Posts Tagged ‘Hillary Clinton’
Palestinians awarded full membership in UNESCO
UNESCO delegates stand and cheer after approving Palestinian membership
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Palestine has become a full member of the UN cultural and educational agency in a move that the United States and other opponents say could harm renewed Middle East peace efforts.
The US had threatened to withhold roughly $80 million in annual funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) if it approved Palestinian membership. The United States provides about 22% of Unesco’s funding.
Which is about how the average mafia functions. Extortion doesn’t make for lasting politics.
Huge cheers went up in Unesco after delegates approved the membership by 107 votes to 14 with 52 abstentions. Eighty-one votes were needed for approval in a hall with 173 Unesco member delegations present.
“Long live Palestine!” shouted one delegate, in French, at the unusually tense and dramatic meeting of Unesco’s general conference.
While the vote has large symbolic meaning, the issues of borders of an eventual Palestinian state, security troubles and other disputes that have thwarted Middle East peace for decades remain unresolved.
Palestinian officials are seeking full membership in the United Nations, but that effort is still under examination and the US has said it will veto it unless there is a peace deal with Israel. Given that, the Palestinians separately sought membership at Paris-based Unesco and other UN bodies…
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, last week called Unesco’s deliberation “inexplicable”, saying discussion of Palestinian membership of international organisations could not replace negotiations with Israel as a fast track towards Palestinian independence.
There is no “fast track” towards Palestinian independence if you think that honorable and ethical negotiations will be forthcoming from Israel’s ruling politicians. They hold power from a commitment to manifest destiny and lebensraum.
There is no “fast track” as long as the train dispatcher deals only in American dollars dedicated to short-term and long-term goals decided essentially by Israeli politicians. There is little or no attention paid to the needs of the displaced nation of Palestine.
History and historic decisions aren’t resolved in press releases from the State Department. Especially those offered in support of imperial occupying armies.
A blunt warning to Pakistan
We sit down to talk, the smile goes away!
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Islamabad — An unusually powerful American delegation arrived here on Thursday to deliver the starkest warning yet to Pakistan, according to a senior American official: that the United States would act unilaterally if necessary to attack extremist groups that use the country as a haven to kill Americans…
“This is a time for clarity,” Mrs. Clinton declared in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she met President Hamid Karzai before leaving for Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. “No one should be in any way mistaken about allowing this to continue without paying a very big price.”
“There’s no place to go any longer,” Mrs. Clinton added, referring to Pakistan’s leaders, whom the administration has accused of equivocating by supporting the Afghan insurgency…
Before the meeting, which took place at the residence of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a senior administration official said that the delegation would make it clear that if the Pakistanis did not act against insurgents like the Haqqani network, then the United States would have to.
The Haqqani network uses Pakistan’s tribal areas as a base and has become the most potent part of the insurgency in Afghanistan. Before stepping down last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, General Dempsey’s predecessor, called the Haqqanis “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence service…
Pakistan’s response remains to be seen…
RTFA. I understand they are between a rock and a hard place. It is – to a certain extent – a problem of their own making. The habit of funneling virtually all foreign aid through Pakistan’s military who dole it out to their bandit buddies as freely as they do to political hacks – ain’t any way to build and maintain democratic and progressive leadership of a nation still climbing out of the Stone Age they agreed to with the departure of the Brits at the end of colonial days.
If they don’t try, if they fail to take a stand for the advancement of the whole of Pakistan’s population while rejecting the sectarian bandits from fear of confrontation – US largesse and tribute must be cut off. Simple enough. Easy enough. Lose the Cold War mentality.
Egypt’s hated state security police disbanded
Egypt’s interior minister has disbanded the country’s feared state security agency, which was accused of torture and human rights abuses during the 30-year rule of former president Hosni Mubarak.
Major General Mansour el-Essawy, a former Cairo security chief and the new interior minister, announced the dissolution of the security apparatus…He said a new agency in charge of keeping national security and combatting terrorism will be formed “in line with the constitution and principles of human rights”.
Officers for the new agency will be chosen in the coming few days, the statement said, adding that the new agency will “serve the country without intervening in the lives of citizens while they practice their rights and political life”…
The security branch, which was empowered to conduct emergency trials, was widely hated and its officers accused of committing torture.
The move was announced as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited the capital, Cairo in a bid to lend support to Egypt during its transition. Speaking at a joint news conference with the Egyptian foreign minister Nabil Elaraby during a visit to Cairo on Tuesday, Clinton welcomed the announcment.
RTFA. Overdue.
Think we’ll ever get round to the NSA and FBI?
Hillary Clinton makes a surprise appearance at TED women
Toward the end of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s surprise appearance at the TED Women conference Wednesday, she told the story of a girl and her father in a developing country.
