, FCO bloggers are not told how to write.

Why am I harping on this? According to the 2008 Internet statistics, there are 220.1 million Internet users in the United States. Our Internet penetration rate is currently at 72.5% (the percentage of the total population of a given country or region that uses the Internet). That is the highest in North America.

In related stats, 54% of all online adults in the United States used the government sites. The generational differences in online activities specifically in the use of government sites are as follows:

• Trailing boomers (age 41-50) – 64 %
• Leading Boomers (51-59) – 60%
• Gen X (29-40) – 56%

I just think that with effective use of technology, there is considerable opportunity to engage the American public on the work of the State Department and USAID. We don't need more fact sheets and briefing papers. What these agencies for diplomacy and development need are more storytellers -- not spin, just real stories from the trenches.

The absent is always wrong. How much longer is State/USAID going to be absent from the online conversation that is bursting a thousandfold?

Randy Pausch used to say that "the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." I recognize that there are security issues, and the mindset of hoarding/protecting information as well, among specific challenges that need to be overcome. But that is all part of this fast changing fascinating new world. The real challenge is the organization’s ability and willingness to seize the moment, consider the brick walls, and find ways to operate from “what can’t be done” to “what is possible.”

My mate helpfully points out that if real folks write about the "realities" of FS life, that if might turn off applicants for the Foreign Service. Well, look -- there is always that as a possibility. But considering that the Government pays a chunk of taxpayer money to train diplomats in languages and other functional skills, and to ship and house them and their families overseas -- wouldn't it make much more sense to have recruits who know exactly what they are getting into, rather than have recruits from cloud nine who flames out and quit when their expectations are not met?

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• Diplomatic Bloggers: To Blog or Not to Blog
• Diplomatic Bloggers: That “Official Concern” Thingy – The Rules
• Diplomatic Bloggers: Official Blogs, Art Thou Here to Stay?
• Diplomatic Bloggers: Web 2.0 Door Opens

• 
  

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Diplomatic Bloggers: Official Blogs, Art Thou Here to Stay?

The State Department has DipNote where posts are written, with some exceptions, by the mostly nameless “DipNote Bloggers.” The Brits has the FCO Bloggers: Global Conversations website which collects their official bloggers in one place, complete with full names and titles, including the Foreign Office Secretary David Milliband, who posts regularly. I don’t know of any other large collection of diplomatic bloggers, except these and the un-official ones (diplomats/diplomatic community members blogging in their private capacity).

The former British Ambassador Charles Crawford has written a few posts on diplomatic blogging. He thought in his post here that “the FCO has a goodly bunch, albeit with tone of unrelenting 'corporate' cheeriness, eschewing anything controversial/awkward in policy or philosphical terms.” But his indictment was that “FCO blogs are a friendly but bland product, making no serious contribution to the 'global foreign policy debate'.

I kind of look at both DipNote and the FCO Blogs as toddlers learning to walk; my hope is that they are fast learners and that they will become more agile as they grow older. Well, one can hope, and hoping is still free…

I have started reading the FCO bloggers because they provide a bit more flavor than our folks over at C Street and I like some of them because of the personal tone. One comment about the blogs: FCO bloggers try to keep to policy areas they have responsiblity for. Diverging from this has caused the odd frantic call from London to the offending blogger. What? They do that?

But Why Would a Diplomat Blog?

One of the FCO blogs by Stephen Hale, the Head of Engagement, Digital Diplomacy, tries to explain where FCO blogging fits in to the UK's foreign policy priorities: More niche blogs, with well defined objectives, linked to specific projects or campaigns. Because the web is about niches, and it's within niches that blogs can have real value. We want our bloggers to reach their particular target audiences (rather than to generate general-interest traffic). Read Stephen Hale’s Why Would a Diplomat Blog?

Ambassador Crawford still is not convinced with its utility, writing: “But how precisely do you begin to define what a 'target audience' is for any given diplomatic blog then target it without being at least a bit sharp and different? It takes months if not years to build up a non-trivial readership - blandness is not the way to do it.” Noah Shachtman over at Danger Room wrote something about this recently in his Info Wars post: “…you need a message that's sharp, and simple. Bland statements-by-committee just don't work. In fact, the more you vet and control your statements, the less effective it is.”

