The chapter begins in Algeria, a key partner on many fronts and one,
like many, that could do with some improvements on the human rights side
of the page. Near the end of her tenure as secretary of state, she
traveled to Algeria with, as always, a checklist of items to be
addressed. One, not mentioned in this brief statement beside President
Bouteflika, was the consideration of a GE bid on a contract for power
plants while American industry competed with state-run operations that
played by rules different from ours or, in some cases, ignored the rules
entirely.
October 29, 2012 by
still4hill
The
published remarks were meager, but the meeting was three hours long.
Months afterwards, GE was awarded the contract Hillary was promoting.
Generators and turbines being built in the U.S. for this contract
support thousands of manufacturing jobs here. This, Hillary tells us,
is why energy and economics must be at the heart of diplomacy.
She tells us that on accepting her post in 2009 she was faced by two major questions:
- Could we build and sustain good jobs at home and speed up the economy by opening new markets and boosting exports?
- Were
we going to let China and other relatively closed markets perpetually
rewrite the rules to the disadvantage of our industries and workers
The
global financial crisis, she explains, brought trade, energy, and
economics within her purview as it had not been for prior secretaries of
state. She dubbed it "
economic statecraft" and urged diplomats to make it a priority.
Hillary
outlined her argument for fair trade agreements to be presented in Hong
Kong later that month at this event in July 2011.
July 12, 2011 by
still4hill
Our
foreign policy must be a force for economic renewal here at home. We
all know that families are struggling to get back on their feet after
the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. We all
know we face genuine economic competition in more sectors, from more
companies, from more places than ever before, whether it’s from Indian
pharmaceutical companies or Brazilian jet manufacturers. And all of us
here today recognize that a strong economy at home is vital to America’s
leadership in the world. Now there will be many prescriptions for what
is needed. My plea is that the prescriptions be evidence-based and not
ideological or even theological, as sometimes they seem to be....
In
Hong Kong later this month, I’ll be speaking about the rules and values
that support our global economic order. And this fall, I plan to give a
larger address on economics and America’s strategic choices. But today,
I want to tell you about how we are using the tools of our foreign
policy to create American jobs.
Then she went on the world stage with her case, as she recounts.
July 25, 2011 by
still4hill
The
United States approaches this question with great humility, and with
hard-won lessons learned from overcoming difficult economic challenges
throughout our history.
We must start with the most urgent task
before us: realigning our economies in the wake of the global financial
crisis. This means pursuing a more balanced strategy for global economic
growth – the kind that President Obama and President Hu Jintao have
embraced, and the G20 is promoting...
Last March in APEC meetings
in Washington, I laid out four attributes that I believe characterize
healthy economic competition. And these are very simple concepts, easy
to say, hard to do: open, free, transparent, and fair. Hong Kong is helping to give shape to these principles and is showing the world their value...
...
all who benefit from open, free, transparent, and fair competition have
a vital interest and a responsibility to follow the rules. Enough of
the world’s commerce takes place with developing nations, that leaving
them out of the rules-based system would render the system unworkable.
And that, ultimately, that would impoverish everyone.
Her
words were preempted and shadowed by the debt-ceiling debate in
Washington. Hillary, in Hong Kong was greeted with questions about U.S.
solvency and bravely assured that of course we pay our debts secretly
praying that we would. Her words in the book eloquently communicate her
level of frustration with the situation in which her government in D.C.
had placed her. "Period."
She
was putting on a confident face for all of us, but she should not have
had to. The meeting with Donald Tsang (above) was one thing. The
subsequent one with Dai Bingguo was another. Amid the customary smiles,
she ended that meeting telling him, "We could spend the next six hours
talking about China's domestic challenges."
For
Hillary, export promotion was a personal mission. Not just the big
companies, the small ones, too. Her persistence with Russia won a
Boeing contract. Not immediately. It took time, but it succeeded.
October 14, 2009 by
still4hill
Among
the very successful initiatives was "Open Skies" which reached 100
partners in early 2011, provides for direct flights, bolsters local
economies by hundreds of millions of dollars, and supports thousands of
jobs. (Go to Hillary for the wonky numbers.)
March 30, 2011 by
still4hill
Discussing
labor, transported jobs, and low standard working conditions, she also
addresses forced labor and human trafficking. She relates stories of
horrendous working conditions as told to her on this visit.
October 31, 2010 by
still4hill
Watching
Al Jazeera, I learned about this. Oddly, one woman says she makes her
little boys do this to finance her daughter's education. It is
dangerous - deadly. Some boys are badly disabled very young, and the
horses are so little and are beaten - hit on the face and abused. The
old men say this is tradition. Like many supposed traditions, much
about this is downright criminal. Hillary does not mention it. As far
as I know she might never have heard of it since the story came out
today. I thought I would add it here since the subject of forced child
labor is prominent here.
Forced labor, child and animal abuse in one
"traditional" package. If Hillary saw this, I am sure she is having a
fit! Today I saw these disturbing figures from the Department of Labor: 168
million children worldwide engaged in manual labor; 85 million in
hazardous labor.This happens, of course, because of limited earning options for
adults.
In
the remote eastern part of Indonesia, children as young as four or five
work as professional child jockeys. On the island of Sumba, famous for
its horses, racing festivals are recently held.
Earlier this month, a race in the east of the island lasted 11 days and attracted nearly 600 horses.
