Questions about nepotism are turning up again at the United Nations, and they go all the way to the top.
This tale involves Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s youngest daughter, Ban Hyun Hee, and her husband, Siddarth Chatterjee. When Ban took over the UN’s top job from Kofi Annan in January, 2007, both Hyun Hee and Siddarth Chatterjee were working for UNICEF out of Nairobi. Some UN observers, myself included (“Uh-Oh, Shades of Kojo“), raised concerns about this at the time — especially when Ban’s office refused to disclose details about the terms of his daughter’s and son-in-law’s UN employment. Given the scandals that beset Kofi Annan over the UN-related dealings of his son, Kojo Annan (the Oil-for-Food Cotecna inspections contract; the Mystery Mercedes …), it would have been prudent for Ban Ki-Moon and his family to make a huge effort to avoid even the appearance of any possibility of nepotism.
But here we go again. Thanks to Matthew Russell Lee of the Inner City Press, we now learn that during Ban’s tenure, his son-in-law, Siddarth Chatterjee, has been rising rapidly at the UN, with almost no details or explanation disclosed. From UNICEF in Nairobi, Chatterjee moved on to become chief of staff to Ban’s Special Representative for Iraq. From there, Chatterjee recently beat out more than 120 applicants for a high-level UN job in Copenhagen, as the regional director for Europe and the Middle East of the UN Office for Project Services, or UNOPS. (UNOPS is a UN “entity” which provides technical and administrative support to UN projects worldwide — $1.5 billion worth in 2007 alone).
Ban’s daughter, thanks to a UNICEF contract, has been able to join her husband in Copenhagen, though as reporter Matthew Russell Lee notes, “Throughout the UN system, Inner City Press has met spouses who are unable to obtain jobs in the same city, country or even continent.”
What qualified Chatterjee for the promotions? What employment rank does he now hold? How much is he getting paid? How did Ban’s daughter get lucky enough to land a UN slot alongside her husband in Copenhagen? Lee has been asking questions, and reports that neither UNOPS nor Ban’s office has been giving answers. Instead, Lee has had to eke out details from internal UN emails leaked to him by whistleblowers who ask for anonymity, due to fear of retaliation (a well-founded fear, after Ban threw UN Development Program whistleblower Tony Shkurtaj to the dogs during the UNDP’s 2007-2008 North Korea Cash-for-Kim scandal).
You can read the leaked emails about Ban’s son-in-law, and Lee’s discussion of the scene, in Inner City’s August 14 story: “UN’s Ban Expects Nepotism Report Aug 18, As His Daughter’s and Son in Law’s Promotion Questioned.”�
They called Ban Ki-moon, Mr. Eel, in South Korea, when he was working as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the now deceased traitor President Roh Moo-hyun administration. When he was elected(?) as the UN Secretary-General, he went straight to the Blue House to thank Roh for lobbying for him. He said, incredibly, “Mr. President (or, Your Majesty! in Korean), I owe you everything, and I will be eternally grateful.” Ban never met with the North Korean defectors in South Korea, or any of us NK human rights activists in South Korea and the U.S. In short, Ban is my enemy and a friend of the pro-Kim Jong-il traitors in South Korea. He should be either impeached or physically kicked out from the U.N.
I fondly remember the Copecna affair… the Kojo arrangement… the Kofina element… and more…
Do we have a re-play of them?
I’d love to see this – particularly if we have Maria Paretti back, and fulfilling sex becomes again a UN job requirment…
Nice piece Claudia. This really is getting to the point where corruption is expected with these folks.
By the way, I meant to ask for your input on this piece I did for Pajamas on the CIA’s analysis of the Saddam, al Qaeda question where I interviewed Paul Pillar and Bruce Tefft. I know you’ve looked at this topic in the past and I’d really like to hear your thoughts.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/revisiting-the-saddam-husseinal-qaeda-relationship/
sounds like the o-bum-a administration has competition in the transparency department.
what a bunch of posers. the UN and the democrat party are criminal organizations. ..and the UN isn’t even in chicago.
Of course nepotism is involved. It is how all tribal societies work. Most of the nations in the world are tribal, which is why they are so backward. It is why the U.N. is useless. One should never include disfunctional nations into a world body.
If we kicked out 2/3 of the nations, the U.N. would suddenly become more pragmatic, functional, and credible. There should be criteria for membership, not mere existence. It’s the Utopian mentality which allowed all to join. Utopians are the bane of humanity. Kumbaya is for children.
When the UN looks for someone to head it up these days, to they hang out a sign saying…
“Wanted: Self-serving, not very bright dweeb, must be into nepotism” ?
Last week, climate change True Believer, Ban Ki Moon said…”We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.”
I suggest, in order to slow down anthropogenic global warming, that Ban Ki and the crowd forgo the big “climate change” get together in Copenhagen in December. One similar UN do recently nearly sank the island of Java, what with all the private jets flying in, the jammed 5-star hotels, the copious golf, consumption of lobster, etc. for 10 long and tedious days.
The formula “one state no matter how irrelevant and how corrupt or unrepresentative its governemnt, one vote” has proven to be a failure.
