Every day 30,000 children die from the diseases of poverty — and none of the proposals from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or the other G8 leaders will do anything effective to halt those deaths.
While they come up with tortuous plans for debt “relief”, the poorest people in the world are still expected to pay $100 million a day to the IMF and World Bank.
And while the G8 leaders say they will increase aid, there is more evidence of how aid is used to fatten Western corporations.
Last week the World Bank confirmed that 40 percent of aid is spent on “consultants”, many of them people lecturing the Third World on how to sell off its public services.
To top it off, Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the US war on Iraq, took over as head of the World Bank this week.
There should be no conditions, no timetables, no waiting before debt is cancelled. The Third World has paid many times over.
And to abolish poverty we could start with the $160 billion the US has spent on the war in Iraq, and its $420 billion military budget.
These are the demands we need to ram down the throats of G8 leaders in Edinburgh and Gleneagles in a few weeks’ time. It is massive protest we need, not quiet words or just concerts.
Until the needs of people are put before the needs of big business, the politicans words about “making poverty history” are meaningless.
Join the storm of protest against the G8.
See also Gordon Brown’s debt relief plan is a sham, figures reveal
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