Where do your ideas come from?

 

DSP’s December Fireside Chat with Chief Publicist Nick Wale

It's the wrapper's fault

 

PhotoShop saves the day

 The photo processing utility PhotoShop often gets a bad rap because scam artists and hucksters use it to create fake photos that mislead or cheat people. But it's just a tool and shouldn't be blamed because some people misuse it. It can be a life saver in some circumstances. Like the time my nephew, Keith, needed new head shots for a film role he was auditioning for and asked if I would do them. I agreed, but since all my photo gear was destroyed when our house burned in March 2021, and I've only just begun to repurchase equipment, all I had was my DSLR camera, a few filters, and two lenses. He recently moved, and his lights, backdrops and other gear needed to do proper head shots was still in storage, we decided to make do with a large piece of brown cardboard and my camera's internal flash. Most of the photos (especially those we took outdoors) came out okay, but some of the closeups had a harsh shadow and the texture of the cardboard glaringly apparent. To make sure the photos would pass muster, I decided that it was time to invest in some proper post processing software, so I bought and installed PhotoShop. A few hours of practice to get the feel of it, and then I tackled the offending shots. Below, see before and after shots to show just what this amazing software can do.

Not a bad shot but that shadow of the head ruins it for use as a proper headshot. The flash also causes the texture of the cardboard to be apparent if you look closely.

Thanks to Photoshop, the shadow's gone and the harsh brown cardboard background has been replaced with a smooth creamy background that I feel sets off the tux better. The photo was also cropped to tighten in on the face and skin tones were softened.

Voila, a completely different photograph, thanks to PhotoShop.

Decline in the rule of law

 

A tale of two countries

In early October, I was invited to travel by train from Washington, DC to New Haven, Connecticut, to talk to a global affairs class at Yale University. The five-hour train trip up was my first since the official start of the pandemic but I found it quite nice, even with having to wear a mask except when I was eating in the dining car.

It was my arrival in New Haven, though, that had a profound impact on me. I contrasted what I saw and experienced there with what my daughter described to me after she and her family visited in-laws in Atlanta, Georgia, a couple of weeks earlier.

In Georgia, she described crowded restaurants where the majority of diners and staff wore no masks, getting on crowded tour busses with people who refused to wear masks, and being invited to social events with relatives who not only refused to wear masks, but bragged about refusing to be vaccinated. In one case, she told me, a relative showed up to visit—wanting to hug the children—and confessed to having recently been diagnosed as positive for the virus, but who insisted that it was ‘harmless.’

Now, my trip was completely different. Federal regulations require masks on all public transport, so everyone on my Northeastern Regional train to Boston by way of Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York City, and New Haven had to wear a mask. When I arrived at New Haven’s Union Station, the cab driver who took me to my hotel wore a mask. The desk clerk and hotel staff wore masks, and when I went out for a quick supper around the corner from my hotel, I not only had to wear a mask to enter the restaurant, but I had to show my vaccination card. So did all the students eating there, and not one complained.

During my meetings with university officials the next day and my lecture to the class, everyone wore masks. There were several test stations around Yale’s campus, and I had to submit certification of my vaccination status before they bought my train ticket.

At the time, Georgia’s infection, hospitalization, and death rates from COVID was higher than Connecticut’s. Georgia had a 7-day case average of 940 and a 7-day average of deaths of 85, while Connecticut’s was 341 and 4 respectively. Connecticut’s total deaths were 8,751 whole 28,939 Georgians have died. If you were paying attention to what I just wrote, you probably have already figured out why.

It’s because here in the United States of America, we don’t live in one country but many. We are as balkanized as the Balkan states when they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire between 1817 and 1912. This term, coined to described the breakup of countries into smaller entities who do not play well together after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, unfortunately describes—in my humble opinion—the situation the U.S. and some other countries are experiencing right now. Citizens are divided by so many criteria one needs a spread sheet and a lot of patience to keep up with it. We’re divided by race, ethnicity, national origin, gender and sex, religion, and politics. Urban and rural people don’t understand, trust, or like each other. Native-born are suspicious of immigrants. We’re even irredeemably divided over who we voted for in the last election.

I wish I could say that I’ve discovered the cure for this condition, but alas I have not. I mean, it would be nice if we could sit down and discuss it, but there’s even a divide between people with college degrees and those without.

A colleague of mine once said that out country and others go through periods of insanity every sixty or seventy years. It can get pretty bad. During one such period of madness we had a Civil War (I’ve always been fascinated by that term. Is there such a thing as an uncivil War?) which killed more people than any of our other wars, and they were all from the same nation. You’ll note I say nation and not country, because we are sometimes two countries, three countries, or even more, and when we are those countries are in a perpetual state of hostility.

