SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON'S SPEECH ON AMERICA'S PLACE IN THE WORLD

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
"America and the World"
Remarks Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State Maxwell School of Syracuse University Dean James Steinberg
Maxwell School of Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY
April 23, 2012
MR. STEINBERG: Well, Madam Secretary, welcome to Syracuse and Syracuse University. When we worked together, you told me often how much you appreciated the affection you had for people here and for this community. And I wanted to assure you, as you could tell from the reception here, the feeling is entirely mutual. (Applause.) On behalf of the chancellor and all of us, welcome. It’s a great chance to have you here, and you can tell how much excitement there is.

I know you get a lot of questions and lot of opportunities to discuss the hotspots of the day, but I’m hoping today, in the time that we have, that we have a chance to reflect a little bit more broadly on some of the challenges and opportunities that you’ve faced as Secretary of State working with President Obama. And I’ve had a chance to get a lot of questions and thoughts from our students and faculty coming into this, and some of the questions that I want to ask you come from them as well.

I want to begin though by asking you a bit about your first challenges on coming into the office. You are probably as well qualified as anybody to be Secretary of State. You’ve been the first lady. You’ve been a senator. You’ve seen a lot of these issues. But what surprised you? What were the biggest challenges you first faced coming into office?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first, Jim, let me tell you how delighted I am to be back here in Syracuse at the university in upstate New York and have a chance to see a lot of old friends but also to come to this extraordinary university. I want to thank the chancellor, with whom I worked so closely when I was senator. And I also want to forgive her for stealing you. (Laughter.)

You were my deputy and we were facing a lot of tough issues together, but certainly I could only say multitudinous positive things about coming to Syracuse and living here with such an extraordinary quality of life. And you and Shere, who is now so ably also serving the university, are deeply missed at the State Department and in Washington. But I certainly have every reassurance and reason to believe that you are in the right place. And I had a chance to meet with your class before coming here, and I greatly enjoyed that.
I think that trying to go back in time to January of 2009, if you remember the challenges that we were confronting, particularly the economic crisis, which had such severe impacts here at home but also around the world and had certainly affected the view that people around the world had of American leadership.

So coming into the office along with President Obama and the Administration, I was surprised at how much work we needed to do to reestablish American leadership, to reassure people that the United States would get through the economic crisis, that we would continue to provide leadership on the full range of issues that affect us as well as the rest of the world.

I hadn’t fully grasped how nervous people were until I began traveling in February of ’09 about what they could expect from us. Because even when leaders and societies criticize the United States, there’s always, in my experience, a thread of concern about where we are and what we will do and whether we can continue to represent the values that we’ve stood for, and serve as an inspiration as well as a very strong presence.

So what surprised me most, Jim, was how much work we had to do in those early months to reestablish American leadership around the world. And I think we’ve done that. That doesn’t mean everybody agrees with us, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot of work to do, primarily here at home. Because any leadership that we try to convey elsewhere has to be rooted in strength at home – economic strength, political strength. But I think we’ve made the case in the last three-plus years that there may be difficult times ahead for the world, but the world will be well-served if American leadership remains as essential today as it has in the past.

MR. STEINBERG: When you were at the nomination hearing, your first appearance before the Senate, you said to fulfill our responsibility to our children, to protect and defend our nation while honoring our values, we have to establish priorities. You’ve been in it for over three years. What do you see as the priorities? And as Brittany Vira (ph), who’s one of my students, asked: How would you like historians to look back in 50 years and say what were the priority challenges?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I must say that I believe in priorities and trying to set them and follow them. What we found was that we needed a broader list of priorities than perhaps made sense in other times. Because given the economic crisis – and I go back to that because it overhung everything we did – we could not really go forth and argue for American positions and American values if people thought that we were not going to remain a strong economy that could support that leadership.
So when we look back, I think reestablishing American leadership, having it once again be respected, appreciated, wanted, and having a list of priorities on our agenda that were both specific, like what we’re going to do in dealing with some of the crisis areas from Iran to North Korea and more general about the overarching global problem, like global climate change or nuclear proliferation and other weapons of mass destruction, we didn’t really have the luxury of being able to put some of those priorities to one side. We had to try to deal simultaneously with a number of pressing issues, some very specific, some more general.

We often talk in the State Department about how we’re constantly having to juggle the urgent crisis, the immediate threat, and the long-term challenge all at the same time. Because you can pick up a newspaper any day, you can see what’s in the headlines, but then you can go through the paper and find things that aren’t yet in the headlines that you know will be unless action is taken to prevent, and then you can also discern the trend lines – not the headlines, but the trend lines – of both threats and opportunities that you have to keep an eye on. So we tried to create a sensible approach toward dealing with all of those in a prioritizing way. But it was sometimes a rolling list of priorities.

MR. STEINBERG: And as you tried to tackle that multiple challenge, you spent a lot of time thinking about the role of the State Department, the role of diplomacy. You’ve initiated an attempt to kind of do the kind of planning that the Pentagon does to deal with the long term. What do you think are the most important results that have come out of that process? And how do you think the State Department’s going to change to meet these new challenges?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, what Jim is referring to is that historically the Pentagon does a four-year planning process called the Quadrennial Defense Review, and it’s an excellent organizing tool, both for internal and external purposes. So they run a process where the different services, the different elements of the Defense Department come together to try to hammer out what are our goals and objectives going to be for the next four years.

The State Department and USAID had never done anything like that. We were a much more reactive agency. If there was a crisis, then get the diplomats out the door. If there’s a humanitarian disaster, then get the development experts out the door. But in a time of constrained resources, which certainly this must be because of the budgetary pressures we face, I thought we were at a great disadvantage because we were not engaging in a planning process internally to set our own goals and objectives, and therefore we couldn’t explain it to the Congress or the public what is it we were trying to accomplish.

So I instituted the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, the QDDR. It was a quite intense and revealing process. Why did we do things? Well, because we’d always done those things. But should we continue to do them, or should we be much tougher about how we define what we began calling smart power in this Administration at the State Department? How do we take stock of where we are and what we’re doing? Do we have the right skill sets for the diplomats and the development experts that we send into the field? How do we understand the role of diplomacy in a multilateral world? It’s no longer just enough to tend to your own embassies. How do we have some interconnectivity in region so that we had a better idea of what we were all working toward? How do we have development that furthers America’s interests while also meeting the humanitarian needs of people?

So we asked all the hard questions. We came up with some, I think, important conclusions. I’ll give you just one example. Energy diplomacy is key to our national security, not only in terms of securing the energy supplies that the United States needs at an affordable cost, but understanding the role that energy plays in nearly every other relationship we have in every region of the world. It makes a difference if the Europeans are totally dependent upon Russian natural gas. That’s makes a difference, because then they are going to be much less likely to feel comfortable cooperating with us or with fellow Europeans on certain actions that might undermine Russia’s lock on their energy. It makes a difference if you’re trying to promote development in Afghanistan whether there’s a pipeline that could come from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and into India, which we are currently trying to negotiate.

So anyway, we looked and said one of our big gaps is we don’t have enough energy diplomacy expertise. So we created a new focus for that and a new bureau in the State Department. We took people who already had some expertise but then recruited others. We just finished negotiating an agreement that had taken many years to negotiate with Mexico to determine the trans-boundary responsibilities when you drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. And we all remember the terrible disaster of BP. So there are just an enormous set of issues that are energy-related that have to go to our national security.
And then on the development side, if we can help countries that are discovering oil, and many African countries right now are – Ghana is going to start drilling offshore, Kenya has discovered oil and gas in the Savannas, Uganda is drilling near Lake Victoria. You go down the list. The natural resource curse is likely to mean that they will get rich and get more unstable and less equal in the distribution of the revenues from those resources, unless we and other likeminded nations can try to help them understand what it would mean for their future if they had a trust fund like Norway had, or a royalty scheme like Botswana had for their diamonds. So we’re looking at ways of getting ahead of problems instead of just always playing catch-up.

MR. STEINBERG: Staying on development for a second, obviously there’s a strong American humanitarian impulse, cares about the welfare of others, and yet lots of skepticism about how effective development assistance can be, the track record not as compelling as maybe one would like it to be. And even more, people look around, they look at our problems at home, deficits at home, our students worried about their future jobs. How do you make the case that this is obviously good to do, but necessary to do, given all the other demands for our resources?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that you will never get an argument from me that we have to pay a lot of attention to what we need to do here in our own country in order to get our economy producing good jobs again, giving people upward mobility, returning a sense of economic security. That is obviously priority one.
The amount of money we spend on development is such a tiny, tiny piece of our federal budget, and it helps us in so many ways. When there is a humanitarian disaster, whether it’s an earthquake in Haiti or a terrible mudslide and flood in the Philippines, and so many others in between, the American people have historically been very generous in trying to help people respond to the humanitarian disasters around the world. And I think we will continue to do that. And it’s a public-private partnership. It’s public tax dollars and it’s private contributions.

And it really sets a high standard for everyone else, because remember, much of the rest of the world has no history of philanthropy, they have no history of the kind of humanitarian response that we have been known for. It’s beginning to change. I want to see it change. I want to see the rising powers also contributing on humanitarian disaster relief. And we’re beginning to see some of that.

In other areas of development, we do a lot of work because it furthers American security interests. We fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic or drug-resistant tuberculosis or the spread of malaria, both because we care about the people who are impacted but also because it’s a public health challenge for us. And so it’s the kind of thinking that is both rooted in our moral obligation to help people in need, but also in a very hardheaded, clear-eyed analysis of what we need to do to get ahead of problems that may end up on our own doorstep. We fight battles for electoral fairness because we believe that people elected in a fair, free, transparent election are more likely to be allies of ours in many of the difficult challenges we face.

So I think we do have to be smarter and more efficient to ensure that any dollar we spend that comes from us, the taxpayers of America, is well spent, is efficient, produces a result. And when it doesn’t, stop doing what we have been doing and either don’t do that or make it something you can justify here in the chapel or on Capitol Hill. But I think if you look – and you can go now – we’ve put all of our foreign aid on the website of USAID. You can go and look at every penny of foreign aid.
And contrary to what a lot of people believe, we do not spend 10 or 15 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid. I remember when I would campaign and people would say, “Balance the budget by cutting foreign aid.” And I’d say, “Well, how much do you think we’re spending?” And they’d say, “I don't know, 20 percent.” And I’d say, “Well, how much do you think we should spend of the federal budget?” “Well, no more than 10.” I’d say, “Okay.” (Laughter.) So I think that we have to disabuse people of some of the myths about foreign aid, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to ensure that every dollar we do spend is spent well and furthers our security, our interests, and/or our values.

