p2pnet - rss feed: Bill Clinton foundation China links
p2pnet news | Freedom:- “You have to applaud President Clinton for his philanthropic interests,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy. “I wouldn’t want to discourage it. But he certainly wouldn’t want to be used as a tool for special interests to have undue influence.”
That’s the final line in a Los Angeles Times feature which kicks off, “political and philanthropy ethics advocates worry that Bill Clinton’s reliance on international businesses and foreign governments to finance his worldwide charity campaigns raise issues of potential conflicts of interest if he were to take an active role in his wife’s administration.
“This is a perfect example of why it’s critical for both Clintons to provide prompt and complete disclosure of all their sources of income, not just personal sources but also his foundation,” the story has Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the Center for Responsive Politics, saying.
It goes on >>>
The Clinton foundation and the former president’s library in Little Rock have received millions of dollars in donations from the Saudi royal family and the Middle East sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, along with the governments of Taiwan and Brunei.
Fueled by such cash, the foundation has grown into a worldwide philanthropic dynamo, using its financial clout and influence with business leaders to streamline solutions for logistical logjams that have long plagued charity operations. The foundation has pressed to lower the price of expensive AIDS medications and set up long-term projects across the Third World.
But like many charities, the Clinton foundation maintains a strict policy of keeping its donations confidential to protect the privacy of donors. Still, partial lists have emerged in the foundation’s tax filings and in press accounts, leading to growing scrutiny of the activities of some contributors.
Some human rights activists suggest that the Clinton foundation’s contribution from Alibaba undermines his wife’s outspoken stance on China’s internal crackdown.
A former US president, “received a donation from a Chinese firm that is involved in censorship, and now his wife is running for president,” says the LA Times, quoting Harry Wu, “an exiled Chinese activist based in Washington,” as saying:
“This is a shame of the U.S.”
Interestingly, Wu himself is doing much the same.
He’s administering the Yahoo Human Rights Fund that’s, “aiding people jailed there for human rights views posted on the Internet,” said Agence France-Presse.
“With behind-closed-doors negotiations still being conducted to decide who’ll be the new Yahoo owner, the company has launched a cynical (even for it) PR exercise after its cooperation with Chinese police landed cyber dissidents Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning in jail for 10 years,” posted p2pnet.
‘Clinton is not involved with Alibaba’
Meanwhile, “The violent clashes in Tibet and the failure of the Chinese government to use its full leverage with Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur are opportunities for presidential leadership,” the LA Times has Hillary Clniton saying, going on, “These events underscore why I believe the Bush administration has been wrong to downplay human rights in its policy toward China.”
Asked to, “comment on the impact of Bill Clinton’s dealings with Alibaba, Hillary Clinton’s campaign deferred to her husband’s foundation. A spokeswoman for the foundation stressed, ‘President Clinton is not involved with Alibaba and is opposed to censorship and the repression of political dissent.’ The spokeswoman added, ‘Sen. Clinton’s position on human rights, both in China and elsewhere around the world, is unwavering’.”
But, “her husband brushed aside a similar opportunity to address China’s jailing of dissidents when he spoke at the conference hosted by Alibaba in 2005, the story says, going on >>>
Days before his appearance, two prominent rights groups, Human Rights in China and Reporters Without Borders, asked Clinton to raise Internet freedom issues during his speech and address the plight of Shi Tao, a Chinese writer arrested in 2004 after Yahoo’s China operation provided state security authorities with private Internet data.
In his keynote address, Bill Clinton hailed the Internet as “an inherently cooperative instrument and an inherently shared technology. The Internet has the potential to put power through information and communication in the hands of ordinary people.”
But he said nothing about China’s Web censorship or Shi Tao’s arrest. Asked later why, he said he was unaware of Shi Tao’s jailing. “Unfortunately, there was no discernible result or response” from Clinton, said Carol Wang, a program officer with Human Rights in China.
The Clinton Foundation spokeswoman would not divulge the amount of Alibaba’s donation but said the firm “paid a portion of the travel expenses and contributed an amount beyond that to the foundation.” Alibaba Vice President Porter Erisman declined to comment on the donation and the firm’s dealings with the former president.
‘ … if you cannot change the law, follow the law’
“Pictures of another 20 Tibetans have shown up online,” p2pnet posted in March, continuing:
Only this time they weren’t of men killed by Chinese forces when demonstrators protested an order to raise the Chinese flag over monasteries in the Ngaba TAP (Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture).
Instead, “Major Internet portals in China, including Yahoo.com and Sina.com, on Friday carried images of some of the Lhasa riot suspects wanted by police,” says the China state news agency Xinhua.
“Phone numbers for the Public Security Bureau of Lhasa City were posted, along with the images of the suspects taken from videos.
“The bureau called on the public to provide tips that may lead to their capture, according to the websites.”
For Yahoo.com, read Alibaba, but, “Jack Ma, a former official with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade who built Alibaba, has often dismissed concerns about his firm’s scrutiny of the Internet for the Chinese government,” says the LA Times.
“As a business, if you cannot change the law, follow the law,” it quotes ho as stating the morning after Clinton’s 2005 speech, going on:
“Ma has insisted that Alibaba operates independently from the Chinese government. But Ma’s official background and China’s tight oversight of its homegrown Internet and e-commerce firms are examples of the “blurred line between government and corporation,” said Jonathan Zittrain, an Internet regulation expert who teaches at Oxford and Harvard universities and is co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
“A Chinese government official doesn’t have to order a local Internet operator to censor something,” Zittrain said. “They might advise them that a certain article on their site doesn’t look too kosher. It’s communicated in code.” The result, Zittrain said, is “the great firewall of China.”
Stay tuned.
Los Angeles Times - Bill Clinton, China linked via his foundation, April 13, 2008
Agence France-Presse - Yahoo fund aids ‘cyber dissidents’ in China , April 2, 2008
p2pnet - Yahoo China ‘cyber dissidents’ fund, April 3, 2008
shown up online - China uses Yahoo in Tibet riots, March 21, 2008
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