Justice for Genoa

Seven years ago, the G8 meeting in Genoa saw unprecedented public protests against the self-appointed rulers of the world. It also saw a then-unprecedented police response in a Western democracy, with the centre of the city shut down, armed guards patrolling the perimeter, and tens of thousands of riot police deployed (sadly, this response has now become the rule). Thousands of protesters were arrested; hundreds were taken to the Bolzaneto police barracks, where they were stripped, beaten, deprived of food and water, threatened with rape, and tortured by police and officials. The doctors and paramedics, who were supposed to care for the prisoners, participated in the abuse. Now, an Italian court has convicted 15 officials, including prison chief Biagio Gugliotta, on charges ranging from assault to inhuman and degrading treatment. It's a victory for justice and human rights, but unfortunately, there's a catch: thanks to Italy's odd statute of limitations (which sets a time limit on final conviction, rather than being charged), none of those convicted will serve any time. Instead, they will walk free, despite having been convicted of some of the worst abuses in recent European history. So, maybe its not such a victory for justice after all...

Climate change: urgent inaction

In addition to reminding everyone of why we used to behead aristocrats, the G8 meeting in Tōyako has also been discussing one of the world's other major problems: climate change. And seized by the scale of the problem and the urgency of the situation, they have agreed to cut emissions by 50% by 2050.

This is being hailed as "progress", but there are two things we should remember. Firstly, the Stern Review recommended that rich countries such as the G8 would need to make cuts of60 - 80% by 2050 if we were to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. And secondly, that recommendation was relative to 1990 emissions; today, the G8 are trying to shift the baseline to "current levels". Which means they can't even keep the promises they made just a year ago in Heiligendamm.

More importantly, while our leaders promised cuts in the future, they gave no indication of how to get there, and steadfastly refused to name an interim target to drive emissions reductions in the meantime. In other words, faced with one of the world's greatest problems, they promised urgent inaction, while polluters keep right on polluting. If this is all our global leaders are capable of, then I think its high time we got some new ones.

Obscene

This week, the G8 are meeting in Tōyako, Japan. One of the chief items on their agenda is the current world food crisis. So naturally, they're scoffing down four-course lunches and eight course dinners, with caviar, sea urchin and truffles, while telling the poor to tighten their belts.

And people wonder why aristocrats get lynched in revolutions...

G8: Some "deal"

The big news this morning is that the G8 have managed to reach a deal on climate change. Except, when you look at it, it's not much of a deal. No targets are set, beyond a vague and obvious statement that emissions must stop rising and then reduce, and there's no agreement even on what baseline to use to measure commitments against (unsurprisingly, the US wants to use this year, giving themselves and other climate cheats a free lunch). And the heart of it - the agreement to keep negotiations within the UN framework - was something everyone had already agreed to (even the US; they were simply trying to renege on it). In other words, they've agreed to nothing more than what they had agreed to do anyway. And this is presented as "progress"?

Climate change: preventing progress

The G8 will be meeting in Germany next week for its annual summit, with climate change expected to dominate the agenda as Europe pushes for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The US has been fighting tooth and nail to block any progress, however George Bush has suddenly announced that the US will lead a series of seperate talks bringing together the world's 15 worst carbon polluters with the aim of agreeing a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gases by the end of 2008.

This sounds good, but the message is in the fine print: despite bringing major emitters together to negotiate, the US rejects any national targets, or any qualitiative goal which could help to define them, or any move towards a global emissions trading system. In other words, they're proposing a "climate change treaty" which is worse than those already negotiated and which, by definition, cannot achieve any meaningful progress.

(But then, preventing meaningful progress is after all the point. Gotta keep those oil and coal profits rolling in...)

Like the AP6 (also coincidentally announced at a G8 summit which showed too much chance of moving forward on climate change), this is simply an attempt to undermine negotiations and allow the US to buy themselves a few more years in which they can pollute freely. And they should not be allowed to get away with it. If the US is not going to participate meaningfully in negotiations, they should be excluded, and the rest of the world should press on without them. Then, when we have a deal, we should use border taxes to force them to sign up for it. But one thing is clear: the charade in which the US uses negotiations not to reach a deal, but to prevent other countries from reaching one cannot be allowed to continue.

The G8 have betrayed the world's poor

Two years ago at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, the G8 nations supposedly took a historic step towards helping the developing world. In the face of unprecedented public protests demanding that they make poverty history, they promised to boost aid by US$50 billion. So, what have they done to keep that promise?

Nothing.

Actually, worse than nothing. According to figures from the OECD, aid spending fell in real terms by 5.1% - the first fall since 1997. A lot has been done on debt relief, but this has come at the expense of real aid spending. So much for the G8's promises...

G8: Disappointing

The G8 has produced its final communique, promising to boost aid to Africa by US$50 billion and forgive some third world debt. But while this will make a real difference, overall it is disappointing. According to Make Poverty History, only 40% of that aid boost is actually new funding, the rest having already been announced. It also will not arrive until 2010. In the intervening five years, millions will die who could have been saved if the boost had been immediate.