MR. STEINBERG: So the other D in the QDDR is democracy. And also going back to your first testimony to Congress, you quoted your first predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The interests of a nation when well understood will be found to coincide with their moral duties.” There’s obviously been a lot of debate about the role of democracy in human rights. There are some critics who say that we haven’t been as zealous as we need to be about those. There are some who worry that even in our own conduct of activities, including dealing with the problem of terrorism, that we’re not being consistent with our moral duties.

We’ve had a lot of chance in the Arab Spring and elsewhere to try to deal and grapple with this challenge. How do you see it, both the importance of these values and how we implement them in our foreign policy?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that they’re absolutely paramount. I think democracy and human rights is who we are as Americans and also what we have stood for historically. But it’s quite challenging to take what are heartfelt values that we care deeply about and implement them everywhere, every time that we possibly can, because there is a lot of challenges with explaining democracy to people. If you’ve never lived it, you have no idea how it affects you. You don’t have the sort of years and years of perfecting our union that we’ve gone through. Democracy can mean different things to different people. And there are different forms of electoral systems, different forms of parliamentary systems that claim to be democracy. Iran claims to be a democracy.

And we have to be always consistent in supporting what we think of as the underpinnings of democracy, and it’s not just elections. Some people have one election one time and claim that’s a democracy. So we have to constantly be urging more openness, more respect for minorities, independent judiciary, protection of the free press, the kinds of pillars of democracy that over many, many years we have learned are essential for the institutionalization of a democratic system.

And when it comes to the protection of human rights, I mean, we issue an annual Human Rights Report that tries to shine a bright light on the problems that exist around the world. And for the first time, when I became Secretary, I said, look, if we’re going to be judging the rest of the world, we need to judge ourselves because otherwise, people are not going to pay attention. They’ll say, well, there go the Americans again, criticizing everybody else, but what about Guantanamo and what about this and what about that?
So we have to be honest with ourselves that despite, I believe, having the greatest commitment to democracy and human rights of any nation, of any society, of any time in history, we make mistakes, we fall short of our own standards, and we have to constantly be asking ourselves what we can do better and how we should behave. And that’s important for us, first and foremost, but it’s also important if we’re going to have credibility when we speak to the Arab Spring or other countries that are trying to formulate democracies.

And sometimes, publicly criticizing a government over human rights abuses is not the best way to achieve the results you’re seeking. So we have to modulate how we say what we say and when we say it and who we speak to, because, again, otherwise you won’t be able to protect the people you’re trying to protect in many instances, and you may not be listened to if it just becomes a mantra, a public rhetorical mantra. It’s very challenging to have those values front and center, to promote them, to implement them, to praise and criticize appropriately, but we try to do it. I think we end up in a pretty good place. There’s always a lot of room for improvement. But it is very challenging.

The other aspect to this is when you have human rights standards that are so foreign to other cultures. I’ll give you three quick examples. If you’re someone, as I am, who believes strongly in the empowerment of women and talk about the rights of women everywhere I go – I’ve done this now internationally for 17 years. Honestly, a lot of – in a lot of places, it’s just not understood. “Of course, we take good care of our women. We don’t let them out of the house, so that they never get into trouble.” (Laughter.) “We don’t let them drive cars, so that they can never be taken advantage of. So we are protecting the human rights of our women.” You can imagine the conversations that I have. (Laughter.)

Or we believe that you should not be discriminating against or permitting violence against the LGBT community in your country. And in many places, in particularly Africa and Asia, that is just a totally foreign concept. I mean, the first response is, “We don’t have any of those here.” (Laughter.) Second response is, “If we did, we would not want to have them and would want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. And it’s your problem, United States of America, that you have so many of those people. So don’t come here and tell us to protect the rights of people we don’t have or that we don’t want.” (Laughter.)
And so, I mean, I call leaders and I say, “You’ve got a legislator who’s just introduced a bill that calls for the death penalty against LGBT people. That’s really a terrible idea.” “Well, we don’t have any of them. They’ve been imported from the West” – (laughter) – “and we don’t need them.” I said, “Well, all right. Let’s start at something very basic. Why do you have to kill them?” (Laughter.) “Well, maybe you’re right about that. We won’t impose the death penalty, but they may have to go to prison.”

Okay. Let’s – I mean, that’s the kind of discussions that you have when you’re talking about human rights. And it’s not that people get up in the morning and say, “I’m against human rights.” It’s that from where they come, on women or LGBT or minority groups, you say, “You don’t treat that minority group very well.” If you’re talking in the Middle East sometimes, “Take better – be nicer to your Shia or your Sunni.” Or, “Please don’t discriminate against your Christians.” It’s a very difficult conversation because it’s just not been one that people have had up until now. I think it’s very important we do that, but I give you this sort of flavor so that you understand we can either have a conversation and try to convince people to move in a certain direction, to provide greater protection for human rights, or we can lecture at them, we can call them names, we can preach, and the lives of the people who are being discriminated against will not change.
So sometimes I feel that we get criticized because we’re not being as vocal or strident as some in the advocacy community would like on some of these issues, but I’m trying to save lives and I’m trying to change attitudes. So trying to do that simultaneously is sometimes quite challenging.

QUESTION: So, Madam Secretary, yesterday was Earth Day and one of my graduate students, Todd Dannon (ph), wanted to pose you a question. I promise you that this is from him and not from my wife, Shere. But the question was: Given that we’ve just marked the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day, do you see any real opportunities for significant environmental progress on the international front? And what role can the United States play in catalyzing that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I am a perennial optimist on even the most difficult issue, and I do think that we can see some progress. I think, number one, the problem of climate change, of environmental degradation, of pollution and contamination, is not going away. It’s not been magically disappeared because people don’t want to have a political discussion about it. It still is affecting people’s lives, and it’s affecting the lives of Americans here at home as well as countless millions around the world.
So because it’s not going away, we have to continue to work toward making progress. And we weren’t able to get a big climate deal through our own Congress in the first part of the Obama Administration, in part because it was in the midst of an economic crisis and so many people said we can’t take on any more cost, even though I would argue that over time this would be an efficient cost-savings commitment. Nevertheless, from the front end, there were some initial investments that would have to be made, so people were rightly anxious about the economy and about making those kinds of commitments.

But we did make slow, steady progress towards some international commitment starting in Copenhagen, then in Cancun, then at Durban, and certainly there’s hope for continuing that at the Rio+20. I was saying to Jim’s class that it is always challenging when you see a problem that you believe must be addressed and you can’t get the political process to respond. Now you can either become very discouraged and very bitter, with good cause because you think this problem is so pressing, or you can regroup, re-strategize, and keep going. So that’s what we’re doing.

And I’ll give you just a few quick examples. Coming out of Copenhagen, for the first time, we got developing countries to agree to anything about climate change. If you’re in India, China, Brazil, South Africa, your attitude is: We didn’t make this problem. The developed world made it. We’re trying to develop. Now all of a sudden along comes the developed world and says to us, “You have to pay for your development.” Well, that’s just not fair. We get to get to the same point of development you all did, and then we’ll worry about something like climate change.

So they weren’t part of Kyoto, they have resisted being part of any international accord under that argument. For the first time in Copenhagen, the President and I hammered out a deal where they would be agreeing to reporting certain things, which they’d never reported before, and making certain internal commitments. At Cancun, that was further refined and similarly at Durban. Because the developed world in Europe, combined with the developing world, wanted very much for there to be a binding agreement on the follow-on to Kyoto that would bind the United States and others.
Well, the United States Congress didn’t accept Kyoto the first time because there was no binding agreement on the developing world. And now all these years later, the developing world is now leading in greenhouse gas emissions and still has not taken on responsibility, except in a kind of an internal level of accountability. So our goal was to get, for the first time, everybody realizing we all had to pay something for this problem. Granted the United States and the West in particular have contributed more over the last century because of our development trajectories to the problem that we face. So yes, we do have to take responsibility. But so do they, because what good will it do us if we take responsibility and they don’t. We won’t make any progress.

Now, the Obama Administration has done a number of things by executive order, particularly increasing mileage for vehicles, going after the pollution from plants – particularly utilities – and other steps that I think the Administration doesn’t get enough credit for, and which I always say to my international interlocutors, “Look, yeah, you’re right. We didn’t pass some great big climate deal in the Congress, but we’ve been slowly cleaning up our own house, and we’re making progress on that.”

Secondly, with this enormous growth in natural gas, the United States for the first time in many years is actually exporting energy. And we may find ourselves in a different energy mix. Assuming we can deal with the environmental issues surrounding hydraulic fracking and other forms of fossil fuel extraction that are part of this calculus, we may find us in a better position to be able to go after some of the major polluters and some of the major oil producers.

And then I started a group of six nations – it’s now grown, I think, to 10 – we’re just frustrated with the slow process of trying to deal with greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide. So we formed a group – the Clean Air and Climate Coalition – to deal with non-carbon dioxide contributors, of which there is a lot – methane, black soot, et cetera. So we’re trying to follow that model to come up with some specific proposals that we can implement.

So we are moving. It’s not as fast. And in the face of just the cascade of natural disasters, it seems like we’re not keeping pace. But we are continuing to move forward. And at some point, the world will recognize that we do have to have international agreements that we will enforce in order to deal with what are significant climate changes that are going to impact us. It’s not like we can build a wall around our country and say we’ll keep out the effects of climate change. And just because we’re not some small island nation in the Pacific that is going the sink in the next decade, we don’t have to worry about it. We’re already seeing those results.

I said this morning, we’ve already moved villages on the Alaskan coast that used to be protected in the winter from a thick bed of ice that would freeze the water in front of these villages so that the storms would not hammer the villages and erode the land. And now the ice is neither there nor as thick, and so we’re already doing things that mitigate against the effects of climate change. So it still is a piece – a big piece of global unfinished business that we’re trying to make slow but steady progress on.

MR. STEINBERG: So on issues like climate and democracy, these obviously have a big impact on global public opinion towards the United States. And when you and President Obama took office, one of your priorities was to try to influence global public opinion and try to restore America’s reputation.
How far do you think we’ve come? What are the challenges ahead? And in particular, how do you see the new media, and how are you using the new media to try to influence the great debate about the perceptions of the United States?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we’ve made progress, but it’s a daily struggle to make sure that we are conveying accurate information about what we’re doing. Now if somebody disagrees with what we’re doing, that’s fair. But if they disagree with something we’re not doing and we’re not even thinking, that’s a problem. So we try to get ahead of the information flow, which is much harder today than it was five years, 10 years, 20 years ago.

