Defending The Global Frontline
Content-wire on globalization protest
20 July 2001 3 pm GMT
In Genoa there is a massive riot going on against the G8 meeting. We know all about it.
It escalated, a young man was shot dead, a tragic loss of life.
The lawyers of the officers will claim self-defence, the protester attacked first.
Attacking - albeit with a fire estinguisher - a van loaded with an hypertense anti riot squad with no stops on their triggers, is not a good idea.
Anyone with any level of combat skills would not have done that. At least not without knowing the risk involved.
But protesters do not have combat skills, they fight with bare hands and a passion very close to madness.
Could the forces have defended themselves from the attack without firing the shots?
Most likely. A good kick or two
could have done the trick.
But the armed forces are not trained, not enough, to think twice, nor to use their hands and feet to get rid of a protester assault.
Content-wire advocates non violence, we swallow as much as we can, and stick to our imaginary guns, occasionally using our sharp tongues as swords, and press on, fighting our own little selfish battles with inoffensive bullets fired from the intellect.
But not everybody chooses the middle path. Nor they should.
Globalisation is a tough subject for us.
Being an online only entity, our dimension has been instantly global from the start, we think that being (virtually) global is great.
Especially as we run from a desk from the middle of nowhere, and we do not support the world economic order as it is.
Maybe one day we shall come up with a new meaning for the term ‘globalization’, that we can discuss, perhaps, some other time.
There is an article in the New Scientist this week (Drug Scandal Protection Racket, page 19, 21 July 2001) that talks about how Uganda and Kenya have different pricetags for their anti dysentery pills so that some kids in Africa survive for 7 cents a pill, and other die because they can't afford the two and half dollars pills that they must pay further down the continent.
The price difference is a pharmaceutical patent policy problem, one of the many
globalization issues on the Genoa table, or rather, missing from the Genoa table.
It is for this and other unfair practices that
there are riots in Genoa today.
Anybody with an interest in the present and future of the planet should be thankful that someone out there is young and fit enough to put their arse on the line for the problems of some folks in Africa.
Whether there can be peaceful protest, another Gandhi perhaps, it's only up to us, and how loud we can scream a silent struggle of thousands world people everyday.
Content-wire editors have lost interest in politics as such long time ago.
Maybe we are too old, we lost our guts, or we just moved on to a different level.
But we wish to express our support for all those who fight against abuse in the world, and are ready to take the streets if that's the only way they can make a point.
Don’t let them get away with global murder, remind them what the agenda is, or should be.
But please do be careful.
If nothing else, read a Lao Tzu manaual, before you set off to fight.
Now it's too late to pray for a peaceful demostration.
Let's hope there will be a peaceful funeral wake.
May that one life violently and suddenly taken, not be lost in vain. May that be, perhaps, put into the perspective, and made a reminder of those thousands of lives routinely lost everyday because of government corruption and greed of the powers.
://italy.indymedia.org
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