Already this week we've seen a load of police on the streets of London squaring up to protesters
from a huge number of organisations with varying ideas about tactics and aims but who are generally
openly anti-Capitalist.
They were out on the streets for the Carnival of Capitalism ahead of the G8 conference in
Northern Ireland.
The conference takes place every year in one of the eight member states and generally the
protests end up with violent clashes being reported.
But just who are the G8?
The G8 short for Group of 8 is made up of the UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy,
and Russia but it's also attended by the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso
and this guy, Herman van Rompuy, who's the President of the European Council.
Now every year the Presidency changes and the country with the Presidency holds the
summit and the meetings before it.
This year it's the UK's turn and next up is Russia and between them the G8 members comprise
just over 50% of global GDP.
It all began in 1973 with just four finance ministers who met for informal talks to try
and work out how to deal with what was then considered to be the worst economic downturn
since the great depression.
In the next three years it expanded to seven countries until 1998 when Russia was allowed
to join following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Now the G8's seperate from the group of 20 which first met in 2008 although all of the
members of the G8 are also in the G20.
The G8 leaders are fond of using buzzwords that don't necessarily mean anything to most
people.
This year David Cameron has said that the G8 will "address global challenges" and take
"concrete steps to advance growth and prosperity around the world."
But the trouble is that those are the kind of words used every year and given that the
economy has been struggling since the banks caused a collapse in 2007, some people are
perhaps unsurprisingly unconvinced.
In the UK at least unemployment remains high, the cost of living is increasing, and money
was poured into the city to bail out the banks that caused the global economic crisis in
the first place and it doesn't seem like much of it is coming back to the people who saved
them.
Then there's the seemingly regular failures to actually carry out the promises they make
in these meetings.
In 2005 the G8 promised to increase international aid by 50 billion US dollars a year but by
2007 they were estimated to be around 30 billion dollars short of the target.
At the 2009 summit in Italy they promised 20 billion dollars to help the global food
supply chain but three years later only 22% of that had actually been delivered and for
a long time now there have been calls for the climate to be put on the G8 agenda as
one of those global challenges that Cameron mentioned but just a couple of months ago
it was revealed that one of the Prime Ministers' advisers actually blocked moves from Germany
and France to have it included.
So it's often seen as an expensive talking shop and despite all these grand promises
to enhance international development many people see it as a kabal that's just looking
out for it's own interests.
The Stop G8 website also brings up the rise of fascism in the West, exploitation in the
third world, privatization, and the emerging surveillance state as reasons to oppose the
G8.
So if all of that sounds just a little bit confusing it's probably because it is on a
not entirely unrelated note, you can check out the videos we did over there which are
the highlights of the Bilderberg 2013 fringe festival and an explainer on just who the
Bilderberg Group are and please don't forget to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss
out on all the G8 stuff we do in the next week.