Left and Green G20 Comment

Some very good left and green commentary before and after the G20.

On Britain's Guardian Comment Is Free pages there was a good article by Seamus Milne about the protests (here) and another, beautiful and poetic statement of the situation we find ourselves in, (as opposed to where we could be) in the prosperous West/North, by Jeremy Seabrook

Imagine a society that looks with different eyes on the submissive surrender of its children to forces which, from the moment they open their eyes, ensnare them in the silken nets of commerce, instructing them in perpetual dissatisfaction and teaching the corrosive lesson that even the most abundant plenty can never be enough. Imagine a liberation that threw aside the sexual burka, the invisible but ubiquitous garment that determines a rigid hierarchy of desirability and glamour, so that the beauty of the wise, the kind, the merciful and the noble might appear once more through the shallow virtue of the skin-deep. Think of a society where voices of sobriety and wisdom are audible above the strident cries of the preachers of the market.

The hyperactivity of a manic entertainment industry will fade, and we will ask ourselves why we spent one-eighth of our life on earth gazing at other people's passions by the unearthly glow of a TV set, or why we sat for a year in traffic and stood uncounted hours in line waiting to relieve ourselves of the money we have earned. Why, people will ask, have we been both distracted from life and amused to death? Whatever happened to our ability to delight and enchant, to hold one another enthralled as we sang and celebrated our lives, rather than wept over the fate of shadows on screens, or vicariously lived the rise and fall of the famous, paying homage to their fabricated success?

More here.

Following the Summit announcements, the usual suspects like the Brownite mouthpiece Will Hutton sung the praises of Gordon and the G20. The Brownites and other enthusiasts for the deal hope that we will believe that the leopard can change its spots, that the IMF, strengthened and emboldened, will not use that new strength to impose an only slightly amended version of the "Washington consensus" globally (perhaps in the age of trillion dollar rescue packages and global "quantative easing" we should speak of the "London Consensus" - a shiny new "humanitarian" and cleaned up method of imposing the power of corporations and finance houses on the poor people of the world.)

Fortunately questions are already being asked about the lack of a significant environmental and climate change tackling element to what is proposed, and the nature of the agenda behind the agreement, as well as the unlikelihood of meaningful action by those who have been instrumental in creating the current crises in the first place.