President Chirac goes a chirac-ing

By William Danzek | 5 December 2005

Back in September 2004, the Guardian newspaper's campaign against agricultural subsidies wrote:

The President of France has started chiracing again. To chirac... is to make high-sounding plans that have no chance of being carried out in order to distract from what is happening at home. President Chirac's latest pan-planetary initiative (are you listening Mr Bush?) is to tax all weapons sales and corporate profits to help the Third World.

There is a much easier way M Chirac beause it's happening under your watch. Get rid of agriculture subsidies.That would save the West over $1 billion a DAY while giving poor countries a dramatic opportunity to develop crops like sugar and cotton that they can do efficiently but from which they are priced out of world markets at the moment because of immoral and uneconomic Western subsidies.

The Guardian's insight is useful when seeing this headline on CNN, "France vows to help cut African poverty". The article, without saying how France is going to actually help cut poverty, says:

"The road we must travel down is long and uncertain," Jacques Chirac said at the opening of the 23rd French-Africa summit, attended by dozens of African leaders.

"But I'll tell you this: in the new century, Africa will impress the world with its achievements and its success. France expects to contribute to this renaissance," he said.