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Friday, January 07, 2005

 

The "Turd" World And The High Priest Vulture Elite



Warning to Potential Readers of this Posting:

The Chief Diplomad is just back from the office. It's 4 am. Mosquitoes are everywhere. The internet is painfully slow. Your "friendly" Chief Diplomad's plan to move on to another set of duties, for now, has fallen by the roadside. He must remain in the current job for now. The local Guardian correspondent has called the Embassy; he is doing a negative story on the US relief effort based on "information" provided by the UN at a press conference. The Diplomad is in a dark, dark mood. So, of course, just as anyone else would do in such circumstances, The Diplomad writes about the UN.

End of Warning.

Many years ago, as we prepared our return to a tough posting in the Far Abroad after leave in the States, our son asked, "Do we have to go back to the 'turd' world?" That phrase, "redolent" with the wisdom possessed only by children, has stayed with me over these passing years. My son was right about the 'turd' world. What tips you off that you have arrived in a poor country, a truly, genuinely dirt-poor corner of the Far Abroad, is the smell. As you leave the airport, you notice a special "exotic" odor of rotting vegetation, garbage, and feces combined with a slight whiff of smoke. Once you're there a bit, you no longer notice. When you leave and come back, it slams you all over again. The kid was right: we had been and still do live in the "Turd World."

This Embassy has been running 24/7 since the December 26 earthquake and tsunami. Along with my colleagues, I've spent the past several days dealing non-stop with various aspects of the relief effort in this tsunami-affected country. That work, unfortunately, has brought ever-increasing contact with the growing UN presence in this capital; in fact, we've found that to avoid running into the UN, we must go out to where the quake and tsunami actually hit. As we come up on two weeks since the disaster struck, the UN is still not to be seen where it counts -- except when holding well-staged press events. Ah, yes, but the luxury hotels are full of UN assessment teams and visiting big shots from New York, Geneva, and Vienna. The city sees a steady procession of UN Mercedes sedans and top-of-the-line SUV's -- a fully decked out Toyota Landcruiser is the UN vehicle of choice; it doesn't seem that concerns about "global warming" and preserving your tax dollars run too deep among the UNocrats.

Sitting VERY late for two consecutive nights in interminable meetings with UN reps, hearing them go on about "taking the lead coordination role," pledges, and the impending arrival of this or that UN big shot or assessment/coordination team, for the millionth time I realized that if not for Australia and America almost nobody in the tsunami-affected areas would have survived more than a few days. If we had waited for the UNocrats to get their act coordinated, the already massive death toll would have become astronomical. But, fortunately, thanks to "retrograde racist war-mongers " such as John Howard and George W. Bush, as we sat in air conditioned meeting rooms with these UNocrats, young Australians and Americans were at that moment "coordinating" without the UN and saving the lives of tens-of-thousands of people.

Seeing these UNocrats perched at the table, whispering to each other, back-slapping, shaking hands, they seemed like a periodic reunion of old cynical Mafia chieftains or mercenaries who run into each other in different hot spots, as they move from one slaughter to another, "How are you? Haven't seen you since Bosnia . . .." As the hours wore on, however, and I nervously doodled in my note pad, shifted in my chair, looked at my watch, and thought about all the real work I had to do that evening, I decided that, no, labeling them mafiosos or mercenaries was much too kind. They seemed more to be the progeny resulting from a mating between a mad oracle and a giant carrion-eater. They were akin to some sort of ancient mythical Greco-Roman-Aztec-Wes Craven-Egyptian-bird-god that demands constant sacrifice and feeding, and speaks in riddles which only it can solve. Yes, I decided, the UNocrats are great hideous vultures, roused from their caves in the European Alps and in the cement canyons and peaks of Manhattan by the stench of death in the Turd World. They leisurely take flight toward the smell of death; circle, and then swoop down, screeching UNintelligble nonsense. They arrive and immediately force others, e.g., the American tax payer, to build them new exclusive nests in the midst of poverty, and make themselves fat on the flesh of the dead. My friends, allow The Diplomad to present to you The High Priest Vulture Elite (HPVE).

These genuinely repulsive, arrogant creatures survive only because the world's rich countries, the non-Turd World, allow them, too. We in the First World find it politically impossible to reveal their pronouncements as the cant they are. For many in Europe and among the New York Times crowd, helping maintain these mad vultures substitutes for genuine action, "The UN is on the job!" In addition, for many senior bureaucrats and minor politicians, there is always the hope that if they play the game right, they, too, can join the High Priest Vulture Elite: We see the ranks of the HPVE full of Scandinavians and leftist Americans, and the occasional pompous Euro-Brazilian, all of whom parlayed mediocre domestic careers of lip-biting humanitarian symbolism into well-paying tax-free sinecures in the HPVE.

