UN Remains Unreformed After Srgjan Kerim's Year, Sarah Palin on Her Way?

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/unga1kerim091608.html

UNITED NATIONS, September 16 -- At the end of his year as president of the UN General Assembly (PGA), Srgjan Kerim on Tuesday said he is "personally disappointed" with how the member states dealt with a UN reform issue that, due to Press coverage, became synonymous with Kerim: the lack of independence of the PGA due not being paid by the UN but by a particular country or, in Kerim's case, company.

Early in his tenure, Inner City Press asked Kerim how he got paid, and it emerged that his pay came from his country and once and future employer, WAZ Media. While Kerim showed some displeasure when Inner City Press went on to analyze the potential conflicts of interest created by these arrangement, he maintained that he would seek General Assembly action before the end of his term.

On Tuesday, as Nicaragua's Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann took over as PGA, Kerim acknowledged that the problem has not been fixed or reformed. He called the situation "urgent." We'll see. Video here, from Minute 17:53.

Elsewhere in his eight-minute response to Inner City Press' two question, Kerim said that the UN budget process is broken, and recounted that in December he spent 23 hours straight in the UN working on the budget, even telling Ban Ki-moon to give a speech to the General Assembly promising to report on spending every three months.

Kerim also took credit for changing the Capital Master Plan to renovate the UN Headquarters, saying he wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he'd agreed to the initial plan, to leave a portion of UN staff inside the building while it was being fixed.

Kerim had a farewell reception last week, at which shrimp and even foie gras were served, with cocktails sipped out on the balcony over the East River. He was given an award for the Millennium Development Goals, like his predecessor and probably his successor, and now according to his spokesman will return to WAZ Media, which he notes in investing in Vietnam and hospitals. We will follow his movements.

Footnotes: as Ambassadors stream in to d'Escoto Brockmann's speech to kick off the 63rd General Assembly on Tuesday afternoon, it emerged that two new crypto-states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have tried to get their representatives in but still do not have visas. It was also said, not for attribution that John McCain and Sarah Palin will come to the General Debate, specifically for the latter to "meet world leaders." This might later change.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/unga1kerim091608.html

Alaska House in SoHo, Even Palin-Less, Is a Bridge to Somewhere: But Where?

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in SoHo
www.innercitypress.com/us1alaskahs091608.html

NEW YORK, September 16 -- In a gleaming white storefront on SoHo's Mercer Street on Monday night, Native Alaskan art was displayed and some was destroyed. It was the opening of Alaska House, a gallery and also the state's economic embassy in New York. Governor Sarah Palin had been slated to attend, until John McCain tapped her as his running mate.

The space's two stories were standing room only with hipsters, and it at first appeared there were no Alaskans, much less Natives, in attendance. Inner City Press, drawn as a matter of news by the prospect of Palin, interviewed a series of lobbyists and filmmakers, finally finding one of each who was an Alaskan Native. The initial purpose was to ask for views of Palin, but the trail soon led farther afield.

The U.S. Arctic Research Commission's Mead Treadwell, soon to fly to Tokyo to speak of whaling "among other things," one of them being drilling the Arctic for oil, told Inner City Press about Alaska House's founder, Alice Rogoff Rubenstein. "Her husband David started a hedge fund you may of heard of," Treadwell said. "The Carlyle Group. It dawned on her that her husband didn't need her for the business. So she found a cause, Alaska. The state is lucky."

"But what's her connection to Alaska?"

"You'll have to ask her." Ultimately Inner City Press did. But first the question was put to her beneficiaries, direct and indirect. Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, the Alaskan Native director of Sikumi (On Thin Ice), a winner of the Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, explained that his mother Edna Ahgeak MacLean is a noted Inupiaq linguist, and that his current project is about a murder on Alaskan ice. "Who did it?"

We won't spoil the murder mystery for you, his non-Alaskan producer Cara Marcous said.

They were accompanied by a Alaskan Native who gave her name only as Mary and who said that her boss is on the board of directors of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. She works in Washington for the North Star Group, which "promotes a bunch of project in Alaska," as she put it.

"Do these include oil?"

They do. Mary is from Dillingham, the same town as Sarah Palin's husband the First Dude, Todd. What does she think of Palin? Her running for vice president is great for the state, Mary said, adding that she'll be voting for Obama. "She's a little too into Jesus," Mary said of Palin. "It makes people who aren't a little scared, that they'll be discriminated against."

There was a crash as an Alaskan Native mask was knocked from the wall to the floor. From outside on Mercer Street came another crash, as the ice sculpture that marked this unmistakably as a climate change event collapsed. "Did it happened naturally?" someone asked, as in a murder mystery. Yes was the answer. An ice piece was carted off.

There by the front door was Alice Rogoff Rubenstein, saying goodbye to her guests. Asked for her views on Sarah Palin, she echoed that her candidacy is good for the state. "My personal views, I'll keep to myself," she said. Inner City Press recounted Mead Treadwell's summary and asked, how did you choose Alaska. "It had nothing to do with my husband," she quickly said. She'd always wanted to go to Alaska, and finally did. She followed the Iditerod dog sled race around, and on the way found Native art. The rest, she said, is history.

But is there any government money behind it? Well, yes. There was an appropriation from Congress used for it.

Would that be an earmark?

Yes.

Even amid the crashing of the masks and ice sculpture, the irony was thick. Palin's tale of rebuffing earmark funding for the so-called Bridge to Nowhere stands in contrast to her state's embassy to hipsters being funded, at least indirectly, by earmark funds from taxpayers, combined with money from a hedge fund involved not only with military contractors but also subprime lending. Alaska House, it turns, is itself a bridge to somewhere. But where?

And see, www.innercitypress.com/us1alaskahs091608.html