When I got to the State Department, we did no social media to speak of. We had very little even language-appropriate outreach on the media. I think there had been an attitude up until then that there were certain set feelings in certain places, there were certain elements of the press that were going to be anti-American no matter what, so it really wasn’t something we should worry about too much and not try to take on. But in the 24/7 media world that we’re now in, with billions of information sites – because everybody with a cell phone or a computer can be a commentator, can be a contributor, can be an activist – we had to get more on parity with that, and we’ve worked very hard to do it.

But it’s tough, and I’ll give you an example coming out of the Arab Spring. I thought we were not being quick enough in reacting to Arab public opinion – both pro and con, but particularly con – about us and the role we were or were not playing, a lot of conspiracy theories about what the United States was kind of doing behind the curtain, which were not true. So I said, “Well, I want more of our Arabic speakers out there.”

And one of the responses was, “Well, a lot of our best Arabic speakers are young. They’re young Foreign Service officers, they’re just getting started. If they make a mistake on the media it could ruin their career.” I said, “Well, I’ve made more mistakes than I can count.” (Laughter.) And at some point, we have to be more willing to take some risks, because we can’t sit around and take 48 hours to respond to a story that is breaking on a blog or Twitter somewhere. We have to get into the mix. Will we make mistakes? Will young people in their 20s and 30s? Yeah, just like people in their 50s and 60s will make mistakes. But we have to be in the flow of the moment.

So we began to change that. I mean, the resistance or reluctance was totally understandable, because if somebody gets out and says something that has an unfortunate effect or they stumble when they’re talking or whatever, that’s a problem. But the alternative, which is to be so worried about saying anything, is absolutely unacceptable in today’s world. So we are out there every day. We are – we do a lot of both formal and informal media work. I’ve done internet chats with Egyptians and Iranians that would be simultaneously translated into Arabic or Farsi.

We’ve really tried to get out there to make the case that – we’re not asking people around the world to agree with everything we do. We don’t agree with any other nation. We have our own interests. We are pursuing those. Let’s not kid ourselves or anybody else about it. But the United States is standing ready to assist those who want a true democratic transformation. We believe in that. So I think we’re improving dramatically. We still have a ways to go, which is why I hope some of you will think about the Foreign Service for a career, because we need you.

MR. STEINBERG: You led right into my next question, which is – as you know well, you can spend time on a campus – there’s a tremendous commitment to public service among young people. But there’s also, I think, a reluctance, especially about federal government and politics, a sense that it’s hard to get ahead, you don’t get a lot of respect. What can be done and what would you say to young people who are thinking about that, seeing other choices in their life as to why they should take on the slings and arrows that go with the kind of career that you pursue?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first of all, I know how publicly service-minded young people are today. I see it, I hear it, and I am very pleased about that. And I also recognize what Jim is talking about, which is a certain level of skepticism about government and politics. I think skepticism is part of the American DNA, so I’m not sure that’s all new. I came of age during the Vietnam War, and there was a lot of skepticism, so you’re in a good tradition of American skeptics.

But at the end of the day, we have an enormous obligation to participate in and to invest in our country. I mean, it is such an honor for me to travel around the world as your representative and speak on behalf of the United States of America. And government service can be so rewarding and can make a great contribution. Obviously, over the course of many years, I’ve known people who have made that commitment, and I work with some of the best and smartest people I’ve ever worked with at the State Department and USAID, who really make a difference in the lives of Americans and in the lives of people around the world.

So our government’s not perfect. Human beings aren’t perfect. There is no such thing. But certainly, it is a worthy and an incredibly rewarding enterprise to be part of government service. So be skeptical, but don’t be cynical. And if you have any interest in pursuing that, whether it’s at the local, county, state, national level, I hope you will. You may take to it and find your life’s passion and career. You may decide it’s not for you.
Politics, especially if we’re talking about electoral politics, is very challenging. There’s no doubt about that. But I often tell people that politics is part of everything you do. There’s academic politics – I was on the faculty of a law school. There’s church politics. There’s family politics. There’s corporate politics. Everything you do, to some extent, is “small p” politics, where you have to get along with people, you have to express opinions, you have to marshal others to your side of an argument if you’re making a presentation in a corporate boardroom or in an academic faculty meeting. So it’s, I think, short-sighted to say you don’t want anything to do with politics, because you will, in some way or another, be involved in the, quote, “small p” political process.

Electoral politics is very, very hard but exciting. It’s exciting to have ideas that you would like to work toward. It’s exciting to convince people to work with you towards implementing those ideas. And again, politicians are human beings, so you get what you expect with any group of human beings. Some are incredibly admirable, and some are less so. But the fact is that the reason democracy is so worth defending is that we don’t give any group of people a monopoly on the truth. One of the challenges that some of these new democracies are going to face is if they are a religiously based political party, you get into arguments where it’s not just politics; it’s also faith and religion. And so how do you argue against that? How do you compromise over that? So I think politics in our democracy is especially important today to continue to make decisions that will benefit our country. And I make an urgent plea for evidence-based decisions, and in the budgetary arena, decisions based on arithmetic and not ideology.

So we need people who are willing to get into politics, knowing how hard it is, willing to keep going at it, understanding you have to compromise, but sometimes getting a little bit is better than getting nothing at all. And so I would urge that people who are interested in politics, working in a campaign, working for a political leader – a county executive, a mayor, a member of Congress, whomever – see it up close and personal. Decide whether it’s for you. It may not be, but I certainly never thought I would ever run for office or hold office. I certainly never envisioned being someone running for president of the United States. But I believe in the political process, and I don’t think we have an alternative. I mean, we can cede decision making to people you may not agree with, but you’re not willing to get out there and argue against them because, you know what, they may attack you. They may say terrible things about you. And it may not just be that one person; it may be legions of people across the cyberspace world.

So you have to be willing to enter into the political fray, but I think we need you more than ever. So I commend public service, whether it’s in a not-for-profit NGO, the faith community, government service, politics, because we really need to keep replenishing the energy and the ideas and the idealism of the next generation involved in our politics. And we also need more citizens who take politics seriously. I mean, we can disagree on what we should do on climate change, and that’s totally fair game. We may not want to make the investment because we have other priorities, but let’s not disagree about the science. We can disagree about what to do about the deficit or the debt, but let’s not pretend you can keep cutting taxes and end our deficit and debt.

I mean, so let’s have an evidence-based discussion. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with the solutions that are proposed, but we do great damage to our political system when we act like ideology in the American political process is more important than facts. We are a fact-based people. One of the reasons people from all over the world could come here and get along and work and succeed is because they didn’t have to be captured by ideology or by religion that tried to dictate how they lived. That could be part of their private life, their private belief, but our politics were wide-open debates about who we were as Americans, where we were going, what we wanted to achieve. And we need to get back to that, and we need to be very honest about what the facts are.

And then we can argue about the politics. After you look at the arithmetic and you realize, you know what; cutting taxes is not going to produce huge amounts of revenue. We tried that in the 80’s. It didn’t work so well. My husband had a different idea. He kind of understood arithmetic, and so he said, okay, we’ve got to do a little of this and a little of that. And we got to a balanced budget and a surplus. And then we get a chance to actually eliminate our deficit and our debt, and we decide no, we’re going to cut taxes again, because that’s going to create more revenues, which of course it didn’t. And then we have two wars that we refused to pay for, for the first time in American history. And guess what? We’ve got a huge deficit and a just unbelievable debt.

And if we’re really concerned about it, then let’s have a reality-based conversation about it. And we don’t have to fix it. We can take the consequences if the political system can’t bear the hard decisions. But let’s not pretend there are easy decision that can resolve climate change or debt and deficit and all the rest of it. Because what I see happening in other countries is a refusal to face hard decisions, and I don’t want that to be us. That’s not who we are. We’ve always been a pretty realistic people. We have a lot of disagreements, but we not only need to set the standard for democracy, we need to set the standard for the kind of reasoning that should underlie any kind of democratic enterprise.

MR. STEINBERG: Madam Secretary, there’s a lot we can talk about, but as the dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, I can’t think of a better note to end on. So let me thank you for coming here and spending time with us, and really great to have you here. Thanks so much.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you all. (Applause.)

FINDING THE ORIGINS OF COSMIC RAYS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory Provides New Insights Into Origin of Cosmic Rays
April 18, 2012
Analysis of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a massive detector deployed in deep ice at the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica at the geographic South Pole, recently provided new insight into one of the most enduring mysteries in physics, the production of cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays were discovered 100 years ago, but only now are scientists homing in on how the highest energy cosmic rays are produced.

Cosmic rays are electrically charged particles, such as protons, that strike Earth from all directions with energies up to one hundred million times higher than those created in man-made accelerators.

The intense conditions needed to generate such energetic particles have focused physicists' interest on two potential sources: the massive black holes at the centers of active galaxies and exploding fireballs observed by astronomers called gamma-ray bursts or GRBs.

"Although we have not discovered where cosmic rays come from, we have taken a major step towards ruling out one of the leading predictions," said Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the IceCube principal investigator.

In a paper published in the April 19 issue of the journal Nature, the IceCube collaboration describes a search for neutrinos emitted from 300 gamma ray bursts observed between May 2008 and April 2010 in coincidence with the SWIFT and Fermi satellites.

Surprisingly, the scientists found no neutrinos--a result that contradicts 15 years of predictions and challenges the theory that gamma-ray bursts produce the highest energy cosmic rays.

"The result of this neutrino search is significant because for the first time we have an instrument with sufficient sensitivity to open a new window on cosmic ray production and the interior processes of GRBs," said Greg Sullivan, a physicist at the University of Maryland and IceCube spokesman.

"The unexpected absence of neutrinos from GRBs has forced a re-evaluation of the theory for production of cosmic rays and neutrinos in a GRB fireball and possibly the theory that high-energy cosmic rays are generated in fireballs," he said.

IceCube observes neutrinos by detecting the faint blue light produced in neutrino interactions in ice. Neutrinos are of a ghostly nature; they can easily travel through people, walls, or the planet Earth. To compensate for the antisocial nature of neutrinos and detect their rare interactions, IceCube is built on an enormous scale. One cubic kilometer of glacial ice, enough to fit the great pyramid of Giza 400 times, is instrumented with 5,160 optical sensors embedded up to 2.5 kilometers deep in the ice.

