US Embassy Research Articles

Tristes Tropique in Jacqueline Bishop's Patchwork Aesthetics

Tristes Tropique in Jacqueline Bishop's Patchwork Aesthetics

Varlık Vergisi’ne Gösterilen Uluslararası Tepkilere Bir Örnek: ABD’nin Varlık Vergisi’ne Yaklaşımı

<p class="ql-align-justify">This study examines the US approach to the Capital Tax. The Capital Tax, introduced by a law enacted on November 11, 1942, targeted the non-Muslim minority living in the country. This situation caused a negative reaction in many countries. The United States was one of these countries. The US government, closely following the developments in Turkey through its embassy, was uncomfortable with such a tax targeting non-Muslims. This discomfort was delivered to the Turkish government through Turkey’s ambassador to Washington. However, the US did not want to be in a position seen as interfering&nbsp;in the internal affairs of Turkey. The US chose not to have direct contact with the Turkish government in a way that could negatively affect their relations. However, the US Embassy pursued an active policy in order to defend the rights of US citizens and the companies in Turkey adversely affected by the tax. For this purpose, the US Embassy presented notes of protest to the Turkish government. Similarly, the responses of other countries to the Capital Tax were followed by the Embassy and forwarded to Washington. In this study, the US approaches to the Capital Tax, which affected the Turkey-US relations negatively, have been examined in detail in the light of archive documents.&nbsp;

The radical potential of leaks in the shadow accounting project: The case of US oil interests in Nigeria

This paper explores the ways in which leaked documents can be recruited to contribute to the counter-hegemonic aims of the shadow accounting project. Drawing on material published by Wikileaks as part of Cablegate, our case study focuses on private communication between US Embassy officials about Chevron Nigeria from 2002 to 2010. In analyzing these documents, we mobilize the ideas of both Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Jessop (1990), emphasizing the role discourse plays in the production and maintenance of hegemonic coalitions between powerful state and market actors, which are central to neoliberalism. Our analysis suggests that the sharing of discourse, much of which occurs in private, allows a hegemonic coalition to agree to a “’popular-national’ programme” (Jessop, 1990) that serves the interests of the coalition, while masquerading as collectively beneficial. In our case study, this private discourse provided the means through which the “moral and intellectual leadership” of the coalition could be embedded in a shared commitment to the maintenance of oil production in Nigeria, despite significant resistance from local communities. In choosing to use leaks to explore the state-capital nexus, we offer a shadow account of the discursive production of hegemony that reveals it to be an ongoing and active project. Importantly, we also show that the very act of creating and recreating hegemony through discourse produces moments of vulnerability and fragility that present counter-hegemonic opportunities. When leaks are mobilized to produce shadow accounts of the contradictions and tensions that exist between the state and capital, the “political frontier” can be restored in ways that re-politicize and radicalize democracy (Mouffe, 2018, p. 4).

The association between PM2.5 exposure and daily outpatient visits for allergic rhinitis: evidence from a seriously air-polluted environment.

Limited evidence was seen as the association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and physician visits for allergic rhinitis (AR), especially in countries with extreme air pollution exposure. This paper addressed the issues about the association between PM2.5 and daily outpatient visits for AR among individuals residing in Beijing, China. Data on daily outpatient visits for AR obtained from Beijing Medical Claim Data for Employees and daily PM2.5 concentrations available from US embassy reports were linked by date from January 1, 2010, to June 30, 2012. A time-series analysis was conducted with a generalized additive Poisson model to assess the association between PM2.5 and AR, adjusting for daily average temperature, relative humidity, day of the week, calendar time, and public holiday. Totally, 229,685 outpatient visits for AR were included in the analysis. The daily mean (SD) concentration of PM2.5 was 99.5 (75.3) μg/m3 during the study period. We found that a 10-μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 content was associated with a 0.47% (95% CI: 0.39% to 0.55%) increase in the number of outpatient visits on the same day. Furthermore, results from subgroup analyses suggested that the association was consistently significant among the groups of different ages (< 65years and ≥ 65years) and gender. However, this study failed to find a statistically significant association in the autumn season but found significant positive associations during the spring and summer seasons (P for interaction < 0.001). This study indicated a possible association between PM2.5 and AR outpatients, which may benefit further researches in studying PM2.5 and its influence on diseases in a real and seriously air-polluted context.

