The Guardian (UK): G8 targeted at counter-summit: “A similar point was made by the actvist and writer Ken Wiwa, whose father Ken Saro Wiwa was executed by Nigeria's former military dicatorship for his campaigns on behalf of the Ogoni people and against Shell. He said the influence of multinational corporations on governments in the developing world, and now in the west, was "the gravest danger" facing us all. "What we have to do now is take back the government from the coporate agenda," he said. "We must find a way to hold corporations to account.”: Sunday 3 July 2005
Simon Jeffrey and Matthew Tempest
Sunday July 3, 2005
A succession of speakers at a "G8 counter-summit" today questioned Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's commitment to ending poverty and tackling climate change.
As the leaders of the world's richest countries prepare for this week's meeting at Gleneagles, delegates gathered in Edinburgh for the G8 Alternatives summit.
The one-day event is the work of a coalition of unions and campaign groups who believe the G8 has taken too much power for itself and who decry what they see as the rich nations' legacy of "war, occupation, neoliberal corporate globalisation, poverty and environmental devastation".
Speakers include Nigerian activist Ken Wiwa, Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who was recalled after complaining of human rights abuses, and ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Green MEP Caroline Lucas, the party's expert on climate change, is among the speakers this afternoon at a session on the environment. She expressed concern that the Gleneagles summit might fail to produce a meaningful deal on climate change.
"When you look at the leaked communiqués so far, the lack of progress would be laughable if it were not so serious," she said.
"We need realistic timetables for action, deeds not words. Yet the US government is blocking everything, even an acknowledgment of the basic science of climate change. So I think Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are happy to let the focus be on aid and debt, and present the US as the scapegoat on climate change."
There were cheers from the audience at Edinburgh's Usher Hall when Respect MP George Galloway called on African countries to tear up their debts and declare "we have already paid".
Mr Galloway accused Mr Blair and Mr Brown of trying to reinvent themselves after the Iraq war and said the backing of stars like Bob Geldof and Bono was giving them "extra credibility".
He said Geldof's decision to be photographed with his head on the prime minister's shoulder on Thursday was "a serious mistake" and will have "caused a shudder" for Make History Poverty campaigners.
Mr Galloway attacked Geldof for instructing Hyde Park acts not to criticise G8 leaders, saying it was "authoritarian".
He accused the prime minister of a "grotesquely cynical manoeuvre" in placing himself at the forefront of the anti-poverty campaign, and said that if "Sir Bob and Sir Bono" really wanted to help, they would stand in Whitehall and call on poor countries to tear up the debts because they had already paid.
Walden Bello, the Filipino director of the Focus on the Global South pressure group, made a rousing call for mass civil disruption of the next World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong in December, to a rapturous ovation.
He told the audience of around 400 activists: "We must be militant, not mellow. We need to lay bodies on the line to stop this monster. The World Trade Organisation is like a vampire - its gets back up again and again, until you finally drive a stake through its heart."
He called for the WTO to be "derailed and destroyed" rather than reformed.
A panel at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall discussed the impact that environmental damage, mostly caused by corporations, has on the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
Bianca Jagger told the audience of her experiences among the indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where contaminated water supplies from oil drilling led to blistering skin and miscarriages. She said that western countries - especially the US - are such huge consumers of oil that the oil companies can hold their governments to hostage. "We must call for the separation of oil and state," she concluded.
A similar point was made by the activist and writer Ken Wiwa, whose father Ken Saro Wiwa was executed by Nigeria's former military dictatorship for his campaigns on behalf of the Ogoni people and against Shell. He said the influence of multinational corporations on governments in the developing world, and now in the west, was "the gravest danger" facing us all. "What we have to do now is take back the government from the corporate agenda," he said. "We must find a way to hold corporations to account.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1520493,00.html
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