787 Hillary anti-Zionist? No, she's a hawk, funded by Haim Saban (dual citizen & Israel-Firster)

Hillary anti-Zionist? No, she's a hawk, funded by Haim Saban (dual
citizen & Israel-Firster)

Newsletter published on 27 December 2015

(1) Hillary Clinton "one of the least pro-Israeli American politicians"
(2) Hillary favours minorities; funded by rich Jews - Brother Nathanael
(3) Hawkish Hillary and her Zionist Sugar Daddy Haim Saban - Stephen
Sniegoski
(4) Hillary helped overthrow Gaddafi - A Hawk Named Hillary (2014)
(5) Neocons back Hillary over Trump. She voted for Iraq war, armed
Syrian rebels, likened Putin to Hitler
(6) Hillary to AIPAC: denounces anti-Semitism in Palestinian textbooks,
says Iran's Nuclear Program unacceptable - Jeff Blankfort (2005)
(7) Hillary sides with the 99%; but vague on TPP & trade issues
(8) Hillary says she opposes Big Business; but vague on Free Trade
(9) Hillary in 2012: “we need ... Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP"

(1) Hillary Clinton "one of the least pro-Israeli American politicians"
  Paul Bustion<pbustion22@gmail.com> 26 December 2015 at 01:51

Peter,

"Trump is the only Presidental candidate who is independent of funding
by the Lobby. Therefore, he is the only one who can bring peace to the
Middle East. Although the Islamicists oppose him, the Lobby and its
warhawks (William Kristol, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton) do too. Being
independent of both, he can force both to the table."

But, although I have not started following politics again until
recently, I followed politics a lot in the past, and from my
understanding Hillary Clinton was one of the least pro-Israeli American
politicians. Barbara Olson, a neoconservative philo-Semitic/pro-Zionist
author, wrote a book trashing Hillary Clinton called Hell to Pay that I
read parts of when I was 13 years old during Hillary's first Senate
campaign. I recalled her stating that Hillary Clinton was anti-Israeli
in the book, and have found my recollection confirmed by looking the
book up on google books. Olson wrote in the book,

"She will also have to explain to New York City's Jewish voters why she
has a lifetime record of support for the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO). The same Hillary who will be donning yarmulkes and
making her appeal in the synagogues of New York-and who now says-in
defiance of Clinton administration policy, that Jerusalem rather than
Tel Aviv should be the capital of Israel-is the same woman who was
chairing the New World Foundation when a $15,000 grant was awarded to a
group called Grassroots International. Grassroots International had
direct ties to the PLO.

Hillary claims she didn't vote on those funds. But this is the same
Hillary warmly cited by New Age thinker Michael Lerner for joining her
husband 'to call for a Palestinian state that would agree to live in
peace with Israel.' While recent polls show considerable softening
toward a Palestinian state among American Jews, this is hardly the issue
she needs to win in New York. 'You favor carving a Palestinian state
into Israel's back,' George Will challenged her. 'Schools run by the
Palestinian Authority, which would run such a state, teach (among other
anti-Semitic propaganda) that the Holocaust is a Zionist lie. How is
Israel helped by a contiguous state run by Holocaust deniers?'"

On another page Olson wrote,

"Hillary chaired the New World Foundation from 1982 to 1988, during
which time she awarded $15,000 to Grassroots International, which
funneled the grant money to the Union of Palestinian Working Women's
Committees and the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, both
branches of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1621571181

(2) Hillary favours minorities; funded by rich Jews - Brother Nathanael
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1023

April 15, 2015 @ 4:43 pm

Bad Start With Hillary

By Brother Nathanael Kapner

It’s a “Hillary for America” campaign Ad.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uY7gLZDmn4>

Her “Getting Started” opens with a mix of Americans showcasing the
Democrat Jews’ favorite minority policy issues. [...]

What’s missing? The White Middle-Class.

Where’s a White family?

Well, here’s a white lesbian smack in the middle. Does that count?

Now hereeeee’s Hillary!

[Clip: “I’m getting ready to do something too. I’m running for
president. Americans have fought their way back from tough economic
times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.”]

Oh, Hillary’s for the common crop but her funds come from the ‘ones at
the top:’

JB Pritzker, Hyatt Hotel tycoon; Marc Stanley, high powered lawyer; Haim
Saban, media mogul, just to name a few.

Oh, ‘the deck is stacked’ and Hillary’s gonna topple it? Not when Jews
‘at the top’ fund her campaign.

And with Joel and Mandy writing her scripts, the deck will stay stacked.

Yet Hillary says she wants to be our champ.

[Clip: “Every day Americans need a champion and I want to be that
champion.”]

But if all you’re offering is stopping dogs from eating the trash then
you’re not a champ, you’re a chimp.

But wait. Hillary does make a mark.

She’s running the first presidential campaign in history that cameos
homosexuals and lesbians as mainstream America. [show clip / pics]

It’s a ‘Hillary Agenda’ where all kinds are ‘getting started’ except for
traditional Whites.

The White Middle Class is about to be stomped out.

That’s why the only White couple in Hillary’s ad is shown with a
disabled child.

In a splintered America of mixed minorities only Jews rise to the top.

And Hillary can never fix that.

(3) Hawkish Hillary and her Zionist Sugar Daddy Haim Saban - Stephen
Sniegoski

From: "Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com [shamireaders]"
<shamireaders@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:59:32 -0500
Subject: [shamireaders] Fwd: MCS BLAST! Hawkish Hillary Clinton and Her
Israel-First
  Political Sugar Daddy Haim Saban
From: Debbie Menon

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2015/06/91758hawkish-Hillary-Clinton-and-her-Israel-first-political-sugar-daddy-haim-saban/

Hawkish Hillary Clinton and Her Israel-First Political Sugar Daddy Haim
Saban

Hillary Clinton’s greatest billionaire backer has been Haim Saban, a
dual United States-Israel citizen and hardline supporter of Israel, who
has openly commented, “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”

By Stephen Sniegoski - Jun 15, 2015

The prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency has many Israeli analysts
wondering what will become of the relationship picking up the pieces
from Barack Obama.

Considerable attention has been devoted to the millions of dollars Bill
and Hillary Clinton have received from wealthy individuals and
corporations for their foundation and for themselves.

