Friday, July 7, 2017

Anti-Capitalists Fight Cops Under G20 Ivory Tower

The G20 summit is today. If you weren't aware, this is the annual meeting of the leaders of the 19 wealthiest nations in the world plus the European Union. They get together to discuss the world's problems and how they can exploit them to steal more resources for themselves how to fix them. And every year, there are protesters.

A lot of these protesters are there against "globalization," which makes me queasy because a lot of the time this is code for nationalism. But many of the protesters are simple anti-capitalists who hate seeing a bunch of the world's richest fuckers get together to discuss how they can carve out more for themselves. And this year the stark contrast between the 20 and the protesters couldn't be any starker.

A day of violent clashes between police and protesters culminated on Friday evening with the bizarre spectacle of the heads of the world’s 20 leading economies listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the top of a shiny high-rise building while police used water cannon, teargas and speed boats to keep at bay an angry crowd of thousands.

How many dystopian future stories came to your mind? It gets worse (or better depending on how you look at it):

Melania Trump, the wife of the US president, Donald Trump, was reportedly stopped from attending an event in the G20’s supporting programme by the protests. “Police have not given us security clearance to leave the guest house,” Trump’s spokesperson told the German press agency dpa. 
A planned visit for leaders’ partners to a climate research centre was scrapped and replaced with a presentation by climate scientists at a luxury hotel. “Thinking of those hurt in Hamburg protests. Hope everyone stay safe!” the US president’s wife tweeted later.

It's just so fitting.

I especially like that Melania, and I'm assuming Donald, had to face a vision of what could be in the U.S. We can actually disrupt your shit. That is, if enough people get over their fretting for windows and cars so we can show them some real riots.

Anyway, if you do a Google search you can get a lot more information about what's going on over in Germany right now. I've seen footage showing a ton of smoke in the area of the summit. You won't see much on U.S. news, I'm guessing. But this is happening.

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