Latest news with #G8
The Herald Scotland
17 hours ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
We can't risk another 'one we got away with' when Trump comes calling
The 2005 G8 summit was anticipated to draw some of the largest protests ever seen at such an event. In anticipation, thousands of officers had been extensively trained in crowd and riot control at the long-since abandoned Law Hospital in South Lanarkshire during the previous year. Everyone I know who undertook that training still describes it as among the best they ever received. There is no question this was the biggest security event ever to face Scottish policing – and arguably one of the most significant peacetime security challenges ever faced across the UK. You can't bring together the presidents of the United States, Russia, and France, the chancellor of Germany, and the prime ministers of Canada, Italy, Japan and the UK under one roof without inducing sweaty palms among those tasked not only with keeping them alive but ensuring they come to no harm whatsoever. Read more by Calum Steele When the stakes are at their highest, every politician suddenly remembers that policing is the nation's number one priority. Any hint of being unable to guarantee the safety of the world's leaders would be devastating to national pride and credibility. A four-, five-, or six-hour wait at A&E is suddenly reduced to a policy footnote. As the summit began, it quickly became clear that highly organised protestors were pushing the police to their limits. Demonstrations and attempts to shut down the A9, coupled with repeated efforts to breach the security cordon, had every Chief Constable calling for reinforcements from the officers left behind to hold the fort. The urgency became undeniable when the outer cordon was breached on the afternoon of July 6, prompting the rapid deployment of a Chinook full of riot police to push protestors back. July 7 was always a significant date for me as I awoke early to get ready for what was shaping up to be a very different kind of birthday; little could I have imagined just how. The mood from the previous 12 hours pointed to an adrenaline-fuelled day ahead. Everyone was convinced that, buoyed by their successes of yesterday, the protestors of today would be even more resolute and that violent clashes were looking likely. Doubts were beginning to creep into the minds of those on the ground about whether they could hold the lines. The terror attacks that commenced just before 9am on the London Underground, and an hour later in Tavistock Square, saw an immediate shift in focus from Gleneagles to London. Tony Blair briefly addressed the nation with the full G8 leadership standing behind him in a show of solidarity before he returned to Downing Street. Protests and disorder instantly ceased as the scale of death and devastation became apparent. Quite simply, everyone went home. The summit itself petered out. While few would admit it publicly, the 7/7 attacks spared policing in Scotland from what could have been a global humiliation. In classic police parlance: 'That was another one we got away with.' The police service in July 2005 was just over 16,000 strong; on paper approximately 300 fewer officers than are in Scotland today. But that is a hugely misleading comparator as, with very few exceptions, the police service of two decades ago had minuscule numbers of officers who weren't fully deployable, and even fewer who were on long-term sick. Today's police service carries some 1,250 of the latter and an almost equivalent number of the former. Specialist public order officers are now concentrated in smaller teams, narrowing the skillset across the wider service. The strength and depth of response teams that made up so much of the contingent support for large-scale deployments are now a shadow of their former selves — with a much diminished and less experienced rump in their stead. The last time there was mass training for major events was at Law Hospital over 20 years ago. Since then, training has declined to the point of being more conceptual than practical. Today's service is more preoccupied with the diversity statistics of who boards a Chinook rather than whether they could actually fill it. The scene in Tavistock Square, central London, after a bomb ripped through a double deck bus on July 7, 2005 (Image: PA) The visit of Donald Trump to Scotland in 2018 came as police numbers had just started to slide and were some 1,200 higher than in 2005. Whilst few would argue the then (and now) President of the United States is perhaps one of the most polarising to have held office, the scale of the police operation to safeguard his security was a fraction of that required for G8. Despite having more officers to call on and less onerous security demands, there was a major security breach as a Greenpeace paraglider managed to fly to within a few feet of the President before disappearing into the depths of the Ayrshire hills. This was yet another 'we got away with it' moment. With another Trump visit expected in the coming weeks, his security team will undoubtedly review both the 2005 and 2018 breaches and ask hard questions about the guarantees Scotland can offer. The police's whitewashing on the impact of reducing numbers may work domestically but they simply can't carry the day. Like it or not, the safety of a US President is a matter of higher national importance than managing protests that may accompany his presence. Police Scotland will need more than a lucky break or a tragic distraction elsewhere to rise to the challenge. We all have to hope that, if for nothing else other than national pride, trust, and confidence in our police service, they are able to do so — as betting on a third 'we can get away with it' would be a very risky strategy indeed. Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and former general secretary of the International Council of Police Representative Associations. He remains an advisor to both.
