Succintly putting it all into perspective.

An 18-course banquet must have really helped them all to understand the world's hunger....Probably the biggest collection of pigs in recent history...

What else could America be in its sad and sorry history since November 22, 1963?, with manufacturing now constituting only 12 per cent of our GDP and the blazingly greedy Ponzi schemers of the "finance industry" fundamentally controlling our economy. All that's left to us is belligerence and war . . . as long as someone else is paying for it. When they inevitably stop paying for it, we will be nothing but a bunch of pistol packin'paupers living in our Cadillac Escalades which have had the engine, transmission, tires and CD player stolen right out from under us while George Wanker Bush will be living in an air conditioned palace in Saudi Arabia and telling the foreign press that Americans are such a bunch of whiners.

I dedicate this song from "The Beatles" to the G8 porkers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEQeRLT1HNQ

Probably the biggest collection of pigs in recent history…

**where? in the G8 leadership? Huh, I thought humans were leaders and pigs were benign sensual creatures stuck in pens and factory farms.
Go figure.

If Hitchens can do a cloying turnaround, so can Margolis. When did the plight of the worlds' poor suddenly interest this old cold warrior ?

Then this -- "Mugabe's Zimbabwe, which I fondly remember when it was prosperous, beautiful Rhodesia, is now dirt poor."

I suppose he also fondly remembers the old Reagan days when he had his head firmly planted in Reagans butt. Maybe if he reads up more on the effects of colinialism and continued Imperial dominance by "western" powers, he can place his assumptions and 'fond' memories in context.

Whats with the 'Yo'ing ? Are you trying to reach out to a younger audience or something ? Pathetic ...

It is good that Bush was stopped to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. After all, sanctions hurt the people, not its leaders, and as it is Zimbabweans are poor enough. But let us not pretend there is anything good about Robert Mugabe. If there ever were, then clearly the man must have turned senile. Over the last ten years he has devastated his country. It would be in everybody's interest if he were to be removed from power as soon as possible. But then again, that counts for many more current leaders.

I thought about making a comment about the fat pigs munching on caviar while discussing world hunger, but after reading the article through, I can only say that those G8 alleged world leaders are some of the most corrupt (in)human beings that I have ever read about. It's the ultra-rich and powerful peering down on the world and deciding who should be allowed to live without fear of war, pestilence, famine, or death.

"Bush and Rasputin Dick Cheney have broken a 1991 pledge President Bush Senior made to Soviet chairman Mikhail Gorbachev. In exchange for Gorby's not crushing revolts across the dying Soviet Union, Washington agreed not to advance NATO eastward toward Russia or into the old U.S.S.R."

Not so. It was Clinton and Gore that broke the pledge and began moving NATO eastward. Why do people continue to make this claim that there is some difference between the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans? They are identical, and devoted to expanding US power at all costs.

See this NY Times article from 1996:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7D61530F930A15753C1A960958260

Especially note this paragraph:

"In calling for NATO's enlargement, Mr. Clinton portrayed himself as finishing the work of his two Republican predecessors. ''President Reagan gave strength to those working to bring down the Iron Curtain,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''President Bush helped to reunify Germany. Now for the very first time since nation-states first appeared in Europe, we have an opportunity to build a peaceful, undivided and democratic continent.'"

Gore, of course, had no problems with any of this, and never once objected to any of it, and, if I'm not mistaken, advocated continuing NATO expansion during the 2000 campaign.

"The goal of conservative rulers around the world, led by those who occupy the seats of power in Washington, is the systematic rollback of democratic gains, public services, and common living standards around the world."
Michael Parenti

Yo, Bushie-babe! You on your way into hiding with Rovie and the rest of your group? Way to go man! You and Mugabe been reading the same play book, cool!

Ten years of destruction play out the same whether it is Africa or the USA.

gyptian,

"Whats with the 'Yo'ing ? Are you trying to reach out to a younger audience or something ? Pathetic …"

Indeed.

Actually, that's how Bush addressed the Prime Minister of Canada -- accurate as quoted in the article. This was also documented in the Canadian press.

I sense your eagerness to trash this writer, but your own inaccuracies take the edge off your critique.

Perhaps it is like a meeting of a mafia mob, with cliques of who is in and who is out with Godfather. Who is paying their way in the oil protection racket, and who is trying to run their own racket on the side. All of them driven by agendas of maintaining power and wealth. Inconvenient truths of climate change are not in their domestic priorities,apart from lip service, as in forty years time, they will be safely dead.

"The study of international relations is analogous to studying the rules of the game among mafia families."
- Professor Ello, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Bush: "Yo, Blair" "Yo, Harper"
Our juvenile imbecile-in-chief likes to pretend he's young. He'd try to talk rap to the world's leaders if they'd allow it, to prove that he's a hip American.

At the end of the G8 conference, hiphop artist wannabe Bush shocked world leaders at the end of a summit on climate change by concluding his remarks with a joke: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He made his comment at the end of a G8 summit in Japan, where leaders of the world's industrial nations failed to reach a firm agreement on climate change.

