This year's G20 summit is the ultimate mirror of modern reality. An uncontrolled clique of oligarchs who collide with each other for world domination, against the background of black smoke and protesters' rage.









When Merkel made a few years ago the latest arrangements to hold the G20 summit in Hamburg, she believed she had completed a brilliant pre-election fiesta for the upcoming German elections. Being a host to the club of the world's most powerful leaders who are talking behind closed doors is a very German way of demonstrating power.





But as Hamburg's sky was blacked out by the protest conflict with the police - which had to call for backup when the 20,000 conscripts began to lose control of the situation - the chancellery's pre-election card was smudged. And these were not the only fumes that shadowed the dream of Merkel. Even the German Spiegel magazine implicitly accused her of joining a non-institutional and uncontrolled power group that replaces the UN.





At a different wavelength, but equally aggressive, the Anglo-Saxon Economist presented her as a threat to the global economy, due to the huge surpluses accumulated by Germany, which distorted not only the European but also the global economy. In fact, the British magazine called her to raise directly public spending and wages (!), presenting Berlin's policy as equally destructive as the economic isolation of Donald Trump. And all this happened even before the beginning of the contacts between the leaders.









The first major news came with the ceasefire in Syria, which Trump and Putin agreed on the sidelines of the session. After a fictional controversy over the supposed interventions by Russian hackers in the US elections ('played' by Trump for the eyes of the liberal, hysterically anti-Russian, American press), the two leaders disagreed about North Korea, but seemed to find a path of conciliation in the Middle East.





This development is expected to escalate the conflict between the two fronts of the US economic elite: on the one hand, the forces represented by Trump demand a moratorium on the confrontation with Moscow to focus their aggression on China, and on the other, the dominant parts of the military-industrial establishment who want to keep the fronts open both in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe.





It should be noted that as these lines were written, Reuters claimed that Putin's aircraft, returning to Moscow, made 500 km bypasses to avoid passing over NATO member countries, such as Poland and the Baltic States - information that appears to resemble one of the most tense moments of the Cold War.





The real important issue of the G20 summit was, of course, the definition of new economic blocs and their inter-relationship at a global level. The simplistic perception "Trump supports protectionism and Merkel the free market", promoted by the international media, does not explain the extremely complex grid of relationships that was imprinted before and during the session.





The US has come to talks with the so-called 'nuclear bomb' of world trade, the threat of drastic restrictions on steel imports - a decision primarily targeted the Asian economy but also causing similar tectonic earthquakes and reactions in Europe as well. European capitalism (see Berlin and Frankfurt) was prepared for the conflict with separate contacts between Merkel and EU officials with the political and economic leadership of China and Japan. The Chancellor welcomed the Chinese initiative entitled "one zone, one way", a program of hundreds of billions of dollars to build energy and freight transport infrastructure from China to Central Asia, Russia, Europe and the Middle East. The United States faces this plan as an existential threat, something that can be seen every day through the escalating provocation against Chinese sovereignty in the Southern China Sea.





Responding to Berlin and Brussels openings to Asia, during the session, Trump made sure to send a clear message, preparing Europeans for the major trade deal with Britain in the post-Brexit era.





The first day of contacts ended with Merkel trying to hide the fierce confrontations at a meal under Beethoven's sounds. At the same time, diplomatic missions struggled all night to draw up a joint communiqué in which it would not appear that the planet enters one of the most important periods of instability after the end of the Second World War.





During all these intrigues, however, the leaders were not alone. The 100,000 protesters who went out in the street with a slogan (among others) "shut down capitalism," were not a mere observer. Despite the hundreds of arrests and dozens of injured people in serious condition in hospitals from the inhuman brutality of the German police, the protesters forced the G20 leaders to move terrified with their helicopters as their motorcades were threatened by the rage of the gathered.





This year's G20 summit is the ultimate mirror of modern reality. An uncontrolled clique of oligarchs who collide with each other for world domination, against the background of black smoke and protesters' rage. All against everyone inside the conference centers, and all of us against them in the streets.





Article by Aris Chatzistefanou translated from the original source:



