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UN Hosts
Environmental Smoke and Mirrors, Naomi Campbell, Indigenous Outrage
Byline: Matthew
Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Muse
UNITED NATIONS,
May
2, updated May 18 -- The UN
was given over Friday night to a strange event, featuring
Naomi
Campbell, Heidi Klum and Patrick Dempsey. Purportedly its announced
$450 a
ticket cost benefited an environmental organization, the International
Renewable Energy Organization. But the sponsor Paolo Zampolli told
Inner City
Press that he was not concerned that the group's Advisory Board is "under
construction;" there is no mention of the group in Google
News or
Lexis-Nexis. Zampolli was speaking into
a cell phone, surrounded by models. Inner City Press asked of IREO was
going to
apply to the Economic and Social Council for NGO status. No, Zampolli
said, it
will be an IGO, an International Governmental Organization. He mentioned the General Assembly, but subsequently said that the IGO
application is to ECOSOC. GA President Srgjan Kerim
was
reportedly at the event. Anything is
possible. [Mr. Zampolli says Kerim was there, along with "fifty to sixty
ambassadors, and that he paid
for the whole party, no $450 tickets were sold.]
Paolo Zampolli gave one business card
to a UN functionary -- listing himself as co-chair of Paramount
based in Soho, which uses models to sell lofts -- and another to
Inner City
Press, with a formal IREO logo, complete with UN-like laurels, on one
side, and
full UN map logo on the other. This seems an abuse of the UN logo, but
who's
counting? [Mr. Zampolli says that Legal, presumably
the UN Office of Legal Affairs, signed off on this use of the logo --
so maybe it's OLA's fault.] A functionary said Zampolli
began
ID Modeling and then worked for Donald Trump. The 12-page pamphlet
distributed was replete with typos and twice listed the re-use of fried
oil in
Fortaleza, Brazil. It also promoted Clear Blue 104 and Quinoa, "the
gold
of the Incas," for use in Egypt. In the crowd was Grenada's Ambassador
Angus Friday, who one week earlier squired Naomi Campbell through the
building.
To the best of our knowledge, no cell phones were hurled.
Klum at UN earlier in 2008, UNICEF's
ill-fated
North Lawn event
One story below in the Express Bar,
Caribbean music was thumping, rice and peas were served and
applications for
scholarship grants from the Trinidad and Tobago United Cultural
Association
were being distributed. This was the (keeping it) real UN, the working
UN,
moving in a parallel and separate world from the smoke and mirrors
upstairs.
In the second floor Delegates'
Lounge, the month-long absurdity of excluding non-permanent resident
journalists and also interns thawed, people mingled without incident
and word
was that the originator of the ban was the Secretary-General's chief of
communications, who has yet to communicate with the press.
All the way down in the basement, a
near-riot ensued with the Permanent Forum on the Indigenous came to an
end
without many want-to-be speakers being given the floor. They rebelled,
and
security was called. Upstairs, the Organization's headquarters was given over to models and snake oil
salesmen. Only at the UN.
Update
of May 18, 2008 -- As noted above in italics, Paoli Zampolli states
among other things that "Legal," presumably the UN Office of Legal
Affairs, approved his use of the UN Logo. Duly noted.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
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
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA
Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
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