Bush reportedly punched the air and grinned while making his comment.

One official who was there told the Daily Telegraph of London, "Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America's record on pollution."

The United States produces about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases.

Many Europeans are critical of Bush for failing to join the Kyoto treaty on climate change at the start of his administration.

The White House had no immediate comment on the president's crack.

What a loser :(

It's been claimed that 4% of the population is sociopaths, people who may appear perfectly normal but have no conscience. I rather doubt it's that high, but of course the concentration is not evenly spread around. Since IQ and socioeconomic status are independent of whatever causes sociopathy, we find the greatest concentrations in three places: prisons, where sociopaths with low IQs and/or who come from the wrong side of the tracks tend to end up, and then for those who are smart and educated and well-connected, corporate boardrooms and legislatures are likely places to find a much higher than 4% incidence--this is because it takes a lot of clawing to get to the top of either a corporation or a government, and a conscience would be a huge handicap. So by the time you get to CEO level or the US Congress or the White House, you have a pretty pure population. Presumably it works the same in other countries, so a meeting of the G8, not surprisingly, is composed of those who truly see the world as a marvelously detailed Risk game. They truly see the armies they send to Iraq or Afganistan in the same light we see those little colored plastic or wooden cubes we use in a Risk game. I wonder if they see their own families in the same light...people they have to maintain ties with for the sake of appearances, when they'd actually prefer occasional call girls and nothing to do with children.
If we are to survive, we have to find a way to overcome this tendency for the least wise among us to gain the most power.

Eric Margolis, Johann Hari, and Katrina Vanden Heuval, three boring writers ideal for inducing sleep (yawn).

the caviar must have been bought at great expense, as the sturgeon fish are now in serious decline.............but i guess that wouldn't have worried the g8 leaders. they have another 42 years to rectify that problem.

as for the comment made by george 'wanker' bush ('wanker' copyright mordechai shiblikov) about the world's biggest polluter - maybe he was referring to himself?

and of course the official briefing book that 'fell' (or was it pushed) into media hands describing monsieur berlusconi as a 'political dilettante' was perhaps a mix up of a phrase from george's 'how to learn french in 10 minutes' book of 'dit la tante'.

thank you mr. margolis for a rip roaring laugh.

MORDECHAI

are you sure it's saudi arabia?

HEDOLOGY: I think you have the cast of characters well defined.

MWILDFIRE: In times as insane as our own, looking up for answers is not a particularly crazy thing to do. There is a remedy that allows for removing sociopaths from public office, and a diagnostic means for defining who they are. We finger print people, we offer psychological testing for certain jobs. I vote for having their astrological charts cast. There are two planets that (based on calculating their relationship utilizing the angles taken from sacred geometry) tell a lot about the integration of any person's sense of consequences. Jupiter and Saturn connote the "law and order" principles, and define the individual's capacity to consider OTHERS in their decisions. They also suggest how people negotiate the relative influences of faith (gambler in over drive) and fear (paranoid type).

With the gargantuan waste of war taken for sane, my vote is for screening any who rise in public or corporate office (some would argue the corporation itself is sociopathic. There are astrologers on Wall St paid to predict how stocks & companies will produce based on their product and birth date--date the company incorporated. That is not my bag, but the human side I have seen to be quite effective in demonstrating who possesses sound ethics and who does not) before they are given the privileges of power.

Hearing about the goofing off at the G8 reminds me of my frat days. However the only pollution we worried about was someone not making it to the bathroom on time.

great post mwildfire.

it's getting harder to have/summon a conscience while aware of the many complicities it takes to live in this brutal society. on some level, we are all enablers, in denial, or self-medicating ourselves to complete exoneration for the maladies and crimes we impose on the world. some are just more caught up in the game than others.

Thanks mwildfire.

"He always seemed such a nice, polite and average kind of person. Who'd of thought our neighbor was capable of such callous inhumanity..."

Typical of a newspaper interview with a neighbor of a convicted psychopath.

Will D voters be expressing similar sentiments of Obama if elected?

Keep rolling the dice people.

Edward1793 said: "those G8 alleged world leaders are some of the most corrupt (in)human beings that I have ever read about."

Agreed! Those are the best that capitalism can come up with? Maybe it's time to considering abolishing capitalism itself?

Poet July 13th, 2008 7:52 pm

Thank you.

nellemason July 13th, 2008 3:53 pm

Thanks.

Gyptian, I concur with your point regarding Zimbabwe. A lot of people don't seem to recall that the clash between Mugabe and the West started with the issue IMF/world bank financed loans - infamously known as structural adjustment programs (SAP). If my recollection is accurate, these multinational loan shacks had for a while been imposing stringent conditions for loans that amongst, others demanded that the host country yank food, educational and health subsidies. The turning point was when Zimbabwe refused to impose further conditions. It is now almost unanimously established that SAP had devastating impact on many developing nations as regards health, education, environment and food production.

"I thought...pigs were benign, sensual creatures"

Something you want to tell us, kelmer?