What do these G8 Demonstrators Want?

[mountainclmbr]

These seem to be "anti globalization" demonstrators. What is it exactly that they want? Heard they are an assortment of communists, anarchists, environmentalists.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070602/ap_on_re_eu/g8_demonstration

Crowd, police clash at protest of G-8 By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer
 


ROSTOCK, Germany - Masked demonstrators hurled stones and flagpoles at police during a demonstration Saturday by tens of thousands of people against the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Germany, engulfing the harbor of this northern port city in chaos.
 
Officers in helmets and body armor at one point briefly retreated before a hail of stones, while other officers chased down fleeing protesters at the rally in Rostock in northern Germany.

Police marched in a line through a harborside street to scatter demonstrators, and were pelted with stones from behind. One of the organizers pleaded for calm from a loudspeaker: "The police are heading back so we can hold our protest in peace, that is what we want."

Cordula Feitchinger, a police spokeswoman, said one officer was slightly injured. She had no immediate total for arrests.

"There are massive assaults on police officers at the city's harbor right now," police spokeswoman Cordula Feichtinger said. "The situation is currently very chaotic and we have to get it under control before I can tell you how many people have been arrested."

[Manedwolf]

Of the videos I've see of those, I see everything from "legalize pot now!" stoners to furious young men with beards and a black banner of jihad.

I think they protest to protest.

[Balog]

I don't know why but I find footage of riots very interesting. I'm trying to think why; I guess I just like comparing the way police in different places respond.

[Manedwolf]

IMO, throwing big chunks of paving stone at the police is assault with a deadly weapon.

[Sindawe]

What do these G8 Demonstrators Want?

They wanna get high.

They wanna get loaded.

They wanna have a good time.

And they wanna stick it to the Man!

Ahhh... the exuberance and folly of youth

[ilbob]

They are just your basic troublemakers. The flit from protest to protest, and as best i can tell have no real interest in any particular cause.

[Laurent du Var]

Stolen from Wikipedia (type G8) :

As the annual summits are extremely high profile, they are subject to extensive lobbying by advocacy groups, street demonstrations by activists and, on rare occasion, terrorist attacks.

The most well-known criticisms center on the assertion that members of G8 are responsible for global issues such as poverty in Africa and developing countries due to debt crisis and unfair trading policy, global warming due to carbon dioxide emission, the AIDS problem due to strict medicine patent policy and other problems that are related to globalization. G8 leaders are therefore pressured to take responsibility to combat problems they are accused of creating. For example, Live 8, a series of concerts in July 2005 to coincide with the 31st G8 summit, was intended to promote global awareness and to encourage G8 leaders to "Make Poverty History." Live 8 organizers have also proposed that G8 member nations adjust their national budgets to allow for 0.7% to go towards foreign aid as outlined in Agenda 21 of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

Another criticism revolves around the membership of the G8. With the exclusion of the People's Republic of China, the G8 no longer represents the concentration of economic power it did when it was created.[7] Also, recent nominal GDP figures published by the World Bank suggest that Spain has replaced Canada as the eighth largest economy in the world.[8] The lack of representation from the 'global south' leads many critics to label the G8 as an institution to continue western economic domination.[citation needed]

Of the anti-globalization movement protests, the largest and most radical was that of the 27th G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Summits since have been hosted outside of major cities. The opening day of the 2005 summit meeting in Scotland was accompanied by a series of synchronized terrorist bombings in London, killing dozens and derailing the summit agenda. The bombings were claimed by a previously unknown Islamist group.

[Matthew Carberry]

What do these G8 Demonstrators Want?

They wanna get high.

They wanna get loaded.

They wanna have a good time.

And they wanna stick it to the Man!

Ahhh... the exuberance and folly of youth

They're just "Wild Angels"? 

We want to be free! We want to be free to do what we want to do! We want to be free to ride. And we want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man. And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time! And thats what were gonna do. Were gonna have a good time. Were gonna have a party!

[HankB]

. . . What is it exactly that they want?

Attention and a free ride.

[MechAg94]

It is like a lot of the protesters interviewed at political conventions.  Most are just stupid people recruited who get a free trip and think it is cool to go protest something (Rent-A-Mob).  A few organizers are mixed in actually work for the advocacy group paying for the protesters.  You could see this at the last couple of Repub conventions.  9 of 10 people interviewed didn't even know what they were protesting, they were just there for a party (or so it appeared). 

The days of spontaneous gatherings of people to voice their opinions in protest are gone (assuming they ever existed). 

[The Viking]

Stolen from Wikipedia (type G8) :

As the annual summits are extremely high profile, they are subject to extensive lobbying by advocacy groups, street demonstrations by activists and, on rare occasion, terrorist attacks.

