Naturally, it’s about Secretary Hillary Clinton. For once, there was a GOOD article, calling out some of the sexism with which she has had to deal, while highlighting the incredible work she has been doing on behalf of the State4 Department, and our country. David Rothkopf had this article, “It’s 3:00 a.m. Do you Know Where Hillary Clinton Is?” I admit, when I first saw the title, I thought he was being snarky, and it was going to be yet another hatchet job on this amazing woman, this bright star. Imagine my delight when I read it, and discovered, far from snark, this was a serious article, about a serious role, and a serious person. All I can say is, it’s about damn time:

When it comes to Hillary Rodham Clinton, we’re missing the forest for the pantsuits.

Clinton is not the first celebrity to become the nation’s top diplomat — that honor goes to her most distant predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, who by the time he took office was one of the most famous and gossiped-about men in America — but she may be the biggest. And during her first seven months in office, the former first lady, erstwhile presidential candidate and eternal lightning rod has drawn more attention for her moods, looks, outtakes and (of course) relationship with her husband than for, well, her work revamping the nation’s foreign policy.

Even venerable publications — such as one to which I regularly contribute, Foreign Policy — have woven into their all-Hillary-all-the-time coverage odd discussions of Clinton’s handbag and scarf choices. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown, while depicting herself as a Clinton supporter, has been scathing and small-minded in discussing such things as Clinton’s weight and hair, while her “defense” of Hillary in her essay “Obama’s Other Wife” was as sexist as the title suggests.

Indeed, sexism has followed Clinton from the campaign trail to Foggy Bottom, as seen most recently in the posturing outrage surrounding the exchange in Congo when Clinton reacted with understandable frustration to the now-infamous question regarding her husband’s views. Major media outlets have joined the gossipfest, whether the New York Times, which covered Clinton’s first big policy speech by discussing whether she was in or out with the White House, or The Washington Post, where a couple of reporters mused about whether a brew called Mad Bitch would be the beer of choice for the secretary of state.

May I just pause here to say, THANK YOU for calling these “news” sources out for these sexist depictions/attacks on Clinton. Thank you.

As to the work of Secretary Clinton, the article continues:

Amid all the distractions, what is Clinton actually doing? Only overseeing what may be the most profound changes in U.S. foreign policy in two decades — a transformation that may render the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush mere side notes in a long transition to a meaningful post-Cold War worldview.

The secretary has quietly begun rethinking the very nature of diplomacy and translating that vision into a revitalized State Department, one that approaches U.S. allies and rivals in ways that challenge long-held traditions. And despite the pessimists who invoked the “team of rivals” cliche to predict that President Obama and Clinton would not get along, Hillary has defined a role for herself in the Obamaverse: often bad cop to his good cop, spine stiffener when it comes to tough adversaries and nurturer of new strategies. Recognizing that the 3 a.m. phone calls are going to the White House, she is instead tackling the tough questions that, since the end of the Cold War, have kept America’s leaders awake all night.

In these early days of the new administration, it has been easy to focus on what Clinton has not achieved or on ways in which her power has been supposedly constrained. Indeed, some of her efforts have been frustrated by difficult personnel approvals or disputes with the White House about who should get what jobs. But this is the way of all administrations. More unusual has been the avidity with which the new president has seized the reins of foreign policy — more assertively than either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton before him. Obama’s centrality amplifies the importance of his closest White House staffers, while his penchant for appointing special envoys such as Richard Holbrooke (on Afghanistan and Pakistan) and George Mitchell (on the Middle East) has been interpreted by some as limiting Clinton’s role.

Given the challenges involved, it was perhaps natural that the White House would have a bigger day-to-day hand in some of the nation’s most urgent foreign policy issues. But with Obama, national security adviser Jim Jones, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates absorbed by Iraq, Afghanistan and other inherited problems of the recent past, Clinton’s State Department can take on a bigger role in tackling the problems of the future — in particular, how America will lead the world in the century ahead. This approach is both necessary and canny: It recognizes that U.S. policy must change to fulfill Obama’s vision and that many high-profile issues such as those of the Middle East have often swamped the careers and aspirations of secretaries of state past.

Which nations will be our key partners? What do you do when many vital partners — China, for example, and Russia — are rivals as well? How must America’s alliances change as NATO is stretched to the limit? How do we engage with rogue states and old enemies in ways that do not strengthen them and preserve our prerogative to challenge threats? How do we move beyond the diplomacy of men in striped pants speaking only for governments and embrace potent nonstate players and once-disenfranchised peoples?

