| The UN Is Being Killed By
Guterres And His Team As From Cameroon To
China Rosewood Flows
A Cautionary Tale By
Matthew Russell Lee
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UN GATE, Dec 28 –
The lobby of the United
Nations still had the veneer
of futurist cool, but upstairs
it has all gone rotten. It was
to the penultimate story that
lobbyist Daniel Lang was
headed that day, not to meet
the top man Fat Tony Guterres
but his African fig-leaf
deputy Amina J. Mohammed.
The two were equally corrupt,
she having signed and
backdated thousands of export
certificates for endangered
rosewood from Cameroon already
shipped to China for the
over-classes bed frames and
other furniture. But it was
this Cameroonian connection
that Lang hoped to play on
today.
Amina Mohammed's factotum
Nelson Muffuh, who had worked
for her at the Nigerian
Ministry for the Environment
and Sustainable Development as
well, approached lobbyist Lang
in the
lobby.
"Ah, Daniel,"
Muffuh said in the faux
French style for which the UN
has known. "I trust you got
through security alright?"
In fact Daniel has seen a man
with a big backpack being
taken out of the line in front
of him, loudly demanding why
he as journalist was being
barred and calling Guterres
corrupt as he was ushered back
out only First Avenue.
"It was alright," Lang
answered, eager to get up to
the 38th floor and make his
pitch to Mohammed before the
interns started drinking in
the UN Delegates Lounge at 5
pm. He had set this meeting
for late afternoon for just
that reason.
"Follow me," Muffuh said,
leading Lang deeper into the
UN General Assembly lobby,
past a series of panels
claiming how the UN had tried
to stop the Rwanda genocide,
to a turnstile facing a bank
of elevators.
"He's with me, Ronald," Muffuh
told the security guard by the
turnstile, who pushed a button
and let them through. "He
represents Cameroon."
The security guard nodded and,
it seemed to Lang, smirked.
What was so strange, a French
white man lobbying for
Cameroon? At least the country
was no longer an explicit
colony.
Up
on the 38th floor there was
more guards, in front of a big
window looking out over the
East River at Brooklyn and
Queens and behind them, Long
Island all the way to the
Hamptons.
"Amina's waiting
for you in her office," Muffuh
said, heading down a hallway
that smelled of the cigars
that UN staffers smoked in the
stairwell one firedoor away.
There were in her corner
office she was, Amina J.
Mohammed in her ubiquitous
flowing robe and head scarf, a
politically correct exporter
of stolen rosewood. Lang aimed
to use her guilty knowledge to
get her and Guterres' support
for another Chinese project in
Cameroon, this time in the
Anglophone Zone. It should not
be difficult.
To Be Continued; and see Patreon
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