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• extra May 9, 2001 |
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IMC on the FTAA The only place you saw the truth While the personhood of corporations is a legal fiction, their all-too-human propensity for advancing their interests by any means possible is not. The burgeoning corporate globe state routinely resorts to lies, brutality, and terror in its pursuit of power. Our pursuit of the truth about it is further complicated by the disparate nature of its enemies. They represent a wide variety of political persuasions: left, right, center, and other. As such, their accounts must be judiciously vetted for the occasional factionalist distortion. Corporate media, on the other hand, can never, ever be trusted to tell the whole truth, not about themselves and not about their masters. Last month, as the corporate media churned out predictable misinformation, the Independent Media Center provided a voice for a diverse group of people mobilizing across the hemisphere against the FTAA and the so-called Summit of the Americas. Corporate media, by contrast, spent as little time as they could get away with on the subject. Most of that was obvious distortion. One network's evening news showed a 30-second montage. This consisted primarily of close-ups of a hand making the sign of the horns, a hammer-and-sickle banner, and a guy in a mask kicking in a windshield. While the guy was kicking in the windshield the voice over said, " ... and some people – anarchists – who just came to make trouble ..." Then a few minutes was devoted to four pundits. Two of them acknowledged that some concerns about the FTAA may be somewhat legitimate, perhaps, at least as the FTAA stands now. The message was clear. If you stay at home on the couch and allow talking heads to articulate your concerns, your concerns may be somewhat legitimate, perhaps, maybe a little. But if you get off the couch to protest, let alone to take direct action, then you are a devil-worshiping, communist, mindless thug and a trouble maker. In fact, antiglobalists are a broad coalition of people. They represent a wide variety of political opinions, ethnicities, ages, genders, persuasions, and trades. Notably absent from corporate media coverage were the skaters (329 KB MP3 file), the software geeks, the labor unions, Europeans and my personal favorite, the older Quebecois man who scolded the riot cops to their faces, one at a time. All this, of course, begs the obvious question: how does the FTAA stand now? That's a very good question, because we haven't been told very much about it at all. On Friday, April 20, 2001 the Toronto Globe and Mail leaked 41 pages of the "FTAA Negotiating Group on Investment," calling it a "road map for multinational corporations to bulldoze governments out of existence." While true enough, that's not the half of it. To hear the corporate media tell it, opposition to the FTAA was brief, violent, and centered in Quebec, it happened only on one day in April, and it is over. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thanks to the IMC, we know that demonstrations also took place in places as far apart as San Francisco, Philadelphia, South Miami, Montevideo, Dusseldorf, and Atlanta. Even tiny Fort Bragg held a rally. In California's Humboldt County, long the scene of tension between anarchist "tree huggers" and organized labor, these natural allies at last marched side by side against their common enemy. Judi Bari would have loved it. Of particular interest were the demonstrations centered on borders. The FTAA, and globalization in general, is about opening borders to capital but not to labor. Protests took place at the Canadian border and at the Mexican border. In San Diego a Black Bloc formed. It was joined by a contingent of Chicano and Chicana activists from M.E.Ch.A.. Corporate media would have you believe that wherever something like that happens, violence follows. The cops were certainly ready. But except for one momentary incident, the action was basically peaceful. It was about flags and symbols, not about truncheons and tear gas. Without the IMC, we might never know that protests against the FTAA were held anywhere but Quebec City. But Quebec City was where they were centered, and Quebec City was where IMC concentrated it's coverage. It was neither an easy task nor a safe one. But it was necessary, and IMCistas got the job done. They brought a sense of historical perspective and put their bodies on the line again and again. IMCistas did more than report. They took an active part in the action. After riot cops shut down the only medical center at gunpoint, Quebec Indymedia offered medical space. Somebody had to help. Quebec 911 was hanging up on people. Unlike corporate media, IMC let participants give their own firsthand accounts. The accounts of the medics are particularly revealing. Read a couple: www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=37657 sf.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=100151 Some illustrative accounts by the protesters themselves: dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=8104 www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=37965 sf.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=100128 www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=36919 sf.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=100056 www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=37848 It wasn't the first time that the iron fist of the state came down in Quebec. It probably won't be the last. Nor was it the first time that many of the protesters had been victims of police violence. But the extent of police brutality shocked even nonparticipants. According to street medic and clinician Doc Rosen, it was some of the worst police brutality he has ever seen. That is really saying something. Doc Rosen was the head of medics at Wounded Knee in 1973, which was one of the most violent police actions in recent U.S. history. Tear gas was everywhere. According to Quebec's Public Security Minister Serge Menard, 320 plastic bullets and 1,700 tear-gas and smoke-bomb canisters were fired by the Sûreté du Québec, just one of the four police forces at the summit. Then there was the water cannon. And who knows how much baton power they employed? As this photo clearly shows, police used laser sights to aim directly at protesters from point-blank range. At this range, these so-called nonlethal rounds can indeed be thoroughly lethal. Many people were hit. It's only by sheer luck, and the diligence of the medics, that none of them died or was blinded. Notably absent from corporate media accounts was the reaction of the local residents to the police brutality. Over two days the neighborhood was bombarded by police gas attacks. Gas seeped into people's apartments. Many fought back, as do most working people in similar situations. Others engaged in nonviolent mutual aid, sharing water hoses or offering their houses as temporary refuges from the gas. The majority of protesters themselves seemed to be French speakers from Quebec City, Montreal, and elsewhere in Canada. Locating the summit in a working-class community was a serious tactical blunder on the part of the NWO. Let's hope they repeat it. In addition to the lies and brutality, two incidents of terrorism stand out, the FBI's so-called "raid," and the arrest of Jaggi Singh. At the height of protests FBI agents visited the Seattle offices of the IMC and handed the group a court order to turn over certain computer logs. Why such logs were being kept in the first place is a separate issue, and one that needs to be discussed. The order also instructed the media organization not to publish the contents of the order. Rumors of a "raid" spread quickly and were hard to squelch. The IMC is fighting the court order. As regular readers of this column know full well, modern technology makes wholly unnecessary the issuance of court orders to find out what is happening on somebody's computer. It can be done surreptitiously, literally at the push of a button. This means the FBI maneuver in Seattle was nothing more than psychological warfare, plain and simple. So too was the arrest of Jaggi Singh. You'd never know it from the corporate media, but a large minority of anarchists are doctrinaire pacifists. Realistic estimates run as high as 30 percent. Jaggi Singh is one of those. He's also an articulate, popular, and good-looking journalist who gets mainstream media exposure. This apparently makes him a dangerous man. As he was exhorting the crowd to desist from violence, Singh was suddenly grabbed by undercover officers disguised as protesters. They didn't identify themselves. They threw him into a van and drove off. Jaggi was held incommunicado for several days and was held until May 7th. He is charged with, of all things, operating a catapult. Though by all accounts except those of the cops, he had nothing to with it, there actually was a catapult present at the protest. It was operated by what appears to be a group of militant surrealists, who used it to hurl stuffed teddy bears over the fence. It wasn't the only prop used in the demo, but it was certainly the most amusing. It was not, however, a "dangerous weapon." Singh's crime, as Canadian author Naomi Kline put it, is "giving good speeches." His arrest is widely, and correctly, seen as an attempt to muzzle legitimate political dissent. Demonstrations around the world, including one in San Francisco, called for his release. Stay tuned to Independent Media Center for further developments. Update: The nessie files runs alternate Mondays. To discuss this column in altcity, our virtual community, click here. |
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