The most well-known criticisms center on the assertion that members of G8 are responsible for global issues such as poverty in Africa and developing countries due to debt crisis and unfair trading policy(1), global warming due to carbon dioxide emission(2), the AIDS problem due to strict medicine patent policy and other problems that are related to globalization(3). G8 leaders are therefore pressured to take responsibility to combat problems they are accused of creating. For example, Live 8, a series of concerts in July 2005 to coincide with the 31st G8 summit, was intended to promote global awareness and to encourage G8 leaders to "Make Poverty History." Live 8 organizers have also proposed that G8 member nations adjust their national budgets to allow for 0.7% to go towards foreign aid as outlined in Agenda 21 of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.(4)

Another criticism revolves around the membership of the G8. With the exclusion of the People's Republic of China, the G8 no longer represents the concentration of economic power it did when it was created.[7] (5) Also, recent nominal GDP figures published by the World Bank suggest that Spain has replaced Canada as the eighth largest economy in the world.[8] The lack of representation from the 'global south' leads many critics to label the G8 as an institution to continue western economic domination.[citation needed](6)

Of the anti-globalization movement protests, the largest and most radical was that of the 27th G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Summits since have been hosted outside of major cities. The opening day of the 2005 summit meeting in Scotland was accompanied by a series of synchronized terrorist bombings in London, killing dozens and derailing the summit agenda. The bombings were claimed by a previously unknown Islamist group. (6)

Emphasis mine.
1: They borrow money, and we expect it to be repaid, no "but..".
2: Isn't China one of the countries who emit quite a lot of CO2? Go protest at the local Chinese consulate. Better yet, go protest at Tiananmen Square.
3: Yeah, shame on the pharmaceuptical companies for making a profit on THEIR products. The product that pharmaceutical companies developed, tested and then released on the market. Blame the governments in said countries for not combating AIDS before people contract it.
4: Foreign Aid. Yeah, lets spend more cash on dictators everywhere, after all, its not their fault that they mismanage the countries they (atleast on the paper) run.
5: Yeah, China is an example to all of us right? Screw them. Really. Pseduocommies should STFU about topics which they don't understand, such as liberty, economy, human rights etc. Same with commies really. IOW, these retards protesting should just go home and smoke pot instead, and put a stop to ever-increasing cost of having more and more cops making sure they don't burn down where ever they are visiting...
6: Better to leave the running of things to the people who actually knows about economy, making many countries ineligable right now. I bet they would think it would be more "fair" to let countries like Zimbabwe play with the big boys, nevermind their inflation being at 2000+%. "You should give your brother a job, because he deserves one. Nevermind that he's an incompetent fool. He still deserves one more than one of your engineers who spent a number of years in college" (not exactly a quote, but close enough of what Hank Rearden is told by his mother in Atlas Shrugged...need I say more?)
7: Ah. The Friends Of The Oppressed Dealing A Blow To The Opressive Decadent Western World (atleast in the eyes of many Euro-commie-trash people). Did I tell you I hate commies? Really hate 'em, really really bad? This is one reason for it. I can tell you the other reasons for it some time...

[mountainclmbr]

When they smoke pot doen't it emit CO2?

[The Viking]

When they smoke pot doen't it emit CO2?

I don't care really. It keeps them busy, and they won't take up police resources that could be put to better use by catching rapists, murderers, paedophiles, and people who fart on the bus. The last category should be beaten upon capture btw.

[Stand_watie]

IMO, throwing big chunks of paving stone at the police is assault with a deadly weapon.

My opinion as well. Also the opinion of the National Guardsmen at Kent State, and (I'm not positive, but I think this was the case) the UK police at the "bloody sunday" demonstration.

Personally while I think deadly force in response to pavestone throwing should be legal, I think an overwhelming and severe ass-beating with rubber batons of all the pavestone throwers would be both more effective, and a better PR move than just killing three or four of them (+ possibly innocent bystanders) 

[Manedwolf]

Well, now they're throwing molotovs at the police as well.

[Stand_watie]

When they smoke pot doen't it emit CO2?

I don't care really...

Maybe that's the answer to violence at rallys. THC foggers. Instead of violence the demonstrators would stumble off to find a 7-11 and some nachos.

I'd be scared that the cops would forget to wear their gas masks though...can you imagine getting pulled over by a high cop? "You were going like, really, really, really fahst duuude.., I'm gonna have to cite ya..unless you got some nachos mahnn.."

[MechAg94]

I am almost surprised they haven't come up with some form of drug agent to use on rioters.  Brave New World. 

[The Viking]

IMO, throwing big chunks of paving stone at the police is assault with a deadly weapon.

My opinion as well. Also the opinion of the National Guardsmen at Kent State, and (I'm not positive, but I think this was the case) the UK police at the "bloody sunday" demonstration.

