Stars at Glastonbury and around the world launch email action at Blair and Clinton

The first Glastonbury Festival of the new millennium saw international stars joining millions of Jubilee 2000 supporters around the world in launching an innovative email action urging Blair, Clinton and other world leaders to 'drop the debt' now.

As the annual music festival with a long history of supporting progressive causes got underway on the weekend of 24-25^th June, Bono, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Bush and Jude Law all kicked off emails in UK and USA calling on the public to send a resounding message for debt cancellation to the G7 leaders. In Glastonbury itself, they were joined by Michael Eavis, David Bowie, Travis, Pet Shop Boys, Counting Crows, the Brand New Heavies and 110,000 festival-goers.

The new virtual campaigning is truly global. The Oscar-winning Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto launched the email action in Japan on 27^th June, and Italy's leading rap star Jovanotti, has followed suit.

The stars have forwarded the email to their online fan clubs and the email is expected to spread rapidly through the internet, prompting large volumes of emails to the leaders of the rich G7 nations. Jubilee 2000 needs five million more email petitions to break the world record of 22 million petitions. The email action is backed up by a new website - - which provides background to the email action and encourages people to return on July 21 (Net the Debt Day) to take part in a final action directed towards the richest nations meeting in Okinawa. July 21 is also the first day of the summit, and people who log on will be able to hear about events as they take place in Okinawa and find out the results of their actions.

Despite all their promises Blair, Clinton, the other world leaders, and the IMF and World Bank have only cancelled a tiny proportion of the debts of the poorest countries. The UK Government continues to collect £56 million from the poorest countries each year. As a result, according to the United Nations Development Programme, 19,000 children still die each day from debt.

To register your support for the immediate cancellation of the poorest countries' unpayable debts, click here.