Actions against the imperialist agenda of the Group of Eight (G8) got underway in Scotland on July 2 with a massive 225,000-strong demonstration in Edinburgh. People from all walks of life and from all over the world participated in the action organized under the theme "Make Poverty History." The City's Royal Mile was the central axis of the demonstration which kicked off at 12:15 pm and ended at exactly 3:00 pm with a minute of "silence and reflection" for the millions of people who have died as a result of the exploitation and oppression of the big powers. The organizers of the event gathered below Edinburgh's castle, which can be seen from all points of the city, to unfurl a giant white banner bearing the slogan "Make Poverty History." At one point participants joined hands to form a huge human chain around the city center.

The leaders of the G8 -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- met in Gleneagles, Scotland from July 6-8.

According to news reports, close to 4,000 police and 10,000 military personnel were deployed. A 6-foot wall surrounded the Gleneagles Hotel where the summit took place. It is reported that hundreds of people were stopped, searched or only allowed to travel to the demonstrations once the police photographed them.

Naming of the Dead at Monument on Calton Hill

On the evening of July 3, the Stop the War Coalition organized a "Naming of the Dead" at the Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. People took turns reading the names of children, women, soldiers and others who have been killed in the war and occupation of Iraq. Participants denounced U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and demanded they be held accountable for their crimes.

Faslane Naval Base Blockade

Early morning on July 4, thousands of anti-war protestors marched to the Royal Navy Base in Faslane on the west coast of Scotland for "The Faslane Blockade." Protestors carried placards reading "No War, No Nukes" as they blocked the four gates of the base. The blockade was already a victory as the authorities had asked the base's civilian staff not to come in to work that day. Some 200 nuclear bombs are stored at the Faslane and Coulport military bases on the banks of River Clyde. Most are on four Trident submarines operated from the Faslane base, according to the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

"We aim to focus on the military power by which the world's richest countries protect their economic interests. Militarism drains money away from health, education and housing, pollutes the natural environment and leads to the death of thousands of innocent people," the event's leaflet stated. "It is a big success, the biggest march ever here in Faslane," Kate Hudson from the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said. "We are giving a strong message to the G8 leaders: to put an end to their nuclear hypocrisy and disarm nuclear weapons."

"(U.S. President George W.) Bush says the U.S. is going to double aid to Africa in the next two years. Even if it does, which is doubtful, it will be the equivalent of two days of American defence expenditures," one of the organizers stated. "That puts into perspective the G8 talk about helping the poor countries, while the priorities are still on defence."

Meanwhile, a street parade called the "Carnival of Full Enjoyment" organized by temporary and precarious workers took place in Edinburgh and was brutally attacked by police. Ninety people were arrested and many wounded by club-wielding police, news agencies report.

Action at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre

On July 5, an action was held at the Dungavel Immigration Removal Center where hundreds of immigrants and refugees, including families with children, are imprisoned. The action demanded an end to the detentions and deportations. "They have committed no crime," organizers said. "While the G8 leaders discuss the needs of global business, they ignore the needs of millions of migrants, displaced as a result of their global economic and military policies, demonised as illegals, living in poverty or in prison, then violently deported. We will not ignore our fellow human beings locked up in Dungavel."

Another World Is Possible Convergence on Gleneagles

On July 6, during the G8 opening, thousands of people gathered for the Another World Is Possible! convergence on Gleneagles. Stefania Milan of Inter Press Service gave the following account of the day's events:

Wednesday, the day of "siege" of the Group of Eight summit at this Scottish golf resort, saw several actions of civil disobedience across the region, and a big march of protesters to the miles of fences surrounding the summit site at the luxurious Gleneagles Hotel.

People started to gather in the morning in Auchterarder, a village of 6,000 people in the Scottish countryside, about two miles from Gleneagles, itself about 50 miles north of Edinburgh.

Around 11 am local time, the march, organised by the coalition G8 Alternatives, was banned by the police for "security reasons." About 25 activist buses coming from Edinburgh were stopped on their way to prevent them from joining the march. But the ban was then lifted after negotiations.

Auchterarder welcomed protesters with tea and coffee in a "global village café" set up in the local church. Some of the shops were boarded up and the post boxes sealed. However, many local residents were very supportive, joining the march or waving from their balconies.

"The G8 leaders do not wear masks or hoods, but are responsible for the death of millions of people in the world," Lindsey German said from the stage at the rally. "They say we are violent, but we have seen much more violence coming from them, bringing economic terror to the people of the world."

"We are the many; they are the few. We are going to protest until we get a world of equality and peace. We want to defeat them, but all at once," German said. [...]

The march finally started at 2 pm, under the rain. Colourfully dressed people, a group of clowns, three bands, a bicycle-operated sound-system, giant puppets representing U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, babies in buggies and middle-aged women made their way down the country lanes, passing by cottages and golf courses.

