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#softpower — Public Fediverse posts

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  1. @DigiDavidex @gabardino Il cinema vende eroi, la realtà è un Paese che esporta crisi e arroganza.
    Hollywood costruisce mondi perfetti mentre la politica USA incendia lo Stretto di Hormuz, tratta territori sovrani come proprietà e tollera violenze come quelle di ICE.
    Un’Europa davvero sovrana dovrebbe avere il coraggio di dire che questa ondata di americagate è solo propaganda travestita da intrattenimento.

    #hollywood #americadownfall #softpower

  2. @DigiDavidex @gabardino Il cinema vende eroi, la realtà è un Paese che esporta crisi e arroganza.
    Hollywood costruisce mondi perfetti mentre la politica USA incendia lo Stretto di Hormuz, tratta territori sovrani come proprietà e tollera violenze come quelle di ICE.
    Un’Europa davvero sovrana dovrebbe avere il coraggio di dire che questa ondata di americagate è solo propaganda travestita da intrattenimento.

    #hollywood #americadownfall #softpower

  3. #Israel’s recognition of #Somaliland was a historic diplomatic breakthrough—but it has also created new strategic pressures involving #Somalia, #Türkiye, #Djibouti & other regional powers. Can #Hargeisa protect its #DiplomaticGains & preserve its #SoftPower?

    saxafimedia.com/israeli-recogn

  4. A FOIA Update, Of Sorts

    Last week, a Government Information Specialist at the State Department emailed to ask if I would still be interested in records I requested in 2021 under the Freedom of Information Act. “The Department is undertaking a comprehensive review of its backlog of FOIA requests,” she wrote, and if (after failing to respond to my request for five years) she did not hear from me within thirty days, “the Department will conclude you are no longer interested in pursuing this request, and your request will be administratively closed.”

    The request itself concerned the Kalorama mansion purchased by Chilean billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig right after the 2016 election, where Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump lived during Trump’s first term. (I’ve written several posts about the situation over the years. This one is a pretty good primer.) When Jared and Ivanka decamped to Florida in 2021, the Kuwaiti foreign mission leased Luksic’s Washington, DC property; federal law required State Department approval. So I asked to see the Kuwaiti foreign mission’s written request and the State Department’s Notice of Approval.

    I was casting a wide net in order to learn what I could about Luksic, his influence operations, and his international network of business relationships, which now extends to the very edge of the Boundary Waters, where Luksic-controlled Antofagasta plc plans to build the Twin Metals copper and nickel mine.

    It was a longshot request to begin with. Is there anything to learn from these Foreign Mission Office records, five years later? Not likely, but who knows? So I replied that I am still interested. I feel obliged to see the thing through, or to see that the Department of State meets its obligation to the public. 

    While I had the attention, or at least the email address, of someone involved in the comprehensive review, I thought I should ask about two other requests I’d filed with the Department of State back in October of 2018, and which I’ve been trying to chase down ever since. These requests concern the use of the US embassy in Santiago, Chile as a business backchannel for Antofagasta: one asks for records of a 2017 meeting between Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada and Carol Perez, then US ambassador to Chile; the other asks for embassy communications regarding Trump’s nomination of Andrew Gellert to replace Perez. Over the years, the Department has set and missed several estimated dates of completion for these requests. I detailed some of the back and forth in a 2023 post. Since then, or at least for the past couple of years, the FOIA Office has failed to respond to my requests for more information about the status of these requests.

    On Monday, this reply came:

    These requests remain in process and has [sic] a new estimated date of completion (EDC) of January 31, 2028.  EDCs are estimates and subject to change. You will be notified of the results of the Department’s search and review efforts in response to these requests as soon as that information becomes available.

    This is just boilerplate, of course; the subject-verb disagreement in the first sentence looks like a copy-paste accident. Still, a few observations. 

    The requests are said to be “in process,” but in eight years no “search and review efforts” have been undertaken. The new estimated date of completion falls in the last year of Trump’s second term – a year and a half from now – and the FOIA office is not even committing to a response when the 2018 request hits the ten-year mark. I am sufficiently annoyed by this delay that I have to wonder aloud (but without evidence) if there is some directive at State to push FOIA matters, or certain FOIA matters, to the end of this administration. 

