As President Bush addressed the United Nations Wednesday, a new advertising campaign blasting the world organization was going on just outside the UN's New York City headquarters.
While the UN began celebrating its 60th anniversary, signs reading "Broken Promises: The United Nations at 60" were plastered on locations surrounding the Turtle Bay building.
The advertisements for a new, in-depth documentary on UN failures were purchased by the Citizens United Foundation (view the trailer here). The ad campaign was timed to begin Wednesday as 170 heads of state gathered in NYC for the United Nations World Summit.
The ads are located on a truck circling the block just outside the UN building, on a ferry on the East River, and on a billboard banner across 42nd Street from the UN. (Click the pictures below to see larger versions.)
The documentary, Broken Promises, tells of scandal, corruption and fraud at the UN. According to Citizens United, the movie "details a litany of the UN's failures to resolve human rights abuses, improve economic and social development and enhance world security."
Narrated and co-produced by actor Ron Silver and written and directed by Kevin Knoblock (Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die), Broken Promises delivers first-hand accounts from genocide survivors and government officials about the United Nations' impotence in defending peace and human rights.
Sources close to Silver say that Silver feels that this documentary delivers the clear message that if the U.N. is to ever grow into a credible world organization, top to bottom reform is necessary. The life-long liberal, turned "September 11th Republican," reportedly also feels that to date, the U.N. has failed to deliver on virtually every aspect of its charter mandate.
Citizens United President David Bossie said of the UN's 60th anniversary, "This is certainly no happy birthday for the UN. At sixty, the UN is at a crossroads. Unless the United Nations adopts sweeping policy changes and conducts a thorough in-house cleaning, it will render itself completely obsolete."
The film also offers an examination of the continuing corruption within the United Nations. In a phone interview with Human Events, Bossie noted that Oil-for-Food is not the only financial scandal the UN must address. The video includes an appearance by Donald Trump who, according to Citizens United, "offered the Secretary General an alternative renovation plan that would potentially save the UN $1 billion on its plan to modernize the UN headquarters. . . . Trump's offer was refused, a move he labels 'something worse than incompetence.'"
According to Bossie, many other scholars and officials are featured in the documentary, including former Sen. George Mitchell, one time Senate Majority Leader; Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General; Rep. Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader; Claudia Rosett, investigative journalist; and Rep. Dan Burton, House International Relations Committee.
A trailer for the documentary is available online. The DVD is available for purchase at HEBookservie.com.
