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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (93739)	1/5/2005 12:30:20 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793743

Something Slightly Different By Diplomad 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.