At the 2005 G-8 summit in Scotland, the industrialized nations leaders declared a debt cancellation for the poorest countries in the world.
But what was on their mind wasn’t “making poverty history”.

The G8 debt cancellation agreement is a clever effort to gain a positive, moral and caring image for the rich countries and a scandalous effort to atone the crimes made by them towards the poor throughout history. Crimes that began with colonialism and continued with its present modern and more complex form - THE DEBT.

The existence of unsustainable debt burdens, trade injustice and aid dependency are the results of a global economic system and a financial architecture precisely designed to favor the wealthy, and to ensure the survival of the existing structure of rich countries dominance.

The debt is not a financial or an economic issue, but rather a political one in every aspect.
It is a method of oppression.
A modern colonial method of control by first world countries. A form of debt bondage on the scale of nations.

It is the best instrument of power and control of North over South [and now east] ever invented, far superior to colonialism which requires an army, a public administration and attracts bad press. Control through debt not only requires no infrastructure but it actually makes people pay for their own oppression.

The debt cancellation is no more than a Compassion Spin. But first we need to understand what the debt is and how it was created in the first place.

In the 1980s, as market prices for export commodities declined and international interest rates skyrocketed, many African countries found themselves in economic crisis, unable to repay mounting foreign debts. In desperate need of new loans to pay off these debts, they turned to the World Bank and to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who were very willing to lend them money, as long as they instituted certain economic policy changes in return. These changes, called "structural adjustment programs", adjusted the economies of borrower countries to suit the interests of the wealthiest players in the global economy. This meant that the economic direction of each country would be planned, monitored, and controlled in Washington.

'Liberal containment' was replaced by laissez-faire capitalism known as the free market. African countries, in need of these loans, had no choice but to accept the conditions attached.
Over the past two decades, Africa's debt crisis has worsened, and the failure of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund economic policies has left African countries more dependent than ever on new loans. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, now major creditors to African governments, have gained total control over African economies.

Many of the loans, which are being repaid, were made during the Cold War to repressive regimes and corrupt leaders, who used the money to strengthen their rule or to fill their own pockets.
Many more loans were made without attention to the viability of planned projects or to the capacity of the recipient country to make repayments. Very little of the money filtered its way down to make any real difference in the lives of the ordinary african people. But it is ordinary people who suffer now because of the debt - people who were probably not even born when the loans were made.

Demanding that these people and their new governments will pay now for the corruption and mismanagement practiced by previous regimes is simply an outrage.

Africa's debt burden and the eager pursuit for repayments by international creditors have had severe repercussions on the continent's development.
Forced cutbacks in basic social services have weakened health and education systems and undermined efforts to cope with the AIDS pandemic.

Africa's children are suffering from malnutrition and are being denied the right to education by creditors who are determined to bleed Africa's economies dry. Meanwhile, the world's rich countries continue to ignore the huge debt that they owe to Africa and to the global South more broadly, for centuries of plundering their human and natural resources.

So who really owes whom?
The poor countries should not be blamed for this tragedy. They neither conquered nor plundered entire continents for centuries, they did not establish colonialism, or re-established slavery, and modern imperialism is not of their making.
Actually, they have been its victims. Therefore, the responsibility lies with those states that, for obvious historical reasons, enjoy today the benefits of those atrocities.
The western world who sucked Africa's blood, won't stop until someone stop it.

The debt is administered by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are largely controlled by the G-8 governments (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, U.K and U.S.A.).

Decisions at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are made by a vote of the Board of Executive Directors, which represents member countries. Voting power at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund is determined by the level of a nation's financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven other largest industrialized countries in the world, holding a total of 50% of the votes. Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercised an effective veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power within the institution, which through the programs and policies, governed by the International Monetary Fund, have tremendous impact on them. Furthermore, the President of the World Bank is by tradition an American, and the International Monetary Fund President is a European.

International Monetary Fund has been using and abusing its “recommendations, which have acquired a binding force, to liberalize world trade, devalue currencies, deregulate prices, freeze wages, reduce health and education budgets, and privatize state-owned enterprises at whatever cost.