    The FOIA office blames a backlog of requests, and that backlog is real. “The State Department’s FOIA backlog spiked by 6,000 cases to a total of 27,619” this fiscal year, reports Justin Doubleday. Back in June, Minho Kim did some great data analysis for the New York Times showing that federal agencies “accumulated the highest-ever backlog of cases in fiscal year 2025, raising questions about compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.” Not surprisingly, “the problem appears to have worsened under President Trump.” And the backlog problem has been compounded by cuts to FOIA staff, leaving “several key FOIA leadership and staff positions vacant” at State. One administration official quoted by the Times says the Trump administration chose to “hire ICE officers instead of FOIA processors.” That snide remark alone speaks volumes about this administration’s misplaced priorities, its refusal of all accountability, and its contemptuous disregard for the public interest. 

    To put it another way: the FOIA backlog is itself a symptom of bad government and corruption, a condition that is only exacerbated by the Trumpist dismantling and hijacking of public institutions and federal agencies.

    In 2019, William J. Burns warned against Trump’s “diplomacy of narcissism, bent on advancing private interests at the expense of our national interests.” The events that prompted my FOIA requests in 2018 – the meeting of an Antofagasta executive with Ambassador Perez and the nomination of Gellert, a Kushner friend – fit the pattern. The cronyism and self-dealing of the first term have gotten much worse and much more blatant this go-round. Charles Kushner is ambassador to France! Jared and Steve Witkoff are the faces of US diplomacy. The ambassador to Chile is Brandon Judd, a longtime Trump campaign stalwart and former head of the Border Patrol union. Judd’s main qualification seems to be that he spent some time in Chile in the 1990s, proselytizing for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. José Miguel Insulza put it bluntly: “de diplomacia no sabe nada.”

    AmbassadorJudd has not exactly covered himself in glory. He caused an uproar just a couple of weeks ago when he criticized Chilean cabinet ministers for expressing serious and legitimate concerns about the new 12.5 percent tariffs on Chilean exports, petulantly adding that there would be no agreement if they continued their criticisms. Judd went on to suggest that Chile’s business leaders should “complain to your authorities to prevent them from making declarations about the relationship with the United States.”

    “The ambassador,” said Juan Gabriel Valdés, “does not seem to understand that he is not part of the Chilean political system…. he does not have a role to play in internal Chilean political debate.” And this was not an isolated incident, Valdés noted. It was “the third or fourth time” that Judd had acted more like a colonial viceroy than a diplomat.

    For the moment, at least, Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Pérez Mackenna and his team are handling Judd. Pérez Mackenna is a seasoned negotiator. Before joining the right-wing Kast government this past spring, he spent nearly three decades as CEO of Quiñenco, managing the global operations of the Luksic business empire. Make of that what you will.

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    #corruption #cronyism #diplomacy #FOIA #FreedomOfInformationAct #oligarchy #power #selfDealing #softPower
  5. Defesa nacional, um imperativo existencial 

    Brasil, enfim, acorda para a necessidade de investir em Defesa. Ataque dos EUA à Venezuela foi alerta. Não precisamos deixar de ser país pacífico. Mas, como mostra o Irã, é possível resistir a uma guerra assimétrica – mesmo sem armas nucleares

    outraspalavras.net/crise-brasi

  6. europesays.com/africa/367795/ Gov’t Moves to Resolve Delays on Kabale–Lake Bunyonyi–Kisoro–Mgahinga Road Upgrade Project #afdb #HenryMusasizi #Kabale–LakeBunyonyi–Kisoro–MgahingaRoadUpgradeProject #Kigezi #SoftPower #SoftPowerNews #Uganda

  7. Its good to see Ed Miliband taking up the UK's World Bank seat himself (rather than leave it to a junior minister).

    But as well as focussing on development & the climate, he will need to make the argument that the UK's international profile not only needs repairing, but a better global reputation may well help deliver Andy Burnham's domestic agenda;

    its not an impossible argument to make, but will be harder in face of a myopic & parochial media!

    #politics #SoftPower
    theguardian.com/business/2026/

  8. Its good to see Ed Miliband taking up the UK's World Bank seat himself (rather than leave it to a junior minister).

    But as well as focussing on development & the climate, he will need to make the argument that the UK's international profile not only needs repairing, but a better global reputation may well help deliver Andy Burnham's domestic agenda;

    its not an impossible argument to make, but will be harder in face of a myopic & parochial media!