Who are the victims? Well, of course, the tax payers of the First World come immediately to mind. But really, after all, for us it's just money. Money comes and goes. The big victims of the HPVE are the world's poor countries who pay with the lives of their children; who get diverted by HPVE mumbo jumbo and its promises of aid and technical assistance from taking actions to develop their own countries and fend off the HPVE.

This is not complete, but the hour is late (please forgive spelling/grammatical errors.) Let me post this now. The Diplomad will get some sleep, then -- as time allows --continue examining the HPVE in subsequent postings, in particular, how the Turd World appears gradually to be waking up to the fact that the HPVE exists only to exist.


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Wednesday, January 05, 2005

 

Something Slightly Different



As The Chief Diplomad moves on to other duties -- fleeing the stench of the UN -- and ponders the meaning of life and death in nasty places, we provide this report from our Acting Chief Diplomad and Vice Coordinator for Coordination on Coordinating the Coordination of African Affairs. It's a charming reminder if any of you dear but cynical readers need it, that the UN's performance in the tsunami crisis has a context:

The UN was represented in this (name deleted) garden variety West African country by all the usual suspects: UNDP (UN Development Program, WFP (World Food Program), UNIDO (UN Industrial Development Organization), ad nauseum. They were all writing "important" studies of the country's development potential after it seemingly adopted a few ideas remotely associated with free markets -- as opposed to its past adoption as national policy of purely communist ideas, which had provoked (surprise!) a great failure. The dictator who had sponsored that communist failure had died, and there was hope that after colonialism, which everyone said had failed, independence might be rescued from the idea that it too had failed. (Note: Colonialism subsequently now turns out to have been the "good old days.")

UNIDO's office was run by a former Minister of Industry from another West African country. This man was known in his home country as "Mr. Ten Percent," which was roughly the amount of his personal kickback from any contract he awarded. On Mr. Ten Percent's UNIDO staff was a young, idealistic European career UN worker, thinking she would help the poor in a needy country during this particular assignment. But Mr. Ten Percent had other ideas. The UN system had taught him that for someone from his continent, international affirmative action had no limits. He insisted that she have sex with him as part of the regular work routine. She refused. He proceeded to wreck her UN career, and then as a reward, was promoted to a very senior position at UNIDO headquarters in Vienna. It's possible that he's still there, earning big bucks.

Note from the transitioning Chief Diplomad: Another heart-warming tale, eh? What our correspondent does not mention is that of all the UN agencies, UNIDO (to which neither the US nor Australia belong, the last time I checked) is the most worthless -- a major achievement, worthy of much commentary.

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Tuesday, January 04, 2005

 

Just TOO Good for a Mere Update!



The post below reports on the impending arrival of Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom "United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-affected countries."

She has spoken! At a large meeting this afternoon, she and the local UN rep, Mr. Bo "Please Wear Blue" Asplund have announced the arrival of yet another "United Nations Joint Assessment Team." But this one is very, very ultra- special. According to the UNocrats, it's not "just another assessment team." Oh, no, banish that thought! You see, "This assessment team will coordinate all the other assessment teams." In addition, the UN will set up a "Civil-Military Coordination Office to coordinate [that word! that word!] all military assistance because the military do not have experience in disaster relief (!)"

Let the mockery begin . . . .

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More UNreality . . . But the Dutch Get It



Well, dear friends, we're now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen -- unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences.

Aussies and Yanks continue to carry the overwhelming bulk of the burden, but some other fine folks also have jumped in: e.g., the New Zealanders have provided C-130 lift and an excellent and much-needed potable water distribution system; the Singaporeans have provided great helo support; the Indians have a hospital ship taking position off Sumatra. Spain and Netherlands have sent aircraft with supplies.

The UN continues to send its best product, bureaucrats. Just today the city's Embassies got a letter from the local UN representative requesting a meeting for "Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom, United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries." Wow! Put that on a business card! And she must be really, really special because she has the word "coordinator" twice in her title!

The letter, in typically modest UN style, goes on to explain that "Ms. Wahlstrom's main task will be to provide leadership and support to the international relief effort. She will undertake high-level consultations with the concerned governments in order to facilitate the delivery of international assistance." Oh, and she'll be visiting from January 4-5.