I think that the genie is out of the bottle and can’t be put back in. So here we are; the choices are clear ‘cuz according to the French – “the absent are always wrong.”

Blogs and the other new/social media provide an opportunity to improved engagement among the immediate audience and the larger global audience of these organizations. It is an entirely different world out there; the information superhighway has gotten terribly busier. Although Asia has the largest number of Internet users in the world at 650.4 millions, two other regions register the highest growth of internet usage between 2000-2008. Wanna guess which two?

The Middle East with a growth rate of Internet usage at 1,296.2 %

And Africa with a growth rate of 1,100.0 %.

This should give us some pause.

An Op-ed a Day, Rapid Response or Something Else?

Somebody made a comment that writing a blog is like writing an op-ed a day and worth the exercise. For which Ambassador Crawford responds:

“Blogs offer you the chance to write an op-ed a day. So do newspapers. Yet how many op-ed pieces by serving British diplomats have there ever been? None? The point is that under the way our democracy functions British diplomats can't work like that. Nor do they. Anything close to being critical or tendentious or spikey or provocative is likely to annoy either a host government or HQ or both. Just say a diplomat posted a blog entry politely speculating on the wisdom of current Climate Change or Middle East policy. Imagine the scenes in Parliament: "The Secretary of State apparently cannot persuade even his own senior officials of the wisdom of this policy! Why should we take any notice of him?"

True. A unified message is necessary because it has more impact and generates less chaos and migraines. You certainly can’t have different people from the same agency talking from various policy perspectives publicly. I imagine that one or two or more would be dragged into the SFRC hearings to make clarifications or to defend their views. Can’t be done; this won’t work or people would be running around like headless chickens trying to find their heads!

The primary question I supposed is -- what is the function of an official blog? Is it an op-ed generator, a rapid response arm, a community huddle, a shining stake on cyberground, what?. At least the FCO has articulated where its blogging fits in the larger puzzle and has now been evaluated for the third time. DipNote has nothing but this, and if it has been evaluated at all, that report is not in the public sphere.

Part of Ambassador Crawford’s commentary on the FCO blogs is that when things are breaking online or even in the MSM like this one on, "A foul-mouthed anti-Semitic tirade"? or this one, the FCO bloggers and website seems to have little to say about it.


A similar criticism for DipNote, this one saying last year: “When the world is blowing up someplace, why does it take days and days for DipNote to weigh in? Where is Condoleeza Rice? Where is the energy, where is any evidence of a major commitment here to something other than a very, very careful, at times self-flattering operation?”

During the Mumbai siege, two Americans escaped and wrote about their experience with the Embassy (actually the Consulate General) in CNN’s user-generated, iReport.com site, DipNote was nowhere around. I don't think readers would expect DipNote to wade in on the core issues in Mumbai, after all it was an unfolding incident. But it's a blog - you can't expect it to be silent when what is going on is right on its alley!


It could have easily posted contact numbers for the task force (it was available elsewhere) and within a reasonable aftermath, could have invited some un-official bloggers who were assigned in Mumbai and were in the thick of things like Diplodocus who posted a few items: We Are Safe, Thanksgiving., It’s Raining in Bombay, The Earth Spins on Its Axis. And Girl in the the Rain who posted Deep Breath excerpted below:

We have been working 12-hour shifts (and sometimes more), running between phone calls or text messages with American citizens who were trapped in the hotels, meetings with the people “upstairs” who wanted to know what was going on, inquiries from families in the States, media calls (which we promptly passed off), and “field” duty at places like hospitals, outside the hotels, the airport, and even the morgue. Things were changing several times per minute - it was nearly impossible to get an accurate picture of things to report to the higher-ups at any given time, because it would all be different by the time you finished saying it.

There were also, of course, some low points. Like when one of our officers was allowed to enter the Oberoi Hotel - he left the hotel shaken, telling us of a horrific scene inside, with bodies in a restaurant where there were still meals on the tables. And, of course, each time we learned of a confirmed death of one of the people who we’d been looking for, or whose families or friends we had been in touch with.

