Following close on the heels of an extensive sweep through south Asia with a quick touch down in D.C. to host a star-studded gala dinner for the Kennedy Center Honorees, Mme. Secretary hit the tarmac for a week of country-hopping in Europe. Featured on these pages were some landmark speeches including her very well-received remarks on LGBT rights and her Internet Freedom address yesterday at The Hague.
Behind the curtain, however, other stories were developing that did not gain space here. On Monday I embedded this video clip in the transcript of a presser in Bonn. Mme. Secretary made remarks about the Russian Duma elections held the day before. At least one person on earth apparently disagrees with most of the media influence polls. None other than Vladimir Putin, "The Russian Situation," prone to removing his shirt no matter the weather, self-detonated at Mme. Secretary's remarks, blaming her for unrest in the Russian streets over claims of election fraud. Clearly he believes she is the most powerful person in the world today. Here are the remarks that set him off. You be the judge. Did she foment civil unrest in Russia?
Also unheralded here, due to the frenzy of posting from Europe, was the launch of the Virtual U.S. Embassy Tehran.
The Embassy was promptly blocked by the Iranian government, of course. Questions arose in yesterday's press briefing regarding accessibility of the Virtual Embassy by Iranians. Here is a snip.Virtual Embassy Tehran
Press Statement
Victoria Nuland
Department Spokesperson, Office of the SpokespersonWashington, DCDecember 6, 2011
I am delighted to announce the online opening of the Virtual U.S. Embassy Tehran as a new and exciting engagement opportunity between the peoples of Iran and the United States.
Because the United States and Iran do not have diplomatic relations, we have been deprived of opportunities for dialogue with the citizens of Iran. But, using new technologies like this website and our linked social networking sites, we hope to bridge that gap and promote greater understanding.
As the Secretary noted in her welcome video posted to the site, “This is a platform for us to communicate with each other—openly and without fear—about the United States, about our policies, our culture, and the American people.” We believe that outreach efforts like these are essential to bringing information and alternative viewpoints to the Iranian people, especially as the Iranian regime continues its efforts to control the flow of information to and from the Iranian people. This Virtual Embassy is just the first of many ways in which we will seek to challenge the Iranian regime’s efforts to place an electronic curtain of surveillance, satellite jamming and online filtering around its people, and I look forward to enhancing our communication efforts directly to the Iranian people.
The Virtual Embassy site can be viewed in English at: iran.usembassy.gov and tehran.usembassy.gov; and in Persian at persian.iran.usembassy.gov.
Last night, I had every intention of mounting a slideshow of Mme. Secretary's day that began in Belgium and ended in the Netherlands. That plan was temporarily scrubbed when I heard Rachel Maddow once again devote some prime time to our girl's spectacular week in Europe. I am softening on Rachel. Last week I tweeted her and suggested she bring Karen Finney on her show, and she did! (I am not suggesting that I single-handedly managed this, but I was happy to see her open to the idea. I hope we see Karen on prime time more often.) I was concerned, however, that Rachel seemed to think that Tuesday's Human Rights Speech marked the first ever defense of gay rights by HRC when that is far from true. So the slideshow was scrapped in favor of last night's LGBT post. Without further ado then, here is Mme. Secretary in Brussels and The Hague, yesterday, totally color-coordinated with the Internet Freedom setting.Mark C. TonerDeputy Spokesperson
Daily Press BriefingWashington, DCDecember 8, 2011QUESTION: Speaking of, have analysts here been able to detect whether people have been able to access the virtual embassy through VPNs?
MR. TONER: Well, it’s – as we talked about, in the first 24 hours, we did receive more than 350,000 page views of our site in Persian. And many of those originated from countries where the Persian-speaking community is negligible. So again, some of these – the concept of the VPN is it sometimes routes individuals through third countries in order to mask their identity or their origin.
So we kind of look at that, the number of page views on the Persian site, as some approximate indication of how many Iranians might be looking at the page. But we continue to believe that people are still able to access the site via VPN, via these virtual – I’ve lost what VPN stands
for –
QUESTION: Private network.
MR. TONER: Private network. Thank you.
QUESTION: Don’t you find it plausible that maybe people are just curious and clicking on your site from different countries? I mean --
MR. TONER: Absolutely. But I’m just saying that the Persian site itself would be an indication.
QUESTION: I mean I clicked on it and I don’t speak Persian.
MR. TONER: Page views, my friend. It’s a matter of hits versus (inaudible).
QUESTION: Yeah. But I mean, you’re making a connection – you’re --
QUESTION: You attracted one then. (Laughter.)
MR. TONER: Three hundred and forty nine. Nine hundred and ninety nine --
QUESTION: I’m just curious why – how you make that connection. I mean I’m assuming that there would be enough curious people who could just click on a --
MR. TONER: You’re right, Kirit. It’s an inexact indicator and I wasn’t trying to put it out there as some kind of absolute, spot on figure. I just said that some of these – we see some of these routed through third countries that have negligible Persian speaking communities. It could well be English speakers who were just enthused about it. But also it could be a sign that people are, indeed, taking advantage of these VPNs.
QUESTION: But you have no way of knowing for sure, right? That’s --
MR. TONER: No.
QUESTION: Is there an update on how many page views there have been since the block came into force?
MR. TONER: Good question. I don’t know that I have that of the – I don’t have an update on the numbers that I gave you yesterday. No.
Just a note about the photos where Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal
is standing at the entrance to the Foreign Ministry waiting for Mme.
Secretary while she is sitting in her car on the phone. According to
the caption on the picture, she was speaking with an unidentified U.S. Senator. We do not know the subject of the conversation or its
urgency. She finally emerges from the car, is greeted by the FM, and hands off her phone to an aide.
Thank you, Mme. Secretary for your tireless service this week. It was a schedule that would have exhausted even the Energizer Bunny. We hope you are getting some rest.
