CHILE / PERU / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / ANTARCTICA / PANAMA / COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / PITCAIRN / HONDURAS / EL SALVADOR / GUATEMALA / FR. POLYNESIA / MEXICO / COOK ISLANDS / KIRIBATI / KERMADEC IS / NIUE / NEW ZEALAND / TONGA / AMERICAN SAMOA / SAMOA / JARVIS IS. / WALLIS-FUTUNA / TOKELAU / FIJI / AUSTRALIA / HAWAII / PALMYRA IS. / TUVALU / VANUATU / HOWLAND-BAKER / NEW CALEDONIA / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. / NAURU / MARSHALL IS. / MIDWAY IS. / KOSRAE / PAPUA NEW GUINEA / POHNPEI / WAKE IS. / CHUUK / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / INDONESIA / N. MARIANAS / GUAM / YAP / BELAU / JAPAN / PHILIPPINES / CHINESE TAIPEI
Image by thejourney1972 (away until april) via FlickrOn Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 3:34 a.m. local time, an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter Scale was recorded off the central Chilean coast. The epicenter was approximately 70 miles northeast of the city of Concepcion, about 200 miles south of Santiago.
Strong tremors were felt throughout Chile, including Santiago. For more technical information on the earthquake, please see the United States Geological Survey website: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2010/us2010tfan/
Chile is a one of the most seismically active countries in the world – earthquakes here are not uncommon. Building construction standards reflect that, but damage is being reported – ranging from light to moderate in Santiago to more severe structural damage closer to the epicenter.
The U.S. Embassy in Santiago is working actively to ascertain the whereabouts of U.S. citizens, both official and unofficial -- through our warden network -- and local Embassy staff. No Embassy casualties have been reported at this time. American citizens in the United States seeking information on whereabouts of U.S citizens in Chile may call the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. at 1-888-407-4747. American citizens in Chile may call 56-2-330-3476.
We have reached out to the Government of Chile and stand ready to provide assistance as requested.
We extend our heartfelt condolences and prayers to the people and residents of Chile who are confronted with this disaster.
To use the Chile Earthquake Person Finder function directly, see:
http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/
Also clears nominees for ADB, IBRD, USTDA and IMF
[M]y “Large Broom” post has been widely read not only in the confines of the State Department (by several thousand people) but also on Capitol Hill and throughout the larger foreign affairs community. Nothing I wrote has been challenged. Au contraire. In reality, what I wrote at the time could be the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg, just as were the complaints raised at State’s most recent Town Hall with the Secretary.[…]As I’ve said earlier and I will say so again, the State Department has long had the reputation for having highly competent officers, but a very weak administrative structure. The system has traditionally rewarded a small number of senior level Foreign Service Officers who essentially clawed their way up through a very competitive, secretive, convoluted system and an overly hierarchical structure. The Foreign Service Act of 1980 made it worse. After the Cold War’s end, the Act was used throughout the 1990s to shrink the Department wholesale, forcing out too many hard language trained officers just at the peak of their careers.
To compensate for the personnel losses that never should have happened, private contractors recruit from the very pool of skilled but forced-out retirees to -- guess what -- staff Foreign Service positions in the Department. I know any number of highly experienced retirees who have either worked in State for a contractor or been brought back directly as temporary employees year upon year. There’s one thing about bringing back a temporary worker with the expert skills to ease a temporary shortage. But year after year?
This is not only bad management, but lends itself to the sort of abuse we see now by senior career officials in HR and elsewhere, who have brought back cronies who were senior administrative officials in days gone by and who are now ensconced in positions of influence. Positions of influence where -- because of special dispensations available only to the privileged few -- they are receiving not only their full pensions but good salaries as well.
But there are other serious State Department Human resources problems that need fixing. Here are two: 1) an all too pervasive attitude from the top down that the employee is always wrong; and 2) the lack of a functioning system of personnel oversight.
Officer losses due to the Global Repositioning Program (GRP) initiative hit the political and economic sections particularly hard and caused their consolidation. The new joint section is responding well to the ongoing integration process, but reporting has been reduced.
Embassy Brussels has been forced to reduce its work on economic and political issues since the 2004 inspection. The GRP, which shifted Foreign Service resources to posts in China, India, and elsewhere, eliminated two political and economic officer positions in Belgium. The downsizing no longer justified separate economic and political sections, each of which had been led by an FS-01 counselor. The Embassy combined the two sections under a single political-economic counselor at the FS-01 level in 2008 and eliminated the second FS-01 position.
In addition to the counselor, two political officers, an economic officer, and two LE staff members make up the political-economic section, augmented by frequent short-term interns. The Embassy has recommended in its MSP, the addition of a third LE position to help its efforts in furthering bilateral cooperation in counterterrorism and terrorist financing, and in fostering Belgian development assistance to Afghanistan and Africa. The OIG team sees merit in this request. Once an entry-level officer (ELO) position is restored to the section in the summer of 2009, it will return to roughly the right size. Another ELO is expected in the summer of 2010.
Following a GAO report blasting a 2005 reorganization of the State Arms Control and International Security bureau, the State Department’s "T" bureau is circulating plans and soliciting feedback on a proposed reorganization of the bureau to beef up its arms control focus and staffing.
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher held a town hall meeting this morning to kick off the effort which over a 100 employees attended. The memo is also being circulated on the Hill.
[…]
The bureau has about 600 employees in three divisions – Verification, Compliance and Implementation (VCI) headed by Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and Verification Rose Gottemoeller; International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN), currently lead by acting Assistant Secretary Van Van Diepen; and Political-Military Affairs (PM), headed by Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro.
[…]
The proposed re-vamp would essentially move more arms control people and functionality to Gottemoeller’s shop, which would be renamed “Arms Control, Verification and Compliance,” (from the Bolton-era VCI, sans the arms control, of which Joseph and the past administration were largely skeptical). It would also move a fewer number of people from Gottemoeller’s division to ISN, the more sanctions and verification-oriented shop. (State is supporting veteran arms control hand Steve Mull, currently an aide to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns, for the A/S ISN job, but the appointment is still languishing at the White House). Pol-Mil would be unaffected by the proposed changes.
“The specific muscle movements between bureaus and rationalization of offices … would be small, targeted and discreet,” the State Department official said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday announced plans to reorganize the "T" bureau at the State Department, seeking to roll back changes made by former Under Secretary John Bolton during George W. Bush's presidency.
Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher, who leads the T bureau, explained the rationale in a town-hall meeting with about 200 staffers Wednesday morning.
"Arms control, verification, compliance, and nonproliferation will no longer be starved for resources; quite the contrary, these missions along with our political-military efforts will be adequately resourced and well-staffed with first rate professionals," she told her personnel. "The proven and time-tested tools of arms control have been seriously underutilized, if not neglected, by the United States, and nonproliferation efforts have at times lacked focus and follow-through. This dysfunctional approach culminated in the 2005 reorganization."[…]The 2005 reorganization consolidated three bureaus into two, joining arms control and nonproliferation together into the ISN bureau, in what was then touted as a streamlining measure. A 2009 GAO report said that State was never able to demonstrate that the changes produced any benefits. Current officials saw the move as a way to marginalize both efforts.
Cover of The Consul's Wife: A Novel
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