June 1-2

"[W]hen I was in Yale University my favorite professor conscripted me in the CIA. As you know he said this is your patriotic duty. Well my girlfriend and I ... actually we met in Paris and then we got married and I didn't have a job and this was offered to me. I was a green horn. I didn’t have any politics at all. I was just a Yalie."

--Writer Peter Matthiessen; on Matthiessen, see; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

US-Pakistan relations: ‘Public diplomacy can bridge cultural gaps’ - http://tribune.com.pk: "The United States intends to use its public diplomacy efforts in Pakistan to bridge the differences between the people of the two countries, newly-appointed US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine said on Friday. She was speaking to a gathering at Kinnaird College University during her day-long visit of the city. 'The under secretary’s goal is to better understand ways through which public diplomacy can bolster US-Pakistan relations,' said a US Consulate General statement. Under Secretary Sonenshine mentioned Fulbright graduate scholarship programme for Pakistan as an example of public diplomacy initiatives to improve people-to-people relations. She said it was the largest such programme.

'The US is also funding an English language education programme for underprivileged students in Pakistan,' she said. Other programmes included university-level linkages and cultural exchanges such as US jazz musicians’ recent visit to Lahore, she added. 'As citizens of one planet, we face shared challenges and should find ways to tackle them together,' she said. She said the US government intended to use public diplomacy efforts to empower, engage with and support people all over the world. Her address was followed by a question and answer session. The under secretary’s delegation included US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy (South and Central Asia) Jim Moore, US Consul General Lahore Nina M Fite and US Mission Pakistan Director of Strategic Communication Tom Miller. Under Secretary Sonenshine also participated in a US exchange alumni’s community service project at the SOS Village. She joined the youth exchange programme participants in repainting a playground at the SOS village. Later, she participated in a group discussion with the graduates of a US-funded after-school English language education programme. Her other activities in the city included visits to the mid-18th century Sunehri Mosque in the Walled City and the Minar-i-Pakistan. The US government, under the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation, has provided $67,500 for restora[tion]." Sonenshine image from article. See also (1) (2)(3)(4)

English Language Training for Ministry of Border - grants.gov: Award Ceiling: $250,000 Award Floor: $0 CFDA Number(s): 19.501 -- Public Diplomacy Programs for Afghanistan and Pakistan ... Agency Name Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Description PAS [Public Affairs Section] Kabul invites all eligible Afghan organizations to submit a proposal for English Language Training for three specific Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs (MOBTA) schools in the Kabul area. A successful proposal will include solutions to enhance the English language proficiency of students and teachers in the three MOBTA schools in Kabul, Afghanistan. This project will build the capacity of as many as 1,000 students by providing intensive English language training for upper division (junior and senior) students who may be selected as candidates for international undergraduate scholarships available to Afghanistan from various donor countries. Candidates are 12th grade high school students.

The project will enhance their English language knowledge to improve their ability to qualify for scholarships and fellowships opportunities outside Afghanistan. The project will also work with the current English teachers of the three MOBTA schools who will teach the students after the end of this project and thus promote sustainability of the project’s outcomes. This one year project will mainly focus on teaching English language to the target group of students and enable them to enhance their English language proficiency to a high-intermediate to advanced level. As many as 200 of the candidates will also be trained on TOEFL and/or IELTS test preparation." Image from

How the US is Slowly Cultivating the Conditions for a Renewed International Order - Ben O'Loughlin, Duck of Minerva: "Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s talk in Parliament in London this week offered useful insights into how the Obama administration and foreign policy analysts around it are thinking about shaping international order. As Director of Policy Planning in that administration from 2009-11 she spoke from experience about the mechanisms being used to implement international change. ... At the society level, citizens, civil society groups and companies are connected horizontally. No particular group or individual is afforded a priori centrality. Why is this a surprise? Public diplomacy experts have spent the last few years trying to target ‘influencers’ in societies. Influencers are political, religious or cultural figures who are listened to by others. This idea is informed by network analysis, marketing, and the idea that State Department messages are more credible in different parts of the world when mediated and delivered by a local influential figure than by Hillary Clinton on TV. Slaughter was not convinced by reliance on influencers, empirically or normatively. She argued that all the millions marketers have spent still hasn’t generated any clear knowledge about how influencers can be identified and utilised. Not only that, but it is surely preferable to try to engage whole societies and treat all individuals equally. That would flourish a greater democratic ethos than appealing to amenable clerics, companies, journalists and intellectuals in the hope they might spread the word downwards."

