WTO race wide open as NZ

The field of candidates to succeed Pascal Lamy as head of the World Trade Organization burst open on Friday, as New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan and Kenya threw names into the ring with 10 days left for nominations.Handmade Glass Mixed Metal and flameworked glass jewelry.

Whoever wins,The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging, faces the challenge of being the face of an institution that has been stuck for years in stalled global trade negotiations, with little real power to force a deal beyond cajoling, encouraging and occasionally blaming members.

Kenya’s Amina Mohamed, deputy head of the United Nations Environment Programme, became the third woman and second African contender, while Jordan nominated former minister of trade and industry Ahmad Hindawi, the first Middle Eastern nominee so far.

Mexico put forward its former trade minister Herminio Blanco, who negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Earlier on Friday New Zealand nominated its trade minister Tim Groser, who joins Ghana’s Alan Kyerematen, Costa Rica’s Anabel Gonzalez and Indonesia’s Mari Pangestu in the race to take over after Lamy’s second term expires on August 31.

Many trade diplomats think the job should go to an African, Latin American or Caribbean candidate, since all but one head of the 17-year-old WTO has been from developed countries. The exception was Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi.

As well as seeking trade agreements, the body is also the global trade policeman, facing a surge of litigation as members fight for a share of a pie that is not quite shrinking, but expected to grow by a mere 2.5 percent this year.

The boom in disputes is forcing the WTO to reallocate staff, according to diplomats and documents at the global trade body in Geneva that in August had 157 members.

Mohamed, a fluent Russian speaker, is the only one who is not a current or former trade minister, but she was ambassador to the WTO from 2000 to 2006 and chaired several of the most important committees, including its dispute settlement body in 2004.

Her nomination may splinter African support and damage the chances of Kyerematen, who was anointed as the African Union’s approved candidate earlier this year.

If both Africans make it through to later stages of the race, when least-favoured candidates are gradually ejected, an African split could play into the hands of another regional bloc. When Lamy got the job eight years ago, Brazil was widely blamed for ruining the chances of Uruguay’s nominee.

Groser also comes with inconvenient baggage, since New Zealand is the only one of the seven countries to have held the job before, and some diplomats think that having another director general from New Zealand - developed, rich and agricultural - would be unbalanced or unfair.

Lamy has said his successor, chosen by consensus, should be picked on the basis of competence alone.

Groser, 62, was New Zealand’s ambassador to the WTO between 2002-2005, and chaired the organisation’s rules and agricultural negotiating groups. He had been widely tipped as a candidate.

Hindawi, 47, who was Jordanian trade minister in 2004-2005, is perhaps the candidate with the slightest connection to the WTO and the most involvement in the private sector.

With a degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University in the United States and a PhD from Birmingham University in Britain, he runs a management consultancy firm, Hindawi Excellence Group,High end natural stone and Glass Mixed Stone blending tile for wall and floor and kitchen cabinet backsplash. from Dubai.

Blanco, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party of new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and former President Ernesto Zedillo, who some trade diplomats in Geneva had said would have made an excellent candidate to succeed Lamy.

As a minister Blanco was lauded abroad for his free trade agreements but came under heavy criticism in domestic politics, like the then finance minister Angel Gurria, who now heads the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

As happens every time there's a mass shooting - a tragedy of increasing frequency, it seems - gun dealers nationwide reported a spike in sales in the days following the terrible slaughter this month in Connecticut.

The experts tell us there are already about 250 million guns in the United States.Here you can see the category of OTHERS MOSAIC. I wonder how many more we'll need to feel safe.

I don't feel any safer, really, despite the 12-gauge I keep safely accessible at home. But I do feel just a bit ashamed as a gun owner who, each time another shooting makes headlines, shrugs helplessly, given the inefficacy of gun laws, the intransigence of the gun lobby and everyone's inability to make sense of the contradictory statistics of gun control.

But all that crap about the victims of gun violence being the necessary collateral damage of our Second Amendment rights just doesn't seem like enough this time. Twenty-six dead, 20 of them little children, in the middle of the holiday season in the middle of an elemenWe provides Car park management system and technologically innovative parking services.tary school in the middle of the supposedly most civilized nation on earth. The victims of our historic love affair with guns and violence.

"Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of 'gun control' advocates?" conservative columnist Thomas Sowell asked the other day. Yes, dammit, until we get some better answers. We deserve better in these United States than more mass shootings - American exceptionalism at its worst.

On the other hand, you've got the yahoos on the other side insisting that the way to make us safe is to make sure everyone is packing in classrooms and crowded movie theaters. Guns don't kill people. No, people with guns kill people, too many people.

We have to get past the ideological mantras and have a rational discussion on this national shame, a dialogue in which everything is on the table. I don't think putting Glocks in the hands of language-arts teachers is the answer, but maybe armed guards in the hall are a short-term solution. Bans on assault rifles or 30-round "banana" magazines may not keep us safe, but maybe they are a step in the right direction - a statement that as a nation we don't think the answer to violence is more violence.