GRBs, the universe's most powerful explosions, are usually first observed by satellites using X-rays and/or gamma rays. GRBs are seen about once per day, and are so bright that they can be seen from half way across the visible Universe. The explosions usually last only a few seconds, and during this brief time they can outshine everything else in the universe.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory was built under a National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction grant, with assistance from partner funding agencies around the world.

NSF continues to support the project with a Maintenance and Operations grant co-funded by the Division of Antarctic Sciences and the Division of Physics. IceCube construction was finished in December 2010. A collaboration of 250 physicists and engineers from the United States, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Barbados operate the observatory.

"Building the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the geographic South Pole was a major effort made possible through many collaborating institutions and the U.S. Antarctic Program," said Scott Borg, division director for Antarctic Sciences in NSF's Office of Polar Programs. "The IceCube Collaboration has been busy analyzing data and the finding published in Nature is an early and significant, result. We are pleased with this achievement but we also anticipate many more important discoveries to follow."

NSF, an independent U.S. government agency, manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S. scientific research on the southernmost continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean as well as related logistics support.

Improved theoretical understanding and continued data collection from the complete and fully calibrated IceCube detector will help scientists better uncover the mystery of cosmic ray production.

STATE DEPARTMENT DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

FROM:  DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Victoria Nuland
Spokesperson
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
April 23, 2012
TRANSCRIPT:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING                                                                                                         
MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2012
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
1:15 p.m. EDT

MS. NULAND:  Happy Monday, everybody.  You were just treated to an hour of Professor Clinton up at Syracuse University, so we’ve covered a number of issues.  Let me do a couple of quick things at the top, and then we’ll go to what’s on your minds.

Today, the Chinese Government announced the fourth round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which will be held in Beijing May 3rd and 4th.  Secretary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Geithner will be joined for the dialogue by their Chinese co-chairs, Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo.   The Chinese also announced the third round of the U.S.-China Consultations on People-to-People Exchanges, which will be held in the same time period in Beijing.

And then further to our daily highlighting of a human rights case, and particularly a journalistic freedom/press freedom case in the walkup to World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd, today’s case, if you’ve seen our website HumanRights.gov, is the case of Yoani Sanchez in Cuba.  Yoani Sanchez is a Cuban blogger who has attracted international following for her blog Generation Y, which gives readers unprecedented insight into life in Cuba.  The Cuban Government has repeatedly denied Ms. Sanchez’s request for travel some 19 times, most recently she was – when she was granted a visa to go to Brazil to attend the premieres of a documentary about media freedom.  So she is our person of the day, and we call your attention to our website, HumanRights.gov.

Let’s go to what’s on your minds.

QUESTION:  Can I just start briefly with Syria?

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Maybe not so briefly on others, but mine is only brief.  Are you okay with the limits, the restrictions that the Syrians want to put on the monitoring mission in terms of where monitors can come from, what countries they can come from, how they are able to travel?

MS. NULAND:  We are most emphatically not okay with restrictions on monitors.  We make clear in Resolution 2043 that we expect monitors to have full freedom of movement, to have full access to Syrians and parts of Syria that they think are important to monitor, and that we expect them to have complete freedom to communicate, to choose their personnel, et cetera.  So this is a matter of concern as these monitors begin to deploy.  And as the Syrian National Council put it in their own statement after Resolution 2043 was passed, this first deployment of monitors is really a litmus test for the Assad regime’s seriousness with regard to the six-point plan.

QUESTION:  And what about the other – about the – where the monitors come from?

MS. NULAND:  And of course, with the – it’s up to the United Nations to decide who should be chosen for the monitoring trip.

QUESTION:  So you would not be comfortable with a monitoring team made up of people from – made up of monitors from Iran, Belarus, Eritrea --

MS. NULAND:  It is not for the Government of Syria to decide who should be a UN monitor for this mission.  It’s up for the – to the United Nations to make those decisions.

QUESTION:  So have you – you’ve told that – you’re aware of what – where they want the people to come from, correct?

MS. NULAND:  We are.  We are.

QUESTION:  And you’ve raised your objections to them?

MS. NULAND:  We have.

QUESTION:  Okay.  That’s all.

QUESTION:  And you are comfortable that 300 monitors can actually do the job that is assigned to them?

MS. NULAND:  Well, again, we’ve only just started to have monitors deploy over the last week and a half.  We are only at double-digit strength, as you know, with more coming in.  The monitors, as you have probably seen through the press reporting, have been greeted warmly by crowds of Syrians wanting to express themselves peacefully wherever they have been able to go.  But I think the concern is, as in places like Hama and Homs, that the monitors come in, they are able to provide some space and some openness for opposition leaders to come out and make their views known.  They’re beginning to start to see people, and then no sooner do they leave town when the artillery resumes.  So this is a matter of concern and something that we will be watching day on day.

QUESTION:  Yeah.  I understand that they are greeted very well and people have probably waited for them to arrive.  But are they – will they be able to discharge their duties as they should?  I mean, keep track of what’s going on, have actual data so it can be vetted and determined and defined and so on?

MS. NULAND:  Well, these are the standards that we insist this monitoring team be able to have, so we just have to see, Said.  It’s really very early days, but as I said, it’s a litmus test for the seriousness of the regime.

QUESTION:  And just a quick follow-up to the discussion that took place here last Friday on the Plan B – your Plan B, so to speak – a great deal of discussion was talked about yesterday.   The Washington Post had an editorial saying that you don’t really have a Plan B, that basically your approach to this whole Syria crisis has been ad hoc.  Do you have a comment on that?

MS. NULAND:  Well, of course, we disagree with that.  As the Secretary made clear in Paris, even as these monitors deploy, the international pressure has to stay on the Syrian regime.  You saw the EU impose new sanctions today.  The United States imposed new sanctions today.  We are continuing to work with all of our international partners.  And as the Secretary made clear in Paris, if this Kofi Annan plan fails, if this monitoring mission fails, we’re going to be back in the UN Security Council, we’re going to be looking at Chapter VII and looking at other ways to increase the pressure.

QUESTION:  That’s once the 90-day period is over, correct?

MS. NULAND:  I’m not going to speak to the timetable.  I think we have to see how it goes, as I said, day on day.

QUESTION:  Thank you.

MS. NULAND:  Please.

QUESTION:  And that within the 90 day, or after the 90 days, you’re going to go to the Security Council?

MS. NULAND:  Well, I think Said just asked that question.  Obviously, Resolution 2043 gives this initial monitoring effort 90 days, but I think the question is, even within the 90 days, are we able to get folks in?  Are they able to do the job?  Is the zone of peace enlarging or is it shrinking as a result?  And we’re just going to have to watch and see.
Please, Jay.

QUESTION:  A question concerning China.  Just --

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.  Are we done – first of all, are we done with Syria?

QUESTION:  Oh, yeah.

MS. NULAND:  Yeah?  Okay.  Go ahead.  Go on to China.

QUESTION:  I know you guys aren’t getting into the give-and-take on the Bo Xilai case, but I’m trying to get sort of on a broader sense if the – if you could describe what the State Department’s, like, policy is towards walk-ins.  Are there sort of clear parameters that the State Department has always used or is using now in dealing with them, just on a general basis?  Because there have been cases in the past where, I guess during Tiananmen, we gave sanctuary to a dissident for, like, more than a year.  So I was just trying to see if there was any parameters you could outline.  And traditionally, is the White House involved in these decisions?

And the other question I just had is:  Is there any – do you know what the status is of Bo Xilai’s son is up in Boston as far as his legal status here?  I assume he came in as a student, on a student visa, but I don’t know if he’s – if there’s any sense on if he has to renew it or if the Chinese want him back.  I was trying to get an update on that.

MS. NULAND:  Well, first, on the latter question, there’s been broad press reporting that he is a student in good standing at Harvard.  We don’t speak to individual visa matters, as you know, but you can draw your own conclusions from that.  And obviously, student visas are, as a general matter, subject to the term of the educational opportunity that the person is here for.

With regard to walk-ins, every case is different.  People walk into U.S. embassies and consulates around the world for a broad variety of reasons and with a broad variety of requests.  There are some guiding regulations with regard to individual requests that might be made in the Foreign Affairs Manual.  We can get you those if you need, Jay, but in general cases have to be decided based on the circumstances, and they’re very much case by case, depending upon what the individual is seeking and what the circumstances are.

Please.  Still on this issue?  No.  Something else?

QUESTION:  Can I try Afghanistan?

MS. NULAND:  Why don’t we stay on China, first?  Yeah.  Go ahead.

QUESTION:  A question that’s much easier.  First, could you please talk to us about the focus of this, the fourth one of S&ED?

MS. NULAND:  I don’t have too much more detail than what was put out by the Chinese side.  As you know, this is a broad Strategic Dialogue that allows us to talk about the full range of bilateral issues, regional issues, and global issues.  On the Treasury side, they’ll speak to their issues, but you know that – all those things that we talk about on the economic and financial and currency side with the Chinese Government.  On the State Department side, it’s everything from our student exchange program, as you can imagine, to the regional issues that we talk about, like North Korea, to the global issues, like our work together on Iran, et cetera.  So I think it’ll be a rich and broad menu of issues.

QUESTION:  Will the South China Sea issue be addressed?  Because I’m wondering if you are following the dispute with (inaudible).  The Philippines now is seeking international support in the standoff with China.  So under what circumstance will the U.S. wade into this dispute?

MS. NULAND:  Well, I think you know our position on these disputes in the South China Sea.  We want to see them resolved through dialogue; we want to see them resolved through consensual means.  In general, in all of the most recent meetings that Secretary Clinton has had with Chinese counterparts, whether they were here, whether they were in China, whether they were in multilateral fora, she has reiterated our interest in deepening and broadening mechanisms within ASEAN, within regional fora, and bilaterally for solving these things consensually, not by force, calling for restraint by all sides.  That’s where we are on this particular one and where I’m sure we’ll be in Beijing next week.

QUESTION:  So do you believe China and the ASEAN countries can solve this problem in a – through friendly diplomatic consultations?

MS. NULAND:  We do.  We have always thought that this needed to be resolved through dialogue, and we’ll continue to press that on everybody.

Andy.

QUESTION:  When was the last time you haven’t?

MS. NULAND:  Haven’t what?

QUESTION:  Thought that something should be resolved through dialogue?  (Laughter.)  When was the last time you said, “No, I think we really need war.”

MS. NULAND:  In the Libya context, dialogue failed and we had to call in NATO and call in other countries, as you’ll recall.  That’s probably the --

QUESTION:  On that same issue, I think you saw that Liberation Daily had a very strong piece over the weekend which essentially accused the United States of, in support of the Philippines, increasing the potential for military conflict in the South China Sea.  Do you have any response to that charge from a newspaper which is widely seen as the mouthpiece of the PLA?