In searching for answers, Clinton is leaving behind old doctrines and labels. She outlined her new thinking in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she revealed stark differences between the new administration’s worldview and those of its predecessors: The recurring themes include “partnership” and “engagement” and “common interests.” Clearly, Madeleine Albright’s “indispensable nation” has recognized the indispensability of collaborating with others.

Who those “others” are is the area in which change has been greatest and most rapid. “We will put,” Clinton said, “special emphasis on encouraging major and emerging global powers — China, India, Russia and Brazil, as well as Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa — to be full partners in tackling the global agenda.” This is the death knell for the G-8 as the head table of the global community; the administration has an effort underway to determine whether the successor to the G-8 will be the G-20, or perhaps some other grouping. Though the move away from the G-8 began in the waning days of the Bush era, that administration viewed the world through a different lens, a perception that evolved from a traditional great-power view to a pre-Galilean notion that everything revolved around the world’s sole superpower.

Obama and Clinton have both made engaging with emerging powers a priority. Obama visited Russia earlier this year and will host Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his first state dinner in November. Clinton has made trips to China and India, and she would have been with Obama in Russia had she not injured her elbow. Both have visited Africa and the Middle East, reaching out to women and the Islamic world.

To anyone who has been following Clinton throughout her career, the manner in which she has been pursuing her position should come as no surprise. You may recall a book she wrote some time ago, It Takes A Village, in which these kinds of concepts have been discussed. She works in a collegial manner, holding the bigger picture firmly in hand as she goes about her work. It isn’t about her. It is about the world, the country, and the citizens here and abroad. It is about pulling women and children up out of poverty, having people be educated, allowing people to live their lives, and not just fight to survive. That’s her deal, and it has been for a long, long time. And it is that commitment that leads to this:

On many critical agenda items — from a rollback of nuclear weapons to the climate or trade talks — such emerging powers will be essential to achieving U.S. goals. As a result, we’ve seen a new American willingness to play down old differences, whether with Russia on a missile shield or, as Clinton showed on her China trip, with Beijing on human rights.

At the center of Clinton’s brain trust is Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Now head of policy planning at the State Department, Slaughter elaborated on the ideas in Clinton’s speech. “We envision getting not just a new group of states around a table, but also building networks, coalitions and partnerships of states and nonstate actors to tackle specific problems,” she told me.

“To do that,” Slaughter continued, “our diplomats are going to need to have skills that are closer to community organizing than traditional reporting and analysis. New connecting technologies will be vital tools in this kind of diplomacy.”

A new team has been brought in to make these changes real. Clinton recruited Alec Ross, one of the leaders of Obama’s technology policy team, to the seventh floor of the State Department as her senior adviser for innovation. His mission is to harness new information tools to advance U.S. interests — a task made easier as the Internet and mobile networks have played starring roles in recent incidents, from Iran to the Uighur uprising in western China to Moldova. Whether through a telecommunications program in Congo to protect women from violence or text messaging to raise money for Pakistani refugees in the Swat Valley, technology has been deployed to reach new audiences.

Of course, you need more than new ideas to revitalize the State Department; you need resources, too. The secretary has brought in former Bill Clinton-era budget chief Jack Lew to help her claw back money for statecraft that many in Foggy Bottom feel has been sucked off toward the Pentagon. She has also created special positions to back new priorities, such as Melanne Verveer as ambassador at large for women’s issues, Elizabeth Bagley to handle public-private outreach worldwide and Todd Stern as the chief negotiator on climate.

Even just a few months in, it’s clear that these appointments are far from window dressing. Lew, Slaughter and the acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development are leading an effort to rethink foreign aid with the new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, an initiative modeled on the Pentagon’s strategic assessments and designed to review State’s priorities. Stern has conducted high-level discussions on climate change around the world, notably with China. Clinton made women’s issues a centerpiece of her recent 11-day trip to Africa, where she stressed that “the social, political and economic marginalization of women across Africa has left a void in this continent that undermines progress and prosperity.”