Once, again, a hearty Diplomadic "WOW!" She's going to do all that in two days! The Australians and we have been feeding and otherwise helping tens-of-thousands of people stay alive for the past ten days, and still have a long, long way to go, but she's going to wrap the whole thing up in a couple of days of meetings. Thank goodness she's here to provide the poor lost Aussies and Yanks with leadership. The Diplomad bows in awe to such power and wisdom. The letter is signed, by the way, by the same UN official who suggested a couple of days back that the Australian and US air traffic controllers in Aceh should don UN blue (see our post of January 2.)

Ok, enough with the UN; you get the picture. Now to the EU. The EU could copy the Australian-American model of acting quickly and effectively to save lives, or they could copy the UN model of meeting at a leisurely pace to plan for the possibility of setting up a coordination center that will consider making a plan for the possibility of an operations center to consider beginning to request support for the tsunami's victims. Ah, my wise friends, guess which model of "action" the EU chose? No need to emulate those "cowboys" from Australia and the USA with their airplanes and loading crews working round-the-clock; oh, no, much too tacky, sweaty and dirty. No need to feed into the system those goofy Aussiyankeebushowardian New World Anglo-Saxons already have created. No, they'll follow the much more elegant Kofi Annan model. A couple of EU planners have shown up to begin making arrangements for an assessment team to arrive, etc., etc., you know the rest. Meanwhile, people die.

But all is not lost. The Dutch, who on occasion show the great common sense for which they were once justifiably famous, have signed up with the Aussiyankeebushowardian Core Group. Thanks to a European Diplomad (Yes, The Diplomadic insurgency has gone international!) we have in our possession a short situation report circulated by the Dutch at the most recent EU meeting here in this corner of the Far Abroad. This January 2 report is written by local Dutch diplomats who traveled to Aceh and saw the reality on the ground. We will cite the two principal paragraphs, and leave them unedited in their original rather charming Dutch-English,


The US military has arrived and is clearly establishing its presence everywhere in Banda Aceh. They completely have taken over the military hospital, which was a mess until yesterday but is now completely up and running. They brought big stocks of medicines, materials for the operation room, teams of doctors, water and food. Most of the patients who were lying in the hospital untreated for a week have undergone medical treatment by the US teams by this afternoon. US military have unloaded lots of heavy vehicles and organize the logistics with Indonesian military near the airport. A big camp is being set up at a major square in the town. Huge generators are ready to provide electricity. US helicopters fly to places which haven't been reached for the whole week and drop food. The impression it makes on the people is also highly positive; finally something happens in the city of Banda Aceh and finally it seems some people are in control and are doing something. No talking but action. European countries are until now invisible on the ground. IOM staff (note: this is a USAID-funded organization) is very busy briefing the incoming Americans and Australians about the situation.

The US, Australia, Singapore and the Indonesian military have started a 'Coalition Co-ordination Centre' in Medan to organize all the incoming and outgoing military flights with aid. A sub-centre is established in Banda Aceh."


Isn't that nice? Europeans with a sense of reality.

The only fault The Diplomad can find with the Dutch report is that it understates the role of the Australians in the relief effort -- they deserve considerably more credit than this report gives them. It's hard to praise the Aussies too much for what they have done in the wake of the tsunami. They are absolutely splendid -- too bad they've got that thing about that weird game, uh, cricket, is it?

Anyhow, soon I will return to my habitual corner of the Far Abroad and leave my colleagues here to deal with the UN, the EU and their Coordination Efforts.



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Monday, January 03, 2005

 

almost fUNnny . . .



Day 9 of the tsunami crisis.

I know I had promised to lay off the UN for a bit . . . but I can't. As one reader commented on a previous Diplomad posting on the UN, "it's like watching a train wreck" -- you know it's horrible, but you've just got to look at it.

In this part of the tsunami-wrecked Far Abroad, the UN is still nowhere to be seen where it counts, i.e., feeding and helping victims. The relief effort continues to be a US-Australia effort, with Singapore now in and coordinating closely with the US and Australia. Other countries are also signing up to be part of the US-Australia effort. Nobody wants to be "coordinated" by the UN. The local UN reps are getting desperate. They're calling for yet another meeting this afternoon; they've flown in more UN big shots to lecture us all on "coordination" and the need to work together, i.e., let the UN take credit. With Kofi about to arrive for a big conference, the UNocrats are scrambling to show something, anything as a UN accomplishment. Don't be surprised if they claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln is under UN control and that President Lincoln was a strong supporter of the UN.

