Gadget Fun!

This year's Consumer Electronic Show (CES 2005) is running in Las Vegas and you can fill buckets with techie and gadget hype, as usual. However, there was also plenty of fun in Bill Gates' keynote:

Gates started out by giving an overview of Microsoft's digital media strategy, assisted by talk show host Conan O'Brien. Gates said Microsoft would continue to make it easier to unite digital experiences.

"If you look at today's living room, you have five remote controls and you still can't get your music where you want it," Gates said.

The presentation was marred by several technical glitches, including a Windows XP Media Center slide show that couldn't be launched and an Xbox game demonstration that abruptly ended with a blue-screen memory error.

"Right now, nine people are being fired," O'Brien joked after the first snafu. "Who's in charge of Microsoft?"

I only have one remote control so I must be low tech. But then I knew that. On the other hand, it never pops up a Blue Screen of Death.

More coverage over at CNET including this scary article:

Bill Gates is coming to your living room, whether you like it or not.

Bar the door and grab the 12 gauge!

So many idiots, so little time

But at least the moonbats at the Independent (UK) have collected a bunch of them in one spot - Could the tsunami disaster be a turning point for the world?

As the international aid effort grows and George Bush launches a fresh appeal, we ask politicians and commentators if 2005 might see a new determination to tackle global poverty.

And the relationship to tsunami relief is what, exactly? If developed countries were hit by a tsunami, wouldn't they need help too?

DINOS CHAPMAN, Artist

Western capitalism demands that people must be impoverished. I cannot think that anything will change this year, because we are the ones who have made the world the way it is. I don't believe in altruism.

Gosh, offensive and stupid.

TONY BENN, Former cabinet minister

It may make people realise that the UN needs to be well-equipped and funded. If people diverted money from weapons and war, we have the technology and money to be able to help - if we decide to do that.

Good ole Tony never changes.

STEPHEN TINDALE, Executive director, Greenpeace

It seems churlish to say it, but while it's relatively easy for most of us to give £50, it would be much harder for us to make the changes in our modern lifestyles that are needed if we are to move to a fairer world.

OK Stevie! I won't donate to Greenpeace in the future. Of course, I don't now.

RORY BREMNER, Comedian

On an individual level, it is not just about what we are prepared to give, but what we are prepared to give up. Having left Afghanistan and Iraq in their wake, can our leaders be trusted to fight a war on poverty?

Rory is always a source of laughs - on him.

Then there are the master bureaucrats at the United Nations

Diplomad has today's scoop on the United Nations' Potemkin village version of tsunami disaster relief:

More UNreality . . . But the Dutch Get It

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-affected countries." Wow! Put that on a business card!
...
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."
...
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 my "Go Blue" post below. But wait, there's more - Just TOO Good for a Mere Update!

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 . . . .

More by following both links. I don't know about you, but I'm doing my bit to "Go Blue!"

Ah, to be a bureaucrat!

At Brothers Judd, Peter Brunet is keeping us apprised of the latest fearless exploits of UK bureaucrats. Take NOW THAT’S ANAL RETENTIVE:

It is a story that might have been dreamt up by the authors of Yes, Minister - except that most viewers would have found it too far-fetched to be believed. For 18 years, according to documents published today under the new Freedom of Information Act, civil servants pushed papers around Whitehall as they grappled with one of the great policy issues of the late 20th century: should government departments be supplied with hard lavatory paper, or soft?

No squeezing the Charmin! And after they wiped out that painful problem - Anti-bullying alliance 'bullies members':

Critics, including MPs, have accused the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), an umbrella group of more than 50 voluntary, private and professional organisations backed by £570,000 government funding, of using bullying tactics itself in trying to suppress criticism.
...
The alliance, founded in 2002 but launched as a full government-backed programme last July, is charged with promoting national anti-bullying campaigns and providing national and regional support for schools and other organisations in tackling bullying.

It has set up a structure of nine regional anti-bullying coordinators, with a brief to create local anti-bullying networks among schools and social services and promote schemes to tackle the problem.

Bullying Online, run by nine unpaid volunteers and trustees, has attacked the scheme, arguing that five of the coordinators - each paid £30,000 a year for two days' work a week - already work addressing bullying for local education authorities. Another, coordinator for the south-west region, runs a commercial firm, Lucky Duck publishing, whose publications include materials for addressing bullying.

