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Date Posted: July 23, 03:00:pm GMT-5
Author: Len
Subject: No Such Thing as a 'Peacefull protest Now

Shellshocked Genoa surveys summit aftermath
Italian government readying emergency aid package


GENOA, Italy (AP) - Broken glass, spent tear gas canisters and smashed yellow cobblestones littered this seaside city today, the streets finally tranquil after two days of anti-globalization protests that left one dead and nearly 500 injured.

Almost 180 people, including two Canadians, were arrested in police sweeps that continued into the early hours of Sunday. Some face serious criminal charges that could be levelled even as they lie in hospital beds, injured in street battles that raged outside the summit of industrial powers.

In nearly two years of such clashes on the sidelines of world gatherings, these were by far the most intense, and the first to result in a fatality - a 23-year-old Italian marcher shot dead by paramilitary police during Friday's fighting.

As many as 100,000 marchers took to the streets to press environmental, social and economic causes mainly linked to global trade and its fallout; The hard core of young anarchists who confronted police with rocks and firebombs constituted perhaps a few thousand.

Demonstrators blamed police heavy-handedness for the mayhem. ''I think Il Duce (Mussolini) would have handled it better,'' said 28-year-old Italian protester Marco Saladinitria as he boarded a train out of Genoa.

Tens of thousands of protesters embarked on a mass exodus even before the summit ended, on specially chartered trains or by car and bus.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi had hoped the Group of Eight summit would showcase this proud onetime city-state, but he spent Sunday touring neighbourhoods battered by rioting.

When he visited City Hall to hear pleas from Mayor Guiseppe Pericu for reconstruction aid, some neighbours stuck their heads out of apartments to yell at him, ''Shame, shame, shame!''

Italy's cabinet was to weigh an emergency reconstruction package worth $67.5 million (Cdn) Monday.

A soccer stadium that had served as a tent dormitory for protesters was padlocked and deserted on Sunday. Outside were heaps of makeshift body armour, fashioned from cardboard, foam padding and mineral-water bottles.

A few hours after the summit leaders left town, workers began dismantling kilometres of tall steel-mesh barricades surrounding Genoa's medieval centre and part of its old port.

In street after street along and near the routes taken by marchers, windows of businesses were smashed, with banks and car dealerships favoured targets.

In one part of downtown, it was impossible to find a working automatic-teller machine; all had been vandalized. Road signs were torn from their posts, used as shields by the demonstrators. The carcasses of torched cars dotted thoroughfares.

''The demonstrators deliberately destroyed the city,'' said university professor Antonio Chirico, who lives near the scene of clashes. ''It was a major mistake for Genoa to host this summit, but we all realized too late.''

Police detained 85 people during the two days of clashes and arrested another 93 people on Sunday morning in a predawn raid on a school compound used as protest headquarters.

''They just went bang into the building - people screamed,'' said eyewitness Caroline Terzaghi, 38, a protest organizer. ''They made people lie on the floor, they beat us up, they were throwing computers around, they were hitting everyone. There was blood everywhere.''

Sixty-one of those arrested were taken to hospitals. Protesters said dozens were beaten during the raid, but police said many of those hospitalized had suffered injuries in prior clashes.

All those arrested in Sunday's raid were charged with possession of firebombs and with criminal association in order to commit vandalism, police said.

Authorities described those arrested in the raid as instigators of violence, and displayed sledgehammers, knives, a pickaxe and black hoods seized in the raid.

Protesters said police also confiscated documents, computer files and videotapes of the demonstration, but police spokesperson Roberto Sgalla denied that.

The Genoa protests, meanwhile, provoked sympathetic demonstrations in Canada, Greece, Germany, Mexico, Spain, France and Sweden.

In downtown Toronto Saturday, about 400 protesters converged on the Italian consulate, beating drums, chanting and carrying signs with the image of Carlo Giuliani, 23, the protester shot and killed by police Friday at the Genoa summit.

In Montreal, a small group of protesters paraded through the city's downtown to the Italian consulate to demonstrate against the violence.

In Vancouver, approximately 400 protesters gathered at the Italian consulate in what organizers called a ''peaceful protest in solidarity with the Genoa demonstration.''


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The days of civil disobedience are long gone

Re Protester shot dead in Genoa in bloodiest anti-summit riot, July 21.

The protests in Genoa have been referred to as "trends" and "thoughtless violence" by various media.

While some people may not fully understand the ramifications of the protesters' actions, it cannot be assumed that the escalating level of violence at these protests is simply a fad or an illogical burst of anarchy.

What the world is failing to understand is that many people are fed up with the increasing polarization between the rich and poor; at 21 years of age, I myself am beyond frightened when I contemplate the near future.

The mindset of the protesters is not one of senseless aggression — they have simply realized that passive activism will not achieve any goals.

It is a terrible shame that a young man had to be killed during the summit. The necessity of tear gas, four-kilometre long fences and scores of policemen armed with machine guns is questionable at best.

If a protester is faced with an army of uniformed soldiers, what will his/her reaction be?

The days of lying down in the street or chaining oneself to a tree have long past.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and at this moment in time, many of us remain willing to do whatever it takes to rectify the dire situation of our very existence.


////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Greed can have fatal results

Re Protester shot dead in Genoa in bloodiest anti-summit riot, July 21.

Anyone else wonder about the socio-economic background of the angry, violent, young Italian protester who was shot dead in self-defence, in Genoa this weekend?

Archaeologists noted the discrepancy of wealth between ancient Mayans.

Malnourished bodies were discovered to have aggressively murdered, even choking to death, the ostentatiously rich — when they could get their hands on them.

We're digging in the past to learn the obvious.

The discrepancy between an executive's salary in the '70s and a worker's was 42 to 47 per cent.

In the current millennium, the gap between corporate executives' and workers' salaries has risen to 222 per cent.

You don't have to be poor to feel angry.

Being greedy creates vulnerability and has consequences for the environment, as well as for our civilization.

I predict more uncontrolled, spontaneous, sometimes drunken riots, sometimes under the guise of organized demonstrations.

It's a matter of time before unruly mobs will get their hands on what's perceived as unbridled greed.

You don't have to be religious to know that wealth among the few carries consequences.

A cautionary note: As well as hiring bodyguards, start to care and take care.

Mind your manners and quit pretending people don't suffer as a result of your quest for weath and power!
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I've been tracking newspaper, radio and television coverage of protests (the Quebec FTAA Summit in April, the G-8 meetings in Genoa and the looming deadline set by the First Nations in regard to legislative changes proposed by the Federal government). I see a pattern.

In each case, there has been a tendency to focus on the radical aspects of the protests while ignoring their histories; in other words, there is a tendency to present radical protest behaviour as having popped up out of nowhere. I would suggest that it is politically unhealthy to allow such misrepresentation to occur.

People who are confident that their views will be taken into consideration as part of proper democratic process do not engage in radical protest. It is when people have repeatedly discovered that they are not being listened to that they turn to more radically demonstrative ways of making their point.

This is the case in each of the examples I've mentioned above. Decision-makers have been proceeding for years as though the public did not exist. The eventual radicalization of public protest was predictable.

The G-8 meetings in Genoa represented more of the same approach, although at least issues of social justice and environmental responsibility were, however superficially, included in the agenda. The decision-making process, however, remains disgracefully flawed from a democratic perspective: a small, elite group, representing only eight of the very richest nations on Earth, making decisions that will profoundly affect the life of the entire planet.


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