News Release

Diplomacy and the UN: * “Threat” of Force * Samantha Power

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Amb. EDWARD L. PECK, peckfsi at verizon.net
Available for a limited number of interviews, Peck served in Tunisia and Egypt, was chief of mission in Iraq and Mauritania, and deputy director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan White House.

JOSHUA HOLLAND, joshuahol at gmail.com, @JoshuaHol
Holland works with “Moyer’s & Company.” His most recent piece is “The Irreconcilable Paradox of Calls to Strike Syria.”

CHASE MADAR, chase.madar at gmail.com, @ChMadar
Madar wrote the piece “Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights” and said today: “In her advocacy for missile strikes on Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is once again doing what she does best: inventing humanitarian reasons for the use of lethal military violence. Indeed, Samantha Power has made a brilliant career in the weaponization of human rights, a legal doctrine increasingly militarized as policy elites harness it to the ends of humanitarian intervention and counterinsurgency warfare.” Madar’s books include The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story behind the Wikileaks Whistleblower.

MATTHEW R. LEE, Matthew.Lee at innercitypress.com, @innercitypress
Lee covers the UN for Inner City Press. He said today: “In the current debate, people act as if the UN Secretariat is the counter-point to the US. But it is not. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is eager to serve the U.S. Only last night, in the middle of all this, he gave a speech in honor of U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power. There is also the question of how UN Peacekeeping could secure anything, much less chemical weapons, in a war zone when the peacekeepers couldn’t even get their screening and sanitation right in Haiti, and brought cholera. (No accountability for that.) UN Peacekeeping is run by Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row in this position. So as the U.S. and France talk of bombing, they’ve got much of the UN Secretariat sewed up as well.”