SAINTS OF THE FUTURE

Ceud mile fàìlte – a hundred thousand welcomes. That’s what Blair and Bush will be getting from the people of Scotland and round the world gathered to oppose their world of war, poverty and exploitation. Welcome to Scotland, the home of golf and the worst poverty rates in Britain. While diners at the Andrew Fairlie’s restaurant in Gleneagles tuck in to “Roast Anjou Squab with Black Truffle Gnocchi”, one in three children are born into poverty, a quarter of our senior citizens live below the poverty line. In Glasgow’s Shettleston, life expectancy is 63, the same as Iraq.

Welcome to Scotland – home to all of Britain’s nuclear weapons at Coulport and the strategic nuclear submarine fleet at Faslane. Our seas are littered with munitions dumps, our soil is scattered with disintegrating military bases and our air is full of the sound of fighter jets training to bomb foreign lands.
In July the leaders of the world’s ‘most powerful economies’ will be gathering in Perthshire. Normally the home to bad-taste golfers in Pringle and check, the elite hotel will instead be brimming with nervous security guards, armed police and the leaders of the Global State.

In the 1970s, with the so-called oil crisis highlighting the increasing interconnectedness of the world’s economies, meetings of the ‘Library Group’ began. Founded by the United States this group included France, Britian and Germany, who soon invited Japan for these initial ‘fireside chats’. The G7 (or Group of Seven Nations) was formed in 1975, with Canada and Italy joining; the EU joined in 1977, although the EU does not have the same status as national governments. Russia achieved partial membership in the group in 1998, and full membership as of 2003; thus the G7 have become the G8.
The purpose of the G8 and their summits is described as threefold: providing collective management of the world economy; reconciling globalization tensions among G8 members; and generating global political leadership ‘where heads of state and government take cooperation further than their officials and ministers can’ (Bayne, 2001: 23). That’s brilliant isn’t it?

Over the last quarter century the G8 has emerged as the central forum for global governance, and until relatively recently they have managed to meet and plan in secrecy, making decisions and controlling the systems that affect all of life on earth. But this time there’s a cute twist with Tony pleading that he wants to make “Africa” and “Climate Change” top billing.
This is Tony’s Band-Aid moment. In his eyes he’s an amalgam of great world leaders, and “Good Celebrities” – Saints of the Future. In Tony’s head he’s Ghandi (without the loin-cloth), Martin Luther King (minus the morality or the rhetorical skills). Bono without the shades. All humble Tony has is a cleanly ironed shirt and a team of professional liars.

But, as so often with Tony’s dreaming, there’s a problem. As Gill Hubbard and David Miller point out in their recent collection of essays, “What’s Wrong with the G8”: “Despite declaring himself the saviour of Africa, weapons are being sold with the blessing of the Labour government on an unprecedented scale. For instance, the government of South Africa is purchasing warships and military aircraft to the value of US $4.8 billion from the UK and other European suppliers. The UK has also sold arms to Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Zambia.”

But this record should be added to George Monbiot’s documentation of the Labour government’s pivotal role in the privatisation of water utilities in South Africa (and especially Clare Short), that “according to a study by the Municipal Services Project, led to almost 10 million people having their water cut off, 10 million people having their electricity cut off, and over two million people being evicted from their homes for non-payment of bills.” (http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~mspadmin/pages/Project_Publications/Reports/bell.htm)

So watch as the spinning gets frantic as they try and square the circle of Tony’s emotional hand-wringing – big doe-eyes and much over-acted sincerity – with the rape and carnage that their collective policies bestow on the rest of the world. Watch too as Blue Peter politics kick-in big style. Poverty is about dark-skinned people in far off lands who – some think - deserve our hand-outs. It’s not their fault they’re in the mess, but it’s not ours either. It just sort of happened because, er, it’s hot, and they don’t have proper vaccinations or something.

As Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, describes the G8:
“Together they have a decisive influence over international financial institutions, including direct control of 46% of the votes in the World Bank and 48% of the votes in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The G8 members similarly control other powerful international institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO).... Although their decisions may mean life or death for tens of millions with no seat at this table, there is no global body that can demand accountability from the rich-country leaders.”

For full article see the latest edition of Variant magazine…