Failure On All Fronts: No Progress from G-20 Leaders
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/no-progress-from-g20-on-economy-or-foreign-policy-a-920864.htmlIn the end, even a meeting between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin failed to deliver results. Participants at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg couldn't manage to find a common position on Syria. The American president demanded that punitive action be taken against Syria, but his Russian counterpart stood between Obama and his allies. Now any decision on a possible military strike against Damascus will be up to the US Congress.
Washington has left no doubt that, from this point on, it will prepare an intervention without a United Nations mandate. Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said negotiations in the Security Council had failed because of opposition from Moscow. And it is also unclear whether Washington will still wait for a report on the use of poison gas in Syria before taking action. It could still take a few more weeks before that report is delivered.
No Common Position
The failure at the G-20 summit to reach an agreement that would have enabled a Security Council deal was expected. The meeting of the world's 20 most important industrialized and emerging nations was originally conceived as an economic forum. Its limits are quickly reached when it is used to discuss issues of foreign policy. Only a few years ago, fans of the G-20 dreamed the constellation could be developed into a substitute for the large and often unruly UN, but few speak in such broad strokes today.
Skeptics of the G-20, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, noted before the expansion of the G-8 to including 20 members in 2008 that making the group bigger would not necessarily make it any easier to solve problems. From the looks of things now, such concerns were prescient. Yet another summit, this time in St. Petersburg, demonstrated that the differences in interests and political views between the member states are simply too great.
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Of course, dems don't either. 
Here's another great vid about the MIC. Just under 4 minutes with great graphics & stats.
53¢ of every tax dollar goes to the military
Next time someone tells you the United States is broke & our seniors have to eat dog food & we have to cut the hot lunch program for our kids, tell them to watch this 4 minute video.
The out of control military/security industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about is sucking up 53 cents of every tax dollar & they want more. Talk about entitlement!
I love this vid. The graphics are fab. The coins dropping as bombs, coin tanks, the weaponry, all of it was just so well done. I post it about once every three months on FB & only one friend has liked it. I guess 4 minutes is just too long. 
This vid is the result of the MIC. They use war to siphon the treasury to the 1%. It is quite a mess we are in.
on edit: Found this one on DU, too.
but if you're putting together a collage of vids, this has got to be included. It's the opening scene of "Lord of War," just under 3 minutes. It follows a bullet from it's manufacturing plant to, well, you'll see. A dark movie.
This, is our biggest export. We should be so proud.
& our world 'leaders' bicker & call each other names.
We are so fucked.
