kickAAS

He loves to go a chirac-ing

The President of France has started chiracing again. To chirac, according to KickAAS’s private dictionary, is to make high-sounding plans that have no chance of being carried out in order to distract from what is happening at home. President Chirac's
latest pan-planetary initiative (are you listening Mr Bush?) is to tax all weapons sales and corporate profits to help the Third World.

There is a much easier way M Chirac beause it's happening under your watch. Get rid of agriculture subsidies.That would save the West over $1 billion a DAY while giving poor countries a dramatic opportunity to develop crops like sugar and cotton that they can do efficiently but from which they are priced out of world markets at the moment because of immoral and uneconomic Western subsidies.

How to keep poor countries poor

Oh dear. The European Union is going to appeal against the World Trade Organisation's ruling that sugar subsidies broke international rules, according to the French Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard in Mauritius on Saturday.
Earlier this month the new EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said he wants all sides rich and poor to be winners during his period of office. If this is the first instance of that philosophy in practice then heaven help us.
Why can't the EU simply accept the WTO ruling that it was wrong to have been exporting up to four times more subsidised sugar onto world markets than is allowed? This would save EU taxpayers money and enable poor developing countries to enter the market on a level playing field. Is that too much to ask for?

For details of the implications of the WTO ruling read this from Oxfam which has played a leading role in the campaign.

Another false dawn?

There is very little activity on the subsidies front at the moment following the patched-up ending of the trade talks in Geneva.
However some developing countries feel, on reflection, that Geneva was a false dawn and that rich countries such as the United States actually gave very little away.