Tim Blair posted this accusation that the UN was lying about the tsunami relief effort:
Via Diplomad, some comments from the UN's Jan Egeland:
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.
Diplomad's response:
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."
I posted two comments in response. This:
If you go and check the transcript of what Egeland actually said, you will discover that Diplomad has taken Egeland's remarks out of context to make it appear that he is saying that the UN is running the air ops into Aceh when, in fact, Egeland did not say that the UN was running them. It is shame that Diplomad would exploit such a terrible tragedy to indulge in some UN bashing.
and this:
The word "we" in his answer could refer to the UN or to the relief effort. And no, it is not by the remotest stretch of the imagination "fair" to interpret it in a way to make his statement dishonest.
These two comments drew the following threat from Andrea Harris, the site administrator:
Tim Lambert and "Leverington," starting arguments and insulting people can get your account suspended. Take your posturing and territorial pissings elsewhere.
I must say that I think it makes for a rather uninteresting comment section if dissenting opinions are not allowed, but to each his own. Dear readers, you are welcome to use my comments to argue with me and each other. (But no insulting people, please.)
Update: Just to be clear, I posted my comments on Tim Blair's blog, not the Diplomad blog. Jim has a handy roundup of the spreading of Diplomad's bogus story.
Update 2: Andrea Harris replied via email with the helpful information that I did not own Tim Blair's blog and that she wasn't going to allow my arguments to take over that blog. I offered to post her reply, but she refused permission.
Harris also threatened Leverington with a ban. Here is the only comment he ever posted:
Why is this all so predictable? The left has used this disaster to take cheap pot shots at the Australian and US governments, whereas the right has decided this is a great opportunity to exercise its anti-UN fetish. Still Tim, for all your sanctimonious drivel (which on occasions rivals even the worst offenders on the left) I reckon your site has done a great job during this period. Keep up the good work.
And this is his from his reply to Harris:
I'm actually one of those friendless people who occupy that lonely territory on the political spectrum called "nonaligned," so I'm not really into territorial pissings. If you go back and read the post you might notice that I was attacking your enemies as well, not to mention congratulating Tim on the work his site has done in the aftermath of the tsunami tragedy, so at least I gave you something to feel happy about. I know you lot are a bunch of hive-minded ideological zealots who collectively chant the same commandment "Thou shall despise the United Nations," but attacking this organisation in the aftermath of such a catastrophe and seemingly hoping they will fail in their response is just as tacky as the left's celebration of every US failing in Iraq. The relief effort is in its early days and covers an enormous territory, so I'm buggered if I know how Tim along with his fellow tribesmen---even with their mass of like-minded contacts and celebrated Google-searching expertise---can seriously claim their information is "factually correct."
Anyway, I've forwarded on your response to a number of my friends and we've all had a bit of a chuckle over it. A couple of them are conservatives who love Tim's site but think you are an idiot for sending out such a dummy-spitting response. And don't worry my friend, I promise not to invite myself back into your group-think sessions any more because I'm extremely sensitive and don't like being called names.
I took a look there for your posts, were they deleted? If they were accurate (and given your past record I would believe they were) this is pretty bad - even for something that represents the "underground" civil service.
Yelling, you might have been looking at the Diplomad site. Tim's comments were on the Tim Blair site, here.
Unfortunately, this "UN is doing nothing" meme (which is completely unfounded) is spreading pretty fast, as I document on my own blog.
Jim: Thanks, I was looking at the Diplomad site. My error.
Strange, I posted a couple of snarky comments once on Tim Blair's blog, one which provoked a lot of flamage, and nobody ever threatened me with account suspension. Is this a recent change in policy? Or, unlike Tim Lambert, am I simply sufficiently unskilled in the art of hack writer takedown that I was never considered a threat. (Probably the latter. I've learned it's far more profitable not to argue with idiots, but simply to ignore them.)
Yes, it's a change in policy. It used to be that Andrea would encourage Tim Blair fans to abuse and insult dissenters and then if they retaliated in kind, ban them for being abusive.
Since I just ignored the abuse directed at me by Blairoids, that didn't work on me so she has now openly banned dissent in Blair's comment section.
Well, I've always said that people's tolerance for dissent is directly related to their confidence in their own positions. I know that I generally delete bookmarks to sites where I see a squelching of debate. Not that I had a bookmark for Blair's site, but I certainly won't be heading back. If you can stomach that kind of circle jerk mentality enough to keep tabs on them, well, you've got more patience than me.
That said, Tim, I don't think I have any general axes to grind with the UN, and, after reading the whole transcript, I got the strong impression that Egeland was doing precisely what Diplomad said he was doing. Also, Annan didn't seem to have an objection to that impression in this interview. For what it's worth, Powell didn't object to that interpretation, either.
As a matter of form, though, when the accusation is that the UN takes credit for other people's efforts, two links to their own press releases aren't particularly convincing evidence to the contrary. Especially when the efforts descibed in those links seem pretty underwhelming to me (lots of assessments and "is procuring" or "is starting"). I wouldn't have criticized their efforts otherwise, but their bullet-points don't exactly wow me with a whole lot of things being accomplished in the past week.
I'm surprised nobody on Blair's comments section mentioned the question about UN aid for Bam in Iran. It certainly jolted me awake that they've distributed such a paltry amount of aid, and Annan basically blew it off. I would have expected him to provide some sort of explanation, since it left me with the impression that the UN's critics aren't exactly making it all up.
