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AUG 19, 2009
Fundamentally Freund: Thinking Outside the ‘Hasbara Bubble’
Jerusalem Post
Always on the lookout for a chance to talk up Israel while traveling abroad, I decided to utilize a recent appointment with a physical therapist in Manhattan for more than just a stretch of my stubborn hamstring. As this licensed professional politely twisted me into seemingly impossible contortions, perhaps mistaking me for some out-of-costume comic book hero, I ignored the desire to scream and instead asked what his impression was of the Jewish state. "Israel? That's near Gaza or something, isn't it?" he said, applying yet another sideways yank to one of my legs, which quickly began to resemble those obtuse angles we had learned about way back in high-school geometry.
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AUG 19, 2009
Unsung Heroes of the Battlefields
Washington Post
Six years ago today, my father, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was killed in a tragic attack in Baghdad that changed the face of the humanitarian world. A truck filled with bombs exploded in the United Nations compound, killing 22 humanitarian workers and wounding many more. Some who were not physically hurt were psychologically wounded. Even years later, many remain vulnerable.
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AUG 19, 2009
Global Spin Doctors
Foreign Policy in Focus
We endure, ignore, or fall prey to as many as 20,000 ads a day. That's one ad every three seconds of our waking hours. We wear ads on our shirts, forward commercials via email, sing jingles with our friends, and even brand corporate icons on our bodies. We've developed vaccines to address this particular virus. There's Naomi Klein's No Logo and the cheeky magazine Adbusters. There's Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's radio program Counterspin andthe ad-stripping features of TiVo. But the virus continues to mutate and spread.
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AUG 18, 2009
Rescue, but Not Outrage
Commentary Magazine
Early this morning (Hong Kong time), I was interviewed on CNN International (here’s the video) about the consequences of recent rescues of American citizens sentenced to long prison terms in some of the world’s worst countries—specifically, former president Bill Clinton’s mission to North Korea on August 5 to bring out journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and Senator Jim Webb’s trip to Burma over the weekend to extract John William Yettaw.
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AUG 18, 2009
‘It Is Pointless to Talk to Al-Qaida’
Spiegel Online International
Harvard professor Joseph Nye talks to SPIEGEL about America's role in the world, the change of strategy under US President Barack Obama and how his concept of soft power can be used to solve tough conflicts...." Every American president has three options. He can use force -- in other words, hard power -- to assert his interests, he can invest money or he can lead by attraction. The latter I call soft power, the appeal of American cultural values. I have never argued that the so-called hard-power instruments of a superpower -- the military, the intelligence services or economic sanctions -- can be replaced. It is all about the right mix of hard and soft power."
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