Like many other things they have done, the Clintons were skirting on the
fringes of illegality. And given the fact that Hillary was not just an
ex-government official, like many who have benefitted from their
positions after they left the federal government, but someone who
intended to return to the federal government in the very topmost spot,
she and husband Bill were engaging in something quite unseemly. For it
would not be beyond the realm of possibility that those who handed over
tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation (some
of which took place while Hillary was Secretary of State) or to the
couple themselves for speaker fees expected favors in return.

Sheldon Adelson is a Republican and Haim Sabbah is a Democrat.

Now all of this has been bandied about in the mainstream media, but what
gets little attention is that Hillary Clinton’s greatest billionaire
backer has been Haim Saban, a dual United States-Israel citizen and
hardline supporter of Israel, who has openly commented, “I’m a one-issue
guy, and my issue is Israel.”[1]

With a net worth estimated at $3 billion, Saban is ranked by Forbes
magazine as the 143rd richest person in the United States.

When asked last July how much he would give to Hillary Clinton’s
campaign, he responded, “As much as is needed.”[2]

Saban’s support for the Clintons goes back to Bill Clinton’s presidency
when Saban and his wife slept in the Lincoln bedroom on a number of
occasions, a privilege reserved for only the largest donors to the
Democratic Party.

U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (center) joins Cheryl and Haim Saban

Saban has supported Hillary in her senatorial and 2008 presidential
campaigns and he, along with his Saban Family Foundation, donated from
$10 million to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.[3]The
paleoconservative commentator Scott McConnell writes that in Hillary’s
current run for the presidency, Haim Saban is her “major financial
backer: one could go so far as to say that he and his donor circle
constitute her ‘base’ or at least a significant part of it.”[4]

Saban was born in Egypt to a family that emigrated to Israel in 1956
with most of the Egyptian Jewish population after the Suez War, in which
Israel, along with Britain and France, attacked Egypt. Although he has
lived in the United States for over thirty years, Saban maintains a
strong loyalty to Israel. For example, between 2008 and 2013, Saban gave
$7.43 million to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a recognized
tax exempt charitable group in the US that provides support for the
well-being of members of the Israeli military, and he has headed
campaigns that raised millions more for that organization.[5]

Billboard paid for by Council for the National Interest.

Saban’s foremost purpose is to aid Israel by increasing American support
for the Jewish state. He has publicly described his method to achieve
this goal by stating that the “three ways to be influential in American
politics” are to make donations to political parties, establish think
tanks, and control media outlets.[6]Saban has used all those ways. In
line with that thinking, he funds the American Israel Education
Foundation, which is essentially a branch of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—located in the same building—and specializes
in taking members of Congress on all-expenses-paid tours of Israel where
they receive huge doses of pro-Zionist propaganda.[7]

Does Israel Buy Influence at U.S. Think Tanks?

In 2002, Saban contributed $7 million dollars toward the cost of a new
building for the Democratic National Committee, which was one of the
largest known donations ever made to an American political party.

In 2012, Saban gave $1 million to Unity 2012, a joint fund-raising Super
Pac that divided its funds between Priorities USA Action, a PAC
supporting President Obama’s candidacy, and two other PACs backing House
and Senate Democrats.[8]

In 2002, he founded the Saban Center for Middle East Policy (which in
2014 dropped the name Saban, though maintaining the connection with him)
at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.[9]Brookings has been
considered liberal or liberal/centrist in its orientation and is highly
regarded in the mainstream. The purpose of the Saban Center appears to
have been to bring aboard some scholars with the aforementioned
liberal-centrist orientation who also take pro-Israel, neocon-like
positions, and mixing them with scholars without those pro-Israel,
neoconnish inclinations—a factor that protects the Center’s reputation
for objectivity in line with the overall Brookings Institution. However,
with the establishment of the Saban Center, pro-Israel neoconnish
individuals have spread to other parts of the Brookings Institution.

While the Center could have only come into existence as a result of
Saban’s money, it seems to have been largely the brainchild of Martin
Indyk, a former deputy director of research at AIPAC, who wanted to
create a foreign policy think tank with something of a pro-Israel tilt,
but without an obvious pro-Israel bias, so that it could gain acceptance
in mainstream circles.

Indyk would become the founding director of the Saban Center and is
currently executive vice president of the Brookings Institution.[10]

In Hillary’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency
in 2008, Indyk served as an advisor on foreign policy.[11]

A few more examples of Brookings’ pro-Israel neocon orientation are as
follows.Michael O’Hanlon, who was in the Saban Center and is now
Co-Director ofthe Brookings Institution’s Center for 21st Century
Security and Intelligence, supported the US war on Iraq in 2003, backed
troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, signed letters and policy
statements of the neocon Project for the New American Century, and
advocated the use of American ground troops in Syria to oust the Assad
regime.[12]In 2008,O’Hanlon supported John McCain for president, though
he had been listed as an advisor to Hillary Clinton before she lost the
nomination to Obama.[13]

Saban AIPAC Appointees – Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, and Kenneth Pollack
who lead AIPAC policy front organizations would very likely receive
National Security Council and US State Department positions if Hillary
Clinton becomes president.

Also, at the Saban Center, and remaining there after the Saban name was
dropped, is Kenneth M. Pollack, who supported the invasion of Iraq,
being the author of the influential 2002 book, The Threatening Storm:
The Case for Invading Iraq.Pollack was described by Philip Weiss, a
critic of US and Israeli Middle East policies on the website Mondoweiss,
as “the expert who did more than anyone else to promote the Iraq war
among liberals, in New York Times editorials and a book saying that
invading Iraq would remake the US image in the Arab world and get their
minds off Palestine!” [14]Pollack also backed the 2007 surge in Iraq.

