By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR LetterPFT Q&A, NY Post
UNITED NATIONS GATE, January 9 – With UN Secretary General obviously failing, from Somalia to Guatemala to Cameroon which he covered up by censorship, the pro-UN industial complex is casting around for someone, anyone to blame but Guterres and themselves. A current argument, propped up by former Guterres official Jeffrey Feltman who signed off on Bernardino Leon's sell out of the UN to the UAE, is that Guterres is forced to be weak because the P3 (France, UK and US) won'tback him up. But could it be Guterres' fault? These analysts, including Human RightsWatch, have said nothing about Guterres' linksto briber China Energy Fund Committee, much less his roughing up and banning of the Press which asked. They didn't cover Guterres' ghoulish order to staff not to ask him any questions or even take selfies when he used their work space for his photo op.
Is it any wonder Jimmy Morales and many in Somalia laugh at Guterres? Are those close to Guterres, profiting from insider status, not part of the problem that is killing the UN? Who is killing the UN? His name is Guterres. And he has many accomplices, including those producing what are, in essence, defenses of Guterres but which his spokesman are the type of hard hitting coverage that proves he is not a censor for twice banning the critical Press.
For weeks the UN of Guterres had refused to answer Press questions about Somalia. Now after Guterres' SRSG representative Nicholas Haysom wasordered to cease operations in, and presumably leave, Somalia, Guterres on January 4 has said the country CANNOT declare Haysom Persona Non Grata, since the UN "is not a state." Why then can Guterres rough up and ban a journalist and claim immunity? And Inner City Press, which Guterres had roughed up on 3 July 2018 andbanned since, had before that asked Guterres' Spokesman Stephane Dujarric about a PNG-ing of UN staff by Burundi and Dujarric said, "I don’t know what the status of the staff member who was 'PNG-ed.' We can check." Video here. But it's worse. When the UN tried to send an SRSG to Iraq and the government objected, the decision was reversed. But never, UN staff tell Inner City Press, has a UN Secretary General given in as quickly as Guterres has to Somalia. They tell Inner City Press exclusively that Guterres was hung up on on the phone. And that the UN Political Affairs operation under Rosemary DiCarlo was not even in the loop on the absurd statement read out by Farhan Haq at at noon. "She's nothing," a long time DPA official told Inner City Press. "If Washington every looks closely she'll be fired." If it happens, it should be for the scandal of the handover of the Department's website to the photographer husband of her chief of staff, unacted on by the titular head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services who has disappeared and is said by her own staff to be... well, that will have to wait. Watch this site. Sierra Leone PNG-ed Michael von der Schulenburg, of whom Inner City Press also asked before being roughed up and banned under Guterres - who claims immunity for all of this. We'll have more on this.