And We’re okay. with the following:

We did our best to stay on top of the situation, and we did whatever we could to help American citizens who were caught up in the attacks or holed up in hotel rooms, (understandably) scared out of their wits. It is tough work emotionally, and I know I speak for all of my colleagues when I say that we all wholeheartedly wish we could do more for people.

I recognize that DipNote is under new management with some changes recently – but until about last year, it often reads very much like a dry report or a press release, or an extension of the happy-talk magazine. In December somebody posted Vulnerable Minorities: Eradicating Today’s Form of Slavery. The piece was in first person, 11 paragraphs in length. Below is a quick excerpt:

I’ve talked with survivors in Tamil Nadu, an especially poor state in India. Many in bonded labor, some sexually exploited, have rights to freedom under a 32-year-old Indian law. Yet the federal and local political will to rescue them from exploitation does not match the commitment on paper.

I have also met with the champion of Uyghur Muslim rights in China, Rebiya Kadeer, who was jailed for speaking truth to power. She and U.S-funded, but independently operated, Radio Free Asia have reported that Uyghur Muslims have been relocated under force, which makes them human trafficking victims. Conveniently, Kadeer says, many of those trafficked are women of child-bearing age to reduce the Uyghur complexion of Xinjiang.

And I thought as I read this post – okay you’ve met all these people and -- what were your thoughts? If I want to read a report on vulnerable minorities like this I would hunt down a report, or read straight news. It almost seems to me as if this was from a cable, tweaked for blog consumption. This kind of material can trick folks into thinking that they’re engaging the blogosphere and spreading USG’s message in this case, on human trafficking, when the writer is really just talking to himself.

Well, the same could be said about me here …tee-hee

In any case, on these official blogs, the root cause of this “dissatisfaction” might be in the fact that the audience is not only domestic but also global, but that within those segments, people also tend to form “cocoons of conversation online.” That's a lot of niches ...

So -- different strokes for different folks?

Related Post:
Diplomatic Bloggers: Web 2.0 Door Opens

Diplomatic Bloggers: Web 2.0 Door Opens

Once, a Political Counselor had a small dinner with his local contacts in a foreign country. He was very well liked and his host government contacts all showed up. After good food and wine, while sitting around in his living room, one of his closest contacts cornered him and asked, “C’mon just between us, what do you really think about ….?” The seasoned Political Counselor never skipped a beat, smiled and replied, “I am a diplomat, the official position of my government is my opinion.”

And such is the life of a diplomat in the service of his/her country: that he/she spends a good chunk of his/her life abroad; that he/she knows when to keep his mouth shut; and that his/her personal opinion has no place in official discourse and severely limited even in private capacity. And this one, from Kenneth Thompson: “The diplomat is the bearer of a view of the outside world which his fellow citizens cannot entirely follow or accept.”

The central uniqueness of service in the Foreign Service or any diplomatic service is that the employee is a representative of his/her government, considered to be on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And in the FS employees “must observe especially high standards of conduct during and after working hours and when on leave or travel status.” Carl Rowan who was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Kennedy Administration even had this advice to diplomats in 1963: “My advice to any diplomat who wants to have a good press is to have two or three kids and a dog.” The idea presumably is that the diplomat’s life even in private must reflect well and favorably on his/her employer.

Applicants to the U.S. Foreign Service are routinely asked during the hiring process if they can support the position of their government even if they personally disagree with it. When they are hired, they become not only “world-wide available,” they also are required to publicly support the policy of the U.S. Government. If you disagree on substantive foreign policy issues, you may go through the official dissent channel. And when the time comes when you are no longer willing to serve where they want to send you (in case of directed assignments) or can no longer publicly support the official position of the government, then the only choice left is to hang up your hat and walk away.

There is an old State Department saying about the caution of bureaucrats: “There are old bureaucrats and there are bold bureaucrats, but there are no old, bold bureaucrats.”

This is kind of a roundabout way of introducing what I want to write here – about those blogging diplomats. But the preceding entry is hopefully helpful in understanding the universe from which these folks operate.

