The annual UN General Assembly Session is under way in New York. World leaders, possessing varying degrees of power and reputation gather once a year, presumably to discuss solutions to world problems. Instead, big egos and small minds jockey on the world stage armed with grandiose postures and hot air. It is a bit like an Open House for an unruly clan. You never know who will turn up and what they will do -- and you can't turn anyone away for just being obnoxious. The petulance, unpredictability and gamesmanship of grown up men (yes, they are always men) sometimes resemble the antics of ornery five year olds in a sandbox.
The history of the UN is replete with dramatic performances by world class windbags. 1960 was a banner year for histrionics. At the height of the cold war and nuclear arms race, the world was clearly divided into camps. The US and the erstwhile USSR were in bitter competition with each other in arenas as diverse as the Olympics and space exploration. That year in September, the UN general assembly session saw two dramatic performances by communist leaders. Nikita Krushchev, the Soviet prime minister gave a fiery speech and is said to have banged his right shoe on the table to make a point. Whether he really did that is in dispute. No photographic evidence exists. But it is such a widely held belief that it has become the diplomatic equivalent of a tenacious urban myth. The new revolutionary leader of Cuba, a young and charismatic Fidel Castro, gave a speech containing blistering criticism of the US. That speech to this day holds the record of being the longest speech ever delivered on the floor of the UN.
This year's UN session too is full of drama. With the world in turmoil and a belligerent and divisive leader like George W. Bush in the White House, other hostile thespians have ample opportunities to orate, pontificate and wag accusatory fingers. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whose name for Bush until today, was Mr. Danger, promoted him to the rank of the Devil. For added effect, Chavez also brandished a book by Noam Chomsky and crossed himself several times when mentioning the presence of the devil.
"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tore into his U.S. counterpart and his U.N. hosts Wednesday, likening President Bush to the devil and telling the General Assembly that its system is "worthless."
"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today."
Chavez accused Bush of having spoken "as if he owned the world" and said a psychiatrist could be called to analyze the statement.
"As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: 'The Devil's Recipe.' "
Chavez held up a book by Noam Chomsky on imperialism and said it encapsulated his arguments: "The American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonistic system of domination, and we cannot allow him to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated."
Managing so many oversized egos and clashing ideologies under the same roof is akin to directing a bunch of narcissistic operatic divas in a musical production. Protocol officers and diplomats must have nightmares and bleeding ulcers. Yet some much anticipated and feared melodramatic moments never materialize and other unexpected ones do because of events unfolding thousands of miles away.
There was the much-discussed handshake that never happened and the presentation of the coca leaf.
When leaders from dozens of U.N. member states suddenly find themselves crammed in the same building, strange things happen. On the first day of the annual U.N. General Assembly session, it was difficult not to feel that one was witnessing the intricate, poorly understood social rituals of a rare and exotic animal species.
The practiced U.N. protocol officers prevented any major gaffes, even when Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had to scrap his appearance because of a coup back home. And the much-anticipated run-in between U.S. President Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never materialized.
As was customary, Bush delivered the second speech of the day and co-hosted a lunch with Secretary-General Kofi Annan just before 1 p.m. Ahmadinejad didn't deliver his speech until the evening, and was not even in New York when Bush was at the U.N.....
As usual, things were running late all day, forcing some leaders to sit around and wait for everyone else. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe had an empty chair next to him at lunch (it was supposed to have been filled by Thaksin), and was clearly not pleased to have arrived on time for Annan's lunch. Cameras caught him looking annoyed, once raising his hands in exasperation...
Diplomats waged battles of a different sort during their speeches. The most theatrical was President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who brandished a tiny coca leaf before the hall to hammer home his longtime argument that coca has many uses besides cocaine.
"It is not possible for the coca leaf to be legal for Coca-Cola but illegal for other consumers in our country and throughout the world," said Morales, who presumably did not declare the leaf to customs when he arrived in the U.S.
The Associated Press article here.
They made the theatrics of pro-wrestling seem like Shakespeare this week. It was depressing and painful to watch each baffoon strain their emaciated intellectual muscles in an effort to project some outdated concept of "toughness". Bush and Chavez, with their childish rhetoric, seemed like long lost brothers at times.
I'm fairly certain that I've lost hope. Human consciousness is an abnormality. I want to be a tiny, lost little pebble. And giving up definitely plays into the hands of the bad guys, but I'm not sure they ever had any real competition.
(Or, maybe I'm just under-caffeinated this morning, I don't know. Hi.)
Posted by: m | September 21, 2006 at 06:17 AM