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Tony Blair: Bono and Geldof saved millions of lives with Live Aid
Sir Tony Blair says Bob Geldof and Bono have saved millions of lives. The rock stars have often been labelled as western do-gooders but a new documentary sets out their influence on world leaders since the Live Aid concert 40 years ago. 'What Bob and Bono and others have done over the years has resulted in, I don't know, probably millions of people living who otherwise would have died,' Blair says. The former British prime minister credits Geldof with getting him to champion African debt relief, while George W Bush tells how Bono persuaded him to pledge $15 billion to fight Aids in Africa. In the series, Live Aid at 40: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World, Bush recalls a 2005 meeting with Bono and Geldof before a G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. 'I didn't have a clue who Geldof was. He and Bono came in, and Bono was at least somewhat presentable; Geldof looked like he crawled out from underneath the ground,' Bush says with a chuckle, before adding: 'But he was a good guy. He cared deeply.' Blair's former adviser Justin Forsyth says: 'Bob was effing this and effing that, even with presidents and prime ministers, and Bono had this kind of deep empathy with people and knew how to kind of appeal to their inner souls.' Geldof adds: 'He [Bono] wants to give the world a great big hug, and I want to punch its lights out.'At the start of the series, Geldof speaks about a conversation with Paula Yates, his wife at the time, that prompted the idea of Live Aid and how he had to explain who Status Quo were to a bemused Prince Charles during the concert on July 13, 1985. • Daniel Finkelstein: Band Aid's critics are just feeding cynicism Geldof later reflects on his subsequent campaign to obtain debt relief for Africa, begun when he returned to an orphanage in Ethiopia in 2003. 'I see these children whose parents have died because of no food. It annoys me to tears of frustration. I go ballistic at this point, as ever, and 'get me Downing Street'.' Blair, at a G8 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, took a call from an aide relaying Geldof's concerns. 'I remember shouting, 'It's happening again,'' Geldof said. In a subsequent meeting, the British prime minster agreed to head a Commission for Africa after Geldof set out the case for the world's poorest countries to be freed from debt. 'I wouldn't have reacted that way at anyone, but it was him with his track record, his commitment, his knowledge, his dedication. And therefore, it made sense,' Blair said. Kate Garvey, another aide to Blair, recalls: 'He [Geldof] was driving the agenda inside government.' When Blair decided to raise debt relief at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, he knew it was critical to persuade Bush. They also had the backing of Bono, who had formed an unlikely alliance with the Bush administration when he got access to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and a 'huge fan' of U2, soon after Bush's election. She says in the documentary that Bush's tastes went 'toward country music'. Pictures show the president smiling as an aide asks: 'You do know who Bono is, don't you?' He replies: 'Yeah, he married Cher.' But Bono found common ground when he brought an 'ancient Irish Bible' as a gift to the White House, as he knew Bush was a 'man of faith'. Bono wanted the US administration to take action on the Aids pandemic, at a time when 6,000 Africans a day were dying. 'I'm being informed that there's a pandemic destroying an entire generation of people on the continent of Africa at the time that I'm the president,' Bush says. Around a year later, in his state of the union address, Bush pledged $15 billion over the following five years to 'turn the tide against Aids in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean'. Bobby Shriver, co-founder with the U2 frontman of Data (Debt, Aids, Trade in Africa), said: 'Bono got George Bush to give $15 billion to black people who don't vote, who have Aids.' Bono says Pepfar, the president's emergency plan for Aids relief, was the largest health intervention in history, adding: 'It has saved 26 million lives.' In the series, the lack of diversity of the rock acts in the charity concerts is debated with Harvey Goldsmith, the promoter behind the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts. 'I didn't care whether they were black, brown, green or yellow, if they were a big act and they were great and they wanted to play, great,' he says. Bono does think it could have been more inclusive of the African continent. 'We did our best to make it more involving of African acts and failed,' he says, referring to the Live 8 gigs. At the Gleneagles G8 summit, a few days after the Live 8 concerts, aides recall how Blair rushed to London from Scotland when he was told of the July 7 bombings. When the exhausted prime minister arrived back towards the end of the summit, Forsyth says the Blair had little patience with Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, who was holding up agreement on Africa. 'He went down into the bar with all the leaders there, and their wives. I remember him, not to exaggerate, but he had Schröder up against the wall, saying, you know, 'We've got to do this deal?' And at that moment, Schröder gave in, and we got across the line with the Germans.' The G8 leaders agreed immediately to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, and promised to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010. Live Aid had critics. Kumi Naidoo, a human rights activist, said: 'There were many good people with good intentions that were involved both with Live Aid and Live 8. I think that there was not enough sensitivity to understanding that it's not right for a bunch of predominantly white male folks to get together and say, 'We got to frame a continent like this.'' Bono fears the 40th anniversary of Live Aid will have a different resonance for global aid than events in 2005. 'The 20th anniversary was just a convergence of good fortune and good actors on the world stage. But what's happening now in politics means this anniversary could be a funeral for the last 40 years.' Live Aid at 40 airs on Sunday, July 6, on BBC2 and can be streamed on BBC iPlayer
