[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:17144] "Make the G-8 History"

[Al Kagan]

Begin forwarded message:

> The following article "Making the G-8 History" summarizes some of the 
> lessons of the G-8  meeting and the protests against it. I think it is 
> of great  acuity and interest.
>
> I want to bring your attention to the site on which it appeared, as it 
> is one of the best resources aimed at sharpening the fight against 
> globalization. It is <http://www.oneworld.net/>
>
> Mark Rosenzweig
> co-editor, 'Progressive Librarian'
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>  Making G8 History
>    Tom Burgis
>  7 - 7 - 2005 
>   Between the submissive pleas of Make Poverty History and the 
> anarchist headbangers of the Black Bloc, where is the coherent message 
> to unite protestors against the G8's planetary depredations? Tom 
> Burgis reports from the Gleneagles frontline.
>   
>
>  The battle of Auchterarder has been fought and lost. More than 5,000 
> protesters achieved on 6 July 2005 what snow over Prestwick airport 
> could have accomplished - the G8 dignitaries arrived two hours late, 
> but still in good time to meet Queen Elizabeth II.
>
>  But then, the battle was always going to be lost. It had to be waged, 
> yet in the war for what is generally called justice, it was no more 
> than a necessary sacrifice.
> The victory of the G8 Alternatives march in Scotland on Wednesday was 
> that it took place at all. At 10.30 am, it had been cancelled 
> outright. Anarchists had descended on Stirling from the Dissent! rural 
> convergence site and clashed with police forces already fraught after 
> Monday's disturbances in Edinburgh. 
>
> The anarchists played into the hands of those determined to make the 
> Live8 celebrity shindig at Murrayfield the day's sole permitted 
> "protest". (That shindig featured an African campaigner thanking the 
> G8 in advance for "whatever it will do". She was not arrested.)
>
>  The Black Bloc, the Wombles and the other anarchist groups that 
> demolished the front of Stirling's Burger King may have shown an anger 
> that is sorely lacking elsewhere, but their motives are often dubious. 
> Some in their ranks simply wouldn't know what to do with themselves if 
> their goal of the state's demise was attained and there was no one in 
> authority left to goad. In terms of collective tactics, they have the 
> acumen of plankton.
>
> Wednesday's march, had it been co-ordinated, focussed, and broad 
> enough to include the most radical elements, the untrousered peaceniks 
> and the swathe of social resistance in between, could have made at 
> least one G8 leader quake. But, as one disappointed activist from 
> Pamplona observed: "It's so disorganised. There's no message to unite 
> people."
>
>  A second victory was to overcome a calculated barrage of 
> misinformation from the police. In ninety minutes around noon, I made 
> four calls to the Tayside press office. The information was both 
> inaccurate and at odds with what officers were saying on the ground. 
> Given that the summit is being held on a golf course in the middle of 
> (picturesque) nowhere, the efforts of the G8 Alternatives organisers 
> were as savvy as they were calm. The clashes with riot police near the 
> security fence around Gleneagles were as much the product of honest 
> vexation as the work of any mischievous element.
>
>   "We're not going to shut them down: they've got American military 
> everywhere", said Globalise Resistance's Guy Taylor, whose coach was 
> blockaded in Edinburgh for three hours. "We're here to show they're 
> not a legitimate body to solve the world's problems."
>
>  While Make Poverty History's "final push" attempts to show that the 
> G8 - unelected, unaccountable and, seemingly, unstoppable - is indeed 
> Africa's messiah, radicals are in for the long haul. "The only thing 
> that unites the G8 is that they are the richest nations in the world", 
> said Taylor. "They're there to retain that wealth and power. Poorer 
> countries at least have some representation at the UN, the WTO and the 
> World Bank."
>
> Solace or subversion?
>
> There is no such recourse at the G8. Not even Bob Geldof has a veto. 
> There is no one inside the summit for the protesters to express 
> solidarity with. That renders Make Poverty History's efforts to 
> harness the G8's power for the good of all mankind seem even more 
> deluded. But with the Security Council omnipotent at the United 
> Nations, and the World Bank's one-dollar one-vote structure skewing 
> its policy grotesquely, it has been at the World Trade Organisation 
> that those poorer countries have been able to muster some collective 
> clout. The most ominous part of the communiqué expected from the G8 on 
> 8 July will be its recommendation for a daring round of development 
