NYT Samantha Power Profile Uses Ghost Tweets & Former Big Wigs, Scribes Schizo on Syria

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 23 -- As the 68th UN General Assembly begins, some try to write the script in advance, just as some big wigs have others write even their tweets for them. 

 These two trends come together this morning in a vacuous, unauthorized New York Times profile of US Ambassador Samantha Power, quickly re-distributed by those who cover her, ostensibly independently.

  The piece, not by Times UN correspondents Neil MacFarquhar nor his replacement Somini Sengupta but rather Sheryl Gay Stolberg, says half way through that Power "declined to be interviewed for this article." 

 
   Oh. There weren't enough diplomats at the General Debate who were willing or eager to be interviewed?

  Instead, the Times uses Power's Twitter account to profile her. There is only one problem: as Inner City Press reported yesterday from the Social Good Summit at the 92nd Street Y, Power couldn't say what her Twitter account handle is, and admitted that it is a US Mission to the UN staffer who read her @ replies and "briefs" her on them. (Some quickly defended or justified this; others didn't, including as a use of taxpayer money.)

From the UN Mission to the UN's transcript of the event:

MR. CASHMORE: What’s your handle?

AMBASSADOR POWER: What is my handle? I think #AmbassadorPower. Someone told me it’s #AmbassadorPower. (Laughter.) #AmbassadorPower?

  So a profile several times using this twitter account is dubious (as for example is CNN using a dubious Al Shabaab account to "report" the nationalities of Kanya's Westgate Mall attack -- which Power did not mention in her Q&A with Mashable on Sunday.)

  The Times collects fawning quotes. The "former UN Peacekeeping official" it uses, Ed Luck, has been gone for some time, but says urgently that Power is a "superstar" in his former venue. (He was also before he left a "Responsibility to Protect" official, part-time and unpaid because the office was not agreed to by the General Assembly.)

  None of this is to say that Power is not an interesting person -- but it is not because of her ghostwritten tweets or quotes from Ed Luck.

  Still, the Times snow-file was quickly re-tweeted by, for example, the 2013 president of the UN Correspondents Association Pamela Falk of CBS, complete with the handles of the US State Department as it to say: see? I am doing my job! 

  Under Falk, UNCA in July hosted a faux UN briefing by Saudi-sponsored Syria rebel box Ahmad al Jarba. Also re-tweeting was UNCA former big wig Margaret Besheer ofVoice of America, on whose Broadcasting Board of Governor sits John Kerry, also Power's boss.

UNCA first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters tweeted that "Syria's Assad slams Western powers on UN draft resolution;" but a scribe working for him wrote "Syria's Assad says not concerned about UN draft resolution" -- both based off the same interview (not with Reuters, but Chinese television: lost in translation?) 

  This is the UN and how it's covered; these are the scribe to which the UN and US Mission most like to give access. And no, Samantha Power was not interviewed for this article -- Inner City Press didn't ask. Watch this site.

   

UN Cites Danger to Alawites, But Urges Them Not to Move, No Protection Offered

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 21 -- The UN is "deeply concerned" that in Syria the Alawite minority, "perceived to be affiliated with the Government... could be subject to large scale reprisal attacks." 

  The UN's adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng in December 20 issued a press release, and on Friday took questions from journalists at the UN in New York.

   Inner City Press asked Dieng what the UN would think and more importantly do if Alawites began to relocate to mountain areas they could defend. Dieng replied that would be a bad thing, that separation is not good.

   So Inner City Press asked if the UN, whose Department of Peacekeeping Operations has said it is involved in contingency planning for a possible deployment in Syria, has been planning how to protect minority groups, including the Kurds. 

  There was no real answer to that, except Dieng saying that deploying a peacekeeping mission is up to the Security Council.

   Yes, but the Secretary General -- and in this case his head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous -- make proposals to the Security Council of what they think should and can be done. 

   So are they preparing a plan to protect Alawite, to take to the Security Council if and when it become necessary? Apparently not.

   Dieng mentioned the Responsibility to Protect, the office for which at the UN has been headless since Edward Luck left. Inner City Press asked if Luck will be replaced, and what Dieng makes of questioning of the R2P mandate, now in the UN's Fifth (Budget) Committee, by countries including Cuba.

Dieng said that Luck will be replaced, by another adviser on a dollar a year contract. He questioned why Cuba would have a problem with this. It was moving without General Assembly approval. 

  This UN bends the rules to push through words, but claims powerlessness when it comes to actually offering protection.

Footnote: Inner City Press thanked Dieng for the briefing, the type that the Free UN Coalition for Access has been pushing for from all Under Secretaries General including the UN's top lawyer Patricia O'Brien, and suggested that he do one on the Eastern Congo.

  Dieng was previously the registrar at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, in which post Inner City Press mentioned him as a candidate to take the top post in the Department of General Assembly and Conference Management. 

   He didn't get that USG post, but rather the one on genocide. Syria is a start -- but he should speak on more country situation, including for example the Tamils in Sri Lanka on which the UN is now on its third report. Watch this site.

Sri Lanka and Responsibility to Protect Arise in UN, Would Ban Take to Council under Article 99?

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1may7srilanka050809.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 -- With bombs dropping on civilians in Northern Sri Lanka and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon still mulling the government's invitation to visit, the talk at the UN has turned to the Responsibility to Protect. On May 6 at a reception attended by Ban Ki-moon and Ed Luck, his special adviser on R2P, as it known, Inner City Press asked Luck how the concept would apply to Sri Lanka. "To both sides," Luck answered.

