Nikki Haley Took Names Then Went Native At the UN, Where Corruption and Censorship Continue

By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT NY Post

UNITED NATIONS, October 12 – When Donald Trump nominated Nikki Haley as his Ambassador to the UN, it seemed she would be a disruptor and clean up corruption. As she prepares to leave, though, at most one of those things is true: she was a disruptive force. But Haley's disruption of the UN was concentrated in her first few months, when she famously stood in the UN lobby and said she would be "taking names" of countries who opposed US interests, and when she blocked Secretary General Antonio Guterres' nomination of Palestinian candidate Salam Fayyad to be the UN's new envoy to Libya.

After that, however, Haley seemed to settle down and go native at the UN. Trump bragged at her send-off that Haley got to know "everyone" in the organization. But not well enough to get Russia's Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia to answer her calls before the UN's mechanism on Syria's chemical weapons expired. She cast vetoes on Jerusalem and Gaza, popular in some quarters but hardly a measure of the she-knows-everyone diplomacy that Trump spoke of.

Haley called for a UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry into the murder in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of American expert Michael Sharp and his Chilean-Swedish colleague Zaida Catalan. But the Commission never happened, and by June 2018 Haley was standing next to Mike Pompeo, explaining why the US was leaving the Human Rights Council.  The answer, some said, was John Bolton...

Haley got her fellow South Carolinian David Beasley installed as the head of the UN World Food Program; at her Press-less press conference as president of the Security Council in September 2018 a South Carolina journalist who'd flown up for the event asked if she'd be taking the Council members down to her home state. It didn't happen - until, in a different form, just after her resignation.

  Perhaps the most disappointing of Haley's failures to disrupt, or disruption interrupted, is on UN corruption. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres no fewer than 15 times since assuming office in January 2017 has used public money to fly to his home in Lisbon, where his spouse still lives. After for Inner City Press I asked questions about this, I was ousted from the UN and Haley did nothing. In fact, another journalist was told by the UN that the US Mission supported my ouster. Haley's spokesman also worked for Samantha Power; her Deputy Jonathan Cohen has yet to speak to the Press, now asking questions at the UN Delegates Entrance gate.

   Haley never even commented much less demanded UN action on a UN bribery case proceeding in Federal court in lower Manhattan against Patrick Ho of the China Energy Fund Committee for allegedly bribing then UN President of the General Assembly Sam Kutesa for oil and other concessions in Uganda. While Guterres has refused to even start an audit to determine the full scope of CEFC's bribery at the UN, Haley has stayed quiet. Perhaps an expanded scope would call into question her oft-repeated claim that it is a new day at the UN. It is not. The UN tends to drag those who pass through it to its level. So it was time for Haley to declare victory and move on.

After twenty four Congressmembers urged Haley to schedule a Security Council meeting about the slaughter of Anglophones in Cameroon, I asked her about it, and she said she was “open” to such a Council meeting. But it never happened, and now even amid the re-coronation of 36 year president Paul Biya, there is no meeting on the horizon.

Haley came out a winner when the New York Times mis-reported that she had accepted $52,000 curtains for her penthouse apartment (the curtains were bought and paid for by the Obama administration). But the real story may have been her living in a $58,000 a month apartment. From there, how could she criticize Guterres spending public money to fly home? Haley herself was taking rides on private jets, as detailed in a formal complaint the day before her resignation was made public.

   Haley's shift from taking names to taking selfies was exemplified on the 4th of July 2018, when the UN gave her its fourth floor Delegates Dining Room and balcony for a party to watch the fireworks. Ambassadors of all stripes lined up, wanting photos with her just as she wanted photos with them, to show how well she was getting along. But what that supposed to be the point?

  The UN is the ultimate swamp, with reform always a chimera, blocked by immunity. Haley's narrative is that she came and quickly cleaned up the UN. Twenty one months in, little has been cleaned up. Perhaps it was time to get out before demands came for results and not rhetoric. At the UN, the corruption and censorship continue -- including with the discovery that under Guterres the UN maintains a secret "active ban" list that includes "political activists' - and Inner City Press. But that's another thing that Haley hasn't acted on; that's another story. Watch this site.

