Hearings this week. 4 in SFRC on Iraq

[TayTay]

Welcome the US Senate back from their "this is not a recess so don't even think about making recess appointments" State Work Period break that happened at Easter. Ah, the Democrats don't have recess, they have State Work Periods. (Gawd, makes it sound like they are on prison furloughs. But whatever it takes to make sure there are no more John Bolton-type recess appointments works for me.)

[TayTay]

1. Finance Comm. 4/1 at 10 am: Anti-Terrorism Financing Update

Anti-Terrorism Financing: Progress Made and the Challenges Ahead

http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/hearing040108.htm

April 1 , 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Member Statements:
Max Baucus, MT
Charles Grassley, IA

Witness Statements:

The Honorable Stuart A. Levey, Under Secretary, Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, U.S. Department of Treasury, Washington, DC

[TayTay]

18. I did hear some of this hearing

Sen. Kerry came on about an hour into the hearing. He did bring up his history with BCCI investigations and asked about the status on anti-terrorism financing laws in other nations. Apparently, Kuwait is not a country that has laws as strict as they should be.

I will check and see if this is being rebroadcast on C-Span.

[TayTay]

2. SFRC 4/1 2:30 pm Situation in Iraq

THE SITUATION IN IRAQ

HEARING
before the

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2008/hrg080401p.html

Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Time: 2:30 P.M.
Place: 407 Captiol Building
Presiding: Senator Biden

Briefers:
+Dr. Stephen S. Kaplan
Vice Chairman
National Intelligence Council
Washington, DC

+Mr. Alan R. Pino
National Intelligence Officer for the Near East
National Intelligence Council
Washington, DC

[karynnj]

17. deleted - because it says it is closed

so asking if there's a link is dumb

[TayTay]

3. SFRC 4/2 9:30 AM Iraq After the Surge, Military Prospects

IRAQ AFTER THE SURGE: MILITARY PROSPECTS

HEARING
before the

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2008/hrg080402a.html

Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Time: 9:30 A.M.
Place: 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Presiding: Senator Biden

Witnesses:
+General Barry McCaffrey, USA (Ret.)
President, BR McCaffrey Associates LLC
Adjunct Professor of International Affairs
United States Military Academy
Arlington, VA

+Lt. General William E. Odom, USA (Ret.)
Senior Advisor,
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Former Director,
National Security Agency
Washington, DC

+Ms. Michele Flournoy
President
Center for New American Security
Washington, DC

+Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, Jr., USA (Ret.)
Former Commandant US Army War College
CEO/President, Colgen, LP
Washington, DC

[whometense]

19. Anyone else watching this?

Odom's no public speaker, but he talked straight. Surge=worse than useless

I imagine the Bushies were not pleased.

[TayTay]

4. SFRC 4/2 2:30 pm Iraq After the Surge: Political Prospects

IRAQ AFTER THE SURGE: POLITICAL PROSPECTS

HEARING
before the

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

http://foreign.senate.gov/hearing.html

Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Time: 2:30 P.M.
Place: 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Presiding: Senator Biden



Witnesses:
+Mr. Yahia Said
Director for Middle East and North Africa
Revenue Watch Institute
New York, NY

+Dr. Stephen Biddle
Senior Fellow
Council on Foreign Relations
Washington, DC

+Mr. Nir Rosen
Fellow
New York University, Center on Law and Security
New York, NY

+Dr. Fouad Ajami
Majid Khadduri Professor,
Director of the Middle East Studies Program
The Paul H. Nitze School
of Advanced International Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
Washington, DC

[TayTay]

5. SFRC 4/3 9:30 am Iraq 2012, how do we get there?

IRAQ 2012:
WHAT CAN IT LOOK LIKE,
HOW DO WE GET THERE?

HEARING
before the

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

http://foreign.senate.gov/hearing.html

Thursday, April 3, 2008
Time: 9:30 A.M.
Place: 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Presiding: Senator Biden

Witnesses:
+Dr. Carole O'Leary
Program Director,
Scholar in Residence
Center for Global Peace
American University
Washington, DC

+Dr. Dawn Brancati
Fellow,
Institute of Quantitative Social Studies
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

+The Honorable Carlos Pascual
Vice President,
Director of Foreign Policy
Brookings Institution
Washington, DC

+Dr. F. Gregory Gause, III
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT

+Dr. Terrence K. Kelly
Senior Operations Researcher
RAND Corporation
Pittsburgh, PA

[beachmom]

8. Will these SFRC hearings be archived on their website?

These look like fascinating hearings with very interesting witnesses. These are the kinds of hearings where you get away from the riff raff and can really learn something.

Also, if someone sees that it will be shown on c-span, please post that here. Thanks.

[Inuca]

9. Based on past experience

they should be available on the SFRC site at least for a while. Looks like they are getting ready for the Petraeus & Crocker show part deux. I wonder what will happen in the next few days in Irak, ceasefire, etc. and how it will affect the whole discussion.

