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@bristlypioneer
This thread has honestly surprised me
I'll be there with bells on, ready to cause plenty of trouble.
because as we all know marching with 2 million people against the war (the largest ever march in the history of this country) had no effect on the powers that be at all. Perhaps the g20 are the only people who can have any effect on the economic situation and impending environmental crisis, however as we all know, they will do absolutely nothing other than rejig the system to further benefit the rich and powerful.
Look at the World Bank and IMF, two institutions set up to help countries in crisis to have access to emergency funds to restabalise and sort themselves out. Look how the countries of the g20, or rather the G8 or even G1 use these institutions to force countries into adopting fundamentalist free market approaches, sell of all public assets and open up to foreign business take over.
I have no faith at all that Obama, Brown or any of the others have any intention of trying to avert the oncoming mess.
The only way I can see to get them to have any change of heart is to show that the people of the world, the people of the UK are not prepared to put up with them any more. This doesn't mean marching from A-B then listening to Tony Benn, or writing to the local paper. It means scaring the shit out of them. Something which next week's protests seem to be starting to do.
However it is worth noting that the police are using this as a massive excuse to up their violence and surveillance against legitimate protest. There have been front page stories in plenty of papers recently of the police abusing terrorist legislation and ASBO legislation to put people off protesting, the TSG (their riot crew) have 60 cases of assault pending against their officers (2/3 of which are against brown people) surprisingly they 'lost' two mail bags of complaints against them and all of the officers log books?
It may well kick off next week, I know from experience it is likely to be the police who start this.
So do come along, but keep your wits about you.