In order to obtain more foreign currency, governments who implement structural adjustment programs usually have to:

• Spend less on health, education and social services - people pay for them or live without.
• Devalue the national currency, lowering export earnings and increasing import costs.
• Cutback on food subsidies - so prices of essentials can soar in a matter of days.
• Cut jobs and wages for workers in government industries and services.
• Encourage privatization of public industries, including sale to foreign investors.
• Take over small subsistence farms for large-scale export crop farming instead of staple foods. So farmers are left with no land to grow their own vegetables on and only few are employed on the large farms.

The structural adjustment policy package is at its core, by no doubt anti-poor policy. The ideologies and rules of economic globalization – including free trade (opening to exploitative foreign investment), deregulation, privatization, slashing of government spending, and the structural adjustment programs– have destroyed the lives of millions of people, often leaving them homeless, landless and hungry, while removing their access to even the most basic public services such as health and medical care, education, sanitation, fresh water, public transport, job training and etc.

For poor countries, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's emphasis on exports is, to a considerable extent an entreaty to exploit cheap labor as a "competitive advantage". But with countries around the world all forced to follow the same strategy, relying on cheap labor becomes a "race to the bottom".

Countries forced into a de facto race to the bottom to offer foreign investors the lowest wages and least substantial labor protections. The International Monetary Fund views labor as just another commodity.

20 years of experience have shown that these financial policies, which are far from promoting fair and equitable development, have had a brutal effect on the most vulnerable strata of society, particularly indigenous populations.

Over the past two decades, as part of structural adjustment, the World Bank has forced African governments to reduce government spending on health care. This has resulted in the closure of hundreds of hospitals and clinics, and has left the remaining medical facilities under-staffed and lacking essential supplies. Under the tutelage of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, spending on health care was reduced by 50% during the 1980s, in the 42 poorest countries in Africa.

The World Bank must take a large degree of responsibility for this situation.
It is an institution that represents global minority rule, and it has used its power to exploit African countries for the benefit of its stakeholders and denies Africa's people the right to health.

The International Monetary Fund austerity programs literally starve the poor. During the famine of 1985 eastern Sudan produced 800,000 tons of grain. But huge debt commitments prevented the Government from buying the supply for those starving in other regions.
During the famine of 1984-85, which killed one million people, Ethiopia exported green beans to the UK.
Despite the continued threat of famine in 1989, Sudan sold 400,000 tons of sorghum to the European Community for animal feed.
Governments of such countries put a higher priority on foreign exchange over feeding their hungry.
The IMF forces famine-stricken countries to export food while their own people are starving.

Serious environmental destruction began in many third world countries in the 1970s and 1980s. Easy money was available from industrialized countries for 'development'. Much of it was spent on large dam projects, power plants and charcoal driven industries. These usually didn't help the poor, and destroy the lives of those who don’t use money but still are the poorest creatures of the world - the nonhuman animals.

As debts mounted, what poorer countries needed most was foreign currency to pay back their debts. One easy solution was to suck the earth's resources for the hard cash they brought in, and cut back on environmental conservation programs.

Third World countries have done this by:

• Heavily overusing soil to grow “cash crops” (tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, tobacco…) often forcing small farmers off their land.
• Producing more crops on small areas of land, often using chemical fertilizers, and so degrading the soil.
• Giving multinational companies logging rights in the forests, destroying the lives of those who live there, especially non human animals.
• Chopping down forests to make room for beef cattle grazing or crop farming.

Between 1992 and 1998, the World Bank Group funded oil, gas and coal projects in developing countries at the cost of $13.6 billion. These fossil fuel projects will eventually contribute a burden of carbon emissions (CO2) to the Earth’s atmosphere greater than all current annual global fossil fuel emissions. During this same period, the World Bank spent 25 times more on climate-changing fossil fuels than on renewable power sources, such as wind and solar energy.
Roughly one-fifth of World Bank Group lending is devoted to increasing energy and power supply in developing countries. The World Bank’s energy lending portfolio is dominated by fossil fuels, more than three fourths of its lending is spent on oil, gas and coal or power projects.

In countries such as China, which is projected to double its energy consumption by 2020, the World Bank is ensuring that much of its future power will come from coal, the dirtiest, most carbon intensive of fossil fuels. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the World Bank has steadily increased its financing of coal-fired power plants in China. While the World Bank’s recent $100 million loan for renewable energy in China is encouraging, it pales next to the Bank’s multi-billion dollar lending for fossil fuel projects.

