Here is a good recap of what has happened during the past week from the American Red Cross:

It is hard to put into words the depth of destruction that has occurred in these areas. Below are a few videos to give you an idea of what has happened in these countries. These are not easy to watch, and tragically, many lives have been lost. But it is important for us to know what has happened, and how we can help.

A brief report from the AP on American Samoa and Samoa follows here:

A major earthquake hit Sumatra:

And this is a glimpse into what has happened in the Philippines:

There are many, many more videos available online at Youtube.com, if you wish to see more.

If you want to help, donations can be made to the American Red Cross Donations are also being accepted by Oxfam America, and other worthy organizations.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those in these areas, for their safety, for those who have been lost, and those who are missing. My prayers also go to all of those brave souls who rush in to help in these situations. Truly, they are heroes…

Now to the article in Washington Post, “Clinton Puts Spotlight On Women’s Issues.” May I just say, before I share the article with you, that she is doing EXACTLY what she said she would do. I’m just sayin’ – she is remaining true to her principles and what she considers to be important. Unlike SOME people I could name. About time some in the MSM got the memo, but WaPo did:

She talked chickens with female farmers in Kenya. She listened to the excruciating stories of rape victims in war-torn eastern Congo. And in South Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a housing project built by poor women, where she danced with a choir singing “Heel-a-ree! Heel-a-ree!”

Clinton’s just-concluded 11-day trip to Africa has sent the clearest signal yet that she intends to make women’s rights one of her signature issues and a higher priority than ever before in American diplomacy.

She plans to press governments on abuses of women’s rights and make women more central in U.S. aid programs.

But her efforts go beyond the marble halls of government and show how she is redefining the role of secretary of state. Her trips are packed with town hall meetings and visits to micro-credit projects and women’s dinners. Ever the politician, she is using her star power to boost women who could be her allies.

“It’s just a constant effort to elevate people who, in their societies, may not even be known by their own leaders,” Clinton said in an interview. “My coming gives them a platform, which then gives us the chance to try and change the priorities of the governments.”

Wow. That is quite a statement. I am glad she is doing this work abroad, for the marginalized and oppressed. Oh, how I wish she was doing it as the President (and we know she would have kept her word then, too).

But, things don’t always run smoothly, as we know:

Clinton’s agenda faces numerous obstacles. The U.S. aid system is a dysfunctional jumble of programs. Some critics may question why she is focusing on women’s rights instead of terrorism or nuclear proliferation. And improving the lot of women in such places as Congo is complicated by deeply rooted social problems.

“It’s great she’s mentioning the issue,” said Brett Schaefer, an Africa scholar at the Heritage Foundation. “As to whether her bringing it up will substantially improve the situation or treatment of women in Africa, frankly I doubt it.”

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said that Clinton has to tread carefully in socially conservative regions, particularly those where the U.S. military is at war. “You might be right, in the narrow sense of women in that country or region need to be empowered, but you’re saying something inimical to other U.S. interests,” he said.

Despite Clinton’s efforts to spotlight women’s issues, it was her own angry response to what she perceived as a sexist question at a town hall meeting in Congo that dominated American television coverage of her Africa trip. A student had asked for former president Bill Clinton’s opinion on a local political issue — “through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton.” Snapped Hillary Clinton: “My husband is not the secretary of state. I am.”

Clinton is not the first female secretary of state, but neither of her predecessors had her impact abroad as a pop feminist icon. On nearly every foreign trip, she has met with women — South Korean students, Israeli entrepreneurs, Iraqi war widows, Chinese civic activists. Clinton mentioned “women” or “woman” at least 450 times in public comments in her first five months in the position, twice as often as her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

And that is why it still shocks me that women who consider themselves feminists, and womens organizations, did not wholeheartedly throw their support behind Hillary Clinton, rather going for the young, inexperienced man. Clinton is not new to this issue, and doesn’t just pay lip service to it, either:

Clinton’s interest in global women’s issues is deeply personal, a mission she adopted as first lady after the stinging defeat of her health-care reform effort in 1994. For months, she kept a low profile. Then, in September 1995, she addressed the U.N. women’s conference in Beijing, strongly denouncing abuses of women’s rights. Delegates jumped to their feet in applause.

“It was a transformational moment for her,” said Melanne Verveer, who has worked closely with Clinton since her White House days.

Clinton began traveling the world, highlighting women’s issues. She gradually built a network of female activists, politicians and entrepreneurs, especially through a group she helped found, Vital Voices, that has trained more than 7,000 emerging leaders worldwide. She developed a following among middle-class women in male-dominated countries who devoured her autobiography and eagerly watched her presidential run.

“She might not be having the same restrictions as we have, but she has had restrictions — and she’s moving on. That’s a symbol to us,” said Tara Fela-Durotoye, a businesswoman in Abuja, Nigeria.

Clinton’s legacy is evident in such places as the Victoria Mxenge housing development outside Cape Town, South Africa, a dusty sprawl of small, pastel-colored homes she championed as first lady. When her bus rolled into the female-run project during her trip, a joyful commotion broke out. Women in purple and yellow gowns lined the streets, waving wildly.

Huh. How does this match with the rhetoric spewed by Obama about Hillary Clinton and her work abroad? Does the expression, “Liar, liar, pants on fire” mean anything to you? And yet, people bought his words, hook, line, and sinker. I wonder how they’re feeling now, especially when they read what the effects of her work are, discernible, and quantifiable:

A youth choir swayed outside a community center decorated with photos of Clinton on her previous visits to the project, which has grown to 50,000 houses. Clinton vowed in a major policy address last month to make women the focus of U.S. assistance programs. The idea is applauded by development experts, who have found that investing in girls’ education, maternal health and women’s micro-finance provides a powerful boost to Third World families.