“This teenage girl’s father expected to force her into early marriage, but she had been to school and she received a cow, perhaps through the Heifer project, to encourage her to stay in school. When her father demanded she drop out of school and get married, she said no. When he insisted, she insisted right back.
“And finally she pulled out her trump card: ‘If I leave and get married, I’m taking my cow, that cow belongs to me.’ So guess what. She stayed in school, she was spared an early marriage, all because her father couldn’t bear to part with the cow.”
Clinton devoted her talk to the importance of empowering women and girls around the world, and the audience of 700 at the International Trade Center responded enthusiastically.
“Let women work and they drive economic growth across all sectors. Send a girl to school even just for one year and her income dramatically increases for life, and her children are more likely to survive and her family more likely to be healthier for years to come. Give women equal rights and entire nations are more stable and secure. Deny women equal rights and the instability of nations is almost certain…”
Clinton spoke of an array of initiatives and programs the State Department is using, many involving technology that can empower women. Among them is a program in the wartorn Democratic Republic of Congo that enables women who are the victims of violence to record and transmit their testimony in criminal cases through the use of mobile phones…
The TED Women conference was a new event organized by TED, a nonprofit that runs conferences and makes talks available on its website, and by the Paley Center for Media.
Clinton said the effort to empower women and girls faces cultural barriers…”We need to reach out to faith leaders and community leaders to change the perception and treatment of girls, and to persuade men and boys to value their sisters and their daughters, their talents and their intrinsic worth.”
That task, of course, needn’t be restricted to foreign affairs and the State Department. There’s no shortage of communities in the United States lacking understanding of women as independent, valuable human beings. That’s using the word “community” in its broadest meaning.
Hillary presses replacement of primitive stoves in the 3rd World
Nearly three billion people in the developing world cook their meals on primitive indoor stoves fueled by crop waste, wood, coal and dung. Every year, according to the United Nations, smoke from these stoves kills 1.9 million people, mostly women and children, from lung and heart diseases and low birth weight.
The stoves also contribute to global warming as a result of the millions of tons of soot they spew into the atmosphere and the deforestation caused by cutting down trees to fuel them.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to announce a significant commitment to a group working to address the problem, with a goal of providing 100 million clean-burning stoves to villages in Africa, Asia and South America by 2020. The United States is providing about $50 million in seed money over five years for the project, known as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves…
Mrs. Clinton called the problem of indoor pollution from primitive cookstoves a “cross-cutting issue” that affects health, the environment and women’s status in much of the world. “That’s what makes it such a good subject for a coordinated approach of governments, aid organizations and the private sector,” she said in a telephone interview…
Although the toxic smoke from the primitive stoves is one of the leading environmental causes of death and disease, and perhaps the second biggest contributor to global warming, after the industrial use of fossil fuels, it has long been neglected by governments and private aid organizations.
RTFA. Simple solutions to an essential problem. Probably way too reasonable for most beancounters and politicians to support.
I picked the video up top that is one of the first widely distributed about a charity answering this need – excerpted from a documentary about one of my favorite footballers, Shaun Wright-Phillips. He spends his summer off working in Guatemala installing alternative stoves.
Hillary – and the curious history of mango diplomacy
When US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered Pakistan help last week in exporting mangoes to the US in a bid to dampen anti-American sentiment, it marked the latest chapter in the fruit’s curious history of diplomacy and intrigue.
Clinton’s offer came three years after the Bush administration opened up the US market to Indian mangoes in exchange for allowing Harley-Davidson to sell its famed motorcycles in India – a deal that generated goodwill as the two countries finalized a civilian nuclear agreement.
Washington’s mango-powered diplomacy this time around is part of a broader $7.5 billion aid effort that is meant to improve the image of the US in Pakistan, a move officials hope will provide the Pakistani government with greater room to cooperate on turning around the war in Afghanistan.
”I have personally vouched for Pakistani mangoes, which are delicious, and I’m looking forward to seeing Americans be able to enjoy those in the coming months,” Clinton said during her visit to Islamabad last week.
The prominence of mangoes in South Asian diplomacy should come as no surprise since scientists believe the sweet and fleshy orange fruit originated in the region before Buddhist monks and Persian traders introduced the plant to other areas of the world.
Pakistan and India recognize the mango as their national fruit, and summer in both countries is defined by the sights and sounds of vendors hawking piles of soft, sweet-smelling mangoes or pureeing them to create refreshing drinks that cut through the scorching heat…
RTFA. Interesting tidbits about one of my favorite fruits.
The article ends appropriately with an Indian proverb: ”You can’t hurry a mango tree to ripen its fruit.”
Hillary: Why did Harper exclude part of Arctic Council?
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a rare public rebuke to close ally Canada, criticizing it for excluding key nations from a meeting to discuss the resource-rich Arctic.
