Arms and the taxman
At the recent G8 summit in Evian, Brazilian president 'Lula' da Silva proposed a tax on the arms trade. Why did no one listen to him, asks Gideon Burrows

It was exactly one month ago today that, buried among the empty speeches and photo opportunities of the G8 world leaders, the Brazilian president 'Lula' da Silva made a concrete proposal to tackle two of the worst problems facing the world today - extreme hunger and the trade in weapons.

There is a need for a global hunger fund, Lula told the G8, "that would not only give food to those in need but would also create the conditions necessary to strike at the structural roots of hunger. There are many ways of gaining financial resources for such a fund. Taxes could be levied on the international arms trade: this would prove advantageous from both an economic and an ethical standpoint."

Blink and you could have missed it. Only a handful of the thousands of journalists packed into the Evian press centre bothered to cover Lula's speech, let alone his proposal. Over the past month, in the UK at least, not one broadcaster or newspaper has examined the idea, nor asked the government for a response.

The G8's silence on the proposal, apart from a few platitudes from Chirac, betrays the fact that leaders from the developing world were invited to Evian as window dressing rather than to be listened to.
[more]