Faced
with US Budget Cut,
UN DPI Promotes
Smurfs Movie Under Press
Censor Gallach
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Series
UNITED NATIONS,
March 15 – Facing budget cuts,
now of up to 50%, how does
today's UN react? Well, its
Department of Public
Information (DPI) under Cristina
Gallach plans an event
with lobbyist UN Foundation
and the Smurfs, and invites
only UN-friendly media. DPI is
a Department that could be
substantially cut or
disbanded. It used public
money to pay a trainer to call
Detroit, Michigan a "third
rate city" in "flyover
country;" it did
no due diligence as a
Macau based businessman bought
the UN, left
his bribery conduit in
and evicted
and
restricts the Press
which reports on it. Making
Inner City Press a "non
resident correspondent"
without hearing or appeal, the
UN now does not inform Inner
City Press of Security
Council trips or
Saturday's Smurf fest. From a
February 15 press
release: "The popular
Smurfs characters are
encouraging children, young
people and adults to make the
world happier, more peaceful,
equitable and healthy with a
campaign launched today by the
United Nations, UNICEF, and
the United Nations
Foundation...Team Smurfs will
rally behind the 17 Goals
through to the International
Day of Happiness on 20 March
2017 when the campaign will
culminate in a celebration at
United Nations Headquarters in
New York to mark the
occasion." We'll have more on
this.
When new - well, 74 day
- Secretary General Antonio
Guterres went on a trip to
Kenya, in New York the Press
was not informed of any chance
to go. But there Guterres
appeared with Al Jazeera, and
now in a profile
in the Washington Post from a
usually
hard-hitting reporter,
this time quoting the UN's
Herve Ladsous, who has mismanaged
UN Peacekeeping and the
Press
for five years. The article
describes the UN Foundation as
"advocating for UN causes."
But shouldn't issues like
accountability for victims of
UN cholera in Haiti, and
opposing censorship in the UN
and for example in Western
Cameroon, with no
Internet for 53 days, be "UN
causes"? In fact, UN
Foundation lobbies against US
budget cuts to the UN, even if
targeted and designed to bring
about reform. The UN's cause,
it seems, is to perpetuate
itself.
(One of
Guterres' team is quoted that
Guterres' goal is to say out
of Trump's Twitter feed. Is
telling a newspaper that the
best way to make it come
about? And if Trump or Rex
Tillerson eschewed a traveling
press corps for hand-picked
coverage, there would be and
is outcry. The Free
UN Coalition for Access
asks, Is it acceptable by the
UN?)
Recently in the UN basement as
Inner City Press came in late
through a long line of
tourists and students at the
metal detectors Inner City
Press must now use everyday
since the UN evicted
it for covering corruption,
a meeting in a windowless side
conference room was ending.
Outside in the hall it was
labeled, Congressional Group.
But inside
on a TV screen it said,
“UN Foundation: Congressional
Learning Trip.” UN Foundation
was set up, with Ted Turner's
money, to help and now defend
the UN. The UN's point person
on sexual abuse, long a topic
of interest for such
Republicans as Senator Bob
Corker (R-Tennessee), is Jane
Holl Lute, who before that was
a high official of the UN
Foundation and of the Obama
Administration. She was
notably absent this week when
a “new” sexual abuse strategy,
immediately critiqued
by Code Blue and others, was
announced. We'll have more on
that.
Down
in Washington, Democratic
sources on the Hill tell Inner
City Press of a visit by the
Obama administration's
appointee to the UN, Jeffrey
Feltman. Strangely, perhaps,
they list the topic not as
involving only Feltman's
specific UN job, the
Department of Political
Affairs he has been held over
to head until April Fools Day
in 2018, but “budget cuts to
peacekeeping.” The head of
that Department, held by
France for more than 20 years,
should be the one lobbying.
But Herve Ladsous is
unappealing in the best of
times; now he is a lame duck
leaving on March 31, to be
replaced by his fellow
Frenchman Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
Will Lacroix be able to stave
off cuts? Will he continue to
use public funds, more than a
quarter of it from US
taxpayers, to pay peacekeepers
accused of rape such as in the
contingents from Burundi
and Cameroon?
Inner City Press exclusively
reported and followed
up on the extension of
Jeffrey Feltman's UN contract
with regard to his UN (largely
US taxpayer) pension vesting
after the five years which
Feltman recently pointed out
has not yet been reached, but
not until now how those close
to Feltman say it was
accomplished. They exclusively
tell Inner City Press that
among the lobbyists to keep
Feltman on was none other than
Bill Clinton, whom they say
said it on behalf of his
spouse, behind whom Feltman
was famously photographed
while she worked her
Blackberry.
Speaking of photographs, Inner
City Press on March 10, still
under censorship restrictions
imposed without
any hearing or appeal after it
sought to cover the fallout
from the UN bribery indictment
of Macau-based businessman and
former Clinton funder
Ng Lap Seng, was Banned
from a simple photo
opportunity on the UN's 38th
floor. The Ban's by the
Department of Public
Information under ostensibly
outgoing Cristina Gallach, who
did no
due diligence on Ng Lap
Seng. When asked the basis,
the UN's holdover Deputy
Spokesman Farhan Haq gave no
reason or definition being
used; he barely looked up from
his computer, from which he
never did answer Inner City
Press' questions
on Cameroon abuses and the
UN's Cameroon Resident
Coordinator Najat Rochdi blocking
it on Twitter, nor how much
"extra-budgetary" funds the UN
proposes to use on Louise
Arbour's D1 head of office.
The
moves are stealth, like much
in the UN these days - and
have the potential of
backfiring. Watch this site.
***
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