George Bush was quite deliberate in picking last week as the time to announce his vast expansion of US HIV/AIDS relief efforts in Africa. It was all about social pressure. With the G8 summit coming up this week, most of the member states had so far failed to fulfill their promises to Africa made at the historic 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles. Most of us expected that they would now at least act to mitigate any appearance that they were poorer global citizens than the neoliberal Evangelical war chimp. That being Bush.

But no. It appears that all the G8 states other than the UK and the US will be slinking back home without meeting their promises, and without even discussing the issue in this week's sessions.

As is always the case in these situations, Bob Geldof says it best. Here's Bob going buckwild yesterday as he spoke truth to the entrenched power of the Euro-Canadian axis.

"If I sign a contract in my business life and don't fulfil it, I would be sued. I could go to jail. Do these leaders live outside the norms of human behaviour?" Canada was the worst of the lot according to Geldof, because it is also making a concerted effort to prevent the issue from being discussed. "Canada is one of the richest countries on the planet, why deny life to millions of Africans?" Italy's efforts merited only the word "pathetic," German chancellor Angela Merkel was was going nowhere with her endless talk of "wait-and-see," and so forth.

So, unless things change drastically before the week is out, we'll be left with yet another year in which the U.S. funds not only its own anti-disease program, the largest in the world, but also remains by far the largest supporter of the U.N.'s World Fund, the smaller fund so loudly and bitchily favored by most G8 states in the past.

This isn't just Yankee preening on my part. The U.S. alone will not likely be able to halt the AIDS epidemic, nor adequately address any of the other great humanitarian catastrophes in sub-Saharan Africa. It's imperative that other wealthy states one day decide that these very basic issues of ecnomic justice in sub-Saharan Africa are, in fact, important. The continent that brought colonialism to Africa ought to be pushing these efforts forward, not holding them back.