New World Blogger

FT.com:

Trade conference becomes more pragmatic


Delegates to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) this weekend in São Paulo will be surprised by the shift in focus from the anti-establishment rhetoric of yesteryear to pragmatic, free-market economics.


Representatives, mostly from developing nations, will learn how to combat poverty by slashing capital costs and meeting consumer preferences in wealthy nations. Forty years after its foundation, Unctad is preaching supply-side economics.

"We don't have the least problem with the idea of [a] market economy but for it to work you need to create a supply-side capability," Rubens Ricupero, secretary- general of Unctad, told the FT. "Unctad is still seen as a 1970s organisation but we have changed a lot. Today we are more pragmatic and emphasise export-led devel opment."

This week the Group of Eight summit said it accepted that developing countries should be allowed to liberalise at their own pace.

"American interrogators can legally violate a US ban on the use of torture abroad as part of President George W. Bush's fight against terrorism, US government lawyers have said.

The lawyers concluded in a draft report drawn up last year at the request of senior military commanders overseeing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that legal statutes against torture could not override Mr Bush's inherent powers.

The revelations are bound to increase international concerns about how the US has conducted its interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at what level any abuses may have been authorised."



Financial Times

Bad news outweighs the good for Brazil, FT.com:

Brazil's financial markets lost ground after Opec announced a lower-than-expected output increase, heightening fears that rising oil prices could derail a worldwide economic recovery.

Currently high oil prices took the shine off approval by the lower house of Congress of a conservative rise in Brazil's minimum wage. The vote was seen as a test of the government's legislative clout and ability to keep to a fiscally sound package.

Civil servants' pensions are pegged to the minimum wage and any rise has a direct impact on public coffers. Investors were paying close attention to the vote for assurance that IMF-agreed budget goals would not be put at risk.

Is poverty an injustice or a misfortune?

The misfortune of being born poor becomes an injustice if the government does not attempt to remedy this situation when it can. The question of disadvantaged birth is already incorporated into many welfare systems. But these systems are often not available to citizens of the third world. Instead, many if not most people in the “first world” will simply consider themselves fortunate and argue that it is a misfortune to be born into more precarious conditions. Likewise, even those in the upper classes in third world nations many times prefer to contend themselves with marveling at their own “fortune” and be thankful that they were not born into the misfortunate that most of their compatriots endure daily. Most of the people born in these countries do not have any chance for upward mobility, and must simply accept their condition. The misfortune of those born into lower positions becomes an injustice as those who can do nothing to help them.

What surprises me the most is that even a Pakistani was killed -- after all, Pakistan is known for breaking with India mostly along Muslim-Hindu lines.

"Saudi siege ends after Briton's body dragged"
"At least nine Saudis and seven foreigners have been killed.

A statement purportedly from Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was posted on Islamist Internet sites claiming responsibility for the attack, the third on foreigners in less than a month in the birthplace of Islam.

An American, a Briton, an Egyptian, two Filipinos, an Indian and a Pakistani were killed in the initial attack, along with two Saudis and seven security force members, the security sources said."