Maybe watching the UN flounder is not like watching a train wreck; perhaps it's more akin to watching an Ed Wood movie or reading Maureen Dowd or Margo Kingston -- so horrible, so pathetic, that it transforms into a thing of perverse beauty. The only problem, of course, is that real people are dying.

I hope soon to return to my habitual corner of the Far Abroad . . . far, far away from the UN.

UPDATE: More on "The UNcredibles": WFP (World Food Program) has "arrived" in the capital with an "assessment and coordination team." The following is no joke; no Diplomad attempt to be funny or clever: The team has spent the day and will likely spend a few more setting up their "coordination and opcenter" at a local five-star hotel. And their number one concern, even before phones, fax and copy machines? Arranging for the hotel to provide 24hr catering service. USAID folks already are cracking jokes about "The UN Sheraton." Meanwhile, our military and civilians, working with the super Aussies, continue to keep the C-130 air bridge of supplies flowing and the choppers flying, and keep on saving lives -- and without 24hr catering services from any five-star hotel . . . . The contrast grows more stark every minute.

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Sunday, January 02, 2005

 

UNsanity Update



Don't want to sound like a broken record (for you younger readers, a record was like a CD, except a lot cheaper) but I have to pass along this bit of UNsanity. I promise, after this I'll stop posting for awhile on the UNresponse to the tsunami disaster, it's just too depressing and UNbelievable.

A colleague came back from a meeting held by the local UN representative yesterday and reported that the UN rep had said that while it was a good thing that the Australians and Americans were running the air ops into tsunami-wrecked Aceh, for cultural and political reasons, those Australians and Americans really "should go blue." In other words, they should switch into UN uniforms and give up their national ones.

Now you all know that The Diplomad is not a cynical or suspicious being, but there is something funny going on here . . . what could it be? Could it be a genuine concern for local "cultural and political sensitivities" that would be offended by the presence of Aussies and Yanks in their own military uniforms saving thousands of lives? Maybe . . . or, might it not be an odd coincidence that just after the infamous Mr. Anan (see prior posts) says the UN will be setting up air traffic control in Aceh, the UN wants to show that it has an ATC system operating? What better way than to continue in the UN tradition of taking credit for others' work? And this just before Mr. Anan arrives in Indonesia on January 6.

Please quote Vice President Cheney's recent comment to Senator Leahy next time.

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The UN Begins to Act . . .



The Diplomad has been critical, often more than implying that the UN is as worthless as, uh, as . . . as . . . well, in fact, that it's uniquely worthless. Among the many things The Diplomad has written about the UN is that it's incapable of acting in an emergency, and that its vaunted humanitarian agencies are as worthless as, uh, as . . . well, as worthless as the rest of the UN system. But The Chief Diplomad is humble and not above taking back his words.

So The Diplomad must acknowledge that as we head into day 8 of the tsunami disaster, the UN, in fact, has begun to act. Just today we ran across this statement by SecGen Annan,

"On the question of fund-raising I think things are looking up. We are doing very well for the moment . . ."

So you see, the UN has been active getting money. That's pretty active, eh? (Note: Too bad Saddam can't help this time with UN fund-raising.)


Oh and that's not all. Nope, not at all. Look at this burst of useful activity by Annan,

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told a U.S. television network on Saturday that he will visit Indonesia on Thursday to coordinate international relief for Asia's tsunami victims. "I will go to Jakarta to launch the appeal from there and work with the leaders of the region who are also determined to play a role," Annan told ABC News. "And I think that's a very positive."

Major donors will convene on Thursday in Indonesia, which is hosting a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) that will focus on the effects of the tsunami disaster. "This is the largest disaster we have had to deal with," Annan said. "The sheer complexity of it - 12 countries have been affected ... And we are trying to operate in each of them and give them assistance, help coordinate the national, regional and international assistance as well as mobilize the resources and the logistical requirements to go in and be effective."

He said international relief coordinators needed helicopters, trucks and air traffic controllers to be able to really move the goods as quickly as possible to get them to the people who need them.

How about that? He's going to a conference. That's pretty active! That'll feed lots of people! And, gosh, he's got a great idea: helicopters, trucks and air traffic controllers! I'll bet nobody thought of that!


Survivors in the remote Indonesian town of Keude Teunom swarmed U.S. military helicopters ferrying water, medicine and other supplies Saturday to devastated areas of the country hard to reach by road.

