Of Samantha Power at the UN, E-Bay & Obama, But What of Sri Lanka and Sudan?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 5 -- In the second act of today's double switch which moves Susan Rice to National Security Adviser, Samantha Power is to be nominated to replace her as US Permanent Representative to the UN. 

  Power wrote the book on genocide -- but some wonder what she DID about it, for example the 2009 slaughter of 40,000 Tamils in Northern Sri Lanka.

  Inner City Press covered that mass killing, and was present when anguished diaspora Tamil denounced, among others, Samantha Power for inaction. Would she have tried to at least get it onto the Security Council's agenda? It's a question that should be asked. See BloggingHeads debate here, at Minute 36.

  Back in 2008, Inner City Press was there when Power arrived at the UN's Delegates Dining Room to raise money from and with E-Bay's founders to educate American on foreign policy. Click here for that story, "Chasing the Flame With Cheese Cubes," a/k/a Fondue. What ever happened with that? It also should be asked.

  In 2010 when Samantha Power visited the US Mission to the UN, Inner City Press asked her why President Barack Obama had not mentioned Sudan much less Darfur in his General Assembly speech. Power put a good spin on things; one wonders if she'll be ask active on Sudan and South Sudan as has been Ambassador Susan Rice. Watch this site.

Chasing the Flame with Cheese Cubes, US Progressives at UN Launch Campaign Funded by eBay

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1fondue051308.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 13 -- Under a red light and with a broken microphone, the founders of eBay and the celebrated biographer of Sergio de Mello launched a campaign Tuesday night in the UN's Delegates' Dining Room. Samantha Power, with the requisite jokes about her falling-out with Barak Obama's campaign, announced the Freedom from Fear Social Action Campaign, to which eBay's founders Pierre and Pam Omidyar are contributing $350,000 as a matching grant. Those who are expected to match it were invited to an event about Power's book about de Mello, "Chasing the Flame."

The goal is to make Americans care more about foreign policy, by jazzing it up with de Mello's story. The campaign's first steps, or "products" as Power called them, are an HBO documentary and a feature film based off the book. Power spoke of synergy between Borders bookstores and the AMC movie theater chain: after a screening, a foreign policy professor could be in the bookstore to talk about it. Perhaps there'll be an affiliated line of coffees, one wag mused as the sunset reflected off the mirrored buildings on Long Island City.

Beyond the joke about Power being exiled from the Obama campaign for overly energetic criticism of Hillary Clinton as "a monster," Obama's name came up repeatedly. The audience was told they must be chomping at the bit, and not only the cheese cubes, to get to a television and watch the night's West Virginia primary results. Power described de Mello, or at least one of his phrases, as "Obama-esque."

Not mentioned was Obama's letter to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad earlier this year, demanding that the U.S. not support any statement about the blockage of Gaza until the statement also condemned Hamas. Power mused about the responsibility to protect, mentioning "Burma, Darfur and Iran" and speaking of bringing "law to lawless places." She said that "if China is to change" and be "brought in," it will happen "in capitals."

It was a decidedly less diverse audience than one usually finds at events in the UN Delegates' Dining Room. To a sociologist's eye, these were affluent Americans, loyal supporters of all things UN without really following any of it too closely. The on-again off-again microphone was joked about -- "this is not a metaphor for the UN," Power said. But perhaps all of it is, a metaphor...

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un1fondue051308.html