It leads to having demented like Kim Jong IL or cannibals like former Ugandan president Idi Amin Dada having a say into internal politics and voting on UN resolutions. It leads to through Arab support and EU cowardice (EU abstained) to have genocidical Soudan in Hman Rights Comission or Iran an Saudi Arabia in Women Rights Commission and lecturing Israel. It leads to former colonizers (aka France) creating 20 artificial puppet states in their former empire in order to get a block of 20 votes from those puppet states they use as a bargaining chips. It leads to
It also confuses people into believeing UN reesolutions tell what “justice” is whjen the fact is that a tribunal “parent states” and interests with one of the parties are allowed to vote (the later is unavoidable but people could consider that the UN general assembly is not an impartial jury but a meeting of steates ie the coldest of the cold monsters). Also in order to grab more poser to itself the UN has self-proclaimed itself competent for evrything who can affect humankind as a whole (climate for instance) instead of reestricting itself to matters of war and peace. We also have to keep presnt that if financial transparency is nearly impossible in democracies where politicians can be thrown out by disgruntled=voters it is a hollow dream in a body of unlected people, many of them from thugocracies and with no feedback mechanism to the tax payer, even for purely informational purposes. This leads not only to corruption but to the scandal of the sixty years long funding of the Palestinians.
The UN is broken, the UN must be dissolved, its building razed and the ground sowed with salt. UN delenda est.
It’s another kingdom that we have allowed to grow into a protected entity that is above the law, and not answerable to the people.
They have reached the enviable position of no one expecting anything of them and they can spend their time telling us what we are lacking in.
Lucky them.
Astronomers: ‘Sun’s output may decline significantly inducing another Little Ice Age on Earth’
‘Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to save planet from utterly foolish global carbon tax’
Saturday, August 15, 2009By Marc Morano – Climate Depot
[Below is a guest essay by Statistician Dr. Richard Mackey, who authored a 2007 peer-reviewed study which found that the solar system regulates the earth's climate. The paper was published August 17, 2007 in the Journal of Coastal Research - Excerpt: "According to the findings reviewed in this paper, the variable output of the sun, the sun's gravitational relationship between the earth (and the moon) and earth's variable orbital relationship with the sun, regulate the earth's climate. The processes by which the sun affects the earth show periodicities on many time scales; each process is stochastic and immensely complex." Dr. Mackey is featured on page 228 of U.S. Senate Report of 700 Dissenting Scientists.]
American Geophysical Union article argues another Maunder Minimum (low Solar activity) likely – Climate Depot Guest Article By Statistician Dr. Richard Mackey
Key Excerpts: Astronomers Dr. William Livingston and Dr. Matthew Penn and a large number of solar physicists (see, for example, the home page of the grandfather of modern solar physics, Professor Emeritus Cornelius de Jager,) would say that now the likelihood of the Earth being seized by Maunder Minimum is now greater than the Earth being seized by a period of global warming. [...] Their central finding is that regardless of the relation to the sunspot cycles, magnetic intensity in sunspots is decreasing and if this continues in the same way as it has for the last 15 years, the Sun will be devoid of sunspots in five years time: overall the Sun’s energetic output will decline significantly inducing another Little Ice Age on the Earth. [...] They would answer Sir John’s question by saying: “Yes, the Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to save the planet from the utterly foolish global carbon tax.”
Dr. Mackey’s Full Article:
Astronomer Emeritus Dr. William Livingston and Associate Astronomer Dr Matthew Penn have for many years been measuring the magnetic field strength of the Sun’s magnetic fields. See for example: here. WattsUpWithThat (WUWT) in June 2009 by them concluding that, broadly speaking, over the last 15 years the magnetic field strengths of sunspots were decreasing with time independently of the sunspot cycle. A simple linear extrapolation of the magnetic data collected by their special observatory (the McMath-Pierce telescope (see here.) published a report) suggests that sunspots might largely vanish in five years time. In addition, other scientists report that the solar wind (a large proportion of the Sun’s output of matter in the plasma form) is in a lower energy state than found since space measurements began nearly 40 years ago.
In answer to the question:
Why is a lack of sunspot activity interesting?
Astronomers Livingston and Penn’s Respond in the July 28, 2009 publication EOS of the American Geophysical Union: “During a period from 1645 to 1715 the Sun entered an extended period of low activity known as the Maunder Minimum. For a time equivalent to several sunspot cycles the Sun displayed few sunspots. Models of the Sun’s irradiance suggest that the solar energy input to the Earth decreased during that epoch, and that this lull in solar activity may explain the low temperatures recorded in Europe during the Little Ice Age.”
Livingston and Penn wrote a July 28, 2009 very well written feature length article feature article appearing in EOS, the professional publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The article is entitled, “Are Sunspots Different During This Sunspot Minimum?” EOS is a broadsheet sent every week to AGU members. It always has one feature article, but mainly lists job advertisements and notices about conferences, seminars and the like of interest to AGU members and news of members’ achievements. The feature articles are sometimes about climate change, which are generally supportive of the IPCC dogma.
