Skip to main content

G8 Summit = Talk fest and little action

The leaders of the so-called G8 Summit - held in Germany - are now winging their respective ways home. The photo-ops have passed and no doubt each so-called leader has some sort of warm glow that they achieved something. But then, reflect on the G8 meeting at Gleneagles 2 years ago and what was pledged then in aid for Africa. Essentially nothing has actually been implemented, especially giving the pledged monies.

"By the time you read this, another G8 summit meeting will be over. And, to quote the ever-quotable Shakespeare, it will once again have been a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Every year since 1975 the heads of the same states (with the more recent addition of Russia) meet to discuss ways to further their control over the rest of the world, including their own citizens, a fact which has become even more apparent at this year’s lockdown-style get-together. And every year since 2001, when an Italian protester was murdered by police, it is a sort of annual scrimmage between citizens and organisations which aim to change the status quo, whether for the good of the environment, the poor, the war-torn or diseased, and the not -so-thin blue line of heavily armoured police who are apparently protecting democracy from itself. In short, the G8 is and remains a meeting free from any sort of consultation with either the heads of those states who will be greatly affected by the decisions made (read African and developing nations), or the citizens the G8 leaders claim to represent.

It can also be viewed as a sort of party under Apartheid– the tiny number of “haves” sit in luxury behind a €12million fence and a police-enforced “protester free zone” 5 km outside the barbed-wire, while the great masses wishing for change or to at least have some sort of inclusion in the decision-making process, sleep in tents and are bullied by armed men in Darth Vader costumes, but both sides attempt to reach conclusions as to the way the world and their own part in it should progress, and both attempt to enjoy the meeting as much as possible."


So writes Daniel Vallin on CommonDreams - read the full piece here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-de...

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?