Head of State: Hillary Clinton

 

Hillary Clinton, the blind dissident, and the art of diplomacy in the Twitter era.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat down on a plush yellow couch at the J.W. Marriott late on a Saturday morning in early May. The Beijing skyline sparkled, uncharacteristically sunny and smog-free, out the window of her 23rd-floor suite, and she was wearing sunglasses even though we were indoors, “an eye infection,” she said apologetically. Clinton seemed surprisingly upbeat, especially considering that just a day earlier, she had come uncomfortably close to a major public rebuff by the Chinese — much closer, in fact, than anyone yet realized. “It was a standoff,” she told me, “for 24 difficult hours.”

Until our conversation, Clinton had said virtually nothing publicly about the case of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident whose fate had become the object of a week of frenetic negotiations when his escape from village house arrest to the U.S. Embassy collided with a visit to Beijing by Clinton herself. Amid the unfolding drama, the secretary had smiled and nodded her way through elaborately choreographed high-level annual talks and a variety of photo ops at which she gamely recited paeans to constructive dialogue and plugged cut-rate cookstoves for the developing world.

But Clinton had in fact spent the last few days in hard-nosed deal-making with the Chinese that nearly ended in an embarrassing failure, until she personally intervened, twice, with her counterpart, Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo: the first time to reassure Dai about a deal to allow Chen to stay in China and study law; then, when Chen balked at that, to secure agreement that he and his family could leave for the United States. “We were in a very difficult position because we had pushed their system just about to the breaking point,” recalled a senior official who was present. “We knew it, they knew it, and they knew we knew it.”

Her final encounter with Dai came, at her request, in an early-morning session in a room at the Diaoyutai compound where, 40 years earlier, Nixon had stayed when he famously met Mao to reopen U.S.-China relations. It was just hours before the close of the formal Strategic and Economic Dialogue that was the ostensible purpose of Clinton’s trip; if Clinton had no agreement by then, they both knew it would open a rift in their relationship and create a political disaster back in Washington, where the secretary and her team were being accused of fumbling an important human rights case by delivering the sick dissident to a Beijing hospital and right back into the hands of his persecutors.

Still, the Chinese did not give in. At one point, an advisor who was present recalled, Clinton finally seemed to catch their attention by mentioning what a political circus the case had become — with Chen even dialing into a U.S. congressional hearing that Thursday by cell phone from his hospital bed to say he feared for his safety if he remained in China. The Chinese team was visibly surprised. Eventually, Dai agreed at least to let the negotiations proceed. A few hours later, exhausted U.S. officials announced a deal.

By the next morning when we met, it was already clear this had been the most intense high-stakes diplomacy of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. She had worked hard to rescue Chen without blowing up the American relationship with China, but it was not yet obvious whether she had accomplished either goal. The Chinese were furious about the embarrassing attention to their human rights abuses. Clinton and her aides were being pilloried at home by everyone from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to the human rights community for abandoning Chen at the hospital. And the secretary was still worried about the deal. “Until he’s actually out and up with his family,” she told me, “it’s still touch and go.”

Listening to Clinton recount the episode, it was hard not to think of her own journey from idealistic human rights crusader to hardheaded global diplomat. Back in 1995, on her first trip to Beijing as first lady, Clinton’s impassioned speech declaring “women’s rights are human rights” was so inflammatory the Chinese blacked out the broadcast. By 2009, when she made her first visit as secretary of state, she was determined to avoid that kind of controversy — so determined, in fact, that she created one by declaring that human rights was just one of many issues she would raise with her Chinese counterparts.

continued… more:

Head of State

Advertisement

Hillary in Paris…

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attends the third meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group in Paris July 6, 2012.

Obama Bypasses Congress, Allows Funding for Palestinian Authority

WASHINGTON, April 25 (UPI) — President Obama, citing the United States’ national security interests, Wednesday waived restrictions on funding for the Palestinian Authority.

In a memorandum sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama cited his authority under section 7040(b) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2012 section 7040(a) of the Act, to provide appropriated funds to the Palestinian Authority.

The president directed Clinton to inform Congress of his action.

State Department officials last month expressed concern the department had been unable to provide full funding to the Palestinian Authority for institution-building projects as the United States seeks to rejuvenate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., had questioned the Obama administration’s request for $147 million for the Palestinian Authority at a time when P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded preconditions for returning to the negotiations while also pushing a unilateral statehouse plan at the United Nations. She also expressed concern that $26.4 million had been requested for projects in Hamas-run Gaza.

“The administration also says we need to help ‘rebuild the Palestinian economy’ — this at a time when our economy is facing serious challenges and Americans are suffering,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Obama-frees-PA-funding

Have you noticed… Where’s Hillary? What is Hillary up to?

Tellurian says:  Take a break, Grab a cuppa coffee, make yourself a cocktail. Be your own best witness to the tremendous job Hillary Clinton is doing for you and our country- You will be asked to participate in a pop quiz in 6mos.  Taking notes is allowed.

“Secretary Clinton Meets With meeting with European Parliament President”

“Secretary Clinton Meets With Israeli Defense Minister”

“Secretary Clinton Announces e-Mentor Corps initiative”

“Secretary Clinton Addresses Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship”

Madame Secretary, Cherchez la femme..

