October 26

“But of course, this is a broader agreement because it will help us to include natural disasters and accidents that might occur anywhere within our (inaudible).”

"And I assured Patricia and we have talked about this among various officials that the United States considers this an important initiative and its implementation to be an urgent (inaudible).”

“We, of course, had the discussion of the complex and difficult circumstances in the global financial system at this time and the effects on the global economy of the importance of affirming the need for changing for the importance of (inaudible), but also the importance of (inaudible) …”

“I think there will be a couple of other encounters before we are (inaudible).”

--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “Remarks with Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa”

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Foreign Fixation With US Election: Free Public Diplomacy, Citizen Style - Avuncular American: An expatriate view of America and the world from Europe by former diplomat Gerald Loftus: “If the reaction of Belgians to the US presidential campaign is typical of publics throughout Europe and the rest of the world - a recent multi-country poll commissioned by The Guardian and other papers shows that Belgians are among the world's most pro-Obama and anti-Bush - then the United States is enjoying a massive public diplomacy bonanza. For free. Thanks to overseas Americans. For the past several months, but especially in the last weeks leading up to November 4, the services of the Democrats Abroad Belgium (DAB) "Speakers Bureau" have been much in demand. … In the US, meanwhile, the State Department's Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy is organizing the I-VOTE program to promote foreign understanding of the immensely complex and seemingly jury-rigged US electoral system (image above from I-VOTE). ”

State Dept. Blogging One Year Later (Part 2): Themes and categories - Edward T. Palazzolo and Dawn Gilpin (with analysis support from Nick Brody, Jesse Herrera, Krista McNaughton, and Jordan Wolff), COMOPS Journal: “This post builds on the previously summarized meeting between Steve Corman and Angela Trethewey (COMOPS Faculty) and Heath Kern and Luke Forgerson (DipNote’s Editors). We reviewed roughly one year’s worth of DipNote posts and reader comments for a content analysis to identify the principle themes throughout the blog. … [W]e present some of our findings along with some conclusions drawn from the data. However, we tried to reserve suggestions for improvement and overall recommendations for the final post in this series.”

Elections should be brought to March 2009 – Juba Post: "Reminiscing on the fact that the Kiir government made a debacle out of the census process, at one point refusing to participate, at another threatening not to accept the results if any, many key Government of Southern Sudan politicians have not out-rightly embraced efforts by the presidency in Rumbek where census material data processing is taking place using the most sophisticated art of the world technology. Preliminary public diplomacy statements seen by Southerners as propagated to undermine the census process that estimated the population of Southern Sudan at no more than 8 million provoked angry confrontations between the north and South.”

What anthropological careers are related to international relations? – Trades: "[QUESTION:] Hi, I was thinking of doing a major in Anthropology and an International Relations minor…. What careers do you think will be available to me? I am hoping to be some kind of an advisor or analyst in these fields. Thank you! [REPLY:] Public Diplomacy and NGO/IO aide work. At my alma mater, there was an international affairs degree which had built in to it a large number of anthropology courses for these sorts of jobs. If you want work in that field, the IMF and World Bank hire good anthropologists for international development work. It's working 'for the man' but I'm told it pays very well.”

RELATED ITEMS

We Should Talk to our Enemies – Nicholas Burns, Newsweek: The next president needs to act more creatively and boldly to defend our interests by revalidating diplomacy as a key weapon in our national arsenal and rebuilding our understaffed and underfunded diplomatic corps.

Transformation, please – Editorial, Boston Globe: Powerful economic and political forces are reshaping a world that the United States has dominated since the end of the Cold War, and Americans need a president with the understanding and the political gifts to guide the country to peace and security in a much-altered global framework.

A World in Crisis Means A Chance for Greatness - Robert B. Zoellick, Washington Post: The next president faces a historic challenge: reintroducing the United States to the world.

The Biden Doctrine - Robert Turner, Washington Times: The conduct of our foreign relations and the command of our military are among the most important functions entrusted to the president under our Constitution, and Mr. Biden's record in these areas is abysmal. From his first year in the Senate in 1973, he was a consistent foe of the American military.