State Dept. Draws Criticism Over Policy on Paid Recruiters of Foreign Students - Karin Fischer, The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The U.S. Department of State has overstepped its authority in issuing a policy against the use of paid recruiters for overseas students. That was the charge made during a panel discussion on Friday, the final day of the annual meeting of Nafsa: Association of International Educators. Mitch Leventhal is a founder of the

American International Recruitment Council, or Airc, a group that develops standards of ethical practices and a system for certifying overseas recruiters. Federal law says that government agencies should defer to industry-based standards, unless those standards are illegal or otherwise impractical, Mr. Leventhal said at a session on the pros and cons of working with agents. So when the State Department issued a 2009 policy directive prohibiting its overseas EducationUSA student-advising centers from forming partnerships or working with recruitment agents paid on a per-student basis, Mr. Leventhal argued, the department was wrongly superseding the authority of Airc, which is registered with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission as a standards-development organization. According to the law, the State Department has to submit a report to the White House Office of Management and Budget explaining why its policy should be followed in place of voluntary industry-set standards, Mr. Leventhal said. He asked whether the State Department had applied for and received a waiver from the White House office. Reached for a response, Meghann Curtis, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, said that the department was aware that there is 'a lack of consensus' on the use of agents. 'Our directive to the State Department-funded EducationUSA centers applies to advisers within our network,' she said in a written statement. 'To meet the State Department's public-diplomacy mission, EducationUSA provides comprehensive information to international students about the entire range of accredited U.S. colleges, universities, and programs in our effort to help students find the best possible match with their abilities, needs, and interests. Working with commission-based recruiters is inconsistent with this public-diplomacy mission.'" Image from

To name is to own - Paul Rockower, Levantine: "So now the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act gets pilloried as a freedom of propaganda bill. I can only imagine if the narrative language had been about censorship and freedom not propaganda. If only the blogosphere was clamoring for its modernization as the freedom to hear domestically what is said abroad, and anything short would be censorship and this was a Freedom of Information act. Distorted way out of context, the modernization bill seems ominous, but simply put, allowing Americans to hear Voice of America should not be a big deal. But to name is to own, and the debate got named and shaped out of context. Mountainrunner Matt has a good piece about having an honest debate about Smith-Mundt, not one colored by  inaccuracies."

USA - NDAA 2012 Codified Indefinite Detention. Now NDAA 2013 Legalizes Domestic Propaganda -  bikersofamerica.blogspot.com: “OFF THE WIRE America's two-party tyranny has authorized endless wars, warrantless surveillance, homeland drones and indefinite detention.  Now they're legalizing the Big Lie. NDAA 2012 CODIFIED INDEFINITE DETENTION. NOW NDAA 2013 LEGALIZES DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA. What the Democrats and Republicans agree on is far more damaging and dangerous than the wedge issues on which they supposedly don't.  We saw that last year with the enactment of Public Law 112-81, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA 2012), which had bipartisan sponsorship and sailed through both House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan majority support.  Now acceleratedly close on its heels comes H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA 2013), which glided through the House with broad bipartisan support on May 18 and is now in the hands of the Senate:
http://tinyurl.com/6rt9xzt Attached to that bill is a bipartisan-sponsored amendment summarized as follows: ‘Amendment No. 114 - Reps. Thornberry (R-TX) and Smith (D-WA):  The amendment would amend the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (known as the Smith-Mundt Act)