In the Lawrence Franklin espionage trial, Pollack was mentioned as also
having provided classified information to AIPAC employees in 2000 during
the Clinton Administration when he was a Middle East analyst in the
National Security Council.[15] Although Pollack was not charged with a
crime, his apparent involvement would illustrate that he is recognized
as a supporter of Israel by AIPAC. Much more recently, on March 24,
2015, Pollack testified before a hearing of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, chaired by Senator John McCain, that Iran was far more
dangerous than ISIS or al Qaeda, stating that “It has a greater ability
to control the region and sustain that control if allowed to do so.”[16]
Note that Israel perceives Iran as the greater danger. Pollack also was
one of Hillary Clinton’s chief foreign policy advisors while she was in
the Senate and supported her candidacy for president in 2008.[17]

The most significant warhawk who happens to be, or at least has been, a
bonafide neocon in the Brookings Institution is Robert Kagan of the
seemingly omnipresent Kagan clan—father Donald, brother Frederick,
sister-in-law Kimberly and wife Victoria Nuland (who, as a leading
figure in the US State Department, played a major role in fomenting the
Russia-Ukraine crisis). Among his neocon credentials, Robert Kagan was a
contributing editor of The Weekly Standard, the original director of the
notorious (in anti-war circles) Project for a New American Century, and
with Bill Kristol, the cofounder of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a
neocon organization considered to be the successor to the Project for a
New American Century. He was also the foreign policy advisor to John
McCain in 2008.

In recent years, however, Kagan, who joined Brookings in 2010, has tried
to distance himself from his neocon past, describing himself as a
“liberal interventionist” and actually taking some positions at odds
with the neocons and the Israeli Right.[18]Instead of 100 percent
neoconism, he now espouses something that could be described as
neocon-lite. His new persona has opened for him the halls of power in
the mainstream and enabled him to become close to Hillary Clinton,
something that the old Robert Kagan, with his harder-line neocon
baggage, probably could not have achieved.

While Saban did not bring Kagan over to Brookings, the huge funds that
he has provided to the Institution likely were a factor. As Washington
insider Steve Clemons wrote at the time: “Kagan’s move is important for
Brookings as the institution has been working hard to get Haim Saban to
give another large infusion of resources to his namesake unit, the Saban
Center for Middle East Policy, at Brookings. Securing Kagan is one way
that Brookings may have sweetened the pot for Saban who is according to
one Brookings source ‘painfully flamboyant’ about using his money to try
and influence the DC establishment through think tanks and other
vehicles to secure Israel-first, Israel-defending policies out of
Washington.” [19]

Neocons like the historian Robert Kagan may be connecting with Hillary
Clinton to try to regain influence in foreign policy. Credit Left,
Stephanie Sinclair/VII via Corbis; right, Colin McPherson/Corbis

Kagan helped establish a bipartisan civilian advisory board for
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.[20]In 2014, Kagan implied that he
might support Hillary Clinton for President. “I feel comfortable with
her on foreign policy,” he remarked. “If she pursues a policy which we
think she will pursue, it’s something that might have been called
neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they
are going to call it something else.”[21] And while it would be very
unlikely that Kagan would receive a Cabinet post in a Clinton
administration, it is quite conceivable that he would be given some type
of advisory position with considerable influence on foreign policy.

While there is no proof that Kagan’s new, more moderate stance is simply
a strategic pose, the fact that his position could be used as Hillary
Clinton’s counterpoise to the hardline neocon-Israel lobby position of
the Republicans would serve to keep debate on US Middle East policy
within even more narrow limits than has been the case during the Obama
administration. Since the neocons would likely squawk that Clinton’s
position was insufficiently protective of Israel and the United States,
the actual similarity of the two positions would likely be obfuscated
rather than clarified by the mainstream media.

Billionaire Haim Saban at his 70th birthday bash, pledged to support
Hillary Clinton should she run for president.

Saban’s monetary contribution to Hillary Clinton’s campaign is not the
only way that he can advance her candidacy. He is the executive chairman
of Univision Communications, which owns and operates the Univision
television network, the largest Spanish-language television network in
the United States, and the fifth largest television network overall in
the country, reaching more than 93.8 million households. The Hispanic
vote has become a significant part of the overall presidential vote and,
since the great majority of Hispanics are Democrats, is especially
important in the Democratic primaries. “You have to go to Univision to
get to Latino voters,” commented Gabriela Domenzain, who was Obama’s
Hispanic media director in the 2012 election.[22]

Even before the 2016 election campaign began, Clinton was able to rely
upon Univision to generate favorable publicity for herself. In early
2014, she joined with Univision in a multi-year initiative to present
mainstream expert information on the television network intended to aid
Hispanic parents in helping their pre-school-age children develop
language skills. In regard to this program, Hillary Clinton has been
featured widely on Univision’s network and website.[23] As an article in
the Washington Post observed when the program was announced, “For
Clinton, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, the partnership with
Univision provides a valuable platform to promote her causes with the
country’s fast-growing and politically influential Hispanic community.”[24]

Hillary’s UNIVISION event – The prospective 2016 presidential candidate
came to an East Harlem classroom, sat beneath crayon posters and
alphabet letters, and urged Hispanic parents to read and sing to their
children to help develop their language skills.

Since Clinton is taking a very favorable position toward currently
illegal immigrants, stating that as President she would go beyond Obama
in providing them legal status and citizenship, publicity from Univision
should help her to capture the Hispanic vote in the Democratic primary
elections by at least the same proportions as she did in 2008, when she
defeated Obama by a two to one margin. The Hispanic vote is expected to
be much larger in 2016, and it should be pointed out that in regard to
total votes in the Democratic primaries in 2008, Clinton actually
received slightly more votes than Obama,[25] which indicates that she
was then about as popular as Obama among Democrats.[26]Where Hillary
Clinton was hurt in 2008 was in those states that had caucuses rather
than primaries in which activists of a more anti-war leftist orientation
tended to be disproportionately represented. Clinton and her close
advisors had taken for granted that she would be the Democratic nominee
and failed to organize effectively in caucus states, being focused
instead on the general election. Her campaign is not likely to be
overconfident this time.[27]

Much is being made in the mainstream media about Hillary Clinton’s
alleged floundering in recent polls. Although there is some truth here
since her negative ratings in the polls are rising, she is still far
ahead of any of her rivals, having substantially more than 50 percent of
the vote in the polls for the Democratic presidential nomination in
2016.[28] With the expanded Hispanic vote, a divided opposition and the
lack of a potential opponent with anything like Obama’s appeal
(especially in regard to the black vote) in 2008,[29] and by organizing
for the caucuses, it is hard to see how Clinton would fail to be the
Democratic nominee, barring some momentous event, such as ill health or
a major scandal. And though the general election is far more difficult
to predict, she should be seen as the likely winner based upon
demographic changes in the US voting population.[30]

In many areas, Hillary’s hawkishness does not need Saban’s prompting,
though since self-aggrandizement looms very large in her political
career, it is likely that placating the powerful has always played a
significant role in shaping her political positions. In April 2014, an
article in the New York Times, which dealt with her positions as Obama’s
Secretary of State, related that “in recent interviews, two dozen
current and former administration officials, foreign diplomats, friends
and outside analysts described Mrs. Clinton as almost always the
advocate of the most aggressive actions considered by Mr. Obama’s
national security team — and not just in well-documented cases, like the
debate over how many additional American troops to send to Afghanistan
or the NATO airstrikes in Libya.

