Discussion
At a time when many politicians seem to have their own agendas and ‘shady’ morality, Kofi Annan seems like a really fair minded and genuine chap.
Kids have an uncanny ability of sussing out genuine people and even my six year old daughter said, when she saw him on the telly, “he’s a very kind man”. Why can’t we have politicians like him in the UK I wonder?
Kids have an uncanny ability of sussing out genuine people and even my six year old daughter said, when she saw him on the telly, “he’s a very kind man”. Why can’t we have politicians like him in the UK I wonder?
srebbe64 said:
At a time when many politicians seem to have their own agendas and ‘shady’ morality, Kofi Annan seems like a really fair minded and genuine chap.
Kids have an uncanny ability of sussing out genuine people and even my six year old daughter said, when she saw him on the telly, “he’s a very kind man”. Why can’t we have politicians like him in the UK I wonder?
Oh, yes. Maybe his son could trade-in getting a $30k PA "consultancy fee" for helping a Euro Agribusiness sell food to Iraq, (and then keep getting the "fee" YEARS AFTER he stopped "consulting" for the firm)and change to getting people "expedited" Immigration papers into the UK, hmmm??
Don't get me started on his lack of involvement in Sub-Sahara Africa.. Give the man an opportunity to bash the West, and he is all for it. God help the person standing between him and a TV camera!
Dave
>> Edited by just dave on Friday 7th January 19:04
Agreed he does come across as honest and kind, willing to use his time and efforts to lead people towards a better existence by helping them to help themselves - which is why he fails to qualify for a life in politics in this country, where the person spec shows you need to have a facility for terminological inexactitudes, spin like a top, impose ideological kontrolfreakery on everyone, waste £billions on dumb issues, feather your nest and wait for the EU gravy train to stop at your door 
just dave said:
At a time when many politicians seem to have their own agendas and ‘shady’ morality, Kofi Annan seems like a really fair minded and genuine chap.
Kids have an uncanny ability of sussing out genuine people and even my six year old daughter said, when she saw him on the telly, “he’s a very kind man”. Why can’t we have politicians like him in the UK I wonder?
Oh, yes. Maybe his son could trade-in getting a $30k PA "consultancy fee" for helping a Euro Agribusiness sell food to Iraq, (and then keep getting the "fee" YEARS AFTER he stopped "consulting" for the firm)and change to getting people "expedited" Immigration papers into the UK, hmmm??
Dave
Don't know anything about his son. But if that's the best a cynical press can get - possible misdemenours of a relative - then he's probably an okay guy.
What hope for any of us if our character is coloured by
relatives. Hell, I'd be knackered, looking at some of my cousins!
alfaman said:Not sure we can pin that on him, part of his reasonableness will be to go along with the nations that jointly fund his organisation and bug his office
Well he's head of an organisation that is poorly organised , virtually ineffective, and incapable of managing its finances with probity..... hmmmmmm .. and who is responsible for that I wonder?
Commenting on the UN is diffrent to cricising Kofi A imo. After all, Patrick Moore admits his Halley's Comet Society is the second most useless organisation in the world, after the UN
News report concerning this sterling fellow
....."It was Annan, who in October 1997 brought in as Oil-for-Food's executive director Benon Sevan, reporting directly to the Secretary-General, to consolidate Oil-for-Food's operations into the Office of Iraq Program. And it was shortly after Sevan took charge that Oil-for-Food, set up by Kofi Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, with at least some transparency on individual deals, began treating as confidential such vital information as the names of specific contractors, quantities of goods, and prices paid.
U.N. staff, such as Under-Secretary General Shashi Tharoor in a letter last month to the Wall Street Journal, have argued that the U.N. was not responsible for Saddam's misdeeds, and that U.N. staff were not concerned with such kickback-relevant matters as business terms of Saddam's contracts. The disturbing implication is that the U.N. — while collecting a commission of more than $1 billion on Saddam's oil sales to cover its own overhead in administering Oil-for-Food — was indifferent to Saddam's short-changing the Iraqi people, whose relief was supposed to be the entire point of the program.
