G20 Summit

[Johann]

*WARNING* I'm a hothead on this topic and my words will be harsh. It is warranted.


The G20 summit was held in Toronto over the weekend (as everybody knows) and I'd like to express how it felt to be in the city when this debacle unfolded.

For about a week prior to the summit I noticed changes to the downtown core. All mailboxes were removed. Then bus shelters. Then garbage bins- they taped plastic bags to telephone poles- just like last year's garbage strike! awesome, huh? Then all PARK BENCHES were removed. Then major statues were moved by crane (for fear of defiling). Windows were boarded up all over downtown- what the fuck is going on here?
Is there a Level 5 Hurricane on the way??
Then the armies of cops started to appear, day after day. RCMP, other provincial cops, York region cops, gazillions of police officers.
With each passing day towards the summit citizens started to stop going downtown unless they had to. The vibe was so negative and oppressive.
I started to get angry. Who organized this? Who was the genius who decided Toronto was the city where this was going to be held? Disrupting local businesses and citizens lives beyond belief so a few empty-headed "leaders" can sit around a conference table and make piss-poor decisions on the world's behalf? Fuck I was getting mad. I don't protest in the streets because that is simply pointless. I've never seen a protest that went well, that got something accomplished. You're just asking for a baton upside the head...

It was truly sickening to see the destruction caused by some "anarchists" but it was even more sickening to see the lack of police response.
Cop cruisers were set on fire, with radicals stomping on the roofs- where were the police? That's right: nowhere near the scene until the cars had been burning forever. Where were the cops when so many windowfronts were smashed? When the shit was going down? That's right: on some other non-vital street, in their riot gear, waiting for a clue or message on what to fucking do.

And now we have our douchebag Mayor Miller grovelling to Harper about compensation for damages, which I'm sure Harper really cares about..
Our PM calls the summit a "resounding success", and that these types of meetings will always attract "hoodlums".
Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, but where do you get off brushing this disaster off? You charged the taxpayers 1.3 BILLION for your little meeting, left a major city reeling from a police state environment which resulted in unprecedented vandalism and destruction.
All for what? And we were given how much notice that this was all going down? Next to NONE!
A shitty "conference" that you could've easily done by video? Get all heads of state on a timing to be "Live" on satellite and voila! No damage to property, people's sanity or police cars! But Shithead Harper does not care at all. He is a true psychopath. I see through him so much it's insane. He has no conscience whatsoever. I'm disgusted that he is Canada's Prime Minister. But we have no one else either. The Liberal party is all but extinct and the majority of ignorant Canadians think Harper is doing a fantastic job. It's sad beyond comprehension.

Did you know that special fancy license plates with the G20 logo were made for special cars?
Did you know they spent 1.2 million on a fake lake that the leaders wouldn't even SEE during the summit? It was at the media pavillion!
Did you know that they spent almost a BILLION on security alone? And that they "secured' JACK FUCKING SHIT FOR THAT MONEY???

I asked 4 different cops on the street why they picked Toronto. Here's the answers I got:

1. It was coin toss
2. It's "good for business"
3. I don't know
4. It's "our turn"

The cops had no answer as to why Toronto was chosen. No one fucking knows. They shut down one of the biggest cities on the planet (imagine the disruption to business and lives!!!!) for NOTHING. For Fuck-All. I'm still pissed off about it. No one has apologized to the citizens of Toronto for being subjected to such insulting chickenshit.
I couldn't walk around my city for three fucking days because a bunch of empty-headed morons decided that they would hold a meaningless pow-wow. A pow-wow on the global economy no less!
How does it fucking look spending truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of money when you're trying to be "fiscally responsible?!??!
FUCK RIGHT OFF.
(I told you I'm a hothead on this one..)

I want Stephen Harper on his knees before the Canadian people. He owes us big time.
But he doesn't care.
He's " a person without conscience"
He only cares about himself.
When the world economy truly tanks where will he be and what will he say?
"I told you so?" HA
he will be saying
"I GOT MINE".

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for this, Johann. A sad sequel to Luminato. Which was free, and made people happy. A time when being a hothead is totally justified.

The prominent weekday US leftist/liberal news program and commentary Democracy Now has been broadcasting from Toronto this week.

Monday: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2010/6/28
Tuesday: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2010/6/29

The vandalism showed that the repression AKA "security" didn't work. I didn't get from Democracy Now the details of removing mailboxes, bus shelters, and even statues. That is nightmarish, and recalls the prettying-up done in Iron Curtain countries for outsiders' visits; helping do that got the artist Christo (a Bulgarian by birth) started on his ideas of transforming environments in art pieces/events like Running Fence, the Central Park Gates, the Wrapped Reichstag, and so on. Oscar said this would have happened in any town where this was held. But that's not true. It's different depending on the organization of the protest, the style of the repression, and many other factors. This is a bad one. And it comes at a particularly bad time.

