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On my wall hangs the original of a cartoon of 12 June, 1999 by the FT’s Ingram Pinn. It is of an African bent over double by a burden of debt, while G8 leaders sit at a table perched precariously on top of the burden – ignoring the suffering African. The impoverished man is surrounded by campaigners, hollering at the G8 and with banners proclaiming: “Cancel the Debts” “Jubilee 2000”. Behind that cartoon lies a story.
Jeremy Smith: 28th June The Council of Europe – the not-the-European-Union organisation of wider Europe (47 countries at last count) – is best known for the work of its Court of Human Rights, and has a general remit to promote democracy and human rights. It is also in the news just now because its Parliamentary Assembly has voted unanimously against a general banning of the burqa or nijab, and criticized the recent Swiss law against the building of minarets. (By the way, the football bit is at the end of this post!)
Ann Pettifor and Maz Kessler: 7th June, Huffington Post It’s not often that you get to sit in the same room with a group of world leaders and hear their wisdom, ideas and experiences at the personal and political levels. We’ve just enjoyed that privilege. And the world leaders were all women.
Léogane is a medium-sized town in south-west Haiti where Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first emperor of Haiti (1804-06), is said to have married the future empress Marie-Claire Heureuse, with Toussaint L’Ouverture as best man. Léogane achieved a far sadder fame on 12th January this year, as the town at the epicentre of the giant earthquake which devastated much of the country. About 80% of the houses and buildings of the town were destroyed or badly damaged, with probably thousands dead. It was therefore logical that Léogane should be chosen, together with its three neighbouring communes, by Haiti’s Minister of the Interior and Territorial Authorities, Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé (great name for a politician) for a new international local government initiative. I am proud to play a part.
The Middle East is known to Asians as the Middle West. This is the name given to a meeting (the West Asian and North Africa forum) convened by HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan with the backing of the Nippon Foundation of Japan. Ann Pettifor is in Amman as a guest of HRH Prince Hassan, and is one of the opening speakers at the three day forum. The forum exists, in the words of Prince Hassan, to “promote collective regional action to resolve conflicts, to promote good governance, to raise living standards, to protect the environment – to face challenges that no nation can tackle alone. You can read more here >
By Jeremy Smith, 5th June 2010 It’s nice when the light of understanding flashes in your brain – and yesterday I had to thank Professor Adam Tooze, an expert on Germany at Yale, for turning on my halogen bulb… Though fully aware of the (how do I put it?) counter-Keynesianism of the German government and political establishment, I couldn’t help being puzzled by their approach to the Greek crisis, which seemed almost calculated to damage the European Union.
By Ann Pettifor: April 25th Huffington Post The humiliating surrender of Greece’s economic autonomy came just last Friday, 23 April, 2010. The democratically elected Prime Minister, George Papandreou transferred to unelected officials in Brussels and Washington the power to determine Greece’s fiscal policy. In other words, decisions about taxation, and how tax revenues should be spent. In a 26 April interview with the Financial Times on the island of Rhodes, the Prime Minister, George Papandreou admitted his country had accepted “a partial surrender of sovereignty”. Our struggle” he went on to say, “will be to recover our autonomy and liberate Greece from the surveillance imposed by the forces of conservatism”.
Back in 1765 Bostonians such as James Otis and Samuel Adams regarded “taxation without representation as a form of tyranny”. Today, a nation that served as the cradle of western democracy will effectively be governed by remote, invisible and unaccountable officials. Jeremy Smith April 19 I’m sitting here in London with fingers crossed - on Friday I’m due to fly to Chicago, a city I haven’t been to since I hitch-hiked round the States, um, quite a few years ago… I keep looking at the web to see what mood the Icelandic Gods are in, and whether they will relent in time to let me fly. My reason for travel – our world organisation of cities, UCLG, has its Executive Bureau meeting there, at the invitation of Mayor Daley, and I am helping with the planning of UCLG’s City Leaders Summit, hosted by Mexico City in November. Meanwhile I have been watching the amazing BBC TV documentary “Welcome to Lagos” which looks at the hard and enterprising lives of that mega-city’s poor, including the scavengers on the city’s rubbish dumps… an echo of the dust heaps evoked by Dickens in “Our Mutual Friend”, plus a practical demonstration of how to live the EU’s waste hierarchy (reuse, recycle…). Some think today’s Lagos is the reality of tomorrow’s city, and that we should accept and celebrate this. I am not convinced by this argument, however much we admire the resilience of the Lagos-ians, and the commitment of their mayor. A few weeks ago, we highlighted the European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life, co-authored by Ai Director Jeremy Smith for the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR). On issues like financial (de)regulation we have been quite critical of the European Union’s role – see our recent Iceland posts. So it is good to record positive news - the European Commission has just announced its own gender equality “Charter” to coincide with International Women’s Day. It is in English, French and German. The EU has really been in the lead over many years, in cajoling its member states into taking legislative and practical action for equality. This new “Charter” (which is really more of a declaration) highlights in particular the issue of gender violence and equal pay for work of equal value. |
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