April 11, 2009 – The New Dark Age

According to Ban, the HOPE II legislation provides ‘a golden opportunity to bring in investors and create hundreds of thousands of jobs’. He wants the aHaitian authorities to ‘work together with donors to undertake a targeted programme to create export zones’, and to submit it to a donors’ conference on Haiti to be held in Washington DC in mid-April.

The British solidarity organisation, the Haiti Support Group (HSG), which has worked closely with progressive civil society organisations in Haiti since 1992, is dismayed that the United Nations is throwing its considerable weight behind a development strategy that has already been proposed, tried, and found to have failed in Haiti.

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7 April, 2009

NATO jubilee summit is over. The world leaders and prime ministers, who gathered in Strasbourg and Kehl, welcomed Albania and Croatia as new members of the alliance and agreed to establish a NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan within ISAF to oversee higher level training for the Afghan National Army, and training and ring for the Afghan National Police. Apart from this, the allies agreed to resume formal meetings of the NATO-Russia Council despite ‘the remaining differences’. Though Turkey was opposed to it, the participants of the summit managed to maintain visibility of reunion and elect the Danish premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance’s new chief.

The NATO summit took place after the G20 leaders had met in London to discuss measures to fight the global financial crisis which still is far from over. After all jubilee celebrations were completed, the U.S. and the EU started negotiations focusing on economy issues. That is why such remarkable military and political event was held between the two economic forums (probably, not to bother Barack Obama to fly overseas once again).

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