MS. NULAND:  Well, again, our position has been consistent.  The Secretary’s position has been consistent on all of these skirmishes in the South China Sea and certainly with regard to this one, that this can only be solved diplomatically, that we want to see restraint on all sides, we want to see ASEAN play a helpful role in coming to a resolution.  And that’ll be the Secretary’s message again when she’s in Beijing next week.

QUESTION:  Okay.  Also --

MS. NULAND:  In the back.  Afghanistan?

QUESTION:  Can we try Afghanistan?  Thanks very much.  May I try two actually?  As you know, the Strategic Partnership Agreement is being inked now to take the United States relationship on beyond 2014.  And we’re hearing that $2.7 billion is going to go to Afghan security forces.  It’s a huge amount of money.  What more can you tell us about the inking of the Strategic Partnership Agreement, please?

MS. NULAND:  Well, let me start by saying that on April 22nd Ambassador Crocker and Afghan National Security Advisor Spanta initialed the text of the Strategic Partnership Agreement.  Let me stress this is an initialing.  This is not yet a signing.  After much work together, we’re pleased that our negotiating teams have come to a common text to recommend to their respective governments.  As is the case with all such agreements, both governments now have to review it, the text in interagency terms.  We have to, on our side, have consultations with our Congress and the President has to make a final review.  So that is still to be done.

With regard to dollar figures, I don’t have anything to announce yet.  I think you know that we have been talking to the Afghan Government, we’ve been talking to our allies and partners around the world about the need to ensure that as the Afghan national security forces take on lead responsibility for security around Afghanistan that they are fully funded, that they are fully equipped, and that we have the ability to continue to train them.  The Afghans themselves will contribute to those costs, but it’s going to take international support as well.  As the Secretary made clear when she was with Secretary Panetta at NATO last week, we’re talking to lots of countries about how they can help the Afghans foot the bill, and the United States also will pay its fair share, but I’m not going to get into numbers here today.

QUESTION:  Okay.  I’m going to just add one more, and that is:  What effect do you think the initialing of this document will have on peace talks with the Taliban?

MS. NULAND:  Well, frankly, at this stage, that is very much up to the Taliban.  Let me say that the Strategic Partnership document is primarily about the United States’ medium and long-term relationship with the Government of Afghanistan, with the Afghan people, and it sets out a blueprint for how we can move forward together on the political side, on the economic side, and continuing to provide appropriate security support, even as the Afghans manage their security increasingly self-reliantly.

As you know, in the context of the larger peace effort that the Afghan Government’s engaged in, we have very much supported the idea of Afghan-Afghan talks about political reconciliation.  We have tried to be helpful in that regard, but really the Taliban have a choice to make now.  They need to decide if they are ready to come to the table under the terms that we’ve all supported, led by the Afghan Government, starting with renouncing violence and expressing interest in these talks.  So ball’s very much in their court.

QUESTION:  Do you have anything to add to your statement from this morning on Sudan?

MS. NULAND:  Other than to say that our Special Envoy Princeton Lyman remains very much engaged with the parties, with the African Union, and that we very much welcome the fact that the South Sudanese did withdraw from Heglig and that it’s now time for the Government of Sudan to stop its aerial bombardment and for everybody to get back to the table.  That’s essentially where we are.  And just to remind again that neither one of these governments is going to be able to fully benefit from the resources of both countries, from peace, from integration with the international community, until the violence stops.  So they both – both sides have an interest in getting this violence stopped.

Said.

QUESTION:  Change of issue?

MS. NULAND:  Say again?

QUESTION:  Change topics?

MS. NULAND:  Yes.

QUESTION:  The Palestinian issue?

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Yes.  There is an apparent estrangement between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.  And my question to you, in this kind of atmosphere, how do you conduct whatever talks or lack of talks, if you would, with both entities?  How do you conduct your business with them?

MS. NULAND:  Well, I’m not going to get into internal issues within the Palestinian Authority.  Obviously, we work with all the leading Palestinian figures.  We obviously work with President Abbas, who David Hale had the chance to sit with on Saturday.  We see Mr. Fayyad obviously, and David also works with Palestinian negotiator Erekat, who he anticipates seeing, I think it’s tomorrow.

So our goal is to continue to try to work with all parties on the Palestinian Authority side and with the Israelis to increase the opportunity for them to be in direct contact and to really get this conversation back to where it needs to be.

QUESTION:  And Mr. Hale discussed the content of the letter that Mahmoud Abbas submitted last week with him?

MS. NULAND:  Well, I would anticipate that he did, but I’m not going to get into the details of their discussion.

QUESTION:  Yeah.  This letter is really the point of contention between the two – between Fayyad and Abbas.

MS. NULAND:  From our perspective, the fact that the sides are in contact, whether it’s by letter – obviously we prefer face to face, but the fact that this conversation is continuing is important.  So we are trying to talk to all of the involved parties about how they can make the most of the time in front of them and the channels available to them.

QUESTION:  Are you aware of the misunderstanding between Abbas and Fayyad?

MS. NULAND:  I’m really not going to get into internal issues between members of the Palestinian Authority.

Please.

QUESTION:  There are some press reports that (inaudible) Turkey is blocking Israel’s participation to next NATO summit.  And the U.S. side is not happy with that.  It’s disappointed and trying to convince Turks not to block Israel to NATO.  Do you have any comment on that – on those reports?

MS. NULAND:  Well, I think you know for quite some time now, we have been continuing to talk to both our ally Turkey and our ally Israel about the relationship that they have with each other, to encourage them to continue to get back to a place where can have conversation with each other, where they can work well together.  We think it’s important to both of them, and it’s certainly important to the region.

With regard to arrangements for the NATO summit and partnership events, as you know, Israel is one of NATO’s partners in the Mediterranean Dialogue.   I don’t have anything particular to announce on partnership planning at the moment.  Those discussions are continuing as we head towards the May summit in Chicago.

QUESTION:  So Israel may participate in some?

MS. NULAND:  Again, we’re still working on what the partnership arrangements are going to look like for the summit, so I’m not going to comment on them from here as those conversations continue.  There are many aspects of how the partners may or may not participate in the NATO summit that are still being worked on.

QUESTION:  Well, are you comfortable with the Turkish position?

MS. NULAND:  Again, I’m not going to comment on internal deliberations going on at NATO about arrangements for the summit from this --

QUESTION:  NATO operates by consensus, correct?

MS. NULAND:  Correct.

QUESTION:  As you well know.  So if one NATO member objected to Israel or any other country’s participation in a partnership dialogue, you wouldn’t be allowed to – that country wouldn’t be allowed to participate, correct?

MS. NULAND:  We need consensus at NATO.  And again, Israel is one of NATO’s partners, has participated over the years in many, many, many NATO activities, consultations, exercises, et cetera.  So we’re going to keep working on the arrangements for partnership at Chicago, but I don’t have anything particular to announce today.

QUESTION:  Well, would you be – would the Administration be comfortable if Israel did not participate?

MS. NULAND:  Again, there are many, many ways that these partnership activities may go forward.  They’ve been done in different ways at different summits.  So I’m not going to get into what we’re talking about, how it might work, who’s going to come.  We’re still working on all of that.

QUESTION:  The Administration won’t come out and say that it wants Israel to be at the – to participate at the summit in Chicago?

MS. NULAND:  We haven’t made any announcements about who --

QUESTION:  I know.

MS. NULAND:  -- among NATO’s 25-30 partners around the world we expect to invite to Chicago.  So I’m not going to comment on individual partners and whether they’re coming to Chicago.

QUESTION:  Well, you’re being asked about one specifically.

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Is it important to the United States for Israel to participate?

MS. NULAND:  It’s important that we come to a consensus agreement at NATO about a strong partnership aspect of this summit.  So we’re still working on that.

QUESTION:  So you’re saying that that could happen without Israel’s participation?

MS. NULAND:  I’m saying that there are 25-30 global partners of NATO.  Is it still under discussion at NATO what events there will be in the context of the summit that will highlight the partnership and which partners will be invited.  No decisions have been made.

QUESTION:  So you’re saying that some partners may not be invited?

MS. NULAND:  I’m saying that there have been NATO summits where no partners were invited --

QUESTION:  Toria, I’m trying to help you out here, because you’re going to get absolutely slammed.

MS. NULAND:  I understand.  Matt, there is no --

QUESTION:  You are.  If you can’t come out and say that the United States wants Israel to participate, its main ally in the Middle East and you won’t come out and say that the Administration wants them to participate in whatever event is going in Chicago, that’s – that is going to be seized on.

MS. NULAND:  Matt, at the last summit in Lisbon, there was zero partnership participation with the exception, I think, of ISAF partners.  At Lisbon there were some partnership events, and I don’t know whether all partners were included.  I think they were not.

QUESTION:  Well, as --

MS. NULAND:  So every summit is done on a case-by-case basis, and we haven’t made a decision about who’s going to be invited yet.

QUESTION:  Well, yeah, but isn’t the planning for at least most of these partnership – these partnerships to have some kind of meeting revolving around Chicago?

MS. NULAND:  NATO has, I think, five --

QUESTION:  Wasn’t there a meeting at heads of state level between NATO and the Russians in Lisbon?

MS. NULAND:  I think there was a NATO-Russia Council at Lisbon.  There will not be a NATO-Russia council meeting at Chicago.  So again, the point is that for each summit, NATO makes decisions by a consensus what the partnership geometry will be.  And that has not been decided.

QUESTION:  Fair enough.  But the Turks wouldn’t be objecting to Israel’s participation if someone hadn’t proposed that Israel participate.  And if you have proposed that they participate --

MS. NULAND:  Again --

QUESTION:  -- and you’re not willing to stick up for it, I don’t understand why.

MS. NULAND:  I’m not going to get into, here, what we have proposed and where we are in the internal dialogue at NATO until the issues are settled by consensus.  That’s not the way NATO works.  Okay?

Let’s move on.

QUESTION:  Can we go back to the Palestinian issue?

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Is Ambassador Hale mediating between the Palestinians, or between the Palestinians and the Israelis?

MS. NULAND:  So David – let me just go through his schedule, if I can.  Special Envoy Hale met with President Abbas on Saturday, with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sabah and other officials in Kuwait on April 22nd.  He arrived in Jerusalem today.  He will meet with Israeli negotiator Molho.

QUESTION:  I’m sorry.  Can you say that again?

