Joe Higgins challenges Kofi Annan at Forum meeting

international | miscellaneous | other press

Wednesday October 20, 2004 21:34

by SP Member

On 14 October the Forum on Europe heard an address by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who had come to speak about planned reforms to the United Nations. All Party leaders were allowed to address comments to Kofi Annan. The following speech was made by Joe Higgins. Annan, reflecting the arrogance of all diplomats and members of the political elite these days, did not answer any of Joe’s questions or refer to any points made in his speech in the summation given to the Forum.

Joe Higgins TD:

“Secretary General, as a parliamentarian for the Socialist Party and member of the Committee for a Workers’ International, I represent a very different viewpoint to the political establishment, who you will mainly meet on your trip I presume. I represent in parliament, working class people and many people in relative poverty. Can I ask you, why should those people and the billions of working people and poor in our world, to whom you referred, place any hope for a better future in a reorganised United Nations, when two of its five permanent Security Council members can launch, and continue, an illegal imperialist conquest in Iraq, slaughtering in the process thousands of innocent people? And while all five permanent Security Council members, and many others, commit on a daily basis, thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of industrial workers to the design and creation of technologies whose sole purpose it is to incinerate ever greater numbers of people over greater distances and from greater distances. Wasting billions of resources, which, if redirected, could provide for example, clean waster, disease relief, clothes and shelter for the billions to whom you referred.”

save preference

Comments (1 of 1)

70 nobel prize winners for Kofi.

by iosaf

Fri Jan 28, 2005 12:29

These names are being publicised as supporting Kofi - coz you'll recognise them.

Peace -former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
Peace - Kim Dae-Jung, former South Korean president
Dismal science - Joseph Stiglitz.
Gunter Grass, - for writing great books and drawing toads and rats and lonely drummer boys.
Wangari Maatha - Peace
Toni Morrison, writer
Seamus Heaney for telling us about his mammy
and Elie Wiesel for telling us about his.

ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for being funky and not Stalin, former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias for being even more funky, South African anti-apartheid campaigner Bishop Desmond Tutu for meeting the catholic worker 11 o clock folk mass crew and saying no to trident, and former South African President F.W. de Klerk for stopping the supremacists getting the bomb and asking for the Mc Donalds to go on the corner of his apartheid era embassy to London so we could hang out in sleeping bags and boycott both at the same time.

The letter was organised by a foundation set up by billionaire commercial media magnate Ted Turner,
and in his pals sites, they list the above names as "most notable".

This sort of pisses me off.
You win the Nobel coz you're notable.
you don't get more notable Nobel prize winners.
so why aren't the 70 names online?

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Human Rights in Ireland

Lockdown Skeptics

Voltaire Network

Joe Higgins challenges Kofi Annan at Forum meeting

Comments (1 of 1)