At UN,
Human Rights Photos Amid the Canapes, Stories of Watches on Display
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
October 29 -- Human
trafficking was
the theme was a photo exhibit that opened Monday night at the UN. The son of
investor Warren Buffett, Howard, fresh from being named an Ambassador against
Hunger by the UN World Food Program, squired the First Lady of the UN and its
head of Drugs and Crime through a display of his photographs, including children
chained to a tree in Senegal. Other photographs, by Kay Chernush, showed a
Nepali mother trying to track down her trafficked daughter in India. Waiters
offers salmon rolls and cakes with flags in them. A chamber music version of
And I Love Her by the Beatles made played by a quartet from Julliard.
"Classy event," remarked one wag, contrasting it with Friday evening's surreal
and tacky display of IWC watches, in their own display cases, in the other end
of the UN lobby, between IWC -- the International Watch Co. -- sponsored a book
a photographs of Antarctica by fashion photograph Sebastian Copeland, whose
intro speaks of traveling "with his cousin Orlando Bloom." The UN as
name-dropping fashion show, ambassadorships given for money, watches on display.
UNEP NY chief Castano and photog Sebastian Copeland, flashy watches not shown
The
historical UN wag hearkened back to at least two watch incidents. In connection
with the 50th anniversary of the UN, Swatch was a sponsor. At a luncheon in the
Delegates' Dining Room, each invitee was supposed to get a watch. They were put
at each table setting. But many disappeared, and then resurfaced in the UN
bookstore, returned as if purchased for $85. Swatch sent a cartload of time
pieces to children singing in the General Assembly. The cart was stopped halfway
there, and half the watches disappears. Ah, corporate partnership.
UN-blind item:
a successful candidate for General Assembly president, native of an occupied
territory but occupied as Ambassador of a certain sandy kingdom, gave out
watches in advance of the vote to elect him, also in the GA. And so it goes at
the UN.
* * *
Click
here for a
Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
Click
here
for an earlier
Reuters AlertNet
piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's
$200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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UN Office: S-453A,
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Reporter's mobile
(and weekends): 718-716-3540
