I am seating at an interesting session called Poverty Alleviation at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference. Basically we are around 200 people divided into around 20 tables of around 10 people all answering the same questions. What are some powerful initiatives that will bring greater income and value to the producers at the bottom of the economic ladder. At my table I have top executives two women who run foundations, a moderator from the Clinton foundation and an actor, Michael Douglas. The session is being managed by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda among others. My table produced two initiatives, one is to use technology to tag each citizen in the world because it is known that a lot of money either payments or donations are stolen from the receipients. This is already partly being done by WiseKey of Geneva. Its CEO Carlos Moreira is at our table. So if every person has his own unique electronic ID they can get more control of his/her own finances. The other comment that I made and Michael Douglas and others supported is that unfortunately the wealthy people of poor countries are no Warren Buffets, they rarely give back to their societies and a lot of educational work should be done to work with the wealthiest people in poor countries to change their behaviour.

More video material

I have been doing my mobile blogging lately with my Nokia N80, connecting to WiFi networks. It´s so easy and so fast. It´s perfect for events like the Clinton Conference as I don´t have time to write.

It was fun to see Bill Gates seating next to his buddy, Warren Buffet, stand up and explain his strategy. It is also interesting to see that Europe donates more money to LDCs than the United States, even if you add the donations by private individuals, but Europe, as usual, does these donations quietly and we don´t know where they end up.

Musharaf is at times highly articulate and reasonable and at other times, like when he says that the Berlin wall came down because of the policies of Pakistan he seems simply out of focus. Then when he draws a distinction between terrorism and extremism he seems very reasonable. By the way there´s a very good article on him at the Safe Democracy web site.

If you can´t see the video, please try here

For non Americans, United States is a difficult country to understand. Sometimes great, sometimes let´s say, not that great. For me today, witnessing President Clinton, a man who I greatly admire, lavishing praise on Laura Bush, the First Lady of a presidency I mostly disagree with, with was a real shock. I guess that in a way that is what´s great about America, that rivals can also collaborate on basic issues such as improving conditions in Africa. But as I heard the Opening Plenary in which Clinton did not have a single word of criticism towards his follower who many of us believe did a lot of harm to global relations I could not help to be quite uncomfortable with his speech and closeness to the Bush Administration.

If you can´t see the video, please try here

I am at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference, where Laura Bush just gave a speech about all these wonderful things that the Bush Administration is doing around the world (please feel free to read wonderful in whatever tone you feel comfortable with). As she spoke different pictures were shown. This one showing the Bush Family and Bono caught my eye.

Follow the conference live by clicking here. I am presently attending this conference and there will be more posts related to it coming out soon.