Beyond that, the U.N., during the final months of Oil-for-Food, gave every indication of knowing just where the problems lay. Last May, shortly after the fall of Saddam's regime, the U.N. Security Council voted to end the Oil-for-Food program and gave the U.N. Secretariat six months to tie-up loose ends before handing over any outstanding import contracts to the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority. With Saddam's regime gone as a contracting party, the U.N. began a frenzied process of "renegotiating" billions in contracts, basically winnowing out the graft component that Oil-for-Food had previously approved.
By the end of this sudden housecleaning, the U.N. had scrapped more than 25 percent of the contracts for which, under Saddam, it had already agreed to release funding from the U.N.-controlled Oil-for-Food bank accounts. Uncharacteristically, the U.N. on its website has posted explanatory notes next to some of the dropped contracts. These do not suggest a U.N. that was living in ignorance of Saddam's 10-percent-overpricing-and-kickback scheme.
For instance, in the U.N.'s own footnotes, there is reference to the welding-machine contractor from Lebanon, "unwilling to accept the 10% deduction"; likewise the Belgian and Jordanian suppliers of medicine, both refusing a "10% reduction." In other cases there is a vaguer note, such as the Russian backhoe supplier, who "refused to accept extra fee deduction." Or the supplier of "fork lift and spares" from Belarus who "stated that the supply of remaining parts cannot be cost effective under the current circumstances." Asked to further explain these notations, an Oil-for-Food spokesman offers no comment except that all available information is already posted on the U.N. website.
Altogether, according to U.N. records, 728 previously approved and funded deals were "removed from the list of amendable contracts," a few because the supplies had already been delivered, but many because the contractors appear to have run for the hills. For instance, there's the Jordanian supplier of school furniture, whose contract was dropped during the U.N.'s post-Saddam frenzy of "prioritization" because the "Company does not exist and the person in charge moved to Egypt." Or the Russian supplier of "vehicle spare parts," who "could not be contacted despite all efforts." Or the Algerian seller of "adult milk" who "has no interest in renegotiation"; the Egyptian seller of "generator" for educational purposes, who "is not enthusiastic about proceeding with the amendment"; the Syrian seller of "laboratory equipment" who is "not possible to contact."
Another 762 contracts set aside indefinitely by the U.N., post-Saddam because of their "questionable utility" were deals for goods that sound handy and humanitarian enough on the generic U.N. face of it. These include medicine from China; sugar and ambulances from Egypt; laboratory materials and medical equipment from France; educational materials from Pakistan; wheat, medical equipment, and ambulances from Russia; and yet more wheat, from Saudi Arabia. One has to wonder if the revised assessment of utility lay in the nature of the goods described, or in the actual terms of the contracts previously blessed by the U.N.
It's commendable that the U.N., facing imminent handover of the program, tried to clean up the remaining contracts. It is plausible, perhaps, that no one at the U.N. knew of the links between Kofi Annan's son, Kojo, and the firm monitoring Iraq's U.N.-approved imports, Cotecna, and that these ties had no bearing on a massively corrupt program. It is possible that only after Saddam fell did anyone among the 1,000 or so U.N. international staff administering Oil-for-Food, or Sevan, or Kofi Annan, notice that they'd been approving Saddam's deals with suppliers that were, in various combinations, paying kickbacks, hard to contact, or even, as in the case of the Jordanian school-furniture contractor, nonexistent.
But what has to be clear by now is that the U.N. itself was either corrupt, or so stunningly incompetent as to require total overhaul. There are by now enough questions, there has been enough secrecy, stonewalling, and rising evidence of graft all around the U.N. program in Iraq, so that it is surely worth an independent investigation into the U.N. itself — and Annan's role in supervising this program. If Kofi Annan will not exercise his authority to set a truly independent inquiry in motion, it is way past time for the U.S., whose taxpayers supply about a quarter of the U.N. budget, to call the U.N. itself to account for Oil-for-Food — in dollar terms the biggest relief operation it has ever run, and by many signs, one of the dirtiest.