They marched shouting: "Freedom for people, not for trade!" "Whose streets? Our streets!" "We will shut them down!" And, "Power to people!" in a peaceful atmosphere.

But when the crowd reached the razor-wire fences, guarded by hundreds of riot police, not far from the stately Gleneagles Hotel, the tension was tangible.

A small group threw down some fences, and the riot police split the march into two parts. Nobody was hurt, nobody arrested, despite half an hour of chaos.

Suddenly, about a thousand activists broke into the fields surrounding Easthill Farm, close to the G8 summit venue. "It is an amazing vision of colourful people with flags and banners walking through the crops, climbing trees, chanting and dancing," said an activist from Manchester.

Some of the perimeter fences were taken down and protesters were able to break in, violating the "forbidden zone." Of course the police did not like it.

Police were flown in with Chinook military helicopters. Both mounted and riot police started to push away the demonstrators. The fields were transformed into a tense battlefield, but still clowns and people were dancing. The police eventually managed to clear the fields, and protesters turned into town peacefully.

But other less peaceful actions took place all over the county of Perthshire.

Heat had been rising in Stirling since the night before. Police began searching people going to the activists' self-organised Hori-zone camping site. In the morning the train station was closed due to "safety reasons," preventing activists from going to Gleneagles.

Since 6 am, the motorway A9, connecting Stirling to Perth, and passing by Gleneagles, was blocked by the demonstrators, with sit-ins, trees, double-decker buses and cars. Samba-activists, clowns, and about 300 children with their parents blockaded the motorway until the afternoon.

People were reported walking in the motorway towards Gleneagles. Other minor roadblocks were created all around Gleneagles. The police announced a "continuous ongoing serious public disorder" in the area.

In Edinburgh, when the police refused to let the buses leave for Gleneagles, a march of around 1,000 started from Princes Street, the main avenue. It was penned in by the police, people were searched and some arrested, but official numbers were not available.

In Edinburgh, activists also tried to prevent the summit delegates from going to Gleneagles by surrounding the Sheraton Hotel in the city center where they were lodged.

About 400 people are reported to have been identified or arrested in the morning actions, but no official figures were available at the time of this report.

Indymedia Bristol Server Seized by Police

Before the actions against the G8 got underway, Bristol Indymedia's server was seized by the police on June 27. An Indymedia volunteer was also arrested during the raid on "suspicion of incitement to criminal damage" and is now on bail.

Bristol Indymedia stated: "We are outraged at the actions of the police. They have completely disabled the entire Bristol Indymedia news service. By their actions they have undermined the principle of open publishing and free access to the media, thereby removing people's opportunity to read and report their own news. This situation has serious implications for anyone providing a news service on the Internet. We do not intend to let this stop us from continuing the project."

Police had demanded access to the Indymedia server to gain the IP details of a June 17 posting in which unknown persons claimed to have damaged cars being transported on a train. The article was considered by Bristol Indymedia to have breached guidelines and was hidden.

On June 20, police contacted Bristol Indymedia in reference to the posting. Bristol Indymedia informed the police that they were in the process of instructing a lawyer to reply on their behalf. On June 21, the police contacted a Bristol Indymedia volunteer requesting the IP logs. Bristol Indymedia considered that the system was journalistic material covered by special provision under the law. A lawyer from the civil liberties organizaton Liberty faxed the police explaining this provision. The police then requested a meeting which Bristol Indymedia agreed to. Ten minutes before the arranged meeting the British Transport Police cancelled the meeting and asked to postpone it.

The next police contact was the seizure of the server and the arrest of the Bristol Indymedia volunteer. The seizure of the server was carried out under a search warrant (Police And Criminal Evidence Act 1984, ss.8 and 15), not recognizing the journalistic privilege. 

This is the second time that authorities have attacked Indymedia servers in Britain in the run up to a major event. Last October, just before the European Social Forum, Indymedia servers in London were seized, prompting a wave of protests and solidarity statements from a wide range of organizations.

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Thousands Protest Bush Visit in Denmark

On July 6, thousands of people marched from the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen to the Danish Parliament against the visit U.S. President George W. Bush to Denmark. Protests began on Tuesday evening, hours before Bush arrived and continued throughout his 17-hour visit.

More than 2,000 police officers were deployed during the visit to block off streets in one of the biggest security operations the country has ever seen, news agencies report. Police sealed manholes and set up barbed wire around Marienborg, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's official summer residence where he hosted Bush. 

The visit was seen as a "thanks" to the Danish government for its continued participation in the Iraq war, the Ritzau news bureau reported. Some 570 Danish troops are deployed in Iraq; most are involved in training the so-called Iraqi security forces based in the southern part of the country.

