Chicago G8/NATO Reality
by Ewen MacAskill via brad - The Guardian UK Friday, May 18 2012, 10:14am
international / social/political / other press

Will our world leaders get anything done?

Sometimes we are jarred back into Reality with all the 'grace' and finesse of a mule kick. That 'kick' can come in many forms, on this occasion it came in the form of a headline from the UK Guardian, here it is unmodified:

"G8 and Nato summits: will our world leaders get anything done?"

Corporate Wars - hardship for the masses, profit for the few

Not many people would miss the underlying import but for others a hint may be required. That howling hint is the current state of the WORLD today, the handiwork of 'our' leaders. Take a GOOD LOOK at their 'achievements' to date: GLOBAL economic collapse, permanent war, rampant Wall St fraud, Reserve Banks printing money from thin air and then hoping WE allow ourselves to be enslaved by toilet paper and the list goes on but the bottom line is, the WORLD is a SHAMBLES thanks to our 'brilliant' LEADERS.

It matters not whether it's Bilderberg, CFR, Trilateral, NATO, APEC, G8, or whoever is meeting, the attendees are CLEARLY INCOMPETENT at best and/or heinous criminals at worst -- the WORLD is a FUCKING MESS thanks to these 'geniuses!'

Our puppet leaders and the financial elites that control them are clearly INCOMPETENT, war mongering, irresponsible vandals, economic dunces and thieving avaricious pigs -- THAT IS THE REALITY IN EVERYONE'S FACE today.

Based on a known track record, we can be assured that whatever idiotic decisions 'our leaders' make in Chicago, they will be a DISASTER -- just take a look around and witness their handiwork to date for yourselves.

Which begs the next OBVIOUS question, why are we in awe of these incompetent CLOWNS, inept criminals and thieving rogues and why do we allow ourselves to be debt enslaved and ruled by these idiots?

Fortunately average Europeans are venting their frustrations on the streets and REFUSING to accept any more bullshit from the greedy PIGS responsible for ALL the WORLD'S current problems.

In Oz the thoroughly inept lackey prime minister Juliar Gillard, is attempting to undemocratically impose a Carbon Tax on the population -- a measure planned and designed by the same clowns that have made a mess of EVERYTHING! Perhaps it's time average Aussies hit the streets and made plain their total disgust, dissatisfaction and REJECTION of the current status quo. Either that or simply HANG the incompetent, LYING, murdering, thieving, criminal bastards.

Full Guardian article follows:

World leaders will fly into the US on Friday for four days of intense diplomacy, against a backdrop of the deepening eurozone crisis and tension in the international military coalition in Afghanistan.

After delivering a speech on international development, Barack Obama will meet new French president François Hollande at the White House before heading to Camp David on Friday evening to welcome the other leaders of the G8, the club of the wealthiest nations. After that winds up on Saturday, the leaders will move to Chicago for a meeting of Nato.

The discussions throughout the weekend will be dominated by the euro crisis and Afghanistan, but a few hours have been put aside for discussion about aid for the developing world.

Meanwhile, protesters are gathering in the small Maryland towns nearest Camp David and in Chicago. They will be joined by more than 2,000 journalists who have sought accreditation.

Motorcades from the airport to the city and around the various venues for 60 delegations translates into a security headache for Chicago police, with major traffic disruption and large sections of the city closed off. Is it worth it? And what is likely to have been accomplished when the delegations fly back home on Monday?

Eurozone crisis

Obama will use informal discussions at Camp David to see if he can push European leaders to move towards a strategy based on stimulus rather than spending cuts to help speed up an end to the economic crisis.

There are growing fears in the White House that Obama's re-election chances could be badly damaged by the eurozone crisis.

Obama has new ally in Hollande, who favours a stimulus package to help growth.

Heather Conley, a European specialist at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, anticipated some intense conversations and walks in the woods – but said Obama's role is limited.

"Nevertheless, I think the president can play a role of listening, helping leaders find common ground … And we are going to have to watch how this plays out, with the frustration of recognising that it will have a profound impact for the global economy and for the US," Conley said.

Bruce Jones, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, acknowledged the potential impact on the US election. "Obama has a lot riding on the Europeans getting this right in terms of job impacts and the range of other impacts. But even if he wasn't in an election season, any president of the United States has a lot riding on the Europeans getting this right."

