THE FAILED DOHA TRADE TALKS

The proposed Cairns Group summit meeting to be held in Cairns on 20-22 September 2006 is at best a face-saving exercise by the Federal Government for its failure to recognise the futility of the WTO's globalisation of world markets.

It is now almost a certainty that the Doha round of trade talks, which have been on life support for the last few years, can officially be declared as dead.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy announced on 24 July 2006 that he would recommend to the WTO General Council that negotiations be suspended for an indefinite period following the breakdown of talks between Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States in Geneva.

The key issue was the unwillingness of the US and the European Union, who blamed each other for the impasse, to reduce barriers to agricultural imports from the developing world.

Australia's Trade Minister Mark Vaile has been attempting to keep the round alive for years but it is now clear that the major players, the United States and Europe have failed to agree on the matter of farm subsidies and the talks have collapsed. Its seems as though the repeated deferrals were simply a ploy to give the likes of our Trade Minister hope while he concluded the Australian-American Free Trade Agreement and it is now apparent that at no time did either the U.S. or the E.U. intend to make concessions.

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http://www.johnston-independent.com/doha.html#.

Selwyn Johnston

Leichhardt Independent – 2007
Federal Electorate – Far North Queensland

It's unlikely that Doha would succeed without the USA and Europe being willing to stand up to their agricultural lobbies, but you're right that Australia's role in the Cairns group has waned to the detriment of our interests and of poor exporting countries.

"Mr Howard has never been a committed multilateralist, preferring the old-style approach of face-to-face negotiations with individual countries rather than working towards wider goals" - herein lies part of the problem.

Whilst having great respect for Graham Cooke as a journalist and writer, and even congratulating him on his report, I believe that our govt is right in ignoring the EU and doing its own deals.

Globilisation is NOT about helping poorer economies raise their standards of living - it is about bringing "first world" nations back into SERFDOM. The floating of our dollar by the World's Greatest Treasurer, in reality, halved the value of our economy in a very short space of time, as it did in other economies, espcially the US and UK. Not to mention many poorer countries.

Both that Treasurer and his PM were doing the bidding of their ideological masters in Zurich and Brussells. They are both now seen for what they were - though I must confess to being so mesmerised by their glam back in the early 80's, I even joined their party and was on Gordon Bilney's election team. Silly me!

I went oevr to the Libs and found elitism, cronyism and a sense of "we are borne to rule," so left. I despair for our nation - poor fella my country! We have been coralled into a Two Prty system and it doiesn't matter who we vote for - we are only going to see further erosions of our standards of living.

Our politicians say only what their script writers advise and only what they think we want to hear. Our Press is controlled by powerful interets and it is hard for journalist or academic to speak out, let alone speak the truth - like many, they are effectively gagged by their need to pay the mortgage, feed their family and hold down their jobs.

The real issues are WTO, IMF, World Bank, G8, EU, Brussels and Zurich - all aparatus of a so far successful attempts to move back to European domination - The Old World Order. theyare the modern day followers and proponents of the Hapsburg Financial Empire and Royal families of Europe.

They regard the USA and Australia, among others, as an anethma to their "old fashioned ideas of Empire and loyal subjectivity. Howard and Vaile probably see trhat, I don't know for sure, but I agree with their actions in this respect, if not many other of their policies.

Globalisation and WTO et al, are the apparatus by which they intend to bring free nations like ours to heel. Our National Debt virtually guarrantess this and since our dollar was floated, the value oif our economy was at one point halved. Govts then had to borrow big and we became servant to the lenders of Europe, Japan, China, Saudi, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and teh UK interests. they own 80% of our economy presently, and teh USA is even worse off than us - in debt to teh same people, thanks to Kissinger and Nixon floating teh world's strongest currency in 1973. Now they are $39 Trillion in debt and sinking fast.

Kissinger & Nixon sold their nation out to European interests, as did Keating and Hawke. Level playing field - ha, ask any Australian Dairy Farmer about that. Yes we are on the level, but Europe has a steep incline right in front of their crooked goal posts.