In
State Dep't
Shutdown Spin,
Was Power in
Africa Too
Cheap
to Tweet?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
October 11 --
How much does
it cost for a
US government
employee to
tweet?
A claim has
been
made today
that
Ambassador
Samantha
Power and
the US Mission
to the UN
stopped
tweeting on
October 2 as
part of making
difficult
choices during
the government
shutdown.
But
we must note:
from October 3
to 9,
Ambassador
Power was on a
French-led UN
Security
Council trip
in Africa. She
was working,
and
one assumes
that France
didn't pick up
ALL the bills.
So government
funds are
being spent.
How much does
it cost to
tweet?
Not
noted by
sycophants is
the
controversy,
or fact, that
Samantha Power
does not send
her own
tweets. She is
a thinker
and author, of
course, there
is no
question she
can write. But
at the 92nd
Street Y just
before the UN
General Debate,
she
acknowledged
that she did
not even know
her own
Twitter
handle.
After
Inner City
Press reported
that, it was
explained that
her tweets are
processed and
proofread by
others, and
Inner City
Press
immediately
added it to
the story. But
it put her
non-tweeting
while on a
trip in
Africa without
(all) her
staff in a
context the
sycophants
should
have noted (as
well as @USUN's
post-trip
tweet sent
hours before
publication of
the spin.)
This,
too: the US
has postponed
the review of
its record by
the UN Human
Rights Council
until at
earliest March
2014, citing
the shutdown.
The
Obama
administration
and Ambassador
Donahoe in
Geneva have
said a lot
about the HRC.
To ask for
this kind of
deferral,
while it has
been
said that
State
Department can
operate more
or less
unchanged, is
strange.
At
a rally on
Capitol Hill
on October 10,
Bob Silverman
of American
Foreign
Service Assoc
said shutdown
hurts -- but
cites only the
Commerce
Department,
not the State
Department.
We'd
like to know
more
about this,
but timely
questions
Inner City
Press sent to
the US
Mission about
a credited
exclusive
story it wrote
about the
Security
Council's
(and Power's)
Africa trip while
having been excluded
from it by
France
have yet to be
answered.
Maybe it's the
shutdown.
Watch this
site.