“Mrs. Clinton’s advocates — a swelling number in Washington, where
people are already looking to the next administration — are quick to
cite other cases in which she took more hawkish positions than the White
House: arguing for funneling weapons to Syrian rebels and for leaving
more troops behind in postwar Iraq, and criticizing the results of a
2011 parliamentary election in Russia.”[31]

Numerous commentators have pointed out that Hillary is not only hawkish
but is attracting support from neocons and neoconnish Democrats. Veteran
establishment liberal commentator Leslie Gelb sees this as part of
“[s]omething pivotal [that] is germinating in the politics of American
foreign policy. It is a shift rightward toward a tougher line, notably
among powerful Democrats. It is dislodging the leftward thrust that was
triggered in the mid-2000s, when George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq became widely seen as disasters.”[32]

In 2014, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glen Greenwald, an anti-war
leftist,commented bluntly about Hillary Clinton: “She’s a f***ing hawk
and like a neocon, practically. She’s surrounded by all these sleazy
money types who are just corrupting everything everywhere. But she’s
going to be the ?rst female president, and women in America are going to
be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to
be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted
as racist. It’s going to be this completely symbolic messaging that’s
going to overshadow the fact that she’ll do nothing but continue
everything in pursuit of her own power.”[33]

Given the possible threat of Democratic anti-war leftists fielding a
third party that could threaten to siphon off a few percentage points
from Clinton’s vote in the general election—or at least the possibility
that a substantial number of liberal party regulars would be too
disenchanted to actively campaign for her—she might, out of political
expediency, moderate her hawkishness in her campaigning, including that
which pertains to Israel. Such a political tactic would seem to be
acceptable to Saban.

As Saban mentioned in an interview on Israel Channel One television in
regard to Clinton’s true position on Obama’s Iran deal:“I can’t reveal
to you things that were said behind closed doors. She has an opinion, a
very well-defined opinion. And in any case, everything that she thinks
and everything she has done and will do will always be for the good of
Israel. We don’t need to worry about this.”[34] And as a self-made
billionaire, it would seem apparent that Saban has not often been wrong
in his expectations.

Moreover, in the unlikely event that Clinton were defeated by the
Republican nominee—unless that Republican were Rand Paul, whose
nomination is an ultra-longshot—then Saban, who admits that Israel is
his only issue, would have little to complain about since the new
Republican President would pursue policies much more in line with the
positions of the Israeli Right than had the Obama administration, which
itself was hardly anti-Israel. In short, no matter who wins the upcoming
presidential election, Israel and its supporters will emerge victorious.

For END NOTES - visit the link

(4) Hillary helped overthrow Gaddafi - A Hawk Named Hillary (2014)
http://www.thenation.com/article/191521/hawk-named-Hillary

A Hawk Named Hillary

As her record shows, Clinton has embraced destructive nationalist myths
about America’s role in the world.

Anatol Lieven

November 25, 2014 | This article appeared in the December 15-22, 2014
edition of The Nation.

Hillary Clinton is running for president not only on her record as
secretary of state, but also by presenting herself as tougher than
Barack Obama on foreign-policy issues. With this stance, she presumably
plans to distance herself from a president increasingly branded as
“weak” in his approach to international issues, and to appeal to the
supposedly more hawkish instincts of much of the electorate.

It is therefore necessary to ask a number of related questions, the
answers to which are of crucial importance not just to the likely course
of a hypothetical Clinton administration, but to the future of the
United States in the world.

These questions concern her record as secretary of state and her
attitudes, as well as those of the US foreign-policy and
national-security elites as a whole. [...]

Even more important and difficult than any of these problems may be the
fact that designing a truly new and adequate strategy would require
breaking with some fundamental American myths—myths that have been
strengthened by many years of superpower status but that go back much
further, to the very roots of American civic nationalism.

These myths, above all, depict the United States as—in one of Clinton’s
favorite phrases—the “indispensable nation,” innately good (if sometimes
misguided), with the right and duty to lead humankind and therefore,
when necessary, to crush any opposition.

It is the strength and centrality of these nationalist myths that have
prevented our elites and the American public from learning or
remembering the lessons of Vietnam—a failure that helped pave the way
for the disaster of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the consequences of which
are still unfolding in the Middle East today. And as Clinton’s entire
record—all her writings and all the writings about her—show, she has
made herself a captive of those nationalist myths beyond any possibility
of escape. As she asserts in her new book, Hard Choices:

“Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America
remains the “indispensable nation.” I am just as convinced, however,
that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every
generation.

And it will be—so long as we stay true to our values and remember that,
before we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or
any of the other labels that divide us as often as define us, we are
Americans, all with a personal stake in our country.” [...]

Nonetheless, a passage early in the book did give me hope that it would
contain at least some serious discussion of past US mistakes and their
lessons for future policy. It concerned what Clinton acknowledges as her
own greatest error—the decision to vote for the Iraq War:

“As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on
Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war
and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges where we had
fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly that when
facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism,
and humility.”

Neither in her book nor in her policy is there even the slightest
evidence that she has, in fact, tried to learn from Iraq beyond the most
obvious lesson—the undesirability of US ground invasions and
occupations, which even the Republicans have managed to learn.

For Clinton herself helped to launch US airpower to topple another
regime, this one in Libya—and, as in Iraq, the results have been
anarchy, sectarian conflict and opportunities for Islamist extremists
that have destabilized the entire region. She then helped lead the
United States quite far down the road of doing the same thing in Syria.

Clinton tries to argue in the book that she took a long, hard look at
the Libyan opposition before reporting to the president her belief that
“there was a reasonable chance the rebels would turn out to be credible
partners”—but however long she looked, it is now obvious that she got it
wrong.

