Yearly Archives: 2009

Uncategorized

Down The Path Called Dysfunctional – Charges of BBG Federal Survey Fraud

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, December 22, 2009, San Francisco — The BBG has long been considered one of the worst managed Federal agencies. The current Bush-era members of the bipartisan Board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting are expected to be replaced soon by President Obama’s nominees who now await confirmation by the U.S. Senate. (You would not know…

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Poland

Critics call Poland Patriot missile plan a symbolic gesture

Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — An article in the U.S. semi-official military newspaper Stars and Stripes suggests that the Obama administration’s plan for placing a limited number of Patriot missiles in Poland has no military significance and is being implemented largely for diplomatic reasons to appease Warsaw after President Obama scrapped President Bush’s far more ambitious anti-ballistic missile defense system.  …

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Poland

Obama diplomacy lost in confusion

TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — Speaking softly to dictators while insulting faithful allies seems to be the essence of President Obama’s confused diplomacy.   The Obama administration has repeatedly offended Poland’s pride in recent months, making Polish officials extremely suspicious and anxious about foreign policy and military commitments of the new U.S. administration. First, President Obama made public his strong desire…

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Poland

Obama diplomacy lost in translation

TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — In angry late-night phone calls to reporters last week, State Department diplomats were defending careless comments by President Obama’s new ambassador in Warsaw, Lee A. Feinstein, who revealed on Polish TV the content of sensitive negotiations with the U.S. about increasing the number of Polish troops in Afghanistan. Polish officials had good reasons to keep this…

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Public Diplomacy

U.S. Embassy blames diplomatic gaffe on a Polish translator but a problem runs much deeper

TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — Bill Clinton might have asked what the “enhanced” definition of  “to enhance” IS?  The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw is busy blaming a Polish translator for mistranslating U.S. Ambassador Lee Feinstein’s TV interview answer about Polish troops in Afghanistan,  which caused a diplomatic uproar in Poland. In an interview broadcast last Saturday,  Ambassador Feinstein  thanked Polish prime minister and…

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Poland, Public Diplomacy

More diplomatic confusion between U.S. and Poland

Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. media has not yet picked up on the latest diplomatic controversy between Poland and the U.S. But the public disagreement between president Obama’s new ambassador in Warsaw Lee A. Feinstein and the Polish defense minister over plans to send additional Polish troops  to Afghanistan is drawing media attention in Poland.   Ambassador Feinstein made a…

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Poland, Public Diplomacy, Russia

Obama’s bad foreign policy decisions may have good unintended consequences for public discourse in the U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO — Sometimes really bad decisions produce some unintended good results. Two recent public diplomacy disasters caused by President Obama’s questionable judgement — where was Judith McHale and the State Department diplomats? — had some unexpected good consequences, as did the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize despite his lack of any concrete foreign policy accomplishments. Some of his recent…

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Cold War, History, Poland, Russia

Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane’s warning about naive idealism in foreign policy

SAN FRANCISCO — Arthur Bliss Lane (16 June 1894–12 August 1956) was the United States Ambassador to Poland (1944–1947). He served earlier as the U.S. Ambassador to the wartime Polish government-in-exile in London and was with the U.S. diplomatic mission in Poland in 1919. During the interwar period, he had a number of other diplomatic assignments in Western Europe and…

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