Priyanka and Post 2015 Goals

Priyanka Chopra appeared yesterday at a United Nations function in Mumbai to launch the mobile phone app of the manipulative "One World Survey."

The OWS is manipulative because it pretends to be consulting people on international development priorities but actually excludes from its list of six anodyne goals all serious problems afflicting development. 

Predictably, of the six choices offered by the OWS, "the votes so far have indicated" strongest support for "better education" followed closely by "better job opportunities" and "better healthcare.

Quite oblivious to the snake oil she was peddling, Priyanka twittered prettily on about how the Survey was meant for "the most marginalized communities in India," how it was "truly groundbreaking" that with a simple phone call "people can take a virtual seat at the UN to participate in a global conversation on a road-map for the future," and how "for the first time I feel we have an opportunity at hand to think ahead, think together yet individually and have a truly impactful plan for a future without poverty and suffering."

A collection of UN local brass with truly Dickensian names (Grande, Arsenault, Pimple) chimed in appreciatively.

If anyone is able to use the phone app to write in new goals, I suggest the following:

• Make Tax havens illegal. They have drained trillions of dollars from poor countries.

• Legitimize all "illicit drugs" so as to drive organized crime out of the racket and cut the largest source of funds flowing into Tax Havens (about $500 billion annually).

• Rich countries should stop taxing the products of poor more than they do that of other affluent nations.

• Rich countries should stop paying billions of dollars in subsidies to their own farmers and thereby making it impossible for farmers in poor countries to survive.

• Rich countries should not insist that their "development aid" is spent on their own companies and supplies.

• UN documents should not lie about the causes of "resource wars" in developing countries; the truth might stop rich countries backing their corporate interests in violent conflicts that have killed millions of poor people.