Unlike other politicians, I don’t think Clinton appoints people to be “window dressing,” but to get the job done. That is further evidenced with the following appointment:

Clinton has also signaled the importance of private-sector experience by naming former Goldman Sachs International vice chairman Robert Hormats, a respected veteran of four administrations, to handle economic issues at the State Department, as well as Judith McHale, former chief executive of Discovery Communications, to run public diplomacy. In the same vein, she has opened up Cuba to American telecommunications companies and reached out to India’s private sector on energy cooperation — showing that this administration will seek to advance national interests by tapping the self-interests of the business community. As with any new administration, there have been inevitable problems. The old campaign teams — Clinton’s and Obama’s — still eye each other warily, but this feeling is gradually fading. And by most accounts, the administration’s national security team has come together successfully, with Clinton developing strong relationships with national security adviser Jones and Defense Secretary Gates. Her policy deputy, Jim Steinberg, has renewed an old collaboration with deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon; the two of them, working with Obama campaign foreign policy advisers Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, have formed what one State Department seventh-floor dweller called “a powerful quartet at the heart of real interagency policymaking.” Henry Kissinger may have overstated matters when he said this is the best White House-State relationship in recent memory, but it’s not bad, while the State-Pentagon relationship is in its best shape in decades.

Huh. Well, I’ll be. Who could have seen THAT coming? Oh, I know – the 18 million people who voted for her!

But Clinton is not looking back to what was. Rather, she is looking ahead to see how best she can fulfill her work, As such, again, she looks at the big picture, and how best to accomplish what needs doing, including:

At the heart of things, though, is the relationship between Clinton and Obama. For all the administration’s talk of international partnerships, that may be the most critical partnership of all.

So far, according to multiple high-level officials at State and the White House, the two seem aligned in their views. In addition, they are gradually defining complementary roles. Obama has assumed the role of principal spokesperson on foreign policy, as international audiences welcome his new and improved American brand. Clinton thus far has echoed his points but has also delivered tougher ones. Whether on a missile shield against Iran or North Korean saber-rattling, the continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma or rape and corruption in Congo, the secretary of state has spoken bluntly on the world stage — even if it triggered snide comments from North Korea.

It is still early, and a president’s foreign policy legacy is often defined less by big principles than by how one reacts to the unexpected, whether missiles in Cuba or terrorism in New York. Promising ideas fail because of limited attention or reluctant bureaucracies, and some rhetoric eventually rings hollow, as the self-congratulatory “smart power” already does to me.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that, seven months into the job, Obama’s unlikely secretary of state is supporting and augmenting his agenda effectively. Not as Obama’s “other wife,” not as Bill Clinton’s wife, not even as a celebrity or as a former presidential candidate — but in a new role of her own making. (drothkopf@carnegieendowment.org

David Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making” and “Running the World: The Inside Story of the NSC and the Architects of American Power.” He will be online to chat with readers Monday at 11 a.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.)

Indeed – she is embracing a “role of her own making.” It is hard not to consider what could have been had she been President instead of Secretary of State. Don’t get me wrong – as I have said a number of times, I am glad that Clinton is in such a crucial role for our country. Clearly, we need her. But the same intelligence; the ability, and vision, to hold the big picture in her grasp while determining the best course to achieve those goals, while finding the people who can affect those goals; the nation-building, yes, the community-building; are all the ingredients necessary for a good presidency. And I am pretty sure that a President Hillary Clinton would not have made any “wee-wee” remarks about the press corp, either. It’s a matter of decorum, the ability to hold things, events, people, in tension. It’s a matter of vision, and the ability to effect change in a real, meaningful way. That’s our Hillary. Thank heavens she is finally starting to get the recognition she so richly deserves.

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…

Wow. I imagine teachers everywhere just cringe when they hear about stories like this. Parents, too, I expect. And especially the latter when the child who was sexually assaulted says things like this:

The victim asked the judge not to give him the maximum sentence because he was a nice man.

Holy smokes. “A nice man.” Hardly. Her father didn’t think so, either. This was his response:

Her father then told the judge that his daughter was emotionally and psychologically scarred and that Judy had a power over her, Strickland said. (Strickland is the spokeswoman for that court district.)

I think we can agree that it goes without saying that the child is “emotionally and psychologically scarred…”

At least Judy acknowledged what he had done:

Judy admitted during the hearing to having sex with the girl, who was 14 at the time, and said he knew what he did was wrong, Strickland said.

I suppose that’s something. Better than him insisting the girl was lying, I guess.

Here’s the thing – this man COULD have gotten up to 20 years in prison. He has affected this child’s life in ways the extent of which cannot possibly known for years to come. Here are the legal particulars:

Tracy Lee Judy, 38, pleaded guilty to criminal solicitation of a minor and two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor during an emotional hearing that included testimony from the 15-year-old victim and her father.

