G-8 and G-20: Summits of deceit and repression

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TORONTO—In the end, the global rulers got what they wanted—a massive propaganda exercise for social cuts, plus a brutal demonstration of police power. As for the working class, we got the bill, $1.3 billion and counting—just for ‘security’.

During the G20 Summit, held June 27-28 in Toronto, police arrested over 1000 people. That is over double the number incarcerated in the October 1970 Quebec crisis, under the auspices of the infamous War Measures Act. Most caught in the latest sweep were released, many without charges, after being held in filthy cages, in a makeshift ‘jail’, for up to 24 hours without adequate water, food, medication, toilet facilities, privacy for females, or access to legal aid. Police charged hundreds, and still hold dozens.

The business media worked feverishly to spin the threadbare results of the G20 meeting (held on the heels of the G8 Summit in Huntsville, Ontario) into a tapestry of triumph, an ode to worldly consensus and to Canadian hospitality. But plainly, it’s a hard sell—especially in light of the city core lock-down, and the acts of petty vandalism that police permitted (or planned) to occur, before resorting to the use of tear gas, pepper spray, beatings and mass arrests.

Many peaceful protesters, working journalists, downtown shoppers and curious on-lookers were snared by the cop tactics. And so, illusions in bourgeois democracy and in ‘officers of the peace’ fell like a multitude of bowling pins.

Meanwhile, inside the media bubble of the world capitalist summit, there was minimal agreement on detail. This betrayed the actual farce of the high-level gathering, which could have been conducted on Skype for free—minus the mini-police state imposed on Torontonians.

To the extent that the G20 leaders agreed to do anything, the measures they endorsed could hasten a global depression, and quicken the descent into environmental disaster.

The rich countries’ bosses promised to cut their budgetary deficits in half by 2013, and to cap their cumulative debt as a proportion of GDP by 2016. If attempted, without taxing big corporations and the super-rich, such actions would choke off jobs, services and investment in production, plunging economies into crisis, and billions into misery.

But Japan is exempt. Italy is not expected to meet the deadline. While Britain and Germany have announced Draconian cuts, Harper is not saying, and Obama is walking a tightrope. Revealing the blatancy of their class bias, the G8 and G20 rejected a tax on financial institutions (proposed by the more desperate French, Germans and British), and they put off until the next G20 summit in Seoul, South Korea, any discussion of bank regulatory reforms.

Concerning climate change, the summiteers agreed to contemplate cuts to the subsidies paid to carbonemitting oil and gas industries. Of course, such contemplations are subordinate to “country-specific strategies”. Canada’s federal government, for instance, is increasing its overall subsidies to the Alberta tar sands. Even the language on climate change from this summit is weaker than that agreed on at the previous G20 gab-fest.

What about the G8, held June 25-28? “The gap between the G8’s compassionate rhetoric and its readiness to help was especially striking”, said the June 27 Toronto Star lead editorial.

While hundreds of thousands of women, and nearly 9 million children die needlessly every year, the $50 billion in aid promised at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 “fell a breathtaking $20 billion short. … This is a shabby performance for a rich club that generates close to $40 trillion in wealth”, stated the Star. Canada’s largest circulation daily failed to mention the source of this enormous wealth—the stolen natural resources and exploited labour of workers globally, especially in the Third World.

The G8 leaders went out of their way to caution the United Nations against hoping for much more from them, notwithstanding the ‘Millennium Development Goals’, which aim to reduce world poverty, hunger, and disease by 2015. And really, isn’t that the whole point of the G8 and the G20? There the richest elites do not run the risk of getting outvoted by the 172 other countries represented at the UN—which 12 Socialist Action july 2010 (Above) Toronto protesters, July 1, demand a public inquiry into G-8/G-20 ‘security’ measures.

justices perpetuated by the G20 is understandable. But their tactics are worse than deplorable. They proved to be straight men for Harper’s predictable punch lines about how ‘security’ spending was justified. The Bloquistas also gave the cops ammunition to brutalize and jail over 1000 innocents, using expanded police powers of search and arrest granted by a secret Ontario Liberal Cabinet decision just weeks prior to the summits.

Now that a majority of the detainees have been released without charge, questions are multiplying. Why did 20,000 cops, including hundreds of them within spitting distance of burning vehicles and shattering store windows, just let it happen? Was it an exercise in policing or PR? And if cop claims are true that they had infiltrated the Bloquistas, how many police were involved in prompting, as opposed to just spying on, the planners of mayhem? NDP and Labour leaders should be expressing rage over these issues instead of obsessing over petty property damage.

Anger over the hundreds of arbitrary arrests, and the de-humanizing treatment meted out by police to detainees, spurred over 3000 people to rally outside Toronto Police Headquarters on June 28. They demanded a full, independent public inquiry. Thousands proceeded to march to City Hall and back to the Legislature at Queen’s Park. Many in the youthful throng chanted “Wasted! Wasted! One billion dollars”! “No justice, no peace”! and the now emblematic cry, “Whose streets? Our streets”!

Socialists were prominent in all of the peaceful, mass protest actions, and received a very positive hearing from the crowds, which included many young women and men attending a demonstration for the first time. Dozens walked behind the Socialist Action banner inscribed with the words “No corporate bail-out. Make Capital pay for the crisis! Nationalize Auto, Steel and Banks—under Workers’ Control”.

SA members collected over $550 in sales of anticapitalist, antiwar, and eco-socialist buttons, and Socialist Action newspapers in a span of four days. We distributed 1000 trilingual statements against the agenda of the G20 (presenting the policies of our Canada/Quebec, American, and Mexican sister parties). Over 40 activists attended an SA public forum at the People’s Summit, dozens more came to our display table at the Ryerson Hub, and we received applications from five individuals seeking detailed information about, or membership in SA.

Harper and his global partners in crime have stirred a giant from slumber. Will this youthful giant master the policies, strategy, and organization needed to seize the time? No one can say, but socialists have an indispensable, and evidently welcome role to play in this still unfolding drama. n