G20 in Australia: Buffoons v the Global South

Pepe Escobar


(L-R) Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Chinese President Xi Jinping
and South African President Jacob Zuma join their hands at a group photo
session during the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza July 15, 2014.

Here’s the G20 in Australia in a one-liner: a tiny bunch of Anglo-Saxon political buffoons attempts to drown out the Global South.

Countries representing over 85 percent of the world economy get together to (in theory) discuss some really heavy economic/financial issues, and virtually the only thing pitiful Western corporate media blabbers about is Russian President Vladimir Putin cutting an ‘isolated figure’.

Well, Washington and its string of puppets did try to turn the G20 into a farce. Fortunately the adults in the room had some business to do.

The five BRICS member-nations – despite their current problems, the G5 that really matters in the world - did meet before the summit, including the ‘isolated figure’. Economically, this G5 more than matches the old, decrepit G7.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff forcefully encouraged the G5 to turbo-charge their mutual cooperation – as well as South-South cooperation. That includes, of course, the BRICS Development Bank. The BRICS, stressing their ‘serious concern’, once again called Washington’s bluff – perpetually refusing to endorse much-delayed structural reform at the IMF.

The IMF quota and governance reform package was in fact approved by the IMF’s Board of Governors way back in 2010. One of its key resolutions was to increase the voting power of emerging markets, the BRICS at the forefront. For Republicans in Washington, this is worse than communism.

Chinese President Xi Jinping added that BRICS cooperation should not only boost the global economy, but also ensure global peace. Make trade, not tomahawks. The over 120 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – beggars in the G20 banquet - were paying very close attention.


Another Climate Change Ransom Note

Donna Laframboise

On November 2, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sent humanity a ransom note. In the words of the UK-based cartoonist known as Josh, its message was: "Give us trillions or you will fry!! There will be storms floods droughts winds and pestilence. We really mean it this time."

The IPCC's most recent document is a 100-page summary of a multi-thousand-page opus released in three instalments over the past 14 months. While the public is told this report - the fifth of its kind - is a scientific assessment of the state of the world's climate, the truth is more complicated.

Despite the fact that climate research was in its infancy back in 1992, world leaders decided global warming was a problem worth worrying about, and that humanity was responsible. They signed a treaty called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It calls for the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere" in order to prevent dangerous human "interference with the climate system." It also mandates ongoing, annual UN climate conferences.

In any negotiation, it's useful to begin with what lawyers call an "agreed statement of facts." Rajendra Pachauri, the economist who heads the IPCC, hopes this newly-minted report will be helpful to "negotiators as they work towards a new global climate agreement." He calls the treaty the IPCC's "main customer." This is the real purpose of the IPCC: to produce documents that can be cited during the poker game known as international climate negotiations.


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