Ritu Sharma, president of the anti-poverty group Women Thrive Worldwide, said she already sees the results of Clinton’s efforts in the bureaucracy. When Sharma’s staff recently attended a meeting about a new agricultural aid program, she said, one State Department official joked, “We have to integrate women — or we’re going to be fired.”

Still, Sharma questioned whether the program would succeed in reaching poor women, especially given the weaknesses in U.S. foreign assistance.

“There’s a lot of healthy skepticism about ‘Will it really happen?’ ” she said.

In a sign of the priority she gives to the issue, Clinton has appointed her close friend Verveer as the State Department’s first global ambassador for women’s affairs.

“She will permeate the State Department, as I want her to, with what we should be doing about empowering and focusing on women across the board,” Clinton said.

This reminds me – do you remember that Obama has a school named after him in Kenya? You know, the one to which he has given not one thin dime? Uh, yeah. Who walks the walk here? Clearly, it’s Hillary:

One issue Verveer has been concerned about is violence against women, particularly the stunningly high number of rapes in eastern Congo. Last week, Clinton, Verveer and the delegation boarded U.N. planes to visit the remote, impoverished region and meet with rape victims. Clinton pressed the Congolese president to prosecute offenders and offered $17 million in new assistance for victims.

“Raising issues like the ones I’ve been raising on this trip to get governments to focus on them, to see they’re not sidelined or subsidiary issues, but that the U.S. government at the highest levels cares about them, is important,” she said. “It changes the dynamic within governments.”

Clinton’s efforts are being reinforced by a White House women’s council and a Congress with a growing number of powerful female members. One sign of that: Aid dedicated to programs for Afghan women and girls increased about threefold this year, to $250 million, because of lawmakers such as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who was recently named head of the first Senate subcommittee on global women’s issues, and Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations.

It is striking how much time Clinton dedicates to women’s events on her trips, even ones that receive little public attention. In South Africa, a clearly delighted Clinton spent 90 minutes at the housing project, twice as long as she met with South Africa’s president. “It feeds my heart,” she explained. “Which is really critical to me personally since a lot of what I do as secretary of state is very formalistic. It’s meetings with other officials.”

“It is striking how much time Clinton dedicates to women’s events on her trips, even ones that receive little public attention.” Because she doesn’t do it for the publicity, she does it because it is the RIGHT thing to do!! That is another big, huge, difference between Hillary Clinton and other politicians. She does a LOT of things about which people don’t know (as in, not publicized in the media) because she actually, genuinely cares about people.
And that is why she will always be my hero – because she cares, because she SHOWS she cares, and because she brings action to her words. I think we could use a whole lot more of that from our elected officials, don’t you?

If you wish to see where Secretary Clinton went, and what she did, click on this link: Secretary of State Clinton’s Africa Travels – Interactive Map

As she circles the globe in coming years, making the case for women’s empowerment, starting with their basic right to be taken seriously, Clinton really has her work cut out for her. And it isn’t just because the situation of women around the world is so dire, and the ocean of problems confronting them — maternal mortality, sex trafficking, domestic abuse, malnourishment, lack of education, lack of adequate medical care, just for starters — is so wide and so deep. And it isn’t just that her historic mandate — to equally empower the other half of the world’s population, to chip away at the forces “devaluing women,” in the words of Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s new ambassador at large for global women’s issues — is so huge and vague and seemingly overwhelming. It’s also because the tide of trivialization that washes over all things “Hillary” is just so powerful. That tide threatens to drown out anything of substance Clinton might attempt for a population whose problems have long been obscured in the androcentric world of diplomacy. And that’s a huge pity.

Ms. Warner is correct. And shame on the media for their wish to trivialize Secretary Clinton’s work.

This is not about ego or elevating Hillary. This is about decency. The media needs to relearn professionalism, highlighting issues that are of vital interest to our nation and the world. I never cease to be both incensed and amazed that the pundit class and venal newscasters aren’t ashamed to focus on fluff and junk politics. We need to draw attention to important concerns, as Ms. Warner painfully notes below:

This was supposed to be the trip that would show exactly how Hillary Rodham Clinton would make good on her pledge, at her confirmation hearing for secretary of state, to make women’s issues “central” to U.S. foreign policy, not “adjunct or auxiliary or in any way lesser.”

There could have been no more dramatic setting: Overruling the security fears of her aides, she traveled to eastern Congo, where hundreds of thousands of women have been raped over the past decade. She visited a refugee camp and met with one woman who was gang-raped while eight months pregnant; she heard of another who’d been sexually assaulted with a rifle. She was told of babies cut from their mothers’ bodies with razors. She spoke of “evil in its basest form.” She promised $17 million to fight sexual violence.

And back home, all anyone could talk about was Bill.

Had he upstaged her with his trip to North Korea? Had he dogged her, in absentia, all the way to Kinshasa, where a university student, wondering about “Mr. Clinton’s” views, set her off, and set the world cluck-clucking, once again, about her marriage, her temperament, even her hair?

When this last paragraph is all the media can talk about, they send a huge message:

Sexism and misogyny are alive and well.

They also telegraph the fact that they could give a damn about focusing on the atrocities against women in the Congo that left Secretary Clinton so shaken. She has been fighting for the rights of women’s empowerment, education and equality here and around the world long before it was fashionable. When women have greater access to education, health care and jobs, the economy thrives, too. This is not just about a “female agenda.” This is something that affects all of us. As Ms. Warner notes:

This could be a moment for America to redeem itself as far as the world’s women are concerned. Our recent track record, after all, is pretty dim. The Bush administration sent anti-feminists to Iraq to train that country’s women in participatory democracy. We pulled our financing from the United Nations Population Fund and imposed a global gag rule barring women’s health organizations that merely talked about abortion from receiving U.S. funds. We never ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a pretty base-level human rights treaty, because of worries by black helicopter types that American sovereignty would be compromised. Our lack of paid maternity leave made us something of a world joke. (snip)

…a peculiarly gendered form of trivializing scorn still tags our secretary of state. Just two weeks ago, The Washington Post had to remove from its Web site an ostensibly humorous video sketch by two of its prominent political journalists that juxtaposed a picture of Clinton’s face with a bottle of derogatorily named beer. This sort of thing bodes badly for the country’s ability to treat her — and the issues she most passionately champions — with appropriate respect.