    #politics #SoftPower
    theguardian.com/business/2026/

  9. Its good to see Ed Miliband taking up the UK's World Bank seat himself (rather than leave it to a junior minister).

    But as well as focussing on development & the climate, he will need to make the argument that the UK's international profile not only needs repairing, but a better global reputation may well help deliver Andy Burnham's domestic agenda;

    its not an impossible argument to make, but will be harder in face of a myopic & parochial media!

    #politics #SoftPower
    theguardian.com/business/2026/

  10. Its good to see Ed Miliband taking up the UK's World Bank seat himself (rather than leave it to a junior minister).

    But as well as focussing on development & the climate, he will need to make the argument that the UK's international profile not only needs repairing, but a better global reputation may well help deliver Andy Burnham's domestic agenda;

    its not an impossible argument to make, but will be harder in face of a myopic & parochial media!

    #politics #SoftPower
    theguardian.com/business/2026/

  11. economist.com/podcasts/2026/06

    >> -- When we talk about globalization, we’re often really talking about Americanization, particularly in the entertainment industry. For so long, it was the U.S. That dominated all of these entertainment industries. So does that mean that America’s dead when it comes to soft power, that American sway is really over?

    -- Not dead, but certainly weakening in a big way...over the years, as you say, a lot of people have been recruited to American ideas and American goals by the soft power of film, of music, and maybe to a lesser extent, gaming. And America’s dominance over these industries is definitely in retreat...America controls the pipes of distribution if you like, and thereby controls a lot the profits. But when it comes to the content itself, America, which used to be so mighty in this area is a fading force.<<

    #Deglobalization #Localization #Culture #SoftPower #Fragmentation

  12. economist.com/podcasts/2026/06

    >> -- When we talk about globalization, we’re often really talking about Americanization, particularly in the entertainment industry. For so long, it was the U.S. That dominated all of these entertainment industries. So does that mean that America’s dead when it comes to soft power, that American sway is really over?

    -- Not dead, but certainly weakening in a big way...over the years, as you say, a lot of people have been recruited to American ideas and American goals by the soft power of film, of music, and maybe to a lesser extent, gaming. And America’s dominance over these industries is definitely in retreat...America controls the pipes of distribution if you like, and thereby controls a lot the profits. But when it comes to the content itself, America, which used to be so mighty in this area is a fading force.<<

    #Deglobalization #Localization #Culture #SoftPower #Fragmentation

  13. economist.com/podcasts/2026/06

    >> -- When we talk about globalization, we’re often really talking about Americanization, particularly in the entertainment industry. For so long, it was the U.S. That dominated all of these entertainment industries. So does that mean that America’s dead when it comes to soft power, that American sway is really over?

    -- Not dead, but certainly weakening in a big way...over the years, as you say, a lot of people have been recruited to American ideas and American goals by the soft power of film, of music, and maybe to a lesser extent, gaming. And America’s dominance over these industries is definitely in retreat...America controls the pipes of distribution if you like, and thereby controls a lot the profits. But when it comes to the content itself, America, which used to be so mighty in this area is a fading force.<<

    #Deglobalization #Localization #Culture #SoftPower #Fragmentation

  14. economist.com/podcasts/2026/06

    >> -- When we talk about globalization, we’re often really talking about Americanization, particularly in the entertainment industry. For so long, it was the U.S. That dominated all of these entertainment industries. So does that mean that America’s dead when it comes to soft power, that American sway is really over?

    -- Not dead, but certainly weakening in a big way...over the years, as you say, a lot of people have been recruited to American ideas and American goals by the soft power of film, of music, and maybe to a lesser extent, gaming. And America’s dominance over these industries is definitely in retreat...America controls the pipes of distribution if you like, and thereby controls a lot the profits. But when it comes to the content itself, America, which used to be so mighty in this area is a fading force.<<

    #Deglobalization #Localization #Culture #SoftPower #Fragmentation

  15. "L’Alliance française : 140 ans de “soft power” colonial"

    #SoftPower #Culture #France #Idéologie #Réflexion ... Nous pouvons faire mieux qu'un racisme "bien-pensant", et éviter (les clichés et poncifs habituels de) la colonisation ! ...

    frustrationmagazine.fr/lallian

  16. Radio Taiwan International: Travels and Transmissions

    Visiting Japan

    Radio Taiwan International’s (RTI) Japanese service took part in an amateur radio event in the Japanese region of Kansai, the "KANHAM", on July 17 and 18. The RTI delegation was led by the station’s president Chang Jui-Chang (張瑞昌). Regular meetings between RTI staff and Japanese listeners in Japan have probably helped to lay the foundations of success, putting RTI at the top of surveys by the Japan Shortwave Radio Club, both in 2024 and 2025.

