“Success is transient. Just like profit or cash-flow – it is over once it has been recognised. Goodness lasts longer – it is like a balance sheet item.”
“To be able to deal with bureaucrats in India it is necessary to understand that it is the potential for blame which has to be minimised while the potential for personal gain has to be maximised”.
As the brush fire of revolution against dictators spreads in North Africa and the Middle East, Bunga bunga Berlusconi ( 75 years old) announced that he will not “disturb” his soul-brother Gaddafi (69 years) in his time of trial. They are of course both senior members of the Association of Dirty Old Leaders.
Opposition lawmakers criticised Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for failing to condemn violence in Libya and saying he did not want to “disturb” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during the revolt in his country.
Berlusconi’s government, which has aggressively courted Libyan petrodollars and rolled out the red carpet during Gaddafi’s multiple visits to Italy, has said little on Libya’s crackdown on protesters that has killed more than 170 people.
Pressed by reporters on whether he had spoken to Gaddafi since the uprising began, Berlusconi said on Saturday: “No, I haven’t been in contact with him. The situation is still in flux and so I will not allow myself to disturb anyone.”
The comment stirred outrage among the leftist opposition, which has long accused Berlusconi of turning a blind eye to Gaddafi’s human rights record and pandering to the Libyan leader for the sake of lucrative contracts and investment in Italy, which is Libya’s former colonial ruler.
In this photograph from June 2009 where Berlusconi is welcoming Gaddafi accompanied by a rather plump member of his all-woman bodyguard, it is not clear why Gaddafi finds it necessary to wear cardboard medals and an old photograph on his chest. It is probably something only Bunga bunga will know.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi welcomes Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at Rome's Ciampinio airport, Italy, on 10 June 2009. Photograph: ALESSANDRO DI MEO/EPA
As the Guardian put it when Gaddafi visited Italy in 2009:
The highlight of Gaddafi’s trip to Rome is a meeting, personally requested by the Libyan leader, with 700 women from the worlds of “politics, industry and culture”. So Berlusconi got down his Bumper Catalogue of Hot Stuff, got rid of any that were over 25, discarded those with a loud voice or body hair, and whittled down the rest by ballot until he got to 1,000, whereupon the disappointed remainder that didn’t get to meet Muammar were given a senior post in his cabinet or a mini-break in his fancy villa with the pools and the elephants.
Before we start thinking this is just a pact of weirdness between two profoundly weird men, it is not the first time Gaddafi has extended the hand of friendship to the ladies of Europa (I do not mean the convenience store chain; I am romanticising the continent, trying to get into the mind of the mighty dictator). Two years ago in Paris, he met 1,000 French women. His message was clear: he wanted to “save European women”.
Gaddafi and his nurse: image EPA
Of course in addition to his bodyguards Wikileaks has told us that he also has his own voluptuous Ukrainian nurse(s).
Diplomats in Tripoli described how the Libyan leader appeared to be reliant on Galyna Kolotnytska, without whom he reportedly “cannot travel”.
In a despatch to the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, sent in September 2009, embassy officials painted an intimate portrait of Col Gaddafi’s many fears and “eccentricities”.
The secret memo, which was headed “A glimpse into Libyan leader Gaddafi’s eccentricities”, said he “appears to rely” on his senior nurse, and less than in the past on his “legendary” band of women bodyguards who used to accompany him everywhere.
Breaking –
Deutsche Welle: Guttenberg is back from Afghanistan and
Chancellor Merkel called Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to her office in Berlin to explain severe allegations of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. Opposition politicians, meanwhile, want Guttenberg to go.
After returning from Afghanistan on a short visit with German troops, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had to let down excited guests at a campaign fundraiser in Saxony-Anhalt on Thursday because he was “unavailable and engaged in Berlin.”
Public broadcaster ZDF reported that the popular politician had been called in by Chancellor Angela Merkel for a question-and-answer session regarding allegations that he plagiarized complete – and numerous – passages of his doctoral dissertation.
“Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg did not credit me as the author of excerpts that came from an article I once wrote,” Barbara Zehnpfennig, a professor at Passau University, told news channel N24. “This breaks all academic rules.”
Zehnpfennig is not the only source not “properly cited” in Guttenberg’s text; several German law professors have accused him of blatant plagiarism, citing up to 70 dubious passages.
Newsmagazine Spiegel said Guttenberg even passed off US Embassy material as his own text – translated directly into German – in a string of allegations that has prompted German media to turn the posh Franconian surname “zu Guttenberg” into a far less noble “zu Googleberg.” …….
