" ... When the G-8 gatherings began in 1975 there were six members, the United States, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Canada joined the informal group in 1976. The European Community as it was then called, began attending in 1977, Russia in 1997. Today the European Union is represented at G-8 meetings by the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council.
The G-8 is about economics. It is no secret that this congress system is an imperialist affair despite its upright façade of battling world poverty. Its annual summits culminate the constant top-level coordination among member governments in fundamental policy areas. Quarterly meetings by the Sherpas prepare for the summits on the basis of information from ministries of finance, foreign affairs, interior, justice, health and environment. G-8 governments and central banks coordinate policies with top financial houses and monopolistic transnationals. And now we know that the over-lapping Bilderberger Group plays an important role across the board.
Thus the G-8 stands at the acme of imperialism and the New World Order.
International economic relations thus have come to reflect a fundamental state gangsterism rendering irrelevant established international humanitarian and human rights laws that impede the imperialist globalizing project.
EU governments have collaborated in violations of the UN Convention Against Torture by facilitating transfer of prisoners for torture either to third countries or to US clandestine prisons. G-8 counter-terrorism is pure charade. G-8 insincerity is self-evident from the way its governments use anti-terrorism legislation to suppress dissent. The declaration on terrorism issuing from this year's summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, exemplifies G-8 cant from countries who collude in the very worst violations of human rights in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Somalia and support repressive regimes around the world.
Good and Evil
Private good, public evil/ Private evil, public good.
Which of the these social variants predominates is a moot point. However, tendencies toward good or evil do count. As a rule what is secret ultimately becomes the evil. Europeans more than Americans consider the “market” as a secret and mysterious affair and most probably evil, as evidenced in the market aspects of America's wars in the Middle East.
We know that defense of the market and reliance on war are only a hair's breadth apart. Though seduced by modern technology, Europeans do not accept a priori the supremacy of the market though they are often as deceived by it as are their—in their opinion—more gullible American cousins.
That the violence of war is contagious is reflected in the growing “private” violence within European families from Finland to Sicily. Nevertheless European multi-party parliamentary systems and the world of ideas create a more defensive atmosphere and public responsibility absent in America's presidential system where the two parties meld into one, elect a leader and allow the Power sect to act in their name.
Each transparency, Baudrillard recalls, poses its opposite, the secret. The same equation belongs to the political world of power. We know little of what goes on in the secret chambers of power in Washington because of their inaccessibility. Some things will never be known in full detail: who assassinated John Kennedy or who shot down the Italian passenger plane over the Tyrrhenian Sea over 20 years ago? What is secret is part of the world of evil. Europe's fear that as a result of the nebulous, top-heavy Brussels bureaucracy the people have less and less control is fundamental to the Euroskepticism of those unconvinced that the EU is good for Europeans.
How could the descendants of peoples wrapped in secret and mystery of Cabala and alchemy be duped by promises of wealth based on free trade by imperialist parvenu market economists? How could the sons and daughters of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Kafka and Joyce and also of Marx and Lenin believe neocon storytellers of the sacredness of the exportation of democracy? These are peoples whose ancestors were stargazers, whose artists depicted peoples with their eyes lifted toward untold secrets in the stars and interpreted life's mysteries in numbers.
People don't understand how the EU bureaucracy works. What are the many thousands of highly paid functionaries doing? Though for 100 years a majority of Europeans have believed in the role of the social state, the EU government seems emblematic of a new kind of secrecy infecting mankind. They created the euro without the consent of the public. They lay down the rules that the individual governments try to get around. People who feel the price rises in their wallet have become pessimistic, suspicious and resentful. Gasoline at over $7.50 a gallon today is enough for revolution. The popular verdict is that the EU is to blame.
The infamous G-8 conference in Genoa in 2001 exemplifies the abyss between European peoples and G-8 of which Europe is twice a member: several individual countries and the EU itself. Genoa, Italy and Europe were humiliated that fall weekend. The city was a battlefield of barricades and fortifications between European people and G-8 political leaders, 20,000 police troops and 200,000 demonstrators from 50 countries, four times the number in Seattle two years earlier, shouting in ten languages “a different world is possible.”
It was like Chile. Police dragged kids to secret places and beat and tortured them for days. G-8 Genoa was pure violence. It is still a mystery how the Black Block vandals got into the tightly controlled country with all their arms. How they operated so freely in the city is a mystery too. In retaliation the Special Forces then attacked peaceful demonstrators. One young man died. It was tension strategy at work! Create the terror then blame anyone you want.
The outcome of parliamentary investigations was acquittal of the police and convictions of peaceful demonstrators. ... "
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