G20 to meet in Melbourne in 2006 : Melbourne Indymedia

The G20 official website provides no details of the meeting other than to confirm it will indeed be in Australia. The mainstream media on the whole seems to have not chosen it as a story worth mentioning. There may however be people within Melbourne who think the fact that a gang of finance ministers, central bankers and the head of the World Bank are meeting in their city is cause of some kind of non-official welcome of the kind the World Economic Forum received some years ago.

The G20 has previously met with raucous protests including Montreal, Canada in 2000 and Ottawa, Canada in 2001.

The Age (Australia) writes Melbourne will host one of the world's most important economic forums next year when the G20 group of finance ministers visits for their annual meeting. Federal Treasurer Peter Costello told The Age that the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors, representing 19 nations and the European Union, will gather in Melbourne after this year's meeting in Beijing. The G20 meeting will follow the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, but will pre-date a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum leaders' summit in Sydney in 2007.

Melbourne will host one of the world's most important economic forums next year when the G20 group of finance ministers visits for their annual meeting.

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello told The Age that the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors, representing 19 nations and the European Union, will gather in Melbourne after this year's meeting in Beijing. The G20 meeting will follow the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, but will pre-date a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum leaders' summit in Sydney in 2007.

Mr Costello would not comment on how the G20 meeting would affect preparations for the Games, or vice versa. However, security will be a concern.

Mr Costello and Reserve Bank chairman Ian Macfarlane will be joined by counterparts from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Britain and the United States. Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, will also attend.

The G20 first met in 1999 on the recommendation of G7 finance ministers. The group of seven rich nations, made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the US, has held annual meetings since 1986. It recommended a broader forum, to provide greater credibility in the developing world. As a result of this broader focus, G20 recommendations often provide compromise alternatives to policy objectives of rich nations.

The forum has given China and India opportunities to assert their emergent economic influence.

It is terrible to think that those evil capitalists from
South Africa, Turkey, India, Argentina & Brazil will be here trying to pursue their evil schemes.

So, so terrible.

I for one am getting a "Bush = Hitler" tattoo on my tuchas for the occasion -- maybe a few additional piercings too.

I plan to get coked to the eyeballs and throw my own excrement at the police -- followed by a light supper and a good night's sleep

I see a cop-troll has already been thru ('mickey moonbat'), developing their case for right to summary execution (as pommy cops are now apparently permitted). Whats wrong, bashing teeenage girls (as i saw ~20 Vic.Police do at s11) too scary for ya?

All i can say is i'm glad the g20 'leaders' are coming, i've got a couple of issues i'd like to take up with them. But they'll prob hide, again, behind a 10' fence and thousands of fat arsed sadists in uniforms (real police don't bash citizens).

Guess we'll have to be creative then. At least we know theres no reason to hold back, whats to lose, we've already got endless war of terror (for oil), privatised education, unaffordable housing, irrelevant elections and loony fundamentalists in power. Bring it on.

yes it seems any opposition to the ruling order brings the trolls out in force, they must be scared. Believe it or not there are capitalists in
South Africa, Turkey, India, Argentina & Brazil and many of them support the agenda of the IMF and World Bank to the detriment of their own people. Ever heard of class? Their alleigences don't lie with the common folk, they lie with the rich and powerful of the world and will do whatever it takes to join their club.

In anycase you've decied to miss read the whole thing for your obvious ideological ends the cheif reason for getting out there is the visits from the IMF and world bank, EU, US and the other countries, including Australia pushing neoliberalism down the throats of everyone and helping their completely unaccountable corporate mates.

But xster said that the forum was part of bring forward India's and China's economic influence.

Surely that is not a bad thing, if someone other than the US has economic influence?

And you are going to have to try a bit harder to convince me that the ANC is a bunch of evil capitalists.

A government of a poor country doesn't necesarily represent the poor, in fact too often it is exactly the opposite. Much has been written about how the South African government has toed the line of the IMF to the detriment of it's people. A short piece is reproduced below. Argentina is no different, despite massive popular opposition it is now also following IMF mandates and paying billions of dollars to the worlds bankers while people starve, likewise Lula in Brazil is losing support for his corrupt practices and failure to really change how the economy is structured.

