By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 28 -- US President Obama's State of the Union speech mentioned Iran ten times, but not that the US got UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to dis-invite Iran from the Syria talks in Switzerland. In fact, Obama did not mention the United Nations once.
In the middle of his speech, the UN e-mailed out a readout of Ban Ki-moon's meeting with Haitian president Martelly. It mentioned cholera, but not who brought it to the island: the UN.
Obama did not mention South Sudan, where the US bears some responsibility, but he did mention Mali, where the US is delegating to colonial power France, as it does in Central African Republic.
The television cameras flashed to Secretary of State John Kerry, and UN Ambassador Samantha Power -- no mention of their push-back from saying that the Rwanda genocide of 1994 was directed at the Tutsis.
Obama talked trade, citing the Asia-Pacific. That would by the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership, which would globalize corporate abuse like the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, under which for example Reuters got Google to block from its search a leaked document showing Reuters trying to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, click here for that.
The camera flashed to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, too. No mention that he came from Citigroup, as does Obama's nominee for deputy chair of the Federal Reserve. The predatory lending scandal has been laundered into the "Great Recession." Watch this site.
Interactive update: Readers' responses led to more research and this: John F. Kennedy in his 1961 State of the Union speech cited (twice) the UN, and strife in the Congo. Jump cut to 2007, when President Bush cited Mutombo helping build a hospital in the DR Congo...
Interactive update: Readers' responses led to more research and this: John F. Kennedy in his 1961 State of the Union speech cited (twice) the UN, and strife in the Congo. Jump cut to 2007, when President Bush cited Mutombo helping build a hospital in the DR Congo...