Personally while I think deadly force in response to pavestone throwing should be legal, I think an overwhelming and severe ass-beating with rubber batons of all the pavestone throwers would be both more effective, and a better PR move than just killing three or four of them (+ possibly innocent bystanders) 

In 2001, there was a a bit of rioting in Gothenburg during the EU summit, which also had US president George w. Bush visiting. The "demonstrators" had been allowed to use a couple of schools to sleep in, which where then closed off with a ring of huge shipping containers, after reports of armed (as in "armed with firearms") german demonstrants. Nothing was found AFAIK, no firearms atleast, although there were reports that one of the police had caught a .22 caliber bullet in his vest. Can't confirm this though. The party got really bad for the leftists when after a day of chucking cobblestones, a policeman fired upon the crowd in defence of a fallen comrade who had been hit in the head, severly injuring a demonstrator (gut shot). He's lucky they didn't use Speer Gold Dots back then.... Also, quite a lot of the cobblestones were returned by the police by air...

[The Rabbi]

We need to ban cobblestones as weapons of mass destruction.

They are against corporatism and exploitation.  I dont know what either of those things are and they probably dont either.  But they're against them.

[gunsmith]

I used to love demo's when I was in my 20's.

you could find girls who say yes even though you don't have a car or a job because you "don't support the system, mannnnn"

[mountainclmbr]

It seems that these leftists are using the standard leftist backward logic. Evil is good and good is now evil. Freedom is bad and tyranny is good. Then they blame the results in the countries run by tyrants on the free countries.


The following quote is from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

Economic freedom has been shown to correlate strongly with higher average income per person, higher income of the poorest 10%, higher life expectancy, higher literacy, lower infant mortality, higher access to water sources and less corruption. The share of income in percent going to the poorest 10% is the same for both more and less economically free countries.[6]

The people living in the top one-fifth of the most free countries enjoy an average income of $23,450 and a growth rate in the 1990s of 2.56 percent per year; in contrast, the bottom one-fifth in the rankings had an average income of just $2,556 and a -0.85 percent growth rate in the 1990s. The poorest 10 percent of the population have an average income of just $728 in the least free countries compared with over $7,000 in the most free countries. The life expectancy of people living in the most free nations is 20 years longer than for people in the least free countries[7].

[/quote]



These demonstrators seem to favor the type of governments in the bottom of the index of economic freedom instead of the ones at the top.

The 2007 rankings of economic freedom for countries are from:

