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- Albert Einstein
Imagine a government allocating one billion dollars of tax-payers money to provide security for an important event in the county. Finally, everything passes peacefully and in a civilized way. In the aftermath of that event, every responsible citizen would and should ask why?
Why such a huge amount of money which could have been spent for the much-needed social and economic urgencies, has been lost in a futile way?
This was an imaginary scenario; however the real one happened in Canada, where the rotating G8/G20 Summit took place in Toronto, Canada on June 26-27, 2010. On the first day of that Summit thousands of peaceful demonstrators, including women and children marched through the streets of Toronto to express their legitimate demands and exercise their rights of free speech and freedom of assembly.
However, it was the police that became provocative and aggressive by harassing the demonstrators, pushing them back, and firing tear gas to disperse them. While the majority of demonstrators dispersed, a group of 500-700 black clad some wearing masks and armed with bats, hammer and metal ball bearings, separated from the crowd, attacked few abandoned police cars and set them ablaze. This group which call themselves Black Bloc broke windows and vandalized some private properties (from a report by the Globe and Mail, June 26, 2010).
These purposeful acts of provocations were responded to by the massive police presence by attacking the dispersing crowd, beating them, and detaining many, including even innocent bystanders (from a report by CTV News, June 26, 2010). The drama was fully and feverishly covered by the mass media, while ignoring peaceful demonstrators and their rightful demands. Thus the plot to breach the security at the Summit was neutralized and the one billion dollars expense was justified.
The above mentioned scenario reminded us of another drama that unfolded on December 25th 2009, when a young and rich Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board the Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan. This incident was a “God sent” justifiable pretext for a very profitable business, the security business. Few days passed when Full-body Scanners were installed hastily at various US airports. These Scanners will cost US tax-payers roughly three billion dollars over eight years (Washington Post, March 18, 2010).
The idea of spending about one billion dollars for G8/G20 Summit’s security in Canada was already welcomed by Nicolas Sarkozy the President of France, the country that will host the next G8 summit in 2011 (from a report by CBC News, June 26, 2010).
As we can see, it’s all business; making money by any means and with every possible way, no matter the consequence with regards to human rights and the well-being of future generations as well as the Planet as a whole. This is the essence of Capitalism and it is becoming nastier as the system passes through its final stage, the most corrupted one, Imperialism.