Smart ideas of yours to have the G20 done by closed TV conference. One defect: obviously this is a show of strength, and 'fiscal responsibility" is for the common man, not the people at the top. They can spend billions on swaggering. Even though to us money doesn't look very well spent. It makes sense that Naomi Klein (a Canadian) was on hand to comment on Democracy Now. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/2...al_crime_scene
Klein wrote the book on Disaster Capitalism: make all the mess you want; whoever gets to do the cleaning up will make a bundle.

I'd be about as scared to go to Canada as to Mexico at this point but for different reasons. After hearing bll about the Mahar Arar case, I'd not trust Canadian authorities. In Mexico, the drug cartels rule, and as an American I might be kidnapped or assassinated.

If I write a political commentary realted to this I'll use your post as a reference.

[Johann]

The head of police security in Barrie Ontario called the operation a "complete success" as well.

How the fuck do you call a billion (?) dollars in damaged property and a furious public a "complete success"?
Is it because you were thrown a $900, 000 000 bone? maybe?
I stayed at home for quite a bit of the summit (as per police orders! Stay Away Perp!)

The police didn't know how to do anything except bang their batons against their plastic shields before they did an "advance"
It was pathetic beyond belief. The National did a piece on a Toronto female bike cop who worked the summit and she said at one point
"It's depressing. It feels as though they've taken over the city" (the protestors). All the while these officers are standing around lollygagging.
I used to be a soldier, and there's a thing called "tactics", things called "SOP's", "in theatre" operational directives that you are supposed to employ during certain situations. I saw absolutely none of that from the legions of police.
It seems like they were all just asked to show up. Stand around, hold a helmet, look like an Alpha male asshole as much as possible. That seemed to be enough. No clue on how to handle violent protestors.
The vibe I got from the police was "I'm not paid enough for this shit"
Is this what citizens/taxpayers deserve? Where's our money's worth for that billion dollars?
And get this:
STEPHEN HARPER is now saying that the federal government is not legally bound to pay for the massive damages to property.
Uh, let's get this straight:
A FEDERAL conference causes a billion dollars in damages to local businesses and private property and you don't owe a dime?
YOU'RE FUCKING FIRED SHITHEAD.

[Johann]

There is also a massive scandal going on right now with regards to the Chief of Police Bill Blair's decision to not tell the public at all about the types of searches near the security fence. Not to mention the targeting of gays and certain others by the police. People are fucking OUTRAGED here in Toronto.
The public was out of the loop until the summit was right on top of our heads.

It's a world-class city, we're recovering rather quickly from this disaster because we fucking rock, because we're always excited about the next big thing happening here (ROGER WATERS: THE WALL LIVE Sept 15th!!!) but the stain of this massively disgraceful display of fiscal and mental irresponsibility ain't coming out with Tide.

[Chris Knipp]

The general point this illustrates is that spending a lot of money and doing good planning and organizing are two totally different things.

The more ominous one is that any operation of this kind moves the place toward a culture of repression.

And then third, what is happening to the world's economies? Will enforced global belt-tightening lead to a repetition of the Great Depression of the Thirties?

[Johann]

Exactly. Our PM knows this too. This is why I hate his guts so much.
He knows and yet he recklessly and psychopathically spends like a drunken conservative asshole.
You're only PM once, eh? Gotta stick it to the peons!
That word: "CONSERVATIVE"- ha ha ha. How "Conservative" are you Steve? My God does he suck..

He even mentioned the "delicate" nature of the world's economy on live TV.
If it's so fucking delicate, Mr. Asshole, then why didn't you tighten your fucking belt? be a Leader in fiscal responsibility? Or how about even having an IDEA that helps the WORLD, even a smidge?
Oh, that's right: that was your PREDECESSOR, Paul Martin, former finance minister and LIBERAL LEADER.
He handed you a surplus when you took power. But you had so much contempt for him (and Canada it turns out) that you had to blow that surplus to Kingdom Come, didn't you? Erase any and all similarities with sanity and "good government", right?
You fucking Calgarian Oilman Asswipe.
You don't speak for me or millions of others in this Awesome Country.
You speak for ignorance and elite bullshit.
When you meet your maker the truth will be driven into your empty pathetic soul.

We are headed for a massive Depression. Great question/point there Chris.
Just look at Greece. If that ain't the writing on the wall...
And who does Wall Street look at today? The Great White North. CANADA.
Canada's banks are rock solid. Our structure is very sound. Stock brokers are investing in only one sure thing: CANADA
That's a fact.
Americans have sneered at us/ignored us forever and now we seem "favorable" for investing. It's quite funny and sad actually.
Ask any stockbroker you know: "Is Canada worth investing in?"
See what he says.

