Diplomats gravitate from all over the globe to New York City for United Nations week. Traffic is snarled and barriers block midtown streets so the panjandrums of the globe can determine the fate of Syria, nuclear weapons in Iran and a Palestinian state. But this is only part of the reality.
These so-called diplomats representing every form of tyrannical regime are in New York to indulge themselves. Strip joints are filled to capacity. African “statesmen” in Brioni suits are preoccupied with jiggling strippers. And prostitutes are booked solid. New York is Gomorrah and the U.N. officials love it.
Moreover, so do their wives and significant others. Bergdorf Goodman has a queue in front of its Fifth Avenue store as women line up for baubles and beads, threads and make-up, aggregating to impressive five figure numbers. Even Arab women in black burkas buy Prada gear to keep under their make-shift effort at phony modesty.
The veneer of respectability is accepted by most New Yorkers because the cash registers are on over-time, but there is a perverse dimension to this decadence. Most of these national representatives wouldn’t be able to recognize a human rights issue if it bit them in the rear end.
When they do speak in the U.N. forum, they mouth the words that were assigned to them. In more instances than one might guess, the representatives are recovering from stupor induced revelry. There aren’t any issues in the U.N., only interests. Most of the states are dictatorships placed in the ironic position of deciding the political liberty of others. At the General Assembly every state has the same influence whether it be Micronesia or China. To call it a farce, does not do justice to farce or fairness or even common sense.