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon gathered his counterparts from Russia, Norway, the United States and Denmark for three hours of talks on Monday on the grounds that they were the only nations with Arctic coastlines.
The decision prompted unhappiness in Sweden, Finland and Iceland, who are also members of the eight-nation Arctic Council — traditionally the body where most important decisions on the region are taken.
“Significant international discussions on Arctic issues should include those who have legitimate interests in the region,” Clinton said in a statement issued before the meeting had even begun. “I hope the Arctic will always showcase our ability to work together, not create new divisions…”
Cannon spent much of his closing news conference responding to questions about Clinton’s statement and insisting he was not trying to marginalize the Arctic Council…
The five nations that did participate in the meeting are the only ones engaged in a protracted process of filing territorial claims in the Arctic, a region that experts say contains rich oil and gas deposits.
“While development may be years in the future, the renewable and nonrenewable resource potential of the Arctic Ocean represents tremendous opportunities,” said Cannon. “We have a common commitment to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims.”
If you need a translation, that’s horseshit diplomacy talk for “We’re figuring out how to divvy up the mineral rights”.
Hillary Clinton regrets U.S. is not a member of International Court
Secretary Clinton with survivors of 1998 Embassy bombing in Kenya
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday it was a “great regret” the United States was not yet a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The United States signed the ICC treaty when Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, was president, but it was never ratified by Congress. Clinton’s successor George W. Bush later rejected the idea of joining the court.
“This is a great regret that we are not a signatory,” she said at a public meeting in Nairobi. “I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership,” Clinton said. “But that has not yet come to pass…”
The ICC is the world’s first permanent war crimes court, set up in 2002 to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and other major human rights violations…
With the recent addition of the Czech Republic, 110 countries have ratified the Rome statute. Absent from the list are the United States, Russia, China and Israel.
I suppose first – we still have to regain status as being a nation ruled by constitutional law instead of executive order. If we can convince conservatives to leave the nutballs behind and come along and join Americans in the 21st Century.
Hillary Clinton – “At first I said no…”
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
When then-President-elect Barack Obama first asked Hillary Clinton to be his top diplomat, she turned him down and recommended others for the job, the secretary of state said in an interview broadcast Sunday.
Speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” Clinton also said the president has answered the central question she raised about him when she was his chief rival for the Democratic nomination last year.
In her famous “3 a.m.” ad, she questioned whether Obama was the right candidate to handle a middle-of-the-night international crisis.
“Has the president answered it for you?” host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“Absolutely,” Clinton replied. “And, you know, the president, in his public actions and demeanor, and certainly in private with me and with the national security team, has been strong, thoughtful, decisive, I think he is doing a terrific job. And it’s an honor to serve with him.”
The former senator from New York and former first lady revealed details of how she came to accept the role. Video Watch analysts dissect the Clinton-Obama relationship »
“I never had any dream, let alone inkling, that I would end up in President Obama’s cabinet,” she said. “When I left the presidential race after getting some sleep and taking some deep breaths, I immediately went to work for him in the general election. … And I was looking forward to going back to the Senate and, frankly, going back to my life and representing New York, which I love. And I had no idea that he had a different plan in mind…”
She added, “Ultimately, it came down to my feeling that, number one, when your president asks you to do something for your country, you really need a good reason not to do it. Number two, if I had won and I had asked him to please help me serve our country, I would have hoped he would say yes. And finally, I looked around our world and I thought, you know, we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out.”
I guess Stephanopolous didn’t read Richard Wolfe’s diary of the Obama campaign.
When I saw Wolfe on TV being interviewed about the book – he said Obama had picked Hillary for Secretary of State before he was even elected, before the primaries were over. Which describes his early insight – and confidence.
Same-sex partners of diplomats get equal protection and benefits
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
The State Department will offer equal benefits and protections to same-sex partners of American diplomats, according to an internal memorandum Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent last week to an association of gay and lesbian Foreign Service officers.
Mrs. Clinton said the policy change addressed an inequity in the treatment of domestic partners and would help the State Department recruit diplomats, since many international employers already offered such benefits.
“Like all families, our Foreign Service families come in different configurations; all are part of the common fabric of our post communities abroad,” Mrs. Clinton said in the memorandum, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by a member of the gay and lesbian association.
“At bottom,” she said, “the department will provide these benefits for both opposite-sex and same-sex partners because it is the right thing to do…”
Influential lawmakers also pushed for the changes — even drafting legislation requiring the State Department to offer these benefits — until Mrs. Clinton assured them that she would address the issue.
The “right thing to do” hardly influences bible-thumping reactionaries who could care less about equal opportunities, equal responsibilities or equal rights. We’ll probably get to hear them whining, tomorrow morning.
Good for you, Hillary!