She has simply not understood the fragility of states—states, not
regimes—in many parts of the world, the risk that “humanitarian
intervention” will bring about state collapse, and the inadequacy of a
crude and simplistic version of democracy promotion as a basis for state
reconstruction.

It does not help that the US record on democracy promotion and the rule
of law – including Clinton’s own record – is so spotted that very few
people outside the country take it seriously anymore.

Her book manages simultaneously to repeat the claim that the United
States and its allies were only enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya and to
try to take personal credit for destroying the Libyan regime. And she
wonders why other countries do not entirely trust her or America’s honesty!

There is also no recognition whatsoever in her book that those who
opposed US military action were in fact right and not “despicable,” to
use her phrase about Russian opposition to the US military intervention
in Syria. [...]

But if Clinton’s day-to-day record was pragmatic, her long-term strategy
may prove disastrous. This was the Obama administration’s decision—in
which she was instrumental—to “pivot to Asia.”

As Clinton’s writings make clear, “pivot” means the containment of China
through the enhancement of existing military alliances in East Asia and
the development of new ones (especially with India). [...]

(5) Neocons back Hillary over Trump. She voted for Iraq war, armed
Syrian rebels, likened Putin to Hitler

Are Neocons getting ready to Ally with Hillary Clinton?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-Hillary-Clinton.html?_r=1

By JACOB HEILBRUNN

JULY 5, 2014

WASHINGTON — AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the
neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine
to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement’s interventionist
foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that
bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more
brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her
nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat
of American foreign policy.

To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of
neocons — Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith,
Richard N. Perle — are permanently buried in the sands of Iraq. And not
all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the
editor of The Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would
“be a dutiful chaperone of further American decline.”

But others appear to envisage a different direction — one that might
allow them to restore the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile
home in the Republican Party is turning away from its traditional
interventionist foreign policy.

It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert
Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New
Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only
avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual
brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group
during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.


Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue
neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism
headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under
President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become
secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott
called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public
baptism into the liberal establishment.)

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on
maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in
muscular Cold War liberalism. Among other things, he has frequently
praised Harry S. Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a
line from him straight to the neocons’ favorite president: “It was not
Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan whose policies most resembled
those of Acheson and Truman.”

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for
Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in
administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on
controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the
intervention in Libya.”

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the
Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s
president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs
Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her
administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national
security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.

Of course, the neocons’ latest change in tack is not just about
intellectual affinity. Their longtime home, the Republican Party, where
presidents and candidates from Reagan to Senator John McCain of Arizona
supported large militaries and aggressive foreign policies, may well
nominate for president Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been
beating an ever louder drum against American involvement abroad.

In response, Mark Salter, a former chief of staff to Senator McCain and
a neocon fellow traveler, said that in the event of a Paul nomination,
“Republican voters seriously concerned with national security would have
no responsible recourse” but to support Mrs. Clinton for the presidency.

Still, Democratic liberal hawks, let alone the left, would have to
swallow hard to accept any neocon conversion. Mrs. Clinton herself is
already under fire for her foreign-policy views — the journalist Glenn
Greenwald, among others, has condemned her as “like a neocon,
practically.” And humanitarian interventionists like Samantha Power, the
ambassador to the United Nations, who opposed the second Iraq war,
recoil at the militaristic unilateralism of the neocons and their
inveterate hostility to international institutions like the World Court.

But others in Mrs. Clinton’s orbit, like Michael A. McFaul, the former
ambassador to Russia and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,
a neocon haven at Stanford, are much more in line with thinkers like Mr.
Kagan and Mr. Boot, especially when it comes to issues like promoting
democracy and opposing Iran.

Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to continue. In 1972,
Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal
and a man who championed the early neocon stalwarts, shrewdly diagnosed
the movement as representing “something of a swing group between the two
major parties.” Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s, it is
remarkable how very little has changed.

Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of the National Interest and the author of
“They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 6, 2014, on page SR5 of
the New York edition with the headline: The Next Act of the Neocons.

(6) Hillary to AIPAC: denounces anti-Semitism in Palestinian textbooks,
says Iran's Nuclear Program unacceptable - Jeff Blankfort (2005)
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 09:21:02 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort
<jblankfort@earthlink.net>

http://Clinton.senate.gov/~Clinton/speeches/2005524910.html

Remarks by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to the 2005 American Israel
Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference

May 24, 2005

As Delivered

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Lonny.

Welcome to Washington for this extraordinary AIPAC conference. I'm told
that the attendance far surpasses any other conference, and it's always
been one of the biggest gatherings that Washington hosts every year. So
I congratulate you for being here in these numbers with this energy and
enthusiasm. [...]

As all of us know, our future here in this country is intertwined with
the future of Israel and the Middle East. Now there is a lot that we
could talk about, and obviously much has been discussed. But in the
short period that I have been given the honor of addressing you, I want
to start by focusing on our deep and lasting bond between the United
States and Israel.

Now, these are bonds that are more than shared interests. These are
bonds forged in a common struggle for human rights, for democracy, for
freedom. These are bonds that predate the creation of the state of
Israel, that really predate the creation of the United States because
they are rooted in fundamental beliefs and values about the dignity and
rights of men and women to live in freedom, free from fear, free from
oppression. And there is no doubt that these incredibly strong bonds and
values will remain as the lodestar of our relationship with our
democratic friend and ally, Israel.

Now, Israel is not only, however, a friend and ally for us, it is a
beacon of what democracy can and should mean. It is, after all, a
pluralistic democracy. It is, as many of us know from personal
experiences, a very dynamic democracy with many points of view, and
those are expressed with great frequency and vigor. So if people in the
Middle East are not sure what democracy means, let them look to Israel,
which has been and remains a true, faithful democracy.  [...]

And five years ago, I stood with my friend, Elie Wiesel, to denounce
this incitement, this violence, this anti-Semitism in Palestinian
textbooks. And I've been working on this issue because to me it is one
of those basic issues that -- how do we expect to have a democratically
elected Palestinian government if their textbooks are still preaching
such hatred, and if we allow this if we allow this dehumanizing rhetoric
to go unchallenged. Because what is happening is young minds are being
infected with this anti-Semitism, and that is going to run counter to
what we hope can happen over the next years as we do work for peace and
stability.