— Claudia Rosett is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute."
Dave
>> Edited by just dave on Friday 7th January 19:40
....."It was Annan, who in October 1997 brought in as Oil-for-Food's executive director Benon Sevan, reporting directly to the Secretary-General, to consolidate Oil-for-Food's operations into the Office of Iraq Program. And it was shortly after Sevan took charge that Oil-for-Food, set up by Kofi Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, with at least some transparency on individual deals, began treating as confidential such vital information as the names of specific contractors, quantities of goods, and prices paid.
U.N. staff, such as Under-Secretary General Shashi Tharoor in a letter last month to the Wall Street Journal, have argued that the U.N. was not responsible for Saddam's misdeeds, and that U.N. staff were not concerned with such kickback-relevant matters as business terms of Saddam's contracts. The disturbing implication is that the U.N. — while collecting a commission of more than $1 billion on Saddam's oil sales to cover its own overhead in administering Oil-for-Food — was indifferent to Saddam's short-changing the Iraqi people, whose relief was supposed to be the entire point of the program.
Beyond that, the U.N., during the final months of Oil-for-Food, gave every indication of knowing just where the problems lay. Last May, shortly after the fall of Saddam's regime, the U.N. Security Council voted to end the Oil-for-Food program and gave the U.N. Secretariat six months to tie-up loose ends before handing over any outstanding import contracts to the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority. With Saddam's regime gone as a contracting party, the U.N. began a frenzied process of "renegotiating" billions in contracts, basically winnowing out the graft component that Oil-for-Food had previously approved.
By the end of this sudden housecleaning, the U.N. had scrapped more than 25 percent of the contracts for which, under Saddam, it had already agreed to release funding from the U.N.-controlled Oil-for-Food bank accounts. Uncharacteristically, the U.N. on its website has posted explanatory notes next to some of the dropped contracts. These do not suggest a U.N. that was living in ignorance of Saddam's 10-percent-overpricing-and-kickback scheme.
For instance, in the U.N.'s own footnotes, there is reference to the welding-machine contractor from Lebanon, "unwilling to accept the 10% deduction"; likewise the Belgian and Jordanian suppliers of medicine, both refusing a "10% reduction." In other cases there is a vaguer note, such as the Russian backhoe supplier, who "refused to accept extra fee deduction." Or the supplier of "fork lift and spares" from Belarus who "stated that the supply of remaining parts cannot be cost effective under the current circumstances." Asked to further explain these notations, an Oil-for-Food spokesman offers no comment except that all available information is already posted on the U.N. website.
Altogether, according to U.N. records, 728 previously approved and funded deals were "removed from the list of amendable contracts," a few because the supplies had already been delivered, but many because the contractors appear to have run for the hills. For instance, there's the Jordanian supplier of school furniture, whose contract was dropped during the U.N.'s post-Saddam frenzy of "prioritization" because the "Company does not exist and the person in charge moved to Egypt." Or the Russian supplier of "vehicle spare parts," who "could not be contacted despite all efforts." Or the Algerian seller of "adult milk" who "has no interest in renegotiation"; the Egyptian seller of "generator" for educational purposes, who "is not enthusiastic about proceeding with the amendment"; the Syrian seller of "laboratory equipment" who is "not possible to contact."
Another 762 contracts set aside indefinitely by the U.N., post-Saddam because of their "questionable utility" were deals for goods that sound handy and humanitarian enough on the generic U.N. face of it. These include medicine from China; sugar and ambulances from Egypt; laboratory materials and medical equipment from France; educational materials from Pakistan; wheat, medical equipment, and ambulances from Russia; and yet more wheat, from Saudi Arabia. One has to wonder if the revised assessment of utility lay in the nature of the goods described, or in the actual terms of the contracts previously blessed by the U.N.
