Secretary of State

7.0 Earthquake crumbles Haiti’s Port-au-Prince

Tuesday, Jan 12, 2010 at around 5pm, Haiti got it’s first taste of catastrophic disaster for this year. An earthquake of devastating proportions. Estimated death toll is to exceed 100,000. And they still haven’t recouped from the 4 Hurricannes in 2008.

Already the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere, this devastating earthquake will test their community spirit and will present challenges that no one in the world can imagine – on top of the challenges they already have daily to survive and live a decent life.

The global world’s response has been tremendous; the world rushing to save them. The Dominican Republic, it’s neighbor, was the first to send help, with every country including Iceland, and even businesses following thereafter and continually -sending enormous amounts of money or items of necessities.

I am very proud to inform that our our own Los Angeles Fire Department is one of the first Search and Rescue teams heading there with 72 men and dogs, also bringing searching equipment and medical supplies. The French have deployed their own Search and Rescue team, as well as other countries to follow suit.

Examples of donations include: The NY Yankees donating $500,000 to help, and of course the Pitt-Jolie Foundation donating $1M to Doctors Without Borders to assist with getting medical help to the Haitians.

Anderson Cooper – 360 is the first American reporter (CNN) on the ground in Haiti providing a minute by minute update account of what is going on.

With that said, many have already tweeted that he should stop reporting and just start helping. I tend to agree with the consensus on this.

He walks by people screaming for help burried in rubble, puts the microphone up to them so you can hear their screams, but doesn’t nothing to help them.

To me, that is atrocish reporting. There is a time and a day for reporting and there is a bigger time when lives are at stake you stop thinking selfishly about your ratings and your possible next new book and you just help the people you are reporting on! What is wrong with this man? Is his ego that big? We now see how much this man really cares.   I now will no longer give his blog or him the time of day.

US Congressional members are starting to form a bipartisan delegation that will be heading to Haiti quite shortly. As of yet, President Obama won’t be going, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (in Hawaii currently) has cancelled her trip to Australia, etc. and is returning to D.C. to handle this better.

But even with all the millions being donated,  they still need so much more of your help.   Please take $1 out of your pocket or more and donate throughhttp://www.clintonfoundation.org/haitirelief

to be a part of the global mass response to help this desparate country and their people who have a very tough and long battle ahead of them.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the Haitian’s and to our 45,000 American citizens that are in Haiti currently, especially those on a  UN mission.

Best Kept Secret for 13 Years

This new announcement the Osama bin Laden tried to assassinate former President Bill Clinton when he was at the APEC meeting in the Phillippines in 1996 is just oh so appropriate…as this week, the troop increasement officially begins with the first 1,000 US Marines heading to Afghanistan with a less than favorable support from the American public.

Sounds like Obama is getting a bit more heat than anticipated and they need to pull out all the tricks they can now to gain support of this insurgency in Afghanistan. No better than to show this ace card!

The event: The terrorists were actually minutes away from success as Clinton’s motorcade was set to go over a bridge in Manila that had explosives on it, when Secret Service got a quick message from intelligence sources saying ‘bridge’ and ‘wedding’ — wedding is the terrorist code word for assassination.  They quickly rerouted. American intelligence sources later found explosive devices under that bridge. It wasn’t Osama bin Laden himself of course, it was one of his affiliates in Al Qaeda acting on his behalf.

Now, Bill Clinton at the time of his presidency chose to keep this assassination attempt quiet. I am sure he had his reasons.

Key Secret Service and Intelligence officials in many agencies knew and seemed to be good to keep this quiet for 13 years.

All of a sudden, it’s worthy to be known.

So what do you think changed everyone’s mind, all of a sudden?

Do you think it’s just because Professor Gromley’s book is set to release? He’s the one who writes about this.

I doubt it.

My theory – Obama needed this edge to remind people of how important it is to spend our taxpayer money to get good ole bin Laden and to stop his globally conglomerative organization.

Obama’s justifications for this insurgency  - or what he calls reasoning – are weak, if at best, and he and his Administration believe this piece of information might relate to more people.

Big chance to take – hoping people will be sucked into this one because they liked Clinton – and now all of a sudden will be okay with our taxpayer dollars funding this almost 9 year ridiculous war.

Gotta hand it to our crafty govy folks – this one’s a goody to pull out of the bag!