The Candidates positions on Iraq and Afghanistan;
Iran; Russia; Global Trade – New York Times

Obama support runs deep in Western Europe – John C. Freed, International Herald Tribune: Respondents in five European countries surveyed are far more likely to cite Obama's personality or his youth, while Americans are more likely to cite his approach to health care and the economy.

France 24 poll: Brits yawn at U.S. election - Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy

At the U.N., Many Hope for an Obama Win - Colum Lynch, Washington Post: "It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the U.N. who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association. "It's been a bad eight years, and there is a lot of bad feeling over it."

Barack Obama, Forever Sizing Up - Jodi Kantor, New York Times: Barack Obama prides himself on trying to see the world through others’ eyes. In his books, he slips into the heads of his Kenyan relatives, teenage mothers in Chicago, Reagan Democrats, bean farmers in Southern Illinois, and evangelical Christian voters.

The Endorsement From Hell - Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times:The endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.

In Philippines, U.S. wages quieter kind of war on terror - Warren P. Strobel, Belleville News Democrat: Counterinsurgency takes time, and there are no quick victories such as those that President Bush claimed after the initial military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Finding our next Sputnik - Gary J. Beach, Boston Globe: America's unchallenged global leadership of the information technology age didn't end because of the lack of information, or technology. It ended because Americans lost interest in careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

What the Next American Leader Needs to do to Deal with Global Warming - Bill McKibben, PlentyMag.com/Common Dreams: Fighting climate change is only partly about cooperating with Europe, China, India, and Japan to save the ice caps and the forests. It's also about beating them in the next great economic shift. The sun, or so the argument will go, is about to set on the American empire -- unless we can figure out how to capture its rays in a solar panel.

The Age of Triumphalism is over: Americans are no longer in the mood to chase after distant evildoers - Andrew J. Bacevich, Los Angeles Times: Having discovered that being the new Rome entails burdens as well as privileges, Americans have opted out. Although Bush's wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, Joe the Plumber's interest in liberating the greater Middle East or courting a showdown even with a figure as vile as Kim Jong Il is close to zero.

Young America’s Wild Side [review of Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds] - Jay Winik, New York Times: The years 1815 to 1848 were a time when America increasingly established itself on the world stage. Reynolds reminds us that immigrants from Europe came in droves and the nation’s population almost tripled; that to the south the United States staked its claim with the Monroe Doctrine, and to the west sought to do the same with the Tyler Doctrine; and that John L. O’Sullivan stirred the imagination of Americans with his call for “Manifest Destiny,” which held that the spread of American culture would uplift all of humanity.

The Not-So Subliminal Obama Socialist Realism Propaganda Art - Sparks from the Anvil: “How can Obama supporters not see that there is a link between Barack Obama and socialism/communism/Marxism? … . The evidence is staring at them, plain as day. it clearly looks like socialist realism art, and that's because it is based on socialist realism art.”

bizarre propaganda - polysemic: “Americans, at least lefty Americans like me, tend to be allergic to government-sponsored propaganda. That the government would be spending money to influence opinion abroad is accepted as a necessity of foreign policy, but that the government might be explicitly advertising a certain position, using public money, is viewed with more suspicion. Not that such propaganda doesn’t happen in the US. From the fairly accepted, such as public school curricula, to the unsettlingly explicit, such as the 'Mission Accomplished' debacle, the American government sponsors forms of propaganda intended to forward a certain view of itself among the citzenry. But what the government does not do, as far as I’m aware, is buy billboard advertisements for anything other than military recruition or emergency preparedness. So it is unfamiliar for me to see government-sponsored propaganda on billboards here in Macedonia.”

World War II Propaganda: Know your Enemy – Harvey, JapanNewbie: Propaganda was used by both the Axis and Allied powers to influence the hearts and minds of every actor and observer during World War II, and America was no exception. Know Your Enemy: Japan, was put together by the Hollywood director, Frank Capra. Frank Capra had made a series of other films for World War II as well, called Why We Fight. Despite the fact that planning for the movie began immediately after Pearl Harbor, the film was not completed and released until August 9th 1945, near the end of the war, and the day Nagasaki was bombed. VIDEO of film.