On Eve of Syria Vote, Arab Spring's Gone Dry at Egypt Day, Rwanda & Bolton

By Matthew Russell Lee, News Muse

UNITED NATIONS, July 18 -- The Arab Spring has gone dry. This at least was the news from the Egyptian national day reception at that country's mission on 44th Street Wednesday night. 

  Previous events at that mission have been raucous, and featured alcohol.  But as one attendee put it, with the Muslim Brotherhood in control, expect no more such receptions.

  On the eve of the re-scheduled vote on the Syria resolution, there were few optimists in or around the UN. Many predicted a double veto on Thursday at 10 am. Others suggested that the vote might be further delayed, to late Friday when the UNSMIS mission's mandate will run out.

  Analogies were made to Rwanda, where a UN mission under Chapter Six of the Charter cut and ran before the genocide began.

Another, asking to not be credited, suggested a solution was still possible, a la John Bolton, invoking Article 41 but not Chapter Seven. But P3 Permanent Representatives emerging Wednesday at 6 did not recognize the gambit. So might Russia play it?

To recap with (a bit) more substance: the issue as several non-Western Security Council members put it to Inner City Press is that the bomb-killing of Syria's Defense Minister changes things. One cynic asked, "So this bombing was done by defenseless people?"

Li Baodong of China told the Press the bombing was terrorist. Another Council source opined to Inner City Press, until now the Obama administration was just trying to fend off the Republicans until the election in November. Now it might not last until then. Then the Free Syrian Army won't own anything to the US, only to Saudi and Qatar.

Still another, referring to Inner City Press' story about plans to split Syria into three with Alawites taking the coast and Kurds another zone, said that scenario is getting closer.

Wednesday evening to the Security Council's credit it still continued working. It was 7:20 pm when the Deputy Permanent Representatives of, among others, the UK and China emerged from the Security Council. Some in their group told Inner City Press the meeting was about UNAMID, the mission in Darfur.

The General Assembly entrance had been locked for the night and they had to exit through the garage then a hallway without lights, with water from the rain and hail storm. It was a dark and storm night -- dry too -- with a double veto on the horizon. Watch this site.

In Ban's UN, Tinker Bell and Bolton, Kentucky Fried Scapegoats

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 30 -- This week a diplomat of a country under UN sanctions stopped just outside the Security Council and told Inner City Press, "The UN has become a joke, all they have now are seminars and panels for discussion, with no knowledge of the ground." He missed one of the more incongruous UN events of October, the naming of Disney's Tinker Bell as Goodwill Ambassador, after the UN screening of the straight to DVD film

Only this week, John Bolton was at the UN with other conservatives, promoting a book about UN reform. Another group held a working lunch about the defamation of religion. The Office of Internal Oversight Services held another celebration of itself, this time complete with former UN journalistic talent, at which it was finally said in the open that the 38th floor is seeking a new Communications strategist.

The John Bolton gab-best at least was interesting. It was sponsored by Fiji, and headlined by C-FAM, which denounced Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin for "redefining gender" and addressing gay rights. Inner City Press asked, did this mean they were on the same side of Eygpt and Syria? Apparently it did. What about Belarus, which fought off and get canceled its own Rapporteur? Bolton handled this one, saying he likes country specific rapporteurs, the thematics not so much.

To salad with walnuts and grilled breast of chicken, the Becket Fund denounced moves by the Organization of Islamic Conference to get language in the UN against the defaming of religion. It was mentioned that the Dutch director of Fitna got a screening this month down on Capitol Hill.

In a mockery of due process, two UN Security officers have been placed on administrative leave for the entry of a KFC Colonel Sanders impersonator last week, rather than highers-up who knew all about it. We'll have more on this.