Coke banned from G8 rally

Edinburgh - This has not been a good weekend for Coca-Cola in Edinburgh.
First, the US soft drink was banned from Saturday's rally of more than 200 000 people, calling for action on trade, aid and debt in poverty-stricken Africa from this week's Group of Eight summit.

Then it was held up as an example of everything that is wrong with unbridled capitalism at a day-long G8 Alternatives summit that put across a firmly left-wing view of where the world should be going.

"We call on people not to consume any Coca-Cola products ... so as to change its behaviour to its workers, the community and the world at large," said Juan Carlos Galvis of the Sinaltrinal labour union in Colombia.

On the seats of the Queens Hall, one of the alternative summit venues, pamphlets for the International Campaign to Make Coke Accountable were laid out for the 300-odd participants.
Galvis has a particular bone to pick with Coca-Cola - he works for it, and implicates it in the deaths of eight trade unionists in Colombia.

He himself was the target of a drive-by murder attempt in August 2003.

"They are assassinating us, they are disappearing us," he said from a stage where his crisp white T-shirt stood out from the black backdrop with its "No G8" logo.

"It is a policy of imperialism ... They (multinationals) are responsible for poverty in the world."

Summits of the G8 leading industrialised nations have always prompted counter-summits and big street protests, and the one that opens on Wednesday at Scotland's exclusive Gleneagles golf resort is no exception.

Saturday's peaceful Make Poverty History march dovetailed with British Prime Minsiter Tony Blair's determination to put Africa at the heart of the summit, along with climate change.
Prospects for confrontation will grow in the coming days, starting on Monday with an attempted blockade of Britain's nuclear submarine base near Glasgow and, on Wednesday, a protest march past Gleneagles itself.

From the balconies hung banners: "Stop Bush", "Ban the Bomb," "Think Before You Drink Coca-Killa".

French leftist Francois Duvalle, a late addition to the plenary, brought the audience up to date on the stunning defeat of the European Union constitution in a referendum in May that plunged the 25-nation bloc into crisis.

He declared the no vote a landmark victory for the French left, after a heated two-month pre-referendum campaign "that was about lay-offs and mass unemployment".