This morning's G20 update

[sabotabby]

1. Ontario secretly passed a law allowing police to arrest you for exercising what had previously been your legal right to refuse to provide ID or consent to a search. You can be fined or face two months in prison.

mycrazyhair gives details and questions whether this new law is constitutional.

2. kellista has a great post up on reasons to protest. Most compelling to me:

G20 countries are responsible for more than 85 per cent of global military spending and 95 per cent of global arms production. Five G20 countries (the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea) spent nearly $1 trillion in 2008 on the military but for about one-tenth of this we could eliminate global starvation and malnutrition, educate every child on earth, make clean water and sanitation accessible for all, and reverse the global spread of AIDS and malaria.
[...]
The G20 decides the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The UN notes that, in an era characterized by the implementation of WB and IMF prescriptions, an unprecedented number of countries saw development slide backwards. In 46 countries people are poorer today than in 1990. Why would G8/20 leaders advocate such policies? Because their result is that the world's poorest nations end up subsidizing the richest. Professor David Harvey points out that from 1980-2007 $4.6 trillion was transferred from the Global South to the Global North.
[...]
The money spent for the summit (fake lake, fences, granola bars for cops, downtown tree removal, et al) could house everyone who is currently homeless in Toronto plus everyone on the waiting list for community housing - a total of 80,000 people - for over a year in a one bedroom apartment at the average market rent for each person. It could pay for every person on the woefully inadequate Ontario Disability Support to get $250 a month added to their cheques for the next ten years. It could buy a Metropass for public transit for every person in Toronto on welfare for about ten years.

3. Today, the G8 meets in Huntsville, ON. Harper is presumably attempting to justify why the "Accountability Summit" is hitting Canada's taxpaying citizens, particularly those in Toronto, with a $1 billion bill during a recession, and why the focus on maternal health doesn't include funding for abortion. Christ, what an asshole.

In an added bit of hilarity, with the massive amount of money spent on security and building a massive wall around the summit location, CBC Radio is reporting that no one showed up to the designated "free speech zone."

4. This just in: the attempt to block use of the sound cannon, which can cause permanent hearing loss and has not been properly tested, has failed. I am headed out to buy earplugs.

5. CSIS may be the scum of the earth, but at least they're honest. The G8/G20 presents a very low terrorism risk. This comes as no surprise to anyone paying attention, but the $1 billion is meant to quash legitimate, peaceful, civil dissent expressed by the people these leaders were elected to represent.

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I like how the government provides a spokesperson to explain that it's all okay because it's only temporary, just like the income tax.

[sabotabby]

The law is about as temporary as the sound cannon and the surveillance cameras, I bet. It's much easier to lose civil liberties than it is to get them back.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

...with sheets.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

national executives never put down powers once they have them. They have to be wrestled away. Viz: the US, even with a president who ran on a platform of not doing this, still tortures, still uses warrantless wiretaps, still uses black sites, hasn't closed gitmo...

quizzical look

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

dee-mock-rah-see...?

Re: quizzical look

[sabotabby]

It's this thing that we gave up when we elected a kitten-eating Conservative to power.

[goodlookinout.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this post! Mind if I copy some of it?

[sabotabby]

Not at all!

[lienne.livejournal.com]

aaaaaah oh my fucking god

STOP IT, CANADA

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE CUDDLY COUNTRY

MOTHER OF FUCK

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Those look like reasons to oppose the G20, not reasons to protest the G20.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

oh, come on, the two words are virtually synonymous. well, except for opposing is a state of being and protesting is an action. i find action works better for me in terms of not being totally cynical and despondent about all things.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Good luck with that. I prefer to be honest with myself.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

i honestly didn't mean that to be totally snarky. i mean it. if i just think and analyse and do not meet and talk and do i end up whimpering in bed and unable to even look after myself. it's a coping mechanism; i'm sure you have some too. ;)

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I bury myself in the purely inconsequential and try not to lie to myself about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

oh, i support your position. please refer to 60 hours of fallout 3 for more details. you'd be surprised how little i lie to myself. i am (very)pissed off at the elite of the world so i yell in the street with 1000 other people who feel the same way. purge a little rage, make a few friends, talk about cool things people are doing close to home. pretensions re: actual concrete effect on the new world order? slim to nil.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

okay, it did sound snarky, though. rilly.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

G20 countries are responsible for more than 85 per cent of global military spending and 95 per cent of global arms production. Five G20 countries (the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea) spent nearly $1 trillion in 2008

While not actually wrong I think that statement is a bit misleading, at least if one uses the Stockholm International Peace Institute's numbers.

