“The United Nations Is Beyond Reform…It Has to Be Reinvented”–Fmr. UN General Assembly President Mig

[CHIMO]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re back in New York, broadcasting from our Democracy Now! studios after a week in Bolivia, where we brought you on-the-ground coverage of the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Thousands of indigenous leaders, environmental activists and grassroots organizers met for three days of talks in Cochabamba. Working groups on seventeen topics discussed a variety of issues, and a summary of their conclusions was put into a six-page Agreement of the People.


The agreement calls on developed countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2020, recommends the creation of an international climate tribunal, and calls for an international referendum on the environment to coincide with the next Earth Day on April 22nd, 2011. The government of Bolivia has pledged to bring the results of the World Peoples’ Conference into the negotiating halls of the United Nations and to highlight the demands at the next UN climate meeting in Mexico in December.


One of the higher-profile participants at the Cochabamba conference was the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto. A Roman Catholic priest from Nicaragua, d’Escoto served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega’s government from 1979 to 1990. In September of 2008, he was elected to serve as president of the UN General Assembly. A year later, he held a ceremony at the presidential palace in La Paz honoring Bolivian President Evo Morales, naming him World Hero of Mother Earth.


On the last of the summit, I had a chance to sit down with Father Miguel d’Escoto on Earth Day for an extended conversation. I began by asking him for his thoughts on the Bolivia climate summit.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/26/the_united_nations_is_beyond_reformit
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2010/april/video/dnB20100426a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:13:33

[htuttle]

1. The world has changed a lot since the end of WWII

Imagine if the Governors of the original 13 colonies had veto power over everything that Congress passed.

[tom_paine]

2. Read up on Poland's "Librum Veto"

Talk about a bunch of corrupt rich aristocratic assholes ruining their own nation for petty, short-term gain!

Google it sometime.