Inner City Press

Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

These reports are usually available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis

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In NYC, While Snow Is Plowed This Time, Summons Strike Is Revealed

By Matthew Russell Lee

NEW YORK CITY, January 27 -- With a snow day declared in NYC on Thursday, the plowing performance of Michael Bloomberg's administration was put to the test.

  In late December streets went unplowed for days. Many said that Sanitation Department managers ordered a slow down to protest job cuts and demotions.

  While Thursday found that most streets were better plowed, some were not. In The Bronx, bus service was entirely suspended. Queens' 40th Avenue, for example, remained covered in a foot of snow.

  When Inner City Press inquired, the Sanitation Department blamed it on a taxi company parking its vehicles in the street and said they could be towed.

  A Sanitation Department worker confided that the protest of Bloomberg's job cuts had been refusing to write any summons for the month of December, denying the City revenue. “It was a Christmas present,” he said.

  The taxi company on 40th Avenue is in a section of Long Island City sometimes called Dutch Kills. It was re-zoned to allow for the construction of a number of seemingly out of place hotels.

  Inner City Press checked out the Holiday Inn on 39th Avenue and found it virtually empty. Still, no one but guests is allowed to use the pool. Chunks of ice fell off the building into the largely empty parking lot.

  On the other side of 40th Avenue are the two large holes dug by the MTA to extend the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station. Some work proceeded despite the declared snow day.

  On the other side, a scrap metal company from Pennsylvania had a truck full of large pipes, behind the old Pam-Am Building, now a Department of Education facility mostly empty for the day.

  It was to the Astoria section of Long Island City that Bloomberg came after the small intervening snow storm, to nosh on lemony Greek soup in a Ditmars deli with Peter Vallone.


40th Ave in LIC, afternoon of Jan 27, plowing not shown, (c)MRLee

 While that end of Long Island City was quickly plowed this time, 40th Avenue remains unplowed as well as misplanned. It is urban archeology that may explain it - and even provide some solution.

 Forward looking footnotes: the location of the old Queensboro Arena, venue of boxing announced by Harry Balogh, remains in the haze of Dutch Kills' history. There are numerous dormant construction site in the area now, of builders who threw down foundations to purportedly get grandfathered into the rights to build more hotels to sit empty. We'll see.

* * *

After NYC Blizzard, Jail Bus Stuck in Snow, Unplowed Outer Borough Blame Game

By Matthew Russell Lee

NEW YORK CITY, December 28 -- In the aftermath of the NYC blizzard of 2010, the streets left unplowed included Baxter Street, directly behind the Manhattan courthouses and detention facilities.

  At dusk on December 27, as Inner City Press was on its way to the courthouse, it came upon an NYC Corrections Department bus stuck in the snow. Exclusive video here.

  As several City workers and machines tried to extricate the bus, two police cars were behind the bus with their sirens on. A passerby wondered at the possibility of a jail break.

  On 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in front of the Public Library, already the snow was turning to ponds of slush in every crosswalk.

  In the outer boroughs, even in the following days, many streets had not yet been plowed. Click here for Inner City Press footage of a street in Astoria, Queens, unplowed two day after the blizzard.


Corrections Dept bus stuck in snow, Dec. 27, 2010 (c) MRLee

  Astoria councilman Peter Vallone fils denounced the lack of plowing, saying that emergency services vehicles could not get through and not enough planning had been done.

  Astute Astorians have noticed the rundown signs on Vallone's Councilmanic and law office, as well as his name on the City's green garbage cans, taking credit for them.

  Bronx state senator Ruben Diaz pere sent out pictures of buses stuck in the snow, noting that none including Mayor Mike Bloomberg had suggested they put chains over their tires.

  Those impacted include, for example, a young worker at the A-Wah restaurant on Catherine Street in Chinatown, unable take the subway home to Sunset Park in Brooklyn and so sleeping in the store. The Beijing duck sandwiches and salt chicken are good, but so is a good night's sleep.

  There will be a continued blame game until and even after the snow melts. Watch this site.

* * *

Susan Rice Denies Being Told Sudan's Bashir Stashed $9B, Despite WikiLeak

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 20 -- Contrary to a cable released by Wikileaks describing Susan Rice the US Permanent Representative to the UN being told by International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo about Sudan's Omar al Bashir “stashing” $9 billion in “illegal accounts,” Ambassador Rice on December 20 told Inner City Pres that “I don't have a recollection of that being told to me directly.” Video here, from Minute 4:18.

  Inner City Press asked Ambassador Rice about the cable and what she and the US Mission to the UN had done after Moreno Ocampo told her and her then Deputy Alejandro Wolff being told about Bashir's $9 billion.

