In a bid to dramatize the urgency of addressing extreme poverty, this year the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the UN Millennium Campaign worked with large numbers of national and local partners.

On October 17, millions of people across the world took part in meetings and rallies calling for economic and social justice for the marginalized and downtrodden in a way that perhaps the world had never witnessed before.
“I am happy to announce that 39 million people have participated in this event,“ UN communications chief Kiyotaka Akasaka told reporters at the end of the global campaign called “Stand Up and Speak Out.“
As reported by Ipsnews.net, this year’s worldwide events coincided with the 20th International Day for the Eradication of Poverty Wednesday, which saw more than 6,000 rallies in 110 countries, setting a new Guinness World Record on participation in mass actions.
From workers to peasants to students, those who joined the global campaign against poverty urged governments to fulfill their commitments on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, and other diseases.
“Every day 50,000 people die needlessly as a result of extreme poverty,“ said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a statement, noting that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider.
Like demonstrators across the world, Ban also took the world leaders to task for their slow moves towards achieving the MDGs. “(Their) record is mixed,“ he said. “Many countries are still off track.“
UN experts on development say that worldwide, almost one billion people are still living on less than a dollar a day, some 72 million children are not in school, and every day 27,000 children die of poverty.
In Ban’s view, poverty can be eradicated only if governments of both developed and developing countries live up to their promises. In a statement, he reiterated that poor countries must spend more on health and education while urging the rich ones to be more generous with regard to their financial assistance.
In sharing Ban’s views on global poverty, the UN General Assembly president Srgjian Kerim noted that more than anywhere in the world, it was the sub-Saharan governments in Africa who are falling behind in achieving the MDGs.
Kerim said the midpoint for MDGs demands the world community must recommit its efforts. He said he would use the current General Assembly session to “build consensus“ for urgent actions to achieve the MDGs.
Last year, some 23.5 million people symbolically “stood up“ against poverty, with 3.6 million in Africa, 19 million in Asia, 55,000 in Latin America, 520,000 in the Middle East and 900,000 in Europe.
In a bid to dramatize the urgency of addressing extreme poverty, this year the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) and the UN Millennium Campaign worked with large numbers of national and local partners, from schools and universities to local community groups and women’s groups, choirs and sporting clubs to faith groups, trade unions and corporations.
The events planned were meant to be entertaining and engaging, while making a strong impression on national, regional politicians and governments, as well as state and global institutions. Millions of people also joined the campaign in cyberspace, posting blogs, videos and pictures on various online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.
In Italy, Microsoft created a dedicated micro-site for the action, and in many poor countries--in Africa in particular--mobile phone technology enabled groups to pre-register their activities online using WAP phones and to view videos of “Stand Ups“ in other countries.

In Rwanda, youth groups organized a “Stand Up“ soccer tournament with 20 primary schools. A youth network in Ghana appointed “Stand Up“ ambassadors to lead events all over the country, including an MDGs youth delegation.
In Bangladesh, an umbrella of youth movements mobilized 10,000 young people to block a busy crossroads with a human chain, and in India, a local NGO planned a march of 20,000 Dalits, focusing on land rights and the achievement of the MDGs for Dalits in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
Similar events also took place all over Europe, and North and South America. In Germany, the Euro 2008 Qualifier soccer game against the Czech Republic saw fans starting the match with a massive “Stand Up“ moment. In The Hague, the national anti-poverty campaign displayed 200 life-size “Avatars“ representing members of the public from across The Netherlands.
In London, trade union representatives, students and the UN deputy secretary-general, Asha-Rose Migiro, used a white band--a symbol of the global anti-poverty campaign--to call for renewed commitments on more and better aid, debt cancellation, trade justice, gender equality and public accountability.
Religious leaders in many parts of the world also joined the action. During the campaign, activists highlighted the link between gender inequalities and poverty because women constitute the majority of the world’s poor owing to unequal access to resources and opportunities, discriminatory laws and unequal distribution of household resources.

