Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 11 -- With the UN General Assembly debate two weeks ago, and already being branded around a September 24 Security Council session on “foreign fighters” as if that would constitute approval of air strikes, the UN Secretariat of Ban Ki-moon has begun to spin.

  Ban has said, mostly through spokespeople since he rarely takes questions, that he hopes military moves in the Middle East comply with international law. He has not said that Security Council approval should at least be sought, or whether a country can do strikes thousands of miles away and call it self-defense.

  The pay-off for this seems to be lip services to meetings that Ban will brand as his own: climate change (without the high level participation of several important countries) and Ebola, where his UN criticizes such moves as quarantines even while supporting those who impose them, and refusing still to answer Inner City Press' September 8 question about its Darfur mission implementing screening of a type that UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous has not even after introducing cholera to Haiti.

  Despite spending over $2 billion ostensibly renovating if not reforming the UN, even the sidewalks and security check-points in front of the General Assembly are not ready. To try to spin this, the UN on September 10 said it will give a tour to in-house scribes on September 11, with spokesman Stephane Dujarric saying to assembly in front of the large usually unused room the UN gives to its UN Censorship Alliance, UNCA, whose Executive Committee has tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN.

  Additionally, on September 11 many journalists will be covering a certain anniversary, especially after Obama's September 10 speech. Similarly on one day's notice the UN's media unit declared September 11 to be their day to interact with in-house scribes about arrangements for the General Assembly week. The new Free UN Coalition for Access objects; watch this site.