G8 and Protest

The G8-summit is the meeting of the eight leading industrialized economies (do Canada and Italy really belong to them?) which are all settled in the northern hemisphere:

In these countries live only around 14% of the world´s population, but their economies make ~63% of the world´s gross national income (2005). This system does not only represent an unjust world-order, but is also out-of-date: China is the real no. 6 now and Spain is no. 8. Therfore, Canada and Russia should leave the club, since Russia is also overtaken by India, Mexico, South-Corea, Brazil and Australia.

The idea was established in 1975, when the G6-coutries France, Germany, Italy, Canada, UK and USA met for the first time to discuss the world economic system after the Bretton Woods System had failed during the oil crisis 1973. 1976 came Canada and 1998 Russia to join the group.
The crisis of 1973 marked the end of the post-war economic growth and opened a phase of growing unemployment in the industrialized countries that was answered politically with neoliberal concepts. In the same manner as Thatcher and Reagan defended their policies, the leading economies justify their idea of globalisation (which benefits only their own interests) with the slogan: "There is no alternative" (TINA).

This year´s meeting of the G8 will take place in Germany (in Heiligendamm, a village at the Baltic Sea) next week (6th-8th June). The heads of states will discuss topics like the development of Africa and the global climate change. They must know, that the world population can not allow to let major decisions be taken by a small number of politicians who are backed up by the economic interests of private companies. Every meeting such as the G8-summit has to be accompanied by demonstrations and protests. We have to set democratic signs and must prove that challenges of the world are not the work of an elite, but can be the fruits of our own actions.

The groups and individuals that take part in the protest come from very different backgrounds: members of leftist parties, NGOs, churches, environmental organisations, unorganised anarchists etc. Some of them reject even to discuss with the political decision makers, because they do not recognize G8 as a legitimate institution. Others try f.e. to put pressure on the European countries not to break down from their positions against those of the USA in the climate debate.