    Broadcasting to Europe and the Mediterranean

    Radio Taiwan’s direct transmissions from Tamsui to Europe and northern Africa, on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, leave little to be desired, apart from a few blackouts during the first minutes of the 15145 kHz transmissions. Listening to the second half hour, from 17:30 to 18:00 UTC on 11990 kHz is much more difficult, as interfering noise spreads across from around 11985 to 12010 kHz.

    The transmissions in German on the July weekends are particularly interesting this year, as RTI veteran broadcaster Eva Triendl interviews her German-department colleagues in these programs – just wondering who is going to interview her, as even Uta Rindfleisch, who started working with RTI in the 1980s (under its former name of "Voice of Free China" at the time) has taken questions.

     

    #Europe #jamming #RadioTaiwanInternational #shortwave #softPower #Taiwan
  17. Tuesday, July 14, 2026

    New era of war begins: Ukrainian sea, ground drone team up for combat mission on Kinburn Spit . . . . . Ukraine drones struck 15 more Russian vessels as Sea of Azov campaign reaches 105 ships total . . . . . Ukraine, 9 European partners launch anti-ballistic missile coalition to support Freya air defense project . . . . . and more

    activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026

  18. Tuesday, July 14, 2026

    New era of war begins: Ukrainian sea, ground drone team up for combat mission on Kinburn Spit . . . . . Ukraine drones struck 15 more Russian vessels as Sea of Azov campaign reaches 105 ships total . . . . . Ukraine, 9 European partners launch anti-ballistic missile coalition to support Freya air defense project . . . . . and more

    activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026

  19. Tuesday, July 14, 2026

    New era of war begins: Ukrainian sea, ground drone team up for combat mission on Kinburn Spit . . . . . Ukraine drones struck 15 more Russian vessels as Sea of Azov campaign reaches 105 ships total . . . . . Ukraine, 9 European partners launch anti-ballistic missile coalition to support Freya air defense project . . . . . and more

    activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026

  20. 🟡 Diplomatic Incident | 7/10
    🇲🇩 🇷🇺

    Russian House in Chisinau closed
    Russian Center for Science and Culture in Chisinau closed since July 4. Head of Rossotrudnichestvo Igor Chaika confirmed the closure.

    #OSINT #NewsGroup #Moldova #Russia #Diplomacy #SoftPower

  21. 🟡 Diplomatic Incident | 7/10
    🇲🇩 🇷🇺

    Russian House in Chisinau closed
    Russian Center for Science and Culture in Chisinau closed since July 4. Head of Rossotrudnichestvo Igor Chaika confirmed the closure.

    #OSINT #NewsGroup #Moldova #Russia #Diplomacy #SoftPower

  22. 🟢 Diplomacy | 3/10
    🇲🇩 🇷🇺

    Moldova closes Russian House in Chisinau
    Head of Rossotrudnichestvo Igor Chaika confirmed the closure of the Russian Center for Science and Culture (Russian House) in Chisinau as of July 4. The decision was made last fall.

    #OSINT #NewsGroup #Moldova #Russia #Diplomacy #SoftPower

  23. 🟢 Diplomacy | 3/10
    🇲🇩 🇷🇺

    Moldova closes Russian House in Chisinau
    Head of Rossotrudnichestvo Igor Chaika confirmed the closure of the Russian Center for Science and Culture (Russian House) in Chisinau as of July 4. The decision was made last fall.

    #OSINT #NewsGroup #Moldova #Russia #Diplomacy #SoftPower

  24. Spotlight on Central Asia looks at foreign influence in the region’s media with @[email protected] joining @[email protected] to discuss a new EU report & narratives pushed by Russia & China https://ow.ly/sFfK50ZfT7Q #Podcast #SoftPower #Disinformation #MediaInfluence #CentralAsia #EUPolicy

    Pannier and Hillard's Spotligh...