NATO Summit protest MEGATHREAD

[derspiess]

That sad part is the anybody with a good reason to protest NATO will be drowned out by the crazy clowns.

What are the good reasons to protest NATO?

Standardizing on the wrong handgun caliber

[jimmy olsen]

The people who engage in most of this crap do not differentiate between NATO and Wall Street. Or the E8, or the UN, or the Marines. Is it all one and the same, because 99% of them are not motivated by any rational ideology.

Just like you are not motivated by any rational ideology. You say NATO > Wall Street, some other random radinutbar says the G8 > Nato > Wall Street, or Wall Street > G8> Nato >UN. You can just roll the dice - none of it is driven by anything rational.

While I don't agree with him on a lot of things, CdM has rational and distinct economic and foreign policy views.

[Admiral Yi]

   No argument on distinct.

[Sheilbh]

Just like you are not motivated by any rational ideology. You say NATO > Wall Street, some other random radinutbar says the G8 > Nato > Wall Street, or Wall Street > G8> Nato >UN. You can just roll the dice - none of it is driven by anything rational.

No one's motivated by a rational ideology and most of the people who are are extreme.  We have instincts and biases that we reason from after the fact.  Normally the radicals are both the most obviously disconnected from any real thought process and the people who most often insist it's all clearly rational if you just listen to them.

Having said that I do find the anti-G8 feeling kind of understandable, though for totally different reasons, I just don't understand what the G8's ever done.  Maybe the G7 did stuff before they invited the Russians in but it just looks like a really needless and expensive conference.  We'd be better off if all the countries just chipped in and sent all the PMs and Presidents for a weekend at Davos.

[Viking]

Having said that I do find the anti-G8 feeling kind of understandable, though for totally different reasons, I just don't understand what the G8's ever done.  Maybe the G7 did stuff before they invited the Russians in but it just looks like a really needless and expensive conference.  We'd be better off if all the countries just chipped in and sent all the PMs and Presidents for a weekend at Davos.

I'm baffled what is wrong with the leaders of the worlds most influential economies meeting and working together to prevent depressions?

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you explain yourself on that one. 

[Berkut]

Just like you are not motivated by any rational ideology. You say NATO > Wall Street, some other random radinutbar says the G8 > Nato > Wall Street, or Wall Street > G8> Nato >UN. You can just roll the dice - none of it is driven by anything rational.

No one's motivated by a rational ideology and most of the people who are are extreme. 

I call bullshit.

Unprovable hypothesis.

[Berkut]

The people who engage in most of this crap do not differentiate between NATO and Wall Street. Or the E8, or the UN, or the Marines. Is it all one and the same, because 99% of them are not motivated by any rational ideology.

Just like you are not motivated by any rational ideology. You say NATO > Wall Street, some other random radinutbar says the G8 > Nato > Wall Street, or Wall Street > G8> Nato >UN. You can just roll the dice - none of it is driven by anything rational.

While I don't agree with him on a lot of things, CdM has rational and distinct economic and foreign policy views.

Not really. His economic views are completely irrational. They just amount to knee jerk "Stick it to The Man!".

[Neil]

Having said that I do find the anti-G8 feeling kind of understandable, though for totally different reasons, I just don't understand what the G8's ever done.  Maybe the G7 did stuff before they invited the Russians in but it just looks like a really needless and expensive conference.  We'd be better off if all the countries just chipped in and sent all the PMs and Presidents for a weekend at Davos.

Would we?  It's important to remember that most countries don't matter.

[Razgovory]

I wonder what is rational.

[Sheilbh]

I'm baffled what is wrong with the leaders of the worlds most influential economies meeting and working together to prevent depressions?

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you explain yourself on that one.

Well it didn't work terribly well at preventing the last recession.  Nowadays the world's most influential economies include China, India and Brazil as much as Canada and Italy.  They can of course work together without a big expensive summit every year.  And I don't object to that.  But with the possible exception of Blair and partial ending of African debt I can't think of a single thing the G8 has achieved and, unlike NATO, or the UN, or the EU it doesn't have even a purpose.  It's just there.

Would we?  It's important to remember that most countries don't matter.

I meant of the G8.

I call bullshit.

