Boston Bombings Links to Kavkaz Center, Hosted in Sweden, Show UN Double Standards

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 20 -- With one brother dead and the other in the hospital, still without Miranda warnings, focus has shifted to their overseas connections, specifically the Caucasus Emirate or Kavkaz Center.

Last May after the Kavkaz Center was put on the UN's Al Qaeda sanctions list, Inner City Press asked Sweden why it continue to allow hosting of the group's web site in its territory, despite a specific UN Security Council provision against it.

The Swedish Mission replied to Inner City Press, in essence, that it was up to the court there. That apparently has not worked, at least as the UN sanctions committee says it intended: the Kavkaz Center cite is blaming the Boston Bombings on the US military or its private contractors.

Russia may well point to this, as to the fruitless questioning of the older brother: Russia tried, the US (and in the case of the website, Sweden) failed.

As Inner City Press, we are not for the blocking of any website. But UN sanctions, once adopted, should either be even-handedly pursued, or dropped. Some countries are trashed for not allowing in “experts” who are obviously biased -- Rwanda and Steve Hege come to mind, but Sudan makes a similar argument.

But Sweden, usually a UN poster child, re-opening “its”Economic and Social Chamber this week, was allowed without any questions to ignore the Al Qaeda sanctions.

Long story short? The UN is a joke, or a gag of double standards. Watch this site.

Footnote: while there are these, and surely other, UN connections, by contrast the supposedly global wire service Agence France Presse sent its UN scribe, defender of French head of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous, Tim Witcher up to to Boston - to write with that dateline on such topics as how "right wing" Americans hate tax day. Heard of Jerome Cahuzac, the French minister falsely denying Swiss bank deposits? Media fail...

India Finance Minister Chidambaram Tells Inner City Press Obama's IMF Reform Vote Delayed, Will Meet Lew

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 17 -- On his way to the International Monetary Fund - World Bank meetings in Washington, India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram stopped in New York City on Wednesday, and Inner City Press asked him about IMF reform. Video here.

  Inner City Press asked specifically about quota and governance reform. Chidambaram replied that the “review is incomplete because the US has not voted.”

  The US has a 17% vote, which can block the required 85% majority.

  Chidambaram continued that “they promised to vote after Obama's swearing in, but it's gotten delayed.” He said he believe “it will happen, but later than we would have liked it to happen.”

  In Washington, Chidambaram will meet with new US Treasury Secreary Jack Lew, formerly of Citigroup. Will he raise India tech visa issues? Apparently not -- he noted that the new bill that has been introduced is 1,500 pages long, adding, “we don't have 1,500 page bills back home.”

  He was asked about corruption, and his answer was that of the twenty questions he has gotten in the past two days, only two were about corruption. He said that up in Boston -- just after the Boston Marathon bombings -- he spoke to MIT, an investor.

Some were surprised he continued with the Boston leg of his trip. Ironically, many international journalists based in New York have been sent up to Boston, to sit writing speculative stories they could have written in New York, or in their own basement, like “tax day is hated by right wingers.” Great insight.

At Chidambaram's press availability, in the Waldorff Towers, a coffee service was waved off; a media based on high frequency stock traders asked a question about its own proprietary data. Was this a sales pitch? In more than one way? Watch this site.