In 2008, we clearly saw the media is incapable of treating this woman with appropriate respect. It is beyond shameful because by constantly shooting the messenger, we diminish the possibility of citizens getting more involved in these vital causes. Her message is blunted by a media blackout about all things substantial in favor of smear and tabloid journalism.

“We have our own work to do at home,” Verveer told me. “We trivialize the importance too often of these issues: the ‘women’s issue’ — you put it in quotes, that little category over there, the box you check. What we have to do is realize these are the issues; if we want societies to prosper and if we want our own security, we have to raise the status of women.”

Women’s empowerment won’t be delivered at the end of a gun or through economic sanctions or even overt criticism, if it cuts into accepted cultural practices. This is messy stuff; some of our most sensitive allies have horrific records on women’s rights. Programs that show success tend to be slow-moving and incremental. Can all this complexity attract — much less sustain — the attention of the public?

Maybe — if we stop viewing everything Clinton does as entertainment.

The UK Independent’s article today, Hillary Wins Hearts As She Concludes Africa Tour offers more by way of real news and real progress made as a result of Hillary’s trip. Certainly something the American media was loathe to cover. Please be sure to read the article.

As the media has clearly demonstrated its bias time and time again, it seems the fourth estate has long abdicated its responsibility for fair or substantive reporting. And we are losing out in the bargain.

As she has done for so many years, Hillary Clinton speaks out for, and stands with, women and children, calling out those who have treated them with such brutality, with such inhumanity. She calls out for justice for these women and children, and for their torturers to receive their comeuppance.

Sadly, inhumanity is not limited to how people treat other people, but the inhumane ways we treat animals, as well. In this particular case, I am referring to horses. And you know I am nuts about horses, have been my entire life. I simply cannot begin to fathom how anyone could do this, and I am thankful that I cannot fathom it.

And that is your warning. The next video is very, very difficult to watch. If you have a weak stomach, you may think twice about watching it:

These two may not seem related, but I think they are. They both speak to how capable people are of despicable acts. In terms of the horses, it is about greed, plain and simple. In terms of the brutal rapes of women and children in DRC by people in the military, no less, it is to control and terrorize civilians, as well as for greed and power.

And in both cases, women and children, as well as the horses, are pawns in someone’s game, used and abused to suit someone’s needs other than their own, with no one to help them. Both the women and children, as well as the horses, are innocent victims of someone’s brutality, of their inhumanity.

Thank HEAVENS we have Secretary Clinton to speak up for women here and abroad, to work to end rape as a tool by those in power. How lucky we are to have someone like HER on our side, who is dedicated to eradicating violence against women. This is her lifelong quest thus far, and goddess knows, I pray she is successful.

As to the horses, I am not a violent person. I have never owned a gun in my life. Frankly, I am scared to death of them though I did have my brother teach me how to handle one properly simply because I think it is important to know how to handle one safely. You just never know when you might come across one these days.
ike I said, I am scared of them.

That being said, I certainly can relate to thinking of horses as beloved family members. Heck, I’d rather hang out with my horse any day than some members of my blood family (three of whom are certified Obots). And I can certainly understand wanting to take action to protect these creatures who cannot protect themselves. Think of it – these horses see people as their caregivers, so naturally, if a person is coming to them, they aren’t going to know the person bears ill intent toward them. How could they know? And that innocence, that trust, literally leads them to slaughter.

I’m sorry – hang on – talk amongst yourselves – okay. Whew.

I know this is nothing new, the manner by which people can treat other people, and animals (Michael Vick is certainly a case in point for the latter after his rampant dog abuse – and he is already out of prison, of course). But it doesn’t mean that I have to accept that this is just how it is. No, not at all.

I hope you won’t either. Thank Secretary Clinton for her work (heck, you can even text or Twitter her). Join an organization like People Helping Horses, which takes in abused and rescued horses, restoring them to health, then allowing them to be adopted by responsible horse owners. Speak up, speak out. We CAN make a difference. We have to make a difference…

– calling the vetting process for Obama administration nominees “ridiculous” and “a nightmare.”

At a question-and-answer session with staff from the U.S. Agency for International Development, a woman asked her when the agency would be getting a new administrator and “why it’s taking so long.”

“Let me say it’s not for lack of trying,” Clinton replied. “The process — the clearance and vetting process — is a nightmare,” she told the staff. “It takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words.”

The secretary said she “pushed very hard last week, when I knew I was coming here, to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and somebody will be nominated shortly.” But, she said, “the message came back, ‘We’re not ready.’”

Wow. So everyone who wants to work for the Obama Administration has to submit to a colonoscopy. Hillary certainly did. Oh, oops. Sorry. My bad. I guess. I mean. Not exactly everyone. I don’t think the Commander in Chief has ever submitted to, nor could he pass, his own vetting process. And Timmy “Turbo Tax” Geithner clearly would have failed, too, according to the criteria of the White House, except for the fact that our President made a big case of saying Timmy was the only one who knew how to fix the economy.

So how’s that working out so far?

Hey, in Timmy’s case, maybe a strict vetting process would have been a good idea. What a shame he was not subject to the same scrutiny as prospects for the USAID position. As Secretary Clinton further states:

“Anyone who has gone through it or looked at this process will tell you that every administration it gets worse,” she added.

“Some very good people just didn’t want to be vetted,” she explained. “You have to hire lawyers, you have to hire accountants. I mean, it is ridiculous!”