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African Leaders Demand Cancellation of All Debts

Meeting in Sirte, Libya from June 28 to July 5 for the fifth ordinary session of the African Union's annual assembly, African leaders demanded complete debt cancellation of all the continent's countries, not just the $40 billion owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, including 14 from sub-Saharan Africa, that the Group of Eight (G8) recently agreed to cancel. According to the most recent World Bank figures, Africa has $350 billion in external debt and pays over $12 billion a year on debt servicing. The cancellation of the foreign debt of 14 African nations is a meager solution to the situation facing the continent, African leaders said.

They also demanded fair international trade rules. As some noted, the economies of most African countries are based on agriculture. Around 40 per cent of Africa's total exports are agricultural produce. The $150 billion subsidies paid by the United States and the Europeans to their producers must end and other trade barriers should be removed, they said. 

In addition, the African leaders recalled that they are still waiting for the fulfilment of the objectives of the millennium for development, announced five years ago by the United Nations. Africa is still far from reaching those goals which include reducing poverty by half by 2015, guaranteeing primary education for all children, reducing by two thirds the mortality rate of children under five years of age and fighting AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

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The G8 Summit: A Fraud and a Circus

- John Pilger, New Statesman, June 22, 2005 -

The front page of the London Observer on 12 June announced, "55 billion dollar Africa debt deal 'a victory for millions'." The "victory for millions" is a quotation of Bob Geldof, who said, "Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny...." The nonsense of this would be breathtaking if the reader's breath had not already been extracted by the unrelenting sophistry of Geldof, Bono, Blair, the Observer et al.

Africa's imperial plunder and tragedy have been turned into a circus for the benefit of the so-called G8 leaders due in Scotland next month and those of us willing to be distracted by the barkers of the circus: the establishment media and its "celebrities." The illusion of an anti establishment crusade led by pop stars -- a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion -- serves to dilute a great political movement of anger. In summit after summit, not a single significant "promise" of the G8 has been kept, and the "victory for millions" is no different. It is a fraud -- actually a setback to reducing poverty in Africa. Entirely conditional on vicious, discredited economic programmes imposed by the World Bank and the IMF, the "package" will ensure that the "chosen" countries slip deeper into poverty.

Is it any surprise that this is backed by Blair and his treasurer, Gordon Brown, and George Bush; even the White House calls it a "milestone"? For them, it is an important facade, held up by the famous and the naive and the inane. Having effused about Blair, Geldof describes Bush as "passionate and sincere" about ending poverty. Bono has called Blair and Brown "the John and Paul of the global development stage." Behind this front, rapacious power can "re-order" the lives of millions in favour of totalitarian corporations and their control of the world's resources.

There is no conspiracy; the goal is no secret. Gordon Brown spells it out in speech after speech, which liberal journalists choose to ignore, preferring the Treasury spun version. The G8 communique announcing the "victory for millions" is unequivocal. Under a section headed "G8 proposals for HIPC debt cancellation," it says that debt relief to poor countries will be granted only if they are shown "adjusting their gross assistance flows by the amount given": in other words, their aid will be reduced by the same amount as the debt relief. So they gain nothing. Paragraph Two states that "it is essential" that poor countries "boost private sector development" and ensure "the elimination of impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign."

The "55 billion" claimed by the Observer comes down, at most, to 1 billion spread over 18 countries. This will almost certainly be halved -- providing less than six days' worth of debt payments -- because Blair and Brown want the IMF to pay its share of the "relief" by revaluing its vast stock of gold, and passionate and sincere Bush has said no. The first unmentionable is that the gold was plundered originally from Africa. The second unmentionable is that debt payments are due to rise sharply from next year, more than doubling by 2015. This will mean not "victory for millions," but death for millions.

At present, for every 1 dollar of "aid" to Africa, 3 dollars are taken out by western banks, institutions and governments, and that does not account for the repatriated profit of transnational corporations. Take the Congo. Thirty-two corporations, all of them based in G8 countries, dominate the exploitation of this deeply impoverished, minerals-rich country, where millions have died in the "cause" of 200 years of imperialism. In the Cote d'Ivoire, three G8 companies control 95 per cent of the processing and export of cocoa: the main resource. The profits of Unilever, a British company long in Africa, are a third larger than Mozambique's GDP. One American company, Monsanto -- of genetic engineering notoriety -- controls 52 per cent of the maize seed in South Africa, that country's staple food.

Blair could not give two flying faeces for the people of Africa. Ian Taylor at the University of St Andrews used the Freedom of Information Act to learn that while Blair was declaiming his desire to "make poverty history," he was secretly cutting the government's Africa desk officers and staff. At the same time, his "department for international development" was forcing, by the back door, privatisation of water supply in Ghana for the benefit of British investors. This ministry lives by the dictates of its "Business Partnership Unit," which is devoted to finding "ways in which DfID can improve the enabling environment for productive investment overseas and... contribute to the operation of the financial sector."

