The G8's "Moral Obligation" to Gleneagles

Forget about the news reports coming out of Heiligendamm, Germany about the amount of violent protests, or the escalating tensions among the G8 members. The real story this week at the G8 summit concerns the “Moral Obligation” among G8 nations to fulfill the promises of the 2005 Gleneagles summit. At this point, G8 nations are far off-track on those promises.

Two years ago, the leaders of the rich world met at the G8 summit in Gleneagles and undertook to double annual aid to poor nations to $50bn (£25bn) a year. Half of that money was to go to the world's poorest people in Africa.

But on the eve of the latest G8 summit, in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm in Germany this week, it is clear the rich world is well off track to deliver what the world's eight most powerful leaders signed up to after the biggest political lobby in history, a massive global campaign to make poverty history that culminated in 10 Live8 concerts watched by more than half the population of the world.

Overall aid to Africa has risen by less than half of what is needed to stay on track to reach the Gleneagles goal to double annual aid by 2010. A report by Oxfam last week suggested that, if present trends continue, the G8 will miss its target by a staggering $30bn.

Worldwide pressure is increasing during this week of the summit to get back “on track” with the financial promises. Last week, President Bush was applauded for his proposal to double 5-year funding for PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to $30 Billion, which must be interpreted as a challenge to other world leaders to fulfill and expand their promises to the world’s least protected. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a proposed annual increase of nearly $1 Billion in African aid. British ministers from across the political spectrum are demanding that the G8 "deliver what they pledged".

Indications show that the aide dollars may soon begin to match 2005 Gleneagles promises, as the world’s moral obligation becomes undeniable. When the summit ends on Friday, we’ll know for sure. Find out more at: http://www.one.org/

Now, a little poetry:


Or A Definition, Beyond Rescue

Almost anything on the horizon.

Smells from a bakery shop. Leaves

that shade us. Wild deer bedding

down for the night. Dust on a window

sill. Vegetable stands onthe roadside.

Sunday afternoons in the garden.

Rowing on a lake in the woods. Grass

growing to the waters edge. A car

speeding by in the diamond lane. A

Rococo boulevard. Sewage plants.

Green stems. Slaughter houses.

Boardsfor roof or floor. Under an ad

on the subway. Iron locomotives. Tin

boxes. Scattering earth with a plow.

Idle cylinders. A plume of steam. The

red green blue of lips laughing. Or

perhaps several harbors that pierce

all that. Patiently waiting in his raincoat.


More Plots, Some Inconsequential

Think of trumpet swans in a public garden.
And see rain falling. Or imagine a turbo

engine. A view of the road through a

windshield. Cooling steel. Safety brakes.

" Well, I simply look in the rear view

mirror to see where I've been," she says

from her coy cockpit. At dusk, men

gather on the street corner to talk...

the edge of an ocean

somebody else's lawn

We wake-up at the same moment

but to entirely different fantasies.
Or maybe Cortez arrives to plant

a flag on an unknown shore while

wild animals & one machine watches.


Poems first published online at: http://www.arbutus.net/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/