Sunday, May 12, 2013

Silent on Murder of Peacekeepers, UN's Herve Ladsous Resurfaces in Lebanon, Feted by UNCA's L'Orient Le Jour



By Matthew Russell Lee, Media Critique
UNITED NATIONS, May 11 -- After refusing to answer Press questions about the murder of UN peacekeepers he is responsible for in Abyei and the Congo, where in the worldis French Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous?
  From L'Orient Le Jour we learn, in a gushing article, that Ladsous in is Lebanon, inspecting the troops. The article, while dated May 13 (that is, Monday) does not even mention the belated freeing of four UN peacekeepers kidnapped by the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, after the intervention of Qatar, said to have great influence with the kidnappers.
  Ladsous routinely refuses to answer Press questions. Video here. After the two recent peacekeeper deaths in Abyei and Congo he did not even do a question and answer stakeout as his predecessor Alain Le Roy invariably did in such situations.
  No mention of that in L'Oriente Le Jour: it's a pure spin article, making Ladsous look artificially good as for example Agence France Presse does.
  And there's a connection: L'Orient Le Jour, like AFP, is represented on and uses the UN Correspondents Association Executive Board.
  In fact, it was L'Orient Le Jour's representative on the UNCA board who, when shown Sri Lanka state media articles saying that UNCA's charges would result in jail time for Inner City Press' reporter, and then threats to said reporter to "float like a brick," said "this has nothing to do with me." Doesn't it?
Footnote: Since the campaign involving UNCA Executive Committee and its officer from L'Orient Le Jour has evolved into ever more frequent use of anonymous social media posts that UNCA's "new" president Pamela Falk of CBS has done nothing about, audio here, and apparently cheers onit's worth noting the above. That's it for now.