Dozens of survivors ran across the mud-covered earth to reach the choppers. Most of the town in the Aceh province has been destroyed. The only buildings left standing are shells of what previously existed.

"Aceh has drowned. We are finished. There is nothing," one survivor in the village on the west coast of Sumatra said. Another man said simply, "Thank you, thank you."

One helicopter brought milk and nutritional supplements. Another brought a medical team to assess the survivors. Other helicopters were due to bring in water and other supplies.

And, of course, we all need to wait for the UN to coordinate before anything happens on the ground,


One of the biggest US military disaster relief missions in history kicked into high gear today as an aircraft carrier battle group arrived off the shores of tsunami-battered Sumatra and began launching helicopters heavy with supplies. A flotilla carrying Marines and water-purifying equipment was heading for Sri Lanka, and a former staging base for B-52 bombers in Thailand roared with the takeoffs and landings of giant cargo planes. Two Seahawk helicopters from the USS Abraham Lincoln landed in Banda Aceh early today to begin getting badly needed relief supplies, including material for temporary shelters, into villages along Sumatra’s northwest coast. <...>

More than 20 vessels with thousands of sailors and Marines are being dispatched, along with some 1,000 land-based troops. The USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault vessel carrying Marines, and the Lincoln battle group were to lead the operations from the seas. Thailand’s Vietnam War-era air base of Utapao has become the airlift hub for the region. C-130 transport planes are already conducting sorties to Jakarta and the Sumatran cities of Medan and Banda Aceh, according to a statement today by the US Embassy in Jakarta.

US Navy medical staff are also on the ground in Meulaboh, a decimated fishing village where several thousand bodies have been recovered. The Navy is considering a request from Jakarta to establish a field hospital there. Elsewhere, nine C-130 transport craft took off yesterday from Utapao, a former staging area for B-52 bombers, to rush medical and other supplies to the stricken resorts of southern Thailand and the more distant airfields in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

A small team of Thai-speaking US Navy SEALs, US Army Special Forces personnel and military doctors have been at the battered resort of Phuket for several days. Along with the US military assets, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Japan are among the core of nations contributing ships or planes and helping plan relief operations.

The US contribution is by far the biggest, however.

The Lincoln group alone has about 6,500 sailors and Marines. The Bonhomme Richard has a crew of 1,000 and can carry an additional 2,000 Marines, and is capable of putting them ashore quickly on huge landing vessels launched from its hull.


Well, The Diplomad is sorry for its past criticism of the UN.

In these times of gentleness and political correctness, we all must acknowledge that we're all special in our own way. We each do what we can best do. Americans and Australians are good at saving lives and the world; the UN is good at asking for money and going to conferences. We're sure both talents are equally valid; we shouldn't judge one better or worse than the other.


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Saturday, January 01, 2005

 

UN Death Watch . . .



Well, we're heading into Day 7 of the Asian quake/tsunami crisis. And the UN relief effort? Nowhere to be seen except at some meetings and on CNN and BBC as talking heads. In this corner of the Far Abroad, it's Yanks and Aussies doing the hard, sweaty work of saving lives.

Check out this interview (on the UN's official website) with SecGen Annan and Under SecGen Egeland shows,

Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. <...> In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.

Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.


I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."

The UN is a sham.

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Friday, December 31, 2004

 

Flash! Clare Short is an Idiot!



If any of you, good friends, think that this posting's headline is too harsh, too undiplomatic and just too Diplomadic, please read this from The Scotsman which I reproduce in its full glorious entirety,

Bush 'Undermining UN with Aid Coalition' By Jamie Lyons, PA Political Correspondent

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.

The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia would coordinate the world’s response. But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN. “I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,” she said. “Only really the UN can do that job,” she told BBC Radio Four’s PM programme. “It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.”

Ms Short said the coalition countries did not have good records on responding to international disasters. She said the US was “very bad at coordinating with anyone” and India had its own problems to deal with. “I don’t know what that is about but it sounds very much, I am afraid, like the US trying to have a separate operation and not work with the rest of the world through the UN system,” she added.


Do I really need to say anything more? "Only really the UN can do the job?" We have US C-130s flying in and out of here dropping off heaps of supplies; US choppers arrive today; USAID is doing a knock-out job of marshalling and coordinating US and local resources to deliver real assistance to real people. The Aussies have planes and troops delivering stuff; even the Indians have goods on the way. The UN? Nowhere to be seen. OK, I'm not being fair. Last night they played host to a big "coordination" meeting of donors to announce that the UNDP has another large "assessment and coordination team" team arriving. Our USAID guys, who've been working 18-20 hrs/day, came back furious from this meeting saying everybody would be dead if the delivery of aid waited for the UN to set up shop and begin "coordinating." The UN types are upset with the US, Ms. Short, dear, not because we're undermining them but because we're showing them up as totally inept.