Outcome: Expect minimal progress.

Help for the world's hungry

The Group of Eight summit has traditionally been the venue for big pledges to help the developing world, as at Gleneagles in 2005. But, with G8 countries – France, Germany, the US, Britain, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia – all facing major economic problems, a summit that makes the kind of major spending pledges of the past is not in the cards.

Instead, Obama, who will lay out his plans for helping the developing world, in particular Africa, in a speech Friday morning in Washington, will settle for a more modest programme. He will pledge to build on the agreement at the 2009 summit at L'Aquila, in Italy, one he helped broker, to help lift 50 million people out of hunger by 2015.

With austerity programmes in place in most of Europe, and Congress opposed to further stimulus measures in the US, there is little room for the G8 to promise significant new amounts of money to the developing world and instead Obama will trumpet an increased role for the private sector.

Aid agencies are not opposed to the involvement of the private sector, just wary of governments shifting responsibility and the onus. Gawain Kripke, Oxfam America policy & research director, expressed scepticism about the prospect of private investment in areas that were risky and fragile.

He said: "The G8 must not give in to the temptation to make bold and convenient assumptions about the private sector as a development panacea."

Outcome: Expect only a modest package of measures.

Afghanistan

Nato will announce it will meet its target of raising $4.1bn a year to fund a 228,000-strong Afghan army for 10 years from 2014.

The US is to pick up between a half to three-quarters of the costs.

There will be no detailed timetable of the phased withdrawal of US and other international forces from Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 deadline.

The complication will be the election pledge of Hollande to pull out French combat troops early, by the end of this year. Obama will at the White House seek to secure a compromise from Hollande that will keep French troops in Afghanistan longer.

The Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai is to attend the Nato summit and a last-minute addition will be the Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari.

The US has not said yet how big the international force left in Afghanistan will be after the withdrawal of combat troops and is unlikely to say at the Nato summit. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was in Kabul last week talking with US commanders, estimated the Nato force would be in the range of 15,000-20,000.

"We're also going to have to help them with logistics still. They're not going to have an adequate way to resupply their own forces or, most importantly, to reinforce any forces that come under attack," O'Hanlon said. "And we're going to have to also, I think, provide attack helicopters and things like that into the 2015 and beyond period. Their air force is still a mess, and they're not going to fix that in two years."

Outcome: Expect Nato to trumpet as a success meeting the $4.1bn target, meaning the Afghan army will be funded for a decade beyond 2014. Obama is hoping to head off an early exit by the French that could disrupt withdrawal plans.

Missile defence and other Nato issues

With all summits, there is an element of window-dressing, with announcements that do not in the end amount to very much.

One of these at Chicago will be European missile defence.

There will be an announcement that the first phase of the European defence system is in place, able to block any missiles from Iran or North Korea. This sounds impressive but amounts to little more than what existed before: radar stations in Turkey, US ships in the Mediterranean and, the one fresh element, a new command team.

There is a continuing disagreement with Russia over this, with Moscow concerned that the defence system is being built by Nato less with Iran in mind than Russia.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has opted against attending the G8 and no-one in Washington outside the Russian embassy appears to know why. Foreign affairs analysts offer various suggestions, including that he does not want to come under pressure on issues such as Iran and Syria.

Iran is unlikely to come up this weekend mainly because of parallel talks underway with the Iranians. Syria is unlikely to be a major issue either as the Nato countries are divided over how to respond and there is not much appetite for intervention.

Outcome: Expect missile defence to be hailed as progress, even though only in embryonic stage. No intervention planned for Syria.

[Puppet] Obama's re-election chances

Candidates worldwide seem to think it is useful to be pictured in the company of other world leaders in the run-up to an election, projecting a view of them as being on top of world affairs.

The downside would be if protests were to turn violent or the Chicago police, in a reprise of the brutal tactics at the 1968 Democratic convention, responded in a heavy-handed way. That could be counter-productive to his campaign

Outcome: Impact on Obama's re-election chances will be minimal.

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited.

Debt Slavery/Economic Collapse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/18/g8-nato-summits-leaders-outcome-guide/