Can You Believe This G8 Sh*t?

Isn't this a quaint scene?  Reassuring, huh?  An old-fashioned butcher's shop, with a very expansive window-display of good-quality food for sale. A town anyone (except maybe a vegetarian) would be happy to live in.

Only this town is a fraud. The "display" is paper, stuck to the windows of an abandoned store. So the official attending the G8 summit in Ireland won't have to stare at the reality of their austerity program in action.  Or maybe more to the point, so that the Media will not look too closely.

Let Roots Action tell the story: "As Fermanagh, Ireland, prepares to host officials from the wealthy G8 nations, run-down and abandoned stores have been painted over with images of "free-market" prosperity.  The happy, thriving butcher's shop pictured here consists of stickers plastered to windows.  It wouldn't do for the architects of austerity to see its actual effects.

Fraud and a butcher's shop, in fact, are perfect images for austerity "science," which turns out to be on a par with climate-change denial and creationism.  An influential study claiming to prove that government deficits halt economic growth has recently been debunked.  Claims in the United States that our Social Security system is in trouble have just been disproven for the umpteenth time.

The United States is rolling in wealth, but the wealth is piled up in the hands of a tiny oligarchy.  That is the real project of austerity.  Public funds are flowing like water, but they're flowing into the Pentagon and prisons and tax breaks for the wealthy, while we cut education, environmental protection, and infrastructure."

You can sign RootsAction's Petition here, to say "The G8 must change course. It's time to invest in people and public resources rather than profit and plunder."