I’m hoping the pandemic represents the crisis period of the disease and we’re on the mend. We’ve had enough of worst of times and the age of foolishness, and I, for one, am ready for some of that ‘best of times and the age of wisdom.’

Who is up to join me? – NWI

The Future of South Africa

 Published originally in Diplomatic Diary on November 5, 2021

Why Are Soldiers Treated Better Than Diplomats?

People are the most important resource in government. In treating its own, the State Department can learn from the military.

It’s no secret that morale at the State Department has been in the doldrums for years. In a 2020 ranking of the best places to work in the federal government by the Partnership for Public Service, the department came in 14th out of 17 large agencies. A survey for 2021 hasn’t been released yet, but it’s no less of a secret that a hoped-for bounce in morale from its Trump administration lows has been much slower and more modest than many diplomats anticipated.

How the department treats its employees is rarely a top priority for a secretary of state — Colin Powell was one of very few exceptions. There are always crises to resolve somewhere in the world that the chief U.S. diplomat considers more important. The military, on the other hand, is known for treating both troops and their families much better than the Foreign Service cares for its own members. With that in mind, is adopting and adapting some of the Defense Department’s best practices a good idea for the State Department?

I spent 20 years in the U.S. Army, followed by 30 years in the Foreign Service. While the differences between the missions of the two organizations are such that wholesale crossover is both impossible and unwise, there are lessons the State Department can learn from the military. People are the most important resource of both agencies, differences in mission notwithstanding, and it’s critical that attention be devoted to how employees are treated. The demands on the people in both departments are great, calling for more similarity in the way they are treated than currently exists. Although the military is more hierarchical in some ways, with missions that demand instant and unquestioned obedience to orders, it’s not quite blind, unthinking loyalty that is sought. From the first day until retirement — and beyond — service members are treated as valued parts of the team. While you are encouraged to pursue individual accomplishment, such as continuing education, you are also taught that your team must function as a cohesive whole. Every person is responsible for every other member of the unit. You are also taught from day one to be a leader. You are certainly required to follow the legitimate orders of those above you, but you are also taught that, when the person in the chain of command falls, you are to move up and take over.

The team concept is often given lip service at the State Department, but the reality is that it fosters an “everyone for himself” environment, where career advancement almost always wins over teamwork. During my time in the Foreign Service, until 2012, the annual performance evaluations put emphasis on what the individual had achieved, rather than on what was done to advance the goals of the organization or to assist others.

Military personnel and most civilian employees of the Defense Department are not only encouraged to get as much education and training as possible, but professional education is a requirement to advance in rank or rise to higher levels of responsibility. Officers spend as much as 25 percent of their careers in long-term educational programs, in addition to their occupation-specific skills training.

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That practice of career-long education and training is not a staple of the Foreign Service. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Training Center, also known as the Foreign Service Institute, does an excellent job in tradecraft and foreign language instruction, but it falls short in the area of professional education. Leadership training has been required for promotion to the senior ranks only in the past decade or so. For mid-level officers, such mandatory training lasts only a week. Few take optional courses, for which they are often forced to use vacation time. Junior diplomats aren’t evaluated for their leadership skills.

The treatment I received when I joined the Foreign Service reminded me of the way my older cousin taught me to swim. He took me out to the middle of a pond on a raft and pushed me into the water. I assume that, if I had not been able to dog-paddle my way back to the banks of the pond, he wouldn’t have let me drown. Would that have been the case with the State Department? Either way, an organization’s support for its people shouldn’t depend on luck. A lot of this is driven by legislation or lack of budgetary support, but the State Department’s failure to press for changes further contributes to the impression that people are not considered an important resource in the department. The Biden administration has made statements that signal a possible change in this perception, but the devil is in the details, and the administration will be known not by what it says but by what it does.

If we are to have a strong, effective diplomatic service for the coming decades, we will need to have committed people, and that will only happen when we deliver on the rhetoric and start actually putting people first.

Getting over shyness

 

COVID-19 AND THE ROLE OF THE MILITARY

More PC Please

 

Kids and Covid - 2

 

 

Kids and COVID

• Negros Weekly
• Posted on: November 9, 2021

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On October 29, 2021, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine which is used for the prevention of COVID-19, to be administered to children from 5 to 11 years of age. Those who oppose the vaccine for anyone are predictably up in arms, again screaming about ‘rights.’ Some of these are the same people who insist that schools reopen for in-person learning but without a requirement that children wear masks to prevent spread of this deadly disease.