  “I'm not going to comment on cables,” she began. After denying any recollection of being told “directly” about Bashir's billions, she said “I don't know if it was said to anyone else.”

   The cable begins that ICC “Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Ambassadors Rice and Wolff on March 20 [2009] that Sudanese President Bashir needed to be isolated. Ocampo suggested if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at possibly $9 billion), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a 'crusader' to that of a thief. Ocampo reported Lloyd's Bank in London might be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money.”


Susan Rice & Wolff & UK's Lyall Grant, Bashir's "$9B in Lloyds" not shown

   As Inner City Press reported earlier on December 20, “in January 2009 US authorities fined Lloyds $350 million for concealing the origins of wire transfers from Sudan, Iran and Libya in violation of US sanctions against the countries... Lloyds' so recent fine, for concealing the source of money from Sudan, would have given Rice and the Obama Administration leverage to get Bashir's accounts confirmed or denied by Lloyds at that time. At issue is not only corruption by a leader indicted for war crimes and genocide: under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, oil profits were to be split between North and Southern Sudan. Southerns have alleged that the Bashir government had improperly kept and hid revenue. Could this have been the money? What did the US Mission to the UN, State Department and Obama administration do to find out?”

   Expecting to receive some sort of answer to this question, Inner City Press later on December 20 asked Susan Rice, as transcribed by the US Mission to the UN:

Inner City Press: there's a report that Ocampo of the ICC told the U.S. Mission or yourself that Bashir had $9 billion taken from Sudan and put in London, Lloyd's of London, is what he mentioned. And I just wondered, it's one of these cables, I don't want to talk about the cable aspect of it, but I just wanted to know what do you think of that? Is that something Ocampo met with you and Ambassador Wolff and said, and if case, what did the U.S. do to find out if it's true?

Ambassador Rice: I'm not going to comment on cables. I don't have a recollection of that being told to me directly, and I don't know if it was said to anybody else.

   But see the cable:

Tuesday, 24 March 2009, 22:17

C O N F I D E N T I A L USUN NEW YORK 000306 EO 12958 DECL: 03/23/2019

TAGS PGOV, PREL, UNSC, PHUM, SU, XW">XW

SUBJECT: (C) ICC'S OCAMPO ON SUDAN: GO AFTER BASHIR'S MONEY AND CALL FOR HIS ARREST; REASSURE CHINA

Classified By: Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolff, for reasons 1.4 b/d

1. (C) International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Ambassadors Rice and Wolff on March 20 that Sudanese President Bashir needed to be isolated. Ocampo suggested if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at possibly $9 billion), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a "crusader" to that of a thief. Ocampo reported Lloyd's Bank in London might be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money. Ocampo suggested simply exposing that Bashir had illegal accounts would be enough to turn the Sudanese against him, "as with Pinochet."

2. (C) Ocampo said Bashir invents conflict to create a better negotiating position, and thought Bashir was using the expulsion of the NGOs to divert attention away from his arrest warrant. Ocampo suggested the U.S. and the international community also needed to push for Bashir's arrest to isolate him. Ocampo likened Bashir's situation to "a bleeding shark being surrounded by other sharks," with no loyalty, only greed, motivating those competing for power. By promoting the possibility of Bashir's arrest, Bashir would be further marginalized within Sudan's ruling elite, Ocampo thought.

3. (C) Ocampo suggested it would be beneficial to reassure China that its access to oil would not be jeopardized. If China believed Bashir was becoming a destabilizing influence, Ocampo said China might be more open to his removal as long as his replacement would guarantee support for China's economic interests.

Wolff

   Lloyds' January 2009 fine of $350 million, for concealing the source of money from Sudan, would have given Susan Rice and the Obama Administration leverage to get Bashir's accounts confirmed or denied by Lloyds at that time.

   From the ICC in the Hague on December 19, Moreno Ocampo issued a statement that he did and does have information about the $9 billion. The unprosecutorial briefing of Rice and Wolff described in the cable may cause Moreno Ocampo some problems at the ICC.

   But in light of his December 18 statement, on top of the cable, Ambassador Rice and those above her may wish to provide some further explanation. Watch this site.

 Click here for an Inner City Press YouTube channel video, mostly UN Headquarters footage, about civilian deaths in Sri Lanka.

Click here for Inner City Press' March 27 UN debate

Click here for Inner City Press March 12 UN (and AIG bailout) debate

Click here for Inner City Press' Feb 26 UN debate

Click here for Feb. 12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56

Click here for Inner City Press' Jan. 16, 2009 debate about Gaza

Click here for Inner City Press' review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate

Click here for Inner City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger

Click here from Inner City Press' December 12 debate on UN double standards

Click here for Inner City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics

and this October 17 debate, on Security Council and Obama and the UN.

* * *

These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

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