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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
Hail Selvakumar the dog, who rescued seven-year-old Indian boy Dinakaran from the deadly waves:
“That dog grabbed me by the collar of my shirt,” the boy said from under some trees at Pondicherry University, where the family waits for relief aid. “He dragged me out.”
And six elephants are clearing wreckage in Thailand:
While heavy machinery works on the tangled wreckage that used to be seafront resorts, some areas are too muddy or hilly for anything other than the elephants. So the Wang Chang elephant farm in the 17th-century Thai capital of Ayuddhaya offered to send in its best pachyderms. They arrived by lorry in Phang Nga yesterday.
“The six were chosen because they are smart and can act on command,” said Romthongsai Meephan, one of the elephant farm’s owners.
They’ll never get a job with the United Nations. Diplomad has the latest on our morally-powerful friends:
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.
Kofi’s looming visit has UN do-nothings in a panic:
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.
Reuters claimed last Thursday that “the United Nations has mobilised its biggest relief operation … “ This may have been a little pre-emptive, although, as it turns out, not entirely inaccurate; in an update, Diplomad reports the arrival of a WFP (World Food Program) team that is truly dedicated to relief:
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.
As Tim Hanes notes, the UN is “philosophically redundant, structurally irrelevant and bureaucratically ossified.” To hell with this sacred cow; better to rely on dogs. Or elephants.
- the UN is “philosophically redundant, structurally irrelevant and bureaucratically ossified.”
Not to mention corrupt beyond redemption.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 01/03 at 07:01 PM • #
- The last time I heard someone talking about going “blue” was a spoiled brat that used to hold his breath until his face turned blue. Sounds like the UN is trying the same trick here.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 01/03 at 07:15 PM • #
- The U.N. whiffed on res. 1441, bigtime. Apparently it had better oil-for-food things to do, still not even getting around to defining what “serious consequences” would have been.
It has whiffed again, at best, in the case of the Tsunami, and has kept its no-hit record perfect in a way which has the fans stunned and awed, indeed.
The best thing for the U.S. to do now is to stay in the U.N., recognizing we have them right where we want them – preoccupied by their own effete diversions and off the field as spectator gossips – effectively corraled by Cowboy George and not even fit for the Bull Pen.
[crudely attempted baseball analogy]
- Heh heh—“preview” is your friend, Kaboom…Posted by Andrea Harris on 01/03 at 10:59 PM • #
- PS: I think light blue is “cyan.” Or you could look up HTML color values; I think they will work too.Posted by Andrea Harris on 01/03 at 11:00 PM • #
- Story about a woman and her children who were saved by following a giant snake. Plus, an elephant who helped save several children:
Giant snake showed way to safety
Posted by CJosephson on 01/03 at 11:18 PM • #
- None of this business surprises me with the hopelessness of the UN.
If the best they can manage after 8-9 days is to conduct meetings on “co-ordination” while people are dying the thing is fucking bureaucratic joke.
After this tragedy we’ll be able to quantify in some way and possibly forecast for other events how many lives can be expected to be lost if the UN is “co-ordinating relief” as opposed to “can-do” nations like the US and Australia that just get the job done.Posted by Hank Reardon on 01/03 at 11:49 PM • #
- Something about elephants going where our giant earth moving equipment cannot go made me tear up this am.
I hope somebody good makes the movie about this disaster. Mel Gibson comes to mind. Who better to make a film about the A/A axis in action than someone who represents the best of the American/Australian axis of good.
Is it too much to hope that Kofi meet the same fate as Corrie. Now that’s the kind of moral eqiuvalency I could get behind.
- 24 hour catering for aid workers in the middle of a disaster area is obscene. Those people aren’t aid workers, they are more like disaster parasites.
I’m glad this information is coming out and is getting spread around the blogsphere. Tell someone you know and pass the word around. We have to end this cozy relationship the parasites have with disasters.
The catering enjoyed by these disaster parasites is being paid for by money coming out of the pockets of people reading this blog. I feel as if I’ve been robbed.
Posted by CJosephson on 01/04 at 02:04 AM • #
- My God. Is any “news” organization reporting on these UN failures and shenanigans? When the UN says it’s doing this and that, and it’s not, why do we have to hear about it from bloggers? The more reporting we hear from bloggers, the more it seems that what we hear from the MSM is just plain wrong. It’s like the MSM is describing some parallel universe where reality is what they want it to be- you know, like with Finnegan and the rabbit.Posted by Brian O’Connell on 01/04 at 03:30 AM • #
- Spot all the floppy blue hats helping the locals…
http://www.navy.mil/view_photos.asp?page=1&sort_type=0&sort_row=1
Current count None-Zero-Zilch
- Who the hell let him in?
http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=19990
Hope the admiral left no loose memos lying around.
- Something you should know about the Thai elephants. An actor friend who went there to shoot a TV episode a couple of years ago told me that the elephant keepers are having a hard time keeping their elephants fed. Elephants consume enormous amounts of food a day, and sometimes the keepers are reduced to begging on behalf of the animals. The actor friend also told me the keepers are quite rough with the elephants, but he’s an actor, so I don’t know what he means by “rough”. But I do believe him about the food. I hope just a little bit of all that aid money goes to them.
- Great links Boss Hog and Rob Read!
Let’s see: UN grandees arrange to stuff their faces 24/7 in a 5-star hotel, as part of the UN Fork-and-Pork� Program. (Who the hell do they think they are, by the way, Madeline Albright?) Kofi Annan returns from his ski vacation in Jackson Hole five days after the tsunami and gets right to “work,” mooching as usual. Meanwhile…
Australia and Singapore establish a cargo highway in the sky. The USS Abraham Lincoln and her sister ships generate fresh water for thousands; send helicopters to take supplies from crowded regional airfields and deliver them where desperately needed; and dispatch Corpsmen to treat the sick and injured. The USS Bonhomme Richard steams straight for Sri Lanka with hundreds of hospital beds and six surgical operating theaters.
Meanwhile, UN wankers primp and posture for the cameras.
BTW: What was the UN’s smug, creepy Jan Egeland thinking when he made that “stingy” remark? Does he have any idea how much commitment it takes to design, build, operate, and maintain a Nimitz-class carrier battle group? Someone has to pay for that, and that someone would be the US taxpayer. Those ships are ready to go only because the US Navy maintains and provisions them, and keeps their crews trained and sharp. There are currently ten Nimitz-class carriers in the US Navy fleet, and another one under construction. Stingy, huh? </tirade>
I’m proud of Australia, the US, Singapore, Japan, and the many other nation-states that actually contribute to the relief of suffering. Who needs the UN?
Brilliant work Diplomad. And Tim, as I observed during the Bali bombing aftermath, your coverage of the big stories is peerless. Great work.
More to the point: great work Aussies and Yanks in getting the job done.
As usual.