FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION
AND ALTERNATIVES

In 1975, at the beginning of the neo era these annual elite meetings began growing to include the richest 7 nations (USA, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, UK, and Japan) plus Russia (because they have lots of nuclear weapons.)

In the Okanawa meeting of 2000 the G8 vowed "unwavering (ie, regardless of the will of the people) commitment to structural change and more adaptable labour markets". The last means, of course, lower wages and worse conditions.

They also promised to achieve the Kyoto protocol limiting climate change and strengthen the anti-ballistic-missile treaty. In 2001 Bush was inagurated. Perhaps G1 would be a better title.

In general, the G8 are trying to take over the job of the UN. The difference is that in the UN the poor have a say. "It’s likely, for example, that the governance structure of the new UN fund targeting infectious diseases will be decided not by the UN but by the G8/G7 ministers." says Tom Barry of the Interhemispheric Resource Center.

Genovacide

During the 1999 Cologne meeting $100bn in debt relief was promised. Two years later in Genova the G8 lived up to its promise by promising the same promise again. If the promise is ever actually fulfilled it will be too little to make a real difference anyway.

"Promises have been broken. Only a fraction of the $100bn promised at the G8 Summit in Cologne two years ago has been delivered. Most poor countries are paying more in debt servicing than on vitally needed health care or education programmes" says Henry Northover, Debt expert at the Catholic Aid agency CAFOD ( "no friends of the poor" - Bush).

Commentators said that there might at least be a minor announcement on helping debtor countries facing oil price shocks. There was none.

A Global Fund on Health had been announced before the G8 summit.

The $1.25bn promised - which will probably simply be stolen from current aid budgets, and given to drug corporations - is tiny compared to the problem anyway.

Tony Blair claimed that the above crumbs are a 'Marshall plan for Africa' - an insult to the origional Marshal plan.

The meeting with African leaders, and the focus on Africa in the 2002 summit (meaning India etc. and the Americas will be ignored), seems suspiciously like the George W Bush electioneering strategy of a near-daily photo op with blacks. (90% of US black voters are not as stupid as Bush thinks they are, and voted against him.)

Commenting on the G8 final Communiqué, Jessica Woodroffe, Head of Policy at the World Development Movement said:

"Ultimately these summits must be judged by the benefits they deliver to the world's poor. The result this year has been an anti-poor trade plan, nothing on debt and a feeble fund."

The G8 final Communiqué is at http://www.genoa-g8.it/eng/index.html and the WDM response is at http://www.wdm.org.uk/cambriefs/Debt/g8resp.pdf

But the G8 said they would cancelled third world debts!

Actually, they have decided to "continue progress", whatever that means. Maybe the ink ran out halfway through signing the paper and now they need to find a new pen.

"Continue progress" is just a code word for making more of the same promises that they have always broken.

Their so called "debt cancellation" has so many strings attached that Laos and Ghana have decided that keeping their debts would mean less suffering than meeting those conditions!

A cold calculation

In 1996, the World Bank, the IMF, the G7 (as it then was) and the "Club de Paris" launched an initiative to improve the capacity of what they call "Highly Indebted Poor Countries" (HIPCs - actually only 41 out of 187 poor nations) to effectively repay an unbearable debt.

Why?

The debt burden had to be reduced, they said, to avoid persistent accumulation of debt arrears - in short, the poor were so poor they would become incapable of paying. For the rich to live on the backs of the poor, the poor need to have backs that will not break.

With this in mind, the IMF and the World Bank promised to cancel 80 per cent of the HIPCs' debt. (By 1999 the poor were paying 25% MORE, according to the World Bank itself.)

At the heavily protested 1999 G7 summit in Cologne, they promise to cancel 90 per cent of the total debt of the HIPCs.

Sort of - the number of nations was narrowed down to 22, and in 1999, the HIPCs repaid US$1.68 billion more back to the World Bank and the IMF than they were receiving in new loans.

In an attempt to confuse the growing numbers of protestors, the IMF has replaced the notorious "structural adjustment" policies with shiny new "Poverty Reduction and Growth Facilities" and the "Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers" - which are exactly the same thing, but with a new logo.

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