For one second, they almost got me even (as I liked Clinton).

An extra umph to this strategy –  this now helps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton justify her support of Obama’s plan even more so.

Afterall, this is her husband, our former US President for 8 years, who outside his sex scandal, did a phenomenal job, and a man who is continuing to make significant contributions globally through his non profit, The Bill Clinton Foundation.

I am sure Hillary knew of this assassination attempt right after it happened, but still, this ‘news flash’ gives her umph in her position today even more so, as to why she stands behinds Obama’s decision.

Keep in mind, Obama’s polling rates dropped a lot since the beginning of December on multiple issues, the war being one.

Indeed, his team needed to think of something quite clever to have these numbers move back up before 2010 rolled in.

Outside those 3 working weeks in December, there wasn’t much time, as the President is on vacation in Hawaii for the holidays, so he wouldn’t be doing much ‘heroic’ presidencing between Christmas and the New Year.

If this works, one would say it’s perfect timing —-and everyone knows timing is everything in politics and war.

Savvy authors and publishers won’t release a book until a certain time when they know a subject matter will be hotter than any other time of the year to increase a higher chance of sales quicker in a shorter amount of time.

The government invented this strategy years ago (as a way to manipulate the American citizens).

Our elected officials and those in our government agencies not only invented this strategy, but over the years, they have perfected it. They are quite slick  - always picking the ‘appropriate times’ to release classified information to the American citizens and/or global world.

Believe me, they don’t just wake up one day and say, “hey, how about we release xx info today to give the media something to write about in case it’s slow for them”.

This ace…this best kept secret for 13 years…well, there is a heck of a lot of political, military and presidential strategy behind this one – and I am sure there is more about this strategy than just this war and Obama’s ratings. More will be revealed in 2010, no doubt.

I surmise numerous interviews with Bill Clinton will be first. Bill obviously knew once this book was released and this precious secret was revealed, that interviews would be requested.

Perhaps there is a bigger Democratic reason why Bill Clinton needs to be in the spotlight more so now than he already is.

Poor Hillary, overshadowed by her husband, yet again.

I am very glad Bill Clinton wasn’t assassinated, but this doesn’t change my opinion at all. No matter what way you color it or state it, I don’t support this AfPak war. So this didn’t work on me. How about you?

Attempted Terrorist Attack on Northwest on Christmas Day

Northwest Airline is really getting slammed this latter part of 2009.

Just last month, you had 2 pilots that overflew their landing destination by hundreds of miles and an hour outside of their landing time because they were on their laptops, even though they had started their descent to land. Schedules on the laptop was more important than the huge plane they were supposed to land.

Today, on Christmas Day 2009, a Nigerian with ties to Al Qaeda ignited an explosive device that consisted of a powdery substance that was in a plastic bag strapped to his body. The flight originated from Amsterdam Netherlands, and was headed to Detroit, Michigan. He did this just about 20 minutes before it landed.

Thursday, he left Lagos, Nigeria on a KLM flight to Amsterdam. Friday, 12/25/09 he left Amsterdam on Flight 253. He previously acquired the explosive device in Yemen and it is now in Quantico, VA  FBI labs for further testing.

This 23 year old Nigerian, has not been 100 % identified yet. Some media news stations say his name is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Rep. Pete King, a ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says it is Abdul Mudallad. Apparantly, Umar’s name is in the FBI counterterroism files and might have been a name listed as a person not allowed entry into the U.S.

Presuming FBI’s identification is a bit more spot on than a legislators, and it is Umar,  stating that he “might have been” sounds like a stall tactic for the FBI and TSA to figure a great explaination of how this man got passed security not only with his name, but with the substances he had.

There were 278 passengers on board and one of them and a flight attendant jumped the Nigerian to stop him and put the flames out on his body. The plane did an emergency landing at 11:31 am EST.

Thankfully, no one was hurt or killed, outside of the terrorist. I don’t think Americans are prepared to handle another airline terrorist tragedy, let alone handle any more bad news at this point, and on Christmas Day to boot.

This will be interesting to follow to find out how this man got through the screening and how his substance was not picked up either. Obviously the bigger question being – just how good is security in airports globally?

On the topic of security, currently, the U.S. threat level is already ‘high’ or orange. So why aren’t they raising it to even a higher level?