The basic point is governments in the neo-liberal age act as the guardians of capital unless sufficient popular pressure is placed upon them. A large protest in melbourne against all these types would add to that popular pressure and those movements around the world struggling against neo-liberalism.

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http://www.ainfos.ca/01/sep/ainfos00094.html

"Colonialism is dead but new overlords impose themselves. The World Bank, WEF, G8, IMF and WTO. They are supported not only by lackey governments like our own but also by a legion of other forked-tongue abbreviations: NGO's, UNO's, USAIDs and WCAR's; of which we are all deeply suspicious, despite their pretense at caring for us." - Durban Social Forum statement.

While the Americans and Israelis were busy storming out of the UN's World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), South Africa was in the grip of a national strike. Over five million workers took part in the two day strike against privatisation in which "most industrial areas were effectively closed down." Following this 20,000 people marched last Friday against the conference. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, opened proceedings at the WCAR, with observer Heidi Bachram commenting "Mbeki spoke of fighting global apartheid but failed to mention that he was embracing an economic programme that increased poverty and homelessness. While Mbeki spoke of the present world order built on slavery and colonialism, his government is busy privatising the water and electricity in South Africa, which is resulting in a 'pay or die' scenario for people here. As he spoke about the successes of the anti-apartheid struggles, local people are being forced to drink water from toilets and since the water was privatised, 200 people in Durban have died from cholera. This is the brave new world of post-apartheid, neo-liberal South Africa."

After the first free elections in South Africa in 1994, the new ANC government was visited by the big boys of global capital (IMF etc) - who told them to adapt to the 'realities of the global economy'. The message was that if they wanted money to raise the standard of living for the black majority they had to, er... lower their standard of living. The ANC inherited a $25 billion foreign debt - funds used to support apartheid, and on top of that the IMF imposed their usual
conditions for loans - wholesale privatisation. Initially people were patient through the compromises to western demands, but now they see their leaders hobnobbing with world leaders while their water and electricity get turned off. Inequality in society has actually increased since after seven years of an ANC government in South Africa.

But these people who have the anti-apartheid struggle still fresh in their minds aren't taking this lying down. Battles have been fought against evictions and water cut-offs, and over 3000 of the Landless Peoples' Movement are camping to protest against being used as farm labour on their ancestral land. In Soweto, people are reconnecting electricity and water themselves, occupying the offices of the service companies, and setting up anti-privatisation groups.

* IndyMedia South Africa were refused press entry into the Conference, because it was thought they might be 'one sided' - which of course the mainstream media never are. Visit http://southafrica.indymedia.org/
* Check out South African anarchist/libertarian paper "Zabalaza"
http://www.struggle.ws/africa/safrica/zabamag.html

Political problems include the aggressive attitude of the ruling neo-liberal ANC, which is in government with the social-democratic SACP and Zulu chauvinist IFP towards the “ultra-left”. This has involved over 500 arrests last year, many of them pre-emptive, police attacks on peaceful marches, assaults on comrades in jail by police, the threatened or actual deportation of foreign-born activists, demonisation of the social movements in the mainstream media, and spying and harassment by National Intelligence Agency spooks. Another political problem is the demobilisation and demoralisation of civil society: the ANC-aligned COSATU has had its militants silenced by internal gagging orders and its militant unions rendered ineffective by gerry-mandering, that the mass-based alternative structures (people’s militia, street committees, radical civics, rank & file worker networks) have largely been disbanded, often by the ANC which feared grassroots opposition. A third political problem is the “saviour” status of the liberation movements, especially the ANC and particularly that of Nelson Mandela among poor South Africans, with capitalist media choirs singing their praises.

..the ANC is by far the dominant party with a 2/3 majority that they hope to consolidate in this year's general election. Less overt racial laws, those that are class-based and biased in favour of big business, have, however ensured that the black majority remains landless, impoverished tenants in their own country.The country's protectionist economics - reinforced by sanctions isolation - has been replaced by an open-door policy that has allowed cheap imports to flood the country, leading to the loss of some 1-million jobs since 1994. Probably the hardest-hit is the clothing manufacturing sector that has long been a stronghold of workerist organising, as well as organised agriculture.

http://www.zabalaza.net/articles/article006.htm

>you are going to have to try a bit harder to convince me that the ANC is a bunch of evil capitalists. [cop troll]

BEE (black economic empowerment) is fundamentally about creating an elite of Black capitalists. It is no accidental that these policies enrich a few individuals whilst leaving ordinary Blacks poor - that is the whole point. It does no good to pretend that BEE could be something else.

