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G8 Summit = Talk fest and little action

The leaders of the so-called G8 Summit - held in Germany - are now winging their respective ways home. The photo-ops have passed and no doubt each so-called leader has some sort of warm glow that they achieved something. But then, reflect on the G8 meeting at Gleneagles 2 years ago and what was pledged then in aid for Africa. Essentially nothing has actually been implemented, especially giving the pledged monies.

"By the time you read this, another G8 summit meeting will be over. And, to quote the ever-quotable Shakespeare, it will once again have been a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Every year since 1975 the heads of the same states (with the more recent addition of Russia) meet to discuss ways to further their control over the rest of the world, including their own citizens, a fact which has become even more apparent at this year’s lockdown-style get-together. And every year since 2001, when an Italian protester was murdered by police, it is a sort of annual scrimmage between citizens and organisations which aim to change the status quo, whether for the good of the environment, the poor, the war-torn or diseased, and the not -so-thin blue line of heavily armoured police who are apparently protecting democracy from itself. In short, the G8 is and remains a meeting free from any sort of consultation with either the heads of those states who will be greatly affected by the decisions made (read African and developing nations), or the citizens the G8 leaders claim to represent.

It can also be viewed as a sort of party under Apartheid– the tiny number of “haves” sit in luxury behind a €12million fence and a police-enforced “protester free zone” 5 km outside the barbed-wire, while the great masses wishing for change or to at least have some sort of inclusion in the decision-making process, sleep in tents and are bullied by armed men in Darth Vader costumes, but both sides attempt to reach conclusions as to the way the world and their own part in it should progress, and both attempt to enjoy the meeting as much as possible."


So writes Daniel Vallin on CommonDreams - read the full piece here.

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