[Chris Knipp]

"Is Canada worth investing in?" I will remember and will ask the right person.

I don't know about Canadian politics. Nobody cares here. Why are Canada's banks so much more solid than the US's?

[Johann]

Canadian politics are embarrassing. You don't have to care. You shouldn't care.
I want to be so proud of my Leaders but it's fucking impossible. They make it impossible.
They get into Parliament and they surrender their brains.
How crazy is it that I want Jack Layton to be PM?????

We have no one to hold their feet to the fire. The Governor-General might as well be a sock puppet. She's a lovely Lady, but about as useful as a broken wrist. Canadians are too busy with their lives to follow politics too closely. I hate that I myself don't know enough.

Our banks handled the financial crisis extremely well. Our citizens understand what a bank is for and what it can do.
Seriously- Canada is seen as a "ROCK" for investing.
Definitely let me know what that "right person" says Chris.

[Chris Knipp]

I only ever went to Canada when I spent a summer working on the Detroit News and went up to the Stratford Festival, when I heard Glenn Gould play a Bach keyboard concerto and saw a play by Shakespeare. I'm trying to remember the novel I read when I was quite young, by an English writer I think, about a man who lived in exile in Canada during WWII. Quite a few Canadians wind up down here, dno't they, including some well known movie actors? But it's a blank to us.

I think the financial solidy is not just that the banks "knew what to do" at the time of the financial crisis, but that restrictions prevented the myriad unsafe investment techniques and "shadow banks" that brought down the US financial sector.

I won't see my financial advisor for another month but I will definitely bring up the subject of Canada. I have done pretty well through it all but there are always new worries now. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist and liberal op ed columnist for the NY Times, wrote a column full of doom this week. He is a Keynsian. Therefore he feels that belt-tightening is exactly the wrong approach. He has been writing this for the past two years. I think he is right, but his view has not prevailed.

His column is called "The Third Depression." You can read it here. The G20 summit is part of the problem.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

He has believed that it could be averted, but he's beginning to think it's too late.

I highly recommend this column by Paul Krugman, and following his writing for the Times in general. It doesn't take a genius to grasp what he says, but ideology keeps the movers and shakers from perceiving the good sense of his views.

[Chris Knipp]

The novel about exile in Canada during WWII was Wyndham Lewis' Self Condemned (1954).

Lewis spent the war years in self-imposed exile in Canada, a period chronicled in his novel Self Condemned (1954), which describes the gradual alienation from society of Dr Rene Harding, a historian whose brand of anti-democratic élitism parallels Lewis's own.

Read more: Wyndham Lewis (Percy Wyndham Lewis) Biography - (1882–1957), (Percy Wyndham Lewis), The English Review, Blast, The Review of the Great English Vortex, Tarr http://www.jrank.org/literature/page...#ixzz0sMkAobBK

http://www.jrank.org/literature/page...-Lewis%29.html

This colored my view of the country.

[Johann]

Excellent stuff Chris, as always. Thanks for the links.
These things must be discussed and addressed.

Yes, no "shadow banks" here in canada- that seems to be a big problem in the USA.

"Deeply discouraging" is putting it mildly about the G20; there is a real genuine disgust here over what happened.
And Harper conveniently is squired away from it. It's as far from his mind as an NDP majority is.
I personally think he has a hate-on for Toronto.
I think his contempt for this city is barely concealed.

Bottom line: we're in serious trouble.

[Johann]

Todays Toronto Sun has reporting on the "fallout" of the G20 disaster.
Joe Warmington has an excellent article on the lack of police response.

get a load of this:

The order was given to "not engage" with violent protestors because "they're too intimidating"

Yeah. Take a moment to read that again.
a few hundred intimidated a force of 19,000 police. Who were covered head to foot in kevlar.

There are quotes from Toronto cops on how everybody was talking over everybody else on the radios, and how the Montreal riot guys were "LIVID" that they were ordered not to engage. They really wanted to get in there and get business done. But they were hampered by a keystone cops Command structure. That just makes me so PROUD! I wanna puke. I saved the paper and will add direct quotes tomorrow

Peter Worthington, stalwart old school military trumpeter brushes it all off, saying the only ones put out by the conference were the public and business owners. Time to retire from your armchair, Peter. You support Harper when he's so obviously a retarded elitist clown? I'm so tired of that old man's "perspective". Hey Peter: I was a Patricia. Do I have your respect? No? You can never take that away from me. I served and I know "shit from shinola" to use a phrase you might know. I ain't no radical, I ain't no "hippie", although I am in favor of peace. I am in favor of busting heads when it's warranted but when is it ever? I'm sick of the waste and negligence and incompetence. This is the 21st Century. the "New Millenium". Toronto is "a city of the future" according to former Prez Bill Clinton. Why the fuck was the city subjected to such disgusting arbitrary chickenshit? why was no one informed properly so that all possible outcomes could be properly anticipated?

