[NYTr] Another UN Official Smeared, this time over Cuban Food Policy, Biofuels
 
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:18:17 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
[This is apparently part of an effort by the biofuels interests,
spearheaded by the ethanol industry in the US (a powerful lobby)
to discredit yet another respected UN official, Jean Ziegler,
because his report in August has had a wide impact on global opinion
over the potential for increasing world hunger by the use of biofuels.
In the past year or so, many food and hunger experts have turned
against the idea of biofuels, which initially seemed very attractive.
It has now become a policy that is sharply questioned, from Latin
America to Africa to Europe, on the grounds of its potential negative
impact on the environment, development, and world hunger.  Of course
the biofuels industry denies this, just as the giant energy corporations
attempted to deny, for years, the threat of global warming.

What's interesting is that it has taken so long for the ethanol/
biofuels corporate PR machine to bestir itself into motion. It seems
they have now realized their (and the Bush Regime's) pie-in-the-sky
proposals about biofuels have already lost major support.

Fidel Castro, who has been a prescient world leader in the effort to
preserve the environment and reduce energy use, was one of the earliest,
if not the first, person to question the wisdom of turning to biofuels
as a means of solving the energy crisis. Revolutionary Cuba is also one
of the few countries in the world that has made adequate nutrition and
the riht to food a major priority. 

It is now the USA'a standard mode of operation to attack UN officials
as a means of discrediting and undermining their findings, i.e., John 
Bolton's scurrilous smearing of Mohammed ElBaradei, previous slanders
against Hans Blix, and now attacks on Jean Ziegler. 

The "French journalist" who criticized Ziegler at a UN press conference
is not identified here.  Nor was he identified, apparently, at the
press conference. We will attempt to find out if it might be one of the
CIA plants with Reporters Without Scruples. If so, Granma International
will probably be writing about this latest effort to smear Cuba, the UN,
and attempts by world hunger experts to call attention to the dangers of
the overuse of biofuels, when energy conservation and renewable sources
such as wind, sea and solar power are much less destructive.

 -NY Transfer]

AP via Yahoo - Nov 14, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071114/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/un_cuba_journalists

UN regrets "undercover" Cubans at event

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER
Associated Press Writer 

GENEVA - The United Nations has expressed regret that undercover Cuban
officials attended a U.N. news conference on human rights, where they
sought information on a French journalist asking critical questions
about Fidel Castro's regime.

Elena Ponomareva, spokeswoman for the global body's European
headquarters, said she was unable to prevent two Cuban diplomats from
entering the Oct. 11 news event with Jean Ziegler, a U.N. rights expert
who was preparing for a mission to the communist-run island.

The U.N. strictly prohibits government officials from attending news
conferences unless they are explicitly invited and included among those
presenting. Previous run-ins have occurred with Sudanese diplomats
seeking to monitor rights officials speaking about Darfur.

The Cuban officials were present for a testy exchange between the
French journalist and Ziegler, who said Havana should be praised for
cooperating with the global body and agreeing to allow him to report on
the country's respect for the "right to food" b Ziegler's area of
expertise.

Havana refused for years to allow U.N. envoys to visit and investigate
alleged rights abuses in the country, claiming that such missions would
violate Cuban sovereignty.

The Cuban officials asked journalists in the room to identify the name
and agency of the journalist who debated Ziegler.

When the news conference ended and Ponomareva confronted the officials,
they said they were diplomats at a U.N. mission, but declined to say
which country they represented.

"I can only regret this incident," she wrote in a letter to the U.N.
correspondents' association in Geneva. She said she would share her
thoughts with Ziegler "concerning the presence of members of the
mission of Cuba at the press conference."

Cuba has not received any information or a complaint from the U.N.,
said Marcos Gabriel at the Cuban mission.

Ziegler b who hailed Cuba during his 11-day mission as a world model
for how it provides its people with food b could not be reached for
comment.

The Swiss sociology professor was appointed as an unpaid, independent
expert by the U.N. Human Rights Council, but his views do not
necessarily represent those of the global body.

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