Not entirely true, the Cole Inquiry is still grinding away, currently trying to chip something of substance out of public sector witnesses.
I note that North American is not at ease with the double entendre, it is a quirk of the language which tends to pass unnoticed. So first a small example – a woman walked into a bar and said to the bar tender, “give me a double entendre". So he gave her one.
Or is that too subtle?
Try the Australian wheat exporter executive, asked by a top foreign affairs official; “Are you giving kickbacks to Saddam Hussein?” No give the response to that question a little thought – “this is bullshit!”
Now it served the purpose of our man from FA to read the blunt statement as a cry of innocence. Equally we could assume the executive was telling FA that his answer was bullshit, which it indeed was.
I don’t know how Paul Volker feels about the evidence coming out now; that Australian execs led him down the garden path playing word games. I guess Paul can hold his own on money, but language subtlety?
Which brings me to another oddity, of either
language or mental stability, or perhaps just more bullshit, in the Oil for Food saga…AWB (The Australian monopoly wheat exporter, for those who haven’t been paying attention) kept a nest of executives in New York.
Sensible, given their need to be close to their main pigeon, the UN.
DFAT, Australia’s foreign affairs and trade department also kept a bunch of its operatives under the shadow of the UN building.
In evidence to the Cole Inquiry a number of these, supposedly influential, people have described themselves as ‘post boxes’ in New York. Is it something in the water in the Big Apple? Are the surroundings so awesome as to render these high flyers gibbering idiots?
I guess it’s cultural. In Australia they would probably claim, “I’m a little tea pot.” New York obviously demands more, like “I’m a post box!”
No wonder the aforementioned Paul Volker couldn’t get any sense out of this deranged mob.
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