Design + Social Impact

In October 2018, the US Embassy in Cairo, Egypt invited Parsons professors John Bruce and Mark Randall to give an intensive, five-day workshop on critical areas for those interested in taking a design-strategy approach for entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial ventures addressing complex social challenges. This type of cultural exchange, one potentially charged with political issues, was a milestone for the Embassy. From over 200 applications, 25 professionals from diverse backgrounds – NGOs, education, film, design, architecture and performance – were selected to attend. A pre-workshop exercise focused intentions; themes included empowerment, cities, health and culture. All were action-oriented and addressed particular challenges within Egyptian society. The curriculum included innovative design-led research theories and practicable methods. Immediate outcomes revealed positive shifts in perspectives on systems, stakeholder activation, and narrative development for advocacy and implementation. The energy and emotion was palpable over the course of the week, culminating in an event for the public, press and top government officials.

Media Literacy versus Fake News

This article shares research findings to support the case for media literacy education to facilitate resilient media engagement by young citizens. It shares the outcomes of a project funded by the US Embassy in London, which brought together leading researchers from the United States and UK with a range of key stakeholders, including journalists, teachers, students, librarians and information professionals. This ethnographic research consisted of interviews with prominent members of the stakeholder fields, four multi-stakeholder dialogic workshops and an extensive field review or literature, policy, pedagogic practice and existing educational resources. From the findings of this ethnography, the argument is presented that critical media literacy, if adopted as a mandatory subject in schools and taught as a dynamic literacy education, would better equip young citizens with resilience to ‘information disorder’ (Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017) than reactive resources (such as fact-checking and verification tools) and small-scale projects which focus primarily on competences.

Israel, Guatemala, and the agricultural roots of an authoritarian internationalism

On Christmas Eve 2017, less than a month after President Donald Trump unilaterally announced his decision to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Guatemala announced that it would become the second country in the world to make the same move. This article locates the historical background to the recent embassy move in the building of model villages throughout Guatemala during the height of the Guatemalan Civil War. Throughout the early 1980s, Israeli agricultural and military advisors helped to militarize the Guatemalan highlands by training Guatemalan police and military to construct plantation-style model villages. Employing the language of rural development, these model villages became a core counterinsurgent tactic for former General Efrain Rios Montt’s infamous “scorched earth” policy. The article concludes by discussing how we practically cross our own mental barricades to refocus Palestine/Latinx solidarity movements toward agriculture. What possibilities are opened up when we stand from our grounded solidarities and commit to refuse exceptionalist narratives and single-issue organizing, particularly in our shared commitments to more effectively combat the ongoing practices of war-making and imperial violence?

Bangladesh Fistula Mission Partnership: Leveraging Assets from the United States Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense to Address a Health Care Crisis in a Developing Nation.

Obstetric fistulae are a leading scourge for women in developing countries resulting, in severe individual suffering and devastating socio-economic repercussions for her family and community. The underlying causes of obstetric fistula stem from multiple factors to include poor nutrition, early marriage, insufficient education and inferior social status of women as well as substandard medical care. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has invested more than $100 million globally since 2004 to address these factors as well as support women suffering with fistulae. The ultimate goal is to eradicate obstetric fistula in Bangladesh in the next 20 years. Despite these efforts, nearly 20,000 women in Bangladesh, still suffer with this malady. To close this gap, USAID and the Department of Defense (DOD) developed a novel Interagency Agreement (IAA) leveraging the surgical skills of military health professionals to scale-up the ongoing fistula care program. The agreement outlined three lines of effort: (1) treat existing fistulae by bolstering surgical capacity of the existing USAID fistula care program; (2) promote fistula mitigation with lectures and hands-on teaching of obstetric care as well as safe gynecologic surgery; and (3) assist with advocacy at higher levels of the Bangladesh government. A Bangladesh Fistula Mission Partnership working group was formed to design and implement this IAA. Critical partners from the US Embassy in Dhaka included USAID (Health, Legal, Contracting), the DOD (Office of Defense Cooperation), and Department of State (Regional Security Officer). Partners from the US Army included United States Army-Pacific Command (Surgeon, Legal, Finance, Security Cooperation, Contracting), Regional Health Command-Pacific (Operations, Legal, Public Affairs), and Tripler Army Medical Center (Department of OBGYN, Operations, Public Affairs). Institutional Review Board approval was not required as the treatments offered were standard of care. The Tripler Army Medical Center (TAMC) health professionals executed the IAA with one pre-deployment site survey and two surgical missions in 2016-2017. The military team supported the surgical repair of 40 pelvic fistulae and perineal tears and provided operative management for an additional 25 patients with pelvic organ prolapse. Furthermore, the team conducted 19 professional lectures and multiple educational forums at hospitals in Kumudini, Khulna and the premier medical university in Dhaka for over 800 attendees including physicians, nurses and students to help prevent obstetric and surgical fistulae. Importantly, the team assisted USAID as subject matter experts in its advocacy to the Bangladesh Ministry of Health for improved maternity care and regulatory oversight. During the missions, the team enhanced their readiness by exercising individual and collective tasks while exposing personnel to the cultural context of the region. This IAA was the first USAID funded and DoD-executed health mission in the US Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility. Direct participation in the IAA enabled TAMC to support the US Indo-Pacific Command Theater Campaign Plan, the Department of Defense Instruction 2000.30 on Global Health Engagements, the USAID Country Development Cooperation Strategy, and the US Ambassadors Integrated Country Strategy Objectives in Bangladesh. This effort can serve as a model for future cooperation between USAID and the DoD.