Unprovable hypothesis.

That's fair.  I've never experienced it myself or met anyone who I thought was rationally ideological.  But I still think a person with a  rational coherent ideology's most likely a fundamentalist or a Trot.  It's not the way we're made.

[Valmy]

That sad part is the anybody with a good reason to protest NATO will be drowned out by the crazy clowns.

What are the good reasons to protest NATO?

Things related to NATO policies.

[CountDeMoney]

Not really. His economic views are completely irrational. They just amount to knee jerk "Stick it to The Man!".

Oh, bullshit.  I don't want to "Stick it to the Man", I want to "Stick it to The Man, and Put Said Man's Head on a Stick London Bridge-Style As An Example To His Buddies".

My psuedo-Keynesian tendencies just happen to get overshadowed with my preference for an emphasis on regulation with a Gestapo flair, s'all.

Why you Free Market-types insist on trusting a methodology run by individuals whose basic premises are built upon and promoted by greed without consequence is rather disconcerting.  It is devoid of all ethos, and I have a problem with that.  Wall Street needs more Jesuits.

And you know where I stand on taxes.

[Viking]

Well it didn't work terribly well at preventing the last recession.  Nowadays the world's most influential economies include China, India and Brazil as much as Canada and Italy.  They can of course work together without a big expensive summit every year.  And I don't object to that.  But with the possible exception of Blair and partial ending of African debt I can't think of a single thing the G8 has achieved and, unlike NATO, or the UN, or the EU it doesn't have even a purpose.  It's just there.

It didn't work perfectly so you are against it?

1. The G7/8/20 is the relevant governments of the world trying to stop recessions and depressions. Nobody else is doing it. If there was no G7/8/20 then we would have to invent it or repeat the great depression.

2. China, India and Brazil are in the G20 which has basically replaced the G7 for world economy issues. The G7/8 still exists becaue these are the countries which are the bulk of the world marketplace and are free and open economies.

3. The G7 has either saved or been the only group trying to save the world economy from recession/depression since the 1970s. Only in the most recent difficulties when China and Indias cash reserves were needed was anybody else of any use.

The G7/8/20 is the forum  for the worlds large economies to discuss issue of trade, currencies and exchange rates. It is the economic equivalent of the UN security council only with everybody having a veto (joint communiqués etc.). They are not there to solve the worlds problems they are there to agree how long contry X can manipulate it's currency/tolls/regulations before the other countries retaliate and simlar issues. We don't have depressions in the west anymore, that is what the G7 (along with the IMF) have done for you lately.

Most of the anti-G7 protests are of the kind "I'm angry that you didn't resolve my irresolvable pet issue that you were not set up to resolve to begin with." It is about keeping the world economy ticking over and that is what it does.

[Sheilbh]

It didn't work perfectly so you are against it?

No.  It doesn't do anything so I'm against the cost and hassle of these annual summits.  As I say have a G8 weekend at Davos. Plus they could get businessmen from their countries down there too and it may do something productive.

You pick up on the G7/8/20 which I think indicates precisely its usefulness.  It was the G7 then they decided to add Russia, just because Clinton fancied making a gesture.  Now the focus is on the G20 because that includes countries in the developing world.  If this was really a body that did anything, or could do anything, like an economic UNSC with everyone having a veto I don't think there'd be such casual expansion.  No one would invite, as often happens, other countries to join in.  Kirchner was at the last meeting, Herman van Rompuy is there every time.  The economic security council, it ain't.

The bodies that matter, incidentally, in helping the world economy keep going are the IMF and the WTO far more than the G8.  In terms of the free and open economies I'd say the OECD's got more claim to a leadership role.  If it weren't for Russia, then perhaps, at a push, you could see the G8 as a SC for the OECD.  Not least because the IMF, OECD and WTO are institutions with all that implies, rather than a summit on a golf course with a joint communique.

Also the G8 doesn't even have an exclusively economic function.  The host gets to pick the agenda of what they'll work on.  Blair, for example, chose climate change and Africa.

[Berkut]

SHelf, your argument against the G8 is simply that it doesn't work.

I don't think tens of thousands of people protest the G8 meetings because they are pissed off that it is not effective enough.