It’s rare that a business deal intrigues investors and political scientists alike. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.’s move to buy 20 percent of Africa’s largest bank is such a transaction.
According to Bloomberg.com, it’s the biggest overseas investment by a Chinese company, in this case the world’s No. 1 bank by market value. ICBC’s $5.6 billion purchase of the Standard Bank Group Ltd. stake is the largest in South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994.
Yet there’s something even bigger at play here. This is arguably the first Chinese investment in Africa that doesn’t carry a whiff of political strategy. Nor is it directly related to China’s desire for resources, which can often help despots more than African households.
ICBC’s Standard Bank deal may be the watershed that begins propelling China’s designs on Africa from talk to just plain business, and smart business at that.
“From the regulators’ point of view, this kind of diversification is a great idea,“ says Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University. “Chinese banks are too highly concentrated in China and it’s not in their best interest that banks depend exclusively on Chinese growth. That kind of dependence is highly pro-cyclical and can feed booms and busts.“
Standard Bank has offices in 18 African countries, including Nigeria and Kenya, and 21 other nations such as Argentina and Taiwan. The Johannesburg-based bank has 713 branches in South Africa and 240 throughout the continent. The deal is a sign that even if the Chinese Communist Party has strategic reasons for investing in Africa, companies are heading there for the economic potential.

See No Evil
Until now, China’s Africa push has raised warning flags around the globe, and rightfully so. To get resources to feed its 11.5 percent growth, China has hopped into bed with some of Africa’s most unsavory regimes, such as Sudan’s and Zimbabwe’s. That see-no-evil-hear-no-evil approach is raising eyebrows.
Warren Buffett can deny it all he wants, but it’s hard to believe that his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. would have dumped its entire holding of PetroChina Co., Asia’s biggest oil company, without the public criticism over China’s support of Sudan.
PetroChina’s state-controlled parent is the biggest foreign investor in Sudan. PetroChina’s stock gained more than 11-fold since Buffett first bought it in 2003. And yet he recently abandoned what he says is absolutely a first-class company.
Buffett was under increasing pressure from human-rights groups over accusations that the Sudanese government supports genocide. There was even a role for actress Mia Farrow, who helped publicize the worldwide campaign to dub next year’s games the Genocide Olympics.

No Baggage
ICBC’s stake in Standard Bank comes without that kind of baggage. It’s a state-controlled China bank, making it hard to figure out where politics end and business begins. Yet the deal shows China is now making bets on Africa’s economy.
Standard Bank is gaining access to the fastest-growing major economy and fattening its capital base. China is getting a foothold into Africa’s nascent investment-banking and insurance industries. It’s also a way for China to use its growing cash piles overseas rather than making fresh domestic loans that may go bad or fuel inflation.
That has been Africa’s experience for far too long. And the failure of Western efforts to reverse the dynamic left the region’s leaders open to Chinese investment.

Investment, Not Aid
One interesting element of ICBC’s deal is how different it is from the usual overture from Western banks. It didn’t come laden with demands about how much control ICBC will have over Standard Bank.
It didn’t require pledges for financial change. It’s merely one bank buying a piece of another with transparent terms and conditions. It’s a sign Chinese managers are willing to treat Africans as peers.
The West hasn’t learned that lesson with its aid programs and lecturing. By trying a new tack, China may be testing what development economists have argued for years: Africa doesn’t need more aid, it needs more genuine investment and trade.
Bono and Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs will keep plugging away, and thank the gods for that. But Chinese companies appear to see something in Africa many in New York, London and Tokyo don’t. Africa represents huge and lucrative business opportunities if it gets its act together.
That’s a big “if.“ With the exception of Botswana and Ghana, Africa’s biggest consistency seems to be to pull the rug out from under wide-eyed investors. China’s interests are offering Africa a rare opportunity to boost its economies.
Another interesting angle here concerns investors. Looking at ICBC along with other Chinese deals of late it’s clear something transformational is afoot.
In recent years, China sought foreign investments in financial firms to shore up capital and gain expertise. Now, cash-rich from trade, stock offerings and surging share prices, China no longer needs Wall Street’s money. Increasingly, it’s foreigners who want a cut of China’s money.

