Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama attempts diplomacy with turkey)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discovered as much Friday as she fielded questions about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front during a town hall-style gathering in Manila.

MILF has the same acronym as an obscene phrase that gained currency in recent years. It was used in a Saturday Night Live political sketch last year in which characters playing Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton criticized sexism in the U.S. election campaign.

Questioned repeatedly about peace efforts with the MILF in the southern Philippines, Clinton struggled with how to speak the acronym.

"I'm encouraged by what I hear about the progress in the peace efforts that are going on between the government and MILF," Clinton said, pronouncing it like a word -- the same way as the acronym for the obscene phrase.

Then she switched and adopted the local usage -- saying the letters individually.

Clinton said the time seemed ripe for a peace deal with the MILF, which has been fighting the Manila government for nearly 30 years.

She urged both sides to work to clinch an agreement while the timing is right, noting how Middle East peace efforts had been idle for years after her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, failed to secure a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians in the late 1990s.

"If people are in the mood and willing to make peace," she said, "do not sleep, do not rest until you finally get there."

Other tidbits from an hour of fielding questions at the town hall session at a Manila university:

Clinton had a crush on singer Fabian as a girl and headed a Fabian fan club.

Hillary and Bill Clinton try to schedule time for themselves when not occupied with their busy schedules.

"We like to take long walks, we like to go to the movies, we like to go out to dinner, we like to catch up on our sleep," she said.

And will daughter Chelsea follow her parents into politics?

"I don't think so," the secretary of state said. "I think she has really carved out her own life and her own privacy."

"I think she respects and appreciates the political world but has no plans for being part of it at this time in her life."

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Photo credit: Reuters/Cheryl Ravelo (Clinton arrives at a Manila university for a televised town hall-style meeting; Clinton fields questions at the session)

The site is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, which oversees the U.S. military cemeteries in Normandy and other locations.
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Erik de Castro (Clinton at Manila American Cemetery ceremony)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got an enthusiastic welcome on arrival in the capital Manila Thursday after a week of visits that included stops in Berlin and Singapore.

Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo called her "the most popular foreign secretary the world over."

"The Filipinos love her," he told a news conference. "I told her that there are Hillary fans and fanatics here."

To demonstrate the point, she was greeted by a couple thousand cheering school students when she visited Malanday High School in suburban Marikina.

The school was inundated during massive flooding in September that left the first floor of the multi-story building under water.

The school has been receiving U.S. aid to help it get back on its feet, including desks, fans and some 50,000 books. Clinton brought with her a pledge of another $5.2 million in flood relief for the Philippines, which has been hit in quick succession by Tropical Storm Ketsana, Typhoon Parma and Typhoon Mirinae.

The U.S. secretary of state seemed invigorated by the excited school kids and the warm welcome.

She told the crowd she'd learned a new word as she toured some of the classrooms, but then had to bring a girl up to the podium to help her pronounce it.

After a moment's whispered consultation with the youngster, Clinton turned back to the microphone and said "mabuhay!"

The popular Tagalog greeting, meaning "long live," is  roughly the English equivalent of "live long and prosper."

Clinton later received the Sikatuna award with the rank of Datu from Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The award is given by the Manila government to foreign diplomats or officials who have worked to improve ties with the Philippines.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Erik de Castro (Clinton shakes hands at Malanday High School in suburban Marikina; Clinton learns the word "mabuhay!")

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, Berliners have erected a wall of giant painted dominoes.

During the evening's festivities the domino wall will be toppled along several blocks near Brandenburg Gate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to visit the domino sponsored by the U.S. Embassy.

She met with the east Berlin school students and teachers who designed and painted the giant block and pronounced it "very impressive."

The scene on the domino shows the back of a popular East German car traveling through a wall from darkness into light. Overhead are a rainbow and a white dove of peace.

Clinton said she liked "the light breaking through the dark."

"Let's do a picture with everybody in front of it, on both sides. I don't want to cover it up," she said.

"Thank you so very much for doing this and for coming out to see me," Clinton told the youths. "Good job. Good job."

The scene on the other side of the domino?

The back of a nude angel ascending toward heavenly light, all discreetly hidden by a U.S. Embassy sign during Clinton's appearance.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski (Clinton poses with students in front of U.S.-sponsored domino)

Her remarks came as thousands of people crowded into the city on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

“We should look to the examples of the generations who brought us successfully through the 20th century and once again together chart a clear and common course to safeguard our people and our planet, defeat violent extremists and prevent nuclear proliferation,” Clinton said.

