Update: America.gov restored my comment.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, December 22, 2010 — I found a factually correct but at the same time completely one-sided report for foreign audiences on America.gov – a State Department website – which claims to have some journalistic objectivity. I posted my comment to the story, which was promptly removed. I recreate it here from memory:
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, December 19, 2010 — In their eagerness to promote the Obama Administration policies to overseas audiences, the Voice of America (VOA) English Service reporters and editors have been toeing the White House line on the proposed START arms reductions treaty with Russia and failing to report in a balanced way on the substantial Republican opposition to the treaty, as they are required to do by U.S. law which governs their journalistic work.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, CA, December 17, 2010 — The START treaty must be very good for Russia if Prime Minister Putin felt it necessary to disavow a reported statement given earlier to the media by an unitentified Kremlin official who suggested that an assassin or assassins may have been dispatched to the U.S. to kill a former Russian spy suspected of betraying a group of sleeper Russian agents. The earlier story, although not reported widely by mainstream U.S.media, was not good public relations and public diplomacy since it implied the Kremlin’s intention to violate U.S. laws on American soil. He may have been advised to issue a denial to help win the approval for the START treaty in the U.S. Senate.
Opinia.US Truckee, CA, December 6, 2010 — The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. has released and commented on a number of leaked U.S. cables dealing with Poland. There needs to be a much greater scrutiny of these cables by mainstream U.S. media and political pressure from Polonia voters to force President Obama to change his course on Poland.
Opinia.US Truckee, CA, December 5, 2010 — A newly disclosed secret cable to the State Department in Washington shows that American diplomats in Moscow sometimes fall for Russian media disinformation and pass it on without questioning while adding their own pro-Kremlin commentary. Most diplomatic cables from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which have been released so far by WikiLeaks, seem, however, far more sceptical and critical of the Kremlin.
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, December 02, 2010 — A court in the Czech Republic has ruled that a former Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Armenian broadcaster Anna Karapetian should not have been fired using RFE/RL’s personnel procedures which deprive non-American and non-Czech employees of some of the protections of Czech labor laws. [quote_right]Czech senator Jaromir Stetina, deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, called discrimination of RFE/RL foreign employees “patently indecent, unfair, cynical and hypocritical.”[/quote_right] RFE/RL is a semi-private entity funded and managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. government agency.
by Ted Lipien
Opinia.US Truckee, CA, November 29, 2010 — Leaked secret State Department cables may help to resolve the mystery as to why President Obama chose September 17, 2009 to make his announcement on canceling President Bush’s missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The announcement pleased the Kremlin, which had been pushing for the cancellation of the planned system for years. But why the Obama White House made the announcement on September 17, the anniversary of the Soviet military invasion of Poland in 1939 under the secret terms of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, is still not clear.
Update: President Obama has so much invested in the “reset” of relations with Russia (read: Medvedev and Putin) that he can’t bring himself to condemn this public rebuke from the Kremlin and a flagrant challenge to him, U.S. laws and sovereignty.
Update: The results of the mid-term elections have shown that American voters have had a chance to evaluate President Obama and have strongly rejected his leadership. While economic and other domestic issues played a major role, it was also a vote of no confidence in his foreign policy.
The radio interview, recorded and first broadcast by the Voice of America (VOA) in 1976, was rebroadcast by VOA’s Polish Service on October 16, 1978, after the news of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła’s election as the new pope had been announced at the Vatican. Today is the 32 anniversary of the election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II.
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