Sacramento journalist R.V. Scheide recounts his experience with an overzealous National Guardsman, who took him into custody for taking photographs at the airport. "When a half-dozen different cops tell you you've done something wrong for two hours straight, there's a tendency to start believing them, even if you haven't done anything," he writes.

The State Department is talking to the Advertising Council about crafting a "public diplomacy" campaign to help "sell America" to Muslims upset about the war in Afghanistan. "Overseeing those talks is Charlotte Beers, the new Undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and former advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson who started in the industry marketing Uncle Ben's Rice," reports the Sydney Morning Herald. But Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, suspects that Americanism may be harder to sell than white rice.

"We needed a firm that could provide strategic counsel immediately," says Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan, explaining the Pentagon's decision to hire the Rendon Group as its PR firm during the bombing of Afghanistan. Norman Solomon reviews the firm's background and clients, including the trade agencies of Bulgaria, Russia and Uzbekistan, the Monsanto Chemical Company, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the CIA and the Iraqi National Congress.