“We need to form an even stronger partnership to bring down the walls of the 21st century and to confront those who hide behind them,” Clinton said, like suicide bombers and those who attack girls for trying to go to school.

“In place of these new walls, we must renew the trans-Atlantic alliance as a cornerstone of a global architecture of cooperation,” she said.

Clinton’s remarks come as President Barack Obama is facing a difficult decision on whether to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan.

The administration has had difficulty convincing European allies to shoulder a bigger role in the conflict, and analysts said Clinton's call for renewed commitment was not likely to change that.

“Facing difficult pressures on Afghanistan, the Obama administration marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by revving up a rhetorical trope that President Bush favored –- drawing a parallel between the Cold War and the fight against radical Islamist terrorism,” said Tom Carothers, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Europeans and others never found it very convincing under Bush,” he added. “I suspect they won’t like it much better now.”

The awards ceremony, held by the Atlantic Council, honored the citizens of several countries involved in the Cold War struggle for freedom, from the United States and Germany to Poland and the former Czechoslovakia.

U.S. and European officials reminisced about the collapse of the Iron Curtain on Nov. 9, 1989. The events that led to the collapse of communism were not inevitable, they said, and did not lead to the conflict-free world that many people predicted.

“Challenges are endless,” said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who introduced Clinton. “Every solution of one problem is an admission ticket to another problem.”

Kissinger, who served Republican President Richard Nixon, said a journalist had asked him to write a thousand-word assessment of Democrat Clinton.

“I said, ‘What do I say after the first three words?” Kissinger said.

“He said, ‘What are those three words?’”

“I said, ‘I like Hillary.'"

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach (Clinton and Kissinger at Atlantic Council Freedom's Challenge awards ceremony in Berlin)

Now some of the folks that made that rock 'n' roll music are blasting back.

Trent Reznor, Tom Morello, Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, Rosanne Cash, Bonnie Raitt, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and other musicians have joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo.

The newly formed campaign, led by retired Lieutenant General Robert Gard and retired Brigadier General John Johns among others, is increasing pressure on the Obama administration to move ahead with the president's pledge to close the prison.

"Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured," Morello said in a statement released by the campaign, charging that some inmates had been subjected to loud music for 72 hours in a row.

"Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney's idea of America, but it's not mine," he added. "The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me -- we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now."

Thomas Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said his group has obtained at least 20 declassified documents that refer to blasting Guantanamo detainees in an effort to "create futility" and encourage them to talk.

Gard, a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said "the torture that went on there is disgraceful and puts our troops at risk every day."

"Guantanamo will remain al Qaeda's biggest recruitment tool unless it's shut down," he added. "I sympathize for the musicians whose music was used without their knowledge as part of the Bush administration's misguided policies."

The musicians joined the campaign just a day after former Vice President Dick Cheney gave a spirited defense of U.S. interrogation methods during a speech to the Center for Security Policy.

"To call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program's legal underpinnings and safeguards," Cheney said. "Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well."

He said alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would not have begun giving U.S. interrogators useful intelligence against al Qaeda had he not been subjected to the harsh techniques.

"To completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme," Cheney said. "In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed."

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Photo credit: Reuters/Deborah Gembara (Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay take part in morning prayers); Reuters/Joshua Roberts (Cheney speaks at American Enterprise Institute in May)

The coverage was fairly straight, but there was a certain glee about the way the story made its way to the top spot in most newspapers.

"Pay slashed at bailout firms," the Wall Street Journal headlined its story.

"U.S. will order pay cuts at firms with bailout aid," The New York Times  said.

"Obama 'pay tsar' to order deep cuts," the Financial Times reported.

The networks were less charitable. CBS's "The Early Show" flashed the headline "Big cuts for big shots" during its report, while ABC's "Good Morning America" flashed the headline "Payback: Government to limit exec. salaries."

According to unnamed Obama administration officials cited in most of the stories, the president's adviser on executive compensation, Ken Feinberg, will soon recommend a plan that would cut overall compensation in half and would slash cash salary payouts by an average 90 percent.

The plan would apply to those big banks and auto firms that received large amounts of bailout money from the federal government.

