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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT NY Post

UNITED NATIONS, January 15 – As the UN's week-long Ocean Conference finally ended on the evening of 9 June 2017 with a reception on the Delegates Lounge balcony over the river, complete with a Fiji band, the Colonel and Ambassadors galore, including Dominica's Italian Deputy Ambassador Paolo Zampolli, the question arose where this was all going. Inner City Press predicted, in terms of the Ocean, that Secretary General Antonio Guterres would create a new Special Representative position on Ocean, and Fiji's Peter Thomson would fill it. That has taken place; Thomson has been shown with UN briber Ye Jianming of CEFC China Energy, which also has linked to Guterres, who has had Inner City Press roughed up and banned, now 195 days and counting. Meanwhile Zampolli is still very much in Guterres' UN - now branching off into drones and artificial intelligence organizations with logos that look like the UN's. This is fine with Guterres - he too has secrets, a desire to use public money to fly home to Lisbon, to use UN Security to rough up the Press which asks about it. Here are two new Zampolli websites, here and here - he is today's UN.  And Guterres and his spokesman won't answer even written questions, even on evidence of UN Peacekeepers dragging corpses. The UN is rotting; anything goes. At the end of the Oceans event, Inner City Press asked the accessible President of the General Assembly Peter Thomson of the push for the creation of a new job, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Ocean, and he seemed to acknowledge it. Photos here. Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access complained how money was spent on exhibits in the UN lobby and then the public banned for the whole week. This is today's UN. On June 7 when Monaco's Prince Albert II held a press conference at the UN, Marine Protected Areas were mentioned and Inner City Press went to ask him about the MPAs which offer little to no protection, see below. But as it turned out at the press conference, the questions were given to a group which the Prince gives money to - this was not disclosed - and the questions not surprisingly were softballs, repeated requests to defend the Paris Accord and sing the praises of the Prince's relatives and diving. To this has the UN descended: faux press conferences by royals, with the fact that those called on for questions are fundees not disclosed. To those the Prince - or his subjects - funds, an embargoed copy of his self-promotion was provided (a disgusted member of the group provided it to Inner City Press). The group, as the Prince should know, operates to get thrown out of the UN investigative Press. There was giggling, and some embarrassing wire service pick-ups, when the Prince "got naughty" and ostensibly stood up to power. At the end no question about Marine Protected Areas was permitted. There was applause, and the question, We'll see you tonight, won't we? There will be more faux prizes. To this has the UN descended. When the  Montreal-based Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity Cristiana Pasca Palmer held a press conference at the UN on June 5 about Marine Protected Areas, Inner City Press as the only media to ask a question raised criticism about Canada's proposed Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area. It was shrunken to avoid key fishing grounds, it allowed oil and gas exploration. But Palmer, and the first expert they referred to, weren't aware of it. Another more voluable responder from the back of the room said maybe oil and gas exploration weren't bad, or the purpose of the Marine Protected Area. Apparently not. But shouldn't UN agencies be aware of such controversies in their host countries? As the Ocean Conference started at the UN there were corporate exhibits including a large one by Suez Environmental, a firm much protested for its role in water privatization. Inner City Press asked the UN Department of Public Information, which is sponsoring press conference complete with corporate moderators asking softball questions to supermarket chains, who in the UN is vetting these corporate commitments. You'll have to wait until the end of the week, was the answer. But the corporations are already getting blue washed in the UN website and hallways, just as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reflexively offered praise to Citigroup last week, while his Global Compact covered up for a company exploiting the natural resources of Western Sahara. Meanwhile another topic Inner City Press started asking about last week, fisheries subsidies, will not be acted on in the Ocean Conference but rather, if at all, in the World Trade Organization at the end of the year. We'll have more on this.

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