Given the track record of the six year old Doha development round of trade talks, it seems premature to visualize progress let alone a breakthrough in the talks that have been going on in Geneva among diplomats and trade negotiators of the major countries.
However, according to Hindu.com, most recent news reports give room for some guarded optimism.
Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said recently that India and the European Union have reached convergence on certain critical issues and would find more common ground soon.
The German chancellor on a visit to the country has stressed the importance of completing the Doha round before the US presidential elections. Brazil is convening a meeting of ministers from developing countries, including from India, China and South Africa to devise a common strategy for reviving the talks.
After a high level meeting of the G-4 countries comprising the US, the European Union, India and Brazil at Potsdam, Germany in June ended in a failure yet again, practically everyone gave up hopes on a revival.
The key issues remained as intractable as ever. The developed countries would not countenance a substantial cut in trade distorting subsidies and support to the farming sector without the developing countries allowing greater market access for their products, both agricultural and industrial. What made an already bleak picture practically irretrievable has been the expiry of the US President’s fast track authority to negotiate trade deals without reference to the US Congress. However, all WTO members reiterated their commitment to multilateralism and agreed to continue negotiations at Geneva.
Although the precise contours of what has been agreed upon have not been made public, the negotiators are reported to have arrived at draft modalities for agriculture and non-agricultural market access which, by and large, seem to be a big improvement over the earlier positions.
The proposals on agriculture, especially, seem to go far in narrowing the sharp differences among countries. For instance the US would sharply reduce its level of subsidies to its farmers by between 66 and 73 per cent to a range of between $13 billion and $16.4 billion a year. The EU would also follow suit and reduce its overall trade distorting subsidies to euro 27.6 billion from euro 110.3 billion every year.
While in agricultural market access too a reasonable compromise seems to have been worked out, it is the package on non-agricultural market access that is seen as a major stumbling block as it fails to address the concerns of the developing countries and the less developed ones.
Within the next two or three weeks, it will become clear if the perceived deficiencies in the draft modalities are removed, paving the way at last for a wrap up of the Doha round.

Prospects for a year-end rally dimmed this past week right along with the chances of another interest rate cut, and that has investors wondering if the bull market can be saved.
According to AP, American investors enter November with some considerable doubts about corporate earnings, inflation, the continuing credit turmoil, the Federal Reserve’s next move, and whether the US might plunge into a recession. All this hangs over the stock market, which has been at best fragile this year.
The quarter-point cut wasn’t enough to satisfy Wall Street, which wants to see further reductions to help stimulate everything from cheaper loans to corporate borrowing. And, the Fed’s inclination that it might not lower rates again this year sent the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling 1.5 percent this past week.
The tug-of-war between Wall Street and the Fed has individual investors wondering whether last week’s market decline was a temporary shakeup or a signal to re-evaluate stocks altogether. Most people aren’t expecting a worst-case scenario, but some observers say economic data will be a key to determining the market’s direction.
“It is almost futile to try and watch everything because this is going to become a data driven market again,“ said Chris Johnson, president of Johnson Research Group. “Before we were waiting for what the Fed was doing, but now all of a sudden that safety net is gone.“
Johnson and others caution not to react too quickly to economic reports from the government and trade groups due over the next few months. The data typically give a backward look at the economy, and it often takes time to get a good interpretation of what the numbers mean.
For instance, last Friday Wall Street got a surprisingly strong report from the Labor Department that showed 166,000 new jobs added in October--yet no rally followed. A more careful reading of the data indicated that fewer people were employed overall last month.
“The market always tends to worry about things, and always exaggerates them,“ said Peter Cardillo, a market strategist with Avalon Partners. “I have a suspicious feeling that is what’s happening right now. The market is looking for good economic news, data that doesn’t sink the economy into a full-blown recession.“