| UN Swamp
Spreads As Ertharin Cousin Mulled For
USAID After WFP Waste and Censorship
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
UN GATE / SDNY,
Dec 1 – What is it about the
United Nations, that rather
than moving away from its
tattered recent history of
corruption and sexual abuse,
it just keeps going
unreformed?
From
Washington sources Inner City
Press, banned
from the UN by nepotistic
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres for 882 days now,
hears that leading the list of
candidates for USAID is...
Ertharin Cousin.
Before
being roughed
up as it reported on the
UN Budget Committee where
Guterres made a deal with
Cameroon as chair, for silence
on human rights abuses in
exchange for bureaucratic
favors, Inner City Press twice
exposed Cousins as head of UN
WFP, noting that
"WFP has not
answered a series of questions
about its and Cousin's
spending which concerned WFP
staff have exclusively
provided to Inner City Press,
seeking to reform what they
see as injury to their agency
by waste and even fraud.
Sources and documents obtained
by Inner City Press show WFP
Executive Director Cousin
asking for an increase
of nearly €24,000 euros for
her housing allowance, up to
€160,000 per
year.
They show
use of WFP funds for a recent
Thanksgiving trip to Chicago
which, several WFP staff say,
was not mostly WFP work.
Click
here for itinary of the
November 20-25 trip, of
which a WFP staff member
complained to Inner City Press
that WFP's "Executive Director
has also taken it upon herself
to fly (business class no
less) on the UN’s dime* to
spend thanksgiving at home in
her hometown of Chicago, stay
at a nice hotel,* attend a
homecoming reception, and
speak at the International Law
Committee -- none of which has
anything remotely to do with
WFP’s work of responding to
emergencies and eliminating
world hunger."
The above
is not an "anti-UN"
perspective, but that of a
long time UN worker angered by
perceived waste and abuse,
which should be
answered.
The sources
point to what they call a sole
source consulting contract
Counsin gave to Piers Campbell
for "consulting," without
transparency."
December 1
re-consideration: it's clear
that many support Ertharin Cousin,
maybe in good faith. But
should these questions be
ignored? Should those who ask
them be roughed up and banned?
Then, "The
Italian Insider, the only
English language daily in
Italy, picked up Inner City
Press' story. Then a funny
thing happened. A planned ad
campaign for an Italian tour
by a band sponsored by the
Detroit Institute of Arts was
pulled from the Italian
Insider. The go-between
for the band, called The
Flutter and Wow, e-mailed the
Italian Insider:
-----
Messaggio Inoltrato ----- Da :
theflutterandwow.gigs A :
Italianinsider.it Oggetto :
Re: Payment Processed and
Contract Signed Data : Fri, 4
Jan 2013 06:21:47 +0100
we have a HUGE problem. One of
the Board members of the DIA
read on your website an
article about the head of
something called the food
program and is fuming mad.
They are close friends from
Chicago. I have been summoned
for a meeting tomorrow and I
sense there are some very
pissed off people at
DIA. There was more --
after his meeting with DIA,
the go-between asked the
Italian Insiders' editor if he
was "a right winger" or
British. The editor surmises
that Ertharin Cousin's "friend
from Chicago" on the DIA board
viewed even a pick-up for the
story about her spending as
"right wing."
It took two days
to get an answer from WFP, but
when it came it was absolute
denial:
WFP
spokesman Steve Taravella
replied to Inner City Press,
"As to the Detroit Institute
of Arts, the executive
director has had no
interactions with this
organization, and has not been
able to determine whether she
has met any member who serves
on its board. She has no
knowledge of the actions you
describe."
Why would the band's
go-between pull the
advertising citing a DIA board
member who is a "close friend"
of Ertharin Cousin? Why would
this go-between as reflected
by multiple e-mails push to
get the pick-up of Inner City
Press' article taken down, or
the belated comments of WFP
spokesman Taravella played
up?"
The UN
must be cleaned up, and made
to comport with basic press
freedoms including due
process. We'll have more on
this.
***
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