…… The university has given the minister 14 days to issue a written explanation of the allegations.
Der Spiegel’s headline calls him the Minister of Scandals
Plagiarism Scandal Threatens ‘Merkel’s Minister of Scandals’
Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff
The Guttenberg plagiarism saga continues while he has gone off to Afghanistan for a surprise visit – probably because it is less dangerous there right now.
Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff is Professor for Media and Computing at the HTW Berlin. She was involved in the BMBF flagship project “Virtuelle Fachhochschule” developing eLearning materials and carries out Internet- and eLearning-related projects. She also works on detecting plagiarism and has a plagiarism blog.
Following the apparently blatant plagiarism carried out by Germany’s Defence Minister for his PhD thesis, she was interviewed by TheLocal.de which includes the folllowing:
What is your assessment of the Guttenberg situation?
What the rest of the thesis is like, and which chapter the alleged plagiarism is in – that’s another question. There are communities here who say it’s OK to plagiarize a little in your methodology section, but not in others. I think this is completely bizarre. Germans have a way of talking the problem down.The excerpts that the Süddeutsche Zeitung has online are scary, because they are one-to-one copies. And that’s not OK.
What is the real issue then?
This has to do with the German tendency to love titles, they are title-fixated, and people in politics love to have a doctor title so they seem wiser. But it should be about science, for scientists to prove that they can work by themselves – it’s the first proof that they can do research on their own.Would you say there is a culture of plagiarising and cheating among German students?
I wouldn’t go that far. There’s a download culture. Young people download their music, videos, and why not download their thesis, because they just see it as busy work – something that stands between them and the degree they think they want or need so they can make lots of money and don’t have to work any longer.
Guttenberg, the conservative German defense minister from Bavaria, has left the country and gone to Afghanistan. They say this was planned, but right now, he’s probably safer there than in the streets of Berlin. The opposition is gleefully taking potshots at him (metaphorically, you understand).
His supporters accuse the scientist who discovered the plagiarism of being part of a commie plot to undermine the country, if I understand their tone of voice correctly.
No one believes that a professor might sit down one evening at the computer, in the midst of writing a review of a doctoral thesis that had been around for a while, but had a very prominent author, currently under fire for other things. The professor, Andreas Fischer-Lescano of the University of Bremen, poured himself a glass of Argentine red wine, looked over the thesis and put three words into Google: “säkularer laizistischer multireligiöser” (secular lay multireligious – the thesis includes a chapter on putting references to a god in a constitution).
And he got a hit. From an article in the Neue Züricher Zeitung by Klara Obermüller, written a few years before his thesis was published. Oops. He poured another glass and tried some other terms, and some more. Fischer-Lescano wrote a scathing review, and includes as an appendix 24 word-for-word passages that are not quoted and not referenced. The review will be published the end of the month in Kritische Justiz, 44(1), pp. 112-119.
A number of journalists have spoken with me today to question this way of working. How do I look for plagiarists? “Well,” I said, “pretty much the same. Except that I prefer Austrian wine.”
As a sociological phenomenon, the rise of the “cut-and-paste” culture together with the German love of academic titles is a worthy subject for study. But what does not seem to be in doubt is that Guttenberg is just another politician who is just another fraud. And a misuse of position – whether to get an academic degree or to amass huge sums of money – is still corruption.
Why voters continue to vote for frauds is an even more interesting subject for study.
Michèle Alliot-Marie: image wikipedia
That corruption and ethics do not place very high in the French scale of values is at least very true for Government ministers. Exploiting the privileges of position is a tradition which is not only maintained but is staunchly defended. Not only did the French Prime Minister have an all expenses paid holiday at the expense of Mubarak (before he left) including the use of Mabarak’s plane, but the Foreign Minister also happily flew around in the plane of a friend of the deposed Tunisian dictator. Now it is also revealed that her parents (in their nineties) have made lucrative real estate deals with one of the dictator’s Tunisian associates.
If nothing else their choice of benefactors brings their judgements into question. And the French Foreign Minister actually being in Tunisia during the protests does not say much for the the intelligence or anticipation of her staff. She even spoke to Ben Ali on the phone during her vacation!!!!!! No doubt she wished him Bon Voyage.
Perhaps the best way to predict when the next Middle East dictator will topple is to study who is treating a French Minister to a holiday.
François Fillon: image wikipedia
French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has defended a property deal between her parents and an associate of the ousted Tunisian president. ….. Earlier Ms Alliot-Marie was criticised for having flown twice on a jet owned by Aziz Miled, who was close to ex-president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. She was on holiday in Tunisia during anti-government protests in December. ….
