TODAY’S Edinburgh march to ‘Make Poverty History’ will be led by Bishops, Cardinals and boss class politicians, in other words, by the religious and political frontmen for the very capitalists that are looting Africa, Latin America and Asia, and burning Iraq!
It is being said that Chancellor Gordon Brown is going to march along with a group of Blair cabinet members, and that Brown will address the rally, as if the imperialist attacks on the poor of the world were nothing to do with them at all.
In fact, a section of the march initiators are openly trying to turn it into a front for supporting the G8 gangsters, praising Prime Minister Blair as a sincere leader working for Africa, adding that President Bush should not be criticised, since the US gives the most aid to Africa of all the states, and that Bush has to be won over as Africa’s potential saviour.
Bush and Blair are the imperialist statesmen that planned and organised the illegal war and occupation of Iraq. This has cost the lives of up to 100,000 Iraqis, and made life a living hell for the Iraqi people. This is a war to rob Iraq of its oil, and the huge importance of oil to the capitalist world means that it will be a war to the death.
It is not some other Bush and Blair that are operating in Africa. It is the same imperialist politicians and the same imperialist powers with the same war aims – to grab the riches of the African continent which include oil, diamonds, gold, coffee and timbers of all kinds.
The Blair and Brown act of concern for the African people should fool nobody.
Only last week it was revealed that under the Blair government thousands of African doctors have been poached and enticed to Britain, to allow the government to cut back on the training of doctors in Britain, while condemning thousands and thousands of Africans to death from lack of medical treatment.
As far as sub-Saharan Africa is concerned, in 2003 the UK government approved work permits for 2,825 health and medical staff from Zimbabwe, 5,880 from South Africa, 1,510 from Nigeria and 850 from Ghana!
Dr Borman, chairman of the BMA’s International Committee, commenting on this said: ‘Shortages of doctors and nurses are having a devastating effect in the developing world. Sub-Saharan Africa alone needs around a million more healthcare workers, and unless the situation improves drastically, rates of HIV will spiral, disability from childhood disease will rise and thousands more lives will be lost.’
This is imperialist parasitism in practice – stealing Africa’s doctors, making a bad situation much worse.
Abolishing a modicum of African debt is a gesture, it will not make poverty history in Africa but will prepare the next imperialist move.
With a great fanfare the imperialist powers will turn the aid tap on slightly, and link it to the privatisation of entire economies.
However, they will insist that they must have the right to supervise how the aid is used, for fear that ‘corrupt Africans’ will pocket it and, of course, where they uncover such corrupt regimes they will demand the right to put good, honest puppet governments in their place.
The imperialists are planning to use the issue of aid to organise regime changes and privatisation programmes that will put the wealth of the region into their grasp.
They are organising the new ‘Grab for Africa’, with Brown supplying that touch of religious hypocrisy that was so essential to the success of his historical predecessor, Doctor Livingstone.
All those who have allowed imperialist politicians and clergymen to establish themselves at the front of today’s march are actually helping on the next imperialist campaign of robbery with violence.
The imperialist powers and their servants will never make poverty history, since they make their billions out of it. Only socialist revolutions in the main capitalist countries, that make capitalism history, can get rid of poverty and transform the world.