I’m all for personal freedom, but I have some serious issues with such an absolute definition of freedom that refuses to take into account the ‘rights’ of others and the realization that rights also come with responsibilities and those who insist on being allowed to exercise their rights without assuming any responsibility are in fact confusing freedom with license.

I fully understand and sympathize with parents who desire to do what’s best for their children, but what we as parents decide is best should be based on informed decisions that take science and rational behavior into account. This includes taking into account what’s best for the community. Vaccinations and the reaction to them are a case in point.

In the US, for example, children enrolling in public schools are required to have a series of immunizations designed not just to protect them as individuals but to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases in the schools and communities. People who claim religious exemptions from such vaccinations must accept that their children cannot be admitted to public schools because of the community health risks. Ignoring these common sense precautions, for instance, led to an outbreak of measles in the United States in 2019, with more cases in the first five months of the year (971) and the greatest number of cases since 1994 when there was a total of 963 for the entire year. The US was on track to eliminate measles which caused 400 – 500 annually and 48,000 hospitalizations, until the 2019 outbreak, which could have been avoided if all children and adults who could get vaccinated actually got vaccinated.

Long-term symptoms include long-lasting fatigue, lung problems, joint pain, brain fog and others. While most of the studies producing these results have involved adults, parents and pediatricians have also noticed these symptoms in children. Children suffering long-term symptoms have and to struggle to make through a day in school, have trouble concentrating, experience fatigue and breathing problems, experience difficulty with schoolwork leading to lower grades, and show decreased performance in athletics and physical activity.This brings us to the vaccination for COVID-19, which is far deadlier than measles and, contrary to popular myth, does infect the young. While children are less likely to die from COVID, they can infect those who are vulnerable to serious illness and death, and studies indicate that an increasingly large number of children, even those with asymptomatic COVID-19 experience long-term effects many months after the initial infection. Studies of children in Italy suggest that more than half of children between 6 and 16 who are infected have at least one symptom lasting more than 120 days, with over 40 percent impaired in their daily activities.

So, it you’re one of these parents insisting that your children return to in-person learning but do not want them vaccinated or be required to wear masks, consider what you might be setting them up for.

In addition to poor academic performance, scientists don’t yet know what all of the long-term problems might be or how long they might last. Concerns about the efficacy and safety of the vaccines are valid but, in my view, unwarranted. Just because they were developed in record time compared to vaccines of the past, does not make them unsafe. We live in an increasingly sophisticated and technological world where scientific advances come much faster than ever, far faster it seems than the human brain can process or comprehend them. I was born before the advent of cell phones and transistor radios but now I wear a watch that has more computing power than the first Apple computer I bought in 1983. No vaccine is 100 percent effective, and there will always be a certain percentage of people who might suffer negative side effects. They pale in comparison to what the disease is likely to do to you or your child, and certainly are worth avoiding you or your child being responsible for passing a deadly disease along to a vulnerable relative, neighbor, friend, or even stranger.

I strongly encourage parents to get vaccinated themselves and unless a doctor recommends against it, have all children ages 5 and up vaccinated. It’s not just a good thing to do for yourself, but it’s what a good citizen would do. – NND

The Silver Lining

 

U.S.-Africa Relations Since 9/11

Dealing with ethical dilemmas

 

Sunshine patriots

 

The Meta-West: Keynote and Implications for Future Research

What scares you?

 

DS Productions to Host a Multi-Author Virtual Signing Event

 

October 13, 2021 – DS Productions (DSP) - the home of some of the biggest selling Western authors in the genre – is excited to announce that they will be hosting a multi-author virtual signing event, Best Sellers Live! The event will be a historic first for the Western genre and a revolutionary step forward for Western authors, readers, and publishers.

 

About the Event:

Six best-selling Western fiction authors have teamed up with DSP to put together The Signature Classic Collector’s Edition: Hunt of the Mountain Man. Each author has contributed a short story featuring the popular heroes from their Western novels. Each book purchased for the event will be signed by all six of the authors.

 

The virtual signing will take place on Thursday, November 18^th at 9:00pm Eastern Time via Zoom. Everyone who purchases a book for the event or wishes to attend the event will receive a Zoom link to join. The authors participating in this highly anticipated event are none other than C. Wayne Winkle, G.P. Hutchinson, William Joiner, Charles Ray, Peter Turner, and David Watts.