and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1986 and 1987 to clarify the authorities of the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to prepare, disseminate and use public diplomacy information [propaganda] abroad and to strike the current ban on domestic dissemination of such material.  The amendment would clarify that the Smith-Mundt Act's provisions related to public diplomacy information [propaganda] do not apply to other federal departments or agencies (including the DoD).’ http://tinyurl.com/6ndk8lr The full text of the amendment is assumed to be H.R. 5736, euphemistically labelled the ‘Smith Mundt Modernization Act of 2013’.  You can read that here: http://tinyurl.com/7k98kqs http://tinyurl.com/7eqx3fl This amendment legalizes what many think the government has been doing for years anyway: using false propaganda to influence the decisions and control the minds of its own citizens.  According to Buzzfeed:  ‘The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts - the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987 - that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government's misinformation campaigns...  The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public.[‘]  'It removes the protection for Americans,' says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. 'It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information.  There are no checks and balances.  No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false...'  Critics of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so 'under the radar,' as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling...  The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaign!  [i]s is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment...  In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create 'sock puppets' on social media outlets [such as Facebook, Twitter and online forums]; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul." http://tinyurl.com/c78hhg9 DemandProgress.org asserts that "The NDAA amendment legalizing mass propaganda campaigns would remove all distinction between a hostile foreign audience and American one, turning the massive information operation apparatus within the federal government against its own people."  They offer yet another online petition/email campaign to oppose it, but many consider such initiatives to be impotent slacktivism: http://tinyurl.com/7lq76h2 Our rapidly accelerating descent into Orwellian police-state fascism will not be stopped or even slowed by signing one online petition or one thousand.  And it won't be reversed at the ballot box, because voting either Democrat or Republican keeps the same corporate-controlled oligopoly in power, and voting any other way is at best an act of defiance: http://tinyurl.com/7e57dqe Our only solution is to take to the streets and quickly - before the drones overhead control our every move, and the droning of TVs and flickering of monitors our every thought. http://tinyurl.com/78vsamc" Image from entry

Radio Free Europe is a model for American global engagement - Prajwal Ciryam, partisans.org: "Where there is no free press, RFE/RL aspires to provide an honest take on local and national events. It's a simple idea, but not an easy one. In several of the countries in which the service operates, it is actually banned. In others, it is merely unwelcome. In some corners, its work is so controversial that the headquarters are highly secured and built to withstand a terrorist attack. Radio Free Europe and its sister organizations have been accused of being propaganda machines or CIA fronts. After all, Radio Free Europe had a close relationship with intelligence services early in its Cold War-era history. This is the danger of such public-private partnerships, especially when their purpose is expressly political. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, the bipartisan commission that oversees these services, is structured to be independent from government influence, but ensuring real autonomy from funders is complicated for any non-profit. Despite potential concerns over true independence, one thing going for RFE/RL is its heavy reliance on local reporters. RFE/RL is frequently an arbiter and amplifier of local voices, a role that shields it from some of the more aggressive criticisms one could make of publicly supported, mission-oriented journalism. RFE/RL's reporters are often heroic. ... The first lesson to take from RFE/RL about America's participation in the world is the obvious one: Bolstering civil society is a more powerful, efficient, and admirable approach than embarking on vaguely defined military excursions. It is premised on the realization that a functioning civil society is a precondition for democratic systems, not an inevitable product of them. The second lesson is more subtle. Whether the engagement is journalistic, political, or militaristic, empowering locals is better than imposing from afar. RFE/RL is about localism at a global scale, America as the positive enabler, and a world in which our country concerns itself with leadership instead of hegemony." Via Kim Andrew Elliott, who comments: "'Mission-oriented journalism' is not really journalism, unless the mission is journalism."

International Campaign for Tibet issues press release on BBG’s troubles in Congress - BBGWatcher, USG Broadcasts/BBG Watch: "The International Committee for Tibet (ICT) has issued a press release on the setbacks in Congressional committees for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) plans to eliminate Voice of America (VOA) Tibetan radio broadcasts. The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) works to promote human rights and democratic freedoms for the people of Tibet.The ICT chairman is Hollywood actor Richard Gere.

The late Czech President Vaclav Havel served on the ICT’s International Council of Advisors, which now includes such internationally known human rights activists as Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel and Bishop Desmond Tutu."

Victory! VOA Tibetan Radio saved - studentsforafreetibet.org:  "We are thrilled to inform you that US Congressional Committees have decided to continue supporting Voice of America's Tibetan radio service."

