Madam, - Yet another G8 summit, and yet more of the empty rhetoric we have become accustomed to from this meeting and that other annual gathering of the great and good at Davos.
Politicians are powerless under the yoke of global capitalism. Planet Earth Inc will not allow political decisions that might derail the gravy train. So we lurch from one crisis to another, thanks to the economic policies foisted on poor countries by the World Bank and IMF to serve the insatiable machine that is the so-called "free market". The only freedom this system affords is the freedom of a few to make untold wealth at the long-term expense of the the most vulnerable of the world's poor.
The ability of local agricultural economies to serve ordinary people has been destroyed to make way for biofuels, the latest must-have for Western stock portfolios. Speculators have driven up the prices of both oil and food and oil companies report record profits. No wonder Mr Bush's friends don't want him to rock the boat.
Western corporations are playing Monopoly with the world's poor while politicians turn a blind eye. Any claims that the G8, the EU, the IMF or the World Bank are there to help poor people and create fairer societies are a sham. The corporation sets the agenda. - Yours, etc ,
BARRY WALSH, Church Road, Blackrock, Cork.