U.S. Homeland Security defines high or orange as “high risk of terrorist attack’. That means it could happen more today than 8 years ago (9/11 attacks) basically. They define ’severe’ or red as “severe risks of terrorist attacks”

Well I don’t know about you, but a man who is tied to Al Qaeda that was able to ignite the device in the plane, caused flames, etc (it just didn’t completely work) with the intent to blow up the plane justifies the word ’severe’  a whole bunch more to me than it ‘it’s possible’.

Who makes these judgement calls? Too much eggnog Homeland Security Napolitano? If she doesn’t call it, Secretary of State Clinton should. Unbelievable!

Keep in mind, it was December 21, 1989 when a Libyan terrorist bomb blew up a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland and everyone on board and many on the ground were killed.

So had this attack today been successful, we would be looking at a very close repeat of a transnational flight being bombed around/on Christmas, with yet another origin/source from Africa,  20 years later. History repeats itself.

If this does not raise the threat level, then what does? An actual successful terrorist attack?

The purpose of threat levels is to make us extra aware. It states reality. Reality happened to day. It shouldn’t take the act of a successful attack to make this level rise!  By then it’s pointless, because the world will already be too scared to get on a plane for some time, yet again.

I think ’severe’ or red is more appropriate… but wait, that probably means Obama’s ratings will go down —well then, no more needs to be said.

Not a very Merry Christmas for the CEO of Delta. Something about Northwest flights and landing doesn’t seem to be going quite smooth these days. Wonder if he is second guessing this Northwest merger.

I know I won’t be boarding one of their flights for a while.

I think many will be counting their blessings this Christmas Day 2009.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone a festive holiday season and a magnificent New Year!

May we all be champions for transparency back to our global governments, agencies and people who work in them  - much louder, firmer and demand more or better in 2010!

Thank you for supporting TOWP, a venue to expand minds globally.

Be safe, happy holidays and Cheers to 2010!

Abbey

Bill Clinton vs. Hillary Clinton – who should lead on North Korea?

It’s not really a battle per se.

They both have the same clear goals and want what is best for the USA and for the rest of the world in terms of security, and in terms of preventing a nuclear catastrophe.

So my question is:

Should we change the laws/role of this position – US Secretary of State?

We made them – so I am presuming we can change them.

Here is why I state this.

Except for Bill Clinton’s first term (Christopher), the past 2 Secretary of States and the current Secretary of State are females – Albright, Rice, and now Clinton.

North Korea doesn’t respect females. So, you are already starting off with a serious obstacle with N. Korea when you have a female dictating terms to them and attempting to establish good relations.

Indeed, N. Korea’s leader has made it clear he doesn’t respect our current Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton – as he has already ridiculed her publically basically stating she holds no respect in their eyes, no authority.

It’s certainly not that Hillary is weak or unqualified to handle N. Korea – that would be Rice. Hillary is one tough lady; this is just their take on her.

So, unfortunately, Hillary Clinton is not going to be the best one to send in for negotiations or to get anything truly accomplished.

What this basically means is the US Secretary of State holds no authority or power when it comes to the subject of nuclear and N. Korea.

I can’t speak for everyone in the world, but to me, as an American, that is unsettling.

With that said, our former President, Bill Clinton does hold the current leader’s respect. And not just the respect of the head of the country, the respect of the regime’s chief negotiator of nuclear discussions.

This is not my opinion. This is fact. When Hillary’s 2nd attempt was made to release the reporters with her request for amnesty, N. Korea responded with: we will give pardon, but only if Bill comes.

That speaks volumes.

This was all conveniently confirmed just this past week, as we witnessed Bill Clinton’s prowess and authority to come before one of the toughest, unforgiving, non-negotiable country leaders, and walk out with the 2 reporters he came for.

US Secreatary of State, Hillary Clinton tried twice. Nothing changed.

If she can’t even get 2 girls released, how is she going to get N. Korea to wipe out their enitre ill- intended nuclear program?

Again, this is not about her ability. It’s more, they didn’t even say “get on a plane Hillary and we will negotiate something.”  Nope – they sent for her husband. This is how they think – men rule.

Even when he was President, Bill Clinton had better relations with N. Korea than either of the Bush’s. He has just been better with N. Korea overall.