During the 1990s, Brazil suffered the heaviest loss of forest—23 million hectares. South America as a whole saw net losses of 37 million hectares. In Africa, 52 million hectares were destroyed. Half of all Africa's forest loss was in Sudan, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mexico lost over 6 million, although government reports reveal the loss may be even higher. In Indonesia, 9 million hectares have been allocated for development as industrial timber plantations, but only 2 million hectares have been replanted.
Meanwhile… the United States gained 4 million hectares of forest.

• In Brazil, government spending on environmental programs was cut by two-thirds in order to meet the targets set by the International Monetary Fund.
• In Russia, the budget for protected areas was cut by 40%.
• In Indonesia, budget cuts have forced officials in Jakarta, one of the world's most polluted cities, to suspend environmental programs.
• In Nicaragua, the budget of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources was cut by 36% in order to adhere to International Monetary Fund budget targets.

The debt's chain reactions and related effects are enormous. Moving towards growing "cash crops" also means that land is diverted away from meeting local and immediate needs, which leads to more hunger.

The tobacco industry diverts huge amounts of land from producing food to producing tobacco. Food has to be imported because rich farmlands are being diverted to tobacco production. The land that has been destroyed or degraded to grow tobacco has effects on nearby farms. Forests, for example, are cleared to make way for tobacco plantations. The soil protection that the forest provides is lost and the soil is more likely to be washed away in heavy rains. This can lead to soil degradation and failing yields of nearby farms.

Tobacco uses up more water, and has more pesticides applied to it (further affecting water supplies) than most crops. These water supplies are further depleted by the tobacco industry recommending the planting of quick growing, but water-thirsty eucalyptus trees.

If all this is not enough, child labor is a routine in tobacco farms.

a woman drying tobacco leaves

As Third World countries struggle to pay back their debts, they have to export as many goods as possible and cut back on imports. This might seem like a good way to earn money. In fact they don't earn as much as they should, because many Third World countries are exporting similar products, flooding the market. Therefore prices are plummeting. So again and as usual and definitely not by chance, the beneficiaries are western consumers who get to pay cheap prices for many basic commodities. Of course it is not surprising as they are both the main consumers and the policy makers.

Getting very low prices on their goods, causes many to look for other income sources. Millions of Americans and Europeans regularly use illegal drugs. Governments across the Western world have poured money into the struggle against drugs. The narcotics market in Europe is expanding rapidly, contributing to social breakdown and violent crimes. But in all their strategies to fight against drug trafficking, no government has come up with a solution which tackles one of the factors making it possible - international debt. Almost all the major drug-producing countries also have high international debts. To repay debts they need hard currency from the sale of commodities - like cocoa, whose value has been falling. Meanwhile, cocaine prices have been rising, so countries turn to the drugs trade - to raise foreign currency and to survive.

FACT: Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America with one of the lowest health care budget in the continent.
The country has to spend half of all its (legal) export income on paying its debt. 40% of Bolivia's workforce depends on the drugs trade for a living.
Apparently when the western countries “say no to drugs” they mean as long as it doesn’t hurt the cash flow.

Many third world countries have become deeply indebted because of high military spending. As wars escalate, they are less able to repay the money they owe. Between 1960 and 1987 third world governments loaned around 400 billion dollars to fund arms imports from industrial states.

The third world arms trade has declined after a peak in the late 1980s. Most of the dictators who invested so heavily in arms are no longer in power and today's governments are not buying as many arms as they once did. But the debts are still left to pay.

Debt can also lead and contribute to war.
As countries become poorer, violence and protest increase. As the debt crisis broke in the early 1980s, violence in many indebted countries around the third world erupted into war or escalated dramatically.

The world spends more than a trillion dollars on military expenditure. - 50% is spent by the US alone and about 30% by the other G8 nations.
The members of the so-called "Security Council" are the biggest arm dealers of all. In 2005 total arms exports to all countries were about $44.2 billion.
The US was responsible for almost half of this weapon export and Russia and France 15% each.
The UK is also among the biggest exporter of arms in the world with Indonesia and Saudi Arabia as its biggest buyers.
American weapons are regularly sold to nations currently involved in active conflicts.
The Pentagon’s largest military aid program, the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, increased by more than one-third (34%) between 2001 and 2006, jumping from $3.5 billion to $4.6 billion over that time period.
Apparently there's always money for death and destruction.

