Time to take the pulse of the world
By Megan C. Torrey
Every third week of September when you walk into the WACCT office you can usually find one or all of us live streaming video from the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. Each year world leaders from around the world make the obligatory trek into New York for the opening plenary session. This is always an extremely exciting and fascinating week. Every leader lays out the agenda and priorities for their country.
Following the opening of the GA you can get a sense of where the world is and where we are headed. You can see trends emerge and realignment in policies. It This is extremely valuable to the we do as a World Affairs Council. Watching the official states can be both informative and entertaining from the statement the historic statement last year of Mahmoud Abbas http://gadebate.un.org/68/palestine-state– followed Benjamin Netanyahu http://gadebate.un.org/68/Israel
Who is never one to be shy about criticizing the UN. Of course no one will ever forget Hugo Chavez and his devil comments aimed at U.S. President George W. Bush, in 2006.
This year President of the U.S. Barack Obama will address the United Nations and make his case for attacking ISIS in Syria and Iraq. At a time when U.S. power in the world is in question, it will be interesting to see how many leaders will speak in support of this action. Already there has been great focus on climate change as the GA is about to begin, I wonder how many leaders will mention combating climate change as a priority? What other issues will emerge and what It will be interesting to hear what other leaders will list as their? What do you think?
We watch live from WWW.un.org
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