MS. NULAND:  He’s in Jerusalem today.  He’ll meet with Israeli negotiator Molho, and then he’ll meet with Palestinian negotiator Erekat separately tonight and tomorrow.  I’m not sure in what order.  And then he will also, tomorrow, see Foreign Minister Judeh, I assume in Amman.  And then, as we said, he plans to go on to Saudi, to Qatar, to Egypt.  And then he’s probably going to go back to the region, but that hasn’t been decided yet.

QUESTION:  That means he’s not mediating between Abbas and Fayyad?

MS. NULAND:  Correct.  He is not getting involved in internal Palestinian Authority issues.

QUESTION:  And when did he see Fayyad?

MS. NULAND:  Say again?

QUESTION:  When did he see Fayyad, the prime minister?

MS. NULAND:  We had Fayyad here in Washington not too long ago.

QUESTION:  No, no.  Isn’t he supposed to meet with Fayyad in --

MS. NULAND:  I don’t have that on this list, but let me check with him whether he intends to see Mr. Fayyad on this trip.

QUESTION:  New topic.  On Myanmar, here seems to be a hiccup in this warming – warmth between Aung San Suu Kyi and the ruling party, the military-backed party, and that they disagree over the oath of office and Aung San Suu Kyi’s – and her NLD counterparts have declined to take their seats in parliament until this oath is changed.  Does that concern you at all?  Do you think that’s a setback?  And what’s your view on this – the oath itself?

MS. NULAND:  Well, as you’ve said, Andy, our understanding is the same as yours, that Aung San Suu Kyi and the members of her party from the National League of Democracy did not sit when parliament opened today because they were concerned about taking an oath requiring them to safeguard the constitution that was passed under military rule.  Our understanding is that the NLD is in discussion with the government and with other parties with regard to this issue and we are calling on everybody to try to work this through in a manner that will allow the NLD to take its seats.
QUESTION:  Would the action for action that the U.S. has promised to continue to implement be on hold pending them actually sitting in their seats in parliament?

MS. NULAND:  Well, I think the measures that we’ve already announced are obviously going forward.  We want to see the government and the opposition continue to work on their issues in a consensual manner through dialogue, and that is our understanding of what the NLD itself wants.  So I think we need to watch this and hope that in coming days, this can be settled.

QUESTION:  And do you have any position on the oath itself?  Do you think that the NLD is correct in its objections to the wording of the oath?

MS. NULAND:  I think we’re not going to get into the internal conversation that they’re having.  As you know, the NLD has concerns about a number of things, including the name of the country, that were adopted at a time when they were not able to participate in the political process.  So they’re going to have to work through these things together as part of the general opening in the reform process.

Please.

QUESTION:  On Iraq, KRG President Maliki criticized an arms sales which will be made by U.S. to Baghdad Government – about the F-16 sales.  And he said to freeze the sales until there will be a solution between KRG and Baghdad Government because he’s suspicious that the Maliki government can use this F-16 against KRG.  Do you have any comment on that?

MS. NULAND:  I’m sorry.  Who made these initial comments?

QUESTION:  President Barzani.

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  KRG president.

MS. NULAND:  I’m not going to get into the middle of intramural efforts between the various Iraqis.  I think you know where we are on this, that we want to see the disagreements that they have with each other also settled through dialogue and through a big roundtable process that they’ve all pledged to join but that still needs to get off the ground.

QUESTION:  Is that F-16 sales will go on?

MS. NULAND:  I don’t think there’s any change in our policy.

QUESTION:  About the – just a follow-up about an oil agreement made by Exxon-Mobil and KRG.  Since it’s an American company, the Exxon-Mobil, this agreement is excluding Baghdad Government’s role in the use of oil in KRG region.  Do you have any comment?  How do you see this agreement?  Is it threatening to unity of Iraq, or how do you see Exxon-Mobil and KRG oil agreement?

MS. NULAND:  We’ve talked about this issue many times.  Our position on it has not changed, that we think the lack of a comprehensive oil agreement is holding Iraq back, that we’ve called on all sides to continue to work through what is necessary to come up with a national oil policy.  And we also regularly counsel our companies, including Exxon, about the fact that there isn’t such an agreement.  So I think we’ll have a little bit more to say on the issues of Iraq and energy later today.  We’re going to have – we have the U.S.-Iraqi energy dialogue going on, and we’ll have some folks briefing later this afternoon on those things.

QUESTION:  Toria, just a quick follow-up to this, but Maliki had really harsh words for Turkey.  And now both of them are your allies, you have invested a great deal in Iraq.  I mean, they’re – he’s pushing the envelopes.  You don’t have any comment on that?

MS. NULAND:  We have, for almost a decade now, encouraged increased dialogue, increased direct contacts between Iraq and Turkey.  There are mechanisms for them to work through their issues together which we have endeavored to facilitate, and we encourage them to continue to use them to work through the issues that they have.

QUESTION:  Thank you.

MS. NULAND:  Please.

QUESTION:  On North Korea?

MS. NULAND:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Different topic.  There are multiple reports that the North Koreans have threatened Seoul and South Korean President Lee’s government.  Do you have a reaction on those reports with military action?

MS. NULAND:  I don’t think our position on this is any different than it’s been before and after the satellite launch.  I think if you got a chance to see what the Secretary had to say when she was on Wolf Blitzer last Thursday, that’s the – obviously the most eloquent statement of where we are, that the DPRK needs to understand that it’s not going to achieve anything but further isolation and pressure by threats, by launches, by any of this.

And we call on the new North Korean leadership to change course; instead put their effort into moving their country into the modern world, into the 21st century, opening up the system and giving their people the right to live in dignity and with openness, well fed, et cetera.  And they’re just putting their energy in the wrong place.

Please.

QUESTION:  Any reaction to Iraqi prime minister’s visit to Iran?  And do you think – is it related to the P-5+1 meeting in Baghdad next month?

MS. NULAND:  I’m going to send you to both of those governments for comments on their bilateral visit.

Okay.  Thanks very much.

ACTIONS TAKEN IN AFGHANISTAN BY AFGHAN AND COALITION FORCES

FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE

Combined Force Captures Several Insurgents

Compiled from International Security Assistance Force Joint Command News Releases

WASHINGTON, April 23, 2012 - An Afghan and coalition security force captured several insurgents during an operation to capture a senior Haqqani facilitator in the Baraki Barak district of Afghanistan's Logar province today, military officials reported.

The Haqqani facilitator is suspected of providing weapons and ammunition to insurgents for a planned attack against Afghan government officials, Afghan security forces and coalition security forces in Kabul City, officials said. Additionally, the facilitator has ties to the Pakistan-based leaders of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

No shots were fired and no civilian property was damaged during this operation.

In yesterday's Afghanistan operations:

-- An Afghan-led force captured a Haqqani leader and detained two other suspects in the Terayzai district of Khost province. The leader directed roadside bombings and other attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the Bak district.

-- A combined force found two weapons caches comprising 17 mortars, two rocket-propelled grenades, and five recoilless rifle rounds in the Aliabad district of Kunduz province. The items were destroyed.

In April 21 Afghanistan operations:

-- A combined force captured a Taliban facilitator and detained one other suspect in the Kandahar district of Kandahar province. The facilitator provided weapons, ammunition and equipment to insurgents in Kandahar City and the Kandahar district for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

In April 19 Afghanistan operations:

-- In the Lash-e Joveyn district of Farah province, a combined force discovered a weapons cache containing 36 120 mm mortar rounds, 96 81 mm mortar rounds, four rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and 200 12.7 mm rounds. The cache was destroyed.

In April 18 Afghanistan operations:

-- A combined force detained one suspect and destroyed a RPG launcher and multiple rockets while searching for a senior Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan facilitator and explosives expert in the Baghlan-e Jadid district of Baghlan province. The facilitator is responsible for multiple attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in northern Afghanistan. He is also suspected in plotting bombings and suicide attacks in Kabul.

APRIL 2011 U.S. TORNADO OUTBREAK SPAWNED 750 TORNADOES, KILLED 361 PEOPLE

FROM:  FEMA
ATLANTA, Ga. -- The relentless and destructive tornado outbreak in April 2011 that caused massive damage, injuries and loss of life across the South resulted in unprecedented response and recovery efforts coordinated by FEMA to every affected state across the region. The storms spawned a record 750 tornadoes. A reported 361 people lost their lives. Six states received major disaster declarations. In the year since, thousands of people have rebuilt their lives and homes, and communities continue recovering and rebuilding.

Tornado over the plains. This tornado was one of many spawned during a massive outbreak stretching from eastern Colorado to Oklahoma on May 23-May  Image ID: nssl0231, NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) Collection Location: Kansas Photo Date: 2008 May 23 Photographer: Sean Waugh NOAA/NSSL

That rebuilding involves everyone from the affected individuals, community volunteers, local and tribal governments and state and federal officials. Federal assistance alone has totaled nearly a billion dollars for housing and other disaster-related needs of individuals, emergency and permanent repair work for local governments and educational and nonprofit organizations, low-interest disaster loans, and dollars paid to other federal agencies to support the disaster response.

That assistance in the six (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee) of eight states in Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Region IV includes:
24,773 disaster survivors were eligible for federal disaster assistance;
$118 million to disaster survivors as part of the Individual and Households Program, including:
$90.6 million to individuals for housing assistance;
Inclusive of that funding, FEMA provided the maximum grant ($30,200) to 1,341 registrants, representing more than $40 million in disaster assistance.

$27.7 million to individuals for other disaster-related needs such as medical costs and funeral expenses.
More than $321 million of the estimated $338 million total estimated reimbursements has been provided to help local governments and educational and non-profit organizations pay for emergency work and permanent repairs.

$160 million in low-interest disaster loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
FEMA has set aside nearly $109 million to help state and local governments implement long-term measures to minimize the impact of future disasters.

Debris was so massive in Alabama that the amount—10 million cubic yards was enough to fill 67,000 18-wheelers. If those trucks were lined up, they would stretch from Mobile to Nashville and halfway back again.

“If we learned anything from last April, it is that we lost too many lives.” said FEMA Region IV Administrator Phil May. “A prepared public is our nation’s most valuable resource in a disaster, and through disaster preparedness we can save lives.”
FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have designated April 22-28 as Severe Weather Preparedness Week to highlight the importance of making severe weather preparedness a national priority.

U.S. AND IRAQ REAFFIRM COMMITMENT ENERGY PRODUCTION AND EXPORT

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Joint Statement of the U.S. - Iraq Joint Coordinating Committee on Energy
Media Note Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC
April 23, 2012
The Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq reaffirmed their commitment to joint cooperation in the areas of oil production and export, natural gas, electricity, and critical energy infrastructure protection during the inaugural meeting of the Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) on Energy on April 23, 2012.

