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TechnoratiG20 Summit: Thousands Prepare to March for 'Jobs, Justice and Climate'
Protesters' anger fuelled by £19m spent to host G20 summit of world leaders
Thousands of demonstrators are preparing to take part in a march for "jobs, justice and climate" amid anger at the £19m cost of staging the G20 summit, ahead of a week of protests to mark the conference.
Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown disclosed the figure, adding that a lot of the money would be spent on security because of the number of high-profile leaders travelling to the capital for the event on 2 April.
Organisers of some of the dozens of protests being held to coincide with the summit criticised the cost.
Leave for police in the capital has been cancelled for the summit amid warnings from Scotland Yard that some campaigners were planning disruption around the city's Square Mile.
A professor, thought to be masterminding "mayhem" for next week, was suspended by his university after he warned bankers could be "hanging from lampposts".
The University of East London confirmed a "full investigation" was launched following warnings of violence from Chris Knight, 66, from Lewisham, south London.
The Put People First march will be held in central London tomorrow, organised by an unprecedented alliance of 150 groups, including unions, charities, environmental campaigners, development and faith organisations.
Thousands will march to Hyde Park for a rally with speakers and entertainment, including Luke Pritchard, from the Kooks, comedian Mark Thomas and Mauritanian musician Daby Touré. An ecumenical church service will feed into the march from Central Hall Westminster.
Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB union, said today: "GMB wants jobs, public services, no global poverty or inequality and a green economy to slow climate change. If the G20 listens and begins to take action GMB will see it as progress."
Glen Tarman, who has helped organise the march, said he had no evidence anyone intended to break the law or commit acts of violence.
Lindsey German, convener of the Stop The War Coalition, which is organising a series of events over the next week, said: "Many millions of pounds are being spent of policing, closing roads, travel and bringing entourages to the UK, but the politicians are fiddling while Rome burns.
"We are in the middle of one of the worst recessions ever, the war in Afghanistan is raging, the people of Gaza continue to suffer, but none of these will be tackled at the summit."
Murray Benham, head of campaigns at the World Development Movement, said: "The cost of the summit is clearly incredibly high. The only possible justification for this expenditure will be if the G20 leaders make the bold moves necessary to make the global economy work for people in the developing world, who are being hit the hardest by the credit crunch and climate change.
"The fear is that if the summit is just a talking shop, then this opportunity and money will have been squandered, and that would be disastrous for the world's poorest people."
Meanwhile, economists warned the need for global co-ordination and co-operation was vital, but there were fears there was little the G20 meeting could achieve, with countries already buckling under the strain of fiscal measures taken so far, and a clear stand-off emerging between the UK/US and other major economies.
Experts have said one of the most important outcomes would be for a greater commitment to encourage free trade and to promote the fight against protectionism, which risks exacerbating the recession.
9 Comments so far
Show AllLet em' march! The G20 needs to face thousands of angry potesters! This ain't a rich man's world anymore! Those days are over with!
Hopefully the 'rich-boys club will incur the contempt it deserves.
The wealthy are parasites. For each one of them who ponce around a thousand starve and the planet suffers devastation!
They are dinosaurs. They no longer belong in this world.
www.dangerouscreation.com
The G20; do any real good? Since when do G-xx summits do any [real] good? Has any of them ever done any real good, so far? [No]. So ...; expect more of this unacceptable consistency.
Why anyone [mature] would really or seriously expect good out of the upcoming summit is "beyond me". So far, there's no reason at all for trusting these ... at all.
So-called activist groups pretending that we can supposedly have faith, some anyway, in the upcoming summit is more bs. It's more of the same sort of sh*t nonsense like voting for lesser evils, including the fact that the 'lesser' argument is only theoretical, for the evil is not always of lesser kind; except in terms of superficial apparence. Following such an approach is to rather really just support more evil.
There are too many precedents to be fooled, so real intent behind so-called activist groups pretending the G-20 in April can do good is questionable. The G-20 potentially can do good, but this is hypothetical, for no G-xx summit has done any real good, so far; and there've been plenty of these summits. They've proven what they're about and it's not good.