He noted that R2P was formally cited during Kofi Annan's mediation in Kenya. Inner City Press asked what he thought of the appointment of former Indian Ambassador Nirupam Sen as the adviser to the President of the General Assembly on R2P. While diplomatically praising Sen, Luck remarked that India was the "last country to come aboard" on the R2P Outcome Document in 2005.

In May 7, Inner City Press asked Nirupam Sen for his views on R2P, specifically regarding Sri Lanka. While refusing to answer on Sri Lanka, Sen insisted first the India wasn't the last to join consensus in 2005, then that it had only held out to make the points of "U.S. civil society groups." Sen said that India's position had been that R2P should only be a UN doctrine if the use of the Security Council veto by five countries were repealed, to "eliminate the strategic imperatives of any great power." Video here, from Minute 41:42.

Ironically, it is China's and to some degree Russia's veto threats which have kept the carnage in Sri Lanka off of the Council's formal agenda, and keep the Council "dialogues" on the topic confined to the basement.

Inner City Press asked asked Sen about Sri Lanka's application to the International Monetary Fund for a $1.9 billion loan, and whether the bloodshed and internment camps in the North should be considered. Sen said that "anything the IMF does to reduce and tone down conditionality is a step in the right direction," toward "mitigating humanitarian impact." But what if the loan is used to involuntarily relocate and detain people? The IMF wouldn't do that, Sen implied. But wouldn't they?

On May 8, Inner City Press asked a senior Ban adviser about Sri Lanka's invitation. I don't think the Secretary General should go, the adviser replied. The government could just use it. He suggested that, instead, Ban should invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter and push to put Sri Lanka on the Council's agenda, in the name of R2P. The draft outcome document gives the Secretary General that role, Ban's adviser said. Inner City Press asked Ban's Deputy Spokesperson about this an hour later, but she said she had nothing to add to what Ban had said on May 5.

Ban's Deputy Spokesperson announced on Friday an upcoming trip by Ban, not to Sri Lanka but Manama, Bahrain. To many these seem to be strange priorities.

Inner City Press asked French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert if his foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, another major player in R2P, is requesting a Security Council session on May 11, when he and his UK counter-part David Miliband will be in New York. Ripert said, "On the side of the meeting on the Middle East... we are organizing with UK a meeting... we are working on the exact form." Video here, from Minute 10:53.

Footnote 1: According to NGO sources, Ambassador Ripert in a recent meeting with them said, of Sri Lanka's Army, "their war is our war," which the NGOs took to mean the "war on terror." Some wondered if this didn't just give a green light to the Sri Lankan Army. We'll see: we will report on this site any response received, on France's view of Sri Lanka (or in advance of the Council's trip to Africa next week of MONUC in the Congo appearing in a memo in French to work with a war criminal.)

Footnote 2: In what could be called an R2P cat fight, Nirupan Sen's criticism of Ban's adviser Ed Luck went further, when Sen said the Fifth (Budget) Committee was right to refuse to confirm him in his post, and to keep him on "a dollar a year." Inner City Press asked Luck about the dollar, and if he has a UN phone number. Of the latter, Luck said he still doesn't, but that at the UN there are many people with phones but the Secretary General doesn't pick up at the other end. And if the call came from the Vanni conflict zone, would Mr. Ban pick up?

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un1may7srilanka050809.html

On Genocide, UN Cites Immunity to Srebrenica Claims, Lack of Jurisdiction Over Peacekeepers

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1srebrenica062608.html

UNITED NATIONS, June 26 -- Complete with screenshots of Darfur from Google Earth, the UN on Thursday held a panel discussion on "our responsibility to protect those threatened by genocide and other crimes against humanity," including ethnic cleansing. Inner City Press asked about the UN's refusal to even show up in the Dutch court considering claims against the UN for its role in the thousands of ethnic cleansing deaths in Srebrenica. Daphna Shraga of the UN's Office of Legal Affairs answered that the UN "does not go to court," it is automatically immune and does not even show up to make the argument.

Inner City Press asked about the cases where the UN waives immunity, for example for some officials accused of corruption. Ms. Shraga responded that in the Srebrenica case in the Dutch courts, no individual is charged. Rather, it is the UN that is facing charges, which it apparently feels no responsibility to answer.


Inner City Press asked if OLA, which is headed by Nicolas Michel, has considered waiving immunity in this particular case, or at least showing up in court. The answer appears to be no. When Mr. Michel was asked to explain by a reporter, he said he doesn't have to, and that he should not be taped. It has been this way since reports earlier this year that he took rent from the Swiss government, some $10,000 a month. Immunity breeds contempt, apparenlty.

The UN's advisor on the Responsibility to Protect, Ed Luck, answered that there is also the court of public opinion, which expects the UN to do the best that it can. When it falls short, its reputation suffers. It is most important, he said, that the UN system learns. Some question, as simply a recent example, UN peacekeepers' in action while Abyie in Sudan was burned down earlier this year. What, exactly, was learned? Luck said that some of the UN's harshest critics work for the Secretariat. These are introductions we are still waiting for.

Also this week, the UN has spoken against torture. But on June 24, Inner City Press asked about alleged torture by peacekeepers. UN headquarters' lead human rights rep quickly associated the question for sexual abuse and women, and said it had already been answered. But in the Democratic Republic of Congo, UN peacekeepers have been accused of straight up torture, with little follow through. Other UN-approved peacekeepers, those of France in Ituri in 2003, are credibly accused of torture, even by Nordic conspirators. The unnamed UN watchdogs up on the 38th floor, we're sure, are closely watching all this. Impunity breeds contempt - that is apparently the lesson.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un1srebrenica062608.html