Circuit Judge Perry Buckner sentenced Judy to five years in prison and two years probation upon completion of the prison sentence. He also will be on the sex offender registry for life.

Five years in prison, two on probation. That just does not sound like enough to me. And yes, I know he will have a tough time in prison. No doubt, he will be in Protective Custody. That may, or may not, save him. Inmates have their own codes, after all (I worked with prisoners, both men and women, and had the Protective Custody Unit as part of my duties, so I do actually have some experience with that. I just didn’t want you to think I was writing, “words, just words.” Ahem.).

Oh, and there is one other little piece of this:

Judy tried to kill himself by overdosing on painkillers on May 10, the night before his trial was to begin. In a four-page suicide note, Judy described himself as a mentally ill Gulf War veteran struggling with “panic anxiety disorder, depression, agoraphobia and other undetermined social disorders.”

As part of his sentence, Judy must receive counseling through Veterans Affairs, Strickland said.

Let me say right off the bat that I have no doubt whatsoever Judy is experiencing those symptoms. No doubt. And it is terrible the long-lasting effects too many of our men and women in uniform carry with them after their service is done. Too many denied or ignored or minimized by the very entity that sent them in. That being said, it is NOT an excuse for this man to sexually assault this child. Good that he is going to get counseling – clearly he needs it, as the list above indicates, as does the “undetermined social disorders,” though I think we have a BIT of a clue as to what ONE of those is, and it is no longer “undetermined”: child sexual molestation.

That girl is going to need therapy, too. Probably her parents will also have to participate. Even still, that girl’s life will never, never be the same again. Never.

How does this happen? The paper the next day had an article announcing that “Violent Crime Is Down 12%,” but rape is up. I’m sorry, but when, exactly, did rape not qualify as a “violent crime”???

This can happen because this kind of mindset is cumulative. You rank rape below, say, bank robbery; have a president make a huge speech abroad in which he minimizes women’s rights and human rights (”Yo, Bitches, Wear That Hijab,” and “Cairo: The Emptiness Of Obama’s Rhetoric” address that issue nicely); and a teacher who gets all of 5 years for repeated sexual molestation of a 14 year old girl. That is some message here in the Good Ol’U.S. of A. to women, isn’t it? (I have also written about the use of rape as war tactic, and the treatment of women in other countries numerous times before, but this time, my focus is closer to home.)

Judy gets 5 years in prison, probation, and on the Sex Offender Registry for sexually assaulting this child. And the girl gets life without parole.

It seems someone stole $2 million from the WV State Auditor’s office using nothing more than letters sent through the U.S. mail. This scam has also been recently reported by Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Maine.

“Two payments intended for one of the companies were diverted overseas,” (State Auditor) Gainer said “– and the money could end up in terrorists’ hands.”

I might take issue with the “terrorists” statement above. Sometimes thievery, as demonstrated by Somalia pirates, is nothing more than a brutish crime of greed. And sometimes the success of criminal endeavors can be blamed less on broken security measures and more on plain and outright stupidity.

Eloquent in its simplicity, here is how it works.

Let’s open the first chapter of today’s Scamming for Dummies. If you want to run this scam, first locate the names of companies who have long-standing contracts with the states. This is easy. Most states publish bid and contract holders on their websites. Next, reproduce the company’s letterhead. This, too, is easy. Just download a copy of the corporate annual report and there you will find a warm introductory letter from an executive of the company. That is also where you will find an official name and title to use in your scam. You will need one more little piece of information to look official. Just go to the state’s Secretary of State’s website and look up the company’s business license. The final piece of our construction materials is provided by the state wishing to grant us the wish of total transparency. Every company that does business with a state must register and provide identifying information, such as their Federal Identification Number.

OK. Now let’s get to work. Nobody puts a million dollar check in the mail. Nope. It is much safer to have large sums like that wired. That is the assumption our scam is based upon. With research, materials and assumptions in hand it is now time to develop the process. The Bonnie and Clyde process worked because it was simple. They convinced bank tellers to give them other people’s money. They walked in the front door, waved a gun, demanded money and the teller complied. Let’s keep it that simple.