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm

      Hong Kong 1   [89.3]         Belize 56   [63.7]         Guinea 111   [55.1]    
       Singapore 2   [85.7]         Kuwait 57   [63.7]         Bolivia 112   [55.0]    
       Australia 3   [82.7]         Slovenia 58   [63.6]         Burkina Faso 113   [55.0]    
       United States 4   [82.0]         Uganda 59   [63.4]         Benin 114   [54.8]    
       New Zealand 5   [81.6]         Italy 60   [63.4]         Bosnia and Herzegovina 115   [54.7]    
       United Kingdom 6   [81.6]         Nicaragua 61   [62.7]         Ethiopia 116   [54.4]    
       Ireland 7   [81.3]         Bulgaria 62   [62.2]         Cameroon 117   [54.4]    
       Luxembourg 8   [79.3]         Peru 63   [62.1]         Lesotho 118   [54.1]    
       Switzerland 9   [79.1]         Swaziland 64   [61.6]         China 119   [54.0]    
       Canada 10   [78.7]         Madagascar 65   [61.4]         Russia 120   [54.0]    
       Chile 11   [78.3]         Albania 66   [61.4]         Nepal 121   [54.0]    
       Estonia 12   [78.1]         Romania 67   [61.3]         Yemen 122   [53.8]    
       Denmark 13   [77.6]         Guatemala 68   [61.2]         Mali 123   [53.7]    
       Netherlands 14   [77.1]         Tunisia 69   [61.0]         Niger 124   [53.5]    
       Iceland 15   [77.1]         Brazil 70   [60.9]         Ukraine 125   [53.3]    
       Finland 16   [76.5]         Macedonia 71   [60.8]         Mauritania 126   [53.2]    
       Belgium 17   [74.5]         Qatar 72   [60.7]         Egypt 127   [53.2]    
       Japan 18   [73.6]         Colombia 73   [60.5]         Equatorial Guinea 128   [53.2]    
       Germany 19   [73.5]         United Arab Emirates 74   [60.4]         Gabon 129   [53.0]    
       Cyprus 20   [73.1]         Kazakhstan 75   [60.4]         Djibouti 130   [52.6]    
       Sweden 21   [72.6]         Honduras 76   [60.3]         Nigeria 131   [52.6]    
       Lithuania 22   [72.0]         Lebanon 77   [60.3]         Uzbekistan 132   [52.6]    
       Trinidad and Tobago 23   [71.4]         Mongolia 78   [60.1]         Suriname 133   [52.6]    
       Bahamas 24   [71.4]         Kyrgyz Republic, The 79   [59.9]         Algeria 134   [52.2]    
       Austria 25   [71.3]         Fiji 80   [59.8]         Haiti 135   [52.2]    
       Taiwan 26   [71.1]         Moldova 81   [59.5]         Rwanda 136   [52.1]    
       Spain 27   [70.9]         Kenya 82   [59.4]         Central African Republic 137   [50.3]    
       Barbados 28   [70.5]         Turkey 83   [59.3]         Vietnam 138   [50.0]    
       El Salvador 29   [70.3]         Sri Lanka 84   [59.3]         Togo 139   [49.8]    
       Norway 30   [70.1]         Saudi Arabia 85   [59.1]         Laos 140   [49.1]    
       Czech Republic 31   [69.7]         Senegal 86   [58.8]         Sierra Leone 141   [48.4]    
       Armenia 32   [69.4]         Poland 87   [58.8]         Syria 142   [48.2]    
       Uruguay 33   [69.3]         Cape Verde 88   [58.4]         Bangladesh 143   [47.8]    
       Mauritius 34   [69.0]         Pakistan 89   [58.2]         Venezuela 144   [47.7]    
       Georgia 35   [68.7]         Guyana 90   [58.2]         Belarus 145   [47.4]    
       Korea, South 36   [68.6]         Ghana 91   [58.1]         Burundi 146   [46.8]    
       Israel 37   [68.4]         Zambia 92   [57.9]         Chad 147   [46.4]    
       Botswana 38   [68.4]         Gambia, The 93   [57.6]         Guinea Bissau 148   [45.7]    
       Bahrain 39   [68.4]         Greece 94   [57.6]         Angola 149   [43.5]    
       Slovak Republic, The 40   [68.4]         Argentina 95   [57.5]         Iran 150   [43.1]    
       Latvia 41   [68.2]         Morocco 96   [57.4]         Congo, Republic of 151   [43.0]    
       Malta 42   [67.8]         Philippines, The 97   [57.4]         Turkmenistan 152   [42.5]    
       Portugal 43   [66.7]         Tajikistan 98   [56.9]         Burma 153   [40.1]    
       Hungary 44   [66.2]         Paraguay 99   [56.8]         Zimbabwe 154   [35.8]    
       France 45   [66.1]         Dominican Republic 100   [56.7]         Libya 155   [34.5]    
       Jamaica 46   [66.1]         Mozambique 101   [56.6]         Cuba 156   [29.7]    
       Panama 47   [65.9]         Cambodia 102   [56.5]         Korea, North 157   [3.0]    
       Malaysia 48   [65.8]         Tanzania 103   [56.4]         Sudan -   Not Ranked    
       Mexico 49   [65.8]         India 104   [55.6]         Serbia -   Not Ranked    
       Thailand 50   [65.6]         Ivory Coast 105   [55.5]         Congo, Dem. Republic of -   Not Ranked    
       Costa Rica 51   [65.1]         Malawi 106   [55.5]         Iraq -   Not Ranked    
       South Africa 52   [64.1]         Azerbaijan 107   [55.4]         Montenegro -   Not Ranked    
       Jordan 53   [64.0]         Ecuador 108   [55.3]      
       Oman 54   [63.9]         Croatia 109   [55.3]      
       Namibia 55   [63.8]         Indonesia 110   [55.1]      

[mountainclmbr]

Well, now they're throwing molotovs at the police as well.

Translation: Using gasoline for fuel to get to work = bad.  Using gasoline for molotovs to throw at police = good.

I heard that there were about 150 police hurt yesterday.

[The Rabbi]

Well, now they're throwing molotovs at the police as well.

Translation: Using gasoline for fuel to get to work = bad.  Using gasoline for molotovs to throw at police = good.

I heard that there were about 150 police hurt yesterday.

Its a question of efficiency.  You only get so many miles per gallon but you can get far more injuries per gallon.

[Manedwolf]

I used to love demo's when I was in my 20's.

you could find girls who say yes even though you don't have a car or a job because you "don't support the system, mannnnn"

Yeah, but that's also often "Share the love and STDs", with that sort...

[mountainclmbr]

I used to love demo's when I was in my 20's.

you could find girls who say yes even though you don't have a car or a job because you "don't support the system, mannnnn"

If these said "yes", I'm afraid I would have to pass.

G8 Photo here:

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070605/photos_ts_wl_afp/0fcd4aa5b87d65d025a1a61fa918dfba