Yay! I made the tags work! Now my posts won't be shapeless blobs.
As a former " Blairoid " (former because I simply don't have the time to frequent Blair's site, not because I'm disillusioned with the content), I'd have to disagree with you Tim, when you state that your treatment results from a change in site policy.
I've seen Andrea do exactly the same thing on several occasions to others, over equally innocuous posts. This goes back quite some time. I recall being more than a little put off by her actions when this occurred.
While I have much more common cause with Andrea's ideological positions than those of the regulars here at Deltoid, the backlash directed at Tim and " Leverington " is completely out of line. If their comments were deemed unacceptable, then any dissenting opinion is unacceptable. As someone who generally is spoiling for a blog fight, I wouldn't bother frequenting a blog that didn't let the other side fight back. No fun at all.......
OK Mike, I'll defer to your greater experience of Andrea. I never had a problem with her before -- I mean there was the usual abuse, but no ban threats.
Planter, if Egeland wanted to take credit, all he had to do was say the UN delivered 50 trucks of supplies. There may well be serious problems with the UN's relief effort, but by offering such weak criticisms, Diplomad is not helping to uncover them.
Tim, that's one of the reasons I mentioned the Bam question. You'd think the amount of aid distributed to victims of a previous natural disaster would make better fodder for criticism than whether or not he was being expansive in his definition of "we". I know that exchange in the interview was a lot more jarring to me than the block that Diplomad/Blair focused on.
She's always been a bitch, not to mention a stupid bitch. Sometimes she even threatens to ban people who are agreeing with blair, because she isn't bright enough to understand their comments. I don't think she has anything better to do with her time to be honest.
Sad that they are now stooping to such a low.
I dare say that a lot of Blair's readers would not keep coming back if it wasn't for the odd leftie sticking their head up and shovelling away some of the mantra-like propaganda shit that recurringly gets posted there.
If only Blairoids visited, the whole thing would quickly be reduced to a bunch of like-minded people shouting the same slogans back and forth, and patting each other on the back afterwards, which is pretty pointless.
Planter,
With regard to Bam, I may be totally incorrect here but it's possible that the sanctions imposed on Iran by the US and various other governments may have hampered efforts to provide aid.
I also seem to recall hearing that Iran declined aid for Turkey (including dog teams trained to locate people under ruins) because of Turkey's relations with Israel.
Such a unique site.
My comments weren't always appreciated by the gatekeepers of Spleenville.
Princess Andy tried changing every comment I submitted, and when that became a little too taxing for her she started posting any detail on me she could find......even calling for any Spleeners in Perth, Western Australia who knew of a Gary Player to pay him a visit.
After a while the word 'the' seemed to generate the same hissy outrage as a carefully crafted comment, which took away most of the fun.
Here are Spleenville commenters complaining about being banned by Tim Dunlop. The irony seems to escape them.
She is the Frau Blucher to Blair's Young Frankenstein.
Ian, I personally have no information about why the money wasn't going to Bam. Annan didn't mention any problems with the US boycott, rather, he just says that "Not all the money that was pledged for the Iran crisis has been disbursed." It sounds more like he is saying that they just haven't collected the money from the pledges, or that they have collected it but haven't given it out. The boycott could be a problem there, but I'm not sure how since so many European countries do business with Iran.
As for the dogs and aid to Turkey, I'm not sure what point you are making. Was that after the Bam earthquake, and you think it affected the goodwill toward the victims in Bam? Or were you just pointing out that the mullahs are a bunch of jackasses (if so, you'll get no argument from me, but I don't think it justifies cancelling aid to disaster victims)? Or something else?
My cat's name is mittens.
<>
No you misunderstood me. Iran REFUSED aid from Turkey after Bam. The Iranian government makes it quite hard to assist the Iranian people.
I'm just pissed off, that I haven't been banned yet. Damn!!
Tim, I'm jealous.
The tar fumes are making me dizzy.
"I'm surprised nobody on Blair's comments section mentioned the question about UN aid for Bam in Iran. It certainly jolted me awake that they've distributed such a paltry amount of aid, and Annan basically blew it off. I would have expected him to provide some sort of explanation, since it left me with the impression that the UN's critics aren't exactly making it all up."
The only thing I've read about the Bam aid was in connection with the tsunami: a norwegian UD representative who commented that the aid promised to the victims by the world may shrink, since in Bam, UN nations only paid about two hundreds of what they said they would pay. No wonder the UN couldn't do miracles there.
Good call on that thread, Anthony. What struck me was that rather than banning folks for posting insults, Andrea was cheerleading the insults. So I posted this comment:
This seems to have driven the whole crew mad with rage. My favourite of the responses was this, from someone who doesn't seem to be even self-aware:
Ah, thanks for the clarification, Ian. The "aid for Turkey" threw me off. It seems then that the point was closer to the mullahs being a bunch of jackasses. <:-) I suspect that's the sort of behavior that will hasten their demise.
My curiosity is piqued, but I'm at a loss how to get reliable information as to how much of the shortfall is Iranian government interference and how much is just failure to follow through by the UN/pledgers. (What is UD?)
There's some pretty insulting posts in this thread. In case you hadn't noticed.