The city of Pittsburgh has called up <a href=”http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ ALeqM5gJKXV5HsfOBZsVB57W4xWVD7SNHg”>4,000 highly-trained federal police officers to support local security forces in the days leading up to the G20 summit that begins on Wednesday. As <a href=”http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ 20090921_globalization_goes_bankrupt/”>Chris Hedges writes at Truthdig, “The draconian security measures put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh are disproportionate to any actual security concern.” The delegates will be protected by a National Guard combat unit recently back from Iraq. The center of the city will be virtually shut down and there are already reports of arrests and harassment of activists. On the eve of the G20 summit and during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression what is the future of capitalism? And does the left have an alternative?

Nation columnist and <a href=”http://www.counterpunch.org/”>Counterpunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn, <a href=”http://www.qc-econ-bba.org/faculty_profile.ihtml? user_Instructor_ID=102″>William Tabb, associate editor of the Monthly Review and author of <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158367036X?ie=UTF8&tag= lauraflanders-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957& creativeASIN=158367036X”>The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century<img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=lauraflanders-20&l=as2&o =1&a=158367036X” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”ir?t=lauraflanders-20&l=as2&o=1&a=158367036X” />, and <a href=”http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=fellows_kagarlitsky”> Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements and the author of <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074532682X?ie=UTF8&tag= lauraflanders-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957& creativeASIN=074532682X”>Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System<img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=lauraflanders-20&l=as2&o =1&a=074532682X” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”ir?t=lauraflanders-20&l=as2&o=1&a=074532682X” /> talk alternatives.