Oh, yes. You must have a bag for the money. Open a bank account in, let’s say Africa. Open another one in the U.S. Here comes the robbery. Send a letter, on company letterhead, signed by an executive of the company, to the state treasure or auditor – or whoever in that state controls the outgoing monies. The letter should reference the description of the contract, the contract number and the company FIN. Here comes the interaction with the teller. Explain, in that letter, that you have changed banks and ask the state to forward all future payments to the bank routing and account number listed for the U.S. bank. The teller obliges. It’s that simple. The very last step is the getaway. Now we go from low-tech to a high-speed vehicle known as the wire. As soon as the money hits your U.S. bank transfer it offshore.

This really happened. Not once, but several times. And no one is sure yet how many states have been duped, nor how much money has been, or is being stolen.

May 1, 2009
W.Va. Auditor’s Office defrauded of ‘in excess of $1 million’
The Charleston Gazette

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More than $1 million has been stolen from the West Virginia Auditor’s Office and diverted to an overseas bank as part of an “elaborate fraud,” state Auditor Glen Gainer said Friday.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office are investigating.

The money was intended for two companies that have contracts with the state’s Insurance Commission and Department of Health and Human Resources. Instead, three payments that totaled “in excess of $1 million” were diverted to an unauthorized bank account in recent weeks, Gainer said.

“It was an elaborate fraud committed by a perpetrator outside the state,” Gainer said. “Everything went to a U.S. bank initially, but it very quickly was transferred overseas. By the time we caught it, the money was gone.”

The person behind the scheme sent letters allegedly from the two companies, requesting that payments be sent to new bank accounts.

The requests were sent on the companies’ letterhead with tax identification numbers and sample checks, which investigators now believe were fake. The letters included forged signatures from corporate executives.

All changes apparently were completed by correspondence through the U.S. mail.

“It was a case of corporate identity theft,” Gainer said. “The only thing that was changed was the routing of the money. They basically asked for the remittance of the funds to be changed.”

That was Friday. Whoops. It seems it was a little more than a million. AND, it was not his fault, says the Auditor.

May 4, 2009
Companies, not state, responsible for scammed funds, Gainer says
Gazette follow-up story.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia should not have to repay two companies that lost nearly $2 million in a corporate identity-theft scheme, state Auditor Glen Gainer said Monday.

[snip]

It is not unusual for vendors to ask for their account information to be changed, Gainer said. They must submit proper documentation, but national standards do not dictate that the state must call firms to verify those changes.

“For us to go back and make thousands and thousands [of phone calls], I don’t have the staff to do that,” he said.

You are called the “Auditor.” I think the title implies that checking details is in your job description. The Charleston Gazette Editorial Board Sums it up.

May 5, 2009

Editorial

Fraud
‘Corporate ID theft’

Now that the auditor’s calamity has spotlighted the fake bank account scam, all agencies, businesses and families should adopt a new rule: When asked to send payments to a different recipient, call first to double-check.

My profound scientific response: Duh! So readers, how secure are YOUR state monies?

Editor’s Note: DON’T MISS LARRY JOHNSON TONIGHT on the Batchelor show at 10:30 p.m. ET, via KFI 640 AM. Check out the full slate of guests and topics tonight. John Batchelor’s KFI show begins at 7:00 p.m., so tune in early. Here are the topics and fellow guests during Larry’s appearance:

Also: If this is your first time listening, you’ll want to come early in case you need to download an easily installed program to hear the show.

HERE is the full line-up of guests and topics tonight on KFI, from beginning to the program’s conclusion:

705P Pacific Time:  Nicholas Casey, Wall Street Journal, re next month, shipping giant AP Moeller-Maersk will make a move that was unlikely ten years back.  A line of 6000 container ships that now goes to Southern California will go instead dock at Seattle. Why?

 920P:  Joseph Sternberg, Asia Wall Street Journal, re Vietnam and the Obama administration, re Vietnam and the worldwide downturn in trade.

Below, you’ll see a fascinating description of the immense expanse of water — I heard that the coast of Somalia is as large as the entire U.S. Eastern coastline (!), and this video is even more descriptive:

For today’s A.P. story, “Obama draws praise, but piracy escalation feared,” Larry Johnson was telephoned and interviewed extensively by London-based A.P. reporter Gregory Katz:

[...]

Some military strategists believe it may ultimately be necessary to attack the pirates’ base in Somalia, much as the British used to do two centuries ago. But few have the appetite for another land operation in Somalia, where a U.S. military foray in the early 1990s ended in humiliation. And the cost in civilian casualties would likely be extremely high, some warn.

