Propaganda

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Ethan Epstein on his piece, Dateline Pyongyang, and why the Associated Press bureau in North Korea is problematic.

This morning, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, tweeted:

Must read:China's Xinhua slams Romney for making his money off Chinese companies before running for pres. #hypocrisy reut.rs/Ou5wIr

— Stephanie Cutter (@stefcutter) September 14, 2012

China's Xinhua is the state's Communist propaganda outlet.

Senator Mark Kirk is pushing for the U.S. to engage in deeper strategic cooperation with China on drugs, terrorism, and Afghanistan. Speaking yesterday at the Foreign Policy Initiative’s annual conference at the Newseum, the Illinois Republican argued that the U.S. should build a supply line to Afghanistan through Urumqi, Xinjiang, the area known to its Uyghur and other Muslim inhabitants as East Turkistan.

Vienna

Last week, the Chinese government issued a new propaganda piece in the form of a policy paper on its Internet control policies. It serves as a typical example of Beijing's Orwellian use of language and formalism to dress up its authoritarianism as legal and rational.

“Courage is contagious.” So runs the pithy motto adorning the bottom of the upload page of the currently minimalist WikiLeaks website. The original site is no longer online. It disappeared from the web shortly before the new year, allegedly to make way for a necessary fundraising drive. “We protect the world – but will you protect us?” WikiLeaks asked in shilling for donations from visitors.

According to the WikiLeaks organization itself, the old site’s database contained some 1.2 million documents. The current site features exactly twelve. The limited assortment appears to be little more than window-dressing, posted in order to create the appearance of continuity and to provide an appropriate setting for what is the real and virtually exclusive focus of the current site: WikiLeaks’s now famous “Collateral Murder” video and the “Collateral Murder” campaign of which it forms part.