3 good articles FOR Condi's visit to Liverpool.

- Peter Dow, Owner Rice for President Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Rice-for-President/


11 July 2005: Secretary Rice hugs a Thai school girl at a Bang Sak school
devastated by the last December's tsunami and rebuilt by the U.S.


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Don't wreck Condi visit

A DOUBLE appeal not to wreck Condoleezza Rice's visit to Liverpool was
made at a Westminster Capital of Culture party.
Merseyside MP George Howarth and Liverpool city council leader Warren Bradley
insisted the American secretary of state should be made welcome.
They were speaking at a House of Commons reception giving an update on
Liverpool's 2008 plans.
Mr Howarth, MP for Knowsley North and Sefton East, said he hoped Dr Rice's
weekend visit to Liverpool would "not be a bitter and unwelcoming experience".
Cllr Bradley said: "I shall be supporting her in Liverpool."
Foreign secretary Jack Straw, who is hosting Ms Rice's visit to Britain, and
will be with her in Liverpool, was a later guest at the Commons reception.
Earlier Mr Howarth, the presiding MP at the function, said: "The right to
protest is sacred.
"What I hope people don't do is say the secretary of state is not welcome. I
hope any protest will not hamper her visit."
Cllr Bradley, who will be handing a private letter to Ms Rice outlining the
council's opposition to the Iraq war, said he would make his feelings known in
private.
But he added: "There is a time and place to make protest."
The reception was attended by members of both the Commons and the Lords.
Celebrity 2008 supporters included veteran actress Rita Tushingham and Nancy
Dell'Olio, girlfriend of England football boss Sven Goran Eriksson.



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So who's afraid of Condi Rice?

Mar 29 2006

AHEAD of her impending, highly controversial visit to Liverpool, chief
feature writer Paddy Shennan profiles US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice
By Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo





SHE has been called the most powerful woman in the world, a warrior princess,
a Black American version of Margaret Thatcher - and a man in a skirt.
And, perhaps more alarming than any of that, she's a fan of prog rockers Led
Zeppelin!
But who exactly is Condoleezza Rice? Where did she suddenly appear from and
what's with the daft name?
It could be argued that Dr Rice, Condi to her mates, really arrived on the
world stage when she succeeded another person with a daft name as US secretary
of state (how could we forget Colin Powell who, for some reason, people had to
refer to as Co-lin, rather than Col-in?).
The name Condoleezza is derived from the Italian musical expression
"Condolcezza", meaning "with sweetness".
Which some people might find ironic bearing in mind her, at times, stern and
sour-faced demeanour, not to mention the fact that her opponents see her as a
callous and cold-hearted warmonger who believes in dropping bombs on countries
first and asking questions later.
But to understand anyone, you have to go back to where they came from. The
daughter of a preacher man, Rice, 51, came from Birmingham, Alabama and was the
only child of Angelena Rice, a music teacher, and the Reverend John Wesley Rice
Junior.
She grew up in the days of strict racial segregation and has often said she
had to be "twice as good" as non-minorities to get on in life. And yet the
racism she encountered was such a part of everyday life, she says she hardly
noticed it.






Her world was rocked, however, when, as an eight-year-old, she felt the floor
shake in her father's church. Two blocks away, a Ku Klux Klan bomb had exploded
at a Baptist church killing four young black girls, including a schoolmate.
By this time, Rice could already be considered a remarkable child, due to her
determination and dedication to succeed.
Despite the difficulties, expectations were high and she has since said: "My
parents had me convinced that, well, you may not be able to have a hamburger at
Woolworth's but you can be president of the United States."
Taught to play the piano by her mother from the age of three, Rice joined the
church choir at four and became a fluent reader of music at five. She would get
up at 4.30am (which she still does, to embark on her daily fitness regime) and
then start practicing her music.
Her family moved to Denver in 1967, when she was 12, and, by the time she was
15, Rice was regarded as one of America's brightest teens and enrolled at the
University of Denver, where she graduated with a degree in political science,
aged just 19. A master's degree followed at 19 and a Ph.D at 26.
How clever is she? As a youngster she underwent psychological testing which
revealed she was a genius with an extraordinarily high IQ.
Bush's former national security advisor also speaks Russian, French, German
and Spanish - although her fluency in Russian was tested when a schoolgirl asked
her on Moscow Radio: "One day you will run for president?" Rice replied:
"President, da, da" - before quickly changing her answer to the more
intelligible "Nyet, nyet, nyet" ( "No, no, no").