Speaking on Wednesday on the French radio station Europe 1, her father Bernard Marie said Aziz Miled was a long-standing personal friend and “my wife and I are the only ones involved” in the business deal. Le Canard Enchaine reported that Ms Alliot-Marie’s parents, both in their 90s, already owned part of a property company, SCI Ikram, and bought the rest of the shares from Mr Miled while in Tunisia with their daughter. An aide to Ms Alliot-Marie said the minister had had “a brief telephone conversation” with Mr Ben Ali during her holiday. The aide did not elaborate further.
Meanwhile, the French government expressed its “total support” for Ms Alliot-Marie on Wednesday.
Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy told his government to holiday at home in future. He was responding to the revelations about Ms Alliot-Marie and Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who was criticised for having enjoyed hospitality in Egypt provided by former President Hosni Mubarak. Mr Fillon admitted he took a new year break in Egypt, paid for by Mr Mubarak. The prime minister and his family were given lodgings, used an Egyptian plane for an internal flight and took a boat trip on the Nile, all at Egyptian expense.
Neither has offered to repay the costs of their holidays to the people of Egypt or of Tunisia.
The BBC tells us that one of the earliest recorded use of “bunga bunga” was the Dreadnaught hoax in 1910.
Virginia Woolf (far left) joins Horace de Vere Cole (far right) in the 'bunga' hoax: image bbc
The infamous Dreadnought hoax was dreamed up by aristocratic joker Horace de Vere Cole, who contacted the British Admiralty pretending to be the Emperor of Abyssinia. He informed officials that he wished to inspect the Home Fleet while on a forthcoming visit to Britain.
After enlisting some friends – artists from the Bloomsbury group, including writer Virginia Woolf – to masquerade as his entourage, he turned up at the navy’s state-of-the-art ship, the Dreadnought.
Officials, taken in by the dark stage make-up, false beards and oriental regalia, treated the group to an official civic reception.
They were reported to have cried “Bunga, bunga!” while marvelling at the ship. An account of the visit plus a picture were sent to the Daily Mail newspaper – probably by Cole himself.
Virginia Woolf said later that when the real Emperor of Abyssinia arrived in London weeks later, wherever he went, ”the street boys ran after him calling out bunga, bunga!” The term reappeared at the end of World War I, after HMS Dreadnought sank a German submarine. According to retired Royal Navy captain Jack Broome – in his book Make Another Signal – the congratulatory telegram read: “BUNGA BUNGA”.
When I went on board a Dreadnought ship
I looked like a costermonger;
They said I was an Abyssinian prince
‘Cos I shouted ‘Bunga Bunga!’
Source: The Sultan of Zanzibar: The Bizarre World and Spectacular Hoaxes of Horace de Vere Cole, Martyn Downer
The phrase “bunga bunga” has become inextricably linked with the private peccadilloes of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi but he can claim to be in the “good” company of a cross-dressing Virginia Woolf !
Image via Wikipedia
The Financial Times Deutschland carries this story today:
Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) has to defend himself against accusations that he had cheated on his doctoral thesis. According to the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” (Wednesday) there are some passages in Guttenberg’s thesis which match literally formulations by other authors, and which have not been acknowledged.The thesis is in several places “a brazen plagiarism” and “deception”, the paper quoted the Bremen law professor Andreas Fischer-Lescano, who had discovered the duplications during a routine examination. Fischer-Lescano teaches at the University of Bremen Public Law, European and international law.…….Guttenberg submitted his doctoral work in 2006 at the Law Faculty in Bayreuth. In 2007, he was then awarded the highest degree – summa cum laude doctorate in law (PhD).
The thesis is now under investigation by the Ombudsman for scientific self-regulation of the University of Bayreuth.
But this is an investigation concerning a serving Minister. I can predict with the greatest of confidence that the establishment will close ranks and that the investigation will come to the conclusions that:
This seems to indicate a perverse view of military recruitment. With the end of conscription the German armed forces are short of people. But targeting school drop-outs and foreigners for lower-ranking military positions seems like an attempt to recruit cannon-fodder.
German military officials are considering pursuing high school dropouts to fill the Bundeswehr’s ranks following the end to conscription.
The Bundeswehr is hoping to make military service more attractive to less educated and unskilled Germans as it transitions to a fully professional force, daily Financial Times Deutschland reported.
“In light of the demographic developments as well as the ongoing structural adjustments to the Bundeswehr, young people with below-average education and school dropouts will now be approached for recruiting,” the document acquired by the paper reads. This “opening of new potential for gaining personnel” will be necessary to maintain the necessary troop numbers, it says, calling the plan an “Attractiveness Programme.”
