Burma

I wrote to Keane a couple of days ago because I noticed that he has some stunning photos on his Flickr page, I was asking if I could post a link to his set on Burmese monks here on KokoroD. I didn't write a post about it once he replied, but Keane (who used to intern at the magazine, and has since moved on to jobs at the UNCHR and law school at Georgetown) posted an interesting note on Facebook about Burma and what it's like working in the U.N.. Which means I can just post what he wrote. (I love being an editor sometimes...) I'll clean up the links and add stories from the mag later, but thanks Keane, passing the mike:

"Happy Birthday, Gandhi

I saw this video by chance while browsing through YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8zOZX3Gtus), and I was impressed. It has been almost six month now, that I have been sitting behind the usually closed doors--okay, cubicles--of UN diplomacy. I am tired of being an intern. When you have an interesting job, school feels like you're not doing anything real; when you have a boring (unpaid) job, school feels fresh, the chance to learn something new every lecture.

But I appreciate the chances I've had to watch this brutally slow and way overtalkative beast inaction. It seems like a necessary experience, to see just how much talk and how little action goes on, and it is infuriatingly inspirational. Watching forty countries come together to discuss something like corruption in the same room is such a hopeful scene, so full of mankind's potential, that it makes you desperately want to figure out how to make this work, if only to honor the sacrifices that many in the organization really do make.

Which is why I was so impressed, when I saw this video. It was just another guy with an accent in another one of them conference rooms, but all of a sudden he starts saying the things I keep hoping someone will say at these ridiculous meetings. And I wanted to congratulate him, find out which country's delegation he's from, maybe find a way to get his e-mail, and just send a note saying thank you, thank you for at least sounding like the way the UN should sound like.

So I looked up the Human Rights Council video archives for today, and began clicking through each of the speeches made by each of the delegations. None of them was him. Until I got to the very bottom, and the video came up on RealPlayer, and there was the guy, making that great speech. But he wasn't from any delegation, or representing any country, wasn't actually working for the UN. His name is Leon Saltiel, and he is the Director of Communucations for UN Watch, a group that basically reports on everything that's at fault with the UN.

I wish you had been someone else, Mr. Saltiel, but still, thank you. I think Gandhi would have been proud."

More of Keane's photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shumshot/sets/72157601495784406/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shumshot/sets/