Saturday 31 May 2008

Ultimately Nefarious and UN-accountable


A former Dutch Cabinet Minister, Ms. Herfkens refuses to repay the USD 250,000 rental subsidy for her apartment that she "mistakenly" received when employed at the UN In New York. Well, we all have heard of UN officials' extravagant lifestyle, but here is a nice twist to this case. Ms. Herfkens was employed as a special advisor to Kofi Annan for, you guessed it, fighting poverty on a USD 160,000-per-annum payroll on top of notoriously fat UN fringe benefits! To make this even more ironic, the hedonistic poverty fighter is a staunch Socialist, a PvdA member.

Through a University friend of mine who works in a UN commission I have met quite a number of former employees of various UN commissions and international organizations like the ILO, the IFO and so on. All of them, with no exception, had quit after a few years, all universally stating a "complete disillusionment in the content of the job" as a reason. Everybody says that the pay was incredibly good but to go on with the job would mean selling out your conscience wholesale.

Another friend of mine worked for the UN-AIDS in Switzerland for a few years. In the beginning I remember him very upbeat about his intention to get the system working. Years of uphill struggle later, he returned to his original occupation as a practising medical doctor. His comments about the UN cannot be published here as Blogspot.com objects to strong language.

Graft and corruption permeate all the levels of this obscenely expensive mastodon, just remember how Kofi Annan's shady dealings with the UN's 65-bilion Food For Oil programme in Iraq were exposed. He managed to get away with it scot-free and there is no doubt that the big time bonanza will continue for years to come.

It is truly sad that the very organization supposed to bring peace, justice and prosperity to the world is busy pigging out on public funds, offering precious little performance in return. They monitor world affairs, but who will monitor the monitors?



Thursday 29 May 2008

Sharon Stone Makes An Ass Out Of Herself


In their majority, Hollywood actors come from not-so- privileged backgrounds with poor education opportunities. Most of them make it to Hollywood because it 's their only chance to have a decent living. They may look good and say well lines written by other people, but they should really never make public statements outside their professional competence.

This time it was Sharon Stone who made a gaffe - or what we call in Russian a fart-in-the-puddle - by saying that the earthquake in China was the country's comeuppance for its policies in Tibet. Apart from an apparent ignorance on Stone's part of basic Buddhist concepts (political entities do not have karmas), this incident shows the newly converted fad Buddhist's callousness and blatant disregard for the tragic deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of Sichuan people who have nothing to do with what the central government in China sets as an internal policy. One of the main Buddhist precepts of "right speech" and the focus on the cultivation of mind's purity and compassion must have entirely missed the Tinsel Town celebrity.

"I've been concerned about how should we deal with the Olympics, because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine," most adorably name-dropped the 50-year-old. Right, Buddhism is all about doing lunch with the Dalai Lama.

Seriously, Sharon, you are much more likeable when you deliver script lines from the mouth, please stick to what you do best.


Sunday 25 May 2008

Eurovision 2008: UK's Sour Grapes


'Tis the time of the year when the UK habitually goes on a diet of sour grapes - the Eurovision Song Contest takes over the hearts and minds of the extended Europe from Iceland to Israel. Year in, year out UK ends up in Top 3 from the bottom and very time everything is blamed on the political voting by "those Eastern Europeans". The failure of his personal pick, Andy Abraham, to score any this year got Sir Terry Wogan so pissed that he hinted at resignation from the whole Eurovision affair. We all know it is but a figure of speech and we are still in for many years of his dyspeptic commentary.


It is true that at least half of the Russian win was based on the douze points from the countries with sizeable Russian-speaking populations but that alone could have never landed Dima Bilan a victory. Wogan's allegation that it is all about "those Eastern Europeans" simply does not hold water: how come then every nation in Europe - including Western ones - except Ireland and San-Marino gave zero points to the UK? On the other hand, Bilan's Timbaland-produced power ballad was rewarded with scores from 6 to 10 by Hungary, Romania, Georgia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Poland that have little or no reason to be pro-Russian - if you know a bit of history. But such intricacies are completely lost on our toffee-nosed Terry: to him they all are just "those pesky, cliquey Eastern Europeans".

What UK's massive track record of nul points proves is that even when it sends its best national contest entries, it still shoots off the mark: the very sound of British songs is too foreign to the Continental ear. As Britain's separate identity from Europe has been underlined, celebrated and at times exaggerated throughout history, so the Anglo-Saxon musical aesthetics doesn't cut it with the listeners from across the Channel.


