To be honest, I haven't been following the $5 billion controversy carefully detailed in William Safire's op-ed piece in today's New York Times. But if I'm to take Safire's facts as truth, I'm joining him on the witch-hunt for a whistle blower.
The gist of the scandal (called Kofigate) points to a ring of U.N., French and Russian contractors responsible for doling out food and medical aid for the Iraqi's. Prices for diluted medicine and rotten food were inflated 10% netting $5 billion in kickbacks to French and Russian companies. This, according to Safire, is why the French and Russians were the only prewar defenders of Saddam Hussein.
[...] Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines.
The U.N. press agent also revealed that Benon Sevan, Annan's longtime right-hand man in charge of the flow of billions, was advised by U.N. lawyers that the names of companies receiving the contracts were "privileged commercial information, which could not be made public." Mr. Sevan had stonewalling help.
To shift responsibility for the see-no-evil oversight, the U.N. spokesman noted that "details of all contracts were made available to the governments of all 15 Security Council members." All the details, including the regular 10 percent kickback to the tune of $5 billion in illegal surcharges? We'll see.
To calm the belated uproar, Annan felt compelled to seek an "independent high-level inquiry," empowered by a Security Council resolution, as some of us called for [...]
Problem is France's UN ambassador, Jean=Marc de la Sabliere is blocking an "independent high-lelel inquiry". Plus, the White House and State Department are seemingly uninterested in pushing for a real investigation.
[...] because as the truth emerges, the U.N. may use the furor as cover for refusal to confer its blessing on the new Iraq. Our present and former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. would have to take issue with Annan if he tried to hide under their wing. Peter Burleigh and Andrew Hillman, our frequent representatives on the "661 committee" [~] so named for a sanctions resolution [~] are not about to be the U.N.'s scapegoats.because as the truth emerges, the U.N. may use the furor as cover for refusal to confer its blessing on the new Iraq. Our present and former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. would have to take issue with Annan if he tried to hide under their wing. Peter Burleigh and Andrew Hillman, our frequent representatives on the "661 committee" [~] so named for a sanctions resolution [~] are not about to be the U.N.'s scapegoats [...]
The good news is, as Safire points out, the new Iraqi government-in-formation have hired accountants and lawyers to examine documents in Baghdad and the Henry Hyde's International Relations Committee begins hearings in mid-April. The press have been rather silent to the tune that Newsday calls "the most underreported story of the year."
I'll join Bill and cheer for an "embittered whistleblower."
Thanks to Pete who pointed me to today's New York Times article(free registration required) announcing that wine glass innovator Josef Riedel died last week of a heart attack in Italy. If you've never heard or used a Riedel (pronounced like 'needle') wine stem you are likely missing out on truly tasting the full flavor experience of any wine you drink.
I know. Sounds silly doesn't it. How can a wine glass change the way a wine tastes. The converted are a cult-like group. Many will carry their own stems into a restaurant that serves wine in thick fish bowls that can stand the rigors of a restaurant kitchen. I converted many years ago.
I actually met Georg Riedel, Josef's son, at a "glass tasting". With my tongue in cheek and suitcase full of wise cracks I was determined to call this thick accented Austrian to the carpet. But I was amazed. I never experienced the aromatic of a wine before. The true test was comparing the typical restaurant wine glass with the same wine in a Riedel stem.
Josef Riedel focused on one of the sensitive parts of our body -- our tongue and the inside of our mouths (Linda Lovelace try a Riedel stem). He found that different wines and spirits tasted differently based on where the 'juice' fell on your palate. So he spent years designing stemware with different shapes and sizes based on the varietal.
[...] He spent 16 years studying the physics of wine delivery to the mouth and taste buds and experimenting with different glass configurations, matching them with wines of different regions, different grapes and different ages.
The size of a glass, its thickness, the shape of its bell and the diameter of its rim contributed materially to the taste of the wine drunk from it, Mr. Riedel came to believe. The wine's balance, depth, harmony and complexity, he discovered, could and often did change from one glass to another. When told that the glasses he created would have limited market appeal, he said: "Aesthetics and excellence are my criteria, not mere convenience." [...]
Over the last 10 years Josef's son Georg has circumnavigated the globe preaching the value of pairing the proper glass with a specific wine. The grass roots effort has paid off. Riedel created a category and a wave of me-too competitor copycats has followed. But none are as good nor as well known as Riedel. But they are cheaper. And as any good marketing or branding expert will agree, if all you've got to compete with is a lower price you will certainly grab sales -- not customers -- loyal customers.
