What’s New August 2004

This page lists changes to this site for August 2004. See below for other updates and to get notified of changes to the site.

The permanent link for this update is http://www.globalissues.org/whatsnew/2004/august.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) July 2004 Package of Agreements Framework meeting was in response to the failure of the Cancun Ministerial Meetings in September 2003. However, these trade talks also resulted in more bullying and arm-twisting tactics from the richer, more powerful countries and regions, such as the EU and US.

Why does propaganda work? What is the impact to democracies of propaganda from unaccountable government or any other source? The propaganda section has been updated. It includes a look at the issue of embedded journalism that was seen during the Iraq invasion. In addition, there is a look at various elements of propaganda used in recent wars such as the invasion of Iraq and the war on terrorism.

When many rich nations give aid to poor countries, it comes with conditions that often restrict what the recipient can do with that money. At the same time, those conditions are often designed to benefit the donor. A small subsection on this issue has been added.

The 9/11 Commission's report revealed intelligence failures, but the report also seemed to miss some deeper issues. Some additional articles on the war on terror have been reposted looking at some of these concerns.

The Butler Report in UK investigating intelligence used to justify the war against Iraq found that intelligence was seriously flawed. However, the scope of the report was limited, and did not have political accountability as one of the things to look at, just the technical issue of intelligence.

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July 20, 2004 marked 6 Years for the GlobalIssues.org web site! Corrupted log files make it hard to know the number of page views in the past year (it was 3 million in the previous period), but since the beginning of this year there has already been some 2.8 million page views. As was the case last year, some older and more regular readers may have noticed the frequency and quantity of updates has reduced somewhat (as this site continues to be developed in my spare time only and there seems to be less of it!). However, it is still growing without any funding and sponsorship, other than what comes out of my pocket. Thank you so much for your continued support and please do tell your friends and colleagues about the global issues web site if you find it useful.

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