The whole world has become dependent on the U.S. and the people who are paying for it live right here in the U.S.
When is this crap gonna stop? I say to hell with the lazy countries. They can kiss my red white and blue ass !!
Posted on 09/04/2002 2:05:44 PM PDT by yankeedame
France's Chirac backs tax to fight world poverty
SOUTH AFRICA: September 4, 2002
JOHANNESBURG - French President Jacques Chirac called for an international solidarity tax to fight world poverty this week, telling the Earth Summit in Johannesburg that current development aid was inadequate.
Chirac steered clear of the "Tobin Tax" on foreign exchange trading, a popular idea among anti-globalisation activists, but insisted on broad-based funding to help bridge the gap between rich and poor and finance sustainable growth. "Let us seek new forms of funding, for example a solidarity tax on the riches generated by globalisation," said Chirac, one of the world leaders in Johannesburg seeking an action plan to slash poverty while sparing the environment.
A Chirac aide spelled out possible areas for levies, telling journalists: "It could be a tax on airplane tickets, on carbon dioxide, on health products sold in industrialised countries, and indeed on international financial transactions."
Championed by non-governmental groups as a way both to raise funds and to deter financial speculation, the Tobin Tax has attracted much interest, particularly in Europe, but appears to have fallen out of favour lately.
European officials have noted possible problems with the tax proposed by U.S. Nobel Prize winner James Tobin in the 1970s. One is that financial markets would simply move to those countries that chose not to apply it.
FRANCE TO DOUBLE DEVELOPMENT AID
Putting his money where his mouth was, Chirac said France would over five years double the amount of development aid to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product, the level to which countries have committed themselves at past development meetings but which in most cases they have so far failed to achieve.
Chirac aides pointed to studies suggesting global development aid would have to be doubled to around $100 billion to fight poverty adequately and noted that sum still represented only a fraction of the world's annual trade and financial transactions.
The conservative leader, re-elected for five years in May, also repeated his call for the creation of a new "World Environment Organisation" which would be charged with monitoring adherence to environmental treaties.
Chirac says he has a passion for "green" issues and sees France having a special role in advancing the environmental cause. His detractors question his actual commitment, noting for example his decision in 1995 to hold nuclear tests in the Pacific.
Chirac urged leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development to send a signal from Johannesburg that the Kyoto protocol on fighting global warming - which the United States has rejected - be ratified, as France has already done.
Story by Gerard Bon
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
They apparently got it off of a place called PLANT ARK at www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm
((chirp))
((chirp))
The whole world has become dependent on the U.S. and the people who are paying for it live right here in the U.S.
When is this crap gonna stop? I say to hell with the lazy countries. They can kiss my red white and blue ass !!
My, oh my. A tax on health ... Well, if you don't want to pay it you could always just get sick and die.
Big ditto to that! What once was old is new again...
I'm reminded of the new global court, which claims jurisdiction over all the citizens of all the world's nations. But where's the representation? Here we have a judicial branch that's been propped into place but no representative branch. How much more un-democratic can it get? And this from the UN/Eurosnot crowd, those saintly shepards of the cause of the people.
He also said that the experience in his country was that in the past they would use the foreign aid dollars and go out and buy the most modern and latest and greatest farm equipment. For the type of farming they were doing this equipment was overkill. What they needed was something like a mechanical equivalent of a couple oxen. Typically, the more modern stuff was temperamental so you couldn't leave it out in the fields for a week or so without it breaking down due to exposure to the elements. These tractors were much harder to do maintenance on and when they needed a replacement part they didn't have the money to pay for it. So, these tractors would just end up sitting out rusting in their fields after working perhaps for one growing season. These other tractors were a much better choice.
The point here is that most solutions provided from idealists in the West to solve problems in Africa are usually not the correct solution for the problem at hand and far more expensive then the one which actually works.
Tyranny it is!
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