The G-20 Summit’s “Pathology of Parochialism”: Empty Proposals on Climate Change, Economic Growth | Global Research
It may well have been one of the more successful operations of silencing in Australia’s political history, a classic of “strategic incapacitation”, but the G20 summit could not contain the crass behaviour of its hosts. Journalists and state representatives were treated to a spectacle of prosaic complaint, the cringe whinge fest that ranged between the puzzling and bizarre.
The chair of any summit, or session, sets the tone, even if it might be distant and hollow. The opening speech of the Australian Prime Minister , Tony Abbott, made it plummet. “What was he thinking?” asked Mike Reddy in a letter to The Age. “Did he expect a standing ovation from the other 19 leaders for stopping the boats and repealing the carbon tax? Did he expect Barack Obama, who has struggled with an obstructionist Congress for six years, to a tear because he can’t get all is budget through the Senate?”[1]