Poverty reduction? Of course not. A charade promotes the modern imperial ideology known as neoliberalism, yet it is almost never reported that way and the connections are seldom made. In the issue of the Observer announcing "victory for millions" was a secondary news item that British arms sales to Africa had passed 1 billion. One British arms client is Malawi, which pays out more on the interest on its debt than its entire health budget, despite the fact that 15 per cent of its population has HIV. Gordon Brown likes to use Malawi as example of why "we should make poverty history," yet Malawi will not receive a penny of the "victory for millions" relief.

The charade is a gift for Blair, who will try anything to persuade the public to "move on" from the third unmentionable: his part in the greatest political scandal of the modern era, his crime in Iraq. Although essentially an opportunist, as his lying demonstrates, he presents himself as a Kiplingesque imperialist. His "vision for Africa" is as patronising and exploitative as a stage full of white pop stars (with black tokens now added). His messianic references to "shaking the kaleidoscope" of societies about which he understands little and "watching the pieces fall" has translated into seven violent interventions abroad, more than any British prime minister for half a century. Bob Geldof, an Irishman at his court, duly knighted, says nothing about this.

The protesters going to the G8 summit at Gleneagles ought not to allow themselves to be distracted by these games. If inspiration is needed, along with evidence that direct action can work, they should look to Latin America's mighty popular movements against total locura capitalista (total capitalist folly). They should look to Bolivia, the poorest country in Latin America, where an indigenous movement has Blair's and Bush's corporate friends on the run, and Venezuela, the only country in the world where oil revenue has been diverted for the benefit of the majority, and Uruguay and Argentina, Ecuador and Peru, and Brazil's great landless people's movement. Across the continent, ordinary people are standing up to the old Washington-sponsored order. "Que se vayan todos!" (Out with them all!) say the crowds in the streets.

Much of the propaganda that passes for news in our own society is given to immobilising and pacifying people and diverting them from the idea that they can confront power. The current babble about Europe, of which no reporter makes sense, is part of this; yet the French and Dutch "no" votes are part of the same movement as in Latin America, returning democracy to its true home: that of power accountable to the people, not to the "free market" or the war policies of rampant bullies. And this is just a beginning.

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Voice of Revolution expresses its opposition to the "pop diplomacy" conducted under the guise of the Live 8 concerts organized in conjunction with the imperialist G8 Summit. The aim is to consciously divert the expression of an organized opposition to the imperialists' Africa agenda and create illusions that the people can expect cures from the gods of plague. The G8 leaders themselves are actively involved in the creation of the illusion of an anti-establishment crusade led by pop stars aimed at diluting the peoples' anger against the G8 powers. Everything is organized in such a way so as to create the illusion that the G8 leaders can somehow be persuaded to act in favour of "making poverty history."

It is reported that Prime Minister Paul Martin joined U.S. President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder "in earnest talks on African development with rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono within hours of arrival at Scotland's Gleneagles golf resort for the three-day G8 summit," IPS reports. Those conversations followed extensive talks between Geldof (of the former band Boomtown Rats, and organizer of the 1985 Live Aid concert), Bono (of the Irish band U2) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"Significantly, Blair, wearing an open-neck shirt, addressed a press conference alongside Bono and Geldof when everyone expected him to be playing host to the G8 leaders who already had arrived, and just minutes before Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to arrive," IPS reports and continues:

"British officials -- who had clearly failed to convince officials from the other G8 countries to adopt radical and substantive agreements either on fighting poverty in Africa, or on measures to contain climate change -- had clearly resorted to pop diplomacy in a last-ditch attempt.

"In an unprecedented move, British leaders took the backseat for the day to present to G8 leaders direct representatives of 'popular people power.' The move meant also that the other G8 leaders would be seen to reject popular demands, rather than official British proposals."

According to media reports, Bono and Geldof then emerge as the "people's representatives" and "negotiators." After talks between the pop stars and the heads of G8 governments, "Bono announced that the picture did not look good," IPS reports.

"We've had some very tough meetings here today," Bono said at a press conference after the meetings with Bush, Martin and Schroeder. "There is a risk that we may have no deal at the summit. A deal on $50 billion (for Africa) is not there, a deal on trade is not there, the debt stuff is not there."

Bono said he and Geldof had been discussing the final declaration to be produced at the G8 summit, IPS writes. "We are trying to convince them that the communiqué has to be clear, though it does not have to be written by a songwriter," Bono said.

Bono then took up the refrain of the G8 by referring to "the alternative ways of protest to those of the musicians and their rock concerts": "Like smashed cars and shop fronts, anger and rage. I think our way is better, but we don't know that yet. It will take a couple of days to find out."

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