China’s Embrace of Cultural Diplomacy - Philip Seib, PD News–CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy: "[C]ultural diplomacy, like other elements of public diplomacy, exists not to create feel-good relationships but rather should be designed to advance the national interest. ... Competition without conflict is a reasonable goal for those shaping the U.S.-China relationship. The cultures of both countries will influence the likelihood of achieving this outcome, and so it is the responsibility of public diplomacy practitioners to elevate the political sophistication of cultural diplomacy."

Strengthen China's public diplomacy - Wang Lili, China Daily: "China urgently needs to carry out more effective public diplomacy if it is to overcome the misunderstandings, prejudice and suspicions that people in other countries have toward it.

Public diplomacy is an indispensable part of a country's approach to foreign relations as well as an important supplement to its traditional diplomacy. Effective public diplomacy is essential if a nation is to promote its national interests and achieve its foreign policy objectives. China's present public diplomacy does not match its position in the world and it needs to be improved. First, more non-State parties should be invited to participate in the nation's public diplomacy. ... Second, the media should play a bigger role in public diplomacy. ... Third, effective public diplomacy needs to be targeted at its intended audiences." Image from

Hollington Tong and his Nationalist Era propaganda campaign - Chinese Culture and Public Diplomacy: "At one of the concurrent sessions, Ms. Shuge Wei, PhD candidate of the Australia National University, did a very clear presentation on the international propaganda efforts made by the Nationalist Party during the 1920-1930s that led up to the Japanese invasion of China.

Based on her recently-finished dissertation, she started (with perfect English) with three Nielson Polls on the gradually-increased sympathy by the Americans with the Chinese during the invasion of Japan. The three polls showed the sympathy increased stably with China." Image from

Blogathon India 2012: A high impact meet in New Delhi - Madhurjya Kotoky, The Public Diplomacy Blog: "Unlike in the West, where blogs have emerged as a serious form of commentary, in India, traditional media remains dominant. While niche blogs are becoming important in spaces like food, music, sports, travel, fashion, entertainment and gadgets, bloggers have a long way to go before wielding any serious influence on the public discourse. Blogs are important to expand the civic space and break the stranglehold of 'brahmanical' Indian media, where sometimes, vested interests can influence conversations. It was therefore interesting to have a Blogathon in New Delhi recently, that saw more than 100+ bloggers getting together to interact and network. Blogathon India, a new network for Indian bloggers, concluded their first meet up called the ‘Dell Blogathon’ 2012 on May 26th, at The Second Sin, New Delhi." Image from entry

From Beatnik to Tweetnik: Brazilian Filmster Gins Up Kerouac's Fifities Favela - Eric Ehrmann, Huffington post: The closet right wing and probably closet gay Kerouac suddenly emerged as a handsome cultural icon in 1957, the same year president Eisenhower launched the interstate highway system to put more Americans on the road. Kerouac and his entourage then preceded to jolt the scared minds of McCarthy era America and got amped up globally as a symbol of cultural freedom while the Cold War Soviet police state was shipping writers and poets to the gulag and the Lubyanka for trying to be like Jack. The Cold War era backstory that made the ex-Columbia University football jock a poster boy for the beatnik social network offers a look at the murky netherworld of cultural public diplomacy gatekeepers who have long operated at the intersection of entertainment and government. While the beatniks were bouncing between New York and San Francisco the likes of  Tom Braden, Stuart Alsop and others with CIA connections subtly worked around the agency's charter and mediated domestic culture and politics in New York, Hollywood and Washington. And domestic MKUltra mind control experiments green lighted by CIA scientist Dr. Sidney Gottlieb during the 1950s and revealed by the Church and Rockefeller Commissions during the 1970s made beatnik drug use look tame.

Exclusive: The Paris Review, the Cold War and the CIA: Letters discovered by Salon show even deeper Cold War ties between the Paris Review and a U.S. propaganda front - Joel Whitney, Salon.

