By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - Song - Review
LITERARY UN GATE, Feb 9 -- As Michael Randall Long and Gul waited to the side while tourists entered the UN with their twenty dollar ticket, he texted Kurt to ask him what do it. It wasn't the arms-length press release that Kurt had asked for but it would have to do for now.
"Ask to see Paulo de Souza," Kurt texted back. "And if that doesn't work, ask for Courtenay Rattray." The Rat Man was Guterres' new chief of staff, replacing the play-out former Brazil Ambassador Guterres had used in his first term. Rattaray had blocked Kurt on Twitter even before Guterres had him thrown out of the UN.
When the suited man came back, and before he could order Long and Gul out of the UN's campus, Long dropped the name. "I'm a lawyer and I'm here to see Paulo de Souza," he announced. "If he is not available, then Courtenay Rattray."
The suited man smirked but a little less surely. "Do you have an appointment?"
"It's a legal matter which would put the Secretary General in an uncomfortable position," Long ad-libbed. Then he deployed what Kurt had said could be a code-word. "Tell them it concerns the Gulbenkian Foundation."
The suited man shrugged and again retreated. "What's that?" Gul asked him.
"It's a group in Lisbon that paid Guterres money, from an oil company that I'm going to say had business in Xinjiang," Long said.
Gul nodded. "We do have natural gas," she said. "It's one of the reasons Xi moved all the Han Chinese in."
When the suited man returned, he did let them in - escorted of course. It was to see the lawyer de Souza but rather the new Chief of Staff Rattray. Kurt had prepared Long for this, too.
Rattray had been photographed at UN sleazefests hosted by a man who ran so-called modeling agencies, code name for a UN escort service. [See here for more.] Some were underage, another connection to the Jeffrey Epstein world of UNSC President Mona Juul.
Up on the 38th floor Rattray stood stiff. "I asked the spokesman," he said, "and he said the only questions he's received about this Gulbenkian Foundation come from a now discredited correspondent. Is this related to him?"
"No it's about genocide," Long said flatly. He turned the floor over to Gul and looked out the window, back toward Grand Central and the tall building he knew that Norway's Mission was housed in, on the 35th floor. That might be their next stop, after this stiff gargoyle. The UN couldn't even do repression right - a totally bush league operation. #GenocideGamesofGuterres.
* * * *
Sometimes you had to have priorities. Or sometimes priorities chose you. Kurt had been live tweeting not only the Sarah Palin versus New York Times trial but also the sentencing of Paul Manafort's lender Stephen Calk's post-trial sentencing when he got the text messages from Michael Randall Long from the UN.
Kurt didn't know Rattray as well he'd known Guterres' previous chief of staff, the former Brazil Ambassador who after a dignified anti-Western diplomatic turn during the UN votes on bombing Libya (they gave the US the green light) had helped Guterres cover up dozens of child rapes.
Once after he was thrown out of the UN and was biking down Second Avenue to the public library where he set up shop to continue covering the UN Kurt had seen her crossing the street and turned around.
"You know they are not even answering my written questions," Kurt had said, and then yelled. The Brazilian lady looked scared and quickened her step in the snowy streets. It made Kurt wonder what he was doing, what he had become. Her name was Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti.
It was easier to hate Courtenay Rattray, a tall sneering get-over who went to whore-monger's parties. For a time he had led the anti-gay caucus in the UN - there is one - and was rewarded by Guterres with a job atop some useless Least Developed Nation bureaucracy. Now he had become Guterres' replacement hatchet man, still block Kurt on Twitter. So Kurt headed north.
Unlike Michael Randall Long and Gul, Kurt didn't take the subway. Too many track fires, too many delays. He took a CitiBike from Foley Square, straight up Centre Street to Canal, then east to Christie, alongside what he called Sarah D. Roosevelt Broken Glass Park.
Kurt picked up the pace, as he approached the UN on First Avenue, past the Chinese consulate. He had come to hate them, too. Li Baodong had helped him, with scoops about Ivory Coast and the right back of beefy Gbagbo. The new Ambassador was just a stone faced ideologue, one who blocked Kurt on Twitter to boot.
Kurt parked his CitiBike on the rack on 44th Street and through of getting a felafel, he hadn't been to this outdoor food truck in some time. But Long had texted him again, and Kurt stopped to reply with more dirt, more code words, more fodder to get Long and Gul deeper into the sanctuary of sleaze. Since Kurt knew from hard won knowledge he was on the blacklist, he decided to branch out.
Norway's Mission to the UN is in the One Dag, an official building that had also housed the scam South South News funded by CCP bribed Ng Lap Seng. A dozen played out Ambassadors had been given office there, to lobby the UN for various things for China. A construction contract for a supposed convention center cum casino in Macau, and probably these Olympics, indirectly.
The SDNY prosecutors had scratched the surface of Macau, putting Ng in jail after a trial that Kurt had covered everyday in the same courtroom that Calk was being sentenced in today, back when Kurt could still bike back to the UN before 7 pm and get in, to write up his articles in the media bullpen on the fourth floor. Where had all those Periscope videos gone?
Kurt knew what to say to get past the guards at One Dag. If you mentioned one of the many diplomatic missions in the building, they would stop you and call upstairs.
If you said you were visiting an NGO they waved you through. Who would be going to shoot that place up? There was, of course, a temperature check. But Kurt passed it with flying colors. And soon he was on the express elevator up to the 35th door.
"I'm here to see Mona Juul," Kurt told the Norwegians' guard. [See here, and book here.]
"She is at the Security Council," was the reply. And then what Kurt had expected, "Do you have any appointment?"
"The Security Council is not meeting right now," Kurt continued, dodging the second part.
"Yes but as president she must be there, having meetings."
Kurt saw another Mission staffer he knew, one who shuttled back and forth working for the UN. He said her name - not included here - and this got in into the waiting room.
A dozen Mission staffer, ten of them blonde, were watching the NBC feed of the Olympics on a big screen TV and cheering. Norway was racking up the medals, and China was not calling re-play and disqualifying them as it had with the Americans.
Norway knew when to shut up and dribble, or cross country ski as the case may be. Through Terje Roed Larsen they had done it in Kazakhstan; as Kurt had exposed while still in the UN, they had done it to steal Somalia's oil. Very environmental.
A welfare state funded by offshore crude oil, virtue signaling about Carbon Neutrality. They fit together with Guterres and his Genocide Games like a hand in a curling glove.
"There is a Uighur woman inside the UN, trying to meet with Mona Juul," Kurt blurted out. The woman he recognized, and who it seemed recognized him, came over.
"Xinjiang is not on the agenda of the Security Council," she said.
"I wonder why not," Kurt said. He remembered when, in 2009, Turkey had tried to put it on and suffered massive punch back by China. The idea was never even raised again, and wasn't even floated now by the US Mission.
"The Uighur refugee is asking to meet Juul in her capacity as Norway's Ambassador," Kurt said. "And if Juul refuses I'll writing about it."
Some people in UN world still read Kurt's blog, and not only people interested in the SDNY courthouse. It had gone from niche media in Turtle Bay to a niche media in Foley Square, a better beat on balance, but one in pain, like a person with an involuntarily amputated limb.
"And she wants me to attend the meeting," Kurt added. Which wasn't technically true. But that had never stopped him before.
"Then it can't be inside the UN," the woman said. "Let me see if something is possible. But you must leave here now."
"On that basis, yes," Kurt said. "But at the drop of a hat, I can be back."
The woman made a mental note to put Kurt on the blacklist of One Dag, including facial recognition on the temperature checking tablet if Kurt tried to use another name. It was Chinese technology. #GenocideGamesOfGuterres.
More on Patreon, here.
From January 21, 2022: UNSG Antonio Guterres: This visit to the Olympics is not a political visit. We consider that the Olympic Games are an extremely important manifestation in today's world of the possibility of unity, of the possibility of mutual respect, of the possibility of cooperation, of peoples of different cultures, of different religions, of different ethnicities. And this is more important than ever when we see xenophobia, when we see racism, when we see white supremacy, when we see anti‑Semitism, when we see anti‑Muslim hatred proliferating all over the world... That is the reason why I am going to the Olympic Games. And it has nothing to do with my opinions about the different policies that take place in the People's Republic of China.
Spokesman Dujarric: Okay, sir, I think you're then off the hook.
Will Guterres be taking his Deputy Amina J. Mohammed, supportive of the killing and targeted detentions perpetrated by Buhari of Nigeria? See, Identity Thieves - and, forthcoming, Genocide Games of Guterres. For now, Belt and Roadkill.
***
Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron.