This meeting, held at the U.S. Department of Energy, was co-chaired by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Dr. Hussain Al Shahristani and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman and Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs at the U.S. Department of State Ambassador Carlos Pascual. The JCC on Energy was established by the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement between Iraq and the United States to strengthen the countries’ strategic partnership on a variety of initiatives.
During the meeting, both sides expressed interest in making efforts to assure oil markets meet producers’ and consumers’ needs for worldwide economic growth, and recognized the bold steps Iraq has taken to increase its oil production and export. The U.S. Government supports these major steps forward.

The United States expressed its continued commitment to support Iraq’s electricity sector through training in operations and maintenance, the provision of spare parts, and the development of the Iraq Electricity Master Plans and the assistance to implement it. The United States described its significant contributions to Iraq’s energy sector since 2003, including $4.6 billion to the power sector and $2.1 billion to the oil sector.

The delegations also discussed the progress of the ongoing energy capacity building programs conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce Commercial Law Development Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The United States outlined the potentially greater role for the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to expand financing for energy trade and investments.

Deputy Prime Minister Shahristani and Deputy Secretary Poneman will travel together to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories on April 24, 2012 where they will see demonstrations of advanced technology in the areas of critical infrastructure protection for oil facilities, advanced civilian nuclear technology and renewable energy technology.
The United States and the Republic of Iraq committed to convene the Energy JCC quarterly over the coming year.

Abby-Care: Coverage for Young Adults

Abby-Care: Coverage for Young Adults

U.S. AND AFGHANISTAN LOOK AT POST-2014 STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE

Panetta: U.S.-Afghan Agreement Shows U.S. Commitment

By Jim Garamone

WASHINGTON, April 23, 2012 - U.S. and Afghan officials are studying a tentative agreement on a strategic partnership post-2014, White House and Defense Department officials announced today.

"For the United States, that will mean review by the interagency, consultation with Congress, as appropriate, and final review by the president," according to a White House announcement. "Once these internal processes are complete, we expect to be in a position to sign the agreement."

President Barack Obama wants the agreement to be signed by the NATO Summit in Chicago next month.

"It is fair to say that it represents a significant step in the relationship and makes clear that the United States is committed to an enduring presence in Afghanistan that will be there to help Afghanistan to become a country that can securely govern itself," Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said. "We've committed to an enduring presence and this agreement makes clear that we will have that presence there beyond 2014."

Officials will not discuss the specifics of the draft agreement, although Panetta said the size of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan remains to be worked out with Afghan government officials.

Both sides took drafting the document seriously, Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said. "It represents the cornerstone in the long-term relationship between the United States and Afghanistan," he said.

The document lays out the strategic parameters for a long-term relationship in many areas, not just a security, Kirby said. "It is certainly ... a clear indication that the United States is not going to abandon Afghanistan," he said. "It is a clear statement of our desire to form and maintain a strategic relationship."

The size of any U.S. force that remains in the region after 2014 will be negotiated with the Afghan government, much like the recent agreement the United States signed with the Afghan government transferring the prisons to them and putting them in the lead of night operations.

Officials hope the agreement will assuage Afghans' concerns that the United States may lose interest in the region after 2014 and leave as it did after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan in 1989. That loss of interest and support enabled a decade of civil war and the rise of the Taliban.

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES AND AGRICULTURE SECRETARIES TOWN HALL MEETING ON CAREER PATHS AND POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

FROM:  DEPARTMENT HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Secretary Duncan joined Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville to host a White House Rural Council town hall with agriculture teachers and students from across Wisconsin.

USDA and Education Host White House Rural Council Meeting, Sign Interagency Agreement to Promote Career Pathways and Postsecondary Education
APRIL 18, 2012
The U.S. Departments of Education and Agriculture have teamed up to enhance agricultural education and related programs that promote postsecondary and career pathways, including teaching, according to an interagency agreement to advance agricultural education. U.S. Education and Agriculture Secretaries Arne Duncan and Tom Vilsack announced the agreement today during a White House Rural Council meeting with local educators at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

“Agricultural education is central to the future of American prosperity,” Secretary Duncan said. “Many Americans may not realize that agriculture supports 1 in 12 jobs across the nation. For the U.S. economy to continue to rebound and grow, agriculture has to help lead the way.”

Duncan added: “Agricultural educators face unique challenges—but they also can tap into unique strengths within their tight-knit communities. Agricultural education is very much about the jobs of the future—and not a backwards-looking curriculum to preserve the past.”

“American agriculture makes incredible contributions to the health of our economy and the strength of our nation as a whole. That’s why it’s so important to recruit the best and brightest of the next generation to pursue careers in agriculture,” said Vilsack. “USDA works each day to help educate, train and support the scientists, farmers and ranchers we’ll need to provide America’s families with the food and energy they need. This partnership with the Department of Education will help us offer even greater opportunities for young people who want to dedicate their lives to agriculture, food and natural resources.”

The agreement calls for the Departments to exchange a variety of information and participate in joint activities, including webinars, conferences, outreach materials, and helping each other identify industry-validated standards, assessments, best practices, accreditations, and certifications. The Departments also will work jointly to find and use pathways and career programs of study that can prepare students for rewarding careers related to agriculture, food and natural resources.

Since taking office, President Obama’s administration has taken historic steps to improve the lives of rural Americans, put people back to work and build thriving economies in rural communities. From proposing the American Jobs Act to establishing the first-ever White House Rural Council – chaired by Agriculture Secretary Vilsack – the President is committed to a smarter use of existing Federal resources to foster sustainable economic prosperity and ensure the government is a strong partner for businesses, entrepreneurs and working families in rural communities. The Council is working to break down silos and find areas for better collaboration and improved flexibility in government programs and works closely with local governments, non-profits and private companies to leverage federal support.

Since August 2011, the White House Rural Council has supported a broad spectrum of rural initiatives, including a $350 million commitment in SBA funding to rural small businesses over the next five years, launching a series of conferences to connect investors with rural start-ups, creating capital marketing teams to pitch federal funding opportunities to private investors interested in making rural investments, making job search information available at 2,800 local USDA offices nationwide, making HHS loans available to help more than 1,300 Critical Access Hospitals recruit additional staff, and helping rural hospitals purchase software and hardware to implement health IT. USDA and the Navy have also announced a partnership to advance the use of next-generation biofuels in Navy operations.

FEMA SAYS NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM COULD EXPIRE MAY 31, 2012

FROM:  FEMA
National Flood Insurance Program Could Expire May 31, 2012, if Not Reauthorized
Here Are a Few Things You Need to Know
April 23, 2012
Many businesses, commercial owners, homeowners and renters purchase flood insurance to reduce the escalating costs of repairing damage to buildings and their contents caused by floods.

As we approach a potentially active hurricane season, FEMA’s Administrator, W. Craig Fugate, is engaging Congress to strongly recommend reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) which will expire on May 31, 2012.

The NFIP plays a key role in our Nation’s efforts to prevent and recover from flood disasters. Reauthorization of the NFIP before it expires on May 31, 2012, is essential to our Nation’s efforts to prevent and recover from flood disasters. Floods are the number one natural disaster in the United States in terms of lives lost and property damaged. The NFIP identifies areas of flood risk; it encourages communities to implement measures to mitigate against the risk of flood loss; it provides financial assistance to help individuals recover more rapidly from flooding disasters; and it lessens the financial impact of flood disasters on individuals, businesses, and all levels of government.

In recent years, a series of short-term reauthorizations and temporary suspensions of the NFIP have eroded confidence in the program among stakeholders, including state governments, tribal governments, local communities, individual policyholders, mortgage lenders, and the private insurance industry. In addition to disrupting the program's day-to-day operations, short-term reauthorizations and temporary suspensions create significant uncertainty regarding the federal government's long-term commitment to underwriting and indemnifying flood losses. In the absence of such a commitment, our stakeholders are less likely to make the investments needed to successfully sustain, strengthen, and grow the program — thereby undermining the NFIP’s effectiveness and efficiency over time.

A two year re-authorization will send a clear signal to citizens, communities, and private sector partners that the federal government will continue to support our nation's efforts to manage flood risk. If Congress does not re-authorize the NFIP before it expires on May 31, 2012:

  Property owners will be unable to complete new mortgage transactions. Property owners who would normally be required to purchase flood insurance to fulfill lending requirements will be unable to obtain affordable coverage. The National Association of REALTORS estimates that a lapse in authorization jeopardizes an estimated 1,300 sales each day or about 40,000 mortgage closings per month.

The Disaster Relief Fund will bear additional costs when flood strike. Property owners who are unable to obtain flood insurance coverage may seek and be eligible for assistance from the Disaster Relief Fund. Consequently, failure to reauthorize the NFIP will result in transferring a portion of the costs of flood losses that otherwise would have been paid by the NFIP to the taxpayer through the Disaster Relief Fund.

The NFIP may have to halt payment of claims for recent events, including Hurricanes Irene and Lee, if a lapse in authorization substantially reduces cash flow into the program from premiums or a significant flood event follows the lapse and drains the remaining, non-renewable funds.

CHINA BASED OIL FIELD SERVICES CO. CHARGED WITH MISLEADING INVESTORS

FROM:  U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMISSION  
Washington, D.C., April 23, 2012 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a China-based oil field services company and two senior officers involved in a scheme to intentionally mislead investors about the value of its assets and its use of $120 million in IPO proceeds. The SEC additionally charged the company’s chairman of the board involved in a separate $40 million theft from the company.

The SEC alleges that SinoTech Energy Limited grossly overstated the value of its primary operating assets in financial statements, specifically the lateral hydraulic drilling (LHD) units that are central to its business. The company’s IPO registration statement in November 2010 promised investors it would spend $120 million raised in the IPO to acquire LHD units, but the company’s purchase contracts and other documents otherwise show it acquired far fewer LHD units, lied about the number it acquired, and grossly overstated the value of the units. SinoTech CEO Guoqiang Xin and former CFO Boxun Zhang were responsible for the fraud.

Meanwhile, the company’s chairman Qinzeng Liu is accused of secretly siphoning at least $40 million from a SinoTech bank account in the summer of 2011. He then stood silently by as SinoTech – attempting to counter negative Internet reports that the company was potentially fraudulent – falsely assured investors that the company had that money and more in the bank. Liu later admitted his theft to SinoTech’s auditor and board of directors, but he retained his position and investors were not informed of the incident.
“SinoTech’s brief life as a public company in the U.S. markets has been rife with falsehoods,” said David Woodcock, Director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office. “Investors deserve the utmost honesty and transparency from companies and their officers when they tap public markets in the United States.”

