Geldof and Bono out of tune on G8

The spectacle of Bob Geldof and Bono bear-hugging G8 leaders in Genoa on Saturday was revolting. It was not just the manic presumption that they would have an iota of influence, or the phoniness and the crass attention-seeking of the exhibition that was stomach-churning. It was their giddy association with the rulers of the world and their eloquent dissociation from the tens of thousands who had gathered to protest against the unfairness and inequities of the new world order.

The G8 represents the tyranny of the new world order against the interests of the world's poor. Self-chosen on the basis of their military might and capitalist credentials, the G8 seeks to further its hegemony of the world, amid a pretence of compassion for the developing world. (Geldof and Bono unwittingly - one assumes - helped further that pretence by the ghastly photo-opportunity in which they participated.) It represents the damaging consequences of globalisation and the marginalisation of the Third World.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, the income gap between the fifth of the world's people living in the richest countries in 1960 was 30 to 1. This had risen to 60 to 1 by 1990 and, in the era of the new world order, to 74 to 1 by 1997. By the late 1990s the fifth of the world's people living in the highest-income countries had 86 per cent of world Gross Domestic Product, the bottom fifth just 1 per cent.

This new world order means the world's richest 200 people more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1998 to more than $1 trillion.

The assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people. The top 10 pesticide companies in the world control almost one-third of a $31 trillion world market. The top 10 telecommunications companies control 86 per cent of the $262 billion telecommunications market, (Human Development Report 1999, page 3).

The world is becoming spectacularly more unfair, and the presiders of this new order of global injustice are the G8 chums of Bono and Geldof.

The superpowers did not move an inch on writing off the debts of the world's poorest nations. They repeated their obduracy over intellectual property rights which restrict the provision of life-saving drugs to poorer countries.

There was no progress on environmental protection. And on AIDS, Kofi Annan was brought along to announce a package that was woefully short of the package he has been urging for some time. He says that between $7 billion and $10 billion is needed annually to fight AIDS: the G8 promised a once-off $1.2 billion.

With a touch of (one presumes) unintended irony, the G8 leaders also promised measures against corruption and bribery. Did no one think it odd that Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi would be asked to champion honesty in politics? Chirac has been trying to hide behind a supposed immunity to avoid answering questions about allegations of mega kick-backs while he was mayor of Paris and involvement in vote-rigging.

Silvio Berlusconi was the focus of an editorial in the very cautious Economist magazine in April. It wrote: "In any self-respecting democracy it would be unthinkable that the man assumed to be on the verge of being elected prime minister would recently have come under investigation for money-laundering, complicity in murder, connections with the Mafia, tax evasion and the bribing of politicians, judges and the tax police."

A few others of the G8 chums of Bono and Geldof are no great shakes either. There's George Bush, who ranks as the current champion of global vandalism in his disavowal of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and his declared intention to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

There's Vladimir Putin, the architect of the world's most brutal war currently being waged in Chechnya (tens of thousands have been killed there in the last 15 months). And then there's Tony Blair, the co-commander of the illegal, indiscriminate bombardment of Yugoslavia. He, too, had some nerve complaining about the violence of the protesters.

It was a pity Bono and Geldof could not break away from the bear-hugging and victory salutes in Genoa in time to get to Zanzibar for another high-level meeting.

This is of finance ministers from the world's poorest 49 countries. They have been meeting there since Sunday, just as the G8 meeting was breaking up (so to speak), to develop a common strategy for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in November.

The ministers are concerned that the WTO rules have excluded the world's poorest countries from much of world trade.

The Finance Minister of Bangladesh, S. Rahama, said on Sunday: "Our 49 countries are generally facing marginalisation. [Our] share [of world trade] is declining in the global market and the economies in the countries are becoming impoverished by each passing day."

There was a time when our pop singers - Bridie Gallagher, Larry Cunningham and their like - knew their place.

vbrowne@irish-times.ie