Chicanery at home and abroad.

A panel appointed by Pascal Lamy, Chief of the WTO has published its recommendations incorporating many changes, including investment, currencies and climate change. TOI, 26 April. However, in a sly effort to help western countries continue their unfair superiority in international trade it suggests that poor and developing countries should be given flexibility depending on need and that too for a fixed period. Fearing that it will be treated the same as a developed country India has immediately rejected the report saying," It is not WTO's report. It is WTO Director General's report. We will oppose the proposals." Started in 2001 the Doha round has been stuck since the meeting in Cancun in Mexico in 2003 broke up in acrimony with poorer countries accusing the rich ones of subterfuge and bad faith. After World War II western countries took control of every international institution and imposed their will on South America, Africa and Asia in an effort to keep us subjugated. The IMF, the World Bank, the UN Security Council are all controlled by whites. China has a seat at the Security Council but does not count because it is an uncivilised and barbaric bandit country which tramples its own citizens while trying to divert them by military jingoism against its neighbors. Western countries, especially the US, supported pet dictators, like Mobutu Sese Seko, who allowed them to loot the mineral wealth of their countries. At the Uruguay round of trade talks under GATT developing countries were bullied into signing a pernicious treaty which allowed them to export commodities but not manufactured products, devastating their industries, especially in Africa. Now developing countries have realised that no treaty is much better than a bad one and are refusing to be browbeaten. Meanwhile trade between developing countries has risen by 3 times, from just 8% in 1990 to 24% of global trade in 2011. This is projected to rise to 34% by 2020. Trade between the rich north and the poor south has grown from 33% in 1990 to 38% in 2011 while trade between developed countries, with each other, has shrunk from 56% to 36%. The rich countries are getting increasingly worried and would like to lock in an unequal treaty which would allow them to maintain their exploitation of developing countries well into the future. Meanwhile NGOs are helping High Net-worth Individuals with their charitable donations. TOI, 27 April. India has one NGO for every 400 people. Why does a country which has a $1.9 trillion economy, is growing in excess of 5% and boasts of bring a BRICS member need so many NGOs? This being India there is an urgent need to study how many are controlled by politicians and whether the so called charity by HNIs is just an underhand way of bribing the villains. With so much chicanery life is so exciting.