I've got more than 3 dozen Riedel stems - for burgundy, bordeaux/cabernet, chardonnay, syrah, port and chianti/Brunello.
Photos: (1) The last drops of a non-decanted 1995 Araujo Eisele Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley sticking to the size of a Riedel Vinum Bordeaux stem; (2) Hundreds of Riedel Vinum glasses lined up for a legendary 2000 Bordeux tasting I atteneded recently (yet to blog).
I'm off to Chicago tomorrow morning (actually today when this posts) a little biz and little play and likely some great blues and food. So much to blog. I'll catch up on the plane and from the hotel.
Another gig at the infamous Coach House in San Juan. The Coach House is one of those love/hate venues for me. I love the fact that they attract top artists such as Hiatt, Al Stewart, Adrian Belew, Peter Fripp, JJ Cale, Bruce Cockburn, Robben Ford, David Lindley, Norah Jones and many more. But the venue has questionable acoustics, they typically mix the music too loud and the food sucks. Yet the place holds less than 300 people, has good looking hostesses and is unmatched in Orange County for the artist line up and an intimate live music experience.
John Hiatt is one of those great artists who has achieved more success having his songs recorded and performed by other artists such as Linda Ronstadt, Eric Clapton & B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, and Emmylou Harris. A true singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter, Hiatt has more than 23 records under his belt. I've seen John play a half a dozen times and always at small to mid-sized venues such as The Belly Up in Solana Beach, The Warfield in San Francisco and The Grove in Anaheim. Typically John plays with a complete band and classically John gives his compadres in recording and touring their own name -- call it a brand. Most recently it was The Goners, who appear on his most recent release Beyond This Gruff Exterior. Other bands that have joined him include The Nashville Queens and The Guilty Dogs. But tonight he shed himself of excess baggage and took the stage at The Coach House naked, save a couple six-string guitars, a 12-string and an electric piano.
The primary difference between catching a gig at a small venue versus a full-blown production at a bigger theatre or heaven forbid a hockey arena is the connection the artist makes with the audience -- on a personal venue. Someone in the crowd yelled out between songs "How's Rita?" John held off from launching into one of the 25 songs we'd hear that night and asked "Who?"
"Rita!"
John rubbed his brow with one hand muting the strings of his ax with the other. "Rita. Rita Farnsworth?" He looked puzzled but a huge smile came to his face. "I can't believe it. Rita Farnsworth, the first girl I ever kissed."
The nerve racking thing for many artists playing this small intimate venues is the fact that either the confident, curious or obnoxious can and will yell things at the artist. And they will be heard. Many times these are song requests. Big productions and artists on long or never ending tours typically play the same core songs every night. The set lists are typically "set" in stone with some room for flexibility. But at the beginning of the show the 51 year old came clean with the audience announcing "I'm too old for set lists."
So when the woman in the front yelled for "Georgia Rae", Hiatt simply changed the tuning of his guitar while telling a story how he and his 15 year old daughter watched these two local daredevil cats dart in front of cars near their home. One day they discovered that one of the cats had met its fate. Then he played this sweet melody he wrote about Georgia Rae when she was just an infant. Later commenting on how he just didn't know what to say to his daughter about the death of the feline.
The beauty of watching Hiatt perform is feeling his raw emotion and soul as he makes the wildest facial expressions I've seen any artist make. These aren't simply rehearsed "trying to look cool" poses. Rather face winces, rolled tongue filling cheek, tongue out of the mouth and fang revealing teeth and bobbing head and winced face expressions. You get them all with Hiatt. No matter how funny that might make him look it shows that the audience, the music, the words and his presence have captured his soul and he is releasing in full force and giving it right back to the audience. Hard for me to explain, but seeing Hiatt bare bones on stage, connecting with his audience and delivering solid songs acoustically with a raw and powerful sensibility made my spine tingle. And that's no joke.
I remember reading an interview earlier this year in which Hiatt discussed his approach to recording. He prefers to record live. That is he typically doesn't record his guitar track and then lay down his vocals. He feels that to truly capture the essence of his song is to sing and play it with the band -- live.
Recording live has "sort of been our modus operandi, roughly speaking, since 'Bring the Family' [in 1987], but in varying degrees," Hiatt says. "We just set it up so that I could play acoustic guitar and sing, and we could all play at the same time. If I go back and sing a vocal when I'm not playing, I don't sing the same. I'm not down in the music. It's different. It doesn't work. I don't phrase it the same. I don't feel it the same as when I'm flailing away on the guitar."
