The Group of 7 (G7) is a get together for governments run by the rich and powerful. Next week the club of the world’s leading capitalist nations will face protests in Calgary.
The US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada are members of the exclusive club established 50 years ago. Only containing 10 per cent of the world’s population, the G7 represents around 30% of global GDP. But its share of global GDP has steadily declined since its 1975 creation.
The G7 represents the leading imperialist nations. The US has about 800 international military bases while the UK has over 100 and France has dozens. By land, sea and air, G7 countries have forces deployed across the globe.
At the upcoming summit, the G7 leaders will plot to contain China’s rise and growth of the BRICS alliance. They’ll seek to weaken Iran and iron out divisions over the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. According to a March Joint Statement of the G7 Foreign Ministers, they’ll be targeting Venezuela and will discuss (US/Canada) control over Haiti.
What they won’t consider seriously is ending assistance to Israel’s genocide. Nor will they put forward policies to flatten global inequities in which a few dozens ultra wealthy people have assets equivalent to the wealth of the poorest 4 billion people.
With Donald Trump attending, the summit is being held far from a population centre in Kananaskis. And the police are establishing an extreme security perimeter and militarizing Calgary. On Monday the police displayed to reporters the weapons at their disposal to suppress protests. At the press conference designed to intimidate, the police announced that their protest pens would be live streamed to the leaders. “These three designated G7 demonstration zones will have live audio and video feeds, which will be broadcast to G7 leaders and delegations at the site of the summit in Kananaskis,” said RCMP Chief Supt. David Hall. “People who want to express themselves, as is their right, can’t get close to the leaders, so the leaders won’t see and hear the protests. So, by establishing that video link, we are helping facilitate that Charter access.”
Pardon my cynicism but I find it difficult to believe Trump, Macron and Carney will watch the live stream protest pen.
The International League of People’s Struggles is organizing a Peoples Forum and protests in Calgary on June 14, at which I’ll be speaking. There are a series of other forums and protests on June 15 with cars being organized from Edmonton.
Resist the Genocide 7 is the organizer’s slogan. It’s a reference to the participating countries’ being the main foreign backers of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The US is the principal diplomatic and arms supplier to Israel while Germany is that country’s second largest source of arms. The UK has conducted hundreds of overflights to gather intelligence for Israel. Ottawa continues to allow arms sales to the extreme right wing, Jewish supremacist Netanyahu government.
Canadians have an opportunity to make their feeling known about this country’s complicity with Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide. We must also demonstrate our displeasure at growing militarism, inequality and imperialism.
People of conscience cannot be silent while a club for billionaires, dominated by a US president who has repeatedly threatened to conquer Canada, imposes a world order in which the rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer. It’s time to stop Israel’s genocide and withdraw from the G7.