Although the American football fanatic is said to have dated the then Denver
Broncos star Rick Upchurch while at university, US reporters have found evidence
of romantic relationships in her life to be thin on the ground.
Rice remains unmarried, although she was reported to have accidentally
referred to President George Bush as her "husband" at a Washington dinner party,
before quickly correcting herself.
Perhaps this isn't too surprising, as she spends so much time in her role as
his right-hand woman (a man like Bush, it has been argued, needs to have at
least one clever person by his side). Indeed, so personally close is she to Bush
that she spends almost every weekend with the president and his wife Laura at
Camp David.
And it is her closeness and allegiance to Bush over his controversial foreign
policy, allied to her enormous political power, which marks her as an obvious
target of anti-war campaigners, including the Merseyside Stop The War Coalition,
who are planning far-from-welcoming demonstrations for her visit to Liverpool
this weekend.
She has been one of his key supporters during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
and is thought to be a main creator of the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive action,
saying shortly before the war in Iraq: "The United States has always reserved
the right to try and diminish or to try to eliminate a threat before it is
attacked."
After Iraqi officials delivered their declaration regarding weapons of mass
destruction to UN inspectors in 2002 (a dossier which they claimed proved the
country possessed no illegal weapons), Rice wrote an editorial in the New York
Times headed Why We Know Iraq Is Lying.
And it was Rice who first used the term "outposts of tyranny" - a descendant
of the Bush phrase "axis of evil", used to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
But Rice's hard line went further - she identified six "outposts": Cuba,
Zimbabwe, Burma and Belarus, together with Iran and North Korea.
She may love to keep fit, look immaculate and add to her wardobe of designer
clobber (Armani and Oscar de la Renta, apparently), but I reckon I know why this
most driven and powerful of women is still single.
No offence, Condi, but I think it might have something to do with a certain
four-letter word ... FEAR.
Who's afraid of Condoleezza Rice? Millions of men, probably.
And I'm sure she scares plenty of women, too.









Why I'm bringing Condoleezza to visit your city
by the Rt Hon Jack Straw, MP




Dear Liverpool
LATER this week I will be coming to your city with US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Liverpool for hosting this high
profile visit and explain why I am bringing Secretary Rice to the area.
Secretary Rice is without doubt one of the most powerful people in the world.
She is also a human being, the product of her race, her religion, her
background.
That came home to me - bang between the eyes - when she and I were answering
questions at her first overseas press conference after becoming US Secretary of
State, my equivalent in the US government, in January last year.
We were in the Foreign Office, answering questions about foreign policy. One
was about the apparently slow pace of change towards democracy in Iraq (and
elsewhere in the Middle East).
Secretary Rice was going through an answer about the difficulties of
establishing democracy. Then suddenly there was a brief pause, a distinctly
different tone of voice, as she said: "Listen. When the Founding Fathers [of the
United States] said: "We, the people", they didn't mean me."
It was a striking moment. In a millisecond, we had moved from Condoleezza Rice
the world states-person to Condoleezza Rice the human being.
She is brilliant, a former head of a world-class university (Stanford,
California) in her early forties, speaks fluent Russian, writes books, plays the
piano to concert standards - the works.






But Condoleezza Rice is also black. And if you were black, and brought up in
Alabama - at the time one of the most racist states - and your father and his
pals had to take their shotguns to man vigilante barricades to prevent the
houses being torched by racist thugs in league with an equally racist police;
and then one of your friends is one of four little girls who gets murdered by
more racist thugs who blow up her Sunday school, then you don't forget you are
black, nor that blacks in America had no rights to speak of, and certainly not
the right to vote, not just when America was founded in 1782 but in the latter
half of the 20th century.
Above all, you never forget that in the land of the free your
great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers were slaves.
I was so moved by Secretary Rice's story that she invited me to see her home
town.
Huge new hi-tech investment, everyone with the right to vote, a multi-racial
council, and police chief who is a black woman.
So when I invited Secretary Rice back to the UK for a return visit, there was
no debate in my mind as to the two places she should come to - Blackburn and
Liverpool..
My Blackburn constituency used to be the weaving centre of the world, shipping
in cotton picked by slaves in the deep south of the USA and then exporting the
finished product around the world. And at the heart of this trade, of these
connections, was Liverpool. A world class city with an extraordinary past - a
testament both to the best of human endeavour in its imagination, its fine
buildings, the courage of its sailors, and the worst, in its reliance too on the
slave trade: and like Birmingham, Alabama, a big city enjoying a renaissance.
It is the final point which was central to my decision. Liverpool's past will
be a big part of our visit, as will the city's cultural diversity. But they do
not fully explain why I decided to bring Secretary Rice to the city.
What also struck me was the hope of the future. Out of the decline of what had
been a great industrial past has come a new era of hope. When we visit the
Albert Dock we will see a symbol of Liverpool's renaissance.
I am delighted that through the visit the eyes of the world will be on
Liverpool and that your success story will be seen by so many more people.
I appreciate that there are some in Liverpool who were opposed to the Iraq war
and other issues and who want to make their feelings known during our visit.
Peaceful protest is a proper part of democracy. I fully respect the views of
those with whom I may disagree.
The visit will have many benefits for the UK as a whole. But just as
importantly, I am sure our visit will bring many benefits for Liverpool.
We will be followed by the world's media, so it is certainly a great chance to
showcase your city ahead of what promises to be an exciting European Capital of
Culture year in 2008.
And I know that the city's business leaders see the visit as a golden
opportunity to highlight the area as an attractive destination for investment.
So, I wanted to thank you in advance for your hospitality. If there is one
thing above all that Liverpool is known for, it is for the warmth of its
welcome. I'm looking forward to experiencing it again.
Best wishes,
the Rt Hon Jack Straw, MP






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