His 25 song set could have come out of my iTunes best of Hiatt playlist playing several songs from my favorite disc, Crossing Muddy Waters, including Take It Down, Gone Gone Away and a slow and soul drenched version of the title cut Crossing Muddy Waters. But perhaps the highlight for me and the other couple hundred fans that crammed the sold out venue was a couple new songs he's considering for an acoustic album to be released later this fall. Wintertime Blues is a funny song about being holed up with cabin fever when the snow is falling and freezing ice make it impossible to go anywhere. Though he commented that playing in Southern California we cry when it rains for more than a couple hours.
He winded up the two and a half hour set with a raucous version of Memphis In The Meantime in which he successfully enlisted the crowd to "haw" and "haw, haw, haw" along with him. Then slowed down and laid back exchanging guitar strings for the keys of his piano belting out heartfelt versions of Lipstick Sunset and Have A Little Faith in Me.
No question John had a lot of fun on stage that night. I hope his little acoustic experiment yields another great album and a chance to see him raw again next year.
As the polls close in Russia and the votes for anyone but Putin get swept under the carpet like chad-challenged ballots in Florida, Russian chess master Garry Kasparov makes moves that he hopes will result in an end game that preserves democracy in the former Soviet Union.
Speaking to ABC News Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Jonathan Karl (yes, he is my brother -- and my best friend) in an exclusive interview, the most successful chess player in the world now heads up the 2008 Committee, which is already looking ahead to Russia's next presidential elections. As chairman of this group of democratic reformers, Kasparov could be lining up a move for the Russian presidency in 2008.
Will Kasparov run in 2008? Jonathan pushes hard for an answer. Read the interview here. One thing is for sure. Kasparov believes that the future of democracy in Russia is at risk.
Photos: (1) Jonathan Karl and Garry Kasparov walking the streets of Moscow discussing democracy and the game of chess. (2) Standing in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, Jonathan Kar interviews potentially a candidate for the Russian presidency in 2008.
It has been a busy week or so since I last was able to put some time into quality blogging. So I'll try to catch up with a number of posts today and tomorrow.
Music. I'm going to do a little housekeeping on musical activities of the last couple weeks.
Through our mutual passion for wine Al and I have become close friends over the years and whenever he makes it into Southern California we make a point to find time for dinner and sharing of excellent wine.
I've enjoyed Al's music since the late 70's and early 80's when he penned Year of the Cat and Time Passages -- both reaching the number one position on the charts and giving Al two multi-gold and platinum albums. A consummate storyteller with charming British wit Al's catalog of over 20 albums gives him plenty of material to choose from. Throughout the 80's and 90's Al toured the world with a full 6 and sometimes 7 piece band. Beyond Al's voice, songwriting and engaging patter, the highlight of these performances perhaps was the guitar work of Peter White. Today, Peter has an extremely successful career as a soft jazz or new age guitar player.
But today, Al prefers the solo acoustic gig where it's just him, his guitar and an engaging audience waiting for him to dole out his trademark songs about history. These include Nostradamos, Roads To Moscow (The Nazi's fateful march in World War II in the footsteps of Napoleon), Running Man (Nazi war criminals and those who hunted them throughout South America), Joe the Georgian (about Joseph Stalin), Antartica (about Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton's expeditions to the icy continent), Peter on the White Sea (Peter (I) the Great -- Tsar of Russia from 1682, Emperor from 1721) and more. You get the idea.
In 1995 Al released "Between The Wars" featuring ex-Paul McCartney & Wings guitarist Laurence Juber as producer and guitarist. Six years later the two collaborated on "Down In The Cellar" an album that was never officially released in the United States because the U.S. distributor filed for bankruptcy and the rights to the U.S. distribution were/are tied up in litigation. All of this is to say that Al is currently collaborating and writing new songs with Laurence for what could turn into an album that I hope they'll release next year.
So this night at the Coach House, Laurence joined us for dinner and Al on stage for an evening of incredible acoustic music. But I have to admit, perhaps the highlight of the evening (save the Marcassin Chardonnay) was minutes before Al and Laurence took the stage when Laurence was warming up and played perhaps the most amazing version of Layla I've ever heard. You know the ending part of that song? You know the part that was played by Derek & The Dominoes drummer and Clapton co-writer Jim Gordon? Watching and listening to Laurence recreate this touching part of that song on a six-string Martin guitar was spellbinding. Everyone in the room urged Laurence to play it for the crowd gathering downstairs for the show. He did. If you don't own any Laurence Juber or Al Stewart music, I urge you to go to the iTunes music store and sample and buy a few. Or, here are my recommendations as an intro to Al Stewart and Laurence Juber at Amazon. Enjoy them!