Tree-Based Methods: Consequences of Moving the US Embassy

We recast the synthetic controls for evaluating policies as a counterfactual prediction problem and replace its linear regression with a nonparametric model inspired by machine learning. The proposed method enables us to achieve accurate counterfactual predictions and we provide theoretical guarantees. We apply our method to a highly debated policy: the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem. In Israel and Palestine, we find that the average number of weekly conflicts has increased by roughly 103% over 48 weeks since the relocation was announced on December 6, 2017. By using conformal inference and placebo tests, we justify our model and find the increase to be statistically significant.

The Practical Controvership of Nepotism

This article aims to provide the reader with some enlightening basic points about the possible appointment of the son of the current President of the Republic of Brazil by his father, current President. Some say it is nepotism because it is the direct appointment of a son (relative) by the Chief Executive to the position of Ambassador of Brazil in the US embassy, while others say that the practice does not hurt Binding Precedent No. 13 by the Brazilian Supreme Court. fact of office without Administrative and not political. Let's look at some points that will solve some doubts arising from the subject, whether it is legal or illegal.

A Ação dos EUA na Venezuela: ONGs, Sociedade Civil e Neoliberalismo

O presente artigo tem como objetivo demonstrar como se deu a ingerência dos EUA na Venezuela durante o governo de Hugo Chávez através da análise da documentação disponibilizada no site Wikileaks que tornou público o acesso a documentos secretos produzidos pelo Congresso dos EUA e pela embaixada estadunidense em Caracas. Tal análise permite perceber como o governo dos EUA atuou como organizador e financiador da oposição venezuelana ao governo democraticamente eleito de Chávez, em particular através da atuação de ONGs, que atuavam para defender os interesses dos EUA no país e como difusoras do discurso neoliberal dentro das bases chavistas.&#x0D; Palavras-chave: Hugo Chávez; EUA; Neoliberalismo; Wikileaks

Analysis of fine particle pollution data measured at 29 US diplomatic posts worldwide

Fine particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5) is the most commonly measured ambient air pollutant worldwide on account of its adverse health effects. In 2008 the US Embassy in Beijing started monitoring PM2.5 on the embassy premises to provide US citizens in the area with actionable health information related to ambient air pollution. By May 2019 the United States Department of State ambient air quality monitoring network had expanded to 43 cities in 27 countries. This provided a reliable source of near-real-time PM2.5 data to fill data gaps in previously under-served countries.This manuscript describes data analyses of seasonal, diurnal and meteorological trends which can be used for air quality planning and awareness in 29 of the embassies host cities. People living, working, traveling or considering relocating to those areas can gain a better understanding of the air quality they are exposed to. Potential explanations are offered for sites that deviate from expected trends: Addis Ababa experiences high PM2.5 during the rainy season probably due to widespread biomass burning and light winds; Manama has high PM2.5 throughout the day on summer weekends because widespread air conditioner usage causes coal-fired power plants to operate at high capacity to meet the electricity demand; Pristina experienced very high PM2.5 during winter weekend nights, which turned out to be very cold and stagnant periods and likely increased wood and coal combustion for home heating.Although Chinese sites consistently exceed the country's annual PM2.5 standards, analysis of long term trends confirm steady improvements in air quality. These improvements cannot be attributed to favorable meteorological conditions alone and are likely due to reductions of emissions. Since random forest-based machine learning methods explained >90% of the variability in PM2.5 concentrations at 21 locations, they can be used in conjunction with meteorological models for air quality forecasting.

