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Ed Webb

Obama starts well with Muslims but must do more - 0 views

  • By visiting Prime Minister Erdogan, Obama is overtly reaching out to what Americans would call "moderate" Islamists. Going to non-Arab Turkey also appears to be an effort to separate US relations with Muslim countries from US policy toward the Arab world.
  • Half of all Indonesians and about 80 percent of Egyptians and Turks believe the goal of US policy is to expand Israel's borders. Few buy US claims that it supports a Palestinian state.
  • Earlier this month, newspapers here in Cairo carried front-page photographs of Clinton being kissed by Israeli President Shimon Peres during her visit to Jerusalem. Arabs saw in that a clear message. Ditto what she said – and did not say – about Gaza, Israeli settlements, Hamas, and human rights in Egypt. Many Arabs fear it's Condoleezza Rice redux. The Israel lobby's success in torpedoing Obama's nominee for head of the National Intelligence Council – widely reported here – underlines the perception of business as usual.
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  • Bush, it seems, gave democracy a bad name.
  • Arabs are still willing to be convinced about Obama's motives. The flurry of diplomatic activity and indications that the administration is willing to talk directly with Tehran and even with the Taliban are being praised on the region's editorial pages. Arabs welcome the fact that the myopia of the past eight years has been jettisoned in favor of a nuanced approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of the many complex policy challenges of the Middle East.
  • Obama has the symbolism of outreach to the world's Muslims down pat, but gestures are cheap in a region where lives are readily sacrificed in symbolic acts of martyrdom. Now he must follow up with real, concrete engagement.
Ed Webb

With video games, public diplomacy by mobile phone - SmartPlanet - 0 views

  • MetroStar Systems, a 75-employee tech start-up contracted by the State Department to bring a better understanding of the United States to the countries with which it has less-than-amicable relations. The company plans to do so with X-Life Games, an initiative that effectively wraps a U.S. history lesson inside a downloadable video game for a mobile phone.
  • The products of this initiative — so far, “Driven,” a car-racing trivia game, and “Babangar Blues,” a music-based role-playing game — are intended to “demystify” the U.S. to foreign audiences, starting with the Middle East.
  • Ironically, the trivia very much resembles the test administered to new citizens. I asked Manouchehri if it was really fair to expect an Iranian to know who Patrick Henry was. “The hope is that they’ll look them up,” he said.
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  • the State Department gathers and receives behavioral data that helps it track “macro behavioral trends,” particularly among the Generation Y demographic MetroStar is targeting, born between 1981 and 2000.
  • Manouchehri is looking at deploying his mobile games in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, as well as in nations with more mature telecom networks, such as Egypt, Indonesia and Lebanon.
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