“That would be nuts,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and State Department counterterrorism specialist. “These people are not organized into any military force, they are intermingled with women and children. You’re talking about wiping out villages.”

He said the U.S. action—and a French attack a few days earlier on a pirate-held yacht with hostages on board—were corrective measures that did not solve the underlying problem.

“When you allow a bunch of Somali clans to grab their weapons and head to sea and collect millions of dollars in ransom, you can’t be surprised when it gets out of control,” he said. “You need an international coalition, with all the countries that have flag ships, to make it impossible for the pirates to get in a boat and leave the shore. Otherwise the ships will continue to be sitting ducks.”

Johnson has in the past criticized Obama as inexperienced, but he said the new commander in chief deserves credit for using established national security procedures to deal with the crisis while refraining from making comments that would have inflamed the situation.

“He stepped back and let the professionals do what they are supposed to do,” Johnson said. “Since the 1980s we’ve built national security doctrine for how to handle these matters, and Obama allowed these procedures to operate.”

Charles Heyman, a defense specialist and former British army officer, said the Obama administration showed its resolve by refusing pay ransom for Phillips’ release.

“That would have been disastrous,” he said. “America would have been a laughingstock and we really don’t need that.”

But he said history shows pirates can only be defeated if nations unite, which is not happening.

“As long as governments don’t come together and defeat it, it goes on like a plague,” he said. “People have to be very, very tough with this.”

The U.S. rescue effort was a clear success in tactical terms, but Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, warned that it could lead to increased violence in the region. … Read all.

h/t American Girl In Italy

Early Reports of a Navy Fight and a Rescue.

::::::

From The John Batchelor Show blog.

Boy, there is a garbage truck load of nonsense being bandied about on the blogs and media about what can and should be done to respond to the piracy against the U.S. flagged ship in the Indian Ocean. So permit me to try to clear up some of the more egregious goofiness.

My qualifications? I am a graduate of the Paul SEAL seminar. Paul SEAL? Paul is a retired Navy SEAL officer who, when he was still on active duty, worked with me at the Department of State’s Office of Counter Terrorism. Paul and I rode to work together for three years. I received the best education about maritime tactics and operations short of becoming a SEAL. Paul, a mustang, had extensive combat experience and has participated in operations against pirates.

(Some of Paul’s exploits are recorded in the book by Harold Lee Wise, Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987-1988.) I don’t know of a better SEAL officer who is qualified to comment on matters like these.

So what is to be done?

The Hollywood version would put a SEAL team in the water who would sneak up on the lifeboat and, in the dark of night, leap over the sides, kill the pirates and free the Captain. An alternative version would be to capsize the boat and snatch the Captain from the water. What says Commander Paul? Nonsense!!! None of these are valid options.

Apart from being very difficult to do you incur an unnecessarily high risk to your own personnel–although SEALs are physically fit they are not bullet proof nor knife proof. They do not believe in fighting fair. Instead, get a decisive advantage and employ massive, overwhelming force.

How about snipers from a helicopter platform? That is more realistic but it is tough in the dark, even with Night Vision devices, to identify the U.S. hostage and keep Captain Phillips alive. Also, there is an enclosure on the lifeboat that hinders our ability to identify the Captain.

Some, like my good friend John Batchelor, argue that the problem lies on the shores of Somalia. Yes, but that is not a problem we can handle militarily. We are talking clans that act like criminal mafias. They are civilians and there are no separate army or military targets to attack. Embroiling our forces in another futile insurgent war in Somalia is nuts. We could not do it in 1993 in Mogadishu and we cannot do it today.

The good news is that the lifeboat is out of fuel, can’t go anywhere and there is a U.S. Naval combat ship sitting nearby. Best and most likely option right now is to continue negotiations to secure the release of the Captain. We can offer food and water as a good faith offering and we can offer to let the pirates go once the Captain is free. At this point freeing Captain Phillips is the priority. Once the Captain is freed we can worry about apprehending the suspects and going after their mother ship.

Why is the FBI involved? First, the lifeboat is U.S. territory, as was the U.S. flagged ship. The FBI still has the investigative lead on these kinds of incidents when it occurs on U.S. territory. Even though the lifeboat and ship are in international waters they are still legally considered to be U.S. territory.

Second, the FBI are the best hostage negotiators in the Federal Government. No other U.S. Government agency outside the FBI has qualified personnel who routinely engage in this kind of activity as part of their daily routine.

