|
 Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, and visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called Tuesday, July 7, for a more "democratic world order" that would give emerging economies a larger voice in international finance and justice affairs.
The two presidents promised to take the campaign, called the Alliance for Change, to the Group of Eight, G8 summit in Italy, which started this Wednesday. "Brazil and France have the same discourse, the discourse of change," Sarkozy said at a joint news conference after a more than hour-long meeting with president Lula.
"We want change so that there is more justice, more balance .... We demand change in world growth." Sarkozy said the two would press their project with other leaders in Italy and were seeking a private meeting with President Barack Obama.
"We are going to try to convince our partners and our friends ... of the need to in a way profit from the opportunity of the crisis which has caused such suffering, to undertake the changes we need," Sarkozy said. The goal, he said, is that "nothing will be like before the crisis".
Brazil has long argued that G-8, which brings together the leading western industrialized nations, has grown too small for a globalized world and emerging giants like Brazil, China and India (BRIC group) have a growing share and are more firmly rooted since the start of the economic downturn.
"The multilateral system was conspicuously unrepresentative and lacking in coherence. The ability of international institutions to respond to the serious challenges of today's world needs to be reinforced and their mandates reviewed," the presidents wrote in a joint essay carried Tuesday in newspapers in France and Brazil and the New York Times.
They said the UN Security Council, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should give more weight to developing economies.
Lula was blunter in an interview published Tuesday in the French daily Le Monde: "The G-8 no longer has a reason to exist," in economic terms, he said.
No further details surfaced about the Alliance for Change, or who would take part of the initiative. However plans were announced to work together in several unnamed African countries on projects not yet announced.
"We think the 21st century is the century when countries must make a difference in Africa" said Lula. He added developing countries deserve better treatment in the sports realm, too, pushing Rio de Janeiro's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games.
Further on the Brazilian president said that the US dollar would remain important for decades as an international reserve currency but he believed it was possible to develop new trade relations, not dependent on the dollar.
In the interview with Le Monde, Lula said the world's dependence on the dollar was not a good thing and alternatives were needed. Debate on the issue would last a very long time, however.
"The dollar will still be important for decades. Replacing it in world trade is not a simple thing. But Brazil believes in the possibility of new trade relations not dependent on the dollar," Lula was quoted by Le Monde.
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
And why does the other liar and cheater, Robbing Hook, doesnt agree to reduce by the same rate, the import taxes on european and/or French cars ????????
Hopefully you get the picture right !
2 cheaters & liars will always VERBALLY & DIPLOMATICALLY AGREE...but nothing will change in reality !