Drawing laughs from the crowd, Clinton said, “And then here’s one of the questions you get asked: First of all, you have to remember everywhere you’ve lived since you were 18. And, beyond a certain age you can’t even remember when you were 18!”

One of her “all-time favorite questions,” she said, is, “Please tell us every foreign national you know.”

“I mean, some people who are of different ancestry, they’re a hyphenated American and they have family still living in other countries, finally said it’s ridiculous. I mean, I have lots of cousins I’ve never met. You’re going to ask me to put their names down so they can all be interviewed? That’s ridiculous!

“You’re sensing my frustration!” Clinton sighed.

Now I know that news media is always looking for any sensational headline it can squeeze out to put Clinton and Obama at odds, but really this does seem to be undermining of her efforts? The combined one-two punch of the State Department and USAID is important and I am continually amazed, if not surprised, how this Administration keeps shooting itself in the foot, not able to focus on the big picture.
A job needs to get done here and this over burdensome vetting process is not helping, particularly when it is only selectively applied.

More do as I say, not as I do, I guess.

Watch or listen to the hearings live via C-Span.

Athough C-Span indicates the hearing begins at 10 a.m., the official U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing announcement states that the hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Surely, before the hearing begins, there will be gaggles of talking heads on all the cable news shows. DO report what you hear in the comments below. And share any news reports you read.

And, below the fold is the official U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing statement:

Senator Obama’s ill-conceived remarks likening small town Americans to embittered guns-and-God bigots have triggered a justifiable furor. Not only are the remarks insulting, but also factually incorrect.

As it happens, at the same event in San Francisco, Senator Obama made other remarks, equally startling, insulting our Foreign Service, Intelligence Officers, members of Congress who provide oversight, and friendly governments. Like his comments about small town Americans, Obama demonstrated a cavalier disregard for Americans who every day get up determined to make this a better country, whether running the general store in a small town, or representing our national security interests in a foreign country.

This is what Obama said:

Experience in Washington in not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags, ‘I’ve met leaders from 80 countries,’ I know what those trips are like. I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do a native dance. You meet with the C.I.A. station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that with the assistance of USAID has started something. And then you go.

Obama’s arrogance and contempt for career professionals in the national security community is palpable. His contempt reminds me of something Bill Kristol, the editor of the right wing war mongering Weekly Standard, said in a debate with me shortly after the launching of the Iraq War in 2003. We were in Midland, Texas, Laura Bush’s home town, and Kristol was asked if he had ever spent time in the Middle East region, to which he responded “I’ve always believed on the ground experience is highly overrated.”

That callous disregard for professional expertise and experience is, of course, one of the reasons we so badly miscalculated the consequences of our actions in Iraq. That arrogance is no less offensive coming from Senator Obama. And it is no less wrongheaded.

Foreign Service Officers, Intelligence operatives, and USAID development experts carry out the mandate of our government to represent the interests of the United States, to understand the dynamics in a foreign society so as to better advise our own government on policies to be pursued, and work to improve relations between the United States and the country in question. The world is a dangerous and precarious place, and there are serious issues that constantly need to be engaged with foreign governments. It requires hard work and diligence. We ignore or denigrate that work at our peril.

Senator Obama should know better. After all, in his professional capacity as Chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for Europe and NATO, he was in charge of ensuring Congressional oversight of the administration’s efforts to generate greater NATO support for operations in Afghanistan.

The fact that, by his own admission, he was too busy running for president to convene a single meeting of that subcommittee, should not absolve him of responsibility for acquiring at least some understanding of and respect for the work of career professionals who dedicate their lives to the service of their country.

I was one of those public servants for twenty-three years. My colleagues and I, whether in the Foreign Service, the Military or the Central Intelligence Agency, were and are motivated by a commitment to serve the values that have made this country free and secure, values that are enshrined in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In exercising our responsibilities, we were careful to ensure that members of Congress were kept abreast and made partners in our efforts to keep America safe. When they visited our posts, we went out of our way to provide substantive briefings, meetings with senior host government officials, trips to USAID projects so elected representatives could see for themselves what the United States was doing to assist citizens of the recipient country improve their lot in life. And yes, there were cultural events, to broaden the perspectives of the visitors and to show respect for the indigenous culture they were being introduced to. Our goal in this was to ensure that those who represent the American people in Congress better understood what we were doing because more knowledge leads to better decisions.

Judgment is not intuitive, as Senator Obama asserts; from my hard-won experience as a Foreign Service Officer, that judgment is learned.

Obama has made plain that he is not bothered in the slightest about belittling the work of Foreign Service and CIA Officers serving overseas, often in dangerous circumstances, any more than he is about denigrating Americans from small towns or blaming democrats in Congress, and especially Hillary Clinton, for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. It was not ironic that he made both comments at the same fundraiser in San Francisco. The contempt is consistent.

Trashing Congress, small town Americans, and career national security professionals, while befriending Jeremiah Wright and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers may be a winning electoral strategy. Who knows? Time will tell. But I suspect that many small town Americans are as offended as my professional colleagues and I by this display of contempt from one who seeks our consent to govern.

   [You can talk] to women — from the Philippines to Latin America to the Middle East — who can vote, own property, or go to school, because Hillary Clinton helped start a global women’s movement for women’s rights. [You can travel] to Africa and Asia, where Hillary Clinton visited countless remote villages to show how the poorest of the poor could become entrepreneurial and self-sufficient when given access to small loans. — Lissa Muscatine and Melanne Verveer, “Hillary’s Unprecedented Experience on the World Stage,” Huffington Post, Dec. 14, 2007

   In 1996, Hillary Clinton addressed the Council on Foreign Relations. Sidney Blumenthal recorded the event in his book about the Clinton presidency: “Hillary was generally associated with the health care program, but she had been traveling worldwide over the previous four years, promoting an agenda of women’s rights and economic development. … she derided the notion [that this was "ineffectual Lady Bountiful 'social work'"]. [O]ne of the most significant factors in the advancement economically of underdeveloped societies was the education of their women. She also talked about microeconomic programs of loans to poor women, which had become a special issue of hers and had proved especially successful. … The reception was overwhelmingly positive.”

