The usual travelling roadshow of naive young dreamers and old-fashioned hate filled socialists are causing trouble in Rostock, Germany, protesting the G8 summit. It should be noted Rostock is in the former GDR, which had the Stalinist regime of Erich Honecker until 1989. The flying of the hammer and sickle flags there, when millions were watched and thousands imprisoned, tortured and murdered for questioning the GDR regime is disgusting.
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The rather inane BBC is talking about far left groups as if they are benign compared to far right groups. The communists protesting at the G8 are no better than neo-nazis, both back the oppressive use of state violence to tell people what to do and what not to do.
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There are reasons to protest at the G8. You could protest:
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1. Russia's continued slide towards authoritarianism.
2. The impoverishment of primary producers throughout the world due to heavy protectionism for agriculture by Japan, the EU and the USA, and the negative environmental impacts of that protectionism.
3. The unwillingness of the G8 to get the Doha round to make much progress in liberalising world trade (a major step towards lifting standards of living).
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The protestors are intellectually vapid. Poverty in African is largely due to governments in Africa being corrupt kleptocracies in many cases, more than happy to use aid to pay for their families to go on shopping trips in Knightsbridge, London. These countries do little to protect property rights (necessary for people to protect what they produce and own, and without that poverty exists) or have independent judiciaries and police. It also isn't helped by the lack of free trade in primary products, as the EU and USA subsidise exports of agriculture undermining the export competitiveness of many other countries, and block or highly tax imports from those countries.
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The protestors current pinup boy Hugo Chavez is now into shutting down broadcasters that disagree with him - the lack of interest in this by many on the left speaks volumes.
2 comments:
Factually speaking, the U.S. and other G8 countries are some of the biggest donors to the poor countries. Also, the G8 is meeting to discuss issues such as global environment, poverty and disease, the same issues these activitists supposedly care about. Also, the 'evil' G8 countries are leaders in food production, medical advances, and technology that can improve the quality of life for all. These activists should be bringing in thank you cards instead of protest placards...they're likely spoiled white suburbanites (not from one of the 'poor and oppressed' countries they care so much about) with a great sense of guilt and self-loathing for their own lifestyle. Well, if they care so much perhaps they should relocate to Darfur, Venezuela, Iraq...
Here, the Chavéz TV.
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