The world is in recession. You, me, all of us, are spiraling down into economic disaster. So, there was a little gathering in London called the G20. Also, this meeting was sparked by the first visit (to Europe) of the President of Hope; Mr. Barack Obama.
How lucky we are.
Last time I talked about CNN and how they used their linguistic skills to make us understand how incredibly serious our current economic situation is. In London, where all the (appointed important) talking heads of the 20 richest (interesting catagorisation) countries of the world came to talk a bit more. Outside, there were people talking too. They cooled some of their feeling of misplacement and misunderstanding on a building of a financial institution, which is sad. Yet, looking at how “we the people” are being treated in present day politics, also not so strange.
What I found most interesting when looking at the protests, was the fact that there were no signs saying “Give banks more money to save the financial system!!” or “IMF needs to gain more control” nah, none of that in London. Well, at least, not in the streets. In the hallways and conference rooms of the G20 summit (another interesting term) on the other hand, there was $1.000 billion promised to the world financial organisations. This, for your information, will mostly exist of brand new money. Isn’t that great? We need money; START THE PRESSES! But that’s beside the point for now.
The protesters outside the G20, were mostly asking for a change in the system, nuclear disarmment, solve world hunger and so forth. I find this to be an interesting development. So, we are being told that we’re in a great depression (or in “the worst recession since 1930″) but people go out in the streets to protest nuclear disarmment, world hunger, well, the earlier mentioned.
Personally, I think more money, will not solve anything. Our system relies on ever-increasing profits, making mankind’s greedy nature quite susceptible for deceit and “power-play”, pushing ‘the (financially) weaker’ deeper into the corner they are in already, enabling the gap between the have’s and have-not’s to grow every day, creating, even more, breeding grounds for hatred, “unhumanitarian behaviour” (don’t know whether that exists as a catagorisation of behaviour, but you get my drift right?), neglect of human rights and all that can (and often will) result in violence. (Giving examples here feels like over doing it, but fuck it: Haiti, Strasbourg (another “summit”) , North-Korea)
I do like the notion of seeing life as a quest in which you can decide to “go down the rabbit-hole” as far as you like. Yet, in doing so, I also like to believe that as you do, you will also realise we are just one people under the sky, and you try, with whatever mean you have, to treat people equally, not do harm etc.
But, again, sorry, I’m drifting off.
My point is; how we are being talked to. There are several issues in this world that are being addressed by politicians but they are all not the issues we ‘the people’ would like to talk about. The most incredible example in recent weeks is the “re-branding” of the Afghanistan war.
The “War on Terrorism” is now called “Overseas Contingency Operation”. How’s that for ‘sanitising’ the one thing in the world we seem not to get over as a species? War, killing of innocent people, economical dominance of the west. But well, this sounds way more comprehensible though doesn’t it? Because the reason for changing the name was:
“Terrorism is a tactic, not an identifiable enemy, and it’s considered inaccurate because it cannot be won by military means alone.”
Whatever they call it, it remains the same. And if, for instance by the increased bombings with unmanned drones, “war” is something which is felt on only one side, namely, the people that die, you shouldn’t call it war either. I’d propose massacre, or something of that category. I understand that there are indeed groups of people that have ‘bad intentions’ with other people, based upon whatever perceived universal truth, the, “Overseas Contingency Operation” is the exact same thing.
And calling it differently, will not change the base-rules of that engagement.
And that is the same with what has happened at the G20. The underlying idea of our current ‘situation’ is based upon a false idea of righteousness that has been proven wrong, several times in several gradations. Talking about how to fill up the gaps will not lead to an actual improvement of standards of third world countries, stop wars (the weapon industry remains to be a very influential and ‘paradigm-setting’ industry), or increase the call for a non-proliferation agreement.
And that’s what ‘we the (simple) people’ would really like to see. Or at least I do.
I know not with what weapons
World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
Until the next day breaks, I wish you love and peace.
