"One man died in Genoa; a man, we must presume, who was swayed by
the false promise that violence -- not peaceful protest, not participation
in the democratic process -- is the best way to advance a political cause,"
Time's article concluded. "It is not too much to hope that the next time
his friends stoop to pick up a cobblestone, they will remember a lesson
learned when plows first broke the Mesopotamian earth: You reap what you
sow."
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The sanctimonious tone, etched with gratification, was not unique
to the largest newsmagazine in the United States. Quite a few commentators
seemed to accept -- or even applaud -- the killing of Giuliani as rough
justice. "Excuse me if I don't mourn for the young man who was shot dead by
police during the economic summit," wrote Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg
Hines. "It was tragic, but he was asking for it, and he got it."
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"wrote Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg
Hines [...] 'It was tragic, but he was asking for it, and he got it.'"
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In Genoa, assaults by Italian police were systematic and
widespread, causing hundreds of serious injuries. But American news
accounts tended to be cryptic. "Italian police raided a school building
housing activists and arrested all 92 people inside," the Wall Street
Journal reported on July 23. "Afterward, the building was covered with
pools of blood and littered with smashed computers. Several reporters at
the school were hurt; one had his arm broken. Police said 61 of the
detainees had been wounded in riots that preceded the raid, but neighbors
described hours of beatings and screaming coming from the school during the
raid."
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On July 25, when I called the Committee to Protect Journalists,
the Manhattan-based group had not yet issued a statement. But program
director Richard M. Murphy told me: "CPJ is extremely concerned by reports
that working journalists were attacked by both police and protesters while
covering street demonstrations at the Genoa summit." The comment was
evenhanded to a fault. The vast majority of the reported attacks on
journalists were by police.
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"'I felt a massive blow to
the back of my head,' he [John Elliott] wrote in the Sunday Times of London. 'For a second
my vision whited out. I had been hit by a police truncheon.'"
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Unlike colleagues assaulted while displaying press credentials,
reporter John Elliott was on an undercover assignment among protesters.
Watching a water cannon move through tear gas, "I felt a massive blow to
the back of my head," he wrote in the Sunday Times of London. "For a second
my vision whited out. I had been hit by a police truncheon."
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"Truncheons whacked my back, arms and shins. They dragged me
over railway lines towards a signal box where I was ordered to put my head
on a steel rail."
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As more police ran toward him, Elliott quickly tried to regain his
journalistic identity by yelling, "Giornalista inglese!" But the clubbing
went on. "Two policemen dragged me along the ground, shouted at me in
Italian and then hit me some more. My cycling helmet disintegrated under
their blows. Truncheons whacked my back, arms and shins. They dragged me
over railway lines towards a signal box where I was ordered to put my head
on a steel rail. I tried to obey, unable to believe this was happening.
Gripped by fresh impulses of violence, they started kicking my head, back
and legs. Repeatedly they pushed me to the ground for a fresh pasting."
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News accounts routinely declared that the fatality in Genoa was
unprecedented. But an essay in the London-based Guardian debunked that
media myth. "The members of the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) could
tell you that Carlo Giuliani ... is not the first casualty of the movement
challenging neoliberal globalization around the world," Katharine Ainger
wrote. "The MST suffer ongoing persecution for their campaign for land
reform in Brazil, their opposition to the World Bank's program of
market-led land reform and to the corporate control of agriculture through
patents on seed."
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Ainger cited other deaths that have gone virtually unreported in
mass media: "Recently, three students protesting against World Bank
privatization were shot in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Young men
fighting World Bank-imposed water privatization have been tortured and
killed in Cochabamba, Bolivia."
Meanwhile, around the planet, those who perish from lack of food
or drinkable water or health care have little media presence. The several
thousand children who die from easily preventable diseases each morning,
and afternoon, and evening, remain largely media abstractions. When will
news outlets really scrutinize the profit-driven violence that takes their
lives?
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While such institutionalized violence is massive and continuous,
supporters of corporate globalizing agendas benefit from the propaganda
value of the street violence by "Black Bloc" participants in Genoa (who,
according to eyewitness accounts, comprised no more than 2 percent of the
protesters there). It would be surprising if those Black Bloc units were
not heavily infiltrated by government-paid provocateurs and the like.
Historically, covert police agents have often pushed for -- and helped to
implement -- violent actions in isolation from a mass base. In sharp
contrast, there is scant record of police agents trying to foment militant,
nonviolent civil disobedience on a large scale.
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"... supporters of corporate globalizing agendas benefit from the propaganda
value of the street violence by "Black Bloc" participants in Genoa ..."
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A global movement with literally millions of participants is
continuing to organize against the colossal daily violence of the world's
biggest institutions. Progressive websites that are genuinely grassroots
and international -- like www.indymedia.org and www.zmag.org -- reflect
vibrant resistance to a corporatized future. Other futures are possible, to
the extent that people are determined to create them.
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