~ ~ ~

The 9/11 Commission quotes US Ambassador Richard Holbrook wondering, “How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading communications society?”

[…] the United States Government is behind nearly everybody, except in certain discrete areas, in terms of technology. And we are, in my view, wasting time, wasting money, wasting opportunities, because we are not prepared to communicate effectively with what is out there in the business world and the private world. So I care passionately about this, especially since I’ve been deprived of my Blackberry, so – at least during the day, anyway – so, I am, again, soliciting your advice.

That’s Secretary Clinton during her first town hall meeting at the State Department. She acknowledged that “there are legitimate concerns about security, but I believe we cannot just take that at face value and stop thinking about it. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to be smarter about using technology. […] On the security issue and on outreach and public diplomacy, we must figure out a way consistent with security to use these new tools. There is no doubt in my mind that we have barely scratched the surface as to what we can use to communicate with people around the world, and in fact, to use them as tools, as this gentleman pointed out, to further our own work and to be smart about it.

The Web 2.0 door is now open. State has jumped on the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and the blogging bandwagons, but it's also running a social networking site and official public diplomacy site (See The State Department’s Online Ventures).

If you open the door, will they come?

In Zimbabwe, Darkly

Less than 24 hours ago, AFP says that the number of people reported to be infected by cholera in Zimbabwe has risen to almost 65,000, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization. “Some 64,701 people have caught the disease during the outbreak, which started in August, and 3,295 among them have died, the WHO said.” And yet - amidst all this and in the face of world-record hyperinflation, politicians are still wrangling about “power-sharing.”

With so many things wrong in the world – in Sudan, in Sri Lanka, in Gaza, and elsewhere, and with businesses shedding jobs every day – how shocking are these numbers? 65,000 people with cholera. 52 dead and 80 wounded in Sri Lanka. How numb have we become to these news of suffering?

The Embassy and USAID in Harare as well as Ambassador McGee are doing what they can. But for stories of what Zimbabwe's like for diplomatic personnel, I visit the Harare blog of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I doubt if you can find any such stark account elsewhere.

Philip Barclay is a Second Secretary (Political/Projects/Consular) at the British Embassy in Zimbabwe. He joined the FCO in 1999 and was previously posted in London and Poland. He is one of the two FCO bloggers in Harare. What is striking about these posts to me is how real and natural they are; no attempt at glossing over and how they prick at your heart with their utter lack of adornment in explaining the state of things.

On the water shortage, Philip writes:

Monday morning. It’s been a weekend of doughnuts and I’m drinking too much again. A can of Namibian beer seems easier and tastier than water flavoured with the sulphuric tang of purification tablets. In Zimbabwe, alcoholism is a prophylactic for cholera. Not surprisingly after my excess, a certain tightness of my bowel suggests that I’d better visit the loo. But that’s not a pleasant prospect.

For some reason Harare’s powers that be cut off the British Embassy’s water supply in December. It’s not clear if this was another sign of Zim’s water system failure or a protest at our policy of saying that Mr Mugabe’s government is not altogether the best thing since sliced bread. Now Harare’s water ain’t great for drinking, fortified as it is by large amounts of the charmingly named but deadly Vibrio cholera bacterium. But I do still find it helpful for flushing toilets and miss it now it’s gone. So my toiletry routine has taken on a semi-African form. I fill a bucket from a butt and carry it down the corridor, spilling a little to present a banana-skin-type walkway to my colleagues. (Continue reading Two Philips Groaning).

Philip traveled to London for training and upon his homecoming to Harare was confronted once more with the lack of water:

I am running out of the little water I had stashed in containers. In the past I could count on my partner for water but now his taps have dried up too. The only friend I know who has a borehole can not help because she has not had power for two weeks now. I feel terribly despondent.

The whole city of Harare has no water. Our offices have no water and outside the cholera statistics are growing. Only a week ago we had someone from Population Services International (PSI) come in to tell us about prevention of cholera.

I remember vividly how she emphasised that we should wash our hands, keep ourselves and surroundings clean. she advised us not to shake hands. She spoke with passion. She made a lot of sense but today as I write this I am asking myself many questions.