Who was steering the G20 aircraft carrier?????


the "Black Bloc" was. And by the looks of things, maybe they should be applauded (all things considered) because they showed just how out of touch our PM is, the police were and how sticky eggs are to get off your face...

[Chris Knipp]

"intimidating" is interesting.

[Chris Knipp]

Back to the bigger fallout: to the global economy, poverty and jobs --

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

There's a front page NY Times commentary piece today I had not read but just have: "Governments Move to Cut Spending, in 1930s Echo," by David Leonhardt (NYT June 30, 2010)

Remember the Einstein saying, "Insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results"? In their recent decisions, the rich nations financial planners appear to think they can do what was done in the late Thirties that prolonged the depression and are hoping that this time it will be different. Leonhardt doesn't pretend to have the answer, he's just worried, as is the financial market and Wall Street, by this collective move ty the rich countries.

It's not that they're utterly wrong, only that their timing may be bad. Leonhardt belives is that the stimulus must continue, because it's too soon to end it. It's also extremely bad to do all the deficit cuts and austerity measures country by all the rich countries at the same time. But the stimulus cash infusions should be accompanied by long term spending cuts and tax increases, just not all the latter right now by everyone (this is at the end of the article):

In an ideal world, countries would pair more short-term spending and tax cuts with long-term spending cuts and tax increases. But not a single big country has figured out, politically, how to do that.

In other words, they're improvising, hoping that copying from the past and hoping this time it'll work better. They don't really know what they're doing. And they've got the economic future of the world by the balls.

Leonhardt begins:

The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.

In effect, policy makers are betting that the private sector can make up for the withdrawal of stimulus over the next couple of years. If they’re right, they will have made a head start on closing their enormous budget deficits. If they’re wrong, they may set off a vicious new cycle, in which public spending cuts weaken the world economy and beget new private spending cuts.

On Tuesday, pessimism seemed the better bet. Stocks fell around the world, over worries about economic growth.

He goes on:

As is often the case after a financial crisis, this recovery is turning out to be a choppy one. Companies kept increasing pay and hours last month, for example, but did little new hiring. On Tuesday, the Conference Board reported that consumer confidence fell sharply this month.

And just as households and businesses are becoming skittish, governments are getting ready to let stimulus programs expire, the equivalent of cutting spending and raising taxes. The Senate has so far refused to pass a bill that would extend unemployment insurance or send aid to ailing state governments. Goldman Sachs economists this week described the Senate’s inaction as “an increasingly important risk to growth.”

The parallels to 1937 are not reassuring. From 1933 to 1937, the United States economy expanded more than 40 percent, even surpassing its 1929 high. But the recovery was still not durable enough to survive Roosevelt’s spending cuts and new Social Security tax. In 1938, the economy shrank 3.4 percent, and unemployment spiked.

Given this history, why would policy makers want to put on another fiscal hair shirt today?

The reasons vary by country. Greece has no choice.

He adds that Spain is in the same situation, and Britain may also be. But not all countries are (and so I would say they ought not to proceed according to the same schedule.

I highly recommend reading this article, as well as scanning Paul Krugman's op-ed pieces over the past year and half, which can be accessed starting here.

[Johann]

Here's a brilliant, on-target letter to the Toronto Star (dated today, July 3/2010) from Piotr Trela:


"Let's check Stephen Harper's claim against some numbers:

The cost of the security- 1 Billion or more; the number of violent thugs- perhaps several hundred.
This means that he spent on average between 1 million and 2 million of taxpayers' money on each of the thugs, and STILL let them ransack
downtown Toronto.
With justification like this, who needs disgrace?

If the world leaders still need their photo op, a stage to deliver promises they don't intend to keep (of the 25 billion in new aid promised by the G8 in 2005 to be made by 2010, less than half materialized) and to schmooze, put them on a cruise ship or a military base (Me, Johann: AMEN!).
The saved billion could then be then used to actually help the poor, instead of merely talking about how we are going to help them.
(AMEN again!)

Furthermore, the saved billion would be new money, as opposed to the 1.1 billion for maternal help announced with big fanfare at the G8 by our
Prime Minister. If you haven't noticed, in his 2010 budget Harper froze aid for the next five years, which means that any new aid initiative, like maternal health, will have to be financed through cuts to the already existing aid programs.
TALK ABOUT ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL TO MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE YOU REALLY CARE!"




*ME, Johann*:

This is as clear as you can get on how retarded and cruel and evil and sickening Stephen Harper is.

I'll say it again:

YOU'RE FUCKING FIRED, SHITHEAD.