It's commendable that the U.N., facing imminent handover of the program, tried to clean up the remaining contracts. It is plausible, perhaps, that no one at the U.N. knew of the links between Kofi Annan's son, Kojo, and the firm monitoring Iraq's U.N.-approved imports, Cotecna, and that these ties had no bearing on a massively corrupt program. It is possible that only after Saddam fell did anyone among the 1,000 or so U.N. international staff administering Oil-for-Food, or Sevan, or Kofi Annan, notice that they'd been approving Saddam's deals with suppliers that were, in various combinations, paying kickbacks, hard to contact, or even, as in the case of the Jordanian school-furniture contractor, nonexistent.
But what has to be clear by now is that the U.N. itself was either corrupt, or so stunningly incompetent as to require total overhaul. There are by now enough questions, there has been enough secrecy, stonewalling, and rising evidence of graft all around the U.N. program in Iraq, so that it is surely worth an independent investigation into the U.N. itself — and Annan's role in supervising this program. If Kofi Annan will not exercise his authority to set a truly independent inquiry in motion, it is way past time for the U.S., whose taxpayers supply about a quarter of the U.N. budget, to call the U.N. itself to account for Oil-for-Food — in dollar terms the biggest relief operation it has ever run, and by many signs, one of the dirtiest.
— Claudia Rosett is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute."
Dave
>> Edited by just dave on Friday 7th January 19:40
I object to some bloke who's not even from my country glibly saying that we should give a billion dollars. Righty-ho, anything you say Sir.
But get this - by cancelling the debt repayments the affected countries will save THREE billion dollars.
So - paid in full with a 2 billion dollar tip?
But get this - by cancelling the debt repayments the affected countries will save THREE billion dollars.
So - paid in full with a 2 billion dollar tip?
simpo two said:
I object to some bloke who's not even from my country glibly saying that we should give a billion dollars. Righty-ho, anything you say Sir.
But get this - by cancelling the debt repayments the affected countries will save THREE billion dollars.
So - paid in full with a 2 billion dollar tip?
No he hasnt told Britain told give a billion dollars.
He has asked the world to give it....
Slight difference....
Plus you wont be giving f'all anyway...youve made it clear that you dont give a shit about anyone else.
Itll come from our govt. and yes its our tax money, but Id rather our money went to help the Tsumani victims, than being wasted on a bullshit based war.
turbobloke said:
Well he's head of an organisation that is poorly organised , virtually ineffective, and incapable of managing its finances with probity..... hmmmmmm .. and who is responsible for that I wonder?
Not sure we can pin that on him, part of his reasonableness will be to go along with the nations that jointly fund his organisation and bug his office
Commenting on the UN is diffrent to cricising Kofi A imo. After all, Patrick Moore admits his Halley's Comet Society is the second most useless organisation in the world, after the UN
Agreed, when you consider the crap that the chap has had to deal with, he does it in a pretty balanced way I think. The UK Government bugged his phone and he responded in a very dignified way. Equally, many countries, apparently, pledge large sums of money to disasters but don't make good on their promises - in other words, the promises are simply made for domestic PR. I felt that he didn't over-react to this immorality, but quietly pointed out the facts.
Sometimes the highly assertive PR trained politicians (Blair, Bush, etc) could learn a thing or two by acting in a more dignified way. Nelson Mandella has a similar persona - I'm not a Mendella fan, but he's refreshingly honest and principled for a politician.
mybrainhurts said:True, but powerful individual governments call the shots in IPCC terms... when none of the storylines - the official name used as predictions is inappropriate (!) - from the IPCC's gigo computer model failed to show the earth melting as a result of Tiny Bliar's smile, the official report was 'adjusted' after normal reviews had finished so that a very scary storyline was included at the last minute, and it was this fantasy scenario that got all the press. Of course, that was the reason for introducing it. My contact at the IPCC won't name names but the lead suspects are Prescott and Gore (this happened a few years back) and not least due to timing Annan had nothing to do with it. The UN has not long ago sacked an IPCC chairman for allegedly playing the green tune too loudly. Even so the UN IPCC is still producing fantasy dressed as fact.
Not to mention he leads the organisation that gave us the IPCC that dreamed up the climate change myth and lumbered us with carbon taxes.............
