UN-Social Media: Fake Ban Ki-moon Tweets, UNCA Fakers As Lapdogs, of UN Peacekeeping, Citigroup, AFP, Reuters

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 27 -- Social media and the UN was the topic on Wednesday, when a representative of Mashable and an Internet activist from Egypt took Press questions along with ECOSOC President Nestor Osorio and the UN's Youth Envoy, Ahmad Alhendawi.

Inner City Press asked the two mostly non-UN guests to assess the UN's social media, including Herve Ladsous' UN Peacekeeping which does not answer tweets on Haiti cholera or rapes in the Congo, and the @SecGen Twitter account that Alhendawi that day cited. Video here from Minute 27.

  Mashable's Stacy Martinet acknowledged that the UN could do better. She advised letting other, “lower” levels of the UN do the tweeting.

  Wael Ghonim said that in Egypt, after the revolution, the military (SCAF) started a Facebook page and put its releases there first, bypassing the old media.

  Ahmad Alhendawi, who'd tweeted about @SecGen, said things should be a two-way street.

  Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky replied that @SecGen “is not official, run by well meaning individual, I believe based in UK.” Nesirky said that his office, “without blowing our own trumpet,” has 36,000 followers.

  It is understood that the UN did not ask to shut down the unofficial @SecGen. But would they try to close, say, @RogueBanKiMoon, for example?

  These days in the UN press corps, the old media “leaders” of the UN Correspondents Association have started no fewer than six anonymous social media accounts to try to undermine the new Free UN Coalition for Access, which thanked the panelists on Wednesday, and Inner City Press which co-founded FUNCA.

  In their anonymous accounts, targeted at countries' mission to the UN, the UNCA “leaders” have falsely alleged Inner City Press receives terrorist funding, or -- somehow worse? -- funding from Rwanda.

But who are these leaders of UNCA, now known alternatively as the UN's Censorship Alliance or, due to anonymity, the UN Cowardice Alliance?

  There is UNCA President Pamela Falk, who send out corporate tweets from CBS, does not respond to questions or critiques, and deleted without explanation tweets that were inaccurate and came into question. 

  Falk has not tweeted since March 24, the day after she sent a legal threat to Inner City Press not to even ask why she was taking photographs of the UN's March 18 raid on the Press office.

  There's UNCA Second Vice President Masood Haider of the Dawn of Pakistan, with 87 followers and seven tweets in the 27 days of March including one that simple reads, @nypost.

  There's UNCA Third Vice President Sylviane Zehil ofL'Orient Le Jour with 92 followers and tweets, a recent sample of which is “Citigroup to Improve Anti-Money Laundering Controls,” without any link much less critique or analysis.

  There's UNCA First Vice President and Concerned UN Reporter candidate Louis Charbonneau, most of whose tweets are just corporate pass-throughs from Reuters, as if on auto-pilot. He also religiously re-tweets his Reuters underling Michelle Nichols, who filed a false complaint echoinghis, along with AFP.

  There's UNCA Executive Committee member at large Tim Witcher of Agence France Presse, with 127 followers and seven tweets in March, the first of which was a re-tweet of the co-stolen Minova rape story of Reuters' Michelle Nichols, with whom Witcher went on to file a false complaint for being called, accurately, a lapdog.

  We could go on, as they do. Watch this site.

Sudan Trade of UN Humanitarian Role Confirmed, As ICP Reported a Week Ago

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, February 28 – A week ago, amid outcry that Sudan would head up the Humanitarian segment at the UN's Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC President Nestor Osorio told Inner City Press he had worked out a compromise.

   Inner City Press reported it, and this afternoon in an open session of ECOSOC it was confirmed.

   Sudan will cede the Humanitarian segment to Pakistan, from which it will take over the so-called Coordination segment. The ECOSOC session takes place this summer in Geneva.

  After the short session where this was announced, Inner City Press spoke with Osorio, Masood Khan and finally Sudan's Permanent Representative Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, who told Inner City Press: "You know, to show that we here respect the multilateral system. But some want to act otherwise.. Anyway, coordination touches on more than humanitarian."

  Inner City Press has asked the US Mission for comment. Osorio on February 28 told Inner City Press, "do you see how we do with diplomacy, with our bureau?"

   Whether this will or should be enough for those who opposed Sudan for the Humanitarian segment is open to question. “Coordination” involves the interplay of UN system entities like the UN Development Program, UNICEF, UNFPA and other funds and programs. What's the difference?

   But given the situation in Sudan's Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, where a Tripartite Agreement to deliver aid was never implemented, chairing the Humanitarian segment was for some a step too far. And Coordination? 

