Free Republic

Along with anybody civilized, I have been horrified by the video and photos coming out of Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks. Hamas. an Iranian proxy, have gone all in trying to sow terror, showing no regard for noncombatants, be they elderly, children, women, Israeli or foreign. They apparently have kidnapped and killed foreign tourists attending some goofy peace concert, dragging them back to Gaza and parading them naked through the streets. No animal does this; only human scum of the sort that belongs on death row. Hamas, in my view, have adopted a Tet Offensive strategy. Before...

OK, folks. We all know it's a joke, a joke worthy of that all-time jokester and comedian, Lavrenti Beria. Beria would have appreciated AG Garland's "sudden" naming of a Special Counsel (SC) to look into Hunter Biden, this after years of saying none was needed. He also would have appreciated that the SC named is none other than US Attorney David Weiss (another miserable Trump appointment), who "investigated" Hunter for the past three-plus years: remember the laptop? On top of it all, Beria would have appreciated how Garland has violated the law by picking Weiss; the law requires that the...

Perhaps it's that great minds think alike, or, perhaps, it's just coincidence. I have started a couple of drafts of a piece on President Trump's foreign policy gains, only to find that a few others have done the same--and probably better. I have vowed not to read anymore of them until I write my own little piece. You can find the competition in National Review, Powerline, and elsewhere. We have heard a great deal from the media and the bureaucracy about the "hollowing out of the State Department." To get an idea of what I think of that, I direct...

"Hello! Hello! I really must be going!" Well, friends and foes of The Diplomad, the time has come; it's time to say thanks and good-bye. Above all we want to thank great sites such as Chrenkoff, Power Line , Betsy's Page, and Ex-Pat Yank that gave us a boost in our early days. We'll leave the site up for a time if people want to read the archives. We had some fun with the Aussie and US elections (we even called the American ones right; we didn't dare predict the Australian ones.) We delighted in the victory of George W....

We haven't blogged about Iraq. So many others have done so, and done it better than we would have and with more knowledge than we. All we want to say is that the people of Iraq today face one of the greatest tests in their modern history: Will they defy the totalitarian murderers and take an important step towards genuine self-determination and democracy? We hope so; we hope the murderers are unable to prevent the lighting of the candle of freedom in that dark and troubled country. On this crucial day in Iraq, we must also remember two sets of...

We warned you; some of you didn't believe us. We told you that on or about January 26, UN Undersecretary General and Disaster Relief Coordinator Jan "Stingy" Egeland would hold a press event to boast of what the UN has done on tsunami relief over the past month since the December 26 disaster. He did... ------------ Keep reading...this is too good to miss! With breathtaking audacity the U.N. not only takes credit for what the U.S. and others have done...they DOWNPLAY our roles!DIPLOMAD(For some reason the system wouldn't let me post a blog url?)

A friend of The Diplomad has provided us this letter which he "swears it's real." Of course, he also thought PanAm was a good investment . . . but, we can dream, eh? The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. ,20016 Dear Concerned Citizen: Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Our administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear in Washington.You'll be pleased to learn that thanks to concerned citizens like you, we are creating a...

We are bureaucrats. We like things tidy. We like options clearly laid out -- and we don't want too many of them. Above all, we like lists; we love top ten lists. We're not too good at math so we restrict ourselves to lists with ten things. Re Math: Don't forget that according to our personnel evaluation reports in the Foreign Service 90% of us are ranked in the top 10%. Our Acting Principal Deputy Vice Chief Diplomad for Coordination of Coordinating Coordinators and List Making has sent us his top "ten mistaken ideas people hold."We are sure our intrepid...

Tuesday, January 11, 2005 Some Good Guys in Tsunami Relief By now we think most of our readers have figured out the very low opinion The Diplomad has of the UN and its wasteful, cynical "relief" agencies, in particular the notably odious UNICEF. The Diplomad has tried to give our readers a taste of just how truly obscene these agencies are and how they feed off the misery of the world's poor and the money of world's rich. The Diplomad also has been and remains very critical of the response of local people to the tragedy that has befallen their...

Regular readers of our little blog know that The Diplomad can get obsessed by certain topics. In the past, such obsessions have included John "XMAS in Cambodia" Kerry; the State Department personnel system; the many manifestations of anti-Americanism around the world; UNICEF; and the loopy enviro-indigenous movement. Of late, of course, The Diplomad has been obsessed with the genuinely grotesque horror of watching the UN in "action" as it reacts to the devastating quake and tsunami that hit large parts of southern Asia, December 26. This horrid Boxing Day event has prompted The Diplomad to engage in another obsession:...

