In just a few weeks Toronto will play host to the world when the G20 economic summit comes to town. City officials and federal politicians are desperate to show the best that Canada has to offer but I’m afraid that all anyone will see is a tightly choreographed event full of hand-shakes and photo ops.
That’s not Canada’s fault, the whole idea that the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies would be able to sit down and agree on anything of substance in just 48 hours is ludicrous. We already have a long standing system in place where the world can come together and discuss issues of real consequence, negotiate settlements and adopt resolutions given the time and attention to detail that they deserve, we call it the UN. Of course the UN is a paper tiger that nobody pays attention to anymore and nobody really pays attention to the G20 either, but that’s a posting for another time. What is Canada’s fault, and the fault of every other host country in recent memory, is the way they are handling dissenting voices.
Last week the story broke that the bill to Canadian taxpayers for security alone at the summit will be nearly $1 billion. The lion’s share of that is not for security inside the venue, it’s for the crowd control required for the protestors outside.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has defined a security perimeter of 50 blocks resulting in widespread displacement of citizens and the cancellation of passenger rail service into the city. No ordinary citizen is going to be able to get close enough to even smell the venue, let alone disrupt anything. I work downtown and am considering taking a few days off just so that I don’t have to run the gauntlet of security check points to and from my middle class job.
You would think that by now some politician somewhere would start to wonder why these protestors keep showing up. There must be something going on that they feel strongly enough about to risk arrest and permanent hearing loss, (the city of Toronto bought three noise cannons capable of blasting 143 decibels in order to help disperse crowds), but thanks to the security personnel the world leaders won’t see or hear the protestors and will be able to remain blissfully ignorant to their cries.
It used to be that politics was local. You could call your MP or Congressman and be heard. Nowadays more and more of the decisions that affect ordinary citizens are made in corporate board rooms on the other side of the world. Not only are the politicians not listening, they have abdicated their power and they couldn’t save us even if they wanted to. (See British Petroleum)
Of course, when the big corporations get into trouble they turn to government for bailouts claiming that if they fail they’ll take the whole economy down with them. The sad fact is; that’s not far from the truth so government caves and the bill trickles down to the ordinary citizen. (See Wall Street Banks, and General Motors)
At the end of the day government mortgages our future to pay for a bankrupt past. Huddling for two days in a posh Toronto hotel isn’t going to solve anything. Sooner or later the loans will be due and the people who are going to have to pay are sitting behind a billion dollar fence over a mile away.
Amen to that! The G-20, G-8 meetings are just warm up phases getting people used to the idea of a one world government. It's coming!
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much about world government as it is about corporate control
ReplyDeleteIt is most definitely about world government, but I thought you supported such things. I was wondering if you would have anything to say about this. The man claiming to be our President strongly supports a much stronger UN that Americans would be subject to. It's ironic that the rest of the world is begging America not to embrace the same socialist policies that destroyed their economies. I saw a few photos of the G8 "anarchist/communist" riots in Toronto. I hope the damage wasn't too severe. While I oppose socialism, I oppose "croney capitalism" even more. Unfortunately, our government is hellbent on giving us both.
ReplyDeleteWhat difference would it make if a cabal of supermassive corporations run the world or if the UN did? The plan is for the UN/Trilateral Commission folks to administrate through big corporations. They divide us through the whole "left vs right argument which is nonsense. This idea was first implemented by Adolph Hitler who is demonized while the architecture he used to gain control of Germany is put into place. We have strong laws against "too big to fail" businesses. Our last 4 chief law enforcement officers have not enforced it. Our last two chief law enforcement officers even gave those (who run) corporations trillions of dollars in return for a government stake in those businesses. They call it a "bailout" but it is really just a way to pay those who run corporations to let us nationalize them in return for making them part of the new "ruling class" aka elites. Those who should need bailing out is those involved in such actions and they should need to be bailed out of jail.
ReplyDeleteAs for BP and the deepwater horizon terror attack, our fearless leader is doing everything in his power (and far more) to prevent the cleanup. I am on the front line of this. Our so called president could have called every drilling expert in the world and got them on top of this. Every plan each state has put into place to stop the oil from reaching our shores has been blocked by the Feds. Texas is sitting on millions of gallons of a dispersant that doesn't harm sea life. The Feds refuse to allow it's use. The Saudis had a similar spill in 1993. They used supertankers to suck the oily water up then separated it from the water. So tell me why we (with the biggest navy and economy in the world) can't do the same. If you look at the facts, its because they dont want to. Could it have something to do with Cap and Trade? Both our government and oil companies will get rich off cap and trade because our fuel is taxed not by the gallon, but by the amount paid for it. So, if gas is $4 a gallon, the federal gov rakes in twice what it makes of gas at $2. If the energy tax passes, the oil companies can jack up the price, the Feds will take more tax, and then an imaginary thing called a carbon credit can be traded. It's ironic that our whole planet, and our bodies are made of carbon, but we should pay for a whole new method of trading for speculators to deal in things imaginary. It's just like the US dollar which if you factor in 0% interest rate, debt and deficit is worth a negative amount. The carbon credit is the ultimate way to "do as I say, not as I do" excuse for folks like Al Gore who fly around in big fancy jets, have fleets of Limo suvs and houses that use more power than small towns in the states they live in while they tell us to "save the planet". God was a far better builder than you think. The planet will be fine, it is just in a totally natural cycle of warmer weather. This cycle has been proven to have happened on a 250 yr warm/400 yr cool nterval for the last 2500 years. Civilizations have risen in the warm, fallen in the cool. Our 250 years of warmer temps is likely up, as average global temps are dropping in exactly the same way tree ring and ice core samples say they did in 1300. From 1300 to 1310, global temps gradually dropped after the midieval warm period from C850 AD. Then in 1310, the bottom fell out. Similarly, since 1998, global temps have been dropping. If there is any radical shift in climate coming, it is cooling, not warming. Warming: with more crops and less violent weather to support growing populations is far preferable to cooling-more violent weather caused by stronger "tripole effect", starving people and desease such bubonic plague which decimated the population of Europe in the mid 14th century. The cold period before the last, hit circa 400AD, which coincides with the fall of the Roman empire brought about by migrating tribes coming-from the north-because their previous homes had become inhospitable.
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