At the beginning of July the G8, the club bringing the major capitalist powers together, will meet in Scotland.

According to Tony Blair, the supposed aim of this summit is to tackle the catastrophic problems facing the world's poor, particularly those living in Africa. However the record of this body shows it has no intention of bringing this about, given that it is the exclusive representative of the world's powerful and wealthy.

Half the world's population lives on less than a dollar a day and 1.7 billion people internationally have no access to essential medicines. 6,000 people die in Africa every day from HIV/Aids, while four million children die before the age of five every year. The representatives of capitalism who make up the G8 are responsible for the creation of this obscene poverty.

They have also waged brutal wars to defend their prestige and profits that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Bush and Blair waged a brutal war for oil against Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis. The Russian President Putin turned the capital city of Chechnya into a pile of rubble in order to suppress the national rights of the Chechen people.

An estimated 200,000 people will protest at the G8 summit, many of them young people. The protests have been organised by the umbrella group "Make Poverty History" whose leadership mistakenly believe that capitalism can be reformed for the benefit of the world's poor.

Socialist Youth and the Committee for a Workers International (the international organisation to which we are affiliated) will be mobilising for these protests in the coming weeks and are organising a youth camp where the issues around the summit will be discussed.

However the main reason we will be mobilising for the summit is in order to make the argument for a clear anti-capitalist, socialist programme. We have no illusions that Bush, Blair and the other cronies that make up the G8 can be pressurised into alleviating the problems faced by the world's poor. Poverty, war and want are not the unacceptable face of capitalism but are inevitable under a system where profit always comes before people's needs.

We strongly urge you to come along to the G8 summit in Scotland as well as joining Socialist Youth and help us make the arguments for a socialist future. A future based on the world's wealth being owned, controlled and planned in order to provide a decent standard of living for all.

If you want to join the thousands of young people protesting against the corrupt policies of the G8, contact Socialist Youth on 0871274315 or 086 1688050 for more information!

This July in Scotland, the New Labour government will play host to the G8 summit, a gathering of government representatives from the world's richest countries.

Blair says that he wants the summit to focus on the problems faced by the people of Africa and the destruction of our environment.

However, it is the policies of these governments and the capitalist system they support which is to blame for these problems in the first place!

Every day 30 thousand children die preventable deaths in Africa alone, due to poverty, disease and starvation. With proper use of modern technology, distribution of food supplies and provision of medicines, these problems could be rapidly dealt with. However, multinational companies take these things out of the reach of the continent's people through their insatiable desire for profit. These companies also rape Africa's huge natural wealth to line their own pockets.

World leaders, including those in the G8, refuse to deal with the threat of global warming to our very existence. To do so would mean dramatically cutting the use of fossil fuels and developing renewable energy sources. This would threaten the profits of the oil barons, who pull the strings of capitalist governments. We are currently in the middle of biggest mass extinction of species since the event which wiped out the dinosaurs! Capitalism naturally breeds overproduction and waste.

The G8 summit is always a focus of huge counter-demonstrations by angry workers and young people and this July will be no different. Hundreds of thousands are expected to converge on Gleneagles and Edinburgh, not least because it will be another chance to voice our anger against Bush, Blair and their supporters who were responsible for the devastating war for oil in Iraq which has cost the lives of 100,000 Iraqi people.

School students from West Belfast, including members of Socialist Youth, have set up Students Against Poverty and have organised a bus to the counter-summit so they can make their voices heard against the destructive neo-liberal policies and war mongering of the G8.

Socialist Youth will also be organising a bus to Scotland. International Socialist Resistance is holding a youth camp during the summit. We will be intervening explaining the socialist alternative to the madness of capitalism.

Transport will be provided to all the protests and meetings planned at the counter-summit. It will also be an opportunity for political discussion with young socialists from across Europe.

If you want to join the thousands of young people standing against the corrupt policies of the G8 in Scotland, contact Socialist Youth on 07821058619 or socialist_youth@hotmail.com for more information!