Two Tales of UN Rapporteurs, Richard Falk, Juan Mendez & Bahrain, As DPI Leapt at a Single Tweet by Inner City Press

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 23 -- Why did UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemn the 9/11 comments of UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, but today refuse to comment on Falk's comments on the Boston bombings?

   Inner City Press asked Ban's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey this question on April 23, and once Del Buey twice didn't answer it, the Press posited one explanation (to see if it might shake free some clarification.) 

   Is the difference to Ban the relative level of casualties? Or has Falk fatigue set in?

  After that, Del Buey told Inner City Press it could ask only one more question. Since the UN, as it happened, paid 27,000 pounds for a 3 pound UK golf ball detector, to offer false protection to its peacekeepers in Lebanon, that question has to be asked even though, again, there was no answer.

  But there was and is another UN Special Rapporteur question: Bahrain has delayed or Banned the rapporteuer on torture, Juan Mendez. Will Ban have a comment on that? We'll see.

  Ban's reticence at least for now to comment on Falk's theory of the Boston bombings is at odds with his Department of Public Information's “urgent” request to Inner City Press on April 18 to clarify a single tweet that it sent, click here for that.

  The tweet mentioning World War 2 and the new (German, male) police adviser to Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, who has the job because of France's veto power in the Security Council, which was won along with... World War Two.

  Inner City Press was told, by DPI official Stephane Dujarric, that this tweet was offensive to millions of people, and crossed “all bounds;” Inner City Press was told that it was being “given the chance” to explain it.

  So the UN was threatening an independent media, over which is has no control at all other than accreditation -- which it at times seems to misuse to control content -- while Ban Ki-moon through his Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq says he is “not responsible” for Falk's views, and will not respond for or to them. Strange. Watch this site.

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...