Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 15 -- In the two hours before a pushed-back UN Security Council meeting on Egypt, US Ambassador Samantha Power held a Twitter town hall meeting.

  She responded to Mia Farrow and Greta Van Susterin on Sudan and International Criminal Court indictee Omar al Bashir -- but she did not respond on UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous having met with Bashir in July.

  She responded on Rwanda and on UN envoy Mary Robinson (and US envoy Russ Feingold on the Great Lakes). But she did not answer on US-trained Battalion 391 of the Congolese Army, implicated in 135 rapes in Minova in November, and in corpse desecration since.

 Nor did she explain how her statement to the Senate, that the US has nothing to apologize for, applies to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

  But the most glaring omission, at least in the tweets Inner City Press saw, was Power's failure to address what she'll do to hold the UN accountable for bringing cholera to Haiti.

  As Inner City Press first reported, 19 members of Congress wrote to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take responsibility. Major US newspapers have editorialized to this effect. So where is the US Ambassador to the UN on this issue? Watch this site.

Footnote: on a more intra-UN issue, the Free UN Coalition for Access asked and will continue to ask, shouldn't the UN have a Freedom of Information Act?

 A related FUNCA question: shouldn't the UN have content neutral media accreditation policies, and rule process rules for journalists? Click here for the NYCLU's question on this. Watch @FUNCA_info and this site.