Forget starting your own business - form an NGO and suck up some government largesse!

Looking Good!

General Order 03-01-2005.1

To: All military and civilian tsunami relief personnel

Subject: Proper method to "Go Blue"

I know you have all been rather busy delivering relief supplies and helping the sick and injured, but the recently arrived United Nations "coordinator" has requested that we "go blue". That is, we should wear United Nations uniforms and insignia.

However, since the coordinator has not been able to displace any food and medicine shipments yet in order to provide the requisite uniforms, he has provided a large quantity of UN logo stickers that he apparently had with him on his Lear jet. These should be applied prominently in the prescribed manner shown in the illustration attached for your guidance.

Please be sure to show them to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan if visits your area on his grand coordination tour later in the month.

How to "Go Blue" correctly!

Wait, there's more!

Diplomad weighs in with today's United Nations tsunami relief japery - it's almost fUNnny . . .

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.
...
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.
...
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.

Hopefully haute cuisine and a fully stocked bar! But I'm sure they brought a few bags of rice in their luggage.

And speaking of gifts that keep on giving, there's the United Nations

Via Instapundit we discover that

SUPPORTERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS have reportedly staged an intervention with Kofi Annan at Richard Holbrooke's home...

You mean the Richard Holbrooke that was the Clinton administration's designated UN suck-up? Yup - cut to the article:

The others there were John Ruggie, assistant secretary general for strategic planning from 1997 to 2001 and now a professor of international relations at Harvard's Kennedy School, Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Timothy Wirth, the president of the Washington-based United Nations Foundation.

The usual Democrat UN lovers. Tim Wirth's actual job title is "Deployer of Ted Turner's Depleted Billion."

The crisis meeting of veteran foreign policy experts in a Manhattan apartment one recent Sunday was held in agreed-upon secrecy.

The high profile guest of honor came unaccompanied by his usual retinue of aides and without the knowledge of most of his closest advisers. The mission, in the words of one participant, was clear - "to save Kofi and rescue the UN."

It must be serious if the usual hangers on didn't get to have their limos park in a no parking zone!

At the gathering, Secretary General Kofi Annan listened quietly to three and a half hours of bluntly worded counsel from a group united in their personal regard for him and support for the United Nations, but deeply concerned that lapses in his leadership over the past two years had eclipsed the accomplishments of his first term and were jeopardizing chances of making the remaining two years of his term meaningful.
...
The secret gathering came at the end of a year that Annan has described as the organization's "annus horribilis," a year in which the United Nations faced charges of corruption in the way it ran the oil-for-food program in Iraq, evidence that blue-helmeted peacekeepers in Congo ran prostitution rings and raped women and teenage girls and formal motions of no confidence in the organization's senior management from staff unions.

Lots of luck, Kofi!

Frankly when your mission statement seems to be "Pontificate endlessly while spending other people's money liberally," it's hard to see how much Kofi could really do to change things. Check out the WInds of Change's The Toyota Taliban, but only if you have low blood pressure:

I've often seen the term "Toyota Taliban" used to refer to non-governmental 'aid' agencies and U.N. bureaucrats. I've even used it myself on occasion. What does it mean, and where does it come from? Here's an excerpt from U.N. Insider's June 04 summary:

In a letter from Kabul, British satirical biweekly Private Eye reported on the private life of international community members in the Afghan capital. It claims that only 16% of the $4.5 billion pledged at the Tokyo conference goes to the government; the rest in the hands of NGO; a term used to refer to "the well heeled" international staff of the U.N. and aid organizations who reportedly spend time shopping for wide screen tvs and laptops at a new Sony Centre. "Most other shopkeepers only ever glimpse them as they are driven past in one of the $75,000 Toyota Landcruisers most of them owned by the U.N. -- known here as the Toyota Taliban," the letter says, adding that the cruisers ferried them from office to restaurant to guest house. It continues: "There's a swimming pool at a central U.N. compound and regular parties and barbecues. Memories of a party held by the DHL courier group last November, when an opium pipe was passed around by U.N. staff, are still fresh. If boredom strikes, aid workers might also sign up for Tai Chi and Argentinean tango lessons."