The United Nations fritters away money while the American military steps in to help the hopeless in southeast Asia.IF YOU'RE GETTING OVER being steamed at Norwegian U.N. apparatchik Jan Egeland, who a week ago thought the U.S. response to the tsunami "stingy," then you need to check in at The Diplomad, a tremendous blog run by a State Department careerist serving abroad and which has done more for the reputation of State among conservatives in the past few months than 20 years of Council of Foreign Relations meets and greets. Short summary: Your worst fears about the United Nations are...

Saturday evening moving into night. We have a slight lull in the pace of activity at the Embassy; all of today's C-130s are loaded and on the way -- even my teen-aged son whom I can't get to pick up his room was unloading trucks at the airport. After a few calls, we managed to snag another hanger at the airfield to store the pile of supplies which keeps growing despite the multiple C-130 flights. It's a pleasure to watch the Australians and our guys work together. They're interchangeable -- except for that, that . . . uh, you know,...

'The Distribution System Is Not Working' By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A01 BUNG BAK YOK, Indonesia, Jan. 2 -- Rukaiyah's right arm has swollen dangerously, puss leaking from an angry gash along the inside of her elbow. The skin has yellowed on a forearm puffy all the way to the wrist. Unchecked infection has led to the threat -- and maybe the onset -- of gangrene. But Rukaiyah, 28, has not seen a doctor since a torrent of water destroyed her home a week ago in Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh...

DIPLOMAD describes its blog thusly: ***A Blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career -- even with a Republican President! Join the State Department Republican Underground.*** I.e., these are current and retired career foreign service personnel working in the State Department, the United Nations and embassies around the world. Most recent posts are by actual diplomats on the ground in the tsunami disaster region. These people are actually attending the U.N.'s endless "coordination" meetings and conferences. I'll include...

Just TOO Good for a Mere Update! The post below reports on the impending arrival of Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom "United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-affected countries." She has spoken! At a large meeting this afternoon, she and the local UN rep, Mr. Bo "Please Wear Blue" Asplund have announced the arrival of yet another "United Nations Joint Assessment Team." But this one is very, very ultra- special. According to the UNocrats, it's not "just another assessment team." Oh, no, banish that thought! You see, "This assessment team will coordinate all...

I just found this Nov 5, 2004 reprint on Diplomad of an article they wrote in SEPTEMBER 2004 - warning what the RATS would do if they lost the 2004 election. They were amazingly on target!!: Friday, November 05, 2004 Another Reprise We promise not to do this too often. Below we have reprinted our September 18 posting re our concerns about the treatment a second Bush term would receive. We think this has more urgency now than we originally ran it (and now we have more readers!) We re-post it intact, including our almost accurate vote prediction. Bush in...

Well, dear friends, we're now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen -- unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences. Aussies and Yanks continue to carry the overwhelming bulk of the burden, but some other fine folks also have jumped in: e.g., the New Zealanders have provided C-130 lift and an excellent and much-needed potable water distribution system; the Singaporeans have provided great helo support; the Indians have a hospital ship taking position off Sumatra. Spain and Netherlands have sent...

Warning to Potential Readers of this Posting: The Chief Diplomad is just back from the office. It's 4 am. Mosquitoes are everywhere. The internet is painfully slow. Your "friendly" Chief Diplomad's plan to move on to another set of duties, for now, has fallen by the roadside. He must remain in the current job for now. The local Guardian correspondent has called the Embassy; he is doing a negative story on the US relief effort based on "information" provided by the UN at a press conference. The Diplomad is in a dark, dark mood. So, of course, just as anyone...

A Blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career -- even with a Republican President! Join the State Department Republican Underground. FSOs (and others) Send us your suggested posts to diplomad-at-hotmail-dot-com.Tuesday, January 04, 2005 Just TOO Good for a Mere Update! The post below reports on the impending arrival of Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom "United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-affected countries." She has spoken! At a large meeting this...

Well, dear friends, we're now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen -- unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences. Aussies and Yanks continue to carry the overwhelming bulk of the burden, but some other fine folks also have jumped in: e.g., the New Zealanders have provided C-130 lift and an excellent and much-needed potable water distribution system; the Singaporeans have provided great helo support; the Indians have a hospital ship taking position off Sumatra. Spain and Netherlands have sent...