Via ACP III on Facebook. Image from

The Foreign Service Officer Test - Darlene, accidentaldiplomat.wordpress.com: "Hello all! Things are going well here in Baghdad. I’ve stuck with my exercise routine, and have now incorporated exercising into my daily routine. Feels great! I’m addition, I’ve signed up to take the Foreign Service Officer test. Tomorrow. I’ve been studying these last few weeks, incorporating it into my workout by studying on my iPad while I’m on the treadmill. It works great – no distractions, just me, music, study, and exercise – multitasking at its best.

For those of you unfamiliar with the FSO test, or thinking “but Darlene, you’re already in the Foreign Service, aren’t you?” I’ll explain. My current job is Office Management Specialist, or OMS. What I really want to do is Public Diplomacy. Having been in for a few years now, I think this is what will make me most happy and make the fullest use of my talents and creativity. The test asks you a broad range of questions, from history to English expression to biographical information to management and economics. I hope I do well – I’ve got friends here that gave me tips for the test, and I think I’m ready. Here goes! I should hear within a month or so if I’ve passed. Cross your fingers!" Darlene image from her blog.

Public Diplomacy at American University - Craig Hayden, publicdiplomacyatau.blogspot.com: "Welcome to the Summer Course on Comparative Public Diplomacy. I've taken the liberty of posting the links to all the group blogs for this course. If you haven't already found them yourself - now you can browse them and provide commentary. Most of the regular course announcements, as you've already figured out, will be posted via email and blackboard."

RELATED ITEMS

Obama apologises to President Komorowski over 'Polish death camp' gaffe: Poland's president has received a letter from Barack Obama, following the diplomatic furore surrounding the US leader's ill-chosen use of the phrase “Polish death camp” - thenews.pl: "Jaromir Sokolowski, Minister at the Presidential Chancellery, told the Polish Press Agency that Obama 'regrets this error. According to Sokolowski the American president noted that over the last few years, Poland had 'rightly fought' to eliminate such terms from public use. Furthermore, Obama stated that his error could be 'an opportunity to ensure that this and future generations to know the truth.' In the letter to President Komorowski, Obama writes apologized for his words, 'which caused pain, to many Poles over the years and [this is an issue] which Poland has rightly fought, trying to eliminate [this term] from public discussion in the world ,' says Sokolowski.

In the letter, Obama stressed that he is aware that the camps at Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka and elsewhere in occupied Poland were built and operated by the Nazi German regime and not by Poland. Both Polish and American diplomats are hoping that Obama's letter will calm the what has become a diplomatic incident that was sparked by the gaffe. The US president made the initial error on Tuesday while awarding the Medal of Freedom – America's highest civilian honour – to the late Jan Karski, an iconic figure in Poland's World War II resistance. America's Kosciuszko Foundation, together with the Polish Foreign Ministry, has been engaged in a long-running campaign to stamp out references to 'Polish death camps' in the international press." Via MC on facebook. Image from

Letter to the Editor: Obama’s Misstep on Poland, and a History Lesson - David Harris, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee, New York Times: In the article about Polish reaction to President Obama’s misstatement about a “Polish death camp,” when he meant to say “Nazi death camp in Poland,” you write that the administration seemed “blindsided” by the angry response from Polish officials (“Polish Premier Denounces Obama for Referring to a ‘Polish Death Camp,’ ” news article, May 31). The administration should not have been surprised. Anyone who has dealt with Poland knows that there are few issues more sensitive than this one. Poland was the first target of the Nazi military juggernaut. Many Poles fought courageously, first on the battlefield, later in the underground, against the Nazi occupation of their country. The Nazis, not the Poles, built the infamous death camps, including Auschwitz, where many Polish Catholics in addition to countless Jews were sent. Regrettably, on a day many Poles and others had long anticipated — when Jan Karski, the brave Polish resistance fighter and underground courier, was to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously — the misstatement marred the event. To make matters worse, the administration’s two-sentence statement later that day expressing regret, in the name of a National Security Council spokesman, came across as bare-bones and insufficient to undo the hurt. Poland deserves better. It may not be too late to make things right, but the longer it takes, the harder it will be.

