| To UN
Opposing Guterres Inner City Press Filed
to PGA Now Asks US State Dept Transcript
Here
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Song
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
March 27 – How corrupt and
undemocratic is today's United
Nations?
Well, now that
Antonio Guterres is pushing
for a second five-year term,
while banning
the Press for the 998th day
for daring to ask about his
finances and failures, he has
collaborators.
The
current President of the
General Assembly Volkan
Bozkir, a strongman from
Turkey who due to his bigoted
comments even pro-UN New York
City Mayor Bill de Blasio
wouldn't meet with, has the
duty of circulating letters
from candidates.
But
throughout February and now
March 2021, Bozkir refused to
circulate the letter of UN
staffer candidate Arora
Akanksha.
Bozkir's
spokesman Brendan Varma, who
blocks Inner City Press
on Twitter, continues to dance
around what the rules are and
won't answer.
So, as a
test - and to raise the issue
of the UN's lack of content
neutral media access rules, lack
of a Freedom of Information
Act (fought for the Free
UN Coalition for Access) and
lack of scruples - Inner City
Press on the morning of
February 26 submitted a signed
letter
and C.V. to the PGA's Office
and to Varma. Since
then, fiveweeks of dodging and
blockage, now of four.
On March 26,
Inner City Press asked US
State Department Ambassador
Erica Barks-Ruggles this:
MS PORTER:
We will go to the line of
Matthew Russell Lee.
QUESTION:
One of the controversies right
now in the UN is this – if
Antonio Guterres is up for
re-election, and the question
is whether there will be other
candidates. There are at
least four candidates who have
provided names and CVs, but
they haven’t been circulated
to the member-states both by
the president of the General
Assembly you mentioned and
even by the U.S. mission this
month, the president of the
Security Council. I
wanted to know what’s the
administration’s – I mean,
does that seem right? Is
that something that the
Secretary’s going to
discuss? And what’s the
mission’s thinking on not
having circulated names during
this month? And one
other thing, it’s something
that the UN has – the council
has not worked on, but does
the administration think that
there’s a UN role in dealing
with the ongoing kind of mass
killings in the Anglophone
areas of Cameroon? The
issue has been going on for
some years and the Council has
had a few AOBs, but never
actually met on or done
anything on.
AMBASSADOR
BARKS-RUGGLES: On
the secretary-general race,
we, of course, as members of
the Council and permanent
members of the Council, will
be very much engaged in this
process. We obviously
work closely with the current
secretary-general and will
look forward to that strong
and constructive relationship
continuing, and I think that
that’s – that will be part of
the discussions that Secretary
Blinken will have with the
secretary-general. But
I’m not going to get into the
details of diplomatic
discussions. On
Cameroon, I’m sorry. I
don’t have anything for you on
that at this point. It
has not been discussed in the
Security Council up to this
point.
We'll have more
on this.
On March
25, Bozkir's spokesman Brenden
Varma, who blocks Inner City
Press on Twitter, announced
that "there is only one
candidate" and that he will
hold a North Korea-like
one-man debate on May 7.
Debate? This is corruption. We
will have more on this. Watch
this site.
***
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