UN general debate 68

Anyone else noticed when you walk into a bar an ask them to turn the channel to C-SPAN everyone looks at you like an asshole? Just me?

The 68th UN general debates are going on right now. The Leaders of every UN member addressing the general assembly for half an hour to an hour or so. Iran has quite the new president. Quite the articulate speaker. My Favorite so far however was yesterdays address by H.E Mr. Jose Mujica Cordano of Uruguay.

Live stream and UN video archive can be found here.

http://gadebate.un.org/

Most people walk into bars to get away from 'it'.
Sports, or something funny are typical bar TV.

Most bars have the same rule we have here: "No politics, or religion."
Leads to too many arguments.

If people want to subject themselves to something 'serious', they should go home for that.

I would much rather watch this sort of thing in a public setting. Otherwise I might find myself talking to the TV. I used to like watching Gaddafi at these things. Also, any members from the istan family of countries could be counted on for some colorful pronouncements.

Man the president of Georgia went on a pretty fierce fiery anti-russian rant that was pretty entertaining - I think he'd been looking for the excuse for awhile.

A bunch of the island nations of the Pacific spoke yesterday. They made some pretty pointed jabs at the US and the general inaction by members of the international community to deal with what is for them an existential threat (rising sea levels). Here are some links to little one page summeries. When the leaders of the world speak I personally think its worth the time to listen. You know, what with democracy and all.

I'm sure everyone raised home from the Bar to tune in on their own private TVs. Right.

http://gadebate.un.org/68/micronesia-federated-states
http://gadebate.un.org/68/palau

The president of Bolivia spoke of his countries experience with large multinationals and the effects of nationalizing their carbon reserves.

http://gadebate.un.org/68/bolivia-plurinational-state

Interesting Ideas floated by pretty much everyone who's not tied to the currant economic models. More of the same from those that are.

Well, I slept in and missed Iraq and Pakistan this morning.

UK, Russian Federation, and China coming up hot by Noon pacific today. Those should be interesting - then I think I'm clocking out.

A good bit discussed the last several days - I guess everyone agreed on sundays off but the debate continues tomorrow and wraps up tuesday.

In addition to most everyone weighing in on the humanitarian crisis, civil war, and breach of international law in Syria, their was a fair bit of finger pointing about the United States not being party to a number of treaties and a general lambasting of the western world to not confront climate change. Some nations spoke to their countries inability to meet the millennial development goals.

Here the Prime Minister of Bangladesh weighs in on a 1 degree temperature change, global sea rise, and climate migrants

http://gadebate.un.org/68/bangladesh

Here The foreign minister of Sudan laments his presidents denial of visa to speak for himself and states his belief that UN headquarter should be moved away from the United States (this has been echoed by several others in this season including the Plurinational State of Bolivia )

http://gadebate.un.org/68/sudan

The Prime Minister of Niger discusses his countries inability to reach the millennial development goals despite "efforts taken in different sectors" to which I'm assuming he means dealing with the oil and mining interests.

http://gadebate.un.org/68/niger

There has been some talk of the ongoing crisis in the Central African Republic and a slew of calls to end the embargo on Cuba with no one speaking on behalf of maintaining them.

I only caught the afternoon session today - which is a shame because I wanted to hear what Canada had to say for itself.

All of the Ministers today addressed the assembly in english. I felt that the closing statement of the day by Grenada was very articulate and comprehensive - it even dropped the buzz bomb 'Agenda 21'. Hungary and Saint Lucia offered some very interesting, forward lookings, and up beat sounding contributions

http://gadebate.un.org/68/grenada

http://gadebate.un.org/68/saint-lucia
http://gadebate.un.org/68/hungary

Statement summaries and video should be up shortly