OPINION: Why the G8 is bad for all of us

The G8 are meeting at Camp David this weekend. The world's leading industrialised nations supposedly sorting out the economic woes of the world and finding a path to recovery following all the turmoil of recent years.

But they won't.

The G8 is a club. It is a club of capitalists and all they will achieve over the next few days are a few bland and, ultimately, meaningless statements, some nano disagreements to make it look like they explored a range of ideas, and then a plan which will anoint to nothing more than papering over the cracks and then continuing with the same failing policies.

There will be no vision for a better future, because the imbeciles who attend benefit personally from more of the same no matter what hardship it imposes on the rest if society.

The G8 needs to accept that capitalism and consumerism have failed. They fail every few years. They fail more and more often and each time is worse. Each fail is more detrimental to the majority of people but the G8 leaders don't care. They adopt policies that protect themselves from the fallout of their own failures and, in doing so, they divide all societies more and more.

And they not only divide their own societies, they also divide the world further. Sure, each G8 nation makes token contributions to the third world but they won't ever do anything to balance the inequalities of nations. Why would they? It might mean their personal power and wealth would be dissipated.

The G8 fear democracy. In the UK we, supposedly, have 3 major political parties, but, in reality, they are different wings of the same capitalist/consumerist party. They have no interest in making things better for society. All they care about is appeasing the proles so that they don't rise up and overthrow the abhorrent system that keeps them in the lap of luxury.

The Eurozone crisis is a perfect example of the inequality of nations and the evil of the big ones. It shouldn't be seen as Greece's problem, or Spain's, or Italy's. The solution is simply but, to the greedy parahias of the G8 elite, it would make the champagne and caviar in their stomachs to go rancid.

We need to accept that capitalism has no future. It makes a few wealthy whilst shackling the majority of people, and nations, to a yolk of virtual slavery.

All debt needs to be cancelled. After all, money is purely notional. Let's just zero it all.

BUT we can't then just go back to the nonsense of capitalism. A different, fairer international system beefs to be used. It must enshrine equality of all people and it must make sure that no one is living a life of luxury while others starve.

Yes, we need, at the very least, genuine socialism but, better still would be a global communism. Not soviet style communism (that wasn't real communism) but everyone working together for the better, to genuinely improve everyone's lot

Sadly, I accept that the public are too blind and too stupid to act. They will continue to elect clones of the same politicians who will run their nation and the world for their personal benefit.

It is time for a revolution. It is time to throw capitalism on a bonfire of greed. It has no place in a modern world. Capitalism fails. Let it die.

OPINION: Capitalism is dead.... Long live... Ummm...

Why, when capitalism fails every few years in bigger and more dramatic ways, do governments not look for a better system?

Capitalism has been failing, regularly, for years. Today, it seems, there is hardly a nation in the world not in some sort of serious debt. Banks have failed their investors, the public and governments across the world. Inequality gets more and more entrenched.

Surely, it's time for a different approach? Surely, it's time for governments to take action beyond bigger and bigger band aids?

When the dyke has a hole, the hole can be stopped for a while but there is a weakness there. Eventually, another hole opens or the first hole bursts again. At some point, the dyke is unable to hold the water back, the dyke collapses and everything is washed away.

It's not a case of replacing capitalism and free-markets with a different version of capitalism, adding safety nets or extra regulation to "protect" society, eventually a completely different approach, a different system needs to be put in place.

I've long argued that all current international/national debts should be written off. It's all just numbers, huge numbers, that are meaningless. They're notional debts, not real ones. Capitalism thrives on debt, borrowing and, consequently, inequality and poverty.

In the UK, we've never genuinely had a non-capitalist government. Even Harold Wilson and James Callaghan's left-wing governments, some 30-40 years ago, were capitalist with a social conscience. At elections we don't have a realistic choice of different systems, just variations on the type of capitalism we want. This is wrong.

Labour has failed the working class in the same way that the Conservatives have failed the wealthy. Labour's abandonment of socialist principles mean that it is, as has been for some time now, Tory-lite. The Lib Dems, well, they let everyone down by going into partnership with the Tories!

It is time that either Labour returned to its core socialist principles and offered a genuinely socialist, if not communist, system as an alternative to the capitalist, consumerist system that has dominated politics since the Industrial Revolution, or that people finally turn from the big two (maybe three) parties and promote one of the lesser, untried parties that can offer an alternative approach. I'd suggest, though not Peet, the Green Party are most likely to be able to offer a genuinely alternate system.

I don't mean a Stalinist communism (in reality, that was closer to Fasism than communism), I mean a new, 21stcentury approach in which government take back control of the budgets, in which a more equality-based approach is key to the way in which governments organise the economy and, of course, an environmentally-friendly angle is included.

There is nothing wrong with success, making-money or even profit but it is how the success is managed, and what the profits are used for that need to be addressed.

Sadly, it won't happen. The British are a fundamentally selfish and greedy society; they continue to vote for the status quo because, ultimately, they all think they might be the fat cats themselves (why else do so many play the National Lottery against the odds?!) and, in the end, they don't care about society, they care about themselves and their families. The British are their own worst enemies.

But, of course, this needs to be done globally, not just in the UK. This requires international co-operation that goes beyond anything the jack-booted Little Englanders who read The Sun or Daily Mail would ever allow. This needs brains not bigotry and xenophobia

How many times does capitalism have to fail before it gets replaced? Too many.

Next time there is an election I do hope more people vote for change, because, clearly, the current system has failed, but I won't hold my breath.

48 years ago today - the assassination of JFK

48 years ago today, at 12.30 pm on the 22nd November 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America, was assassinated as his motorcade drove through Dallas, Texas.



Today, nearly half a century later, we're still unsure as to who pulled the trigger. Sure, the Warren ommission found that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to shoot JFK and Jack Ruby acted alone to kill Lee Harvey Oswald but, as the years have passed, more and more conspiracy theories and potential cover-ups leave us with a situation where it is thought 80% of Americans believe that there was more to it than a lone gunman shooting their President.

Will we ever know the truth? It seems very unlikely now. Most of the main players are now long gone and all the theories seem inconclusive at best and some, well, just crackpot.

What is worth contemplating is what sort of world we might have now had Kennedy lived.

He would, quite likely, have won the 1964 Presidential election, defeating Nixon who might not have ever become President. It's possible that the fall of communism in Eastern Europe might have been sooner than the late 80s/early 90s. If no Nixon, then, possibly, no Reagan and the arms race that threatened the future of the whole world.

Kennedy had his faults as a human being, as do we all, but there is no denying news an inspirational figure, perhaps on a scale not seen until Barrack Obama's election to the White House. Had JFK lived on November 22nd 1963 the is no doubt the world would be a very different place today in 2011.