On Social Media, State Department Stands Alone - Peter Van Buren, Huffington Post: The bottom line is this: If the hyper-classified CIA recognizes the need for an internal review of its pre-clearance process, why doesn't the State Department? If the military, with its obvious day-to-day operational need for secrecy and its immediate impact on soldiers' lives, can co-exist without pre-clearance restraints on blogs, why can't State?

Given the chance to make sane, voluntary changes to an obviously outdated social media policy that stands outside the boundaries of other federal agencies with a whole lot more secrets to protect, State appears ready to instead insist on having those changes dictated to it by a court. That is an expensive, and poor, way to fix regulations and in this case, wholly unnecessary. Image from

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran - New York Times: From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. The United States government only recently acknowledged developing cyberweapons, and it has never admitted using them. There have been reports of one-time attacks against personal computers used by members of Al Qaeda, and of contemplated attacks against the computers that run air defense systems, including during the NATO-led air attack on Libya last year. But Olympic Games was of an entirely different type and sophistication. It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country’s infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.

Music used as 'disincentive' at Guantanamo Bay, Pentagon says - Music has been used as a "disincentive" in handling prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday. “Music is used both in a positive way and as a disincentive,” Capt. John Kirby told reporters, but it is not a form of torture.

“We don’t torture,” he said. On Tuesday, Al Jazeera released the documentary “Songs of War,” which examines the use of music as a form of torture. According to the documentary, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have been forced to wear headphones and listen to music for prolonged periods. Composer Christopher Cerf, who writes music for “Sesame Street” and is featured in the documentary, expressed outrage that his songs were used as an interrogation tool. Rage Against the Machine image from

Egypt's Depressing Run-Off - Marc Lynch, Foreign Policy: It's actually a very good sign that the U.S. was so irrelevant to the election campaign -- a successful campaign based primarily on anti-American rhetoric, or overt American intervention in the election being two dogs which didn't bark in an important way.

Syrian intervention risks upsetting global order - Henry A. Kissinger, Washington Post: Regime change, almost by definition, generates an imperative for nation-building. Failing that, the international order itself begins to disintegrate. Blank spaces denoting lawlessness may come to dominate the map, as has already occurred in Yemen, Somalia, northern Mali, Libya and northwestern Pakistan, and may yet happen in Syria. The collapse of the state may turn its territory into a base for terrorism or arms supply against neighbors who, in the absence of any central authority, will have no means to counteract them. In Syria, calls for humanitarian and strategic intervention merge. At the heart of the Muslim world, Syria has, under Bashar al-Assad, assisted Iran’s strategy in the Levant and Mediterranean.

It supported Hamas, which rejects the Israeli state, and Hezbollah, which undermines Lebanon’s cohesion. The United States has strategic reasons to favor the fall of Bashar al-Assad and to encourage international diplomacy to that end. On the other hand, not every strategic interest rises to a cause for war; were it otherwise, no room would be left for diplomacy. Image from

On Current TV with Eliot Spitzer: ‘We couldn’t find enough ways to throw the money away’ - Peter Van Buren, We Meant Well: "In a second interview with host Eliot Spitzer, I discuss the true cost of the Iraq war and my claim that the State Department is retaliating by trying to have me fired. We talk about how I was appalled by the waste and failed attempts to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people: 'Projects would be funded, money would be spent — nobody would even look at the results. The important thing was to have pictures taken, propaganda put up, signs made in English so that the signs would look good on television and we would move onto the next thing … never bothering to look over our shoulder.'”

Foreign Service Dissent Award Snubs Most Vocal Foreign Service Dissenter of the Year - Domani Spero, DiploPundit: We understand that two nominations were submitted for the Rivkin Award for FSO Peter Van Buren, but since he did not get the award, AFSA’s [American Foreign Service Association] panel must think that he did not “go out on a limb” enough, or “stick his neck out in a way” that involves some risk.  Which is kind of sorta funny since the last we heard, Van Buren’s neck is definitely on the chopping block.  Revenge of the chickens for writing about chicken crap.  But seriously, he sure did challenge the system from within by not resigning, didn’t he?

ADVICE

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ONE MORE QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

"How to recover from being born?"

--Question asked by Romanian essayist Emil Cioran; cited in Times Literary Supplement (May 15, 2012), p. 9