Irish Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Daily Mirror
Tony Blair believes Bob Geldof and Bono saved millions of lives
40 years on from Live Aid, Tony Blair believes Bob Geldof and Bono have saved millions of lives. Over the years, the outspoken rock stars have often been labelled as western do-gooders or as celebrities with white saviour complexes, but a new BBC series sets out their extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence over global leaders since the landmark concert on July 13, 1985. Blair puts it very plainly. 'What Bob and Bono and others have done over the years has resulted in, I don't know, probably millions of people living who otherwise would have died. I don't think there's any type of remote ideological argument that should stand in the way of that.' The final episode of a three-part series gives a glimpse into the machinations of how the Dubliners wangled their way into the Oval Office, had a direct line to Downing Street and got invited to a G8 summit alongside Vladimir Putin. Blair fully credits Geldof with getting him to champion African debt relief, while George W Bush recounts how Bono persuaded him to pledge $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa following a gift of an Irish bible and an exchange on sins of omission. In the series, Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World, Bush recalls his 2005 meeting with Bono and Geldof ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. "I didn't have a clue who Geldof was. He and Bono came in, and Bono, was at least somewhat presentable, Geldof looked like he crawled out from underneath the ground', he says with a chuckle before adding, 'But he was a good guy. He cared deeply." Blair's former advisor, Justin Forsyth, explains their contrasting styles. 'Bob was effing this and effing that, even with presidents and prime ministers and Bono had this kind of deep empathy with people and knew how to kind of appeal to their inner souls.' Bob puts it in typically blunt fashion: 'He wants to give the world a great big hug, and I want to punch its lights out.' At the beginning of the series, Geldof speaks about the kitchen table conversation with his late wife, Paula Yates, which began Live Aid, recording the Band Aid single, and explaining who Status Quo were to a bemused Prince Charles during the concert. He also admits he was mistaken about not wanting Queen to play at the global concerts, regarding them as an 'overblown operatic' act. 'Subsequently, of course, we all have to admit that we thought the songs were great, so with age, we're allowed to admit it.' Meanwhile, Lionel Richie said he wasn't sure why US superstars like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder didn't perform. For his own part, he said: 'I made a conscious decision at the very last minute to get on the plane and go because I just felt it was necessary to do it.' In the final episode of the series, Geldof reflects on his subsequent campaign to get debt relief in Africa began when he returned to an orphanage in Ethiopia in 2003, nearly two decades after Band Aid. 'I see these children whose parents have died because of no food. It annoys me to tears of frustration. I go ballistic at this point, as ever, and 'Get me Downing Street' Blair, at a G8 summit in Évian-les-Bains at the G8 summit, took the urgent call from an aide. 'I remember shouting, 'it's happening again'', said Geldof. In a subsequent meeting, the British prime minster agreed to head a Commission for Africa after Geldof set out the case for the world's poorest countries had to be freed from crippling debt. 'I wouldn't have reacted that way at anyone, but it was him with his track record, his commitment, his knowledge, his dedication. And therefore, it made sense', said Blair. Blair's aide, Kate Garvey, recalls: 'He was driving the agenda inside government, which was incredible.' When Blair decided to raise debt relief at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, he knew it was critical to persuade Bush. 'The relationship was a very close relationship. We were in constant conversation with each other, and I thought there was a chance, because we had formed this commission that Bob (Geldof)had asked us to do.' They also had the backing of Bono, who had already formed an unlikely alliance with the Bush administration when he got access to Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, who was a 'huge fan' of U2, soon after his election. Although she says in the documentary that Bush's tastes went 'toward country music'. As he's been briefed by his Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Joshua Bolten, Bush smiles as he recalls his aide asking him, 'You do know who Bono is, don't you?' He replied: 'Yeah, he married Cher'. But Bono found common ground when he brought along an 'ancient Irish bible' as a gift to the White House, as he knew Bush was a 'man of faith' 'He surprised me by giving me a Bible. I don't think this was a way to make me like him. I think is the way he really wanted to share with me a part of his being", Bush said. During their religious discussion at the start of the meeting, Bono asked him if there was a hierarchy to sin. 