Ten invaluable tips for assessing the G8

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/ten-invaluable-tips-for-assessing-the-g8/article1618646/

You can't tell the players without a program, and you can't decipher their rhetoric without a scorecard. As you try to figure out what the G8 are really up to in Huntsville, and while you're waiting anxiously for the G20 to go home already, just keep the following 10 rules in mind (and feel free to add your own):

1. Disbelieve every story you read, see or hear. Every official delegation will have a giant contingent of spin doctors, each peddling a version of events solely designed to make their Top Banana look good. None should be trusted.
2. Our Canadian media will be held hostage by the Prime Minister's vast army of teenage communication whizzes, all of whom will insist that the entire event pivots around Stephen Harper. For the rest of the world, we're simply the accidental host and a marginal player.
3. Seven of the G8 club are known as donor countries, in relation to poorer countries. Yet, all have enriched themselves at the expense of poor countries; fancy folks call this a negative resource transfer. As well, Russia, the US, Britain and France are responsible for most of the tyrants and much of the conflict that have cursed so many poor countries. All G8 members should properly be seen as owing large debts to the world's poor countries, which need to be repaid.
4. Rich countries are said to give about $120-billion a year in aid to poor countries. That figure needs perspective; it's not as grand as it seems. For example, Canadians spent $183-billion on health care alone last year. And great gobs of so-called aid money has nothing to do with poverty reduction or development at all. In fact, much of it actually benefits the so-called donor country. One example: Canada has “given” $1-billion to the poor west African state of Mali since 1962. So far as can be calculated, two thirds of that amount has actually gone to Canadian businesses and consultancies in the form of supply contracts and consultations.
5. Many generous promises will once again be made by the G8 to poorer countries. Believe none of them. It is a necessary ritual at these meetings to make extravagant pledges that few countries have any intention of fulfilling. In 2005, at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, the members promised to increase aid by $50-billion by this year; they are $20-billion short. They pledged $25-billion to Africa specifically; they are $14-billion short. Unbeknownst to most mortals, hundreds of commitments are made at these jamborees; overall, only about half are ever met. Don't ask me why make vows they don't mean. I've never fathomed it.
6. The government of Canada will unleash the dogs of war - better known as cabinet ministers and flacks - who will swear that Canada has lived up to its international obligations. You decide: Canada now rank 18th among the world's major aid “donors”. Stephen Harper has cut $700-million from our promised aid target. He has frozen all foreign aid, especially to Africa. He has defunded 8 poor African countries. The eye-popping cost of security at this week's summits is more than five times what would have been spent in an entire year in Canadian aid to those eight African countries combined. Only about 20-30 per cent of our aid budget goes to Africa. No funds promised to maternal care will be new money; they will be stolen from existing programs.
7. There will be much talk about the health of women and children in poor countries but little talk of AIDS in poor countries. Yet AIDS has a devastating impact on women's health. The 2005 G8 in Gleneagles won great acclaim by pledging universal access to AIDS treatment by this year. Yet many of the biggest funders are reducing their AIDS budgets, leaving 9 million people, two thirds of them in Africa, without access to life-saving drugs that rich countries take for granted.
8. If asked, each G8 will once again, for the millionth time in 40 years, re-commit itself to contributing .7 per cent of its GNI to aid. Not a single one has ever reached that figure, and only the UK comes close. The only countries that have ever given .7 per cent (or more!) are Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Holland. None is in the G8 or the G20. More than half of rich nations actually reduced their aid budgets in 2009. Canada is on the high road to reducing its aid from .32 per cent of GNI to .28 per cent. The philanthropic Yanks give a derisory .19 per cent, though the American public believes that fully a quarter of the national budget goes to foreign aid
9. Even if the entire G8 met their .7 per cent vow, African development would still be greatly constrained. Yet, you will not hear a word from Huntsville about the factors that stifle real development in poor countries:
   -  neoliberal policies that have been forced by the rich world on the poor
      (including user fees those vulnerable mothers and children must pay for
      health care);
    - the billion dollar a day subsidies to agribusinesses in Europe and the US;
    - the western tax havens that allow the rich to launder vast amounts of
      capital out of poor countries;
   - the active recruitment of the poor world's best and brightest to our own
     shores;
   - the debt that the poorest countries in the world still owe to the richest
     banks in the world;
   - the harm wrought by the economic meltdown and global warming, none of
      it the fault of the poorest countries.
10. While political leaders yammer away, big business acts. And it often acts
    with the active support of their governments and embassies abroad. While the rich world presents itself as the savior of the poor:
    -  giant pharmaceutical companies price vital drugs out of the reach of most
       poor people;
    - asbestos companies export their deadly product, banned in the rich world,
      to poor countries;
    - tobacco giants, whose boards are choc-a-bloc with former politicians,
       university presidents and other respected members of the community,
       ramp up their lavish advertising campaigns to turn poor country citizens
       into cigarette addicts;
    - mining companies bribe officials of poor countries (who are later denounced
      for being corrupt) to plunder their resources at minimal cost, paying little in
      taxes and royalties and less in wages while creating environmental
      disasters.

What do you call those who have the capacity to reduce hunger, poverty and disease with a stroke of the pen, and fail to act? What do you call those who are knowingly responsible for causing death and suffering to millions of fellow citizens? What do you call those who deny to the poor the benefits that we in the rich world take for granted? You call them the G8.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s) and not do necessarily reflect the views of the AfricaFiles' editors and network members. They are included in our material as a reflection of a diversity of views and a variety of issues. Material written specifically for AfricaFiles may be edited for length, clarity or inaccuracies.

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