Bob Geldof has urged one million people to descend on Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh when the G8 summit convenes July 6-8. Headlines at The Scotsman range from “Shortage of portable loos hits G8 camp plans” to “Protests becoming too safe for ageing rockers.”
Are any of you joining Bob and/or the “Make Poverty History” marchers? By the way, via DN!, “President Bush made clear yesterday that he is opposed to doubling aid for Africa, [a major agenda item for the G8]. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has proposed that the world’s richest nations make a $25 billion increase in support for Africa. But asked about the issue yesterday, Bush said ‘It doesn’t fit our budgetary process’.”
Update [2005-6-2 12:18:10 by susanhu]: My daughter just sent me this story: Malawians now turn to water lilies for food. “Malawians are risking crocodile attacks to fetch water lilies for food after a sudden rain failure early in the year destroyed key crops leaving seven million short of food across southern Africa. …” The story describes mothers making porridge out of water lilies, for chrissakes, to feed their kids. Do you think George Bush knows, or even f–king cares?
More on the “nightmare” below:
From today’s The Scotsman, “Nightmare of a million on the march “:
Police and the city council are already bracing themselves for a huge Make Poverty History march on Saturday 2 July, expected to be attended by around 200,000, followed by a Stop The War Coalition demo the following day.
But they have now been forced back to the drawing board after Geldof [PHOTO LEFT] and Ure urged people to head in their droves to Edinburgh after an all-star Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London, and a string of other concerts in Europe and North America on 2 July. The focal point will be a Live 8 concert at Murrayfield Stadium on Wednesday July 6 and a rally called The Long Walk to Justice.
A Live 8 spokeswoman said that further details would be announced next week, but she revealed that celebrity campaigners would be flying in from America to Edinburgh for the event. …
[………………….]
The Edinburgh Pentlands MSP said: “We simply cannot have one million people turning up on the streets of Edinburgh without proper arrangements being made in advance.”
But the First Minister, Jack McConnell, said Scottish police and other agencies would be “very well prepared” for whatever happened.
Meanwhile, staff at the headquarters of multi-national oil companies in Aberdeen have been put on alert for possible demonstrations by anti-capitalist protesters. They have received special briefings about security measures and the background to the talks in the run-up to the summit.
Who are the “celebrity campaigners” coming from the U.S.?
I got a chuckle from the MSP saying a million people couldn’t simply show up. Was it just me, or did he sound like a petulant hostess?
In any case, Edinburgh is a city where a million people can, actually, just show up. The Edinburgh Festival is in August and they have accomodation for more than that every year.
Oh, that’s so funny. I got a huge kick out of their protestations too. So it just depends on the event, eh?
I’m curious. Just how far is it from London to Edinburgh?
Too far to walk in a week — it’s about three and a half hours North of Manchester, which is a good two hours from London by train.
To my chagrin, I’m going to miss all of it — though I will be in Edinburgh the week after. I suspect it may be slightly dishevelled.
You MUST report everything to us! I lived in Seattle during WTO ’99, and the national press coverage of the protests and events was vastly off-the-mark.
I will — there may be a few days delay since I’ll be offline, and I won’t be there until a few days after, but I will be keeping my eyes peeled.
That’s great, Dove — I’ll look forward to hearing your impressions and news!
Susan, I’ve got relatives who live there, so I’ll see if they know anything and keep you posted. I was thinking of the Seattle WTO thing as well — PBS has a show on tonight about it.
Scotland has a lot of “anti-corporatists” as they call them. The article you linked to mentions that security at the oil company headquarters in Aberdeen is being increased.
Yeah, what Dove says. I think the march is from the Live 8 concert to the demonstration the next day. They’re just urging people to make their way to Edinburgh.
I’ve taken that train ride a few times, and it’s always been about 8 hours, but I was maybe on a slow one. In any event, it had the effect of making me imagine it was approximately the same as Los Angeles to San Francisco.
We’ll need your eyes and ears.
The Genoa summit was something else … Gosh, was it 2001? I was listening to BBC World Service late on a Saturday night, and heard live reports from a BBC reporter about the horrific beatings of protestors at the IndyMedia building. But, the U.S. press barely mentioned any of it.
I’ve often wondered what became of those who were badly injured from the beatings … I followed them for several months after but lost track.
Then there was the death of Carlos — shot by an Italian policeman. Tragic.
I hope I didn’t give the impression I live there! Just visited relatives a few times. I’m actually in your neck of the woods. Not actual woods, but the same state. Not state as in “condition” but as in a geographical… nevermind. I don’t live in Scotland is what I’m sayin’.
Oh okay — LOL!
Still, we’ll have to use the alternative media to find out what is going on there. I haven’t checked but surely Scotland has an IndyMedia office. And I hope the BBC does as good a job as they did on Genoa.
Although these results are now several years old, I don’t think that Americans’ views have change that terribly radically in the past four years, even taking 9/11 into account. The 2001 PIPA/University of Maryland survey, “Americans on Foreign Aid and World Hunger”, showed clearly the misperceptions most Americans have about foreign aid. Reviewing the results of their questionnaire, we see:
Median 20.0%
Mean 24.0%
9. What do you think would be an appropriate percentage of the federal budget to go to foreign aid, if any?
Median 10.0%
Mean 13.8%
Response of “zero” 4.3
In fact, as most BMT readers probably know, the real figure is less than 1%!
Taking the issue of world hunger separately, the PIPA report had this to say:
“The OECD, which is a group of all the major industrialized countries — primarily the US, Europe and Japan — have proposed a plan for cutting hunger in the world in half by the year 2015. Assuming that this plan would cost the average taxpayer in the industrialized countries $50 a year, and that people in the other countries, as well as the US, were willing to pay their share, would you be willing to pay $50 a year to cut world hunger in half?”
In this case, 75% said they would be willing to pay $50, and just 19% would not. It is likely that a near-unanimous majority would be willing to pay the significantly smaller amount that many experts believe would be necessary for a program to cut world hunger in half. (Source)
I’d agree that it’s extremely doubtful that our Dear Leader cares at all about these issues. He’s got far more pressing concerns, such as his fears for his twins, Jenna and Barbara: “I worry about letting these little girls get into a situation where something unpleasant could happen to them,” Bush said. Oh, boo-hoo, George.