Sides? (was Re: the terrorist bombings in London

[jbor at bigpond.com]

To put it into proper perspective, it's actually 100% debt write-off  
for 18 African countries, with another 20 countries under  
consideration. Blair and Bush have led the call for the debt just to be  
scrapped.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4083676.stm

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8AKUPUG0.htm? 
campaign_id=apn_home_down

If it comes down to a choice between the G-8 summit, and throwing  
rocks, breaking car windows (and misusing words like "junta"), to ease  
poverty in Africa and implement environmental reforms, I'm pretty sure  
I know which "side" I want to be on.

best


>> The G-8 leaders are meeting at Gleneagles to ratify plans to provide  
>> further debt relief to African nations (those which aren't ruled by  
>> corrupt despots and genocidal warlords), to discuss other ways of  
>> easing African poverty, and to implement protocols aimed at reducing  
>> global warming and long-term environmental degradation. Those are  
>> issues that should be discussed, initiatives that should be supported  
>> and put into effect.
>
> I place no faith in anything the G8 appears to have in the way of  
> humanitarianism in its 2005 agenda.
> The widely touted ('Make Poverty History') aim at $40 billion in debt  
> cancellation across a ten year period pales when you consider that  
> sub-saharan Africa owes $230 billion in external debt alone. The  
> entire third world owes roughly (it's hard to be nit-picky here) two  
> and half trillon dollars, meaning that for every $1 officially given  
> in aid, $3 are paid back to western lenders. So for all the pomp and  
> ceremony of the G8, 'Live8' and 'Make Poverty History' campaigns,  
> we're really all just screwing them. Conditionalities are placed upon  
> debt cancellation - and arguably, while 7.2% of oil reserves (more  
> than all of North America) are located in the continent, the enforcing  
> of liberal economic policies upon African states can be seen in terms  
> allowing multinational corporations to exploit them legally, rather  
> than the terms of "democracy as best possible conduit to economic and  
> social recovery".
>
> If anyone's that interested, the 'Make Poverty History' wristbands you  
> may or may not be wearing were  sourced (by the british media) to  
> Chinese sweatshop -- so maybe if the G8 are successful, you never know  
> -- they could import them from sweatshops in Kenya when 'Make Poverty  
> History' rolls into Latin America, or Afghanistan and Irag (provided  
> we're not still there trying to sort the collective pragmatics of our  
> nations' foreign policy.
>
> And until the Bush military Junta goes, theres probably no chance in  
> getting a US government to legislate its way to the kind of reduced  
> carbon emissions that can only come when people aren't allowed to buy  
> SUV's like there's no tomorrow (though there probably by the time this  
> happens).
>
>> What's most disturbing about yesterday's terrorist attack on London  
>> is that the jihadists who perpetrated the bombings and the protestors  
>> in Edinburgh seem now to be on the same "side". Both groups were  
>> attempting to derail the G-8 meeting and to hijack the agenda of  
>> those talks.
>
> That's not what's most disturbing -- what's most disturbing is the  
> fact that Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) were given information  
> regarding the attacking prior to the event occurring, subsequently  
> contacting Scotland Yard to inform the British Police of an attack on  
> British soil, and regardless of prior warning, yesterday still  
> happened because the unit carrying out the attack were completely  
> unknown to intelligence agencies. What's disturbing is that we're now  
> feeling (in the UK) the added repercussions of what is liable to occur  
> in a country whose Prime Minister was jointly-responsible for  
> destroying UN protocol and conducting an (extremely arguably) illegal  
> war against a non-agressor nation - pretty much against the majority  
> of his electorate's will.
>
> Furthermore The only way that Anti-Capitalist Protestors and Jihadists  
> could  *seem* to be on the same side, however, is if you're stupid  
> enough to confuse method and aim (or write for a British tabloid);  
> Anti-Capitalist Protestors weren't aiming to "hijack the agenda of  
> those talks" but to protest against the idea of a 'G8' itself in as  
> peaceful a manner as possible -- though there have been riots at  
> several of the summit-meetings. The Jihadist aim and method is terror.  
>  There is a universe of a difference.
>
>