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  doggammit1 month, 1 week ago

  What a dismal joke... Let's set up a new committee and inquire about the conditions found in Africa. Let's drag this issue around for another decade or two and make pomp and circumstance over the great depth of compassion and understanding our leaders show for a continent whose many ills a significant number of G8 nations have been historically complicit in creating.

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  doggammit1 month, 1 week ago

  The political will of the G8 to move forward on this and pressing climate and energy issues is tempered by their desire to control all three according to self-serving economic terms. The results or their play acting furnish a travesty of decision and indecision - mealy mouthed commitment to partial action and plausible reasons to avoid action completely. The latter instance was particularly evident with regards to issues of climate change - which GWB claimed could not be addressed without including non-members China and India into the discussion. This artificial barrier to discussion imposed on the G8 agenda shows member willingness to duck inconvenient issues and begs questions regarding G8 legitimacy as an international policy and decision making body. Like the UN Security Council, the G8 toastmasters club may be seen as foppish and two-faced through actions and inactions that expose a studied reluctance to speak with fairness, openness and honesty on international problems.

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  rushran1 month, 1 week ago

  BUSH WILL NOT HELP YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE OIL!!!!!!!...

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    Blackacereturn1 month, 1 week ago

    Because China is beating them to the resources there. by treating the people like humans and not the animals the west has chosen over the years. We refused to do clean business in Africa, the poorest continent has the highest import tariff in the history of man. Our stipulation in the most favorite nation status granted to china is that they shouldn't import African products via china to the US. Now that there is another source for business in Africa that the 8's don't control, they are hosing talks on Africa, it's sad that it takes this and millions of lives to get them talking.

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    rightfromwrong1 month, 1 week ago

    these meetings are nothing but a farce. if the nations don't have a lot of resources then they really don't care. If they do have resources they just want to run the country thru the IMF and world bank so they can exploit them more.

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  nikkibabe1 month, 1 week ago

  The US under Bush Administration should be kicked out of G8 for the following:

  . invading, destroying and occupying a UN member country.

  . illegal confinement and torture of detainees

  . International human rights violation by denying legal rights to "suspects" held without charges.

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    rightfromwrong1 month, 1 week ago

    Good stuff Nikkibabe

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    saintetienne1 month, 1 week ago

    stikkibabe,

    Let's not forget about Bush giving 15 Billion dollars to African nations to help prevent and cure AIDS, establish businesses and clinics throughout the African continent, and basically save whole villages from the brink of extinction. More money by far, I might add, than ANYone has ever donated to Africa in history.

    Oh that's right - - the mainstream media conveniently keeps forgetting to make anyone aware of that little story.

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  TheNewsseeker1 month, 1 week ago

  Before all necessary criticizing, I would like to state that it is one step in the right direction, when the voice of Africa is heard in a way that cannot easily be ignored. It is unfortunately true that the Group of Eight has a historical responsibility for the status quo. Colonialism, slavery and not to forget the unfair trading conditions of today have made Africa, which hides so many treasures under its soil, the poor continent. If there is something, globalization should teach us, let it be the fact, that there will no longer be a "club of the rich", but that we all depend on one another. The problems of the future, the climate change, the growing poverty, the challenging question, how to feed an exploding population, will only be solved in a cooperative way, or they never will!

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    doggammit1 month, 1 week ago

    " If there is something, globalization should teach us, let it be the fact, that there will no longer be a "club of the rich"..."

    You are an obvious idealist, Newsseeker. But, judging from respective G8, IMF, WTO-World Bank and UN track records, I think Africans and other nations have the right to reman cynical about initiatives such as Africom or this new G8 song and dance. Also, internal G8 battles for control over the globalist agenda are not encouraging. Selective self interest and manufactured consensus are still functional within the entire spectrum of G8 globalization gambits and Africa is not an player in that multi-handed chess game. Rather, she is being handled like a pawn.

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  doggammit1 month, 1 week ago

  I had to laugh at Merkel's remark about how 60 billion in foreign aid comes with some strings attached - and how responsible African management of these funds represents future "opportunity" for African independence and self-sufficiency. I hope she doesn't take herself too seriously... Seen though German and other G8 eyes, these comments reflect what pro-Western interests view as their own future "opportunity" - as generated by the corporate/colonial charity basket and little else. It's most likely a way to skirt the bad odor the WTO and IMF have already left behind in many places - and can be compared to current pre-conditions for independence facing Iraq, except on a much larger scale.

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  nostalgia1 month, 1 week ago

  If you want a good book on what has gone on in Africa, pick up Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari

  Theroux lived in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a university teacher

  The book is the story of his return to Africa and his journey from Cairo to Cape town shortly before his 60th birthday

  He wanted to see what had happened to the continent he had lived in as a young man.

  You will get a new perspective on the continent and some insight into why all of the aid that has been given to Africa has made little if any impact and in many cases actually made things even worse

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