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At UN, Tonga's Prayers & MDG Hoopla, NGO Follies
from Ground Zero to Nauru
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Muse
UNITED NATIONS,
September 14 -- There are many
free-riders on the UN's anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals. Some
were on
display on Friday, at a press conference packed with insiders who
applauded at
banal lines from, for example, Ambassador of Madagascar, Zina
Andrianarivelo,
who previously worked for-profit with the Henri Fraise Fils & Co
group. He
appeared at the second annual press conference to announce an MDG
festival.
There was only one problem, asked by Inner City Press: the
same group had made
the same announcement on September 12, 2007.
Then, they
had promised to hold the
MDG festival on June 2008. It never happened; nothing happened. And yet
they
re-appeared on September 12, 2008, with a congratulatory entourage,
making yet
more promises. There is no time to waste, they said. Then why did they
in one view waste a
year?
MDGs banner in Davos: how many hangers-on?
Among
the other NGOs in the UN last week were a group of praying Christians,
mostly seemingly from Texas and Oklahoma, at an event strangely
sponsored by
the Mission of Tonga. The prayers filled up Conference Room 4, and each
chose a
flag and country and directed their prayers in that direction.
The Prayer
Initiative folks, on September 11, not
only did a "Prayer Cruise around Manhattan Island" on the Circle
line, they also bussed down to Ground Zero, and did a "Prayer Drive"
around it. On the morning of September 11, while the names were being
read out,
the UN held a press conference by the (Sandy) Weill Cornell Medical
Center -- about bringing people back from
the dead. Click
here
for video.
Much in
need of prayer is Nauru, built up by bird excrement that was
subsequently
chipped away and sold as phosphorus for matches. A
representative of this soon to be called
victim of climate change said that even the once a week flight has been
suspended, so that the aircraft doesn't get repossessed. Perhaps Tonga
and its
prayers can revive the flights if not the island.
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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USA
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Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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