>> Edited by turbobloke on Friday 7th January 20:37
peterpeter said:
No he hasnt told Britain told give a billion dollars. He has asked the world to give it.... Slight difference....
Yes, by 'we' I meant the West.
peterpeter said:
Plus you wont be giving f'all anyway...youve made it clear that you dont give a shit about anyone else.
I shall be giving enough through extra taxation not to feel obliged to add a top up, thanks. Half my income is spent for me by wastrel politicians; I will continue to decide where the other half goes.
Still, I hope that in the current climate of competitive giving ('I'm giving more than him, ergo I'm better, look at me giving lots of money, I'm cool') you will be parting with more than most.
turbobloke said:
when none of the storylines - the official name used as predictions is inappropriate (!) - from the IPCC's gigo computer model failed to show the earth melting as a result of Tiny Bliar's smile, the official report was 'adjusted' after normal reviews had finished so that a very scary storyline was included at the last minute, and it was this fantasy scenario that got all the press. Of course, that was the reason for introducing it. My contact at the IPCC won't name names but the lead suspects are Prescott and Gore
My money's on Gore.
Prescott's too thick to think that through.......
simpo two said:
No he hasnt told Britain told give a billion dollars. He has asked the world to give it.... Slight difference....
Yes, by 'we' I meant the West.
peterpeter said:
Plus you wont be giving f'all anyway...youve made it clear that you dont give a shit about anyone else.
I shall be giving enough through extra taxation not to feel obliged to add a top up, thanks. Half my income is spent for me by wastrel politicians; I will continue to decide where the other half goes.
Still, I hope that in the current climate of competitive giving ('I'm giving more than him, ergo I'm better, look at me giving lots of money, I'm cool') you will be parting with more than most.
1 bn$ to the west is nothing.
half your income!!! Sounds like your not self employed then.
After business expenses I end up paying 25%.
So yes perhaps I can afford to be less of a miser.
simpo two said:
Still, I hope that in the current climate of competitive giving ('I'm giving more than him, ergo I'm better, look at me giving lots of money, I'm cool') you will be parting with more than most.
I must add that all those who donate are very welcome to do so. I don't have a problem with that, nor do I denigrate or insult them for doing so. What people choose to do with their own money is up to them. However, you can see that PeterPeter thinks he is somehow 'better' than me because he has (I presume) opted to spend his change differently from me. Perhaps he is just very generous, or perhaps he is swept along on the wave (no pun intended) and feels he'd be out of fashion for not doing handing over the cash. Perhaps it gives him a sense of well-being, or duty done, I don't know.
Would we have handed over £200M if this had happened at any other time in history apart from the last 10 years? I don't think so. It's very odd. And people who choose to vote the other way get slagged off in public. I resent that.
los angeles said:
At a time when many politicians seem to have their own agendas and ‘shady’ morality, Kofi Annan seems like a really fair minded and genuine chap.
I completey agree, Srebbe64.
The current USA administration's policy to denigrate the United Nations with sly, scurrilous remarks of "corruption," are damn disreputable and niaive. The USA is the United Nations. They, together with all the other countries who sit at its round table, are guardians of that important organisation. They are charged with furthering its aims and objectives, in addition to monitoring the way it works and carries out its daily business. The USA cannot disassociate itself as if it has nothing to do with the UN. That's called abrogating your responsibilities, or double standards, to you or I.
>> Edited by los angeles on Friday 7th January 20:14
'lo LA,
Try this (Working, eating and typing- so bear with)
You and some partners are in a deal, with various levels of investment from each.
Lets say building a house.
You hire a Project Manager who then hires the specific trademen to do the jobs required. Time goes on, the job lags, costs are rising and you meet with the partners, some of whom don't seem upset about the project delays and urge you to go ahead with the plan.
The project ends, things are not as planned and it turns out that several of your partners, the Project Manager and the subs had a side deal going to hire friends, family and generally pad the budget.
When confronted, the Project Manager tells you "So what if the cost was a little higher, you have a house, right?"
The ethics here are not that "I did not get my cut", but "Why were there deals on the side, at all."
Mayo splattered,
Dave
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