E
ven Britain's idea of what can make it in the Eurovision turns out way off the mark each year: this year's bookmakers' favourite, Botox-intensive Ms. Perelli of Sweden only managed to score high from Finland and ended up No. 18. It can be that Britain is not in tune with what Europe likes because its nose is too deep up America's butt in their glorified "special relationship". Instead of bridging gaps with the rest of the continent, it likes to imagine that the Atlantic Ocean is narrower than the English Channel and mimics every cultural or economical trend of its former colonial Big Brother and voilà le resultat.

Britain's best attempts at faking the "Eurovision winning sound" never-failingly end up too drag, comical and tongue-in-cheek. This year, UK's honest attempt at presenting itself well in the Eurovision fell flat for a different reason: original indigenous British music sound is not what the rest of Europe likes. Last year's Scooch was just too gay and tacky, this year Andy Abraham stood no chance because he was too cool - the Anglo-Saxon way, which in Europe makes little impression. Nice try but no cigar, bud.

There is a dogged tendency on the UK's part to underdo it or overkill it every time, will it ever be able to get it right or will it walk away huffed, puffed, miffed and pouty to never play with other children again?

Thursday 22 May 2008

1984, 20 Years After - Mind Conrol In The US


The KGB with their magnetic tape reel based telephone eavesdropping system and a creaking network of volunteer informers could never even start dreaming of this extent of mind and soul penetration. These paragraphs read like a cyber-punk sequel of Orwell's 1984:

"As Michael Turk, the Bush-Cheney e-campaign director in 2004 explained, the Republicans were able to mobilise their supporters through a combination of email lists and internet 'data mining'.

They identified potential Republican supporters in every precinct around the country, using technology which predicts voter preferences on the basis of commercial data on car ownership, magazine subscriptions, and the like.

And then they sent their campaign volunteers detailed instructions on who to visit, including local maps of the area and walking routes, and issues that each potential voter was likely to be most concerned about."

Truly, the winner takes on the worst qualities from the defeated.

Wednesday 21 May 2008

This Attitude Won't Get You Far, Britain!


This is what British people think should win the hearts of Continental Eurovision voters but it never will. The trouble is UK does not take the competition seriously, sending kitschy trash because "those quaint silly Europeans like that crap anyway". That's not the right attitude!


Well, the reality is that there is a huge gap between modern musical cultures on the British Isles and the Continent. In terms of quality production and hit songs, the whole of Continental music industry is worth about 2,8% of that in UK and Ireland. Bearing that in mind, it is easy to understand why the British feel so tongue-in-cheek about the indomitable Balkan "nay-nah-nah", self-congratulatory Germanic pop trash and Slavic drag queen entries that their cousins across the Channel keep gleefully churning out, year after year after year.

To win the ESC, you MUST believe in the crap you sing and it MUST show. Unti you learnt the importance of that, you will always bring home "nul points". Farcically gay acts like Scooch of 2007 just won't do, how could you ever expect the Euro-public to take to this colourful spit in the face?



Saturday 17 May 2008

Rich Man's Frug Through The Years


Dance was my passion and, for some time, serious involvement since the age of 7 when we had ballroom dancing classes at my school up to the time when a lower back injury made me quit my jazz dance and modern ballet pursuits. I can really appreciate when a dance is conceived and executed good; great choreography can well me up.

Rich Man's Frug - a superb production by inimitable Bob Fosse has inspired a series of spin-offs and take-offs throughoutthe yeears. Some are quite spectacular but most are just not up to snuff.


Get Me Bodied by Beyoncé (click the link as the video is protected from embedding)

In Get Me Bodied Beyoncé finished the cricle by bringing the dance that heavily borrowed from Afro-American dance tradition back to the 'hood she pulled it with some class and distinction.

That, unfortunately, cannot be said about Freemasons' who seem to have been on a very tight budget to make this video for When You Touch Me so they had to hire a dancing act from their local drag show. Even clever editing and camera work do not hide the fact that it is probably the performers' sophomore project in a provincial dance academy. Where Beyoncé (or her video producers) put a new twist on the original routine, injecting it with some cool soul vibe, Freemasons only managed an unflattering take-off. Bob Fosse would not have been proud of this.