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both tout their work for children and women. Yet there are differences in their concentration on the issues, particuarly women’s issues.

This weekend, I searched the “Issues” section of Obama’s official campaign site, but could not find the words “women” or “woman,” either as a main category or under the sub-section, “Strengthening Families and Communities.” Sen. Clinton’s main issues section features “A Champion for Women,” a full-page summary of her views on women’s issues. She also has a “sister” site, “Women for Hillary.”

Now, I am very certain that Barack Obama cares about women’s issues, which he’s mentioned often. On a site sub-page (Learn / AnswerCenter), I spotted a question, “How can I find out more about Senator Obama’s position on women’s issues?” I clicked, and that took me to “Women for Obama.” I didn’t spot a link to “Women for Obama” elsewhere, but didn’t check every sub-section.

In 30- and 60-second debate responses, Sen. Hillary Clinton often says that she has worked for decades for the rights of children and women. It is unfortunate she hasn’t the time to enumerate her considerable hard work — for 35 years. A cursory review of her Senate Web site statements, from 2001 to present, show her concentration on the plight of women and children in countries from Sudan to Northern Ireland to Afghanistan. Here are some of her earliest achievements:

• fresh out of law school, she was a staff attorney for the newly-founded Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts — she was a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children — and she conducted a post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center
• many years later, and for six years (1986-1992), she chaired the national Children’s Defense Fund
• she chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee for 10 years, and put mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size in place
• she established Arkansas’ Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth
• she co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children’s Defense Fund
• she chaired the Rural Health Advisory Committee, a presidential appointment
• she served on the board of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Legal Services (1988-1992)
• she chaired the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession — and much, much more

During her eight years as First Lady, she was instrumental in passing many laws and developing programs that addressed the wide-ranging needs of children and women, both in the United States and across the continents of the world:

Along with Senator Ted Kennedy, she was the major force behind the State Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage.

She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare. (”Hillary convened the first White House conference on breast cancer funding in 1993 with the National Breast Cancer Coalition” – Web site)

She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.

The First Lady worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome.

Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.

In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady.

As First Lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House Conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997), Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997), and Children and Adolescents (2000), and the first-ever White House Conferences on Teenagers (2000) and Philanthropy (1999).

Hillary Clinton traveled to over eighty countries during this time, breaking the mark for most-travelled First Lady held by Pat Nixon. In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued very forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in China itself. She was one of the most prominent international figures at the time to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan. She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.

The New York Times recorded the historic, challenging speech that Hillary Clinton gave in Beijing in 1995 in “HILLARY CLINTON, IN CHINA, DETAILS ABUSE OF WOMEN“:

Speaking more forcefully on human rights than any American dignitary has on Chinese soil, Hillary Rodham Clinton catalogued a devastating litany of abuse that has afflicted women around the world today and criticized China for seeking to limit free and open discussion of women’s issues here.

“It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights,” Mrs. Clinton told the Fourth World Conference on Women assembled here.

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls,” Mrs. Clinton said, or “when women and girls are sold into slavery or prostitution for human greed.

“It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small” she continued, or “when thousands of women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.”

While her comments concerned abuses that have taken place around the world — the burning of brides occurs in India for example, and rape has most recently been a tactic of war in Bosnia — her words took on a special resonance here in China, where the Administration has muted its public criticism of human rights abuses and is struggling to patch up frayed political relations.

China has been widely criticized for forcing women to be sterilized or have abortions as part of its policy of one child per family, and there are wide reports of female infanticide by parents who want a son. [...]

Mrs. Clinton’s gravity and directness seemed to please both Democratic and Republican members of the United States delegation here, and thus the speech may trump the political disputes that have plagued both Mrs. Clinton’s decision to travel here and the Administration’s approach to China.

She delivered her remarks after joining hundreds of delegates in a morning workshop on “women and health security.”

Addressing the full conference in the afternoon, Mrs. Clinton expanded on a theme that Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, raised on Monday when she told the delegates that violence against women thrives when there is a “crisis of silence and acquiescence.”

As Mrs. Clinton recited her litany from the podium, many delegates applauded, some cheered and others pounded the tables.

Continuing with references to domestic violence, genital mutilation, coercive abortions and sterilizations, Mrs. Clinton told the delegates from more than 180 countries, “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” …

Yes. Human rights ARE women’s rights, and women’s rights ARE human rights. And thank god for a woman who not only has spoken with courage to challenge age-old discrimination and cruel treatment of women but who has also actually put in place — through hard work and time-intensive negotiation and persuasion — programs that truly help women around the world:

There are so many news stories about her travel and her direct involvement in helping create economic opportunities for women worldwide and in ending discrimination. Here are but a very few, gleaned from the archives of the New York Times:

“ CLINTON IN VIETNAM: THE FIRST LADY; In Northern Vietnam Countryside, a Village Takes to Hillary Clinton,” November 18, 2000

Mrs. Clinton has long championed small loans as a way to lift rural women and their families out of poverty. … Le Thi Luong, 31, a mother of two, showed Mrs. Clinton her thriving business, making tofu and raising pigs, which she built using steadily bigger loans over six years.

At Mrs. Luong put her tofu machine through its paces, Mrs. Clinton gazed at her well-kept courtyard and house, which Mrs. Luong recently expanded and crowned with an impressive railing of stone pillars.

Small children, who had clambered onto the roof, peered through the railing at Mrs. Clinton, laughing in delight when she and her daughter, Chelsea, put on conical straw hats to ward off the morning sun.

