The Americas Summit

Compare the earlier post about Bush's message at the summit:

President Bush acted Monday to bar people involved in corruption from the United States, a move that coincides with one of his goals at a summit meeting of 34 Western Hemisphere nations.

Corruption of public institutions hampers U.S. efforts to promote security and strengthen democratic institutions and free-market systems, Bush said in a proclamation the White House released at the two-day summit, which began Monday.

He said the United States is acting to restrict international travel and prevent entry into the country of people who have committed, participated in or benefited from corruption conducted while performing public functions.

The restrictions apply, he said, when corruption has had a "serious adverse" effect on the international activity of U.S. business, U.S. foreign aid goals, the security of the United States against transnational crime and terrorism or the stability of democratic nations and institutions.

With Venezuela's Chavez:

Another thorn in Bush's side at Monterrey is Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. He lashed out yesterday at the very idea of formal dinners and conferences among world leaders.

"While we, the presidents, go from summit to summit, our people go from abyss to abyss," Chavez said in an interview with a local TV station.

"These summits are social gatherings -- we fly, we say 'hello,' we share one or two meals, we sign a paper, we have a photo taken, and that is all."  source

Indeed. Like the world summit on hunger held in Rome in June of 2002. It was a follow-up to a summit five years earlier where nations' leaders met to address the problem of hunger and starvation around the globe. They decided at that earlier summit to set a goal of reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half - to 400 million - by the year 2015. Five years later, they figured the number had been reduced by 6-8 million - approximately one-third the target number for just one year.

While over 800 million people are going hungry around the world, the summiteers had no such problem. They had three days of speeches and conferences and banquets. At the end of which, they signed the Declaration of the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, a document they had agreed to before the summit took place.

The basic question in the food and agriculture sector–– why, in a world whose food supply every year is enough to feed everyone an adequate human diet, are one-seventh of these people denied their right to that food?–– was not asked by the organizers of this event. Nor was it asked at the 1996 Summit or earlier relevant UN conferences.

Don't worry, the U.S. representative didn't participate in the sham. There was no U.S. representative sent. Don't worry about that either, because the U.S. did make sure a provision approving agricultural biotechnology was written into that pre-arranged agreement they signed.

The favorite of the 1996 Summit’s seven commitments was to expand trade in food and agricultural products. This mantra of free trade is constantly put forward as the panacea, in this case for overcoming food insecurity. The thesis is that with more free trade in food and other agricultural products, everybody will be fed, and everybody’s poverty will be relieved. But studies conducted since 1996 clearly show that such trade expansion has hurt small farmers in the developing countries, and retarded any reduction in food insecurity.

In fact, there is no such thing as free trade; food and agricultural trade, for example, is managed by the cartel described above. Few farmers trade and neither do most governments, unless they have a state trading entity. Companies trade, and their purpose is not to compete, but to expand the market and divide it up so that each maximizes profit. These companies, most of them headquartered in the United States, decide what people will eat, and how it will be produced, packaged, marketed, and— above all— priced. And they are accountable to no one; boards, stockholders, and even accountants don’t count.

Until those who want to reform the global food system face the reality of this power structure, no global meetings or lists of remedial actions based on personal commitment or thorough documentation will bring about the necessary changes. People are hungry because they are poor, and they are poor because they lack the power effectively to choose otherwise. Unaccountable power is undemocratic and immoral, and its top-down concentration protects it from citizen participation.   worldhunger.org

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.