Perhaps that is because in his first term, he had a male Secretary of State and the beginning relations with N. Korea were established stronger, and then N. Korea just maintained them out of courtesy to President Clinton even though he had a female as Secretary of State  in his last term.

Future presidents should take note of this. It’s not about gender inequality in America; it’s not that a female can’t do this job. It’s about a country that has nuclear warheads pointed in many directions worldwide. That needs to be more a deciding factor when picking US Cabinet Members in the future.

So what I am proposing about changing the laws/role of the US Secretary of State is the following:

With respect to our Nations safety and actually, the world’s safety, for former President Bill Clinton to have all Secretary of State ruling authorities & power  - including his inked signature on any Agreements to be just as valid as if Hillary were signing herself – when it comes to North Korea and anything related to the topic of nuclear. Hillary can hold her own for other discussions. But for nuclear, we just can’t risk it.

It would be one thing if N. Korea had basically been quiet on this subject. But we have seen over the past months, this is just the opposite.

My idea isn’t really too far fetched. After all, he’s married to the US Secretary of State, and he was our US President for 8 years. Who better than Bill to share the role of Secretary of State?

I don’t think any Americans, or anyone else in the world, would really have a problem with this, if the alternative was a nuclear missle headed to our towns.

Let’s think about this: there was a reason they had Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gwan, the regime’s chief nuclear negotiator involved in Clinton’s very short trip.

So let’s be smart and let’s take advantage of all ‘this’ – Bill Clinton’s highly respected and good repoire with the current N.Korea leader- before ruling is taken over by his son. Let’s not delay this anymore!

When Congress returns from recess, have them draw up an immediate addendum to the rules and role of the Secretary of State to expand to:

“any and all former high level government officials,  if it regards a topic that is extremely serious and potentially catastrophic to the safety of America or the world”.

Have both the House and Senate do a quick vote on it to set it in place, have Obama’s signature on it, and put it ‘effective immediately’.

This document can be modified or reworded as a work in progress as the week goes on, but the idea is to allow Bill Clinton to immediately step into the talks, plans and possible rework of how we approach N. Korea for nuclear discussions.

I create urgency here for a reason. The key to this is the current relationship and repoire Bill Clinton has with Kim Jong, II.

Although not showing any signs of this, Jong could die soon. We know that as he preps his son for his takeover. It also might not be the same with the V.F.M. Kim Gwan if Jong dies. So we need to act on this now.

These nuclear negotiations will take a long time to make any headway; this obviously won’t be as easy for Bill as it was for the release of Gore’s reporters. You need to also factor in that things take time for signatures to actually get on formal agreements. More crucially, the time it takes for N. Korea to actually start honoring what they agree to & making some significant headway to see measurable results, with the US and other world leaders stepping in for oversight over the years.

All this is most likely at least a year or two out, as we basically have 4 months left in 09.  If this is successful, I predict  2012 is when some kind of harmony (far reaching word, I know ) will occur between N. Korea and the rest of the world in terms of nuclear and safety.

Who knows if N. Korea will ever be viewed as a friendly country or will ever be the way America ideally wants it to be in terms of safety and other topics, but we will never know unless we give our former President, Bill Clinton that absolute full authority and power of the position his wife holds, to give it his best shot.

I believe no one will be better at doing this, not even Obama and his team alone. Bill will be crucial for results, and results that will be lasting past Jong’s death.  Bill will be the one.

So, you see – the sooner we enact this new expansion of the role of the US Secretary of State – the better.

If this all strikes you as a ‘no way is this possible’ – please think in terms of this:

Just as much as The Supreme Court considers The Constitutional Rules in determining their decisions, they also understand these were written by our founding father’s hundreds of years ago and all cases also need to be considered in light of today’s world – just as equally.

So, I believe our highest US Cabinet roles also need to be flexible to adjust to the grave realities of today’s current situations (threats especially) and respond to them appropriately the same way the Supreme Court rules today.

As Obama is rebuilding the foundation of America, perhaps we should rebuild the infrastructure of the US Cabinet Member’s roles – redefining or expanding on them over the 21^st Century for the good of our great nation and our important role in the world.

Now, if my idea is not accepted, then there is one more option:

Just ask Jong II & Gwan who they want to talk to over the years to discuss this issue – Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton.