Update 1: The SFRC website has updated its schedule up to January 15 but none of the speeches from the hearing today has yet been posted online. Jason Horowitz of The New York Observer has a copy of her prepared statement and has posted it here. Enjoy!
The new Foreign Policy blog The Cable has a 79-page sneak preview of HRC’s answers to incoming SFRC chairman John Kerry’s prepared questions. There are 136 prepared questions touching on just about all the hot topics in foreign affairs. Although the answers she provided were brief, a few would be of immediate interest to FS folks. Question 62 is on USAID, Q68 on budget issues, Q69 on the existing staffing shortfalls and Q77 on overseas pay gap where HRC’s written response says that rectifying it will “indeed be a high priority for me.”
Senator Kerry has the US Embassy Baghdad staffing down as Q26.
Senator Clinton will be at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) this morning for her nomination hearing. Her prepared testimony is not yet available has not yet been posted online as of this writing.
Consul-At-Arms on the email storm that recently hit the State Department:
A lot of knuckleheads can’t seem to resist hitting “reply-all” to an e-mail whose addressees run to six or seven pages, and those aren’t individual addressees, they’re distribution lists!
It’s still happening as people seem to be returning from leave and finding their own in-boxes clogged and cluttered with this nonsense. The responses tend to say stuff like “take me off this address list” or “stop hitting reply-all!” (which I find pretty funny in a dopey sort of way) or even one “I’m important, stop wasting my time” from a certain unnamed ambassador.
Steve at Dead Men Working also has his take on the same storm with the cyber-security/DS angle here.
I have to say I like the haiku contributed from SA-27:
“STATE workers helpless
Captive to this email worm
Tech guys please save us“
I won’t add another haiku but I’ll contribute a couple of tanka poems (ancient cousin of the haiku) to mark this episode. Tanka poems are short, lyrical poetry structured in 31 syllables arranged in groups of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7, syllables, in a two-part form with the first part in 5, 7, 5, and the second part in 7 and 7.
Email Surge
Roaring storm crashes
“Reply to all” swells and floods
Mail surge? Whatisit?
Stop wasting my time, I am
Ambassador – important!
What if this was a soft cyber-attack generated by malicious individuals or frenemies of the United States? Sorry, I’m not a tech person but I have a healthy gene of paranoia. In any case, in honor of the unspecified disciplinary actions for all those who could not find their “delete” buttons next time:
Save Us
Evil email worm
Takes State’s fine workers hostage
Distress, they need help.
Disciplinary actions
In the works, people watch out!
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