The neo-liberal model advocated by International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) represents an attempt to turn the world into one enormous free-trade zone.

Here is an example for pure, unadulterated greed. The $350 billion per year pharmaceutical industry - one of the most profitable and powerful in the world - has teamed up with its allies in the US government, denying millions of people access to affordable, life-saving drugs.

In the United States, people who are infected with the HIV virus can now have their lives improved through a combination of drugs known as AIDS cocktails. The cost of these drugs is $10,000 to $15,000 a year - placing them far out of reach of the 33 million people in low-income countries, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa, who needs them.

The cost of producing these drugs is a tiny fraction of their price. An Indian generic drug manufacturer, Cipla, recently offered to provide the drugs to governments for $600 per year and to non-governmental organizations for $350. For millions of people these drugs would become affordable. In the poorer countries, where annual income per person is in this range, they would be affordable with relatively modest foreign aid from the richer countries.

But in this world profits are much more important than anything else. Accounting on patent rules, pharmaceutical companies abuse their god-like power over the lives of millions by determining the price and availability of these desperately needed medicines, the cost in human suffer is enormous.

The currnet economic system is not going to allow any real change within it. It is the state structure, big business, and consumer society that is directly responsible for this sufferfull world.
When these entities repeatedly demonstrate their prioritizing of monetary gain ahead of suffer, it is absolute absurd to continue to ask them nicely for a policy change.

The world debt is both a cause and a symptom of the structural inequality in the international economic system.
It is a new form of slavery. Not less vicious than the slave trade.

So what is wrong with the debt cancellation?

First of all it takes no account of the fact that many countries are paying off illegitimate debts – such as those on loans knowingly given to dictators, or for useless projects that only benefited companies in the lenders’ country.

The process is aimed not at canceling debts, but at ensuring that they can be repaid. It has nothing to do with enhancing human development, reducing poverty, or even increasing economic growth in the debtor countries. It is designed to reduce debt figures down to a level where they would be deemed “sustainable” again according to the criteria of the International Monetary Fund.

Debt relief will be granted only if the poor countries will adjust their gross assistance flows by the amount of the debt relief. In other words, their aid will be reduced by the same amount as the debt relief.

It is still completely designed, controlled, monitored and implemented by creditors, the IMF and World Bank (which prescribed the problems of the poorer countries in the first place) and with little or no voice for people in poor countries who are experiencing the debt crisis.

The countries must fulfill structural adjustment conditions that eliminate impediments to private investment and calls for countries to privatize industries, liberalize their economies, eliminate subsidies, and reduce budgetary expenditures.

It does not cover the debts claimed by the Inter-American Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Other critical areas, such as the 2004 tsunami-hit regions, are not included.

And most importantly:
The G8 statement does not express any measure of acknowledgment of the historical and structural causes of debt and poverty to their own culpability.

Even for countries that are allegedly benefiting now, there is still debt remaining. This includes:

• IMF and African Development Fund debts incurred after 2004.
• World Bank debts incurred after 2003 – the Bank saved itself $5 billion by insisting on the debts incurred during 2004.
• Debts to other multilateral lenders – this includes other continental and regional development banks. This is particularly significant for the Latin American countries, which obviously don’t have any debt to the African Development Fund but have huge debts to the Inter-American Development Bank.
• Bilateral debt – that is, debts to individual governments.
• Commercial debts – debts to private lenders such as private banks

Third World financial debt owed to the North is at once…
Fraudulent, odious, illegal, immoral, illegitimate, obscene and genocidal. Countries of the North owe the South countries, particularly Africa, a manifold debt:
Blood debt for the slavery.
Ecological debt for the destruction and looting of natural resources.
Social debt for the unemployment, mass poverty and hunger.
Economic debt for the colonization, and the looting of human and mineral resources.
And cultural debt for the degrading of African civilizations to justify colonization.

Debt and structural adjustment plans (SAPs) are the causes for the degradation of health, education, nutrition, food security, the environmental and sociocultural values of the African and Third World populations.
The Debt and the SAPs are the cause for the aggravation of unemployment, the destruction of families leading to the rise of delinquency and prostitution, the worsening of women’s socio-economic conditions and daily life, the ecological degradation of the continent and wars with their cohorts of refugees and displaced persons.

Stop counting on politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, T.V broadcasters, celebrities, they won’t save the world from all the suffer…