G8 Alternatives

Scotland is hosting the next G8 meeting in July, so I suppose it's only natural that we've been hearing quite a lot about anti-globalisation & anti-G8 demos. I have to admit that despite my vast amount of education *cough*, I am still relatively ignorant about the actual political agenda the G8 pursues. So in order to find out why people feel the need to demonstrate against the G8, I went along to a G8 Alternatives meeting yesterday.

I have to say it wasn't all that enlightening and a lot of the rhetoric used by the speaker undermined her own agenda. Most of the arguments in favour of action against the G8 were arguments which can be used to counter any capitalist body. And although they are highly valid in their own right, I was left wondering, why target specifically the G8? I suppose I will have to do my own bit of research into that topic once I have more time. Hopefully before July, so I can make up my own mind about whether or not I really should be there flanking the movement, despite the promise of policecordons with rubber bullets, teargas and watercanons.

If anything, I will go along to the G8 Alternatives Counter Summit in Edinburgh on July 3rd. Pro-action, in my opinion is a far more worthy cause than Anti-action. Making moves towards a solution, rather than a focus of destructive efforts on trying to halt the current establishment.



There's a video-link up to a Noam Chomsky talk on Tuesday, which should be interesting. Although again, I have to delve deeper into his writings when I have more time (The PhD is a bit time consuming at the moment ;-), I find his rhetoric on the Responsibility of Intellectuals incredibly gripping. After reading this and watching "Manufacturing Consent", I can no longer justify sitting in a pub philosophizing about the world without taking any action myself. Better late than never I suppose :s

On a lighter note, the Toxoplast is now responsible for three sleepless nights in a row, so pardon me for grabbing the plant-waterspray this morning to squirt him off my head. Although he now looks like a disgruntled wet gremlin, I think he may finally have gotten the message.