As of December 31st, Kofi Annan will no longer be the secretary general of the U.N. Taking his place will be South Korea's Ban Ki-Moon, an ironic twist considering North Korea's controversial nuclear weapons testing this weekend.
People are saying that Ban will be more low key than Annan, more of an administrator than a spokesman. However, I will miss Annan, as my dreams of a UN themed coffee house will go splat with the loss of the signature drink, Coffee Annan.
Speaking of replacements, I am also going to miss super kyoot Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi, who is being replaced by Shinzo Abe, an alleged nationalist who could shake things up for our Eastern friends. Conspiracy theories abound around him, including a strong Japan-US alliance to keep China at bay. China certainly is a country to keep an eye on, but so far Abe has remained a cool diplomat, even acknowledging past ill doings of the Japanese government against the Chinese. Time will tell, but let's hope the situation in the East doesn't heat up more than it already has.
2 comments:
kofi "you can't get there from here" annan was the perfect frontman for the united nations... 'the little organisation that couldn't'
as for current events, there's a load of "sky is falling" trashtalk surrounding the NK 'test-fire'.
even supposing kim il-dung has made this happen, it still takes a lot of precision and infrastructure to build & properly maintain, never mind lob, a ballistic missile halfway around the planet... just ask an engineering student, or the near-bankrupt former soviet union.
i'm thinkin' the bigger threat here is that this was a test-fire to demonstrate to osama, or whoever, that ole' kim has a workable prototype he can flog on the open market.
then you just put it in a shipping container postmarked washington, or new york... or toronto, and babu's yer uncle.
what you have to remember, is that even in the worst case scenario, one boomer (that's a u.s. ballistic missile sub for the uninitiated) has enough firepower to turn most of any continent you'd care to name, never mind piddly, little north korea, into well... afghanistan.
if kim is stupid, or crazy enough to point his new toy at the western world, and i'm not saying he won't, it'll be, in the immortal words of george s. patton a "more rock... less talk" kind of day.
I think the saddest part is now I'll no longer get to tell people that Morgan Freeman was really Kofi Annan and it was all an act.
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