At
UN, Extensive Power Outage After
$2 Billion Fix-Up, Press
Hindered by Minders
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
February 10 – The UN suffered
an extensive power outage on
February 10, after it spend
over $2 billion on a
rehabilitation grandly called
the Capital Master Plan.
Hallways were dark even as the
UN still led paid tours
through.
Inner City
Press arrived, now through the
metal detectors, to find UN
Security brass in the lobby
directing those who had come
for the meeting in Conference
Room 3 to go to the General
Assembly.
But since
being evicted for covering UN
corruption, Inner City Press
cannot stake-out the General
Assembly, at least not without
a minder. Down
by Conference Room 3, the sign
boards were out. The computers
that Inner City Press is now
forced to use to download UN
video of "answers" to its questions
were off.
Finally obtaining a minder to
reach a photo booth - but not
the stake-out of the General
Assembly - Inner City Press
heard the President of the GA
apologize
to a quarter-filled GA
Hall for the power outage. But
after $2 billion dollars?
We'll have more on this.
Eleven months ago, acting
against Press coverage of her
and Ban Ki-moon's links to UN
corruption cases, Under
Secretary General Cristina
Gallach had Inner City Press physically
ousted from the UN.
Audio
here.
Since then
a campaign of harassment by UN
Security and the requirement
that Inner City Press unlike
other media have minders to
stake-out public events in the
UN has continued.
This even
as Ban Ki-moon left the UN and
the United States on the day
his brother and nephew were indicted
for bribery and using
Ban's and the UN's name to try
to sell a 72-story building in
Vietnam to Qatar's sovereign
wealth fund.
The
hindrance of Inner City Press'
coverage ranges from formal
General Assembly meetings to
an "extraordinary" Security
Council meeting about Mali on
January 27, after Inner City
Press exposed
the extension of
Clinton-aligned Jeffrey
Feltman so his pension
can vest, and Spokesman
Stephane Dujarric called
Inner City Press'
questioning "despicable."
Inner City
Press went and got the UN
minder that Gallach requires.
As a diplomat was speakig to
Inner City Press behind the
stanchions it must stand
behind, a UN Security official
came over and stood looming
nearby. He cut in to demand
who was escorting Inner City
Press.
No one
else gets asked this.
The diplomat joked, "You're an
important person." But the
conversation and information
were over. This is censorship.
Earlier on
January 27, an event about the
Holocaust: after asking the
Ambassador of Qatar about the
war in (and bombing of) Yemen,
Inner City Press went early to
cover the even. New Secretary
General Antonio Guterres and
his team walked by, waving.
Inner City Press, having seen
there was no one in Media
Accreditation and Liaison
Unit, was told by UN Security
it could not cover the event.
For 15
minutes Inner City Press
waited, finally stating this
was happening due its
reporting on Ban Ki-moon and
corruption. UN Security began
to write up a report, a full
Kafka. We'll have more on
this.
On January
24, there was an event
ironically about "propaganda."
Here
was the definition given, in this
tweeted photo.
While the
event went on, Inner City
Press under Gallach's 11-month
old eviction order was
required to leave before 7 -
its UN pass stops working in
UN turnstiles at that time.
On January
17, for an event involving
Gallach herself as a speaker,
despite having been invited --
not by the UN -- and having
its RSVP confirmed, Inner City
Press was stopped by UN
Security and not allowed to
enter. Video
here.
In any event, with the
UN pass that Gallach has
reduced, Inner City Press
cannot get through any
turnstiles to work after 7 pm.
Gallach herself appears in the
UN Office of Internal
Oversight Services audit
of the Ng Lap Seng / John Ashe
(RIP) UN bribery case, at
Paragraphs 37-40 and 20b, as
having done no due diligence
of Ng Lap Seng's buying of UN
events and even its Slavery
Memorial. Audit
here.
She
and Ban Ki-moon, to punish and
make more difficult coverage
of their links to these cases,
evicted Inner City Press and
restrict it to this day, 11
months later. As to Ban, Inner
City Press on January 17
appeared in a 19-minute interview
about corruption and
censorship on Seoul's TBS
radio. On the lower
profile, entirely
unaccountable Gallach, we'll
have more.
This is a litmus
test of press (UN) freedom.
Gallach's
censorship order of February
2016 prevented Inner City Press
in December 2016, for the first
time in years, from covering the
UN budget process, including on
human rights and Burundi,
another of Ban Ki-moon's
failures.
For years Inner City Press has
been virtually alone in covering
the late night Fifth (Budget)
Committee session in which
billions of dollars are carved
up. But in 2016 for the first
time, following Gallach's
retaliatory eviction order and
ghoulish restriction regime of
minders and the putting off of
pass, Inner City Press could not
cover the budget.
By seizing Inner
City Press' long time office --
and awarding it to an Egypt
state media Akhbar al Yom whose
correspondents Sanaa Youssef
rare comes to the UN and never
asks questions -- Gallach and
Ban have made so that Inner City
Press cannot enter the UN after
7 pm. But that, of course, is
when the budget process happens.
In December 2016,
for example, Burundi cut the
funds for human rights observers
and the UN mission the Security
Council mandated but has yet to
deploy. Inner City Press covers
these, but was Banned from
covering the process by Gallach.
This is a cover up.
Meanwhile
Gallach is showing her true
colors with article such as that
“amateurs” killed journalism.
Really? Energetic online media
that actually covers UN
corruption is a threat to
deadbeat stenography or
non-existent journalism like
that of Akhbar al Yom's
correspondent?
Gallach is the wrong person to
have control of the UN
Department of Public
Information. She also did no due
diligence on Macau based
businessman Ng Lap Seng in the
John Ashe case, and is
responsible for the UN's Wonder
Woman fiasco. She must go.
***
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