> talks at the body whose doctrine was described by Ralph Nader as 
> "trade über alles".
>
>   "Britain is part of a big push for the Doha [development round]", 
> says veteran Filipino activist and head of Focus on the Global South, 
> Walden Bello. "The December ministerial will be about the survival of 
> the WTO, the engine of global misery, or whether it gets stopped for a 
> third time." Bello, who laments British demonstrators' "mellow" 
> approach to protest, identifies the Achilles' heel of the titan of 
> global finance: the consensus required for the WTO to issue a 
> communiqué.
>
>  In 1999, the WTO talks broke down for the first time since its 
> foundation in 1995. In the streets, as police wiped the blood from 
> their batons, something had happened, a child of many names had been 
> born. Its general sobriquet is the "global justice movement". Before 
> Seattle, Bello argued, the globalisation of free trade was considered 
> inevitable. After it, globalisation was something that could be 
> resisted, partly through direct resistance to the WTO, G8 and the 
> Bretton Woods institutions.
>
>  At Cancún in 2003, the WTO was dealt a massive blow. Emboldened by 
> the mass protests on the Mexican streets, Africa united and new 
> coalitions of developing countries - the G20, G33 and G90 - squared up 
> to the big boys. Such was the resilience with which the Davids fronted 
> up to the Goliaths' ultra-liberal draft proposals, the ministerial was 
> unable to issue a communiqué. They continue to coordinate resistance 
> to the west's economic bulldozering at governmental level.
>
>  The network of insurgent solidarities goes wider. Where Richard 
> Curtis offers solace to leaders who will lose no sleep as they condemn 
> the global south to another cycle of privatisation and privation, 
> radicals in the social justice movement have fostered links between 
> civil society and those in developing countries determined to resist 
> the pillage of their resources.
> Others in Auchterarder, including George Monbiot and Trevor Ngwane, 
> head of the South African Anti-Privatisation Forum, argue for more 
> direct action. Monbiot recommends that the global south call Paul 
> Wolfowitz's and Gordon Brown's bluff on debt. If debtor countries 
> simply refused en masse to service their debt, they would have the 
> west by the bankrolls, says Monbiot: "the total debt is $2.5 trillion; 
> the global financial reserves are only $1.5 trillion. That would give 
> poor countries real power." 
>
> Resisting the global carve-up
>
> Within the protest establishment, that argument is barely 
> countenanced. "We're only asking the G8 to do what those eight 
> countries can. We (also) challenge the way the express their power. We 
> are not legitimising them", says Matt Phillips, one of the senior 
> figures within Make Poverty History. "We don't have time, frankly, to 
> wait for a more legitimate entity to turn up. While we're here today, 
> 30,000 African children will die. We give the British government 
> credit for pushing an ambitious agenda. I don't question Blair and 
> Brown's commitment - what we're bothered about is the outcome."
>
>  The furore over whether the G8 could turn benign if it is cuddled for 
> long enough ignores the fundamental illegitimacy of this sacred group. 
> It has no democratic mandate. Any attempt to challenge the misery the 
> masters of the universe perpetuate must consider the fundamental 
> question: where does its power come from? It comes from the 
> entrenched, feudal privilege of corporate capital, expressed through 
> structures either overtly or covertly unrepresentative of the planet's 
> population.
>
>  The Battle of Auchterarder was doomed from the outset. As the 
> polyglot protesters left Gleneagles on Wednesday night, the mood was 
> sombre. The carve-up will continue on the other side of the fence - 
> though thanks to Make Poverty History, the vocabulary will be 
> different.
>
>  The next struggle will be for the will of those who have been 
> politicised by Make Poverty History's mass appeal - those who scratch 
> far enough below the surface of the G8 communiqué to see that the only 
> slogan worth shouting is "make the G8 history".
>  This article is published by Tom Burgis, and openDemocracy.net under 
> a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it free of charge with 
> attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If 
> you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. 
> Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees. Some 
> articles on this site are published under different terms.
> --
>
>
> MARK C ROSENZWEIG
>

Al Kagan
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61820
USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax 217-333-2214
akagan at uiuc.edu
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