The big 5 are the US, Russia, China, the UK and France. South Korea isn't even in the top 10. It also (IMO) underplays the US role in military spending. The US is responsible for over 40% of military spending world wide and spends more than the rest of the top 15 combined.

I'm also a bit sceptical about $15/person being enough to eliminate malnutrition, provide universal education and provide universal clean water and sanitation.

[snarkitysnarks.livejournal.com]

I was also sort of wondering why Japan was on a list of military spending, because Japan does not have a military.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Actually Japan is 6th on the list but spends only 0.9% of GDP on its military. I guess they have a big GDP!

[snarkitysnarks.livejournal.com]

Whoa. That is really something.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

There's also the fact that you just don't have to spend very much to get up there; most nations' armies are nominal.

damn lies, statistics, etc

[kellista.livejournal.com]

the source for the first stat is the Institute for Policy Studies (http://www.fpif.org/); I made the post at work and not with a lot of research (but tons of spunk!), but fair enough. I don't know what's the most accurate or recent statistic.

Yeah, the US is far and away the big spender. But we're talking about the G20 as a body right now. The military budget in South Korea has changed really quickly in the past ten years. 2009 spending represents a twofold increase from 1999, and now the Ministry of National Defense's (MND) 'Defense Reform 2020' projects an annual average increase of 7.6 percent to 53.3 trillion won by 2020, another doubling over the next decade. So it seems to me this could creep it up the list. Just quick Googling, not an issue near and dear to me or anything. The local stuff is what really gets me.

Finally, $15/person? What do you mean?

Re: damn lies, statistics, etc

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Finally, $15/person? What do you mean?

A tenth of almost a trillion dollars is slightly less than $100 billion. There are something over 6 billion people in the world. Point is while a $100 billion dollars sounds like a lot it really isn't. For example, the UK's welfare bill is $300 billion.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

hmm, fair enough. at the same time, what do these things require in real terms? protein and vitamin supplements, teachers' wages and very deep holes? anyway, not to be trollin'. i think my sentiment that priorities of the powerful are very very skewed indeed stands.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree at all about the skewed priorities. I just think fixing them may be a bit harder. Since I started working in the public sector I've been quite staggered by how much stuff ends up costing. I regularly see project costings in the billions of dollars.

There may be lower cost ways of achieving some of these things. There has been brilliant low cost work on child malnutrition in Vietnam for example. The trouble is G20 heads of state are the worst people to be dealing with those kinds of intervention since one critical ingredient is humility!

[kellista.livejournal.com]

yeah, i work in the small scale pretty exclusively so for me conceptualizing the amounts of money is a task onto itself. and agreed; humility is the scarcest commodity of all.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

One nitpicking comment: It's not a law; it's a regulation. A huge difference is laws are passed after debate (the thoroughness of the debate is another mater), and regulations are decided within ministries, often with no public scrutiny whatsoever.

[genesayssitdown.livejournal.com]

the only thing as close to this was when the democratic national convention came to boston in 2004; we got our free speech zones (which were literally cages, chain link fence in every direction, including up, entrances guarded by machine gunned police).

the huge wall that had boston so creepy and weird for weeks was worth showing up to protest alone.

of course no one really showed up, because yay democrats! and somewhere in texas a village is missing its idiot! and all that.

the world is scary

[snarkitysnarks.livejournal.com]

This just in: the attempt to block use of the sound cannon, which can cause permanent hearing loss and has not been properly tested, has failed.

Holy shit
earplugs and all that, but you know, please be careful Spy.

[purveyorofchaos.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. Also, I'm guilty daily for not heading over. But honestly I'm just not hardcore enough to do the Pitts G20, then Haiti, and then another G20. Especially when I'm losing my job. Smash patriarchy/the state/military spending/unsuspecting fascists/global douchebaggery for me, eh?