Tag Archives: united nations

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The United Nations. According to reports, the UN press office has instructed staff not to call the current Russian war against Ukraine a “war” or “conflict.” I’m sure somewhere, somehow the UN manages to do something useful, but I’m equally sure this ain’t it. Having spent the last two decades in the belly of one of the world’s great bureaucracies, I know ass covering when I see it. It’s not surprising from an organization that continues to allow Russia to chair the Security Council while simultaneously committing countless war crimes against clear and obvious civilian targets. It’s not surprising, but it’s damned well disappointing. 

2. Our Arab allies. Leaders of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have refused phone calls from the President of the United States in recent weeks. These “allies” of ours are quick enough to pick up the receiver whenever the need to re-up an order of military hardware or need a big bad superpower to keep their neighbor in line. When the issue is opening up the spigot and pumping some more oil, tough, we’re met with a deafening silence. If we had any sense as a country it’s the kind of thing we’d remember and exact a price for the next time our allies need spare parts for their fancy American fighter jets.

3. Off ramps. The Twitter space is filled with voices calling for the world to find an “off ramp” for Vlad the Invader. The world, they say, needs to give Vlad a way to back away without smelling like he’s fallen directly through the outhouse floor. I’m sorry. No. Vlad needs to put his tail between his legs and slink back to Moscow having been bled militarily by a country he assumed would roll over and crippled financially by a resolute western alliance. The world will get far better terms once he squeals than if he’s allowed to thump his chest and claim some sort of victory no matter how pyric. Treat him like North Korea’s glorious leaders – put him in a box and mostly ignore him. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Detroit. Apparently now indoor plumbing is a human right. At least according to the United Nations, who it seems wants the city of Detroit to provide water to everyone without regard to who has paid for the service and who hasn’t. And that’s where I have the problem, because you see, eventually someone will have to pay. The building and maintaining the infrastructure used to purify and delivery water certainly costs money. At some point, someone has to pay in order to keep the system running – typically that means those receiving the service (city water) pay for what they receive and when they stop paying they stop receiving. It feels like a pretty straightforward pay-as-you-go arrangement. But if the customer base stops paying, who picks up the tab? Whose responsibility is it to pay for something you use? The city? The state? The people who actually pay taxes and their utility bills. Surely we could just charge them a little bit more, no? We have a real problem in this country when huge swaths of society feel entitled to the fruits of labor that isn’t theirs. Detroit’s water woes are just the latest example of nice people being well intentioned, but inherently stupid.

2. Work versus email. The number of messages you send is a really shitty way to measure how much “work” you get done. A) It doesn’t take into account the length, complexity, or content of said emails. B) Being “busy” passing out electronic missives doesn’t mean you’re adding anything of value to whatever you’re engaged in. C) Chances are whoever receives your email is going to misinterpret at least part of it. Sending a lot of email is not a substitute for doing the work. More often than not it’s a sure sign that you’re spending too much time electronically “talking” and not enough time actually thinking.

3. Gaza. Despite what social media apparently want you to believe, the Palestinians and Israelis are not morally equivalent. For as long as there as been an Israel – actually since before then in British Mandate Palestine – they’ve been engaged in a fight for their national survival against a numerically superior foe whose stated ambition is to drive them into the sea. My take on the current Gaza situation is basically the same as if Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia decided Delaware was the odd man out and started hurling missiles into Wilmington. Expecting Delaware in this case to not use every resource at its disposal to make that stop happening would be ridiculous. It’s not the cool or popular stance these days, but I’m saying it out loud and in print: I stand with Israel. Our only real ally in the Middle East and the region’s only functioning democracy deserves at least that much.

Kevin Bacon or: The Everlasting Know-It-All…

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I find myself in the incredibly awkward position of agreeing with the United Nations, Germany, France, and Brazil all at the same time. Just writing that sentence makes me feel vaguely dirty on the inside. Still, it seems to be a fact of life these days. It’s not that I mind our government spying on other countries. I actively encourage it. Mostly, I’m simply Seperationembarrassed at the ham handed way our country seems to be handling its clandestine affairs. At this point, I really think job should be to get themselves off the front page of every newspaper in the world expeditiously as possible.

While I’m more than happy to let the boys at Ft. Meade do some quiet spying across the ocean seas, I want to make it perfectly clear that I don’t think that my government has the right to listen in on my phone calls, or read my email, or track my location just because in some Kevin Bacon-esq way, my latest tweet could be six degrees separated from the local Elkton Al Qaeda cell. Frankly, I think I’d rather take my chances with the terrorists than with the Everlasting Know-It-All that our government seems bound and determined to become. An American citizen shouldn’t have to sacrifice essential liberty for the convenience of the government simply because it’s easy to point the big ear inwards and suck up every available byte of data. If the American government wants to spy on Americans, it should be hard. It should be damned hard. I won’t make any apologies for my lack of interest in making it easy for the NSA, or CIA, or any of the other three letter agencies out there.

When it comes right down to it, I’ll trade being a little less safe for being a little more free every single time. After all, it’s hard to be overly afraid of the terrorists when our own government is spending an outsized amount of time watching us, listening to us, kicking in the doors of those who dissent, and generally acting like a bunch of terrorists and thugs themselves.