So we must continue to shine a bright spotlight on these messages of
hatred and these enticements for martyrdom in these textbooks and on the
media that take young minds and twist and pervert them and create a new
generation of terrorists and insurgents.

About a year and a half ago, I held a hearing with Senator Specter on
the Palestinian media, and I confronted the Palestinian Authority
representative about this issue, whom we had invited to come and address
the Senate committee. I urged him to acknowledge that when it comes to
children, whoever those children are, shielding them from hate and
violence should be the number one priority of their families and their
governments and the entire global community to prevent this hatred from
festering.

Using children as pawns in a political process is tantamount to child
abuse, and we must say it has to end now!

And, of course, that infection is contagious, and it can spread beyond
the Palestinian territories. It can spread into other parts of the Arab
world, and it can impact what goes on there.

And of course, one of the areas I am deeply concerned about is Iran, and
its pursuit of nuclear weapons, because a nuclear-armed Iran would shake
the foundation of global security to its very core. Israel would be most
immediately and profoundly threatened by this development, but Israel
would not be alone. Knowing of Iran's historic and present ties to
terrorist networks, how would we feel, here in America, if the Iranians
could start producing nuclear weapons at will? How would the Europeans
feel if Iran could start nuclear weapons at will?

So let us be unequivocally clear. A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable,
but it is not just unacceptable to Israel and to the United States. It
must be unacceptable to the entire world, starting with the European
governments and people.  [...]

(7) Hillary sides with the 99%; but vague on TPP & trade issues

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/us/Hillary-Clinton-attacks-republican-economic-policies-in-roosevelt-island-speech.html

Hillary Clinton, in Roosevelt Island Speech, Pledges to Close Income Gap

By AMY CHOZICK

June 13, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech that was at times sweeping and at
times policy laden, delivered on Saturday a pointed repudiation of
Republican economic policies and a populist promise to reverse the
gaping gulf between the rich and poor at her biggest campaign event to date.

Under sunny skies and surrounded by flag-waving supporters on Roosevelt
Island in New York, Mrs. Clinton pledged to run an inclusive campaign
and to create a more inclusive economy, saying that even the new voices
in the Republican Party continued to push “the top-down economic
policies that failed us before.”

“These Republicans trip over themselves promising lower taxes for the
wealthy and fewer rules for the biggest corporations without any regard
on how that will make income inequality worse,” she said before a crowd
estimated at 5,500, according to the campaign.

“I’m not running for some Americans, but for all Americans,” Mrs.
Clinton said. “I’m running for all Americans.”

Offering her case for the presidency, she rested heavily on her
biography. Her candidacy, she said, was in the name of “everyone who has
ever been knocked down but refused to be knocked out.”

Mrs. Clinton portrayed herself as a fighter, sounding a theme her
campaign had emphasized in recent days. “I’ve been called many things by
many people, quitter is not one of them,” she said.

Standing on a platform set in the middle of a grassy memorial to
Franklin D. Roosevelt on the East River island named after him, Mrs.
Clinton invoked his legacy. She also praised President Obama and her
husband, former President Bill Clinton, but declared that “we face new
challenges” in the aftermath of the economic crisis.

While some Republican detractors have tried to make an issue of Mrs.
Clinton’s age (if she won she would be 69 when she took office in
January 2017), she sought to embrace it and to rebut the notion that she
cannot stand for change or modernity. Offering her campaign contact
information, she spoke about the lives of gay people, saying Republicans
“turn their backs on gay people who love each other.”

Interactive Feature | Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)? At
least a dozen Republicans and a handful of Democrats have expressed an
interest in running for their party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

In one of the biggest applause lines, she said: “I may not be the
youngest candidate in this race, but I will be the youngest woman
president in the history of the United States.”

Underscoring the point with a riff on an old Beatles song, Mrs. Clinton
said: “There may be some new voices in the presidential Republican
choir. But they’re all singing the same old song.”

“It’s a song called ‘Yesterday,’ ” she continued. “They believe in
yesterday.”

Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee,
called the speech “chock-full of hypocritical attacks, partisan rhetoric
and ideas from the past that led to a sluggish economy.”

Mrs. Clinton specified policies she would push for, including universal
prekindergarten, paid family leave, equal pay for women, college
affordability and incentives for companies that provide profit-sharing
to employees. She also spoke of rewriting the tax code “so it rewards
hard work at home” rather than corporations “stashing profits overseas.”
She did not detail how she would achieve those policies or address their
costs.

Mrs. Clinton spoke to the criticism that her wealth makes her out of
touch with middle-class Americans, saying her candidacy is for “factory
workers and food servers who stand on their feet all day, for the nurses
who work the night shift, for the truckers who drive for hours.”

Uncomfortable with the fiery rhetoric of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the
Massachusetts Democrat, Mrs. Clinton offered some stark statistics to
address the concerns of the Democratic Party’s restless left. “The top
25 hedge fund managers make more than all of America’s kindergarten
teachers combined, often paying a lower tax rate,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton said many Americans must be asking, “When does my family
get ahead?” She added: “When? I say now.”

In a campaign in which Republicans have emphasized the growing threat of
Islamic terrorism and an unstable Middle East, Mrs. Clinton hardly
mentioned foreign policy. She did speak of her experience as a senator
from New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“As your president, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe,”
she said, weaving the skyline and a view of the newly built One World
Trade Center into her remarks.

For as much as the content of the speech mattered, the theater of it was
equally important. For a campaign criticized for lacking passion, the
event gave Mrs. Clinton the ability to create a camera-ready tableau of
excitement.

The Brooklyn Express Drumline revved up the crowd assembled on a narrow
stretch at the southern tip of the island. And Marlon Marshall, the
campaign’s director of political engagement, rattled off statistics
about the number of volunteers who have signed up and house parties held
in the early nominating states. A section with giant screens set up for
an overflow crowd stood nearly empty.

But a crowd of supporters and volunteers from the staunchly Democratic
New York area does not exactly represent the electorate writ large. The
real test for Mrs. Clinton and how the speech was perceived will be in
Iowa, where she was to travel on Saturday evening for several events.
Iowa, the first nominating state, shunned her the last time she sought
the presidency, in 2008.

“I was disappointed she didn’t challenge Obama four years ago,” said
Dominique Pettinato, a 24-year-old parole officer who lives in Brooklyn.

