The "hip hop jam session" between African American hip hop musicians and Sfax native El General is at the core of the hip hop diplomacy: critical cross-cultural exchange and dialogue achieved through musical collaborations. The interaction between youth through a shared global language (hip hop and social media technologies) may be a "bab" for this bilateral political and cultural education.

Kwan, who will be inducted into the hall during the national championships at the end of January in San Jose, Calif., has served as a public diplomacy envoy for the U.S. government for the last five years.

Public sentiment here against China has worsened since the captain of an illegal Chinese fishing boat allegedly killed a Korea Coast Guard officer on Monday. Public anger further deepened as Beijing only expressed regret, falling short of offering an official apology.

Talk to Pakistani politicians, scholars... you are beyond the realm of politics and diplomacy and into the realm of hurt feelings. Words like “ditch” and “jilt” and “betray” recur. With Americans, they complain, it’s never a commitment, it’s always a transaction.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton launched the Women in Public Service Project – a new initiative to increase the number of women in public service at the local, national, and international levels. A partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Seven Sisters Colleges of Barnard College

So far, Beijing's soft power strategy has focused on ramping up the Chinese media overseas, with steps like state news agency Xinhua taking out advertisements at New York's Times Square. The spread of Confucius Institutes across Asia and the world is another high-profile effort.

Public diplomacy efforts to project a more culturally sensitive regional outreach merely provide a patina of inclusiveness that covers and perpetuates traditional economic interests associated with the inter-American system that is structured to ensure that wealth is pumped up to the top of the economic pyramid.

Excitement over the Internet aside, however, the Virtual Embassy Tehran is a product of the same failed public diplomacy paradigm that the United States has pursued since 9/11. As such, it reflects the persistent inability of the U.S. government to recognize modern global communications landscape and the limits of persuasion.