The G8 will continue to attach "conditionalities" to both aid and debt forgiveness. This is good when it comes to governance - there is no point in giving aid if it simply goes to an official's Swiss bank account rather than people in need - but the West continues to demand economic liberalisation and privatisation as a condition for receiving assistance. In New Zealand, this economic programme resulted in widespread hardship for many, and skyrocketing wealth for a few. In Africa, it kills people. User charges for basic healthcare result in reduced access and hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths every year. User charges for water have resulted in epidemics. Privatisations have resulted in basic services such as water being denied to millions, and in some cases even stopped completely, as the owners shut down and pull out. The result is yet more deaths. And yet donor nations and institutions continue to demand these policies.

However, the biggest failure is on trade. By focusing on aid and debt relief, the G8 have fundamentally missed the point. While increased aid is both welcome and necessary, the long-term solution to Africa's problems lies in internal economic development and being able to "trade their way out of poverty". This in turn requires access to western markets - something currently denied to them. The G8 has simply failed to address this problem. Rather than taking a historic opportunity to commit to ending subsidies and trade barriers which ruin poor countries, the G8 have chosen to work through the WTO - which means the same old one-sided game of the rich countries extracting further concessions from the poor to do what they'd promised to do years ago, and then reneging on the deal (while using their economic clout to force the poor to keep their end anyway). The unfairness of this system is obvious to all, and yet the G8 have chosen to perpetuate it. And the reason is clear: they profit from this inequality, and want to do so for as long as possible - even if it means condemning the poor to further poverty.

(As for climate change, given Bush's intransigence on the issue, the G7 should simply have worked around him, and produced an agreement for those that could agree, rather than wasting their time pandering to his delusions. Yes, America needs to be brought on board - but it is crystal clear that that will not happen so long as Bush is President, and so the rest of the world should simply move on without him).

Again, what the G8 has offered will make a real difference to the fight against poverty. Lives will be saved and made less miserable; some countries will be able to escape the burden of unpayable debt and have a real chance at development; fewer people will die of HIV/AIDS. But they could have - and should have - done more. And we will simply have to keep on pressuring them until they do.

G8: the view from Edinburgh

Morgue, a friend of mine currently hiding in Edinburgh, has an excellent series of posts on the upcoming G8 meeting and surrounding issues. Go read them.

G8: Missing the point

George Bush has responded to the growing pressure surrounding the upcoming G8 meeting in Gleneagles by promising to double US aid to Africa. But while welcome, this is fundamentally missing the point. Bush's increase follows the same old path of making aid conditional on "better governance" - code not just for reduced corruption, but also for the "Washington Consensus" of open markets, privatisation, and user-charges for basic services. And these are the problem, rather than the solution, because they make the basic education and health which are the prerequisites for any sort of economic development unreachable for the vast majority of Africans.

It's also missing the point because it ignores the key component of the Make Poverty History campaign: trade. One of the reasons Africa remains mired in poverty despite a half-century and more of aid is because the rules of global trade are stacked in favour of the rich and against the poor. Through the World Bank, IMF, and aid conditionalities, the rich have forced the poor to systematically open their markets, while keeping their own closed. As a result, poor countries cannot develop export markets, while their internal markets are devastated by cheap imports. The result is joblessness and poverty.

Reforming world trade rules to create a level playing field would produce far more benefit to the poorer countries than increasing aid budgets. The poor world already gains thirty-two times as much revenue from exports as it does from aid. Oxfam has estimated that increasing their share of world trade by only 5% would deliver them an extra US$350 billion a year - seven times more than they currently receive in aid. And the effects would be dramatic: it is estimated that every 1% increase would reduce the number of people in extreme poverty by 128 million.

Strangely, though, the G8's dialogue on this has focussed on aid and debt-reduction (again, with strings attached), rather than trade. And the reason is obvious: the rich countries profit from the present inequalities, and are perfectly willing to see the poor continue to die of hunger and disease in order to continue to do so. And the only way this will end is if we stand up and tell our governments that we are no longer willing to tolerate it.

Justice for Genoa

More than 70 Italian Police Officers go on trial today for their role in the brutal nighttime raid on the Armando Diaz school and adjacent alternative media centre during the G8 summit in Genoa four years ago. During the raid, peaceful protestors were savageley beaten; one man

was beaten unconscious and received several broken ribs, a fractured hand and the loss of all his front teeth.

Other injuries included an American who was kicked so hard in the groin that he will never be able to father children.

Forty of those arrested at the Diaz were taken to a holding centre at Bolzaneto, outside Genoa.

There they were submitted to physical and verbal abuse, including being threatened with rape by officers who were singing fascist-era songs.

The international media was then duped into believing the Diaz was a hotbed of violent resistance.

Two Molotov cocktails were planted and police also showed off an array of knives, sledgehammers and pickaxes which they claimed to have found on the premises.

One enterprising officer, Massimo Nucera, also claimed to have been stabbed and produced a damaged jacket to prove it.

Tests on the jacket later showed the stabbing was faked, and it later emerged the penknives had been used to prepare food in the school kitchen and the tools were from a nearby building site.

The police officers - including the second-in-command of Italy's counterterrorism unit - face charges including assault, false arrest, and abuse of office. And the reputation of italy's police - and of Italy itself - hinges on the result. If this turns into a whitewash, then Italy will be tarred as a country which puts force above the rule of law, and which allows its officials to act with impunity towards its citizens - just as it did in the 20's and 30's.

Showcasing

Bush wants the venue of the G8 summit next month to showcase his "environmental stewardship" - so he's holding it in one of America's most polluted counties, in an island resort surrounded by toxic waste dumps.