Taking Back September
Hoodies, light sweaters, and leather jackets dot the shoulders of New Yorkers. Flu shots, occasional chilly nights, and, allergies will leave some afflicted. For the rest of the northern Hemisphere this means autumn arriving, but for New Yorkers and international media, it means an annual two-week period of Midtown East madness known as the United Nations General Assembly. Leaders of of the world converge on the Big Apple, giving speeches that television media will play and replay, dissect and analyze. But the speeches themselves, while sometimes surprising, and even entertaining, do the least in the matter of reconciling state agendas with regional and global contenders. The true cause of the traffic nightmare, and the real foreign policy chess moves, occur over a rapid succession of serious, closed-door, bilateral or trilateral meetings between states, in sections of the United Nations, and its neighboring hotels, where the press are forbidden to follow....