The bailout was extremely controversial with the public and triggered public anger after it was revealed that employees at some of the firms were continuing to draw multi-million dollar salaries and huge bonuses.

Under Feinberg's plan top earners at AIG's financial products unit, which was blamed for risky bets that threatened the stability of the insurer, would not get more than $200,000 in individual pay.

The unit became a symbol of Wall Street insensitivity after AIG decided to pay employees in the unit $165 million in retention bonuses despite having taken $180 billion in taxpayer funding.

Critics of the bailout welcomed Feinberg's plan to crack down on soaring executive pay.

"The public has a lot of questions about whether or not these dollars that were given to banks were wasted and whether or not they were squandered on bonuses and, you know, high executive compensation," Ryan Alexander of Taxpayers for Common Sense told CBS News.

But others expressed concern that government decisions to hold down pay could lead to an exodus of top talent from the firms.

"Now that politicians have gotten the taste for trying to control the pay at some firms, what's to stop them from imposing those rules on everyone," Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at Cato Institute, told CBS.

He told ABC's "Good Morning America" the decision could lead to top positions at the companies being occupied by "second rate people" and reduce the dynamism of the U.S. economy.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford (Protest in New York's Times Square last year over government bailout of financial industry)

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would decide whether federal judges have the power to order the release of the ethnic Uighur prisoners into the United States.

The White House and Congress argue the inmates have never been admitted into the United States under U.S. immigration laws, and judges should not be making those sorts of decisions.

To underscore the point, the U.S. Congress Tuesday approved a spending bill that includes a measure effectively prohibiting Guantanamo prisoners from being released into the United States. The measure would admit them only to face trial.

President Barack Obama has pledged to close Guantanamo by Jan. 22, 2010, but meeting that goal has become increasingly difficult.

Few countries are willing to accept any of the approximately 220 inmates, and the United States continues to debate what to do with them.

The 13 Uighurs -- a Turkic Muslim ethnic group from Xinjiang in western China -- have been cleared of being suspected terrorists by U.S. authorities.

Many of them had traveled to Afghanistan for weapons training in order to fight the Chinese government before Sept. 11, 2001, and fled to Pakistan after the outbreak of hostilities.

They were captured and handed over to U.S. custody and have been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly eight years.

Five of the original group of 22 Uighurs were transferred to Albania two years ago. Four more were sent to Bermuda in June.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the Supreme Court in a letter Sept. 23 that the south Pacific island of Palau had agreed to accept 12 of the remaining 13 Uighurs.

But only six of the 12 have agreed to resettle there.

Meanwhile, pressure is increasing on the White House to close Guantanamo.

Tom Andrews, a former Democratic congressman from Maine, announced the launch Tuesday of the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo.

He was joined by retired Lieutenant General Robert Gard and retired Brigadier General John Johns.

Attacks on closing the prison are "pure politics at its worst," Andrews said.

The campaign unveiled a new advertisement to air on cable television and the Internet.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Deborah Gembara (View inside common area of medium security prison at Guantanamo; guard tower at Camp X-Ray detention facility)

In the latest salvo, President Obama's senior political adviser David Axelrod told ABC's "This Week" that Fox's programming "is not really news" but "pushing a point of view."

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel echoed those remarks on CNN's "State of the Union" program Sunday, saying Fox "is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

The White House began pushing back against Fox's coverage of the Obama administration a week ago after the president won the Nobel Peace Prize.

White House communications director Anita Dunn noted that conservatives who were "rejoicing" over Obama's failure to bring home the Olympics seemed "quite bitter" about the Nobel prize.

"Fox News often operates almost as either as the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party," she said.

"What I think is ... fair to say about Fox, and certainly it's the way we view it, is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party," Dunn said.

Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush's political adviser, told "Fox News Sunday" the White House was dominated by "Chicago-style politics."

"If you don't like the questions that are being asked by Major Garrett or Wendell Goler or Chris Wallace, then you try and demonize Fox News," Rove said.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch saw a bright side to the White House attacks.

"There were some strong remarks coming out of the White House about one or two of the commentators on Fox News," Murdoch told an annual meeting of News Corp. shareholders. "And all I can tell you is that it's tremendously increased their ratings."

Despite all the back and forth between the two sides, the White House says Obama will accept interviews with the network.

"We're going to appear on their shows," Axelrod told ABC. "We're going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view."

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama with Emanuel and Axelrod at a meeting in Turkey in April)