If you build it, will they come?

A lot of electrons are being re-arranged about the G8/G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto ON this month, and I have to say we're spending an awfully large amount of money ($1.1B current estimate) on a huge waste of time. Yes I came out and said it: the Summits have no clothes.

Certainly I'm not alone in this, but most of what you read is about our incipient Police State or how much the "fake lake" cost. These are all worthy subtexts to the whole thing, but I have two much cheaper alternatives, and one that won't bother as many people.

The first is to tell our international "friends" that we're not wasting our tax money and disrupting people and transportation for these dog and pony shows, and that if they want to the "prestige" of hosting them they're welcome to it. I've heard that it's "our turn" but this is a bullshit photo op and nothing more; we can replace this with video conferencing at a tiny fraction of the cost of all this. The second money-saving idea is to pare security back to the bare minimum for VIPs and tell all those "Black Bloc" fuckers that they'll be shot on sight as soon as the first brick or Molotov is thrown. Really, all the fences, removal of mailboxes, etc. is to deal with a few thousand traveling thugs who show up to break things for fun. Shooting them would deter the fellow travelers and cut down on recidivism from the hard cases.

Obviously my second proposal won't fly in this country, but try that kind of shit in China and see how far you get. That brings me to my final proposal if you really insist on running these meetings. This has the added (partial intentional) effect of exposing the hypocrisy of the political classes that like their junkets: build a permanent G Summit facility somewhere that protesters will have a hell of a time getting to because of distance, isolation and/or forbidding terrain. I have two suggestions for location, but you can use your imagination.

Primary location, The Falkland Islands; access only by plane or ship, and I mean ship, not boat. No kayak-borne infiltrators will paddle over from Argentina to crash your party, and the British garrison is all the security you'll need. It'd be good for the local economy and give everyone there (garrison included) something to do. Yes, they're nasty cold, wet, windswept rocks in the middle of the south Atlantic but you're there on important business so what does that matter? You'd have one-time costs to build the necessary facilities and then relatively minor maintenance expenses. The whole thing might cost as much as one of these fiascoes anywhere else, and you'd have a permanent site with an "indigenous" security force.

Secondary proposal is Churchill, Manitoba. Not as isolated as the Falklands as it has permanent rail and air links, but isolating it is merely an issue of shutting those links down to passengers during the summit, and as it gets no cruise ships it's arguably easier to secure. Facilities would have to be built, and in order for it to not cripple the fall Polar Bear tourist season you'd schedule the meetings for the spring or summer. Again, the climate sucks (not to put too fine a point on it) but there's about as much to do in Churchill as in the Falklands.

Something "out of the way" was probably what was envisioned for Huntsville, but it's another example of governments coddling themselves at public expense. If they were serious about doing this sort of thing and not disrupting everyone for the sake a a few malcontents, they'd go somewhere like Churchill and not to the cottage/resort capital of eastern North America. $1B would go a long way in a place like that and have some lasting benefit to the community. Chain link fences and Jersey barriers don't leave that sort of legacy, but at least the swollen political entourages will be comfy while they're here.