”I’m very interested in what you’re doing,” Mrs. Clinton said to Mrs. Luong, while stealing glances at the children.

At a meeting of 160 women who take part in the loan program, [she spoke]. ”For many years I have believed in the power of these small loans,” Mrs. Clinton said, standing in a modest village temple as turquoise ceiling fans whirred over her head. ”You are really making a better future for yourselves, your families, your villages and your country.”

”We very much thank Mrs. Clinton for visiting us,” said Pham Thi Hoa, a neighbor of Mrs. Luong. ”We think her visit shows solidarity for women.”

… ”That’s one of the things that makes us respect her more,” [Nguyen Tra My] said. ”We see that she has a lot of character, that we can learn from her.”

“ The Clintons as Teammates, Dovetailing in Africa,” April 3, 1998

Not just the symbol-conscious but the substantive Clinton & Clinton was on display today. This morning, the Clintons met in Dakar with activists from across Africa to discuss democracy and human rights. It was the last of what seemed an unbroken stream of transcontinental round-table talk, during which the Clintons discussed recovering from genocide with Rwandans, fighting poverty with South Africans, and protecting the environment with Botswanans….

[T]he Clintons appeared in the isolated village of Dal Diam, swept with dust by the hot wind off the encroaching desert, to admire work done there over four years by the Agency for International Development and private groups: a well dug, cattle bought, reading taught, and a village store started with a small loan.

… White House aides acknowledged that the Clinton partnership had been more visible in Africa than it had been since 1994. Mrs. Clinton kept a lower profile at home after the health care plan collapsed, concentrating on less hotly debated issues like foreign development and education. But in her foreign travels, Mrs. Clinton never stopped campaigning on behalf of women, declaring over and over that women’s rights were also human rights. …

Clinton & Clinton became more prominent on this trip simply because, in Africa, Mrs. Clinton’s cherished issues moved to the fore. ”She clearly has been a primary tutor of him” on Africa, said Michael D. McCurry, the White House press secretary.

Mrs. Clinton, who traveled in Africa a year ago, lobbied her husband to make this trip and guided him to sites she visited before, like a South African housing cooperative and this small island of sandy lanes and pastel-colored colonial houses. …

As is generally the case abroad, Mrs. Clinton has been a political asset to the President here, partly because of her previous trip and her advocacy of foreign development. ”Thanks for visiting us Hillary,” read one sign in the Senegalese village on Wednesday. …

While she spoke at many of the same events as the President, Mrs. Clinton also spoke on her own, always to highlight women’s issues. At a day care center in Ghana, she declared, ”We must speak out to insure that no girl is ever denied an education” and ”to end violence against women in all forms.”

Today, Mrs. Clinton met with a group of activists here to condemn the practice of female genital cutting. …

With his wife beaming nearby, Mr. Clinton was then presented with a baby goat, which he cradled in his arms and kissed repeatedly on its forehead, baahing back as it cried to him. ”What’s the name of this goat?” he asked, and was told, inevitably, that it was Bill Clinton — a Billy goat.

”You must take very good care of this goat!” Mrs. Clinton declared.

“The Next Clinton, May 30, 1999

Far more than in the United States, Hillary Clinton has found her own voice overseas. Abroad, she conducts a sort of shadow Presidency, with advisers borrowed from assorted agencies and an aging 707 whose port engine periodically bursts into flames. She does it with what amounts to her own foreign policy, promoting issues of women’s rights, health care and development that her husband addresses rarely, and almost always with her at his side. …

Clinton has spent more days this year in North Africa than in New York. I went along with her to North Africa earlier this spring and stood nearby in a Moroccan village called Tasselmante as, calling across an empty chicken coop, she questioned one of the locals: ”How many chickens do you have?” Ten. ”And they are healthier than your chickens used to be?” Clinton inquired.

Yes, the woman said through an interpreter, crediting the coop. A nonprofit group, the Near East Foundation, has been promoting its use among the village women. Clinton’s solo international trips — to Africa, Asia, the former Soviet republics, Latin America — seldom generate much attention in the United States, but they are front-page news in the nations she visits. Knowing that, Clinton aims her spotlight at programs that are giving women power, attempting a very gentle advocacy-by-exhibit. …

Clinton has played her advocate’s role more openly within the Administration. She surprised the President’s men, for example, by urging them to consider the effect on child-support payments of bankruptcy legislation now before Congress. Without drawing attention to herself, she has lobbied Congress on issues like adoption.

She made herself a driving force behind one of the biggest-ticket proposals of Clinton’s second term, a $21.7 billion child-care initiative that has yet to win Congressional support. And, as she said at Hofstra, she never walked away from health care, but instead has doggedly coaxed along the President’s incremental changes, including a $24 billion children’s health insurance initiative.

When it comes to children and health care, President Clinton goes out of his way to acknowledge his dependence on his wife. ”I’d also like to thank the First Lady, without whom I probably would not know very much about these issues,” he said in the East Room recently, in a ceremony highlighting the new health care program. ”When I met her in 1971, she was already obsessed with them.” Like the words, the body language emphasized her helpmate role. As the audience applauded, Hillary Clinton, seated on the podium to the President’s right, stared down at the floor, seemingly abashed at all the attention. …

::::::::::

Hilary Clinton remembers — as do I, rather vividly — what a tough road it’s been since we were young women in the days when women didn’t have the opportunities that they enjoy more these days:

Growing up, there were sports we couldn’t play, schools we couldn’t attend, and jobs that essentially had a “men only” sign on them.

As an eighth grader I was captivated by space-travel. I wrote to NASA asking how to apply to be an astronaut — they wrote back explaining that these positions weren’t open to women. Well today, Iowa’s own Peggy Whitson has been appointed the first female Commander of the International Space Station.