 

You can visit the webpage for the event to purchase your book and for more information:

https://www.bestsellerslive.com/

About the Authors:

 

C. Wayne Winkle

C. Wayne Winkle is an Amazon best-selling author of Westerns that depict the heroism and dangers inherent in the American West of the 19th century. He was a board-certified family psychologist with over 40 years’ experience prior to retirement. His intent in his writing is to bring back the history (good, bad, and indifferent) of the American frontier. He is married to the same wonderful woman for 50 years. She has been, and continues to be, his anchor in this wild and wacky world. Their six grandchildren keep both of them busy when he isn’t writing. His Christianity forms the basis of his life, even though he falls short of its ideal on a daily basis. His motto? ‘I can’t not write!’

 

G.P. Hutchinson

A resident of Texas for a number of years, Hutchinson’s visits throughout the West have only served to deepen his enthusiasm for the region and his appreciation of its people, history, and folklore. He’s currently a resident of upstate South Carolina, along with his lovely wife, Carolyn. Besides writing, Hutchinson enjoys forays into the mountains, horseback riding, and exploring the history of America’s national pastime, baseball.

 

Peter Alan Turner

Maybe it’s because Peter Alan Turner lives on Rattlesnake Ridge. Or perhaps it’s because he grew up watching television Westerns that he was drawn to writing about the Old West. As a former history teacher, Peter strives to be authentic, create likable characters, and tell a good story. With more than a dozen books and a four-plus star rating on Amazon, he must be doing something right.

Peter lives with his wife of fifty-three years and their cat Moxie in Western Maryland. Peter is lucky that his children, grandchildren, and great-grandson all live close by. When he’s not writing, Peter enjoys woodcarving, fishing, and pampering his classic Jaguar. Mr. Turner donates a portion of the profits from his books to Veteran’s charities.

 

Charles Ray

Charles Ray is a man reborn. After 20 years in the US Army and 30 years as a diplomat, he has reinvented himself as an author. He has been writing since his teens, but really got into it in 2008 as he was approaching the end of a half-century government career. Ray writes in a variety of genres, both fiction and nonfiction, but in a further reinvention, this Texas native who now calls Maryland home, is currently best known for his tales of the western frontier. He writes stories that are historically accurate and reflect the diversity of the Wild West, but never lets history interfere with telling a compelling story. Ray currently lives in Woodbine, Maryland.

 

David Watts

David Watts grew up in Texas and participated actively in farming and ranching. As a teen, he watched cowboy movies every Saturday at the Ritz Theatre. He has published nine very successful Westerns, drawing upon his range of personal experience and is currently working on a chapter-challenge collaboration with William Vlach. Previously, he worked in poetry, short stories, mysteries, Christmas memoir and radio commentary. He is an accomplished musician and composer and a retired television and radio host. His professional life is in medical health care.

 

William H. Joiner Jr.

Other than summer jobs as a teenager, Bill has always been in business for himself. He has owned businesses that included: residential and commercial construction; brokering and trading commodities; owning and operating multiple insurance agencies; horse breeding, syndicating, training and racing; dog breeding and field trialing; owning and operating multiple gyms; owning and operating oil wells; brokering, researching title and consulting (regarding the buying and selling of oil and gas properties); as well as brokering and facilitating international fuel purchases.

He finally found his calling as an author, drawing on life's experiences for the inspiration for his books.

 

About the Publisher:

DS Productions (DSP) is a leader in Western fiction with a strong catalogue of authors and Western novels. DSP has consistently placed their authors inside the top one hundred and is also known for taking new authors and turning them into a success using their sales formula. Their personalized, winning publishing techniques have made them one of the leading publishers in Western-themed fiction.

Hands free phones

 

Freedom without responsibility - extended version

 

Latest Developments in the Ethiopia Crisis

Freedom without responsibility

 

Blinken Gets B- for First 8 Months at State

‘I Will Not Let You Down’: Blinken Gets B- for First 8 Months at State

The secretary hasn’t quite managed to keep his promise to employees, but he hardly deserves all the blame.

By AMBASSADOR CHARLES RAY | SEPTEMBER 26, 2021

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session in New York last week. Photo by the Department of State.

Eight months ago today, Antony Blinken was sworn in as U.S. secretary of state. As he entered the State Department the next morning, he made this promise to the assembled employees, as well as to many more watching around the world: “As secretary, I will not let you down.” Has he kept his word?

