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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Films, Arts & Education
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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NEWS REPORT:The Clintons, Triangulating with ChinaBashing “Chinese money” in public, accepting it in privateAny role played by Bill Clinton in dealings between a Chinese state-owned company and a U.S. company should be vetted during a presidential campaign.
Presidential campaigner Sen. Hillary Clinton often vocalizes about China on the stump for public consumption. Brought to you on YouTube, her complaints include unsafe Chinese imports—“Let’s be tougher on China going forward!” (Possibly carried away, she brings forth rhetorical offspring we never knew she had—referring to “my children having toys from China that are going to make them sick.”) Clinton has also spoken about human rights abuses in China. Possibly her single strongest statement as first lady came in 1995 when, speaking in China, she proclaimed that “women’s rights are human rights.” But notwithstanding forceful speech about needing “to undercut the power the Chinese have over us,” the Clinton campaign has yet to clarify the nature and extent of the Clintons’ own financial ties with China. These ties go well beyond the longtime support of troubled fundraiser and alleged Ponzi schemer Norman Hsu, who raised over $800,000 to the Clinton campaign (which later pledged to return the contributions). They include two Chinese government-owned media entities, a California billionaire, and a former Clinton administration official with international connections. The first of these more businesslike Clinton-China connections is California billionaire and ‘Hillraiser’ Ron Burkle, a high-end supporter who has raised over $100,000 for Hillary Clinton and who is reportedly paying $20 million to Bill Clinton as a settlement for Mr. Clinton’s services and ownership stake in Burkle’s private investment firm, The Yucaipa Companies. In September 2007, Yucaipa agreed to purchase a major stake in Xinhua Finance Media, part of the Chinese government-owned media conglomerate Xinha. Under the deal, Chicago banker David Olson, a Yucaipa partner and Clinton supporter, became part of the board of Xinhua Finance Media as a director. The benefits to Xinhua from the deal are apparent. The U.S.-listed securities of the overseas company rose to their highest level in more than three months after the announcement of the Yucaipa stake. The deal might not be a one-way street. A year before Burkle announced the purchase in Xinhua Finance Media, China’s Xinhua News Agency had instituted a demand that financial news services including Bloomberg and Reuters in China sell information through Xinhua. This demand, the kind usually represented as communistic, anti-Western, or anti-free press, could dovetail neatly with some capitalist-running-dog interests. Reporters for Xinhua, sensitive to a potential appearance of impropriety, have tried to balance coverage of the Clinton and Obama campaigns. The Clinton campaign has not responded to emailed questions and request for comment. In March 2008, the Chicago Tribune reported another connection linking Bill Clinton with the Chinese news industry. Clinton was compensated for his support for an Internet company called Accoona, whose main partner is China Daily Information Co., a subsidiary of Chinese government-run China Daily, the country’s largest English-language newspaper. Accoona, privately held, paid the former president with options for 200,000 shares of stock for the William J. Clinton Foundation. The Foundation sold the shares in 2006 for $700,000. As the Tribune reported,
China Daily put the Accoona search engine on the front page of its Web version. A third and more personal China-Clinton connection is Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor and recently a foreign policy advisor to the Clinton campaign. Samuel R. ‘Sandy’ Berger, as readers may recall, was the former Clinton national security chief who removed classified documents from a National Archives reading room in October 2003, shortly before Berger was to testify to the Independent 9/11 Commission. Berger reportedly took away one copy of five classified copies of a Millennial Plots report, produced for former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke, in September 2003, and then took away the four remaining copies of the report the next month, stowing them first in his clothing and then at a nearby construction site. Like Ron Burkle, Sandy Berger is listed as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation established by former president Clinton which has funded his presidential library. Berger’s recent role as foreign policy advisor in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign extends his previous roles as a fixture in foreign policy for both Clintons. Already developing global connections, Berger was then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton’s foreign policy advisor during his presidential campaign, became Assistant Transition Director for National Security during the 1992 Clinton-Gore transition, moved into the Clinton administration as Deputy National Security Advisor and then became NSA. Even back during the Clinton administration, Berger apparently did not want China to get in trouble with his boss the then-president. He delayed for more than a year to inform Bill Clinton that China had acquired designs of U.S. nuclear warheads. Extending his longtime global connections, Berger is now co-Chairman and co-founder of Stonebridge International, a DC-based advisory firm which has made substantial contributions to the Clinton campaign and which offers its services to help companies expand in foreign markets including China (and Russia, India and Brazil). Berger is also on the board of a New York-based international hedge fund, DB Zwim Global Advisory, headed by substantial Clinton donor Daniel B. Zwim, with subsidiaries and interests around the world including a large Singapore concrete company. Berger’s Stonebridge bio says, “He is involved across nearly all the firm’s engagements and regions, with a particularly strong focus on Asia, Russia and Central Asia and the Middle East.” Globalizing and big donors go together, of course. But any role played by Bill Clinton in dealings between a Chinese state-owned company and a U.S. company should be vetted during a presidential campaign. Margie Burns [link to her blog at margieburns.com] is a freelance journalist in the DC area. She can be reached at margie.burns@verizon.net.
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Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on April 19, 2008. |
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