Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Berto Jongman: US Public Diplomacy – Time for Competence?

02 Diplomacy
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Novel Suggestion: A Qualified Nominee for America’s Next Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Whirled View, Saturday, 25 May 2013

Will persistence pay off or does hope just spring eternal? The former would be nice.

On May 24, 2013, 51 former US Ambassadors and senior US government officials with extensive overseas and Washington experience in foreign affairs wrote to Secretary John Kerry (copying NSC Advisor Tom Donilon) urging the new Secretary to appoint a career foreign affairs professional as the next Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. This position is being vacated by Tara Sonenshine, Hillary Clinton’s final political appointment to the office. Sonenshine lasted less than a year.

The letter signers are right.

The position has been a revolving door since its creation in 1999 in the wake of the destruction of the US Information Agency which left a gaping hole in America’s ability to interact systematically and effectively with foreign publics abroad – a vacuum that the new soft power mandate for the State Department has miserably failed to fill.

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David Swanson: Shattered Hopes in Palestine — Boycott Israel is People’s Solution

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
David Swanson
David Swanson

An Endless “Peace Process” for Palestine

By davidswanson – Posted on 27 May 2013

The United States balances its endless war of terrorism with the institution of an endless “peace process” for Palestine, a process valuable for its peaceyness and interminability.

Josh Ruebner's new book, Shattered Hopes: The Failure of Obama's Middle East Peace Process, could just as easily have been called “Fulfilled Expectations: The Success of Obama's Middle East Peace Process,” depending on one's perspective.  Its story could be summarized: Obama's performance in this area has been of a piece with his performance in every other.  Some people became very hopeful about his rhetoric and then very dejected about his actions.

In this case, among those getting hopeful were Palestinian negotiators.  But they didn't just grow depressed and despondent.  They felt no obligation to behave like Democratic voters.  They swore off the Hopium and went to work on an international approach through the United Nations that has begun to pay off.

Obama began his “peace process” efforts “naively unprepared for the intensity of the pushback from Israel and its supporters in the United States to its demand that Israel freeze settlements,” Ruebner writes.  But evidence of Obama's mental state is hard to pin down, and I'm not sure of the relevance.  Whether Obama began with naive good intentions or the same cynicism that he was, by all accounts, fully immersed in by his second or third year in office, the important point remains the same.  As Ruebner explains, Obama employs an all-carrots / no-sticks approach with Israel that is doomed to failure.

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Jon Rappoport: The Attempt to Destroy the Individual

Cultural Intelligence
Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport

The attempt to destroy the individual

by Jon Rappoport

May 27, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

“What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It's a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.”

Howard Beale, in Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 film, Network

But that was only a movie. Who cares about that? You go into a theater, sit there in the dark for a couple of hours, walk out, and think about something else.

For several years now, I've been writing about the decline of the individual. The wipeout.

Every time I write an article on this subject, I receive suggestions. I should go back and re-read Marx. I need to understand the difference between “communal, communitarian, community, communist.” I should research worker-owned businesses. What about trans-substantial transpersonal sub-brain algorithmic psychology? How about the pygmies? Ego? Superego? Id?

I appreciate these and other remarks, but I'm talking about the individual, about Self, beyond any construct, beyond citizenship, beyond membership, beyond sociology or anthropology or archeology.

The individual is enshrined in various political documents, but his rights don't originate there. Neither does courage nor imagination.

I've laid out the enormous psyop designed to submerge the individual in unconscious goo. This psyop depends on the repetition of words like: unity, love, caring, community, family. And phrases like “we're all in this together.”

The individual is characterized as: lone, outsider, selfish,greedy, inhumane, petty. Turn him into an exile, excommunicated from the great body of humanity.

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Graphic: Tobacco Smoke Enema Tool

Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency
Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Tobacco Smoke Enemas (1750s-1810s)
The tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient's rectum for various medical purposes, primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum. The warmth of the smoke was thought to promote respiration, but doubts about the credibility of tobacco enemas led to the popular phrase “blowin'smoke up your ass.”  Marcus Aurelius

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