So much stupidity . . . . Ms. Short and her ilk would rather have people die than have the US go it "alone" with its partners.

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Things That Make You Say 'Blah!' The UN Response to the Tsunami



Sorry, this will have to be short. I just hope it's coherent and spelled correctly.

We've been working some very long days since the tsunami hit this region: today was another 18-hour day, on the heels of a sleepless night answering phones, writing messages back to Washington, coordinating with Pacific Command in Honolulu, and trying to nail down a thousand and one details big and small. There will be no New Year's holiday for any of us.

Our regular readers know that this blog is very critical of the Foreign Service and the State Department. But to be fair, I think Americans would be proud of the dedication shown and of the work being done by their Foreign Service, some incredibly competent and energetic USAID workers, and, of course, the US military. Everybody in the Embassy community is giving up leave, canceling long-standing holiday plans, volunteering for every imaginable duty -- including some quite hazardous ones -- and doing incredible work, all to save the lives of people, many of whom a few days ago probably would have been perfectly willing to burn down our Embassy or march against the USA. Most of the bureaucratic crap is forgotten and common sense rules the day. Americans are everywhere in this corner of the Far Abroad doing things that no other country on earth can or will do and at a truly amazing pace. Proud to be an American (and for the Aussies, you, too, can be very proud of your folks who are doing a bang up job -- as the Aussie military always does.)

In stark contrast, the much-vaunted UN humanitarian effort is a disgrace.

If you go to the UN's official website you'll find stories such as these,

1) "Annan cuts short holidays to oversee massive UN relief effort after Asian tsunami"


Secretary-General Kofi Annan is cutting short his end-of-year holidays to return to United Nations Headquarters in New York tonight to oversee the world body's relief efforts after the devastating tsunami that struck Southern Asia, killing some 80,000 people, injuring hundreds of thousands more and affecting millions.

He will meet tomorrow morning with UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland and the heads of other agencies involved in the relief effort, which officials have called unprecedented and possibly the largest ever launched by the world body.


2) "UN launches unprecedented multiple effort to aid victims of Asia's devastating tsunami"


"An enormous relief effort is on its way," UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said, as UN Disaster Assessment Coordination (UNDAC) teams fanned out to the stricken countries and local branches of the world body's various agencies began releasing emergency material.


And my personal favorite and worthy of my posting of December 11 on UNICEF,

3) "In UN relief effort after Asian tsunami, some details fall below public radar"


To address the psycho-social needs of children throughout nearly a dozen countries devastated by the tsunami, selective in-service teacher training will be supported to equip teachers with specific methods and activities, UNICEF said.


Believe me, there is no massive UN effort underway. There is a lot of UN blah-blah, but that's it.

Notice in citation #2 above that when Egeland talks about "an enormous relief effort is on its way" he really means the UN has begun to send bureaucrats out to affected areas to file reports. Also note citation #3: children are dying all over the place and where does UNICEF want to spend its, I mean, your money? On psycho-babble training of teachers -- teachers who probably are knee-deep in mud and water right now.

Ironically the UN effort is best summed up by the "outspoken" Mr. Egeland, who in an unguarded moment in New York revealed the truth: "We are doing very little at the moment."

Meanwhile, Americans are funding local Red Cross/Red Crescent organizations, organizing truck convoys to break up the supply bottlenecks at airports and seaports, loading barges with rice and biscuits, flying in a steady stream of C-130s, and steaming in aircraft carrier battlegroups (diverted from other tasks vital to our national security) laden with mobile hospitals, supplies of every imaginable type and critically needed helicopters. Local AmCham chapters are putting together huge donation drives and "greedy' American multinationals are donating expensive heavy earth moving equipment, generators, and fuel to help Asia's victims -- China has done nothing, by the way.

Those "stingy" Americans, when will they ever stop thinking about themselves and give . . .

Happy New Year to you all, and thanks for reading our little blog.


# posted by Diplomad @ 12:30 AM Comment (0) | Trackbacks (11)   

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A Blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career -- even with a Republican President! Join the State Department Republican Underground. FSOs (and others) Send us your suggested posts to diplomad-at-hotmail-dot-com

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