Belfast Grassroots Against the G8 Press Launch

international | anti-capitalism | press release

Tuesday May 17, 2005 18:27

by Belfast Grassroots Against the G8 Media Group - Belfast Grassroots Against The G8

g8belfast at doyourservice dot com

0770 470 8172

Call for Belfast's Citizens to Join G8 Summit Protests in July

Belfast Grassroots Against The G8 a network the groups and activists in Belfast opposing the G8 held a Press Briefing this afternoon in the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre . The Briefing was an opportunity for journalists to interview individuals and learn their personal reasons for going from Belfast to Scotland this summer.

Community Activist Ann Patterson & Davy Carlin of the AntiRacism Network gave brief statements about why it's important for people from Northern Ireland to resist the G8 Summit.

The Irish News, Belfast Newsletter & NVTV are covering the story.

Tony Blair, Anne Patterson, Davy Carlin & George Bush

Call for Belfast's Citizens to Join
G8 Summit Protests in July

A coalition of Belfast based environmental and community activists calling themselves “Grassroots against the G8” have called on local people to protest against the Group of Eight Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in July.

Press Contact:
Anne Patterson: 0770 470 8172, g8belfast@doyourservice.com

The G8 summit is one of the most unpopular and costly events in the world, with mass public protests dating back to Bonn in 1996. For years a huge range of citizens' groups have accused the G8 summits of being a phony spectacle, used to pander to the demands of wealthy and powerful institutions at the expense of the whole world's population and our
environment.

"Bush, Blair and the other G8 elites are trying to portray this meeting as an attempt to resolve two of the world's major problems: Global Climate Destabilization and the Mass Poverty in Africa, but since the 1970s the decisions which have caused these problems have all come from the G8 summits, and been made by G8 leaders."

said Lisa McKee, member from the “Food Not Bombs” group, an anti poverty organisation in Belfast.

"Huge protests have forced the issues of poverty and climate collapse that ordinary people are concerned about into the media spotlight. Now Tony Blair wants to claim these ideas are coming from the G8 elites"

adds Cormac Bennett, a grassroots activist.

The movement against the G8 has united people from communities all over the planet, including Northern Ireland. Local organisations and activists are calling on people to participate in local protests, or to go to Scotland for the Make Poverty History March July 2nd in Edinburgh and then July 6th-8th go to Gleneagles Hotel to join the Scottish CND and the Dissent! Network to blockade the G8 meetings, play golf on their hotel’s golf course, and shutdown the Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base.

The negative effects of globalisation are not just something that happen somewhere else in the world. Those returning from Scotland will join the rising tide of discontent about the Belfast Water Tax, a local occurrence of the global corporate push to privatise of water, from Cochambamba, Bolivia to Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Resources for Journalists
More detail is available at http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/

Other Journalist Resource Links
Dissent!: http://www.dissent.org.uk/
Make Poverty History: http://www.makepovertyhistory.org
G8 Alternatives: http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk/
Faslane Nuclear Submarine Blockade: http://www.faslaneg8.com/
Make Poverty History (local): http://www.makepovertyhistory-ni.org
GrassrootsGathering(local):http://www.mallusk.net/grassrootsgathering
Dissent Ireland : http://www.dissentireland.org/

The other side of the story
Official G8 website: http://www.g8.gov.uk/

Notes:

The G7 (now often referred to as the G8 since Russia was invited) was formed in the 1970s during a period of economic crisis by Canada, Italy, the USA, UK, Japan, France, and Germany. Its express purpose at the time was to enable these seven countries to develop long-term strategies to maintain their position as the world's dominant economic powers.
Among the strategies developed and employed by G7 countries were:

1) monopolizing and controlling the oil supply of other countries in the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and South America
2) loaning of money to corrupt dictatorships in Africa and Asia, causing third world debt
3) escalation of the nuclear arms race against the USSR, and the export of conventional weapons to client regimes such as Iran and Iraq.
4) making third world agricultural system dependent upon Western oil and chemical industries

Russia, although much less economically important since the collapse of the Soviet Union earns it's place because of it's large oil and arms industries and its arsenal of WMD. The president of the EU is also entitled to attend, and sometimes selected African leaders or pop stars are invited as public relations gimmicks.

The G8 has no constitution, accountability or status in international law- there is no such thing as a 'G8 presidency'. Some media commentators are confused on this issue. The substantial multi-million pound bill for the annual G8 meeting is, however, covered by the host country. Often many costs must totally be absorbed by the local government, which has already caused some complaints this year from the City of Edinburgh.

The G8 meetings rotate annually and this year is the turn for the UK to host the meeting. At the 1998 G8 meeting in Birmingham, Tony Blair promised to focus on elimination of third world debt. Each year since 1998, the G8 press conferences have contained announcements of debt cancellation. Every year, these promised measures have been delayed, reduced and then quietly dropped. We expect this year to be no exception.

Many people feel that there would be a better world if this meeting of elites from the eight most powerful nations in the world did not take place.