Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refuses to raise ‘human rights’ issues in her talks with the oppressive Communist Chinese government.  Exercising what she calls ‘smart power’, she smiles and smiles, while dissidents are confined.

There is, however, no indication that her visit to China is having the least effect on any of its foreign policies.   

From Canada Free Press:

The Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a group comprising some of China’s most determined activists, said the authorities had told dissidents that they would not be allowed to move freely during Mrs Clinton’s visit.

They were either placed under increased surveillance or locked in their homes and barred from receiving visitors.

Some activists were reported to have been detained by police at guesthouses outside Beijing.

Many of those who have been targeted by the Chinese authorities signed the Charter 08 petition in December. The petition, which was issued on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, called for political reform, freedom of expression and democracy in China.

It was signed by 303 intellectuals and activists, including Yu Jie, a blacklisted writer who was visited by plainclothes police on Friday.

"They said I was to receive heightened monitoring throughout Clinton’s visit, but it would end once she left," said Mr Yu.

In the post below, we explained that the revolutionary left has claimed to act in the name of aims and ends that most people agree with. To do this was one of the tactics taught by SAUL ALINSKY, the left revolutionary whose disciples, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are now President and Secretary of State respectively. His instructions required them to work their way to power through the institutions, not to flaunt their radicalism but to ‘cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within’; to start with ‘community organizing’, the role of the organizer ‘or master manipulator’ being supremely important.

A full account of his ‘blueprint for revolution’, which ‘he and his disciples euphemistically refer to as "change”’, can be found here.

President Obama now has a very big community to organize, the entire United States of America. Its citizens can only benefit by being informed about their organizer’s master and his theories. 

 Christopher Hitchens, in an article on the manifest corruption of the Clintons, asks – and we too would like to know the answer:

Why is Sen. Clinton, the spouse of the great influence-peddler, being nominated in the first place? In exchange for giving the painful impression that our State Department will be an attractive destination for lobbyists and donors, what exactly are we getting? George Marshall? Dean Acheson? Even Madeleine Albright? No, we are getting a notoriously ambitious woman who made a fool of herself over Bosnia, at the time and during the recent campaign, and who otherwise has no command of foreign affairs except what she’s picked up second-hand from an impeached ex-president, a disbarred lawyer, and a renter of the Lincoln Bedroom. If the Senate waves this through, it will have reinforced its recent image as the rubber-stamp chamber of a bankrupt banana republic. Not an especially good start to the brave new era.

From Yahoo! news:

Secretary of State nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband’s foundation, an Associated Press review of her official correspondence found.

The overlap of names on former President Bill Clinton’s foundation donor list and business interests whose issues she championed raise new questions about potential ethics conflicts between her official actions and her husband’s fundraising. The AP obtained three of the senator’s government letters under the Freedom of Information Act…

The letters and donations involve pharmaceutical companies and telecommunications and energy interests. An aide to the senator said she made no secret of her involvement in many of the issues. Bill Clinton’s foundation declined to say when it received the donations or precisely how much was contributed.

"Throughout her tenure, Senator Clinton has proven that she acts solely based on what she believes is best for the state and people she represents, without consideration to any other factor," said spokesman Philippe Reines. "In these instances, she was doing what the people of New York elected her to do: Work hard on the issues of importance to them."

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Clinton Foundation both declined to answer questions about whether the senator tried to step away from issues directly affecting donors to her husband’s charity, and whether the foundation tried to screen out money from those on whose issues the senator had intervened.

"Generally, through a combination of rigorous adherence to Senate and FEC income and asset disclosure rules, coupled with the voluntary and unprecedented release of the names of every single Foundation supporter since its inception, the Clintons are by far the most financially transparent former first couple in American history," Reines said.

 Take this newly revealed information (from an article by Jacob Laksin all of which is worth reading here) 

 Among those who’ve made a total of $492 million in contributions to the Clinton Foundation are several troubling figures and governments – including supporters of the terrorist group Hezbollah, and the rulers of Saudi Arabia – whose identities the former president would have preferred to keep private.

with this from the Washington Times

The incoming Obama administration plans to create a new position to coordinate outreach to Iran and is considering a number of senior career diplomats, State Department officials and Iran specialists say… A State Department official said the idea of naming a senior Iranian outreach coordinator was broached in the first transition meetings with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s choice for secretary of state, and her transition team earlier this month. "The idea is that the position should build on the existing diplomatic framework," the official said. He asked not to be named because a nominee has not been announced. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton declined to comment for this article. Brooke Anderson, a spokeswoman for the transition, also would not comment. However, several Iran specialists said such a position was in the works.

and recall that Hizbollah – ‘the Party of God’ – is an Iranian creation and that Saudi Arabia is financing the Islamic conquest of the Western world by mean of ‘soft jihad’.

Then let’s ask rhetorically whether Hillary Clinton, against whom there have been plausible allegations of corruption, is really the best choice for the position of Secretary of State, to look after American interests in a world in which the greatest menace to America, to freedom, to the West in general comes from Islam, above all from Iran and Saudi Arabia.  

Will those who pay the piper no longer insist on calling the tune?  And is there no reason to suspect that the Clintons are a venal couple? 

 Tom Fitton at Front Page Magazine lists just some of the ‘reprehensible acts’ (we’d say vile, immoral acts) of Hillary Clinton over the last 15 years, and goes on to say:

With specific relevance to her new job as Secretary of State, there are also the serious conflicts of interest involving Bill Clinton, who has become something of an international sensation since leaving the White House, brokering international business deals and reaping huge fees for foreign speaking engagements.  Even the liberal CNN reported that Bill Clinton’s “complicated global business interests could present future conflicts of interest that result in unneeded headaches for the incoming commander-in-chief.”