Even Zimbabwe's health minister, David Parirenyatwa and president Robert Mugabe have taken turns to tell people about the importance of washing hands and general hygiene. But the question on everyone's lips is; "Where is the water?"

You can wash hands and keep your home and yourself clean if you have running water. We have had no water for several days and some of my colleagues have not had running water for months.

We have become innovative bathers but I do not know for how long we are going to be able to come to work without stinking the whole office out. There is a limit to how much perfumes and deodorants can mask body odours.

It will be very easy for cholera to wipe out whole offices. People are coming from waterless homes to waterless offices. Anyone who thinks cholera is under control is having one very big sad joke. The Zimbabwean government does not believe it should be declared a national disaster. (Continue reading One big rubbish dump)

Grace Mutandwa is the other FCO Harare blogger. She joined the British Embassy in Harare in 2002 as the locally-employed Press & Public Affairs Officer. Prior to that, she worked as an Arts Editor and a political journalist for more than 18 years for various local and international media organizations. In Life Goes On, she writes a powerful piece about the distance we keep even when things fall apart.

Someone dies, someone disappears and later reappears in court or their body is discovered decomposing somewhere. More than 50,000 people are struck by cholera and 3,028 of them die.

We all worry about these developments, do what we can to help ease the pain but at the end of the day, life for those still free to move around goes on. We go out, we invite friends to dinner, get invited to share a curry or a drink and slowly we continue with our lives.

This is the reality of life. Even in war torn countries life of sorts still goes on. A toddler spends several weeks with an abducted parent and later becomes a guest of the state in one of the country's worst prisons. Still we talk about it for a while and soon enough we move on.

Several are starving but those with the means feast -their lives go on. Survival itself has become a major feat and those who still can drag themselves around do so with dwindling empathy and patience for the less fortunate.

Two 13-year-old girls incessantly ring my gate bell and when I answer, they tell me they are looking for jobs and that they have not eaten in days. They will work for food because being paid in local currency is useless. They have walked all the way from the high density suburb of Dzivaresekwa, west of the Harare.

I already have domestic help so I give them water and two slices each of bread. The food and water soon disappear. The two skinny-looking girls thank me profusely and ask me for old clothes.

My youngest and only daughter is an 18-year-old who is built bigger than the two. She is away studying but before she left home she cleaned out her wardrobe and gave various cousins some of her clothes - so there is nothing to give.

My heart bleeds. No child should ever have to go through what those two are going through.

All this gets me thinking about how really jaded we have become with political, economic and social situation in the country. Even as I spoke to the two girls it struck me how distant I managed to remain even as I gave them the bread and water.

There is something dead in us as a people. Several stories were written and appeals launched on behalf of journalist, turned activist Jestina Mukoko. She is a prominent person, so journalists tend to focus on her. The toddler who went missing with its parents got a mention every now and then if it was lucky.

Even when the toddler turned up at a police station with its parents being accused of banditry, we as a nation failed that child. We behaved as if it was the most normal thing for a baby to be incacerated. News that the baby too was beaten to force the mother to confess, just makes the whole story very sordid, and still no one raised a voice.

The Child Protection Society suddenly died - not a single word from them. The other so called children's rights organisations just disappeared off the earth. We have become damaged goods.

We are facing a bleak year. Politicians want power but they do not seem to realise that with power comes responsibility. When I sit through 16-hour powercuts it does not make me feel better to find out that the same is happening in Nepal. Citizens deserve the best from their government.

When people hanker after power they must realise and accept the fact that they must be accountable and that citizens expect improved standards of living and not to be taken back to the dark ages.

Zimbabwe used to be Southern Africa's breadbasket. It is shameful that today we produce nothing. Today we import turkeys from Peru and chickens from Uruguay. There is something very wrong and we cannot even ask God anymore to put it right because God left Africa ages ago - in fact when he did he never even passed through Zimbabwe. So in a way life goes on.

Can you imagine a Second Secretary in our Foreign Service or one of our locally engaged staff writing these posts in DipNote? Frankly, I can’t. And yet, such details and sense of “real life happening” is probably what is needed in our diplomats’ discourse with the American public.