Television – Monty Python – Still On Comedy’s Flying Trapeze – NYTimes.com

In case you miss Spamalot in NY, a little more Spam for ya’– not too much to do with diplomacy, unless you mean the Department of Silly Walks.

via Television – Monty Python – Still On Comedy’s Flying Trapeze – NYTimes.com.

Donal McLaughlin, Designer of United Nations Emblem, Dies at 102 – Obituary Obit – NYTimes.com

Who knew? Useful party trivia, and extra credit final exam question for certain:

“It was my good fortune to be assigned the problem of designing a lapel pin for conference identification,” Mr. McLaughlin wrote in “Origin of the Emblem and Other Recollections of the 1945 U.N. Conference,” which he published in 1995.

Mr. McLaughlin, who was the chief of the graphics presentation branch of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the C.I.A., led a design team under the supervision of Oliver Lincoln Lundquist, who died in 2008.

After considering and rejecting several prototypes, Mr. McLaughlin came up with a round emblem showing the continents against circular lines of latitude and vertical lines of longitude, framed by two overlapping olive branches.The emblem was also stamped in gold on the United Nations Charter, signed that June, and a year and a half later it was adopted, with modifications, as the official seal and emblem of the United Nations.

Golf Diplomacy: Speak Softly and Carry a 9-Iron

Here’s one that will make Bill happy–mixing diplomacy and golf.  Take that Tom Friedman:

In Newsweek, Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a “fairway theory” for gauging friendliness toward the United States.

Vietnam, for years a bitter foe of the United States, is now a friend. The clearest evidence of how far things have changed may be the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail, a route that connects more than a half-dozen luxury golf courses and resorts. (Like its namesake, the golf trail runs north-south, but presumably the resemblance ends there.) On the other hand, Venezuela, led by the ever-hostile Hugo Chávez, has closed several golf courses and is threatening to shut down others. Chávez recently delivered a tirade against golf on national television, deriding it as “bourgeois,” an outlook consistent with his repressive policies, which are driving many middle-class Venezuelans to leave the country. Or take the two Koreas: the closed North is reportedly home to just three courses, while democratic South Korea, a U.S. ally, boasts no fewer than 234.

via Reading File – NYTimes.com.

Liechtenstein, Andorra Forced To Fight By Larger Countries | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

And now for something completely different…

HELSINKI—Members of the Group of Eight, the forum for the world’s most powerful industrialized nations, held a special session Tuesday to discuss how best to prod the European microstates of Lichtenstein and Andorra into fighting.

Most of western Europe agrees the two nations seriously need to sack it up and brawl.

The G8’s proposal, which seeks to pit the small, landlocked principalities against each other in military combat, was reportedly drafted after the leaders of the eight nations had grown bored with their recent negotiations over international energy tariffs.

“After much careful deliberation, we have come to the consensus that the nations of Liechtenstein and Andorra need to just man up and fight, ” said U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown during an afternoon recess.

via Liechtenstein, Andorra Forced To Fight By Larger Countries | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

Qaddafi proposes abolishing Switzerland | FP Passport

In case you are worried that diplomacy is all teeny tiny appetizers and fancy cravats–its also lots o’ fun:

A UN spokesman tells the Swiss News Agency that Libya submitted a proposal to the General Assembly calling for the dissolution of Switzerland last month. The proposal was never accepted or circulated because the U.N. Charter prohibits countries from threatening the existance of other member states.

In case you hadn’t gotten the message, Qaddafi really hates Switzerland

via Qaddafi proposes abolishing Switzerland | FP Passport.

That’s almost as good as Qaddafi’s alleged videoconference at Georgetown U where he noted:

• Israeli’s and Palestinians should live in a united state called “Isratine.”
• “I think Osama bin Laden is a person who can be given a chance…Maybe he wants peace.”
• “If you want to preserve this group, the Jews as an ethnic group, Palestine is not really the right place. The Middle East is a sea of Arabs…Take them to Alaska or Honolulu or the Hawaiian islands or the Pacific islands and they can live peacefully in an isolated setting.”

Euro diplos appear to have kept the view according to CS Monitor that Qaddafi is a “serial human rights violator and 1970s-style Arab dictator.”

Sovietology | Hair Club for Men Theory

I’m so very sorry, but its late and I heard this in the morning on NPR and can’t stop singing the song…not that there’s anything wrong with bald, powerful leaders:

When the Communists took over in Russia in 1917, the first leader, Vladimir Lenin, was bald. His successor, Joseph Stalin, was hairy. Stalin’s successor (we’re skipping an interim leader, Georgy Malenkov, who never got to be chairman), Nikita Khrushchev, was bald. Next up: Leonid Brezhnev (hairy). Then, in rapid succession, came Yuri Andropov (bald), Konstantin Chernenko (hairy), Mikhail Gorbachev (bald), Boris Yeltsin (hairy), Vladimir Putin (very, very thin on top) — and last and maybe least, today’s Dmitry Medvedev (hairy)…

To sum up: baldies hand off to hairies in perfect Russian synchrony

Implications seem to revolve around the US domestic horse race (and I disagree with the author’s point, even though I have nothing to back my case up with here):

2008 was a year that featured all kinds of demographic breakthroughs: Women candidates, black candidates, a Mormon, a Jew and a 72-year-old all sought the top job.But the only semi-bald man seeking the nation’s highest office, Sen. Joe Biden, got himself un-balded.

Barney Frank, Congressional negotiator

You can’t start off the day thinking about diplomacy without considering the Honorable Representative from Massachussets and his one-liners, nicely published by the NYT.

My fave:

MARCH 11 “Mr. Speaker, a parliamentary inquiry. Mr. Speaker, is blatant hypocrisy a violation of the rules of the House?”

Responding to Republican complaints that Democrats had extended the voting period for 15 minutes to win approval of a bill creating an independent House ethics office. In 2003, the Republicans once extended the voting period for three hours to get their desired outcome.