'He gave me the best answer anyone ever gave. He said, 'the sin of omission'', recalled Bono. This was taken as meaning it was wrong not to do anything. Bono wanted the US administration to take action on the AIDS pandemic, which was seeing 6000 Africans a day die of a preventable, treatable HIV disease. 'I'm being informed that there's a pandemic destroying an entire generation of people on the continent of Africa at the time that I'm the president, which I consider the most generous nation in the world, and we're doing nothing about it. It struck my heart', said Bush. Around a year later, in his State of the Union address, Bush pledged an incredible $15 billion over the following five years to 'turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.' 'Bono got George Bush to give $15 billion to black people who don't vote, who have AIDS', said Bobby Shriver, co-founder of DATA, Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa, along with Bono. Bono said PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest health intervention in the history of health interventions. 'It has saved 26 million lives'. In the programme, the lack of diversity of the rock acts in the charity concerts is debated with Harvey Goldsmith, the concert promoter behind Live Aid and Live8 concerts: 'There's always a criticism about not being enough black acts. I didn't care whether they were black, brown, green or yellow, if they were a big act and they were great and they wanted to play great', he says. But Bono does think it could have been more inclusive of the African continent. 'We did our best to make it more involving of African acts and failed, we f**ked up', he said, referring to the Live8 gigs. He later says, "Getting this stuff right is really hard because you are essentially raising an alarm." At the start of the G8 summit, a few days after the Live 8 concerts, aides recall how Blair rushed back to London from Scotland when he was told of the July 7th bombings in London. When the exhausted British leader arrived back towards the end of the summit, Blair's advisor, Justin Forsyth, says he had little patience with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was holding up agreement on Africa. 'He went down into the bar with all the leaders there, and their wives. I remember him, not to exaggerate, but he had Schroeder up against the wall, saying, you know, 'we've got to do this deal, aren't we, (Gerhard)?' And at that moment, I think Schroeder gave in, and we got across the line with the Germans.' The G8 leaders agreed to immediately cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, and promised to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010. Blair remembers it as the 'most extraordinary weekend' during his time as prime minister. 'To be frank, even President Putin played his part in that', he says, adding, 'It was probably one of the last moments of truly global solidarity that I can remember.' He remembers being fed up with criticism from NGOs that it hadn't gone far enough. 'They ask you to do something, you do it, and they still criticise, and Bob and Bono just weren't like that at all.' Kumi Naidoo, one of the critics, had mixed feelings. 'I think there were very many good people with good intentions that were involved both with Live Aid and Live8. 'I think that there was not enough sensitivity to understanding that it's not right for a bunch of predominantly white male folks to get together and say, 'we got to frame a continent like this'.' At the end of the documentary, the U2 frontman fears the 40th anniversary of Live Aid will have a very different resonance for global aid. 'The 20th anniversary was just a convergence of good fortune and good actors on the world stage. But what's happening now in politics means this anniversary could be a funeral for the last 40 years.' Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World will be shown on Sunday, July 6th, with the first episode starting at 21.00 on BBC Two, and it will also be on BBC iPlayer. The Irish Mirror's Crime Writers Michael O'Toole and Paul Healy are writing a new weekly newsletter called Crime Ireland. Click here to sign up and get it delivered to your inbox every week
Irish Examiner
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
'Sometimes you do have to piss people off to grab their attention'
