Roundup of G-20 News - New Media and Politics

June 28 2010 // News

Trying to get back in a regular groove what with holidays and a weird sense of burning out on litany of lies crap and bad news. None of which would be half as bad were it not for the frustration I feel when it's not reported in on detail and with context by the MSM. Things have gotten far more wankerish here in Canada that I could have imagined - even with Harper at the helm. 

That G-20 get-together that produced a record number of mass arrests, the most in Canadian history, drew this response from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association: "To us, it’s abhorrent that we would be arresting more than 900 people to find maybe 50 or 100 … vandals. This makes no sense. It’s a fundamental breach of Canadian law to have done that,” said Nathalie Des Rosiers, the organization’s general counsel.

 

If this was the worst thing that came out of Harper's billion dollar vanity project I'd have moved on to other things, sadly it is not. Naomi Klein explains how we all got screwed at the summit, Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world’s wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill. Paul Krugman of the NYT's thinks the deal signed on at the G-20 could lead to the 3rd great depression. One he believes 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. But our PM was busily advocating and cheering on these cuts. That may end up being his true legacy.

NGO's (Non-Governmental Organizations) gave the summit a failing grade and to top it all off Canada actually blocked taking action on poverty at the summit. How proud of our PM are you at this moment? But he doesn't deserve all the brickbats - keep some handy to fling at Ontario's Liberal(?) premier Dalton McGuinty who refuses to explain why his cabinet passed a secret law giving police more power to arrest people during the G20 summit in Toronto.

And one final note from the awesome summit of the wealthy on behalf of the rich, the PM signs a nuclear co-operation deal with India.