I'm sure you've all seen the advertisements or news regarding the G8 Summit occuring in Scotland over the first week of July. For those of you that don't realise the powers of the world meet to discuss a number of different issues involving Economics and the Environment. However sometimes those leaders make those decisions based upon their political members and there own personal agendas, and tend to forget about the publics opinion on such issues as world poverty. Most media groups have already informed the world of Bob Geldof's plan for at least one million peaceful protesters to decend upon Scotland during the first week of July, so as to make it known what the majority thinks just to make sure that the worlds leaders don't get sidetracked with any "backwater deals". I thought since the Political section of the forums was missed mentioning the event, I would post it up. I urge that if you can go and want to go, try to be safe with what you do there as it's not about violence it's about all those small things that we think should be on the agenda that our world leaders are a little too incompetent to put on it without a little bit of encouragement. In fact I would suggest that the Police and the Army (and any world governments so secret services) should also join the protest proactively. As for them to be seen to aid the protestors or just be apart of the protest would provide a positive influence and hopefully steer protestors from actively seeking to be maliceful. If you can't make it, just remember those world leaders have to return home (sometime), which means you can always protest at the airports they arrive at. (Thats if of course they would use any forms of civillian charters) If you can't do any forms of protest then you can write to your government, e-mail or phone. Every little helps. I haven't mentioned the many specific reasons to protest since there are so many, some are far more worthy causes than others. I just didn't want any of you to necessarily forget or believe that can't make a difference, because you can.
I take it that you're in favour of shouting angry slogans and dressing up in face paint in order to help the world's poor. Good luck with that. If Geldof gets his one million protestors I guarantee mayhem, regardless of how carefully the protest promoters try to prevent it. The black flag brigades always make a showing at these things, and their whole intention is to make as much trouble as possible. I view it as a form of social darwinism: the protestors seek to influence or even undermine the legitimate activities of elected government officials, but as their numbers increase so too does the likelihood that the event will attract anti-government elements that make the protest look so bad as to undermine the original objective of the protest. In other words, a small protest is essentially meaningless, but the more successful a protest organiser is at bringing people out to join his protest the more likely his message will be drowned out by the antics of the crowd. It's a lose/lose proposition. My interest at this point is to see how Scottish cops handle non-soccer hooligans.