High summer of 2001 and the eyes of the world were trained on Genoa. Politicians from the most powerful of nations were in town for the G8 summit to talk policy and economics and global poverty. Bono and Bob Geldof were engineering face time with everyone from Tony Blair to Vladimir Putin as part of a drop-the-debt campaign. It was also a powder keg, the streets already in chaos as the two Irish celebrities shook hands and clapped backs in the neoclassical opulence of the Palazzo Ducale. Bono was among those to criticise the 'rioters' among a gathering of 200,000 anti-globalism protesters, but Aisling Wheeler was seeing a different story unfold on the ground. Living in Italy at the time, and carrying a burgeoning interest in environmentalism, Wheeler found herself part of a larger group of peaceful activists corralled into a dead-end street by the local police. They were penned in just out of reach of one of the water points ubiquitous to the country's cities, and that was no coincidence. It was a broiling hot day. 'They were letting people out in twos and threes but not back in. One guy got out, filled water up and tried to lob them back in. The carabinieri fell on him, they just beat the crap out of him. I remember being really, really scared by that. I had never seen that before. It was the first time that I had seen police violence.' Amnesty International describes peaceful protests as 'an invaluable way to speak truth to power'. Sport has long been used as a platform. Consider how apartheid in South Africa was undermined by voices of opposition in rugby and the Olympics. Think Colin Kaepernick kneeling in his 49ers uniform and the wider Black Lives Matter movement. According to the Statewatch organisation, Genoa in 2001 marked a new peak 'in the violent management of protest in a so-called democratic country'. A map on Amnesty's website shows countries where governments are violating the human rights of protestors right now. Seven western European nations and the USA among them. CLIMATE CONCERN: I felt like people were thinking that you shouldn't be interrupting play, that Shane is out there doing his best for his country', says Aisling Wheeler Close to two decades had passed by the time Wheeler stood beside the 18th green at Lahinch Golf Course. Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood and reigning champion Russell Knox were walking up the final fairway on day one of the Irish Open when she stepped out from the gallery with two colleagues from Extinction Rebellion (XR) Clare to unfurl a banner. The banner read: 'Game over, climate action now.' The whole protest was done inside 30 seconds, by which time they had chanted a message designed to resonate with their suddenly captive audience. 'Climate emergency, the time is near, golf links courses will disappear.' Whistles and boos rang out as two security guards led them back through the crowd. And then play continued. As protests go, this was the far end of the scale from Genoa, or the time Wheeler had taken part in a protest blocking roads on the Swiss-Italian border. It still took guts to step out from the massed ranks and make a stand that you could be sure would invite annoyance, some anger and even condescension. 'Very nerve-racking,' Wheeler says six years later. A local, from down the road in Ennistymon, she met neighbours in the weeks that followed, some of whom applauded the action, others who felt she had simply 'drawn attention to herself'. That latter opinion drills to the heart of sport as a platform for protest: how to keep the spotlight on the message, not its mode of delivery, or the messenger. A dozen people were involved in the planning stages for the Lahinch protest in 2019. There were discussions beforehand of going further, of spraying something on the greens maybe, before the idea was eventually dropped. They weren't looking to ruin anyone's day, just to sow a few seeds. A report a year before by Climate Coalition had found that every links course in the UK was at risk of disappearing inside 100 years. Ireland would be no different. Shouldn't people, shouldn't golf people, be worked up about that? Targeting the Lowry group was designed to amplify their voice and their message at a tournament being beamed across the world. For people like Wheeler, climate change is an alarm that never stops blaring. A call to action. For so many others it is a reason for resignation. The 'what can I do?' line of thought. More again deny the very science that stares us in the face. This was the sort of indifference and pushback the protesters met with in 2019. 'A lot of people just don't think about it. This is an issue I have been concerned about for 24 years and I think about it all the time. I don't stop thinking about it, but most people don't seem to think about it very often. Some people just don't really have a global view. 'I felt like people were thinking that you shouldn't be interrupting play, that Shane is out there doing his best for his country, he has a lot of responsibility or whatever, and we were messing up… I kind of understand that people feel that, but I don't think he felt that.' ***** The 'elephant in the room', according to XR Clare six years ago, was a sporting event sponsored by Dubai Duty Free when the airline industry as a whole is, according to a study published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, responsible for 3.5% of all human activities that act as drivers of climate change. A similar link served as the prompt for Extinction Rebellion Ireland's (XRI) protest last July at a race organised by Crusaders Athletic Club in Dublin for 2,000 runners and sponsored by JP Morgan. According to a 2023 report by a group of environmental bodies, JP Morgan is the number one fossil fuel financier on the planet. The bank committed $40.8bn to companies involved in that sector in that one calendar year alone. Fossil fuels are, by a distance, the largest man-made contributor to climate change. Over three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and close to 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions stem from the industry. And here's the thing. Crusaders AC is based in Irishtown, a short jog away from a point where the Liffey meets Dublin Bay. Like Lahinch, it is one of those sporting hubs most at risk from rising sea levels. This is what XRI's Angela Deegan means when she refers to the 'disconnect' in sport and among the general public. 