Two Items on G-20 and the People's Suummit in Nice 

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People's Summit Opens in Nice

Prensa Latina 
November 1, 2011

http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=446188&Itemid=1
 
Imagen activaParis, Nov 1 (Prensa Latina) With a
demonstration on the streets of Nice, anti- globalization
organizations started a people''s summit, as an alternative
to the meeting of the Group of Twenty (G-20) to be held this
week in Cannes.

The forum's organizers chose Nice as the venue because French
authorities had banned such demonstrations in the same place
where the G-20 will meet.

"People First, Not Finance," was the motto chanted by
participants in the demonstration, which was closely watched
by some 2,000 officers deployed in the city.

Members of social groups, trade unionists, human rights
advocates and environmentalists from Spain, Belgium, Great
Britain, Japan, Mexico and France met in Nice to participate
in the People's Forum.

The walk started at the Esplanade de Lattre de Tassigny,
crossed part of the city and concluded in Les Abattoires,
which is the site that will host the people's summit until
Friday.

The meeting's objective is to seek other ways to solve the
economic crisis, other than those that will be proposed by
the G-20 countries when they meet on November 3 and 4 in
Cannes.

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 Anti-G20 Summit Prepares Its Case
 
 By Cléo Fatoorehchi 
 Inter Press Service 
 November 01, 2011
 
 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105623
 
 AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France

 Anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist groups are gathering
 ahead of the G20 meeting in Cannes in the south of France
 next week.

 Cannes will be under tight police security Oct. 31 to Nov.
 4, and the People's Forum has negotiated permission from
 local authorities to meet in Nice, 20 miles from Cannes. The
 Forum will gather countless organisations, from Attac to
 Oxfam France, from Greenpeace France to Action against
 Hunger.

 With their slogan "People first, not Finance!" they are
 determined to generate strong mobilisation against the G20
 and its policy of financial supremacy.

 "With strong mobilisation, we can overthrow the strength
 ratio," Valérie Brulant, member of Attac (Association for
 the Taxation of financial Transactions and for Citizen
 Action), told IPS.

 Commending Spain's indignados movement in May and the Occupy
 Wall Street still under way in New York, with widespread
 support around the world, she believes that with this
 momentum people around the world are eventually realising
 that "the (financial and economic) crisis was produced by
 the banks, but that people are paying the bill."

 Antoine Lupera, member of the executive committee of the
 French Communist Party (PCF) in Aix-en- Provence told IPS
 the PCF will join the People's Forum in Nice because they
 share the same beliefs.

 "One of our main fights is the fight for men and women's
 emancipation, so we believe that the system, and especially
 the system that is instituted with the G20, is totally
 inadequate for our idea of emancipation," he said.

 "(This system) empowers a small group of people, and a small
 group of countries (the G20) that have the financial and
 economic power to basically do whatever they want with it,
 and whatever they want with their money - to refinance the
 banks, to promote the capitalist system that we live in,
 instead of wanting a change."

 Above all, "they are against one of our main principles," he
 told IPS. "Humans should come first, and that won't be the
 case with this kind of meeting."

 Brulant said that given the last G20 conclusions, this group
 is about communication and never about concrete action. One
 of the main reasons for such hypocrisy is it lacks the means
 to apply its decisions, and to sanction countries that do
 not implement them, Brulant said.

 "The G20 is not only illegitimate but also harmful," she
 said. It is illegitimate because while the financial,
 economic and social crises affect all countries around the
 world, "only 20 are gathering to solve the problem, and 174
 others cannot say a word. This is unacceptable."

 It is harmful, she said, because "the G20 does everything to
 perpetuate the system and to support the financial markets,
 and so the dictatorship of finance. The race to short-term
 benefits is detrimental to people, to social rights and to
 environmental rights, Brulant said.

 Gildas Jossec, an expert on financial regulation and
 lobbying transparency at AITEC (the International
 Organisation of Technicians Experts and Researchers, which
 will take part in the People's Forum), told IPS that the
 bank system must focus on financing the economy. Then it
 would "speculate less on the financial markets.thus taking
 less reckless risks."

 He also supported implementation of the financial
 transactions tax, which could generate a considerable amount
 of money for development financing and the fight against
 climate change. But, he said, the financial lobby, which led
 to the economic crisis, is an obstacle.

 Activists are taking heart from the new challenges arising
 now to such dominance. "There definitely are populations who
 are getting informed, conscious, politicised, and who think
 of the society we live in from what affects them locally,"
 environment expert at AITEC Maxime Combes told IPS.

 "The anti-G20 mobilisation in Nice will be an important
 moment to show the world that we refuse their system through
 an international protest, but also that we have
 propositions, recommendations, requirements, and alternative
 ways already into place, all of them being presented at the
 People's Forum."

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