Propaganda ‘Worth an Army’: The Norwegian Labour Party, Haakon Lie and the transnational dissemination of Cold War propaganda, 1945–55

The working class was the most important target for British and American propaganda in Norway during the early Cold War. The propagandists found eager allies in certain Norwegian Labour Party partisans, who wanted support in their struggle against communist and Soviet influence. Party Secretary Haakon Lie became their key contact. Soon after the war, he started propaganda cooperation with the British Labour Party, as well as the British and US Embassies in Oslo, mostly on his own initiative. New opportunities arose with the onset of the Cold War and the establishment of secret Western campaigns to influence public opinion abroad. From 1948 onward, anti-communist propaganda poured into Norway, reaching a peak during the Korean War. In the early 1950s the British Foreign Office, the US State Department and the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom were all cooperating with the Norwegian Labour Party. This article gives an overview of the transnational dissemination of propaganda through Labour’s party and union apparatus, arguing that the Western propagandists’ remarkable reach towards the Norwegian labour movement and working class was a cultural ‘empire by invitation’.

The Geopolitical Codes of The United States Decision to Relocate Its Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Geopolitical Codes of the United Dtates Policy to Relocate Its Embassy to Israel to Jerusalem. &lt;/strong&gt;Trump’s policy to relocate the US embassy triggered Palestinian mass protests and wider political tension. Ten of thousands Palestinian took part in Gaza protests. Protests are also took place on The West Bank, where the focus was the embassy move. A mass protests turned violent, as Israeli troops responded with rifle fire. This policyraises strong reactions from world leaders. This paper aims to explain the geopolitical codes of The United States Policy : who are the allies or the supporter of the US policy in case of US embassy relocation and who are the enemies that against the US policy. We will find out whether this United States agenda will succeed in leading world opinion and influencing other countries' foreign policies and the consequences of what the United States will give to its supporters and opponents of its policies.&lt;/p&gt;

Contesting the ‘War on Drugs’ in the Andes: US–Bolivian Relations of Power and Control (1989–93)

AbstractThe implementation of President George H. W. Bush's 1989 Andean Initiative brought to the fore competing US and Bolivian agendas. While US embassy officials sought to exert control in pursuit of militarised policies, the Bolivian government's ambivalence towards the coca-cocaine economy underpinned opposition to the ‘Colombianisation’ of the country. This article deconstructs prevailing top-down, US-centric analyses of the drug war in Latin America to examine how US power was exercised and resisted in the Bolivian case. Advancing a more historically grounded understanding of the development of the US drug war in Latin America, it reveals the fluidity of US–Bolivian power relations, the contested nature of counter-drug policy at the country level, and the instrumentalisation of the ‘war on drugs’ in distinct US and Bolivian agendas.

The method of active protection of information from the laser acoustic intelligence systems

In this paper, we analyzed the optoelectronic technical channel of information leakage and Laser Spy System, analyze the threats which they make and offer solutions to existing information security issues. The Laser Spy System is considered by many to be the Holy Grail of high tech spy devices because it can give the user the ability to listen in on conversations that take place in a distant building without having to install a bug or transmitter at the location. The Laser Spy System was said to be invented in the Soviet Union by Leon Theremin in the late 1940s. Using a non-laser based infrared light source, Theremin's system could detect sound from a nearby window by picking up the faint vibrations on the glass surface. The KGB later used this device to spy on the British, French and US embassies in Moscow. The Laser Spy System goes by several names such as the Laser Microphone, Laser Listener, Laser Bug, Window Bounce Listener and a few similar names. The Laser Spy certainly works well under ideal conditions, but it has many strengths and weaknesses that will be discussed in this paper. General component in the Laser Spy system is the laser, which will target a distant reflective object and send the beam back to your receiver for decoding. When the laser reflects from the target window, the slight vibrations from conversations or noise that vibrate the windows cause a very slight change in position of the returning laser beam. These changes in the laser fluctuations are taken by a phototransistor and then converted into sound. The most common methods and means of protection are presented, these methods can be both active and passive, but they all have a number of shortcomings, such as high cost, the creation of acoustic noise, insufficient protection, etc. We are proposed the method of laser noise as an alternative to the existing one, and the concept of its implementation is given. This method is based on the creation of counter laser radiation. This radiation consists of a plurality of laser beams that have parameters that are similar to the parameters of the rays of the attacker. Experiments have shown that the interception of the reflected laser beam is complicated if anti-radiation is applied.