Emma Bunton apparently had a bigger budget for her video, must be the money she saved on the rather lacklustre song. At any rate, Baby Spice did some justice to her inspiration, the one and only Rich Man's Frug.




Tuesday 13 May 2008

Rule Of Thumb For Consumer


I once knew a Jamaican gentleman who had a great pleasure of feeling superior to me because he used a Davidoff shower gel and I - some supermarket brand, with a very nice smell, but, well, nothing to feel high and mighty about.

Knowing marketing tricks helps understand that quality of life does not always increase with the amount of money invested. Reading labels, even without much scientific background, helps make rational choices, not influenced by advertising or social opinion.

All liquid cleaning products, from car shampoo and dishwashing detergent to upmarket brands of shower gels use one and only lathering agent - sodium laureth sulfate, SLS, a cheap and effective foamer. It is produced by submerging coconut shells discarded from palm oil production into sulphuric acid. It sounds scary but the final product, except for possible skin irritation from overuse, is harmless.

The point is that no matter what brand of shampoo or shower gel you buy, the major essential ingredients are the same - the SLS, some preserving and homogenizing agents, flavours may be different, but they do not add to the cost of production. When you buy a posh hand soap, 5 times the price of a house brand one, you pay for advertising expenditures and a higher profit mark-up for the producer. The increase in quality of your life is pure "placebic", a weeny ego-trip at the expense of a more economic shopper.

I was brought up in anti-consumerist society. The majority of products we used were basic and generic. When I moved abroad and found myself in a hyper-shopping paradise of Japan, I had to make a conscious effort to try and understand what is good and what is not, what makes sense and what doesn't when it comes to shopping. I had to analyse, compare and make conclusions because I had not grown up with shopping choices so I learnt to make better ones.

Later I got to observe the price-defining process from the inside, when I worked in a close conjunction with the Marketing Department in Bangkok. Marketing people are a smart lot. Their objective is a non-stop profit maximisation and they know exactly how put everything together and what subconscious buttons of yours to press to achieve it.

So, for myself, I figured a rule of thumb: go with the midrange. Cheap products are cheap for a reason, they use cheap ingredients and parts and are not meant to last. Upmarket products are mostly about hype and the conspicuous consumption kick. Top-end brands may offer exclusive quality -- hand-made, hard-to-find materials -- but that again is more about ego-stroking and less and less the case as, for example, high-market clothes producers switch from exclusive production by expert craftsmen to Asian and Central American sweatshops. Irresistibly attractive gadgets add to the price but not to your user experience. When you buy the latest and most expensive computer model, you pay for the R&D (research and development) expenses for the rest of the producer's range - a charitable and praiseworthy act, but I prefer to leave to commit it to somebody else.

The midrange can be tricky, too. It is important to understand up to what point you still pay for real quality, not for stretch limos, expensive whores and single malt whiskey for the manufacturer's top management. You also need to keep your eyes peeled for some trashy poor man's products - sometimes better repacked - priced as midrange, with no justification whatsoever. You just have to train your senses to see that very real quality - in the feel of the material, the dying pigment hue or in the fine print of technical specifications.

It is a jungle out there and the road through it is long and winding but it is also fun as long as you do not take everything too close to heart because, at the end of the day, it is all but maya and nothing matters but the joy you have and the experience you gain.



Sunday 11 May 2008

Cherie Blair Follows Chantelle Houghton's Suit


If we are to trust Mrs. Cherie Blair and her much hyped autobiography, her significant other, Mr. Tony, advised Gordon Brown on matters of politics. Among other things, he told Mr. Brown "how to win the next election".

Unfortunately, quite like her obvious role model Chantelle Houghton, Mrs. Blair does not seem to be smart enough to know when her own wording gives her out. The very style and nature of other revelations that fill her book reek enough of Big Brother-style chav broad catfight revenge to reduce its credibility to next to zilch. I will not even list her petty and downright boring allegations, like "the leadership deal between Blair and Brown happened at a neighbour's home, not at the Granita restaurant in Islington as was widely reported" (oh how scandalous, so they didn't do it over lasagna bolognese!). If you have the time to waste you can buy yourself a copy. If you a reality TV fan, you will probably enjoy it.

I am absolutely positive that Cherie deserves to marry Preston and be invited to the next episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks for a nice grill by Simon Amstell. But, quite likely, she will just take it as an exposure boost for herself.