'It's just the irony of it,' Deegan explains. 'This was an athletics club giving JP Morgan a huge platform to whitewash or sportswash their image. It's kind of absurd, really. JP Morgan are investing in companies which are still actively expanding fossil fuel exploration. 'This is what's going to bring about terrible consequences for everybody. You would think people interested in outdoor pursuits, like running and things like that, would be particularly concerned at that, particularly when you have athletic grounds in a low-lying area of Dublin.' Just Stop Oil started targeting Premier League games three years ago when protestors attached themselves to goalposts at several grounds. A similar intervention was held by Derniere Renovation along the route of the Tour de France. A table at World Snooker Championships at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre was covered in orange dye in 2023. For a while there, such sights were common. The spate of green protests at sporting events has clearly slowed. It's only in the last month that four Just Stop Oil activists were jailed in the UK for an environmental protest at Manchester Airport when they sought to glue themselves to the runaway. Their offence? Conspiracy to intentionally cause a 'public nuisance'. The Liberties Rule of Law Report 2024 detailed a worrying picture when it came to freedom of assembly and peaceful protest around Europe. New restrictions are being introduced and existing ones tightened, it said, especially when it comes to protests at pro-Palestinian and climate changes demonstrations. The UK has this year moved towards the introduction through Parliament of a fourth anti-protest bill in as many years. The latest will ban face coverings. This legislative trend has been described by Amnesty International as 'draconian' and 'authoritarian'. As an attack on peaceful protest, which is protected under international law. The Irish government is attracting criticism from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties over proposed laws here that would also govern face coverings in public places. Amnesty has expressed concern over 'the escalating crackdowns on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly' in the US ahead of next year's World Cup. And these are in the western democracies, not authoritarian regimes. Wheeler had no illusions about the level of impact their brief intervention in Lahinch made at the time. American tennis player Taylor Fritz said that an interruption during his game at last year's US Open actually made him want to take more flights but, agree or disagree, which says plenty in itself for the difficulties in getting through to some. So, what is the future for sport as a platform for protest? 'Gosh, I wish I had all the answers. I'm not a sage!' Deegan says. 'We probably need a combination of things. Different things reach different people. There are different ways of taking in information so I think there is a place for different things, personally. 'Sometimes you do have to piss people off to grab their attention. I wouldn't be one to advocate stopping traffic or anything, but a lot of people are kind of getting on with their day and need to be shaken at times.'
Canada News.Net
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
G7 is unviable Kremlin
Moscow has no interest in the format as the members no longer represent the global majority, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said Russia has zero interest in the 'Group of Seven' (G7) format, as it is no longer viable, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has stated. He explained that the global dominance of the countries making up the group is nearing its end. Established in the 1970s, the G7 comprised Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and the UK. In 1998, with Russia's inclusion the group was expanded to a G8. However, the country's membership was suspended in 2014 following Crimea's reunification with Russia, following a referendum on the peninsula. On Friday, Peskov said that "our attitude toward the [G7], it's well known. It has long since stopped being an interesting and in-demand format." According to the Kremlin spokesperson, "Russia does not consider such a format viable because global trends indicate that the G7's share in global affairs and global economy will be inexorably shrinking." The official noted that "this is not seasonal volatility," but a long-term trend. Alternative formats, such as BRICS, which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia as full members, have already overtaken the G7 in terms of their combined share in global economy, Peskov argued. The presidential spokesperson's comments echoed those made at the 28th annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2025) by Maksim Oreshkin, the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration, on Wednesday. "Power centers are changing. The so-called 'Big Seven', which hasn't been 'big' for a long time, is being replaced by new growth hubs," he said, pointing to the rise of countries in the Global South and East. Speaking at the G7 summit in Canada on Monday, US President Donald Trump expressed regret over the removal of Russia from the group back in 2014. "I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in," he argued.
