Tweeting the General Assembly

I've finally decided to take this techiness to a new level. I spent a
few days this week at the UN General Assembly (at the last minute
getting my hands on tickets to observe! Too bad not on Wednesday...).
It was pretty amazing to see so many presidents and to hear them
speak. And it was crazy to feel blase about hearing another president
speak. These are world leaders! For any single one of them I would
line up specially! And there I was, just listening to one after the
other.

So, in honor of this momentous occasion, I tweeted my thoughts. You
can follow me at www.twitter.com/suvihynynen. i think this is maybe
what twitter was made for, but I may be mistaken. Josh, any thoughts?

For those of you who don't want to go check out the twitter feed, i'll
give you a brief synopsis- every single president talked about climate
change, some of them sincerely (like the small island developing
states that are experiencing the effects now and are sinking) and
others were just getting on the bandwagon. All the presidents I saw
were male, although there were 5 female heads of state listed. FIVE
out of what, 195. Wow, we've got some work to do. The financial crisis
was also a major topic (understandably) and I could sense a bit of
anger I think towards the major world economies (US, GB, etc.),
because while housing prices and employment have been hit here, those
countries have just been devastated financially with food shortages
and loss of capital. (I tweeted some good quotes on that I think...
go check it out).

I don't know if it's bad that I wanted to see Robert Mugabe, but I
did. I've never seen a real live dictator before, and I wanted to see
what he would say when facing the world stage when he's been so
horrible to his own people. And what did he say? he blamed the
sanctions on Zimbabwe for the death children there. Other than that,
he was rather more timid than I expected.

Now, Hugo Chavez was something else. This man was comical and
charismatic. i can see why he's drawn a following. That doesn't mean
that I agree with him or his policies, but he was really fun to listen
to, joking about the Cuban delegate throwing a shoe at him, inviting
Obama to the Socialist club, pulling out a huge Karl Marx book and
reading from it, and concluding with a song.

It was also interesting to hear Benyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas
(Israel and Palestine, respectively) speak, about the same things. A
two state solution, reaching out to the other side in peace, defending
themselves in Gaza. The same things they've been talking about for the
last what, 40 years? I wonder if peace will ever be possible there.

So, this week I saw presidents. It both overwhelming, and at the same
time underwhelming. But more than anything, it made me want to do
something important with my life, and in some way change the world and
not jsut talk about it. Like Asha, this incredible Somali woman
honored by the Clinton Global Initiative and my org WOW (come to the
conference and here her speak Oct. 10th in Utah! www.wowinfo.org) for
her peacebuilding work there.