Years later, when I was deciding where I wanted to attend law school, I was coolly informed by a Harvard Law professor, and I quote, “We don’t need any more women at Harvard.” So I went to Yale. [laughter] And my entering class at Yale Law School — where I decided to go instead — had 235 students, of whom just 27 were women.

Today, women are the majority of students in law schools. As a young lawyer, when I told a colleague that I might want to practice courtroom law, he replied that, that was impossible, because I didn’t have a wife. … Read more of her speech on “WOMEN’S RIGHTS: Mary Louise Smith Lecture at the Catt Center for Women and Politics,” Iowa State University, October 24, 2007

There’s a bit of the rebel in Hillary Clinton — which I fully understand because it took a somewhat rebellious nature to fight the inequalities with which both she and I grew up. These stories are delightful but mindful of the challenges of standing up for one’s beliefs and rights:

From her speech in Iowa, October 24, 2007:

I’ll never forget a newspaper advice column that I read in the early 1980s. I was working at a law firm at the time and my daughter was about three years old. Someone had written into this column asking: “I’m about to get a big promotion and I’m going to have my own office for the first time. What kind of decorations are appropriate for my office?”

Well, the advice columnist responded that he needed to know if the writer was a man or a woman because it would affect the answer. If you’re a man, he said, and you have a family, put up lots of pictures of your family because people will think when they come into your office “this is a stable person with a good set of family values.” But if you’re a woman, don’t put any pictures of your family in your office because people will think you can’t keep your mind on your job.

So, of course, I immediately filled my office with pictures of my family. …

Then there’s this story about her standing up to an employer following her college graduation:

That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthy conditions).

:::::::::::::::

Then there was a remarkable speech that Senator Hillary Clinton made in 2001 on the floor of the U.S. Senate in support of the Patients Bill of Rights — which she worked hard to help pass during the days of the Republican majority in Congress, by engaging colleagues on both sides of the aisle like Sen. McCain and then-Sen. John Edwards:

I really rise today on behalf of the countless New Yorkers, and really millions of Americans across our country, who have been waiting for this day for a very long time. I heard some remarks by the Senator from Texas about the efforts that were made, I guess, 6, 7 years ago now, to try to provide health care coverage to every single American. I was deeply involved in those efforts, and although we were not successful, the goal was one that I think we should still keep at the forefront of our minds and hearts because when we began our work in 1993, there were approximately 33 million Americans without insurance; today we are up to 42 million. This is after the so-called managed care/HMO revolution occurred, where people have been finding it harder to afford coverage, afford the deductibles, afford the copayments, with the result that we have more people uninsured today than when many of us tried to address this problem some years ago.

There are many urgent health care issues before us as a nation, such as sky high prescription drugs for our seniors, too many without adequate coverage, and once they have Medicare they can’t afford the additional coverage that is required in order to give them the kind of health care they should have. There are gaps in our health safety net, a shortage of nurses in our hospitals and nursing homes, and the very difficult conditions under which so many of our nurses now labor. And, of course, there is the growing crisis of the uninsured. So we have our work cut out for us in order to deliver on the promise of quality, affordable, accessible health care for all Americans.

That is why I am urging we proceed without further delay or obfuscation and pass a Patients’ Bill of Rights–the bipartisan Patients’ Bill of Rights that Senators McCain, Edwards, and Kennedy have worked so hard to present, which has bipartisan support in the House.

[...]

In my office I keep a picture of a young, beautiful woman named Donna Munnings. This is Donna. This is a young woman who reminds me every single day when I look up at her picture in my office of what can happen when the system does not respond until it is too late.

Donna’s mother Mary is a school bus driver from Scottsville, NY. She has been lobbying and advocating for this bill for years. Her daughter Donna died February 8, 1997, after having visited her primary care physician repeatedly, only to be told that she had an upper respiratory infection and suffered from panic attacks and that no diagnostic tests were necessary. Had the doctors performed a $750 lung scan in time, they would have seen not an upper respiratory infection but a football-sized blood clot in her lung.

Her mother Mary said:

In my subsequent research I found that HMOs can and do penalize doctors for ordering tests which HMOs feel are unnecessary. But all for the sake of money [all for the sake of a $750 test] we lost a vital, beautiful young lady who had only begun her life.

[...]

Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mrs. CLINTON. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DURBIN. I believe the Senator from New York was at a briefing this morning where we discussed the experience in the State of Texas. In 1997, a certain Governor of Texas, who has now moved to Washington, had a Patients’ Bill of Rights established in Texas. Maybe the Senator from New York can help me with these numbers, but I believe in the 4-year period of time that the State Patients’ Bill of Rights has been in effect in Texas, there have been 1,300 appeals of decisions by insurance companies and only 17 lawsuits filed in 4 years.

So the argument that giving the people the right to go to court will mean a flood of cases brought in court has been disproven in the home State of the President. Does the Senator from New York recall that?

Mrs. CLINTON. Indeed, the Senator from New York does recall that. I appreciate the Senator from Illinois raising that because that, of course, is one of the objections the opponents are trying to throw up, that this bill will open the floodgates for lawsuits. In Texas that has not happened. It has not happened anywhere in the country where these protections have been afforded under State law.

People are not rushing to the courthouse. They want the care that they need. They don’t want a lawyer; they want a doctor; and they want the doctor to take care of them according to the doctor’s best judgment. That is what doctors are telling us. They are not being permitted to do that.

I appreciate my friend from Illinois raising that point because, as this debate proceeds, you are going to hear a lot of arguments about why we just cannot do this. You know, we just cannot take care of Donna and her mother Mary and all the other Donnas and Marys in our country. There will be all sorts of red herrings and all kinds of arguments made that just do not hold water. There is no basis in fact for them, but they sound good. Maybe they will scare some people. But we are tired of being scared and intimidated. This is no longer just a political issue, this goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans.