There's more by following the Winds of Change link including a Roger L. Simon commenter with 18 years experience in Afghanistan:

An enormous and highly profitable international aid apparatus has assembled in Kabul and has largely ignored the input of the Afghan people or their largely American liberators; the latter stand by in disbelief as taxpayers contributions to Afghanistan disappear into outfitting the extravagant needs of European aid community. The UN pays $400 a day (more than a year’s pay for an average Afghan ) plus a generous per diem. This enormous aid infestation has fostered rightful resentment. The UN and associated NGOs ran through years of aid funding in a matter of months. Now when money cannot be found for reconstruction, the UN issues reports criticizing the parsimonious Americans. Meanwhile, the UN and NGOs live like pashas. Hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for Afghans have been transformed into fleets of top-of the-line Toyota Landcruisers, villas and estates to house their workers complete with swimming pools, an endless supply of underpaid servants, luxurious furnishings (accented with looted antiquities,) the latest laptops, video equipment, cases of Johnny Walker Blue and the bling bling ...perks that might even seem excessive to Ken Lay are justifiable expenses charged off to the US. No accountability, no oversight. They don’t bother cooking the books, they don’t even keep the books!

Afghan citizens fear that vocal objections to this patronizing treatment will result in economic reprisals by the UN. They’ve looked to the Americans and ISAAF to clean up the mess to no avail. Rents have skyrocked for the Kabulis as every decent habitat in the city has been purchased by NGOs at ten times its face value. Many citizens now find their new landlords are NGOs! Everywhere in that country this toxic scenario is daily repeated--the condescending class of chauffered Eurotrash grief-relief workers are now hated and despised as the new Toyota Taliban.

There's more there too, but if that doesn't have you reaching for your holster, nothing will.

I hate to seem repetitive, but it's time to put the UN of its misery. And everybody else's misery too.

Biscuits and Gravy - January 3, 2005

I don't think Mrs. Philosopher is going to go for this

In Labour Britain, we all need a tax break. Now it seems, if you want to stop the government taking its bite, you'd do well to become a Muslim, marry four wives, and declare each spouse a tax write-off.

They had a hot time in the old town on New Year's Eve!

More than 330 cars were set on fire in the suburbs of Paris. Since the number increased a mere nine from the previous year, the Interior Ministry noted that there is "stability in the phenomena of urban violence."
...
To add to this sad comedy, one imbecilic French apologist, sociologist Michel Wieviorka, stated the violence is "response from victims of social exclusion to our society of consumption."

Sheesh, a French sociologist. What could be lower?

I am sure Anders Jacobsen's heart is pure, but if you are going to give money to the United Nations, you might as well throw it in the toilet. (Via JustOneMinute who probably wouldn't approve of my take on this.)

That Sounds About Right: Opponents of the Death Penalty Murder 23 People in "Protest"

Campus life, fully exposed

In the fall of 2000, I promised my daughter the freshman that I wouldn't write about Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) until she graduated. As a result, you readers learned nothing from me about the naked dorm, the transgender dorm, the queer prom, the pornography-for-credit course, the obscene sidewalk chalking, the campus club named crudely for a woman's private part, or the appearance on campus of a traveling anti-Semitic roadshow, loosely described as a pro-Palestinian conference.

Instead of hot news items like these, you usually just hear that Wesleyan is very "diverse." Newsweek once hailed the school as the "hottest" diversity campus in America, apparently using the word diversity in its normal campus meaning of "no diversity at all." A one-liner about the campus is that "Wesleyan is so diverse that you can meet people here from almost every neighborhood in Manhattan." And the students tend to have opinions from every known corner of MoveOn.org.

Sounds like a class joint. (Via Betsy's Page)

NEW MARC RICH LINK STINK

New details of billionaire trader Marc Rich's shady oil deals under the U.N. oil-for-food program are emerging, The Post has learned.

These include deals with front companies that have connections to Saddam Hussein's underground financial network.

In particular, prosecutors are probing four suspicious deals that took place in February through April 2001.

In these cases, Rich was listed as a secondary buyer of oil contracts originally allocated by Saddam to mysterious French and Egyptian companies.