The Diplomatic Pioneer: Provenance, Patrimony, Pertinence Marking the 75th Anniversary of the Institute of International Relations

Universities have historically merited a special place in world history as the locus of science, upbringing, humanism, and freedom of expression. However, modernity is routinely putting their tenacity and toughness to test by challenges of social existence, where every individual, government and society alike are transforming faced with globalization, communicative technologies, climate change and the new type of the world economy. The Institute of International Relations is therefore seeking to reiterate the irreplaceable value, virtues and vistas of a classical university in the ever-changing world of today. Since its inception, the IIR has come a long way from a small department to the major educational and methodological centre of Ukraine for training experts in international relations and foreign policy. Nevertheless, the life in the precincts of the Institute is not confined to research in the silence of laboratories or libraries. Thus, under interuniversity agreements, the IIR cooperates with more than 60 higher educational establishments from Belgium, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iran, Japan, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Spain, and the US. Within the framework of international cooperation attention is also attached to the matters of professional ethics: For four consecutive years, the IIR has taken part in the Strengthening Academic Integrity in Ukraine Project (SAIUP) under the aegis of the American Councils for International Education in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine backed by the US Embassy in Ukraine. In recent years, the Institute has set up an extensive network of international project activities, as amply demonstrated by the establishment of Ukraine’s sole Centre for Arabic Studies and the Youth Information Centre of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. Capitalizing on the generated momentum, in 2019, the IIR won an overarching victory in the competition for the establishment of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence under the EU’s Erasmus + Programme to become the only such project in Ukraine. The Institute of International Relations is also mindful of employability and future careers of its graduates. Such initiatives as the Career Day, traditionally bringing together the world’s leading employers, the IIR Business School and the Memorandum of Cooperation between the Institute and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine are there to serve this purpose. Our Institute is an opportunity to open up to the world by virtue of new knowledge, academic exchange programs and internship in the best universities. This is the place not only to meet loyal friends and wise teachers, but also to unite the IIR traditions and achievements with the global perspective and break new ground of thinking. Keywords: the Institute of International Relations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, joint degree, master classes of practitioners, case studies, language training, English-language master programmes.

Framing the Reaction of President Abbas on the Issue of Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Framing the Reaction of President Abbas on the Issue of Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Trump's Reckless Middle East Gambles

Unilateral decisions to scupper the Iran nuclear deal and move the US embassy to Jerusalem could have dangerous consequences that the president's inexperienced advisers failed to anticipate.

Country institutional profiles: evidence from Colombian software exporters

PropósitoEste estudio muestra cómo el entorno institucional percibido por parte de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (Pymes) exportadoras de Colombia determina su desempeño.Diseño/metodología/acercamiento a la investigaciónNuestra investigación aplica un modelo de regresión a una muestra de 43 Pymes exportadoras de Colombia de la industria de desarrollo de software recolectado a través de una encuesta en línea.ResultadosLos resultados muestran que la dimensión normativa del entorno institucional determina el desempeño exportador de las Pymes. Al contrario, las dimensiones cognitivas y regulatorias del entorno institucional no tienen un efecto significativo.Limitaciones de la investigación/implicacionesLa característica transversal del método de encuesta y el enfoque en una sola industria y un sólo país genera limitaciones sobre la posibilidad de generalizar los resultados entre diferentes industrias y países.Implicaciones prácticasLos resultados resaltan la necesidad de normas y valores amigables con el emprendimiento en el contexto de Pymes exportadoras en América Latina. Los gobiernos deberían enfocarse en el desarrollo y el fomento de emprendedores internacionales que inspiren y sirvan como modelo a seguir para otros emprendedores. Esto en lugar de crear marcos regulatorios y el suministro de conocimiento para poner en marcha una empresa y gerenciar el riesgo para Pymes exportadoras.Originalidad/valor de la investigaciónNuestro estudio es uno de los primeros en aplicar la medición del perfil del entorno institucional de Busenitz et al. (2000) a una muestra de emprendedores. Estudios anteriores aplicaron la medición a una muestra de estudiantes y oficiales de embajadas estadounidenses. Aparte del artículo de conferencia de Renko et al. (2009), nuestro artículo es el primero que relaciona el perfil institucional de país con el desempeño de empresas exportadoras de software y en especial en el contexto de un país Latinoamericano. Por lo tanto, nuestro estudio trata de contribuir a un mejor entendimiento de cómo el entorno institucional de un país impacta al desempeño de Pymes exportadoras.