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana (Lake Charles Division), SinoTech’s public filings certified by both Xin and Zhang represented that the company had purchased 16 LHD units worth $94 million. In fact, the company only acquired 11 such units worth less than $17 million. SinoTech continually misled investors about the value of its equipment in press releases and SEC filings between December 2010 and November 2011. Xin went so far as to try (unsuccessfully) to convince SinoTech’s LHD unit supplier to issue public statements verifying the company’s false valuations to investors. The supplier refused.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Liu’s admitted theft of $40 million in company funds occurred sometime between June 30 and August 17. Liu withdrew the money from SinoTech’s primary bank account at the Agricultural Bank of China. SinoTech did not record Liu’s withdrawal in the company’s books and records, and it retained Liu as its chairman despite his confession.

The SEC alleges that the theft remained hidden when SinoTech attempted to rebut an Internet report alleging fraud in August 2011. In an effort to persuade investors that SinoTech was legitimate, the company issued a press release stating that SinoTech’s bank balances totaled more than $93 million and included $54 million on deposit at the Agricultural Bank of China. Liu knew this claim was false due to his earlier theft from that account.

The SEC’s complaint seeks permanent injunctive relief and financial penalties against all defendants as well as disgorgement of ill-gotten gains by SinoTech and Liu. The SEC also requests bars against each of the individual defendants from serving as officers or directors of U.S. public companies.

JUSTICE & EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS REACH SETTLEMENT WITH BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS OVER ELL STUDENTS

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Monday, April 23, 2012
Departments of Justice and Education Reach Settlement with Boston Public Schools to Ensure Equal Opportunites for ELL Students
The Department of Justice and the Department of Education reached agreement with the Boston Public Schools (the district) and its superintendent today to ensure that English Language Learner (ELL) students in Boston receive the services and supports they need to overcome language barriers, as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  This agreement replaces an interim settlement agreement entered on Oct. 1, 2010, which required the district to implement short-term remedies to ensure that thousands of students improperly excluded from the district’s ELL programs were promptly assessed and provided services.

The agreement reached today governs the district’s transition from these short-term remedies to longer-term policies and programs that expand the coverage of Boston’s ELL program and are designed to ensure that the services provided to ELL students are of high quality, delivered by qualified teachers and tailored to the specific needs of each individual student.   The agreement requires the district to continue its efforts to accurately identify and place ELL students, and further ensures that ELL students, who face unique challenges, including students with interrupted former education and students with disabilities, receive assessments and services that are specially designed to address and ameliorate those challenges.   The agreement also affords ELL students greater access to the higher-level learning opportunities in the district. To ensure these programmatic changes are effective, the agreement further requires the district to evaluate the effect of these changes on student achievement over time through robust, disaggregated data analyses.

“We applaud the Boston Public Schools for working collaboratively with the United States to develop a comprehensive plan to effectively serve all students who are not proficient in English,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.  “We believe this plan can guide other school districts seeking to ensure that its English Language Learner programs not only meet the requirements of federal law, but also empower English Language Learner students to strive for success in their education and lives.”  

“A key to success is access to a high quality education and today, the Boston Public Schools is promising to provide limited English proficient students an equal opportunity for success by giving them access to programs and services tailored to meet their needs, including access to accelerated programs,” said Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education.   “The Department of Education is committed to working with the Boston School Committee as it implements this comprehensive plan.”  

“ Our education system must provide our children with opportunities to develop into productive citizens regardless of their proficiency in English.  When English language learners lack properly trained teachers, those opportunities are curtailed,” said U.S.  Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of the District of Massachusetts.  “We share the goal of continued improvement to Massachusetts schools and look forward to the progress of this collaborative effort.”

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PANETTA WORKS TO EXPAND SOUTH AMERICAN DEFENSE TIES

FROM:  AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE

Panetta Visit to Expand South American Defense Ties

By Cheryl Pellerin

WASHINGTON, April 22, 2012 - During his first visit to South America as defense secretary, which starts today, Leon E. Panetta will meet over the next week with military officials in Brazil, Colombia and Chile, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said.

The secretary "is looking to expand defense and security cooperation with three important countries in the region and, increasingly, in the world," Little added.

Panetta will travel to Brasilia and Rio de Janiero in Brazil, Bogota in Colombia, and Santiago in Chile.

This trip follows a late-March visit by Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, Fla., and then to Brazil and Colombia.

In Brazil Dempsey met with Defense Minister Antonio Celoso Amorim and top-ranking military official Gen. Jose Carlos de Nardi in Brasilia, and in Bogota with Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon Bueno and Gen. Alejandro Navas, commander of the Colombian Armed Forces.

For Panetta, one set of discussions in South America will focus on partnering with Brazil, Chile and Colombia to help build capacity for the military to assist civil authorities in such Central American nations as Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize, a senior defense official told reporters in a background briefing on Friday.

"The challenges these countries face are towering compared to their own capacity to deal with them," he said, adding that Brazil, Chile and Colombia already are significant contributors to building partner capacity.

Colombia, for example, offers capacity-building assistance in 16 countries inside and outside the region, including Africa.

Colombian service members have trained more than two dozen Mexican helicopter pilots and now train police in Honduras and Guatemala. The nation also provides assistance in nondefense areas like justice reform, the official said.

Also in the region, in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake and tsunami in Haiti, thousands of U.S. and Brazilian military personnel worked together to provide life-saving relief to the Haitian people. It was the largest combined operation of U.S. and Brazilian military forces since they fought together as allies in World War II.

"We could have done better in Haiti if we had glued together the system in advance to provide for more effective defense support to civil authorities," the official said.

"By collaborating with [all three countries]," he added, "the United States can get down to specifics about which country will be conducting specific initiatives and what kinds of initiatives, so together we can ensure the investment we're making ... is as efficient and effective as possible."

During an April 9 meeting in Washington, President Barack Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff established the U.S.-Brazil Defense Cooperation Dialogue and announced that Panetta and Amorim would hold the first meeting this week in Brazil.

The DCD will help bolster cooperation between DOD and Brazil's Ministry of National Defense, and between the nations' militaries, the White House said in a statement.

Beyond the Western Hemisphere, the Defense Department is looking to Colombia and Brazil, both of which already have deep ties to Africa and now provide assistance there, to help U.S. Africa Command with peacekeeping and other efforts there.

"Africa typifies the situation we're in, where the United States has limited capacity to help build partner capabilities," the defense official said.

"Brazil and Colombia ... are stepping up to the plate. Let's collaborate with them, establish a dialogue between their militaries and Africom so we're working in mutual support in an informed, cooperative way," he added.

Panetta will also seek to expand the range of defense collaborations, including traditional military efforts such as training, exchanges and joint exercises.

"Clearly we still have plenty to talk about in continuing to support the Colombians in their efforts against [the narcoterrorist group FARC, for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]to talk about counternarcotics," the official said.

Panetta also will discuss new challenges like cyber security and defense support to civil authorities that offer opportunities for collaboration.

In 2014 Brazil will host the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, World Cup tournament in Rio de Janeiro, and two years later that city will host the 2016 Olympic Games.

"We know in the United States how to provide defense support to civil authorities, to law enforcement or to help prepare for the kinds of challenges these world-class sporting events can attract," he said, "so we're going to share expertise [and] talk about the kind of dialogue that will help nations get prepared."

He added, "In the context of limited resources of the United States for defense ... we have an opportunity to partner together with other nations so they become security exporters."

Panetta, Little said, sees Brazil, Chile and Colombia "as increasingly important players on the regional stage and also in terms of their leadership roles internationally."

All have made progress in terms of their economies, their militaries and their political situations over the last several years, he added.

U.S. Department of Defense Armed with Science Update, THE FOG OF WAR

U.S. Department of Defense Armed with Science Update

MISSILE TALK

FROM:  U.S. NAVY
NORCO, Calif. (March 29, 2012) Telemetry systems personnel from the performance assessment department at Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Corona Division, conduct pre-operation testing and software upgrades on portable auto-tracking telemetry antennae. The department develops, operates and maintains communications, computing and instrumentation systems required for missile flight data collection, analysis and dissemination. (U.S. Navy photo by Greg Vojtko/Released)

MILITARY MEMBERS AND FAMILIES HELP ON EARTH DAY TO CLEANUP TRASH

FROM:  U.S. NAVY
 Japan (April 21, 2012) Chief Yeoman Ken Vinoya, center, helps gather trash at the Misawa Fish Port. Misawa Air Base service members and family took part in an Earth Day cleanup in the local community, and helped remove several tons of refuse. (U.S. Navy Photo by Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Daniel Sanford/Released)

Misawa CPO 365 Helps Conduct Beach Cleanup
By Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Daniel Sanford, Naval Air Facility Misawa Public Affairs
MISAWA, Japan (NNS) -- Members of the Navy Misawa CPO 365 Program spent the morning cleaning up the local Misawa Fish Port, April 21.

The event was in coordination with the 42nd annual observance of Earth Day, a global event filled with activities highlighting environmental concerns and issues.

More than 30 Misawa Air Base chief petty officers (CPOs) and board-eligible first class petty officers worked together to help the community pick up trash and help beautify the areas in the local community.

"Were here this morning to help out our host country and Mother Nature," said Chief Navy Counselor Todd Wean, who hails from Sarasota, Fla. "The members of CPO 365 do monthly community relations projects together anyway, so it seemed like a good fit for us to combine our effort in the community, while also helping out the environment in the process."

The cleanup is always one of the largest environmental awareness projects in Misawa with several tons of refuse being collected and removed from the fish port.

"We have a great relationship with the local community, and they are very open, receptive and helpful to service members living here in Misawa," said Chief Cryptologic Technician Collection Erika Haws, who originally hails from New Orleans, and serves as the Navy Misawa CPO 365 community relations coordinator. "It's nice to return the favor, and help make this area even more beautiful than it already is."

Besides, the CPO 365 members, many more Misawa service and family members were also on hand to help with the cleanup. Misawa cub scouts, girl scouts and numerous other base groups and organizations joined CPO 365 in their effort.

"It's nice to see folks of all ages come on out from the base and take ownership in the local community," said Wean. "We love Misawa, and this is just one small way that we can make it an even better place to be stationed and live."

Prstence, Titan a Enceladus

Prstence, Titan a Enceladus