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By Matthew Russell Lee, Video I II III RS HK

UN GATE, Sept 8 – The United Nations under Antonio Guterres is a complete failure, even on issues on which there was a consensus like on piracy. Seychelles sent 19 pirates to Somaliland to serve jail sentences. But no one followed through to ensure that Somaliland received any funds for this work, and Guterres' leadership on Somalia has included through his own envoy under the bus for daring to raise issues.

So now Somaliland released the pirates, and Seychelles has written a letter of complaint, where else, the UN. Talk about through good money after bad. Until Antonio "Back Door Man" Guterres leaves or is impeached, the UN is a useless place of censorship. Watch this site.

Today's UN and its partners including some on diplomacy are well versed in hypocrisy - but sometimes things go so far they must be noted and replied to, in this case to this year's President of the UN General Assembly several of whose predecessors as PGA have been shown to have have been bribed by CEFC China Energy, proclaims hers is a "UN4ALL." On June 10 Espinosa's spokesperson Monica Grayley in a noon briefing Inner City Press was banned from for the 342nd day and in which Grayley received not a single question, announced grandly about the ILO: "The President of the General Assembly is taking part in the 108th International Labour Conference, in Geneva, Switzerland.    The annual meeting, which seeks solutions to challenges related to the future of work, is also marking the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Organization (ILO).    Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa spoke at the Opening Ceremony, attended by dozens of Heads of State and Government and the Head of ILO, Mr. Guy Ryder."

  Well, as simply one example, Ryder's ILO has been expelled from Somaliland for failing to handle basic diplomacy. Banned Inner City Press has obtained the expulsion letter, which refers to the "complete disregard for government decision and correspondence by ILO." The current UN team, starting with corrupt censor Antonio Guterres and working downward from there, are bunglers and blow-hards. Here is more Somaliland coverage from Inner City Press, from before the time(s) Guterres had Inner City Press roughed up and banned now 342 days and counting.

On March 8 Espinosa held a press conference that her spokesperson Monica Grayley repeatedly claimed was open to all - while knowing that Inner City Press was banned from attending or asking questions.

  And so it was on May 30, when Grayley for Espinosa issued a canned answer on which Inner City Press was prohibited from asking any follow up, that she urges all sides to end violence, as if government soldiers burning down whole villages were the equivalent of what they say they are fighting. There is no dialogue; there is a dictator living in Geneva. We'll have more on this.