I am sad to report that the Obama Administration is performing more ineptly than the Bush Administration in managing the crisis response. (Sad because I initially had high hopes that Jim Jones would bring some tough love to a broken interagency system.) So far they have not convened the necessary interagency video conference that should be used to coordinate a full up response and ensure that the White House has a full understanding of the options and capabilities. This is being handled as primarily a DOD operation with the FBI playing an ancillary role. I am surprised that NSC advisor Jim Jones and the NSC chief for counter terrorism, John Brennan, are acting like novices when it comes to handling the interagency responsibility competently.

I am still hopeful this will turn out well and the Obama team will declare victory. But it will be a hollow victory because it exposes how unprepared the Obama team is to handled a full interagency response.

If reports are true that other Somali pirate ships are en-route to the scene to attempt to rescue their colleagues then the Obama team will face a significant test of will. The appropriate response will be to declare the area off limits and shoot any boat out of the water that attempts to approach the lifeboat carrying Captain Phillips. If the Obama team does this they will earn some tough guy points and allay fears I’m hearing from military friends that this group has no spine. If the Obama team fails to stop such an attempt then Obama will have surpassed Jimmy Carter for being a surrender monkey.

UPDATE–There has been some silly complaining about Barack Obama’s silence. I dealt with the U.S. hostages who were held in Lebanon (e.g., Joe Cicippio, Terry Anderson, etc.) Barack is doing the right thing. The last thing we need is a President making a public spectacle of himself and commenting on hostages. That raises the value of the hostages to the hostage takers. Let the professionals handle this behind the scenes. That is happening, although the Obama team is still making the same mistake as the Bush team in parsing the words and defining piracy as something different then terrorism.

Here’s my prediction–we will see action during darkness tonight (or tomorrow night perhaps) to rescue Captain Phillips. He will be saved. The press will praise Obama and the crazed rightwing will be eating some crow. Although Obama does not have a clue about how to manage the interagency process he is smart enough to be quiet and let the guys who know what they are doing handle things. In doing that he’ll probably end up enjoying his first genuine foreign triumph.

And if Phillips dies in the assault? A tragedy but a reminder that Obama is a tough guy who won’t be bullied by pirates. I am betting that will be the storyline.

UPDATE II–There is no problem if this thing is strung out for a while. Unless there is clear evidence that the Captain’s life is in imminent peril it is better to stay calm, keep talking and let the realities of being stuck in the equivalent of a large floating toilet settle in on the pirates. They are accustomed to living in shitty conditions but even this will take a toll. Plus, they have probably used all of the khat they brought with them and are now jonesing for a new hit.

So far the international community has not come up with a credible policy or deterrent to dissuade the pirates from continuing their mayhem. Only when more of them are killed or thwarted in their endeavors, rather then raking in millions of dollars from insurance companies, will they back off and try to figure out a new scam to make risk free money.

U.S. policy remains completely disconnected in trying to figure out how to deal with the threat of terrorism vice piracy. There is an established body of doctrine and procedures for dealing with terrorism. The various U.S. Government agencies and departments generally know what their role and responsibility is. Not so on piracy. Here’s what is crazy. I was involved a few months back on a scenario similar to this. The only difference? We made the pirates adherents of Osama Bin Laden. Katie bar the door!! You wave that red flag and everyone jumped to. There was no hesitation in sending forces overseas. It was not just a DOD mission. Others participated–State Department, Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and U.S. Central Command.

So now we have a real world incident and what happens? We ignore the so-called lessons learned from that exercise. Instead DOD does its thing and the FBI does its thing and no one is fully coordinating the effort. For example, a U.S. team should have been on hand in Mombassa, Kenya to receive the inbound pirated ship and crew, if for no other reason then to keep the press at bay and help coordinate the reunion of the crew with their loved ones.

Just like George Bush, Obama and his team are treating piracy as if it is something so significantly different from terrorism that the tools and procedures we have in place to respond to a terrorist threat are ignored as they struggle to figure out a response to the latest attacks. Piracy is not the same as terrorism. However, the systems and procedures erected in the Federal Government for marshaling all relevant Federal resources to be brought to bear on the issue are the same and should be used. So far they are not.

