This week at CPD, we hosted Dr. Timothy Potts, the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, who discussed the Cyrus Cylinder as a cultural icon and museums as vehicles for promoting global dialogue. Potts shared with us the history and meaning of the Cylinder; a clay foundation deposit no larger than a loaf of bread inscribed following Cyrus the Great’s incorporation of Babylon into the Persian Empire in 539 BCE.

The four ex heads of state and other politicians received the Ulyses Guimarares medal the highest decoration of the Brazilian Congress for their contributions to the current constitution. The constitution, the seventh in the country's history, was promulgated on 5 October 1988, after a year and eight months of discussions by a constituent assembly elected in 1986.

Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, visits the Getty Villa in Los Angeles to highlight what the ancient Cyrus Cylinder holds for cultural diplomacy. On loan from the British Museum, the Persian Cylinder represents a step toward government acknowledgement of basic human rights-- namely, a written acknowledgment of the freedom to practice religion without persecution from the state.

One basic obstacle for the new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program that open today will be America’s basic distrust of the Iranian regime. Before striking any deal with Tehran, the Obama Administration will have to gauge whether a country where hostility toward the U.S. has been a core political theme since 1979 is acting in good faith.

This is the last time you will be reading The International Herald Tribune; as of tomorrow, it is The International New York Times.

Just before the American ground war in Vietnam began in March 1965 with the landing of a brigade of US Marines at Danang, General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had been commander in chief of Communist armed forces in Vietnam since 1944, told a television interviewer that “Things are going badly for the enemy, because the South Vietnamese soldiers do not want to fight for the Americans. But we are in no hurry. The longer we wait, the greater will be the Americans’ defeat.”

Twenty-five years ago, Ted Turner and Bob Wussler answered an emergency call from the Soviet Union. On the other end were Kim Bohuny and Mike Fratello, pleading from inside a lightless cement bunker, deep behind Soviet lines. They had a simple request. Food. And water.

This funereal op-ed is so fundamentally flawed that it is more like a drive-by shooting. Shooting USIA in the back is an unfortunate metaphor for the context of public diplomacy since many of us who engage in public diplomacy think of it in terms of ballots over bullets and swords into ploughshares. Even those who don’t like this tender-hearted approach view it in the tougher-minded context of political campaign strategies.