HILLARY CLINTON FIRST LADY

~ the extraordinary Hillary Clinton

The First Lady has never been more popular—or effective. As Mrs. Clinton begins a campaign to restore America’s decaying historical treasures, Ann Douglas finds that in her personal life, too, she seeks inspiration from the past.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

During Hillary Clinton’s four-day Save America’s Treasures tour to various historical sites in the eastern United States last July, large crowds of people, “presidential-size crowds,” as one reporter put it, packed every place she stopped. On July 14, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the First Lady visited the Colonial Theatre, a turn-of-the-century architectural jewel that now houses an art-supply store, about 3,000 people had already gathered in the street outside by noon, though she was not due until 4:30 P.M. One man I spoke to said he was happy to wait. “She’s my girl,” he explained. A “phenomenal person.” A woman who expressed concern about jobs leaving the region was confident that “Hillary’s visit will be a shot in the arm for Pittsfield.” Earlier in the day, in Newburgh, New York, headquarters to George Washington for sixteen months during the American Revolution, I talked to various members of the African-American community as they cheered her arrival. “She looks much better and younger than on TV,” one woman commented. Several young men were more outspoken: “Mrs. Clinton got it going on!” “She’s the Chief!” “She canhave me anytime!”

People lined the roads in and out of the towns, holding up their babies, eager to get a glimpse of her. Near Auburn, New York, a small girl outside DB’s Drive-In ice cream store waved a sign at the First Lady’s bus: HI MRS. CLINTON! DO YOU WANT AN ICE CREAM CONE? To everyone’s surprise, the bus stopped, Hillary Clinton got out, bought a cone (a small vanilla-chocolate twist), and chatted with Marilyn Biss, the proprietor, a widow with five children. She insisted on paying, though Mrs. Biss tried to dissuade her: “It’s totally inexpensive, and you’ve been great for my lunch-hour business.” A boy with a blond crew cut rode his bicycle up to the store and looked through the window to see what all the excitement was about. “Holy Cow!” he exclaimed. “It’s Hillary Clinton!” Read more

….BUT LOOK AT HER NOW!

Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton

…her Brilliant career…

As Obama’s surprise (and reluctant) pick for Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton brings her star power and stamina to the global stage. Jonathan Van Meter reports.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
It is a dreary morning in early October in Washington, D.C., and perhaps because Hillary Rodham Clinton is wearing a black Oscar de la Renta suit on such a colorless day, she seems somber. I had trailed her for nearly two weeks this summer in Africa and then again in New York during the United Nations General Assembly, and I had grown accustomed to seeing her in the vivid suits she favors. Africa is nothing if not colorful, and so not only did bright red or teal or periwinkle seem situation-appropriate, but her clothes somehow matched her demeanor, which was almost uniformly cheerful. Sometimes the color/mood connection was made overt: One morning, as her motorcade arrived at the U.N. for a panel on violence against women and girls, she stepped out of a shiny black luxury sedan in a red suit and was met by Esther Brimmer, her Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, also wearing red. “Good morning, Esther,” said Clinton. “I see you got the color memo.”

Today’s memo? Not today. When she walks into one of the many grand diplomatic reception rooms on the eighth floor of “the Building,” as everyone calls the State Department, she is clutching a big mug of milky coffee and is wearing no makeup. She looks tired and cranky. She is about to tape three I’m-sorry-I-can’t-be-with-you-here-this-evening videos for events she can’t attend. This is obligatory drudge work, to be sure, but it’s drudgery that requires her to suck it up and find that extra gear: She must be on. Clinton says hello to the group—not her usual effervescent eye-popping hello but a barely mustered blanket nicety. She sits where she is told, facing a teleprompter, and her ever-present and very chic deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, hands her a small case filled with cosmetics. Holding a compact, Clinton puts on mascara, lipstick, blush, and a little powder. She yanks her jacket straight, affixes her mic, and signals she is ready by sitting up and staring directly into the camera. And—click!—just like that, the public Hillary appears: upbeat, reassuring, in control, wide awake, means business. She nails all three videos in one take. Done. Next.

She walks into the adjoining ballroom, where she has been keeping Katie Couric waiting, and sits down to do a lengthy and tough interview on the war in Afghanistan and President Obama’s agonizing decision-making process. Not surprisingly, her mastery of the issues is dazzling. Even Couric is blown away. In fact, Clinton is so clearheaded on the subject, so eloquent, that it raises the question: Why hasn’t Hillary Clinton been more out in front on the most troubling foreign-policy issues of the day? read more..

…Because it’s not her job, she’s not the President! As if she doesn’t do enough, ya Jackass!

Clinton Visits Moscow Monday For U.S.- Russia Partnership Talks

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will begin a three-day visit to Russia Monday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry described it as an important step in moving the Russia-U.S. partnership forward after a summit in July of the presidents of the two countries in Moscow built a strong base.

Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, as coordinators of the Russian-American presidential commission, will discuss “aspects of its structure and effectiveness” and to “outline the schedule for bilateral contacts,” according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko.