If the ANC were even a mildly reformist party of the working class, it would try and redistribute wealth and power downwards, to the popular classes. But because the ANC is a capitalist party, it focuses on promoting capitalism “as never before,” with particular emphasis on creating the “fresh fields” for the “non-European bourgeois.” Sometimes this clashes with ANC neo-liberalism, leading to policy contradictions

The class agenda has been stressed by Mbeki, whose famous speech to the Black business body, NAFCOC, called on Black capitalists to enrich themselves while “empowering” local communities. Peter Mokaba, then head of the ANC Youth League, was equally clear in an internal ANC paper in 1998 that the ANC is a “national liberation movement and not a socialist organisation,” and its goal was never to “destroy the capitalist class and establish socialism”. Rather it is to create a “vibrant and democratic, prosperous and non-racial capitalism.”

Mokaba, like all other senior ANC leaders, is now a prominent “national” businessman. The most prominent example is, of course, Cyril Ramaphosa, with a market influence of R137 billion, but he is hardly alone. As Smuts Ngonyama - spokesperson for Mbeki - said recently of his role in Genesis Telecom, “I did not struggle to be poor.”

AT THE PARTY

The Communist Party, and most COSATU leaders, have remained blind to what this says about the class agenda of the ANC. BEE commentary from these quarters remains constrained by lifelong support for the ANC and the two-stage perspective. This translates into an attempt to maintain the Alliance with the ANC while giving BEE a more “left” spin.

In the Financial Mail, Zwelinzima Vavi of COSATU made the illogical claim that labour must contest the “middle class” to ensure “black entrepreneurs” do not align with the “capitalist class” - which boils down to the moralistic belief that Black capitalists can be nicer than White capitalists if workers appeal to their consciences.

In a stinging reply to such views, Saki Macazoma of the ANC NEC - who got his start in the state-owned Transnet, where he fired 15,000, and Wits University, where he fired another 615 - argued it makes no sense to expect “socialist outcomes” from “capitalist methods.” In Umsebenzi, the SACP’s Jeremy Cronin admitted that changes in “the superficialities of pigmentation boardrooms” did not stop capitalist actions being shaped by the market, nor morality. But Cronin failed to define what “transformation” actually meant, or explain how it was linked to the SACP's supposedly socialist programme. In effect, he said nothing at all.

More recently, Archbishop Despond Tutu’s Nelson Mandela Lecture described BEE as elitist, attracting a vicious reply from Mbeki. Mbeki could not deny the point, and so his focus was on Tutu’s personal credentials.

Predictably, Blade Nzimande, the centrist SACP boss, has tried to smooth over the cracks raised by such exchanges, speaking of a “BEE debate convergence” but carefully defined the enemy as the “white capitalist class,” neatly sidestepping how the SACP’s struggle against “the capitalist system itself” would impact on Black, ANC, capitalists.

http://www.zabalaza.net/articles/zab6.htm#bee

Dear Sir or Madam,
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Jambaa. I am the Head of the “Kharaa” association of Youth /NGO/ so I am applying for you.
Our association was established first in 2004. We have done quite many activities since we started working for this. In the future we are planning to do more things.
One of the most significance of our association policy is to work on widening our relations with the other countries. So the reason that I am writing is to know more about your company activities and we would like to keep in contact on working with you.
In globalization of the today’s world, it is a nice opportunity to cooperate in order to build a new development era for the children and future generation to enable them to inherit the friendship and peace of ours.
The advantage of our cooperation is to enable you to see the beautiful nature and landscape of Mongolia, meet the youth and live together for the world future of humanity under the 1 big roof, called World, apart from giving you the real information about Mongolia.

Calling for a new Genova.
This is the time where all organisation from earth, animal and human rights, religious group, mothers, fathers, workers, students, indigenous, gay and lesbian to join together and show that we hold them accountable, they are the real evil.
Hopefully there will be a lot of anarchist coming down from all over the world.
Let's don't get away with it.
It's show time!