For some members of the skeptical liberal wing of the Democratic Party
still concerned that Mrs. Clinton will embrace her husband’s centrist
approach, the speech went only so far in convincing them otherwise.

“This was mostly a typical Democratic speech — much better than the
direction Republicans offer America,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of
Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal advocacy group. But he
said the speech had not offered “the bold economic vision that most
Americans want and need.”

Mrs. Clinton did not broach one issue that liberals are increasingly
frustrated by: trade. On Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist
from Vermont who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, pointedly
criticized Mrs. Clinton for not taking a position on a controversial
trade bill Mr. Obama is pushing, as well as other contentious issues
like the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline and the renewal of the
Patriot Act. “What is the secretary’s point of view on that?” Mr.
Sanders asked of the act, which he voted against.

Mrs. Clinton had hardly stopped speaking Saturday when Bill Hyers, a
senior strategist for Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland,
who is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, criticized
her as vague on trade and other issues. Mr. O’Malley, he said, “has been
fearless and specific in the progressive agenda we need.”

If there is one demographic Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is hoping to excite
it is young women. It is an obvious connection that her 2008 campaign
played down as it tried to present the former first lady as a strong
commander in chief.

But on Saturday it was clear that Mrs. Clinton will make gender more
central to her campaign this time. In her closing remarks, she called
for a country “where a father can tell his daughter yes, you can be
anything you want to be, even president of the United States.”
Correction: June 13, 2015

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a woman who
attended Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech. She is Dominique Pettinato,
not Pettin. An earlier version also misstated part of a quote by Allison
Moore, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. She said
Mrs. Clinton’s speech was “chock-full of hypocritical attacks,” not
hypothetical attacks.

(8) Hillary says she opposes Big Business; but vague on Free Trade
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/democrats-produce-trade-discord/391224/

Hillary Clinton's Hard Choice on Free Trade

The fight over the Trans-Pacific Partnership presents the former
secretary of state with a difficult dilemma.

  * David A. Graham

  * Apr 23, 2015

Harry Reid is mad at the Obama White House, which is pushing the
Trans-Pacific Partnership. “The answer is not only no but hell no,” the
Senate minority leader said. Elizabeth Warren is equally incensed:

"No more secret deals. No more special deals for multi-national
corporations. Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to fight any more
deals that say we're going to help the rich get richer and leave
everyone else behind?"

President Obama, the deal's biggest proponent, is mad at Warren. “I love
Elizabeth. We’re allies on a whole host of issues. But she’s wrong on
this.” (Warren sniped back in a blog post.)

Martin O'Malley, who opposes the deal, is mad at Hillary Clinton, who
has hedged on the TPP recently. "Americans deserve to know where leaders
stand," he tweeted.

Jeb Bush, who backs the deal, is also upset at Clinton. "It is time to
move forward as even recent Democratic presidents have recognized—and
Sec. Clinton shouldn’t stand in the way for political gain," he wrote on
Medium.

A GOP Deal to Give Obama More Trade Power

The politics of trade are weird.

Obama's biggest hurdle in getting the trade deal approved was always his
own party, as my colleague Russell Berman pointed out last week, when
negotiators reached a deal to fast-track the TPP. What's changed is that
the TPP has collided with the presidential race—in ways that are risky
for Hillary Clinton. The problem for Clinton is that she has
historically backed free-trade deals, and as secretary of state called
the TPP "the gold standard in trade agreements." Yet her campaign's big
push over the last week or two has been to prove her liberal bona fides.
Many progressives still don't like NAFTA, a product of Bill Clinton's
administration (actually, many Americans don't like NAFTA), and while
Hillary Clinton still looks like a prohibitive favorite in the
Democratic primary, rivals like O'Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders
oppose it, as do the labor unions that are a major part of the
Democratic coalition.

Clinton's approach so far has been to stay vague. "She will be watching
closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency
manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health,
promote transparency and open new opportunities for our small businesses
to export overseas," her campaign said Friday. On Tuesday in New
Hampshire, the candidate herself added, “Any trade deal has to produce
jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security.
We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the
skills to be competitive.”

Those don't sound like full-throated endorsements, as O'Malley implied.
He followed up that tweet with an email to supporters with the subject
line "Hard choice?" (Clinton's memoir, released last June, was Hard
Choices.)

Then there was this awkward exchange in a press gaggle with White House
spokesman Eric Schultz on Wednesday:

  ... Do you consider Hillary Clinton an ally on this trade stuff?

  Evan, I'm going to side with you on this. I believe that the labor,
environmental and human rights concerns that many Democrats have voiced,
the President takes to heart. And he would not sign a deal unless those
protections are in place.

  If you look at the TPA agreement that was introduced in a bipartisan
way in the Senate, we believe that’s the most progressive in history and
that’s why the President is encouraged by it.

  So Secretary Clinton and President Obama are on the same page with trade?

  Well, look, I believe that if you look at the points that are being
raised in terms of human rights, environmental protections, labor
protections, that those are important priorities of this President. So I
haven’t seen anything to suggest any distance.

Here's the thing: Clinton has largely adopted the central liberal
critique. Warren, at least in theory, isn't opposed to all free-trade
deals‚ but she warns that the TPP could be a bad deal and that the
contents of the deal need to be public so that all Americans can read
them and make up their minds. That's where O'Malley is too. (In a video
in that email, O'Malley said, "I'm for trade, and I'm for good trade
deals. But I'm against bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.") Now Clinton has joined them, sort of, in saying that the
deal requires environmental and labor protections, while not quite
calling for total transparency.

Will that half-a-loaf approach satisfy constituencies like the AFL-CIO,
though? The group's president, Richard Trumka, blasted the deal at a
hearing Tuesday. "The livelihoods of workers are at stake here," he
said. "We need a different deal." Remaining vague has political upsides,
and it avoids the political circus that would come with an outright
break from the president. But it won't help her to convince progressives
she's one of them. Unlike same-sex marriage, for example, free trade
isn't usually a top-tier issue, but it's fairly easy for Clinton to
stand behind marriage equality in 2015, when the issue is largely
settled for many people. Taking a stance on the TPP is playing with live
ammunition.