So Espinosa's claim to be open is false, as in context is some of the praise she offered. Now with Inner City Press still banned she and her spokesperson Monica Grayley are dodging on the expose of her corrupt spending, telling softball stooges to just go ask Ecuador. No, one should ask a court - corruption and censorship are crimes. From Ecuador: "Maintaining Maria Fernanda Espinosa as president of the United Nations General Assembly will have cost the country a little more than half a million dollars by the end of her year in office. That if you only count the payment of your salary for one year, amounting to the not insignificant 12 thousand monthly, plus your rent, your expenses of representation and transfer. In total 510 811 dollars. We must add the cost of the two Ecuadorian advisers who work with her: $ 241 570. So for the work of Espinosa in the UN, Ecuador will have disbursed 752 381 dollars.  The cost to the country does not end there. You have to add other expenses that were made before your appointment and that have not yet been quantified. For example, what was invested during the campaign that the lady did in several countries, in order to undermine the candidacy of Honduras that, by the end of 2017, practically had the global consensus to be the winner. Part of that amount will have to be presented by the Office of the Comptroller General, who made an examination of the cost of using the presidential plane for the displacement of Espinosa during the months prior to his election. In total, this will mean for the plundered tax coffers of Ecuador around one million dollars.  The figure is not pig hair, especially considering the economic conditions of the country. Therefore, it is inevitable to ask the question, was it worth paying so much?  To answer, the first thing is to consider that the Presidency of the General Assembly is a symbolic position, with very little capacity for decision and political struggle. Basically, it has the function of organizing the debates during the year that the General Assembly lasts. According to the expertin the history of the United Nations, Helmut Volger, to discourage any possible political ambition of the President, article 36 of the UN Charter says that the "president, in the exercise of his functions, is under the authority of the General Assembly " So obvious is the lack of interest in the position, that member countries do not provide a salary, so the President is paid by his country of origin, says Volger. "The lack of power, in addition to the inadequate working conditions have meant that the Presidency has been assumed rather uninspiring and inexperienced diplomats," said Christian Wenaweser, the Liechtenstein ambassador in 2007 during a debate to reform the letter of the UN, recalls Volger.  The exercise of the position has not meant for Ecuador any substantial benefit for the country. If you look at the websiteof promotion that Espinosa has set up, it is notorious that his management, like that of practically all the previous presidents of the Assembly, has been focused on public relations and draconian issues such as the overcoming of women in underdeveloped countries; no to an international policy agenda of Ecuador. What benefits has management brought to Ecuador? Among the most relevant data, on his page, there is information about a visit to Cuba, made at the beginning of April, where he met with President Miguel Díaz-Canel and in which, faithful to his ideological preferences, he praised "the resistance" of Cuba before "the unjust blockade" of the USA. It also appears a visit made to Mexico on the occasion of the possession of Manuel López Obrador and a campaign to eradicate the use of plastic bottles in which it seems to have been very involved. There are interviews in which he talks about the importance of multilateralism or south-south cooperation. The same is seen in your Twitter account.  Chancellery report on expenses María F. Espinosa  In fact, the one million dollars that the Ecuadorian taxpayers will have paid at the end of the year of Espinosa's presidency is a contribution to the ex-chancellor's resume and consequently to his apparent political aspirations. A contribution, without a doubt, very expensive.  The sponsorship of the candidacy for the Presidency of the Assembly and the concession of the generous conditions with which she was to exercise that position were, evidently, part of a payment of favors from Lenin Moreno. Espinosa and her husband, Eduardo Mangas, were very close to him when Espinosa was Ecuador's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. Both were, in addition, key political operators for the presidential candidacy of the current president. Espinosa asked for a license to come to Ecuador during the election campaign and when Moreno assumed power, she was named chancellor. In that position he was the cornerstone of the shameful international policy of the first year of Moreno's government in which he supported Maduro's Venezuela and the discourse of sympathy and support for the authoritarian regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua was maintained.  That María Fernanda Espinosa has been nominated to the Presidency of the General Assembly when she was involved in the scandal because of the way she nationalized and accredited Julian Assange as an Ecuadorian diplomat in Moscow, is also evidence that the president was willing to do everything to defend and protect your former political operator.  As well as Rafael Correa sent $ 1.6 million to Moreno to incubate his presidential candidacy in Geneva, Moreno has done with Espinosa. The payment of favors and the logic of friendships and loyalties are paid. But of course, with the country's silver." From her canned March 8 opening statement: "my team and I are preparing for the “Women In Power” event, which will take place in the General Assembly, on Tuesday, 12 March.  I am very grateful to all Heads of State and Government who are participating (six women) and also to other leaders, Ministers of State, representatives of international organizations and civil society.  The Presidents of Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Nepal and Trinidad and Tobago will be here, as well as the Prime-Minister of Iceland, the Vice-Presidents of Colombia and Costa Rica and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, among other female leaders.  My message for this event is clear: women are still vastly underrepresented in leadership positions around the world, and it is high time to change it for good." Then why praise the pilfering of the SG post that was supposed to go in 2016 to a woman? After UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres amid Inner City Press questions about his links to CEFC China Energy had Inner City Press roughed up by UN Security and banned from any entry of the UN, Espinosa's belated 11 February response was to say... it's all up to Guterres.  Now Inner City Press can report what it hears from its many UN sources, that Espinosa who burned her bridges in Ecuador is angling to see if she could take over the UN Secretary General position from Guterres, whose censorship she has been supporting. Under this theory, the corrupt and ambitious Guterres would leave the UN to return to Portuguese politics and the Eastern European Group would again be excluded. With GRULAC pushing, Espinosa would try to use her time being a sycophant to China as a calling card to become UNSG. This is how low the UN is sinking, in the view even of UN staff close to Espinosa - and to Guterres. Espinosa's chief of staff, about whom Inner City Press reported on his search for another UN job as he left UNFPA before Inner City Press was roughed up and banned - and therefore had and has a conflict of interest -- issued this response on past 4 pm on February 11: "From: Kwabena Osei-Danquah Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 4:44 PM Subject: Re: Formal request to PGA regarding restoration of full access to cover the GA To: innercitypress  Cc: Monica Grayley , Nadia Kalb , Raquel Martins   Dear Mr. Lee... The President of the General Assembly is not in a position to review or grant media accreditation. All media access at UN Headquarters is governed by an agreement between the Department of Global Communications, Department of Safety and Security (DSS), the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General (OSSG) and the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA).     The President of the General Assembly is committed to openness to and accessibility of media and will work with all stakeholders, consistent with her authority, to bring the United Nations closer to the people and to make the United Nations relevant for all.      Yours Sincerely,        Kwabena Osei-Danquah  Chef de Cabinet to the President of the 73rd Session of the General Assembly."

