So, the G-20 and the G-8 summits are over.And what did we learn?The first thing that people will remember are the protesters. They grabbed more headlines and more photo ops than the politicians, or even the fake lake. Whether it was the peaceful protesters who were desparately trying to draw attention to a variety of causes they feel are important, or the bunch of young, anonomous, dressed in black thugs, everyone's attention was on them.The fact that the leaders of the a number of countries were meeting in the same city or the same province didn't create anywhere near the amount of press coverage. In fact, the only thing that made headlines about the leaders was the fact that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared the meetings a success. What exactly they accomplished is something that will remain a mystery to most Canadians, and probably to most people around the world. Which makes you wonder if there is really any purpose to these meetings but to allow these leaders and their assorted hangers-on to take expensive trips every year. Could they not do all this meeting and talking over the phone? With all the technology available in the world today, how hard would it be for them to set up a tele-conference, complete with video hook-ups, and discuss things more than once a year. Then all they would have to worry about would be the possibility of ending up on You Tube if the conference was hacked.Maybe that way, people would actually figure out what the leaders were talking about and if the conference was successful, all by themselves. As well, it would interesting to see if the so-called anarchists would show up to trash something, just on principal. They say they are against government, but an investigation into the members would probably reveal bored, young, rich, white boys who have too much time on their hands and who play too many violent video games instead of doing something constructive with their lives.Of course, the other idea that is being floated for the next meeting is to put all the leaders on a cruise ship int he middle of some ocean with a couple of naval ships around them. Hopefully, ithey would end up being out of sight and out of mind, and people could get on with their lives without more government interference. We might even leave them out there and see if it makes a difference.When the leaders figure out what they are doing, then maybe they could tell the rest of us, hopefully in plain language that doesn't take a lawyer or a public relations flack to come up with. In the meantime, we'll just have to muddle along the best we can. Waiting for more pronouncements from our leaders about exactly where they are taking us.
