Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): It was thirty years’ ago, on 31 August 1980, that strikers from Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard forced the communist regime to recognize Solidarnosc as an independent trade union, release political prisoners, end media censorship and accept the right to strike. The regime later imposed martial law and Solidarity was forced underground before being…
Public Diplomacy, Russia
BBG Blamed for Armenian Genocide Denials on Congressionally-funded Radio Liberty
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 02, 2010, San Francisco — Armenian genocide and Holocaust denials in radio and TV reports generated by private contractors working for the Broadcasting Board of Governors are linked to mismanagement and flawed programming policy at this US taxpayer-funded Federal agency, says FreeMediaOnline, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization which works to promote independent journalism…
Russians lap up the tale of a shadowy spy couple – latimes.com Posted using ShareThis
Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — It is not a good time for Poland in Washington and in U.S. media. The New York Times covered Vice President Biden’s visit to Warsaw from Berlin. It could have been worse; the report could have been filed from Moscow or the paper could have used a short AP story, as did The Washington Post, The…
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…
Poland, Public Diplomacy, Russia
Walesa on Obama’s Missile Diplomacy – American Diplomacy Failed Obama in Poland Update
“It wasn’t that the shield was that important, but it’s about the way, the way of treating us.” –Lech Wałęsa, the former Polish president and Solidarity leader, regarding the US decision to drop the missile defense shield in Poland; John Brown’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, Version 2.0 Dear Poland, Happy Soviet Invasion Day, Love Uncle Sam…
Dear Poland, Happy Soviet Invasion Day, Love Uncle Sam Wired While American and international media blames President Obama for choosing to announce his decision on the removal of the missile defense system from Poland and Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland on September 17, 1939, surprisingly so far no one has called it…
Ted Lipien, author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church,” said that Sarah Palin can be described as a new feminist Christian woman who has followed the most important rules for marriage and families set by the Polish Pontiff. According to Ted Lipien, Pope John Paul II…
Bureaucratic Jamming Of U.S. Broadcasts To Russia, Georgia And Ukraine FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, September 7, 2008, San Francisco — Political jamming originating in Washington rather than Soviet-style electronic jamming of radio signals made it impossible for the Russian speakers in the war zone in Georgia and in Russia itself to hear Voice of America (VOA) news broadcasts during the recent crisis in the…
Religion
A New Book About Pope John Paul II and Feminism Also Deals with Cold War Spying at the Vatican and Attempts to Influence Reporting by RFE/RL and VOA
I included here more information about “Wojtyla’s Women,” my book on Pope John Paul II and feminism. In the book, I discuss at some length the attempts of the Polish communist secret police and the KGB to recruit agents among Pope John Paul II’s friends, as well as their attempts to influence the reporting of journalists working at Radio Free…