The questionable deals began a month after sanctions-buster Rich, a convicted tax dodger, received his midnight pardon from then-President Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton, the gift that keeps on giving.

Still crazier than an outhouse rat

Unknown to practically everyone except windy Cindy is that Mr. Soros is quietly divesting himself, even as we speak, of anything in his private equity group that contains Third Party money. To circumvent what he frets could be the Bush Cabinet, a k a The Grim Reapers, coming after him in terms of SEC, FTC, IRS or any other initials, all's being sold off or spun away from him. Even shucking some stuff he personally owns outright. However, whatever's retained will be whatever has him as its sole investor with his own money of which he has approximately $16 billion, give or take an IRA. All will be placed into some newly defined entity.

SPECTRE?

Good news, tsunami victims!

Bobby Mugabe is coming to town!

Harare - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has taken his family on a month-long annual holiday to Malaysia despite the loss of life caused by Sunday's disastrous tsunami wave, which devastated resorts there and along the coasts of many nations bordering the Indian Ocean.

State radio reported on Tuesday the 80-year-old head of state and his delegation were seen off at Harare airport by vice-presidents Joseph Msika and Joyce Mujuru and members of his elite policy-making body, the Politburo.

Politburo? Catchy name! Actually, they were probably at the airport to make sure he really left. But based on last year's road trip, it will be good news for the Malaysian economy:

January 18 2003

By Douglas Carew

When it comes to lavish Christmas spending, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe is king.

Mugabe has outdone his big-spending spin doctor Jonathan Moyo by flying to Singapore to indulge in a huge shopping spree of his own, while back home millions of his countrymen face starvation, partly because of Mugabe's failed policies.

Information Minister Moyo's two week spending spree in Johannesburg received extensive news coverage this week, but Mugabe went to even greater lengths to stock up on expensive goods for himself and beat the shortages caused by the Zimbabwean economy's state of near paralysis.

Singapore is south-east Asia's premier shopping destination, with thousands of shops selling the best the world's manufacturers have to offer, and Mugabe stocked up with 15 trolley loads, including high-tech electronic goods.

I'm sure it gets real tedious hanging around the palace and trying to ignore the whining from the starving population.

But something more seems to be going on:

The Zimbabwe government has denied media reports that controversial information minister Jonathan Moyo has tendered his resignation to acting president Joyce Mujuru.

Moyo allegedly sent his resignation by fax from Kenya, where he is on holiday, but Mujuru reportedly refused to accept it, referring the matter to President Robert Mugabe who is on vacation in Malaysia.
...
However, senior official sources confirmed the story, and said Moyo's decision to quit was linked to his removal from the ruling ZANU-PF's powerful Soviet-style politburo and central committee.

Moyo's political fortunes started to wane in December after he organised a meeting of key party members in his rural home of Tsholotsho ahead of ZANU-PF's congress, allegedly aimed at thwarting Mugabe's candidate for the post of vice-president, Mujuru.
...
Moyo's misfortunes coincide with those of colourful business man and high-profile ZANU-PF member, Philip Chiyangwa, who was also opposed to Mugabe's choice of vice president.

Chiyangwa and four senior ruling party officials, including Zimbabwe's ambassador to Mozambique, have been in solitary confinement for two weeks on charges of spying for "foreign powers".

They allegedly provided confidential ZANU-PF information to spy masters based in South Africa.

Looks like ole Bobby has been making a list and checking it twice! On the other hand, can you imagine anything more laughable than spying on Zimbabwe? Sheesh, I could do it without even taking off my jammies - "Everyone is starving but Bobby's pals, and his thugs are killing people. Just like yesterday."

We're from the United Nations!

We're here to, er, coordinate! That's it, coordinate! The Diplomad who is all over the UN tsunami relief farce like dirty on a duck says The UN Begins to Act . . .

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.

But wait, there's more!

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. Annan (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. Annan arrives in Indonesia on January 6.

Gosh, that's a surprise!

Anyhow the Diplomad is a little tired of being such a gloomy Gus:

I promise, after this I'll stop posting for awhile on the UNresponse to the tsunami disaster, it's just too depressing and UNbelievable.

Hey, keep the fun coming! Otherwise, we are stuck listening to the pontificating kleptocrats groaning as they pat themselves on the back.