Back to the show. Al hit the stage first and played a few songs including Apple Cider Reconstitution, on of my favorite and from his classic Modern Times album. Several songs later Laurence joined Al on stage where they played several songs from Between The Wars, most notably Night Train to Munich where the two shined and clearly demonstrated that while it'd been a while since they played live together, one could feel their recent collaboration that week recording demos in Laurence's LA studio was long overdue and they were enjoying playing together.
Al plans to return to LA to work on what may be a new album in early April. Stay tuned.
Photos: (1) Laurence Juber backstage at the Coach House performing amazing acoustic guitar arrangement of Layla; (2) Laurence Juber and Al Stewart on Stage at the Coach House in February 2004.
I just received an e-mail from my brother Jonathan who's in Moscow covering the elections for ABC News. Armed with camera in hand he just sent me this email and photos.
A few minutes after the last polls closed in Russia's presidential election .... a massive fire broke out just outisde the walls of the kremlin ... a building the tsars used to house their stables and Stalin used to park his cars ...
This weekend when Haiti's rebel's had gained control of virtually the entire island country of 8 million people the only city that remained in control by Aristide's forces was the capital Port-au-Prince.
Why hadn't the rebels successfully taken the city? Because the U.S. Government hoped they would slow down or stop their advances. You might wonder how the U.S. Government were in touch with or even contributing to orchestrating the rebel's strategy. Couldn't be farther from the truth.
[...] Philippe said he was not contacted by the United States, but read about the plea on the Internet.
"We don't want to have any problem with the international community," he said. "They have a good strategy to help Haitian people" -- namely a demand for Aristide to resign.[...]
At one time insurgent rebels looking to gloss their ego tuned in to the mother of news -- 24 hour news network CNN -- today it seems Haitian rebels tend to me a bit more technically savvy. That is, tuning into the world via the internet versus tuning out by watching television.
To be sure, television news is still king, while the internet makes its own advances. And whether or not the U.S. had anything to do with the recent mayhem in Haiti (and I doubt that they did) I do wonder why we haven't seen more coverage of the events leading up to the chaos online. So, like Michael Feldman, I wonder where are the Haitian blogs?
A few years ago when I was active in the company I co-founded, Wirestone, we competed in the internet professional services space, as it was called then. The biggest players included Razorfish, iXL, Sapient, Scient, Viant, agency.com, modem media and Organic.
Where are these companies today? Maybe 2 or 3 survived. But the biggest. The baddest. The most bloated. Started its life as US Web. Then they merged with a company called CKS. Some bright team inside this once great (and I use that term loosely) company came up wth the idea that it was time to change its name. And after that, the great decline began.
Ok. So this is one of those blog postings I typically avoid. If you're a first timer to The Digital Tavern please peruse by scrolling down or clicking categories. You'll get a better flavor of my writing and what I write about. But for now, I gotta give an update.
Why? Given the lack of activity in the last week I figure those regulars should at least know what's going on. First, it's pouring rain. Last week I had my car at the dealer for service for 2 1/2 days on regular service plus a warranty related thing to uncover some sort of misfiring on the punchy V6. Picked it up on Saturday. Saturday night the check engine light on, rough idling and then flashing in panic mode the check engine light kept me wondering whether the car was going to just quit. Poor thing. Took the car back at 6:30 am this morning. Looking like a nice day I set out on the motorcycle for my daily deeds. Bad move. By the time I was done with the deeds the sky opened up and cried. The tears caused my feet, pants and butt to get soaked.
This week holds a couple huge tastings for me. It's been a while since I've attended a tasting. So somehow there are two crammed into this week. First is an amazing list of 2000 Bordeaux. You name it first, second or cult growth of the best vintage in decades. That's Wednesday and I'll be sure to blog my tasting notes. Next is the who's who of California Cult Cabernets from the 1994 vintage. Should be incredible. Bloggable, too.
Hope my car is done and running right.
Travel? Looks like Chicago in a few weeks and a trip to Hong Kong and China in April Want to go to Portugal and Spain too. Who knows. Gotta check in with Tim and see what he's up to.
Thanks to Pete who pointed me to today's 
The nerve racking thing for many artists playing this small intimate venues is the fact that either the confident, curious or obnoxious can and will yell things at the artist. And they will be heard. Many times these are song requests. Big productions and artists on long or never ending tours typically play the same core songs every night. The set lists are typically "set" in stone with some room for flexibility. But at the beginning of the show the 51 year old came clean with the audience announcing "I'm too old for set lists."