It is just more NWO sort of bs; oligarchy, etcetera. If they had any real honourability, then they'd honour the UNGA, the General Assembly, f.e.; but the GA is always treated like a side show. Why? The imperialists, oligarchs, predators obviously have no intention of supporting real democracy! Never did and never will! Expect different and you must then be watching too much disney.
The same applies with the UNHRC. If the "elites" really intended to abide by, support, and defend the UN Charter, human rights, international laws, conventions and treaties, as well as national charters of rights, etc., then the UNHRC would be highly respected, instead of also being treated as an insignificant side show. But that's the way the UNHRC is usually or always treated, a very meaningless side show! It's not perfect, for the UNHRC doesn't even seem to be certain that Israel committed crimes of war and crimes against humanity in the latest "Operation Cast Lead" of Israel against Palestinians, while anyone of really sane mind, heart, and reasonably informed knows very well that Israeli leadership are [definitely] guilty of these crimes and that they're many. The UNHRC is getting tied up with legality-on-paper bs, instead of simply stating what Israel's truly guilty of. More investigations won't hurt, they'd only show an even greater number of instances of these crimes during (and since) "Operation Cast Lead", but we nonetheless already know all we need to know in order to know that Israel's extremely guilty of these two categories of crimes.
All human institutions will fail, Jesus of Nazareth said, and a sharp foreseer he was. We won't find an example of that foresight having been mistaken. The gravity of failures varies, but all human institutions have failed and all will continue to fail; variably, but certainly. After all, they're run by humans, imperfect beings, and while some people are far from error-prone, institutions consist of many people, including in terms management, alone. While some individuals are careful enough to be able to do excellent work, other people involved are more prone to errors, as well as greed and biases.
But the G-xx summits are of political and corporate elitists. While politicians, only, could be present, they work for financial and corporate interests.
When looking after flocks of sheep you don't leave your post to wolves to take your place. Not if you know what you're doing and truly care anyway.
George Galloway? A Good Samaritan and therefore Shepherd. The same applies to a ... handful of other politicians; a relative handful anyway. Most politicians are wolves and most of them try to disguise themselves as good shepherds, including when they've already really made it obvious that they're wolves. Many of them think they can keep fooling us about their true natures even after having made these rather obvious!
They're humourous in the dark sense.
I have no faith in this upcoming G-20 summit anyway.
These protesters are the heroes we need to support in any way possible!
the stimulus package of Obama is there to do three things: Alternative energy, jobs, health care and education.
I say three not four because education is getting a lot of money thrown right at it and it is a terrible system: superintendents for every rural school seperately and each one of them getting as much as a supreme court justice!!!! Each school build multimillion dollar boondoggles: a "busgarage" , lighting up the sport field with massive lighting that pollutes the sky, tearing down of any older buildings just to build again....
The press, that which sees its circulation dry up and turns to Governmnet for help in order to stay in business, will most certainly understate the numbers of protesters by a factor of 10 and more.
You can protest see, it a sign we live in democracies, but if too many protests a governmnets action, then it not REALLY a democracy is it?
GWNorth,
Good comment on "understating the numbers of protesters"; that's why we put videos of these marches on Youtube. "Official" counts are about half of the actual numbers and then you watch the Youtube and see how big the march really was. MSM are lying themselves to well-deserved oblivion.
It's been forty-two years since MLK pleaded for "programs of social uplift," which translates to jobs, justice, climate, education, health care, et al, over militarism, racism, and poverty.
"This is what democracy looks like."
It's time to tell the people that this is the end result of what George H W Bush
introduced to Bill Clinton, "The New World Order", One World Economy, privatization, Nafta, Countries with no borders, all for the benefit of the
Super Rich and the Halliburton Dentention Centers. Bubba Clinton and the Bush Family have succeeded in the break up of Union Help, moving our industrial base
to China, reducing our standard of living to match third world countries and
make us all slaves of the Super Rich..The people in England, France and other
Europe countries are catching on faster than us in the USA.
The Stimulus is a diversionary tactic to get the people's minds of what is going on in this country, the Major Depression that we are into.
Bill Clinton and Hillary are the only ones that gained from this new deal, along with Walmart, and Obama..When will we organize a million-man march on DC?
Repower America initiative petition for those interested in lending their voice
http://www.repoweramerica.org/