In a time of momentous change in the world, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (left) sets out on her most heartfelt mission: to put women and girls at the forefront of the new world order. – Newsweek
Dominant Social Theme: She's just the best.
Free-Market Analysis: Tina Brown, the much feted editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Talk magazine and The Daily Beast has finally issued the first all-new edition of Newsweek. The revamped magazine – which was bleeding millions before Brown was brought in to salvage it – looks a lot like the old Newsweek from what we can tell, and the cover story is no exception. It is beyond adulatory, providing Hillary with a message and focus that we're not sure she ever had in real-life.
The article is deeply dishonest on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin. The Hillary Doctrine starts off with a shocking cut line (see above). Apparently after decades of denying that anything like "a new world order" existed, the American media establishment (as represented by Tina Brown) has decided to speak more openly. There is a new world order and Hillary is at the forefront of its realization. Having placed Hillary in her rightful position, the article goes on to establish her bone fides:
But Clinton was far from a passive observer. She was in energetic discussion on the Egyptian news site Masrawy.com, where her presence excited a stream of questions – more than 6,500 in three days – from young people across Egypt. "We hope," she said, "that as Egypt looks at its own future, it takes advantage of all of the people's talents" – Clinton shorthand for including women. She had an immediate answer when a number of questioners suggested that her persistent references to women's rights constituted American meddling in Egyptian affairs: "If a country doesn't recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible."
The Web chat was only one of dozens of personal exchanges Clinton has committed to during the three months since Tunisia's unrest set off a political explosion whose end is not yet in sight. At every step, she has worked to connect the Middle East's hunger for a new way forward with her categorical imperative: the empowerment of women. Her campaign has begun to resonate in unlikely places. In the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, where women cannot travel without male permission or drive a car, a grandson of the Kingdom's founding monarch (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud) last month denounced the way women are "economically and socially marginalized" in Arab countries.
The problems in the Middle East are far greater than women's oppression in our view. More than that, the US has been a prime enabler of the dictators and oppression in the Middle East. The difficulty is the financial environment, the central banking system that creates endless booms and busts and starves entrepreneurs of capital. It seems a little precious in our view to worry about women's rights when the average Egyptian is living on a dollar a day.
This doesn't stop Tina though. Hillary's campaign to help oppressed Muslim women grinds on. It is part of a larger effort as enunciated by the US State Department's mission statement: "Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system."
One could ask, reasonably, when did the State Dept's objectives changed from pursuing cordial relationships with the countries of the world to an activist approach that "advances freedom" via the creation of "well-governed states." None of this is theoretical either. There is factual documentation that Western elites have set these color revolutions in motion. The raised-fist logos that appeared during the Eastern Europe color revolutions have reappeared in Tunisia and Egypt; a much-discussed UK Telegraph article that reported on US intel involvement in training Egyptian "youth" on various protest tactics prior to Egypt's recent upheavals. The training apparently went on for at least two years.
We've reported on AYM, The Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM), which began with a December 2008 summit in New York City to, as Wikipedia puts it, "to identify, convene, and engage 21st century movements online for the first time in history. The United States Department of State partnered with Facebook, Howcast, MTV, Google, YouTube, AT&T, JetBlue, Gen-Next, Access 360 Media and Columbia Law School to launch a global network and empower young people mobilizing against violence and oppression."
Hillary is an imperial factotum of an empire that is fomenting revolution around the world. One can argue that such revolutions are "good" but this begs the question; why did the US sponsor the thugs and dictators that ran the Middle East for so long. And in the long run, the kinds of societies that will come out of these color revolutions will doubtless continue to contain the ruinous financial infrastructure that has done so much damage in the West.
The likelihood as a matter of fact is that many of these countries will end up with Islamic republics. Thus Hillary's stated concern about "women" must be seen within the context of what these color revolutions portend. The West needs Islam to pursue its phony war on terror and one watches with a certain dreadful fascination as the West builds yet another faux-enemy for purposes of advancing authoritarianism at home.
Finally, we note the article was written by someone named "Lemmon" who is identified as a "fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations." There is something deliberately provocative about all this. Certainly Newsweek has been the mouthpiece of the Imperium for decades. But the article is a tissue of lies, easily debunked with even the smallest amount of research on the ‘Net. Presumably Newsweek will have to turn a profit at some point and generate an audience as well. We fail to see how with articles like these Tina Brown is giving Newsweek any chance at all – not that we really believed she would. But that is the dilemma of the mainstream media in the era of the Internet.