[TayTay]

11. At least one of the Iraq ones might be on C-Span 3

And it is quite possible that the Iraq hearings will replay on C-Span 1 or 2 overnight. The video webcasts usually show up on the SFRC site about 10-12 hours after the hearing is over.

Gen Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker will testify before the Senate on April 8th. They have a hearing before the Armed Services Committee on 4/8 at 9:30 am and a hearing before the full SFRC on 4/8 at 2:30 pm. Should be interesting.

[TayTay]

6. Commerce 4/3 10 AM, International Fisheries

International Fisheries: Management and Enforcement

Full Committee

Thursday, April 3, 2008
10:00 AM
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/

The hearing will focus on international fisheries issues, including Regional Fisheries Management Councils (RFMO’s), compliance reporting and enforcement on the high seas.

[globalvillage]

7. Seriously?

A Fisheries hearing? Awesome!

[TayTay]

10. Yeah, GV, Fisheries Hearings

For everyone but Inuca. I promised Inuca I would never mention Fisheries hearings again in terms that suggested "must see TV." Apparently, shockingly, Fisheries Hearings are an acquired taste. (Who knew?)

[Inuca]

12. Oh! :blush:

Actually, maybe I should follow, I have a large pond that my husband is hoping to fish from some day.

[TayTay]

13. LOL, this is great

Back many years ago, okay in 2005, when I first started putting up notices of hearings in the DU JK group, I noticed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Fisheries Hearings. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings were an easy sell, most of the time, because they involved lots of discussion about things that were in the news and the players were well known. (And anything the Dems wanted would be ruthlessly dismissed by the Bush Admin and their fawning allies in Congress, thus rendering the hearings an existential exercise in "How much of this can we take and still stay sane?")

I have noticed over the years that more and more people will now watch Finance and Commerce and SBA hearings. (SBA hearings are great, even if they no longer feature Hector Barreto as SBA Administator and poster boy for incompetence in the Bush Admin. Gawd, those were the most amazing hearings that nobody ever saw. "Mr. Administrator you are, without a doubt, the most incompetent, ill-prepared, inattentive and dismal excuse for a public official that I have ever seen. Any decent human being would have resigned by now and gone off to seek eternal penance for the colossal sins of idiocy and ignorance in the performance of public duties. What in God's name has kept you coming back here when you know that you will suffer for it?" "Ah, I have charts and graphs to show you." "Are they relevant to the discussion at hand?" "No, but they are pretty and talk about lots of numbers and make me feel good. Sorry Senator Snowe." "Sen Kerry? Any thing you want to say to Mr. Barreto here?" OMG! Those were the most entertaining and sad hearings of the whole damn Bush Administration, imho.)

[beachmom]

15. Any way to put them on YouTube? Could be funny. nt

[MBS]

14. hey, these are really important, guys

1.There are HUGE problems with the cod fishery and Georges Bank in general-- very relevant to MA, of course, but also of national and international (Canada, European North Atlantic) generally.Ditto tuna (though not in New England per se, this issue is relevant to American waters and American fishermen), as well as international importance.
2. Ditto salmon aquaculture, problems with transmission of viruses from farmed fish to wild stock. .
3. Ditto issues with insistence of Japan and others to resume whaling
4. Ditto thorny, and (bad) consequential interaction of LNG plant sitings with fisheries. (Very very important, and grotesquely underreported, issue in Passamaquoddy Bay on Maine/New Brunswick border. Some idiots have been pushing to build multiple LNG plants in an ecologically fragile, and difficult-to-navigate (ergo, it doesn't even make logistic sense), taking advantage of high employment in northern ME to bulldoze their proposals through. Navigation path for the giant LNG tankers exactly overlaps
with (a) the highest concentration of plankton (=food base for whales and other animals in the waters there) (b) location of three mainstays of the ec onomy i this area: fisheries, aquaculture "farms" (also dependent on clean water and tourism (FDR home on Campobello Island; St. Andrews, New Brunswick; Grand Manan Island; northern Maine) AND (c) the migratory path of the endangered right whale (speaking of which, we can thank Sen. Kerry, Sen. Snowe and others for altering shipping lanes near Boston to help right whale.. . though the @#$ Bush administration has still refused to implement that change, the last I heard).

I'm really really glad that Sen. Kerry is on this committee, and I'm glad to know about the hearing.

[TayTay]

16. MBS, I am sorry

I actually did follow this because of a long history of interest in this in The Bay State and for other reasons.

Our humor here is more about my enthusiasm for this subject and somewhat erratic success in conveying that enthusiasm than it is about the subject.

My apologies if any offense was given. None was intended. We sometimes stop and take a second to laugh at ourselves for doing things we never ever thought we would be doing, well in a pre-DU JK life. Watching hearings of any sort is one of those things that people just never thought they would be doing. That these hearings are important is one of the pleasant things that was revealed.