  The US has another concern and desire to trade or block: Palestine as a Vice Chair of the Arms Trade Treaty, another story first reported by Inner City Press. And we'll have more on that. Watch this site.

On Syria, 45 Days Are Proposed Despite Araud's Denial, 11 & 3:30

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 11 -- After French Ambassador Gerard Araud told Inner City Press that "no," 45 days is not  the period, the UK circulated a draft resolution to "renew the mandate of the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) for a period of 45 days." Inner City Pressis putting the draft online here.

  Other key paragraph are 13 and 14:

"13. Decides that, if the Syrian authorities have not fully complied with paragraph 5 above within ten days, then it shall impose immediately measures under Article 41 of the UN Charter

"14. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council on the implementation of this resolution within 10 days of its adoption and every 15 days thereafter;"

  Sources said that this "UK" draft will be discussed not only by experts at 11 in the morning on July 12, but also by Permanent Representatives that afternoon at 3:30 -- all this during an all-day Security Council debate featuring July's president Colombia's foreign minister Maria Angela Holguin.

  President Nestor Osorio left the Council session on West Africa on Wednesday afternoon to go pick up Holguin. The topic of the debate on Thursday, an an interactive (but closed door) session on Friday is "Peacebuilding." But as a seasoned non-Western diplomat told Inner City Press Wednesday afternoon, the Council is more and more irrelevant.

  Look at what the Council doesn't deal with, he said, mentioning North Korea and the Middle East. Even on Sudan, we try to step in front of Mbeki. All that the UK, France and US know how to do is ask for sanctions. But on Syria it would send the wrong message to the opposition. And so we will oppose it.

  Another non-Western Security Council members asked Inner City Press, rhetorically it seemed, "How do you sanction the opposition? Their right to self-defense has been recognized at the Friends of Syria meetings. And so it Assad does nothing and you sanction him, they will just grab territory, the country is majority Sunni."

  Meanwhile the head of the UN Office on West Africa Said Djinnit left the consultations without passing by the press stakeout. Some wonder if he can handle Mali, before more of Timbuktu is destroyed. Problems the UN Security Council could do something about, they don't. Watch this site.

On Sudan Ritual of UN SC, Rice Says It's Only Way To Keep Tabs, Critics Say Colonial, Outmoded

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 10 -- As the UN Security Council met Tuesday on Sudan and South Sudan, several Council members complained to Inner City Press that the biweekly sessions had become a mere "ritual" or "make work."

  "It is wasn't for the Mbeki panel," one of them asked Inner City Press, referring to the African Union High Level trio chaired by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, "what could the Security Council even claim it's doing on the issue?"

  This months' Council president Nestor Osorio has told Inner City Press that arrangements are being made for Mbeki to come brief the Security Council on or about July 26, just before a deadline in the AU roadmap. "That's the real meeting," the complaint continued. "This is just... a P-Five problem. It's colonial."

  The analysis continued that the "Western Three" send as Permanent Representatives diplomats who are convinced with the importance of the Security Council. "Maybe that was true after the Second World War," the non-Western diplomat continued. "But now the Council is not suited to the problems it is trying to address."

  A cynic noted that some regional groups still want the UN to pay for their actions, like ECOWAS' talked about reclaiming of Timbuktu and Northern Mali. And who, we note, is paying for Mbeki, and for the team of Joint envoy on Syria Kofi Annan, dubbed the Seven Million Dollar Man?

  Just then US Ambassador Susan Rice came out of the Security Council, where they'd spent the morning on the Sudan issue. Inner City Press asked her, are these sessions useful? Some of your colleague say they've become just ritual.

  Ambassador Rice turned and gave a serious answer, that these session are "the only way to keep tabs" on the parties and their compliance with commitments. And perhaps it does serve for that. 

  Notably, several sources leaving the Security Council after Ambassador Rice told Inner City Press that the August 2 deadline shouldn't be seen like a religious text, as long as there is progress.

  What is sad is how little concern, at least as reflected by media, there is with the Sudan - South Sudan conflict, or even with the protests inside Sudan. Is that the Security Council's fault? Or of the Western Three? Watch this site.

Footnote: Tuesday's session was so low key it was difficult to get a commitment for a UN TV stakeout by Sudan's Ambassador. Envoy Haile Menkerios, who genially spoke with Inner City Press last week in the North Lawn building, was not available to talk, as even Cyprus envoy Lisa Buttenheim had been. What has happened, on the Sudan issue? And whose fault is it?