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By Matthew Russell Lee, Vine, Periscope

UNITED NATIONS, February 16 – As the North Korea UN sanctions "experts" report continues to be cherry picked further and further down the food chain, now comes a report focused on coal, pointing the finger at Vietnam, Russia, China, Vietnam and South Korea. Omitted, apparently intentionally, are violations by Japanese companies, like Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, as Inner City Press has reported. The reporting is politicized, just as the now exposed reporting about a car crash in Okinawa back in December 2017, complete with similar finger pointing at the Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa Times. On that one Masato Inui, an executive officer at Sankei Shimbun, is quoted that “We will train our reporters more thoroughly to prevent this happening again and work toward improving the credibility of our reports." And on the other?

 As North Korea says it can't pay its 2018 UN dues because of sanctions on its banks, there are 14 other UN member states at least two years behind in their dues payments, according to Secretary General Antonio's letter less than a month ago. While four of these countries got exemptions from losing their voting power in the General Assembly, ten were stripped of their votes, including oil-rich UN Security Council member Equatorial Guinea. The other countries listed as denied votes for failure to pay are Libya, also under UN sanctions; Venezuela, Suriname, Grenada, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Marshall Islands, Central African Republic and Yemen, being bombed by Saudi Arabia. The four that got exemption and can still vote are Sao Tome and Principe, Comoros, Somalia and Guinea-Bissau, the latter two also on the agenda of the UN Security Council.  While the Democratic Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name, last year paid its UN dues as a "swap," for this year's $180,000 it has told the UN that sanctions are prohibiting the transfer and asks that the UN take action. Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk wrote to UN Department of Management chief Jan Beagle, in a letter obtained by Inner City Press and available in full here on Patreon, that "Last year we paid our contribution to the UN in the form of swap with the operation expenses of the UN agencies in the DPRK, purely out of its position to honor its obligation as a UN member state, but it is an abnormal method which cannot be applied continuously in view of our state law and regulations. I would like to kindly request the UN Secretariat to take measures, in
conformity with its mission with impartiality and independence as lifeline, to secure promptly the bank transaction channel through which the regular payment of the DPRK’s contribution is made possible." We'll have more on this. Back on January 17 when the UN's Committee on Relations with the Host Country met, the representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea read a three-page statement condemning the US for issuing his Mission to the UN's tax-exempt card in the name "North Korea" and not Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He said, "We presumed it would be only a kind of technical mistake by the U.S. side, and returned the card back to the U.S. mission, while requesting them to correct that serious mistake." The statement, which Inner City Press has exclusively obtained immediately after the meeting (photos here, full PDF of letter via Patreon, here) continued that the U.S. mission replied, "It seems to be a glitch in our database, we'll reach out to our office in DC." That was on December 13, the statement said, continuing: "on 14th December there was an explanation from the U.S. mission informing that, quoted as 'Our DC office has indicated that all country / mission names on OFM credentials for Democratic People's Republic of Korea indicate North Korea which is the conventional short abbreviation. The short name for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is North Korea, so the tax card will remain the same." The statement concluded by condemning "such reckless political hostile policy" and demanded an apology. Watch this site. Throughout 2016 New Zealand documentary maker Gaylene Preston and her crew staked out the UN Security Council along with Inner City Press, awaiting the results of the straw polls to elected Ban Ki-moon's sucessor as UN Secretary General. Preston's focus was Helen Clark, the former New Zealand prime minister then in her second term as Administrator of the UN Development Program. Preston would ask Inner City Press after each poll, What about Helen Clark's chances? Suffice it to say Clark never caught fire as a candidate. Inner City Press told Preston, as did many other interviewees in her documentary “My Year with Helen,” that it might be sexism. But it might be power too - including Samantha Power, the US Ambassador who spoke publicly about gender equality and then in secret cast a ballot Discouraging Helen Clark, and praised Antonio Guterres for his energy (yet to be seen). Samantha Power's hypocrisy is called out in Preston's film, in which New Zealand's Ambassador complains that fully four members of the Council claimed to be the single “No Opinion” vote that Clark received. There was a private screening of My Year With Helen on December 4 at NYU's King Juan Carlos Center, attended by a range of UN staff, a New Zealand designer of a website for the country's proposal new flag, and Ban Ki-moon's archivist, among others. After the screening there was a short Q&A session. Inner City Press used that to point out that Guterres has yet to criticize any of the Permanent Five members of the Council who did not block him as the US, France and China blocked Clark, with Russia casting a “No Opinion.” And that Guterres picked a male from among France's three candidates to head UN Peacekeeping which they own, and accepted males from the UK and Russia for “their” top positions. Then over New Zealand wine the talk turned to the new corruption at the UN, which is extensive, and the upcoming dubious Wall Street fundraiser of the UN Correspondents Association, for which some in attendance had been shaken down, as one put it, for $1200.  The UN needed and needs to be shaken up, and hasn't been. But the film is good, and should be screened not in the UN Censorship Alliance but directly in the UN Security Council, on the roll-down movie screen on which failed envoys like Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed are projected. “My Year With Helen” is well worth seeing.

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