Bristol G8 Dissent! update
Dee Senta | 22.10.2004 20:32 | G8 2005 | Globalisation | Social Struggles | London
From 1 January 2005 for one year, Britain will be the 'host' nation of the G8 (group of eight major industrial democracies - not necessarily the 8 richest, nor most democratic). 'Dissent! a network of resistance against the G8' held a stall at last weekends ESF conference, as well as a day long series of packed out workshops on Friday 15 October at the Beyond ESF event. At the Bristol Dissent meeting on 26 October, Bristolians who attended the workshops will report back on the discussions and progress of the campaign.
Also available will be a stack of info & literature relating to the G8 and the campaign. All are welcome to attend the meeting, from 7.30pm at Kebele, 14 Robertson Rd, Easton, BS5 (please note that the Bristol & national Dissent networks operate in line with the PGA hallmarks - see www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/pga/hallm.htm)
Tony Blair has signalled that during Britains host year, he wants to focus the G8 on issues including Africa, climate change, and sustainability. All very worthy, but ironic given that since it's inception in 1975, the G8 has spectactularily failed to resolve these problems. For instance, the US has failed to sign up to the now outdated Kyoto agreement, Russia has only just signalled it's willingness to do so, whilst harmful emissions & global warming increase apace. In Africa, 20 years on from Band & Live Aid, approx 6 million Ethiopians face famine this year, the Sudan crisis worsens, and poverty across the continent has increased. The national & Bristol Dissent groups believe that aid, whilst well intentioned, is merely a sticking plaster across a failing worldwide socio-economic system, and that more fundamental social & economic change is required.
In response to Blair's 3 main issues, the Bristol group will in the coming months produe a series of fact sheets on these issues, as well as an introductory fact sheet on the workings of the G8. We will also highlight the alternatives to the failing economic programme of the G8. If you have ideas & information to contribute to these please get in touch.
Other upcoming Bristol Dissent events include:
4 November - benefit night at The Plough pub, Easton Rd, Easton, from 8pm, with bands/DJ's.
6 November - first in a series of monthly info street stalls around Bristol.
More details available at the meeting. You can contact Bristol Dissent at
dissentbristol@susbsection.org.uk or by post to Box 102, Greenleaf Books, 82 Colston St, Bristol, BS1 5BB. Info will be generally available from Kebele, ring 0117 939 9469.
Let's get busy - see you there!
Tony Blair has signalled that during Britains host year, he wants to focus the G8 on issues including Africa, climate change, and sustainability. All very worthy, but ironic given that since it's inception in 1975, the G8 has spectactularily failed to resolve these problems. For instance, the US has failed to sign up to the now outdated Kyoto agreement, Russia has only just signalled it's willingness to do so, whilst harmful emissions & global warming increase apace. In Africa, 20 years on from Band & Live Aid, approx 6 million Ethiopians face famine this year, the Sudan crisis worsens, and poverty across the continent has increased. The national & Bristol Dissent groups believe that aid, whilst well intentioned, is merely a sticking plaster across a failing worldwide socio-economic system, and that more fundamental social & economic change is required.
In response to Blair's 3 main issues, the Bristol group will in the coming months produe a series of fact sheets on these issues, as well as an introductory fact sheet on the workings of the G8. We will also highlight the alternatives to the failing economic programme of the G8. If you have ideas & information to contribute to these please get in touch.
Other upcoming Bristol Dissent events include:
4 November - benefit night at The Plough pub, Easton Rd, Easton, from 8pm, with bands/DJ's.
6 November - first in a series of monthly info street stalls around Bristol.
More details available at the meeting. You can contact Bristol Dissent at
dissentbristol@susbsection.org.uk or by post to Box 102, Greenleaf Books, 82 Colston St, Bristol, BS1 5BB. Info will be generally available from Kebele, ring 0117 939 9469. Let's get busy - see you there!
Dee Senta
Comments
Hide the following comment
Come on, Dissent!, where's your radicalness? :-)
23.10.2004 12:17
It suggests the G8 has done almost nothing to improve the global south's situation.
I would go further than this and I'd add that these problems stem from colonialism and the slave trade and that recently as well as doing almost nothing to resolve poverty, the policies of the G8 have succeeded in making these problems worse - MUCH MUCH WORSE than they already were.
Secondly, aid is sticking plaster? Bollox to that - at least a sticking plaster is in the right direction. Some facts about aid:
Aid is usually conditional on privatisation, slashing public spending, rolling back employment rights and environmental legislation, opening up markets that can't compete on an equal footing thus putting local small businesses and farmers out of business (in an economy with little or no welfare safety net), and other "conditionalities".
Most aid is military in nature and that which does go towards 'development' is often to promote harmful and inefficient projects like dams which provide dubious value for money and yet displace thousands of people from their homes - people who end up living in filthy slums in the big cities.
Large quantities of aid money are wasted on the aid chain - aid is passed from agency to agency to agency before reaching the actual projects that are carried out - and each agency uses up money on admin costs and inflated salaries.
George Monbiot has recently drawn attention to the fact that a large amount of recent aid to south africa has gone not to any south african NGO but to the, wait for it... ADAM SMITH INSITUTE - neo-liberal market-fundamentalist conservative UK think tank and also to various management consultants. And what did they do with this money - they advised the South African government on how to privatise essential services like water. For example in Soweto, J'burg people have been having pre-paid watermeters installed in their houses (without their consent) so that those who can't pay don't get to drink clean water. A cholera epidemic has as a result claimed many lives.
The list goes on...
So it's fairly clear that aid does more harm than good.
It's NO GOOD demanding MORE AID before we change the way aid works.
But countries don't aid anyway. The people in global south have as much capacity to fend for themselves as we do. If we want to help them we don't need to be giving them charitable handouts. All they need is for us to STOP FUCKING THEM OVER!
Dropping the debt, radically overhauling unfair trade rules and an end to IMF/World Bank neo-liberal "conditionality" on new loans / debt relief would be a start.
love and rage,
Ozymandias