The question is what promises will Bill Clinton make to his international business associates with respect to U.S. State Department Policy that his wife will have to keep? 

Hillary Clinton is ethically challenged. Her husband is ethically challenged. Has any other Secretary of State nominee been the subject of a grand jury criminal investigation? From their days in the White House to the present day, they have consistently abused their public office for personal and political gain. Hillary and Bill (not to mention their siblings) are scandals waiting to happen. She has neither the temperament nor ethics to be in such a sensitive office.

I believe Obama made a deal with the devil to avoid a floor flight at the convention. It may have served him politically, but the public shouldn’t suffer the consequences. If the Senate is serious about ethics in government, Hillary’s nomination would be rejected. In putting forward Hillary, Obama now owns the Clinton scandals. Her nomination is another weak personnel decision that will harm his presidency.

Will the Obama administration exercise due diligence and keep a watchful eye on the Clintons?  My guess is that if Obama is willing to hire Hillary given her dismal record, he’ll be willing to turn a blind eye to her likely corrupt behavior at the State Department. 

The vetting of Hillary seems to have been run by John Podesta (her husband’s former Chief of Staff) and Cheryl Mills (the ethically-challenged lawyer who served as Clinton White House lawyer).  Surprise, surprise.  She passed.

Will the names of those at home and abroad who gave the Clinton machine millions over the years be released? 

 Power Line aptly comments:

Eric Holder has come in for considerable criticism from conservatives for his role in the pardon scandal at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term. And properly so. But conservatives have had little to say about substantial allegations of corruption on the part of Hillary Clinton throughout the Clinton presidency.

All but our youngest readers will recall the particulars – Whitewater (which led to the appointment of an independent counsel), cattle futures, and the White House travel office scandal. In fact, Clinton was nearly indicted by Ken Starr’s office for giving testimony inconsistent with what the prosecutors had learned from other key witnesses and that the prosecutors were convinced was false.

Hillary Clinton was also involved with the pardon scandals that may come back to haunt Holder. Her brother Hugh Rodhamreceived $400,000 for working on two pardons, one of which was granted and the other of which resulted in commutation of the sentence. (Hillary claimed that she was unaware of the transaction, and Rodman apparently returned the money). Tony Rodham, another brother, also received financial consideration in connection with another of the Clinton pardons.

Bill Clinton also pardoned the FALN terrorists, pardons that have led to criticism of Holder because federal guidelines were circumvented. But the impetus for the pardons seems to have been Hillary’s race for the Senate, a number of prominent Hispanic politicians from New York having pushed on behalf of the terrorists. Absent such political calculation, it is almost impossible to understand why Bill Clinton would have pardoned this lot, the members of which apparently had not even asked to be pardoned (two of the terrorists refused their pardons). Hillary backed away from the pardons at the last minute, but her fingerprints are on them nonetheless.

Why are we hearing so much criticism of Holder and so little of Clinton? One explanation might be that Holder has been nominated to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and Hillary has not. But this is hardly a satisfactory basis for giving Clinton a pass; having a corrupt Secretary of State is no small matter.

It’s also possible that conservatives are holding their fire because they are reasonably happy with the Clinton nomination for substantive reasons, considering the alternatives. But Clinton is hardly the only mainstream liberal Democrat Obama could have selected, and it’s become clear that Obama has no interest in offering high profile positions like Secretary of State to someone from the far left wing of the party.

In any event, it’s not as if conservatives can block the nomination of Clinton (or, for that matter, of Holder in all likelihood). The point in both cases should be to raise legitimate questions, and the questions about Clinton seem at least as legitimate as those about Holder. 

Saul Alinsky was the Marxist whose doctrine has been learnt and followed by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Melanie Phillips has an excellent column about him and them in The Spectator.   

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.  

The whole thing is a must-read.   

 Women like Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Sarah Palin owe nothing to the lefty feminist movement.

Brains, competence, courage, character, and the right understanding of political issues equip them for  leadership, for directing whole nations, for steering the ship of state.   

The Wall Street Journal contrasts Sarah Palin with Hillary Clinton: 

Many younger women didn’t learn what it means to be an achieving woman from dormitory feminism. She didn’t abandon her hometown for the big city. She stayed home, had babies, helped her snowmobiling husband with his commercial fishing business and with him, tried to assemble a life.

She got into politics in Wasilla with zero connections – no famous father, no financing husband, no mentor, nothing. She got elected mayor. She got into politics to improve her community, not to launch herself on some career path she had figured out while in college.

Then came the interesting part. Under the standard model, you deploy your superb IQ to maneuver upward around the oppressors. Sarah Jock, learning her self-discipline in such weird pursuits as morning moose-hunts with her dad, ran at the system. Doing something few women and no males would do, she went after the men who run Alaska’s inbred politics, the machine. And cleaned their clocks. The people elected her governor.

I asked a number of women this week to account for Sarah Palin’s sudden appeal. Here are the common threads.

The angry woman-as-victim drives them nuts. They hate victimology. As one woman said, "The point is that across the ages women have been doing pretty much what Sarah Palin has been doing: bearing children, feeding families, bringing in an income, working to improve their communities."

Another woman said, "Her story reflects a more normal reality" of active women; "the harder you work, the luckier you get." Hillary Clinton still plays the victim card. Sarah Palin gives off no victim vibes. These women mentioned her grit, determination and character.

Read the whole thing here.