It Must Be Time For An Assembly.

Technically the 66th (2011) meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) began last Tuesday (13/9/11) with low level committee and plenary meetings. However it is today (19/9/11) when things really start to get serious with a high level meeting to discuss resolution 65/238 which covers non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and tobacco smoking related diseases. This meeting will continue into tomorrow (20/9/11) when there will also be a high level meeting on resolution 65/160 which covers issues of drought, desertification and poverty. This meeting will inevitably expand to include the current east Africa food crisis/famine and the issues surrounding global warming/climate change. There will then be a general debate from Wednesday (21/9/11) until the following Tuesday (27/9/11). As a general debate this will cover a wide range of diverse topics including human rights and the eradication of racism. However the big topic will be Palestinian statehood with the leaders of both Israel and Palestine addressing the meeting on Friday (23/9/11).

Apart for the Dale Farm eviction* Britain's opening salvo for the meeting has included seven arrests in an Islamic terror plot in Birmingham to raise the issue of Islamic terrorism. There has also been the news that British doctors have successfully separated two Sudanese conjoined twins, Ritaj & Rital Gaboura after a series of complex surgical operations that began in April 2011. The big change since last years UNGA is that the east African nation of Sudan has separated into two with a predominately Muslim north and a predominately Christian and oil rich south. South Sudan has become the UN's newest member and this is Britain's way of both welcoming them and claiming responsibility. Obviously the separation of Sudan reveals Britain's intentions towards Nigeria and east Africa including Libya. However the aspect Britain was hoping everyone would focus on is the widely held, in Britain at least, belief that Israel has been manipulating the Sudanese civil war which led to the separation, particularly the situation in Darfur to act as a metaphor for the Israel/Palestine conflict. So Britain is hailing the operation as a complete success in order to firstly check to see who else shares that belief and to throw it's support behind plans for Palestinian statehood especially one that would see the natural gas rich Gaza become part of Israel.

In other news my father is this evening attending a special service at Saint Benets - my grandmother's Welsh Church. There he will meet up with Lloyd Lloyd the ex-Barrister who acted as a named person in my grandmother's powers of attorney. They will be joined by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. There shouldn't be anything too dramatic about this it's just it sounds so strange I think I'd better mention it to confirm the rumour.


*In the last two hours Britain's High Court has issued a restraining order which prevents the eviction of Dale Farm until a full court hearing can take place on Friday (23/9/11). I'm not aware of the full details of the case but from what I can gather the issue is how the eviction will take place rather the if the eviction can take place. So this is just a delaying tactic partly in the hope that the activists at Dale Farm will get bored and go home and partly to force the whole issues of ethnic cleansing, the Nazi Holocaust and the clearance of unauthorised settlements to the top of the agenda on the day the leaders of both Israel and Palestine address the UNGA.