A key item on the agenda is another round of talks by the two sides on replacing the cold war-era Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I).

United States and Russia have held seven rounds of negotiations so far, aimed at signing a follow-up treaty on nuclear arms limitation.

START I, expiring at the year-end, places a limit of 6,000 strategic or long-range nuclear warheads on each side. The Moscow understanding calls for reducing nuclear warheads held by each country to between 1,500 and 1,675 by the end of 2012.

Dropping of Washington’s European missile defense plan was a major condition by Moscow to consider major cuts to its nuclear arsenal.

The top diplomats will also discuss Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear program, and the Middle East peace process.

Clinton’s visit will be preceded by consultations between Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. under secretary of state Ellen Tauscher on missile defense.

Gore Vidal: Obama ‘Dreadful’ as President

Gore Vidal, American literary giant and Democrat insider, is publicly declaring he made a mistake in switching his support during the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

“I was hopeful,” Vidal says of an Obama presidency. “He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time.” Now, Vidal says in an interview published in the British paper, The Times, he was wrong and Obama is performing “dreadfully” as president.

Vidal says criticisms of Obama are mostly about his Afghanistan policies, which he says show the president is “inexperienced.” He says Obama “has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.”

In his view, the United States should retreat from Afghanistan, and he believes Obama is getting bad military advice because “he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star.”

In contrast, he thinks Hillary Clinton would handle military matters better because she is a woman. “Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals,” Vidal tells The Times. “History has proven when the girls get involved, they’re good at it.”

Vidal says terrorism is a government-created fraud. The “war on terror” was “made up,” he says. “The whole thing was PR, just like ‘weapons of mass destruction.'”

Citing his father Gene Vidal, who founded TWA Airlines, he says of the war on terror: “It has wrecked the airline business, which my father founded in the 1930s. He’d be cutting his wrists. Now when you fly you’re both scared to death and bored to death, a most disagreeable combination.”

On health care reform, Vidal says that Obama mishandled the issue. “I don’t know how, because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.”

Vidal tells The Times he regrets moving back to Hollywood, after years of living in Italy. He says the United States has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together.”

In general, he thinks that the White House is failing because “Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realize how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is.”

He says that another of Obama’s mistakes is that he “believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative,’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not — they’re fascists.”

In giving advice to President Obama, Vidal cites President Lincoln, who “wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War” ‘I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it.’ That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.”

At 83 and in a wheelchair, Vidal’s bitterness seems to stem from his own unfulfilled political ambitions. “I would have liked to have been president, but I never had the money. I was a friend of the throne. The only time I envied Jack [Kennedy] was when Joe [Kennedy, his father] was buying him his Senate seat, then the presidency. He didn’t know how lucky he was.“

A few excerpts from the Times Online:

“America should leave Afghanistan, Vidal said. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.” Vidal, a friend of President John F. Kennedy, became an Obama backer because he “grew up in a black city” (Washington) and was impressed by Obama’s intelligence.

On Mr Obama’s plan to reform healthcare, he said: “He f***** it up. I don’t know how, because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.”

Vidal added: “He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. ’I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs – a bit of Lincoln’s chill.” He also predicted Obama may be assassinated: “Just one lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6854498.ece

If you missed Hillary on FACE the NATION- video here

SOS Clinton will receive the Roosevelt Institute’s Four Freedoms Award

Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, left, and his wife Princess Maxima, right, of the Netherlands accept a commemorative bowl from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, second right, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009 in New York. The royals are in town to participate in the festivities celebrating the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York Harbor in September 1609.(AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)

Prince of Orange Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima talk with Brig. Gen. Mike Linnington and cadets during at visit at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will accept the Roosevelt Institute’s Four Freedoms Award, which honors a lifetime of distinguished service and an unwavering commitment to freedom, on Friday, September 11 at 7:00 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.

On January 6, 1941, in one of the most important speeches of the 20th century, President Roosevelt proclaimed four freedoms essential to any flourishing democracy: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Each year, a single individual is selected for the FDR Four Freedoms Award. Previous honorees have included some of the most distinguished Americans of our time, including Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Carter and Clinton; Coretta Scott King; Elie Wiesel; Katharine Graham; Robert C. Byrd, and Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. International recipients have included: Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, the Dalai Lama, H.M. Juan Carlos of Spain, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Shimon Peres, Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela.

In addition, each year, a Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal representing each of these values is presented to an individual whose life and work embody that ideal. This year, Anthony D. Romero and the ACLU will be the Freedom of Speech and Expression Medal Recipients, Eboo Patel and the Interfaith Youth Core will be the Freedom of Worship Medal Recipient, Vicki B. Escarra and Feeding America will be the Freedom from Want Medal Recipient, and Pasquale J. D’Amuro will be the Freedom from Fear Medal Recipient.

The event will be open to the press. RSVP to awillis@rooseveltinstitute.org by Thursday, September 10. Space is limited.

PRESS CONTACTS:
Office of Press Relations
U.S. Department of State
(202) 647-2492

Roosevelt Institute
Adrienne Willis
awillis@rooseveltinstitute.org

PRN: 2009/884