Are we going to take care of each other? Are we going to let doctors and nurses practice their professions? Or are we going to turn our lives over to HMO accountants and bookkeepers and the like?

I am hoping we will not only proceed to this bill, which deserves a full hearing, deserves a full debate, and deserves a unanimous vote in this Chamber. I hope when we pass this, we will be sending a very clear message to all the mothers and fathers and family members that this will never happen again. This beautiful young woman whose life was cut short tragically would still be with us today if that HMO had just said: maybe we should let you go ahead and have that test.

I look forward to working with my colleagues. This has been 5 years in the making. Let’s end the politics of delay and move forward with the motion to proceed.

The Patients Bill of Rights — intended to “amend the Public Health Service Act and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to protect consumers in managed care plans and other health coverage” — passed the U.S. Senate on June 29, 2001 with a vote of 59-36-5.

Hillary Clinton is in deed a “A Champion for Women.”

:::::::::::::::

[Emphases mine.]

NYT:

WASHINGTON, July 27 — The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.

[...]

In talks about the package, the administration has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a condition of receiving the arms package, the officials said.

The officials said the plan to bolster the militaries of Persian Gulf countries is part of an American strategy to contain the growing power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies. Officials from the State Department and the Pentagon agreed to outline the terms of the deal after some details emerged from closed briefings this week on Capitol Hill.

[...]

In addition to promising an increase in American military aid to Israel, the Pentagon is seeking to ease Israel’s concerns over the proposed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by asking the Saudis to accept restrictions on the range, size and location of the satellite-guided bombs, including a commitment not to store the weapons at air bases close to Israeli territory, the officials said.

The package and the possible steps to allay Israel’s concerns were described to Congress this week, in an effort by the administration to test the reaction on Capitol Hill before entering into final negotiations on the package with Saudi officials. The Saudis had requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol Hill that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the kingdom. …

I’d like to just quote the entire article, but that’s not kosher. Read it if you’d like all the details.

$20 billion to the Saudis. $30.4 billion aid to the Israelis. The conversation we can have about this is self-evident. I’m pooped from a long trip to see a doctor, so I hope you’ll pick it up from here. – – SusanUnPC

UPDATE: Right after I posted the NYT article, I thought to check Memeorandum to see if other blogs have picked up the story (other blogs are on on this, but I haven’t read their posts yet), and saw this appended article from The Guardian:

US accuses Saudis of telling lies about Iraq

· First time administration has made concern public
· Claims royal family is financing Sunni groups

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday July 28, 2007
The Guardian

The extent of the deterioration in US-Saudi relations was exposed for the first time yesterday when Washington accused Riyadh of working to undermine the Iraqi government.

The Bush administration warned Saudi Arabia, until this year one of its closest allies, to stop undermining the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, are scheduled to visit Jeddah next week.

Reflecting the deteriorating relationship, the US made public claims that the Saudis have been distributing fake documents lying about Mr Maliki.

Read all.

– Cartoon by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, sent to me by Leslie

Next, from McClatchy’s top article today, “Constant filibuster threat is tying Senate in knots“:
 

Senate Republicans this year are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever, a pattern that’s rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

The trend has been evolving for 30 years. The reasons behind it are too complex to pin on one party. But it has been especially pronounced since the Democrats’ razor-thin win in last year’s election, giving them effectively a 51-49 Senate majority, and the Republicans’ exile to the minority.

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 “cloture” votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority’s right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they have fallen short 22 times this year. That’s largely why they haven’t been able to deliver on campaign promises.

By sinking a cloture vote last week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-47 Senate majority voted to end debate.

Republicans also have blocked votes this year on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly one in every six roll-call votes in the Senate this year has been a cloture vote. … READ ALL.

Other news items today:

• “Rice’s foreign-aid overhaul sparks backlash“:

  … Rice responded to the disarray by handpicking corporate veteran Randall Tobias to manage a sweeping overhaul of U.S. foreign assistance. Tobias abruptly resigned in April after he admitted receiving massages from women linked to an alleged prostitution ring — but not before he created a system that aims to reshuffle billions of dollars in aid to better reflect the administration’s priorities.

  Rice’s foreign-aid approach “sadly bears the hallmarks of our failed early assistance efforts in Iraq, where ideology and political connections trumped professionalism,” charged Pam Pearson, a foreign-service officer who had worked for Tobias, in a cable she sent to top State Department officials last fall.

  The fight over U.S. foreign aid largely has been hidden from the public, but it is likely to emerge Tuesday, when the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Henrietta Holsman Fore, the undersecretary of state for management and the nominee to replace Tobias as the deputy secretary of state for foreign assistance.

  The bulk of the $23 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid goes to a handful of key countries, leaving about 120 nations to battle over $3 billion of the pie. India is one of the big losers in Rice’s foreign-aid revolution. All U.S. aid to assist India in education, women’s rights, democracy and sanitation is terminated under the new system. Overall aid to India — where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day — would be cut 35 percent in 2008, to $81 million, on the theory that India has one of the best-performing economies in the world.

  One promising U.S.-funded program in India is QUEST, a partnership with tech firms such as Microsoft and Lucent aimed at teaching critical skills in Indian classrooms. With Washington, D.C., promising about $2 million a year, QUEST grew from 200 to 2,000 schools in one year.

  But without a continued U.S. contribution, the initiative probably will not survive. …

• “Mob Wars Hit New Heights in Israel“:

  When an explosion goes off on a busy Israeli street these days, it seems as likely to be a mob hit as a Palestinian attack.

  Rival underworld gangs are waging bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, targeting each other with bullets, bombs and anti-tank missiles.

  Organized crime, long overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, has become such a part of everyday life that Israel has its own “Sopranos”-style TV series, “The Arbitrator,” in which even synagogues are no refuge from hit men. …

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