Thom Yorke answers the Okinawa summit with a burning laptop

Thom Yorke has turned his page on radiohead.com on the leaders of the G8, a day after their summit at Okinawa ended without a deal on cancelling the debts of developing countries. The page shows a laptop on fire, with This is worth nothing until you drop the debt¹ across its screen.

The G8, the seven richest industrial nations and Russia, met at Nago from Friday to Sunday. NME, which calls the page Yorke's most bitter attack yet on Western leaders over Third World debt, reports that Tony Blair clashed with Bill Clinton there, pushing for a quicker settlement.

Yorke has used the same page for the cause since late June, when he asked fans who backed Jubilee 2000, the campaign to cancel poor countries' debts in the millennium year, to email Blair and Clinton before the summit. Yorke addressed “the G7”, the campaign's name for the rich creditor nations, over the debt promises they made at Cologne in June 1999. The G7 have snaked their way out of most of the promises they made last year and this is the best way to shit them up for this year's summit.² He signed off by suggesting fans stick it in the G7's pipe and make them smoke it, “love Thom”.

Beneath the burning laptop he now asks the leaders how they will sleep, what they will say to their children and how they will explain themselves when things turn nasty, and tells them they have no one to blame but themselves. Many of the debts have been repaid already, he says again, and it is the interest that keeps the poorest countries from developing, while the leaders have committed millions to policing the internet over the next five years. You can't eat the fucking web. This is free market killing.¹