Clinton still enjoys overwhelming support in the polls, and the fight
over the TPP seems unlikely to change that. But it highlights the
difficulties she faces as she attempts to win over her party's
progressive wing, without alienating other constituencies. It is proving
a difficult deal for Clinton to negotiate, as she attempts to fast-track
her bid for the Democratic nomination.

(9) Hillary in 2012: “we need ... Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP"

http://www.ibtimes.com/Hillary-Clinton-trade-deal-flip-flop-she-praised-trans-pacific-partnership-now-hedges-1887195

Hillary Clinton Trade Deal Flip-Flop? She Praised Trans-Pacific
Partnership, Now Hedges

By David Sirota @davidsirota d.sirota@ibtimes.com

and Matthew Cunningham-Cook @mattcunninghamc m.cunninghamcook@ibtimes.com

on April 17 2015 5:48 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Friday she is still deciding whether to
support a controversial 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Progressive groups opposed to the deal lauded that
announcement. There’s just one hitch: Clinton is already on record
touting the agreement.

In November 2012, the then-secretary of state declared that “we need to
keep upping our game both bilaterally and with partners across the
region through agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. ...
This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free,
transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of
law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will
cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong
protections for workers and the environment.”

Those comments contrast with a statement given to the New York Times on
Friday by Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill. With progressive
lawmakers and activist groups saying the deal will kill domestic jobs
and unduly empower corporations, Merrill suggested Clinton may not
support the TPP she previously championed.

“Hillary Clinton believes that any new trade measure has to pass two
tests,” Merrill said. “First, it should put us in a position to protect
American workers, raise wages and create more good jobs at home. Second,
it must also strengthen our national security. We should be willing to
walk away from any outcome that falls short of these tests. The goal is
greater prosperity and security for American families, not trade for
trade’s sake.”

Of the current debate over the TPP, Merrill said of Clinton: “She will
be watching closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency
manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health,
promote transparency and open new opportunities for our small businesses
to export overseas.”

Clinton has a history of abruptly changing positions on trade policy.
When running for president in 2008, she criticized the North American
Free Trade Agreement, despite reports that she supported it while her
husband was president. Clinton also pledged to oppose a proposed free
trade agreement with Colombia. Only two years later, as secretary of
state, she backed that deal while her family's foundation received money
from a Colombian oil firm and its founder.

While in the Senate, Clinton supported free trade agreements with Chile,
Singapore and Oman, all opposed by unions in the United States.

At the time, the AFL-CIO said, “The labor provisions of the Chile and
Singapore FTAs will not protect the core rights of workers, and
represent a big step backwards.” The union federation also opposed the
deal with Oman. Its president, John Sweeney, noted that “the State
Department has identified Oman as a destination country for men and
women who become victims of trafficking and forced labor.”

Clinton’s new comments on the TPP drew measured praise from Credo
Action, one of the progressive groups urging Congress to block the deal.
The group also pushed Clinton to oppose the reauthorization of so-called
fast track authority that grants presidents more power to cement trade
deals.

“We’re glad that Secretary Clinton is voicing concerns about the
Trans-Pacific Partnership,” said Murshed Zaheed, deputy political
director at Credo. “But to stop secret trade deals like the TPP,
Secretary Clinton must speak out forcefully against Fast Track Trade
Promotion Authority now while the debate is playing out in Congress.”

Clinton has not declared her position on the fast track proposal, which
is expected to be voted on in Congress in the coming days.

(7) TPP Proponents close to Clinton remain Optimistic about her Support

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/24/tpp-proponents-close-Hillary-Clinton-remain-optimistic-will-support-controversial-trade-agreements/

By Lee Fang

04/25/2015

Although Hillary Clinton went into great detail extolling the virtues of
President Obama’s proposed trade agreements while serving as secretary
of state, as a candidate for president Clinton has only offered vague
statements about her current position on the deals.

So how would a President Clinton decide on the Trans-Pacific Partnership
or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? On Wednesday,
White House spokesperson Eric Schultz said he had not “seen anything to
suggest any distance” between Clinton’s position and the Obama
administration on the deals. And trade consultants close to Clinton
remain optimistic about her support.

Asked about Clinton’s TPP position at a recent Bloomberg News
conference, Jim Bacchus, former Democratic congressman from Florida,
said he is “sure Hillary will get to all of these things and I think she
has a good sense to be for trade as part of her overall approach to
America’s economic future.”

Later at the same conference, Bob Hormats, who served as Clinton’s under
secretary of state, said he could not speak on behalf of Clinton, but
emphasized that his former boss “understands very clearly that there are
enormous trade opportunities in Asia and creating jobs.”

Hormats now serves as vice chairman of Kissinger Associates, a
consulting firm founded by Henry Kissinger that advises multinational
corporations on trade issues.

In Congress, Bacchus was a lead negotiator for NAFTA and later served as
chief judge of the World Trade Organization. Bacchus, who now works on
trade issues as the Global Practice Chair of the lobbying firm Greenberg
Traurig, said he was the first of Florida’s congressional delegation to
endorse Bill Clinton’s bid for the presidency, a supporter for Hillary
Clinton in 2008 and a strong supporter of her current presidential campaign.

In New Hampshire, Clinton recently said, “Any trade deal has to produce
jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security.”
She has also mentioned that she would like to see currency manipulation
as a key part of the deal.

But Clinton’s comments have not persuaded TPP critics. Indeed, vague
demands that any deal increase prosperity are more or less identical to
the rhetoric offered by strong TPP supporters. I spoke to Gov. Scott
Walker of Wisconsin last Saturday, who had this to say about the TPP and
TTIP (emphasis added):

  Well, I talked about TTIP the other day in Germany in Hanover at the
industrial fair there, and I think fair and open trade is a good thing
on either side of the continent for the United States, whethere it’s on
the Atlantic or the Pacific. Obvious the details need to be worked out
and there’s a lot of details including some specific to my state that
need to be worked out. But I think in the end, having a deal that’s fair
and offers fair and open trade would be a good thing for the United
States and for our trading partners.

Critics of the deal argue they have been burned by double-dealing by
politicians in the past.

As a candidate for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama harshly
criticized NAFTA on the campaign trail, claiming he would move to
renegotiate the pact as president. Yet, reporters later uncovered
evidence that Obama’s aides had met privately with Canadian officials to
tell them that Obama’s rhetoric was “more reflective of political
maneuvering than policy.”