The G8 has come and gone

The G8 has come and gone. Will anything change? Probably not. Wealth will remain mostly in the hands of the Northern countries who say they want to give more money to Africa for medical purposes. Critics say the money is old money already pledged. And what will the money buy anyway? Lately in the news here was a story of an American big pharm company that did drug trials in an African country on children, testing some drug on one group and placebos on the other. Seems that 15 or so kids out of around 100 died and there's a court case against the big pharm concern. Will the court case bring those kids back? I remember in the States at fundraising job interviews for medical colleges how they all spoke of big pharm, gotta go after big pharma for the cash. The fundraising world is so replete with hypocrisy too often.

The police smashed some heads at the G8 though. And some police were also injured. After the big protest newspapers reported lack of sympathy with the protesters because so many cops had been injured. Later in the week though they changed their tune and the tide began to shift towards the protesters. Maybe this was after the demo where thousands of protesters dressed up like clowns and marched off to somewhere only to be headed off, chased and stopped by the police.