Editorial: G-20 vernacular spectacular

With all the protests, police, class rescheduling and bus detours surrounding this week’s… With all the protests, police, class rescheduling and bus detours surrounding this week’s events, it is easy to forget that world leaders will actually discuss important issues at the G-20 Summit.

We think.

Here are some discussion topics on the agenda, according to Reuters: creating a new framework to shrink surpluses in export-rich countries, rebalancing the global economy, reworking and regulating the world financial order and nurturing economic recovery.

The itinerary is a litany of vague management talk with the exception of an old reliable: global warming. Climate change has become a perennial empty gesture offered to the Europeans.

EU: “Let’s address global warming.”

United States: “Oh, uh, yeah. Let’s seriously think about talking about that.”

China: “Nope.”

United States: “Phew.”

Otherwise, themes for debate remain enigmatic to anyone without an M.B.A., or anyone who is not a manager in “Office Space.”

As such, it is no wonder each summit attracts a motley collection of demonstrators, ranging from anarchists to animal lovers, who have no opinion on the shifting of voting power percentages in the International Monetary Fund.

Every protest group wants to communicate its message to world leaders, but groups often get criticized because they aren’t speaking about summit-related issues.

Why would people allegedly put feces in bathroom soap dispensers, and how does it relate to the G-20?

There is no direction, reason or connection. However, the rage that fuels such Project Mayhem behavior could be a manifestation of feeling excluded.

This sentiment is only exacerbated by rhetoric coming from G-20 officials — Financial Services Authority Chairman Adair Turner declared, “It is essential that priority use of high profits should be to rebuild the capital needed to support lending, allow official measures to be removed, prepare institutions to meet higher capital requirement and that bonus and dividend policies should be consistent with this priority,” according to Reuters.

Ignorance will certainly pervade many protests. There will be signs like the infamous, “Who needs oil? I ride the bus.” But there will also be sincere outcries on an amalgam of issues that will not receive official debate at the summit.