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Some Summit

Wednesday August 28, 2002

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San Francisco, California
KSFO Radio

NOTE: Catch up with the "Mullings Dog Days Tour" Travelogue here:


• The U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development, which is taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa is not a Summit and will not result in Sustainable Development.

• Some 40,000 - that's FORTY THOUSAND - delegates are attending this meeting.

• A "summit" is typically a meeting of heads of state numbering between two and nine.

• Forty Thousand is - more.

• As a indication of how seriously this is being taken here in the United States - assuming you consider San Francisco to qualify - was this morning's San Francisco Chronicle: The only article about the Summit was a packaged New York Times piece across the top half of page A6 (which was shared with an ad for a health club and an ad for teachers to order Chronicle subscriptions).

• The piece, by Rachel J. Swarns, contains this:

• "Many [delegates] are expressing doubts about the developed nations' sincerity and are especially critical of President Bush, the leader of the world's biggest economy and its largest polluter who decided not to attend."

• The United States is also the largest single provider of money, goods and services to poor nations, but that tune isn't playing in Joburg this week, or in the New York Times ever.

• President Bush, despite sending Secretary of State Colin Powell who, by most accounts, is the administration's strongest voice for helping underdeveloped nations, is the designated bad guy. Again.

• The Johannesburg Mail & Guardian ran a front pager which had the headline: "Business blamed for Summit shut out." in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) complain they can't get into the negotiation sessions. One activist was quoted: "The agenda has been taken over by the United States and the European Union in trade liberalisation...This is the Earth Summit, not a trade summit."

• Summit leaders say that there will be no new treaties or even conventions signed as the result of this meeting.

• The sole purpose of this meeting, under the sponsorship of the United Nations, appears to be to bash the West generally, and the United States in particular.

• As we round the final turn into the November election stretch run, how do you think it plays in U.S. agricultural regions to read that, according to the London Times, there were "calls yesterday for the West to reduce the $350 billion in subsidies that it pays its farmers each year, so that poor countries can compete on a level playing field.

• On the other hand there is this bit of Alice in Wonderland thinking: "Many Third World farmers are organic because they cannot afford pesticides ...Western countries promised to work with developing nations to set up certification schemes so that they can get premium organic prices."

• Ok. Just to keep the conversation lively. Consider this: You're in the Safeway with orders from YOUR Director of Standards & Practices to buy lettuce, tomatoes and other green things which, left to your own devices, would never hit the bottom of your grocery cart.

• Raise hands: Which head of lettuce do you consider to be more healthful, the one grown in Uganda - because no pesticides have been used? Or the one grown in California?

• Me, too.

• A quick look at Orbitz.com showed the lowest fare from Washington, DC to Johannesburg at $1,480 round trip.

• Let's say when you average out all the fares from Europe and Asia it comes to $1,000 per.

• 40,000 times $1,000 is forty million dollars. In airfares alone.

• How many small electrical, water, and sewage systems could have been built for that?

• On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the London Times and the Joburg pieces, and an apropos World War II poster.
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  Copyright © 2002 Richard A. Galen

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