One other thought on today’s incident when the Somali pirates holding Captain Philips fired at a small U.S. Navy boat as it tried to approach the life boat. What was going on? Here’s one possibility. The U.S. boat was a diversion designed to distract the pirates while a Navy SEAL placed a listening device (or devices) on the hull of the life boat. Such devices will enable the U.S. hostage negotiators to figure out where they stand in the talks with the pirates. I do not know for a fact whether or not this happened. But anyone who has watched the movie, The Negotiator, can figure out that this kind of move is possible. Negotiators want inside dope in order to gain an edge over the hostage takers.

[UPDATE: I found the video that gives a great tour of the interior of that lifeboat. It's immediately below the fold.] Here are several more great reports, with video updates, on the movement of both pirate and U.S. ships in the area:

CNN just gave a fascinating tour of the same lifeboat that the captain and his captors are in. What a change from the lifeboats of yore! If only the passengers of the Titanic had had these lifeboats (and plenty of them, ahem), so many more would have survived. However, there’s a problem for rescuers: The doors can be sealed from the inside. That video isn’t up yet, but i’ll keep checking. HERE’s THE VIDEO:

Say, below in the A.P. video report, just five hours old, there are great shots of the interior of such a lifeboat. There’s also a great report from WorldFocus, the recently launched PBS international news program, that gets into the terrorism vs. commercial enterprise argument:

Text:

The captain of a U.S. cargo ship tried escaping his pirate captors, but was recaptured off the coast of Somalia. While the military is massing more firepower in these waters, friends are not surprised at Richard Phillips’ action. (April 10)

DO NOT MISS THIS “PERSPECTIVE” discussion via WorldFocus:

The warships cannot solve the problem, because the answers  are on land.   The FT’s Robert Wright told us that there are two clans that dominate piracy, the Hawiye and the Darod, and they work in parallel.  The Hawiye command the Haradere area.  The Darod command the Puntland Coast around Eyl.  Only ground-based suppression will work, but that means Marines, air support, naval support, United Nations cooperation, civic and humanitarian structure — the comprehensive approach that the US has not wanted to risk since 1993.   Now the hostage scenario may force the Obama adminstration’s hand.   CENTCOM’s General Petraeus says that more ships are in-bound for the region, though this is an impotent and tardy gesture.  The FBI hostage negotiators are headed to the USS Belknap to open conversation with the pirates.  The demands are simple: food, fuel, cash and free passage back to our dens.  The Obama administration must now struggle with the policy that the US does not ransom hostages.   No appeasement, no concessions, no peace.  Surrender or die.  There is more than one hostage on that bobbing Maresk line lifeboat.  The US, the pirates, the POTUS and VPOTUS could become hostages, too.  It is not idle that the President would not answer a reporter’s question today about the pirates.  This is dangerous policy.  Blackhawk Down in deep water is make-believe, so far.    The pirates operate in packs; they may have land-based command and control; they may welcome jihadists into their mix; they know that one in two captured pirates have been set loose.   Easy to imagine there are tens of pirate boats pushing off from the coast and preparing to grab anything American.   Fat pickings, big pay-day possible, and the new bosses won’t shoot, will they?

From the blog and radio show site, The John Batchelor Show (with Podcasts). Larry Johnson is a regular guest Sunday nights on KFI-AM at 10:35 p.m. ET. Visit this blog on Sundays for promos that include the evening’s hot topics.

Today: “Pirates still hold ship captain, but running out of fuel (Roundup),” Africa News:

We are watching this very closely,’ US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in brief remarks in Washington. The lifeboat in which the captain was being held had apparently run out of fuel, she added.

Secretary Clinton was asked about the pirate takeover Wednesday during her meeting Moroccan Foreign Minister Dr. Taieb Fassi Fihri, during which she took the opportunity to mention that Morocco was the first nation to recognize the U.S.A. in the 18th century and helped our fledgling nation fight piracy long ago. (Special request to our Reader Historians: Please share those great stories!):

From the text of the press conference:

[...]

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, do you have any clarity on the Somali piracy situation?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we’re deeply concerned and we’re following it very closely. Specifically, we are now focused on this particular act of piracy and the seizure of a ship that carries 21 American citizens. More generally, we think the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy.

I think Morocco was the very first country that recognized us, going back a long time. And we worked together to end piracy off of the coast of Morocco all those years ago, and we’re going to work together to end this kind of criminal activity anywhere on the high seas. Thank you.

UPDATE FROM FOX NEWS / TIME-SENSITIVE:

Earlier, here’s a short Reuters video report that sums up the crisis: