In Beijing, Obama Pitches Trans Pacific Partnership, No Censorship Fix?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 10 -- In Beijing US President Obama is promoting the "Transpacific Partnership," which would among other things export pro-corporate (and pro-censorship) laws like the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

  After telling the media to hurry up and get out of the room, "we have some work to do," a statement emerged on November 10, that 

"We, the Leaders of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam, welcome the significant progress in recent months, as reported to us by our Ministers, that sets the stage to bring these landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations to conclusion."

   But if the TPP is so good, why would an organization like the Electronic Frontier Foundation be sounding the alarm? And why and how can the UN be promoting and praising this TPP?

 The UN has a joint agency with the World Trade Organization, and on March 6, 2014, at the UN the director of the joint agency the International Trade Centre Arancha Gonzalez, formerly of the WTO, spoke at the UN and praised the pending Trans Pacific Partnership.

Inner City Press when able asked Gonzalez to explain working on the TPP as a UN project, given the range of groups opposed to the TPP, including for example the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Click here.

  As the Free UN Coalition for Access is pursuing, TPP would essentially globalize the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which can be used for censorship -- not only has used by Reuters UN bureau chief to ban from Google's Search an anti-Press complaint he filed with the UN, but more recently to take-down videos of protests.Click here.

  Gonzalez gave a lengthy answer, that trade deals are up to member state, but added that the ICT works so that rules are consistent and not fragmented.  To some this sounds like "race to the bottom."

  Since the press conference was billed as concerning the Commission on the Status of Women, Inner City Press asked Gonzalez which countries ban women from having bank accounts. Saudi Arabia came to mind, but Gonzalez cited Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. We hope to have more on this issue.

   Back on March 4 another UN agency UN HABITAT unveiled "The City We Need" booklet on Tuesday at the UN, in advance of an event at the nearby Ford Foundation. 

  Inner City Press, when able, asked about the corporate sponsors listed in the booklet, including GDF Suez (protested for example about a hydro-electric dam in Brazil), Siemens (Western Sahara) and Veolia, a French firm recently contracted on Syria chemical weapons which does business in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

After thanking the panel including HABITAT's Joan Clos on behalf of the new Free UN Coalition for Access, Inner City Press asked: how were these corporate sponsored vetted?

  The answer, from Nick Yu of the World Urban Campaign, was as is so often the case at the UN that the private sector is important, is a stakeholder. Yes, but what about these particular companies? What is the process? And what is their involvement, beyond paying to be listed in promotional materials?

A goal of the campaign seems to be to try to get a holistic "Cities" Sustainable Development Goal. Inner City Presshas reported on a similar move, involving Palau, to get an Oceans SDG. The list is growing.

A panelist who was also a New Yorker, Eugenie Birch, answered Inner City Press question about the last and the current New York City mayors. Bill de Blasio, Birch said, is a corrective on issues of affordable housing and free kindergarten (what about pre-K?). Michael Bloomberg, whose meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry has yet to be summarized by the UN as Inner City Press has requested, will be at the Ford Foundation. Watch this site.

   

On Ebola, Reuters Advertises Itself, Adler Calls on UN Censor, Sir Harry Says "We" on Cuba

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 31 -- Yesterday morning the International Monetary Fund said in response to a Press questions that the outlook is worsening in the three most Ebola impacted countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. It's a humanitarian and also a business story.

So where is the big business media, for example Reuters, on this?

 Now we can say: Reuters is advertising itself. In a session dominated by Sir Harold Evans, reference was made to Reuters "great" reporters, piped in by video. Sir Harry prefaced one question by saying the crisis is nearly over in Liberia; he said "we" have strained relations with Cuba. Sir?

  US Ambassador Samantha Power spoke in detail, but seemed to ignore China's announcement commitment to Liberia while thanking all the way down to Air Maroc. In fairness, at the end she mentioned an old Chinese plane -- being unloaded by American soldiers.

  The moderator Stephen J. Adler, who previously refused to provide any Reuters policy on crediting other media's exclusives and ignored Reuters attempts to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, took a few questions, including one about why the US doesn't have a Surgeon General. Planted?

  Then Adler called on Tina Brown -- Sir Harry's significant other -- then Reuters UN censor, who has scammed Google into blocking from its Search his own complaint to the UN to try to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, here.  filing, under oath, to Google is here. Both forms of censorship are opposed, at the UN, by the new Free UN Coalition for Access.

  When US Ambassador Samantha Power went to West Africa, she took Reuters along to document each stage. (Here is some alternative coverage, here, here and here.) Upon her return, on October 31 Power will speak at Reuters in Times Square. That event will web-cast, but throughout the week Reuters has been selling its clients first access to quotes from business leaders.

  But there is another side to Reuters. Even when it celebrated itself for getting a leaked copy of the most recent Somalia Eritrea sanctions report, it neglected to report in any way that one of the report's authors was forced to resign after writing a “regime change” plea on UN letterhead. (Inner City Press coverage here, then here and ehere.)

   Reuters reminded silent on this development, clearly relevant to the sanctions story and report, even as it was discussed on camera by the UN spokesman and UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant.

  Relevant to this silence by Reuters, and making it more problematic, is that the sanctions monitor who was forced to resign, Dinesh Mahtani, used to be in the employ of Reuters. This is how it works.

  While trumpeting its (compensated) “exclusive” publication of leaked documents, Reuters has petitioned Google to block from its Search an anti-Press complaint it filed with the UN, calling it a personal communication and even copyrighted, under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

  The attempt to get leaked documents blocked from Google's Search as "copyrighted" is a strange logic for a company that itself publishes unauthorized leaks. But who ever said Reuters is consistent?

Here's the notice for Power's presentation:

Please join us for a Reuters Newsmaker

Join Sir Harold Evans, Reuters Editor-at-Large, to hear a firsthand report from the front-lines of the Ebola crisis, and its impact on Africa and across the globe.

Speakers:

Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama’s Cabinet

Vandi Chidi Minah, Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone to the United Nations.

Sheri Fink, M.D., Ph.D. Author of “Five Days at Memorial”

Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., Ph.D. Associate Professor of Medicine, Columbia University

Sharon Begley, Senior Health & Science Correspondent, Reuters

MODERATOR Sir Harold Evans, Reuters Editor-at-Large, author of “The American Century”

Reuters does Ebola - and then sells it. Watch this site.

 Follow @innercitypress Follow @FUNCA_info

As Inner City Press Questions UN on Sanctions, UNCA & Reuters Trolling Resumes, UN's Censorship Alliance Under Pam Falk Offers to Sell UN Office Space?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 18 -- Here is how the UN works, or doesn't: after Inner City Press reported that a UN sanctions monitor used his position to lobby for regime change, and that the UN bureau of Reuters "reported" on the monitor's allegation without mentioning his resignation, the trolling campaign of Reuters and the UN Correspondents Association began again.

  After Reuters UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, then censored the leaked evidence of his attempt by a bogus filing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act getting Google to block the document from it Search, here, the push through UNCA went even more anonymous. 

Ban Ki-moon & Reuters' Charbonneau, censored his bid to get Pressthrown out of UN

 The head of UNCA, Pamela Falk, was informed (on the record audio here and here), but did nothing.

  Now it emerges that Falk has been telling new media at the UN that if they pay $90, she will write a letter to the UN Secretariat and get them office space in the UN. Is this appropriate?

Falk, who did nothing to reform UNCA, which now "tries to sell UN office space"

  Under Falk, UNCA never even tried to adopt a reform that it would not, as Charbonneau and Voice of America's Margaret Besheer did, try to get other journalists thrown out of the UN. Now under her UNCA purports to sell space in the UN.

 Back on August 27, after Inner City Press in the days before had questioned Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's dubious approach to Sri Lanka and Libya, and UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous' stonewalling on Darfur and elsewhere, UNCA decided to fight back.

  A troll social media account linked to the UN Correspondents Association, about which the Free UN Coalition for Access had notified not only UNCA and its head Pamela Falk but also Reuters, whose UN bureau chief tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN then lobbied Google (here) to block his leaked “for the record” complaint from Google's search, revived on July 27, went on the offensive against Inner City Press again -- anonymously, of course.

  The UN itself was notified of this account, since it continues to partner with UNCA as its UN Censorship Alliance, setting aside first questions and giving it a large, usually unused room even as the UN evicted the News Agency of Nigeria from its workspace at the UN citing lack of space. 

  This same troll social media account has promoted the current UN spokesman, to whom the Reuters bureau chief's complaint to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN was directed.

  Now that same spokesman defends Ban Ki-moon, for example adopting Ladsous' censorship on September 3, not taking Press questions on Ladsous' DPKO ordering peacekeepers to surrender to the Al Nusra Front.

  His office has in the past censored from the UN's transcripts even the name of the Free UN Coalition for Access, which Inner City Press co-founded after members of UNCA's Executive Committee including for exampleVoice of America (Freedom of Information Act obtained document here), Agence France Presse (document here),Bloomberg and Reuters, sought to get it thrown out.

What's telling about these revivals of UNCA's trolls social media campaign is it is tied to when the UN is under attack. That's why they call it the UN's Censorship Alliance.

  Now the big room the UN gives them, entirely closed from August 1 to August 19, while its glassed in bulletin board had and has an advertisement by one of its UNCA members to buy a used car for over $7,000, is set to be used for trickery, with with purported press freedom organization partnering with censors to purportedly talk about... press freedom. We'll have more on this.

  And what of the UN's previous argument against FUNCA's substantive fliers, that they had to be approved by the UN? Are UNCA's used car sales approved by Ban Ki-moon? Are its anonymous trolling social media accounts? Watch this site.

   

After Thailand Names General as Prime Minister, UN Tells Inner City Press It Favors Democracy, Not Censorship

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 22 -- While today's UN claims to be for democracy and against censorship, its pattern of not comment on Thailand, for example, until asked and then refusing to directly address anti-democratic moves tells a different story.

 On August 22 Inner City Press asked UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric:

Inner City Press: In Thailand, the military Government has named Prime Minister their own General, Prayuth Chan-ocha.  I wondered what is the UN thinking as this process goes forward It’s not really a move towards democratization.  It’s actually a giving of a political post to a military figure.  Is there any comment from the UN on that?

Spokesman Dujarric:  On Thailand, the Secretary-General continues to appeal for prompt return to constitutional civilian democratic rule and all-inclusive dialogue that will pave the way for long-term peace and prosperity in Thailand.  He urges all parties to work together constructively and refrain from violence and respect human rights.

Inner City Preess:  But isn't a General as Prime Minister contrary to that?

Spokesman Dujarric:  You asked the question with preamble you delivered.  I answered that.  I answered the question.

  Really? Meanwhile censorship including of social media has been on the move in Thailand since, on May 28, the military government banned Facebook.

  At first they claimed it was a technical glitch, then admitted it had been an experiment but in light of push-back, the ban was reversed.

  There's irony in Reuters reporting this, when it has engaged in more targeted censorship by filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint with Google to get its UN bureau chief's "for the record" complaint to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, click here for that.

  One take-away might be that targeted censorship, no matter how cynical, can last longer than banning a whole social media network. 

   Google has accepted and acted on DMCA complaints about leaked e-mails, for example from Reuters to the United Nations seeking to get the investigative Press thrown out, and has then blocked access to the leaked documents from its search.

  Of this abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry told Inner City Press about the Reuters case:

"Unfortunately, it is all too easy for a copyright holder (assuming that the person that sent this notice actually held copyright in the email) to abuse the DMCA to take down content and stifle legitimate speech. As countries outside the US consider adopting DMCA-like procedures, they must make sure they include strong protections for free speech, such as significant penalties for takedown abuse."

  In this case, copyright is being (mis) claimed for an email from Reuters' Louis Charbonneau to the UN's chief Media Accreditation official Stephane Dujarric -- since March 10 Ban Ki-moon's new spokesperson -- seeking to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN.  

  Access to the document has been blocked from Google's search based on a cursory take-down request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

 If this remains precedent, what else could come down? We'll have more on all this. Watch this site.

    

On Somalia, Fawzia Yusef J.Adam Sought Removal of Jarat Chopra, Reuters Now Passes Through

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 16 -- There's been an ongoing spat between the Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group under Jarat Chopra and many of those he reports on, in Somalia, Eritrea and even Kenya.

 Back on December 5, 2013, Inner City Press exclusively reported -- and put online -- that Somalia had asked the UN to "terminate the contract" of Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group coordinator Jarat Chopra, in a letter obtained by Inner City Press and then published online here.

   Somalia has asked for a revision of the SMEG's last report, on the topic of "misappropriation of Somalia's public resources."

  The letter was signed by Fawzia Yusef J. Adam as deputy prime minister. 

 Now Reuters in Vienna has been handed Chopra's report against Adam, as well as the Shulman Rogers law firm and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud -- Reuters passed it through but does not put it online. Why?

  The Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group's public report"estimates... an overall international market value of US $360 to $384 million, with profits divided along the charcoal trade supply chain, including for Al-Shabaab." The SMEG puts the Al-Shabaab share at 40% - and says "the remaining 60% is divided between the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) (20%) and Ras Kamboni (40%)."

  Sources informed Inner City Press before (and included) in its December 5, 2013 report that the SMEG had been ordered out of, or "Persona Non Grata-ed" from, Kenya. 

  Inner City Press exclusively spoke with senior representation of Kenya on this, and it was denied. Others said the UN's Department of Political Affairs was trying to resolve the situation, particular in light of the Security Council's rejection with eight abstentions of the African Union's request that the Council suspend the Kenya proceedings of the International Criminal Court for a year.

   Since then, the issue has been explained to Inner City Press as more individually-based. Then the Somalia letter specifically asking that Jarat Chopra be fired was obtained.

  In its last report the SMEG named an array of arms embargo violators in Somalia. Click here for Inner City Press'reporting on those violations, including by the UK, which(overly) "insider" Reuters for example neglected to mention in its gushing report. The Reuters pass-through scribe, full disclosure from Electronic Frontier Foundation's Chilling Effects project, has engaged in outright censorship, claiming his "for the record" anti-Press complaint to the UN was somehow covered by copyright and getting it blocked from Google's Search, filing online here.

   We will have more on all this. Watch this site.

  

Host of UN Gabfest on #FreeAJstaff, UN Correspondents Association, Ignored Deaths & Attacks on Journalists

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 25 -- While Egypt's sentencing of the three Al Jazeera journalists to seven years in prison received deserved condemnation on June 25 in the UN, double standards and hypocrisy were on display at the UN Censorship Alliance, UNCA.

   This group, headed by CBS News Pamela Falk's with a vice president from Turkish state media and others from Reuters and Gulf media -- Gulf and Western, they're called -- not only were silent but caused anti Press death threats from Sri Lanka extremists.

  This year they said nothing as journalists were killed in Eastern Ukraine. Even when one of their own members, from Lebanon, was told by French ambassador Gerard Araud, "You are not a journalist, you are an agent," they did nothing.

   After the first of these incidents, two elected members of UNCA's Executive Committee quit and co-founded the newFree UN Coalition for Access, which has asked the UN to admonish Araud and the French Mission (request denied by UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric), and has defended journalists in far-flung Somaliland and Burundi.

  CJP spoke on June 25, calling Eypt the biggest jailer of journalists in the Arab World. CPJ should have noted as well its own research, that for example Turkey had 40 journalists imprisoned at the end of 2013. 

  A Reuters scribe on UNCA board (mis) reported, with no disclosure, that the all Jazeera three were "jailed" this week. They've been in jail for some time.

 The Reuters bureau chief and puppet-master has himself engaged in censorship, getting Google to ban from its Search his "for the record" complaint trying to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, here. This is the UN's Censorship Alliance.

   In the UN Press Briefing Room on April 15, 2014, outgoing French Ambassador Gerard Araud told a Lebanese reporter, "You are not a journalist, you are an agent" -- Egypt's logic.

  But on June 25, there were at least two representatives of France's mission to the UN headed to a #FreeAJstaff "town hall."

  At the June 25 UN noon briefing, citing not only the three from Al Jazeera but other journalists sentenced in Egypt, including a Coptic journalist sentenced in Minya to five years, another to three years in Suez, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Stephane Dujarric if Ban has even ASKED to meet al-Sisi when both are in Malabo for the African Union summit.

   Dujarric did not say yes. Video here.

   Back in April, Inner City Press on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access asked UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric if he would convey to Araud and the French mission the stated position that reporters should be treated with respect. Dujarric declined.

   The old United Nations Correspondents Association has "dragged its feet" on any defense of its own dues paying member from Lebanon. But now it scheduled an "Emergency Town Hall meeting" on the Al Jazeera case.

  In fact, UNCA executive committee members have tried to get reporting they didn't like removed from the Internet, about a financial link between Sri Lanka's ambassador and UNCA's head and the latter unilaterally holding an "UNCA" screening of a Rajapaksa government film denying war crimes.

  When censorship failed, UNCA executive committee members tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN - one of them later made a Digital Millennium Copyright Act sworn statement to Google that his "for the record" complaint was copyrighted - and got it banned from search: censorship.

  Now this UN Censorship Alliance schedules an "Emergency Town Hall meeting" on the Al Jazeera case. Watch this site.