More Good News/Bad News

[andrewducker]

    * Trade discussions in Hong Kong later this year should yield an end date to agricultural subsidies.
    * Britain is to host a 1 November meeting on climate change, to assess progress.
    * $3bn agreed for Palestinian Authority for investment in infrastructure.
    * Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo described the deal as a "success".
    * G8 commits to training 20,000 peacekeepers for Africa.
    * African leaders to commit to democracy and good governance as part of the deal.
    * Debts of the 18 poorest countries to be forgiven.
    * Universal access to anti-HIV drugs in Africa by 2010.
    * US now accepted global warming was an issue.

But on the other hand, there's still a lot of debt out there and an awful lot of work to do, and the date for ending agricultural subsidies will doubtless be in about 10 years and phased out over a further 20.

Still, at least the problems are being acknowledged and movement is being made in the right directions.

Comments

[code-delphi.livejournal.com]

Cynicism aside, it *does* give some grounds for hope that things might move in the right direction. Of course, there's no choice as far as climate change goes (already too late to mitigate what will happen, but at least it won't be exacerbated).

Helping Palestine is brilliant, and the least they (especially the US) can do.

Giving Africa a hand is... surprising. No obvious reason to help (from a national self-interest point of view), though the millions with AIDS is getting a little hard for leaders to ignore. Perhaps the US and EU sees Africa is an expanding market, that'd be ideal to capture... can't buy McDonalds if they're all dead.

Or perhaps it really is genuine, heart-felt altruism! Maybe one day it will be.