The US first lady spent time with a couple of China’s most prominent diplomats on her last day in Beijing, the pandas Meng’er and Gu Gu. She was greeted by a group of schoolchildren waving miniature Chinese and American flags and handed out stuffed toy bald eagles to them. Melania Trump engages in panda diplomacy at Beijing zoo
BIDD Diplo Portal Belgrade
Emily Heil, The Washington Post, March 6
Image from article: Melania Trump visits a language arts class at the Dove School of Discovery on March 4. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
The visit by Melania Trump to a charter school in Tulsa on Monday seemed to be a picture-perfect success for the first lady. She complimented pre-K students on their crayon skills and observed middle-schoolers conducting science experiments. She made small talk and warned a second-grader who had complained about her homework that it was “very important.”But the first lady had just stepped into a zone fraught with potential diplomatic peril with her stop promoting her Be Best initiative that aims to improve children’s well-being. The Dove School of Discovery, a Tulsa charter institution that focuses on character education, is believed to be part of a network of schools in the United States and abroad linked to the Gulen movement, a secretive religious movement inspired by a 77-year-old Turkish Muslim cl..
Lorraine Vaney, ,gip.geIn the last three years, the Georgian fashion scene has gone through an unprecedented development. Tbilisi became a new hot-spot for buyers and opinion makers looking for authenticity, avant-gardism and exoticism. The capital of Georgia certainly took advantage of the dynamics ruling and extending the global fashion market – as did other capitals with less success.In a highly competitive market, it has somehow become a requisite for capital cities to have their own fashion week like those in NY, London, Milan, Paris and Berlin as a visual demonstration of wealth and taste. So why and how did Tbilisi become the new fashion destination in Europe? How could this attractive industry serve as a soft power tool on the road to European integration? Part of the answer has to do with shared European culture and public diplomacy [JB emphasis] . The Soviet Union and cultural competitionSince Soviet times, fashion has been influenced by or even associated with politics and p..
Read more
I’M a little worried about the French ambassador. Sure, he’s good-looking and charming and popular and lives in the most romantic chateau in town. But I fear that he’s one glass of silky Beaujolais and one tart tweet away from blowing up his life. At 62, after a distinguished career in the French Foreign Ministry,
Read more
angles.saesfrance.org
Publié en ligne le 23 juin 2015 Auteurs, Par Raphaël RICAUD
Image (not from article) fromRésumé
John Lackey Brown était le correspondant littéraire du New York Times en poste à Paris au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Lors des deux premières décennies de la Guerre froide, il fut attaché culturel dans les ambassades américaines de Bruxelles, Rome et Mexico. Ceux qui le connaissaient le mieux disaient de lui qu'il était apprécié pour sa bonne humeur, son esprit et son amour pour la culture. Au sein de sa profession, il faisait figure de modèle. Les paroles s’envolent, les écrits restent. En raison de la nature éphémère et privée des apartés, on ne peut que spéculer sur l'utilisation de l’esprit dont faisait preuve cet attaché culturel dans ses démarches diplomatiques. Les archives de sa correspondance, en revanche, demeurent et méritent être étudiées (elles reposent à la bibliothèque Lauinger de l’université de Georgetown, à Washington D.C.). Cett..
This post is part of a debate on Australia’s foreign policy White paper 2017. Click here for other debate posts. Australia has a great story to tell the world, a powerful ‘strategic narrative‘ that is a potent source of soft power. But it’s increasingly difficult for this story to be heard, given the transformations arising
Read more