These recruits would be targeted to fill mainly lower-ranking military positions, the paper said.
The latest detail in military reform plans by the Defence Ministry came after this weekend’s news that foreigners living in Germany could be allowed to join the Bundeswehr. But a Defence Ministry spokesperson told the Financial Times Deutschland on Tuesday that only EU citizens and those from a few other countries would be among those considered for enlistment.
Free-loading civil servants are present everywhere and are the rotten apples among the many millions who are actually civil and who do actually serve but this case from China stands out. Though it is somewhat unclear as to whether he is a heroic whistle-blower or just a free-loader.
Jiang Jinxiang - "Chinas most capable civil servant"
A civil servant from Longyan, Fujian Province, who collected a monthly salary for nearly nine years without lifting a finger, intends to go back to work Monday.Jiang Jinxiang, a former director at the Urban Construction Commission in the Standing Committee of Longyan People’s Congress, was suspended on May 16, 2002 and never returned to work.Internet users exposed him after they learned he still received a monthly salary of 2,700 yuan ($410) from the local government even though he stayed home. Jiang, 55, who was suspended for trying to expose quality control problems at a city project during a local People’s Congress session in 2002. He told the Global Times Sunday that he stopped going to work in 2002 because his colleagues did not talk to him, which made him unhappy.“I couldn’t accept the government’s treatment. I felt it was unfair because what I exposed was true,” Jiang said. Jiang saw a government notice in the Minxi Daily on Saturday that ordered him to show up for work within 15 days. Zheng Lixin, head of the Longyan Construction Bureau, which oversees Jiang’s section, said that they kept sending him payments on humanitarian grounds since his family was poor, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Image via Wikipedia
When making his speech at the UN Security Council, the Indian External Affairs minister S. M. Krishna started by reading the speech of the Portuguese Foreign Minister instead of his own. It took three whole minutes before another member of the Indian delegation stopped him and asked him to start again!!
One wonders how long the Minister would have continued before realising it was not his own speech. One wonders also if his colleagues were sleeping if it took them 3 minutes to realise what was happening. Of course UN speeches are so full of platitudes and phrases “signifying nothing” that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one speech from another.
Another confirmation of my belief that the UN is not a place given to thought but serves only for reading out prepared positions by rote (prepared by others of course). Neither politicians / ministers, diplomats or their speech writers come out with much credit.
While delivering his speech at the UNSC, Krishna read out portions of the Portuguese foreign minister’s speech instead.
The occasion was significant as it was the Indian foreign minister’s first speech at the UNSC after New Delhi entered the coveted body on January 1 as a non-permanent member after nearly two decades.
Krishna was scheduled to speak after his Portuguese counterpart Luis Amado at a session on Friday on ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Interdependence between Security and Development’. Portugal has also been elected to the UNSC for a two- year period.
As soon as the minister started speaking, almost everyone present realised that he was reading from Amado’s speech, as a few lines were out of place. Krishna apparently did not realise his mistake and went on.
“On a more personal note, allow me to express my profound satisfaction regarding the happy coincidence of having two members of the Portuguese Speaking Countries, Brazil and Portugal, together here today,” the minister said as a horrified Indian contingent watched. “The European Union is also responding in this manner in coordination with the United Nations.”
It was after three minutes that India’s permanent representative to the UN, Hardeep Puri, intervened and asked him to start afresh.
Clearly embarrassed, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) on Saturday tried to play down the minister’s gaffe.
It insisted that the “mistake” was not so crucial because the initial paragraph of all formal addresses contains ” certain salutations and courteous references and he had used such expressions from the address of the previous speaker”. Sources in the MEA said it was a “genuine” mistake. Amado had delivered an extempore speech and its written summary was distributed to all other 14 ministers of the UNSC members and five invitee ministers.
Krishna spoke immediately after Amado and he mixed the text of his own speech with the summary of what the Portugese minister had said. The copy of Amado’s speech in a folder did not bear either his name or the name of his country. Hence, the ” honest and inadvertent mistake”, a source said.
A former foreign minister, who did not wish to be named, put the blame on the Indian diplomats and ministerial staff present. “They should have alerted the minister within a few seconds. It was their responsibility to ensure that he had the correct speech before he began,” he said. Apart from Puri, other Indian diplomats present included MEA additional secretary (international organisations) Dilip Sinha and adviser to the minister Raghavendra Shastry. All of them were sitting right behind Krishna.
