State
Dept Holdover
Brownfield Says
US Relationship with the
UN Is Great, But DPI
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
March 2 – Early reports on
possible Trump administration
cuts to the United Nations,
and more recently State
Department, budget have been
triggered push-back by former
State Department staffers,
some using pseudonymous
Twitter accounts.
But on
March 2 holdover Assistant
Secretary for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs, Ambassador William
Brownfield on the record
insisted that the US'
relationship with the United
Nations is excellent. He cited
an upcoming UN conference
later this month at which he
said he will be representing
the United States. We'll see.
Meanwhile
on March 1, despite the
billions of dollars the US
gives to the UN, the UN
website was down for hours, no
one seemed to care. At the UN,
the Department of Public
Information under Cristina
Gallach used public funds, one
quarter from the US, for a
training to tell DPI-accredited
NGOs that Detroit,
Michigan is a "third rate
city" in "flyover country;"
DPI had already evicted and
continues to restrict the
investigative Inner City Press
which alone reported on the
dissing of Detroit, and other
UN corruption.
On US
inauguration day on January 20
at the US Mission to the UN
the photos of Obama, Biden,
Kerry and Samantha Power came
down. As of February 17 they
have not been replaced.
But as elsewhere an
"Alt USUN" Twitter account
continues in a parallel online
universe the views of Power,
most recently
calling out new Ambassador
Nikki Haley for only attending
three of 13 UN Security
Council meetings, on Ukraine,
ISIS and Israel - Palestine.
Fair
enough. But how many meetings
did Samantha Power attend? And
after the Israel - Palestine
meeting Nikki Haley took questions
at the Security Council
stakeout, not pre-screened by
Power's spokesman Kurtis
Cooper - who remains at the US
Mission, tweeting, along with
many others.
In fact,
Isobel Coleman who did nothing
when the DC-based
whistleblower protection group
Government Accountability
Project wrote to her about the
UN's eviction of the
investigative Press, here,
still as of February 17 lists
herself as the US
representative on UN reform.
Is it true?
In
the UN itself, Obama and
Hillary Clinton nominee
Jeffrey Feltman has gotten his
UN contract extended. Inner
City Press first
reported, from multiple
sources, that Feltman sought
this so that his UN pension
would hit the five year
vesting dateline. The UN's
holdover spokesman Stephane
Dujarric called Inner City
Press' question, and by
implication Inner City Press,
"despicable."
Or is that, deplorable?
Meanwhile
Voice of America, which was
shown under the US Freedom of
Information Act to have asked
the UN to throw out the
investigative Press, has now
asked about Jared Kushner
(video via
here) and asked the UK
about Nikki Haley's
inexperience. Like we said, an
alternative universe.
Other
former State Department
officials like Bathsheba
Crocker wring their hands
about changes in foreign
policy. But what did they do,
when the UN killed 10,000 plus
people in Haiti with cholera?
They had their time to try to
improve the UN, and largely
failed. It's time to #MoveOn.
***
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