And all the jockeys were under 11 years old…
I meet one of them, 7-year-old Ade... who comes below my waist.
He’s putting on a balaclava so I can now just see his eyes and mouth. He’s also wearing a small helmet and no shoes.
He has a black eye from when he fell off a horse and he has been doing this job since he was four.
Ade doesn’t own a horse. So he is here hoping someone will hire him as their jockey.
Hillary
mentions that she added the U.S. to the annual trafficking in persons
report. This was not a popular move when she initiated it. It ruffled a
lot of feathers, but her argument for doing so is hard to refute. She
brought in Lou CdeBaca to address this.
June 16, 2009 by
still4hill
...
I’m especially pleased that our new Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, the new
director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons here
at the State Department was confirmed in time for him to be part of
this ceremony...
We are including more information about the
United States in our report. I believe when you shine a bright light you
need to shine it on everyone, and we will rank ourselves. We believe
we’re Tier 1, but we will rank ourselves next year in the report so that
we have done our duty as well.
You see some of the reactions to her addition of the U.S. in this post.when she released the report the next year.
June 14, 2010 by
still4hill
Today we release the 10th
annual Trafficking in Persons Report. I remember very well when we got
the wheels in motion for this process because we wanted to document the
persistent injustice of modern slavery. We wanted to tell the stories of
men, women, boys, and girls held in forced labor or sexual servitude
around the world. And for the first time ever, we are also reporting on
the United States of America because we believe it is important to keep
the spotlight on ourselves.
June 27, 2011 by
still4hill
June 19, 2012 by
still4hill
May 6, 2012 by
still4hill
QUESTION:
(Via interpreter.) My name is Alia Atta. I am the general secretary for
BGIF. We work with workers’ rights. And there we face all kinds of
obstructions with the police, goons, thugs, and false allegations in
court. And, in fact, one of our leaders, Aminul Islam, was very brutally
murdered. With such conditions, how can we work with the cause of
workers’ rights? Thanks.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank
you. (Applause.) And – well, first let me say that I spoke out strongly
to point that there needed to be an independent investigation into the
murder of Mr. Islam, because certainly his family and his colleagues
deserve answers about what happened to him. So on that particular case,
this is a real test for the government and for the society to make sure
you don’t say that anyone can have impunity. That’s a key issue for the
rule of law.
Secondly, on your larger question, the history of labor rights and labor unions in any developing society is always difficult. There are strong forces that oppose workers being organized. We have this in my own country. You go back to the 19th and the early 20th
century when labor unions were just getting started, there were goons,
there were thugs, there were killings, there were riots, there were
terrible conditions. We passed laws at the beginning of the 20th
century against child labor, against too many hours for people to work,
but that took time. It took time to develop a sense of political will
to address those issues. So you are beginning that, and it’s a very
important struggle. I think in today’s world, everything is accelerated
because everything is known. There are no secret issues that can’t be
exposed. There are exposes about factories from China to Latin America.
So you are doing very important work. Do not be discouraged or
intimidated. But you deserve to have the support of your government and
your society.
The third point I would make is that we
have worked from Colombia to Cambodia with the owners of factories and
other enterprises to help them understand how they can continue to make a
very good profit while treating their workers right. And in fact,
we have spent a lot of time trying to help owners of businesses
understand how to do that. And it’s worked. And we have people who are
quite experts in that.
For many years, Colombia, the country in
South America that has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world
right now, had hundreds of labor organizers killed. And they were
killed by economic forces and political forces that didn’t want to share
power, didn’t want to share profits, who didn’t see that that was part
of the obligation of democracy and society. So we have seen this happen
all over the world, and we stand ready to work with factory owners and
labor organizers to have a better dialogue, to understand what can work,
and then to help you implement it.
So I thank you for raising it because it’s
a part of becoming a middle class country. Workers deserve to have
their labor respected and fairly paid for. Factory owners deserve to
have what they pay for, which is an honest day’s work for the wages that
they pay. So there is a way to accommodate those interests, and we’ve
seen it, and we can continue to work with you to try to achieve it.
On
the topic of energy, Hillary mentions what she calls "the resource
curse" - her term for resources engendering corruption and uses Nigeria
as an example of a country where she repeatedly warned that corruption
needed to be tackled and the profits from resources fairly distributed.
August 12, 2009 by
still4hill
August 12, 2009 by
still4hill
August 9, 2012 by
still4hill
One
energy issue Hillary addressed through the Clinton Foundation was that
of toxic fuels for cooking. She provides statistics revealing the
global health threat posed by cooking in unventilated areas using toxic
fuels, a problem that led her to a solution.
September 21, 2010 by
still4hill
Secretary Clinton’s Remarks on Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves at the Clinton Global Initiative
September 21, 2010 by
still4hill
Before
we even get to the chapter on Haiti, I can attest to one other problem
created by the use of charcoal there. Deforestation. The mountains are
denuded and whenever there are big tropical storms and hurricanes, the
floods and torrents are deadly. It is not a direct threat from the
toxic fuels (that exists as well of course), but represents danger to
life and limb.
May 8, 2011 by
still4hill
May 11, 2011 by
still4hill
June 16, 2011 by
still4hill
September 30, 2013 by
still4hill
Hillary
ends this chapter with an eloquent argument for the growth of a global
middle class that will ensure our own growth, more common ground with
our international neighbors, and, a a result, a more secure America in
the future.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
####
Hillary Clinton