Many of my former Foreign Service colleagues will say no. Some of them are frustrated with Biden administration policies or actions, including those in Afghanistan and on the U.S. southern border. Others are disappointed that Blinken has been slow to take on systemic management problems and hasn’t been able or willing to counter the White House’s impulse to appoint a large number of unqualified nominees to serve as ambassadors. Moreover, ambassadorships that have traditionally gone to career diplomats, such as those in Turkey, Chile and Paraguay, have been handed to political appointees. And almost 70 ambassadorial posts are still vacant.

But is Blinken to blame for these disappointments? After all, although the secretary has great authority, he can be overruled on policy matters by the president. In this case, Blinken’s two decades of working for Biden during his time as senator and vice president, and Blinken’s familiarity with Biden’s thinking, were cited as perhaps the secretary’s biggest asset when he was first nominated for the position. Still, the White House has at times overruled the chief diplomat in almost every administration, so it’s possible it has happened in this one, too.

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The high expectations of the Biden team among the State Department workforce have fueled the frustrations. After four years of being ousted, sidelined, ignored, insulted and demoralized by the Trump administration, career officials’ hopes for meaningful changes haven’t materialized. Even though the current administration has publicly expressed support for them and committed to a responsible foreign policy, political and bureaucratic realities have meant that many of those promises haven’t been kept. In addition, the administration’s own messaging from the start helped raise the unrealistic expectations.

There is no doubt that some of the Trump team’s decisions and actions have impeded the Biden administration’s work. The 2020 agreement with the Taliban was just the beginning. In the 11th hour, Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, changed several U.S. policies, clearly intending to box in the incoming administration and create difficulties. He designated the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen as a terrorist organization, a move that would seriously hamper aid groups’ ability to deliver food and other humanitarian assistance to Yemen’s suffering population. Pompeo also lifted restrictions on official U.S. contacts with Taiwan, which created problems with China. A quick reversal of these decisions was no better option than keeping them in place.

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On the management and personnel front, some of Biden’s initial appointments were delayed by the refusal of Emily Murphy, Trump’s head of the General Services Administration, to recognize the November election result and allow the transition to begin. Once that was resolved, however, the White House was unusually slow in nominating ambassadors and senior State Department officials compared to most previous administrations. The Senate’s lethargic confirmation pace and a single senator’s decision to hold up certain nominations are partly to blame for the dozens of vacancies. But the administration hasn’t even announced ambassadors to many countries, including Britain, South Korea, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, all of which are expected to go to political appointees, as they usually do.

Ambassadorial appointments have been a perennial sore point for career officials. In spite of the Biden administration’s public support for Foreign Service officers, it has selected a surprisingly large number of politically connected but unqualified non-career nominees, to whom the president apparently feels indebted. Patronage appointments are as old as the republic — in fact, they were the norm until the Foreign Service was established in 1924. But professional diplomats expected Biden, who understands the intricacies of diplomacy better than most politicians as a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to walk the talk. 

It’s not clear whether Blinken has tried to push back on some unqualified nominees or to challenge taking more and more posts away from the Foreign Service in favor of political appointees. In 2009, when the Obama White House was on track to exceed the historical norm of one-third of ambassadorships going to non-career nominees, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to head off that effort. Given the Biden team’s intentions, it might be wise for Blinken to take a cue from Clinton.

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It has been challenging for Blinken to manage the State Department bureaucracy. With much fanfare, he appointed the first-ever chief diversity officer, who reports directly to him, to increase diversity in the department’s ranks. However, the budget for that office, which is prepared by career officials, was barely enough to hire staff, with not a penny for programs.

Taking all this into account, I would give Blinken a B- for his first eight months in office. Recognizing the mess the administration inherited and the toxic partisan environment in which it has to work, it’s unfair to assign the secretary of state all the blame. On both policy and management, he could do more, as can the White House. It should pick up the pace on nominations, shifting the onus onto the Senate, if it continues to drag its feet. It’s unrealistic to expect the administration to do away with political appointments, but nominees should be demonstrably qualified for the jobs. Running a private company or even an American city may be impressive, but absent active experience in international affairs, it doesn’t necessarily make one an effective diplomat.

To those unhappy with the pace of change in the State Department, get real. Expecting sweeping reform in the current political climate is naïve. Even a president can do only so much. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold leaders accountable. As for Blinken, “I will not let you down” may not have been the wisest promise on his first day on the job.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Ray is a former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe and Cambodia, deputy chief of mission in Sierra Leone, and consul-general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He spent 30 years in the Foreign Service and now teaches at WIDA.

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author and don’t necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government, the Diplomatic Diary or WIDA.

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