In their EOS article, Livingston and Penn answer yes to the question: “Are Sunspots Different During This Sunspot Minimum?”
Their central finding is that regardless of the relation to the sunspot cycles, magnetic intensity in sunspots is decreasing and if this continues in the same way as it has for the last 15 years, the Sun will be devoid of sunspots in five years time: overall the Sun’s energetic output will decline significantly inducing another Little Ice Age on the Earth.
In a press release the National Solar Observatory reported:dated June 17, 2009
Drs. Rachel Howe and Frank Hill, both of the NSO, used long-term observations from the NSO’s Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) facility to detect and track an east-to-west jet stream, known as the “torsional oscillation”, at depths of ~1,000 to 7,000 km below the surface of the Sun. The Sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years; the streams migrate slowly, over a period of 17 years, to the equator, and are associated with the production of sunspots once they reach a critical latitude of 22 degrees.
Howe and Hill found that the stream associated with the new solar cycle has moved sluggishly, taking three years to cover a 10 degree range in latitude compared to two years for the last solar cycle, but has now reached the critical latitude. The current solar minimum has become so long and deep, some scientists have speculated the Sun might enter a long period with no sunspot activity at all. The new result both shows that the Sun’s internal magnetic dynamo continues to operate, and heralds the beginning of a new cycle of solar activity.
“It is exciting to see”, said Dr. Hill, “that just as this sluggish stream reaches the usual active latitude of 22 degrees, a year late, we finally begin to see new groups of sunspots emerging at the new active latitude.” Since the current minimum is now one year longer than usual, Howe and Hill conclude that the extended solar minimum phase may have resulted from the slower migration of the flow.
GONG and its sister instrument SOHO/MDI measure sound waves on the surface of the Sun. Scientists can then use the sound waves to probe structures deep in the interior of the star, in a process analogous to a sonogram in a medical office. “Using the global sound wave inversions, we have been able to reveal the intimate connection between subtle changes in the Sun’s interior and the sunspot cycle on its surface,” said Hill.
“This is an important piece of the solar activity puzzle,” said Dr. Dean Pesnell, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It shows how flows inside the Sun are related to the creation of solar activity and how the timing of the solar cycle might be produced. None of the forecasting research groups predicted the current long extended delay in the new cycle. There is a lot more to learn in order to understand how the Sun creates magnetic fields.”
Astronomers Livingston and Penn conclude their EOS article with these comments:
“Whether this [decline] is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen. Other indications of the solar activity cycle suggest that sunspots must return in earnest next year.
Because other indications point to the Sun experiencing an unusual period of minimum solar activity, it is critically important to measure the Sun’s magnetic activity during this unique time.”
‘Professional societies returning to practice of true scientific debate’
Another interesting aspect of Livingston and Penn’s EOS article is that the AGU published it in its professional publication. This suggests to me that the professional societies are returning to practice of true scientific debate that has been suppressed for so long.
It is worth recalling the feature article “Natural antidote to global warming” written by Sir John Maddox, then the editor of Nature and published in Nature on 21 September 1995.
Sir John referred to the extensive research published up to 1995 indicating the Sun-climate relationship and that the Sun was likely to enter into a Maunder Minimum inducing state sometime during the first few decades of the new millennium.
Sir John, an enthusiastic apostle of the IPCC dogma, asked:
“There remains the question of whether the Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to avoid a global carbon tax?”
He answered that on the basis of his reading of the evidence published up till then there was only a small chance. However, he concluded by noting that it is a real possibility and that the moral of his commentary was “a better understanding of the Sun might now have practical value.”
Livingston and Penn and a large number of solar physicists (see, for example, the home page of the grandfather of modern solar physics, Professor Emeritus Cornelius de Jager,) would say that now the likelihood of the Earth being seized by Maunder Minimum is now greater than the Earth being seized by a period of global warming.
They would answer Sir John’s question by saying: “Yes, the Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to save the planet from the utterly foolish global carbon tax.”
The UN, and those who follow the UN ideals for Global government and global religion,(Lucis Trust), are enemys of this country, and should be kicked out by force.
No more American money to the UN, and no more American lives wasted for their agenda. The UN puke blue color off anything American.
Put me in charge.
Marc Malone said:
“If we kicked out 2/3 of the nations, the U.N. would suddenly become more pragmatic, functional, and credible.”
Problem is, 2/3 of the nations in the UN would vote to kick out the U.S. if it weren’t for, you know, our money.
Hypothetical. Has there EVER been a UN conference, meeting whereas there’s actually been progress, an accord,
The ‘news’ of the UN ‘unresolved issue regarding this or that matter will be discussed at a further date.. yadda yadda yadda.’ Yet, these jackals continue to get paid handsomely for NOTHING.
Though I’ll give this to the UN. Their empathy-laden Unicef commercials is great cinema.
Reading the daily pieces of this African country’s President sidestepping this charge, another disregarding a genocide charge, another blatantly sending a death squad to a Presidential opponent(s), et al.
Sure, apartheid’s over. But the wake from it and the egomaniacal sociopaths who are in place of these countries now.. nothing’s new.