Now before 8 am on February 12 Inner City Press has sent this reply and reiterated request: "Dear President of the UN General Assembly Espinosa Garcés and chief of staff:     I write in reply to your February 11 e-mail stating that "[t]he President of the General Assembly is not in a position to review or grant media accreditation."  Forty days ago I informed you that the Secretariat has barred me from any enter of the UN since 3 July 2018 - this has been not only as a journalist reporting on the UN, which I have done since 2005, but even as a member of the public, seeking to attend events of and related to the General Assembly you preside over.    For your information, when I have arrived at the Visitors' Entrance, even with a ticket in my name to attend a GA event, I have been told that I am on a "permanent barred list," which is not public, which I was placed on without any hearing or due process, and from which there is no appeal. This is UNacceptable.     Your 11 February response also states that "[t]he President of the General Assembly is committed to openness to and accessibility of media and will work with all stakeholders, consistent with her authority, to bring the United Nations closer to the people and to make the United Nations relevant for all."    This is inconsistent with your apparent decision, forty days after my written request, to do nothing about the Secretariat's banning of me from any openness or accessibility - and with "UN4ALL."  So I ask again, now that you have formally had this information for 41 days - in fact, I raised it to you at the UN Delegates Entrance Gate even before you assumed your position - what are you going to do about it? I also must point out that based on whistleblowers within UNFPA Inner City Press and I published a report concerning Kwabena Osei-Danquah, who authored / signed your Office's 11 February response.  In this light, I am asking for a response from you, the PGA.  Please confirm your personal receipt of this reply and state what you will do, consistent with you statements on press freedom and, separately, on 'UN4ALL.'    Thank you for your prompt attention."  We'll have more, much more, on this. On 5 December 2018 after an eight day trial Inner City Press covered, also here, a jury in lower Manhattan rendered seven guilty verdicts in the UN bribery case of US v Ho, in which a still UN accredited NGO known as CEFC used the UN to offer weapons to Chad's Idriss Deby for oil and a stake in the Chad - Cameroon pipeline - and for paying $500,000 to a foundation suggested by Ugandan foreign minister Sam Kutesa's wife Edith Gasan Kutesa. While Guterres refuses Inner City Press' questions about why it is not a conflict of interest to refuse to audit CEFC when in 2018 it tried to buy Partex Oil & Gas from the Gulbenkian Foundation of which Guterres has been a paid board member, in Uganda President Museveni - for whom Kutesa sought a $500,000 campaign contribution - said his Attorney General would check where the money went. Even that is more than Guterres' UN is doing. Now Kutesa is proclaiming that his not being present for a UN meeting of other former PGAs - including Peter Thomson who also met with CEFC's Ye Jianming and Vuk Jeremic who worked for Ye - does NOT mean that he is under a travel ban or would be arrested in the United States. What does it say about the UN that three live former PGAs have these questions over them, with a fourth having died while on trial for taking bribes from the same Ye Jianming? Would current PGA Espinosa have invited John Ashe if he were still alive? In jail? We don't know - her spokesperson Monica Grayley has not responded to two e-mails from Inner City Press. Instead on February 4 she said that "not all former PGAs were invited," repeatedly, about Kutesa, adding that an ex PGA from "the Middle East" was going to come but couldn't. In the typical ghoulish hypocrisy of Guterres' - and Espinosa's? - UN, the faux question was from James Bays of Al Jazeera which/who worked with Stephane Dujarric to get roughed up and banned Inner City Press which actually covered the CEFC bribery trial....

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