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August 8, 2001
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Nessie Files



Genoacide
The cops are not the enemy. The system is the enemy.



By nessie

THE GLOBALIST PROPAGANDA mill was quick to criticize the violence of the protesters in Genoa last month. It has been just as quick to overlook the daily atrocities of the globalists themselves.

Every day the neoliberal policies of our global corporate masters condemn billions to grinding poverty and blinding ignorance. Hundreds of thousands of people a day die needless deaths from malnutrition and curable diseases. This the propaganda mill ignores. But when somebody stands up to its masters, that's a whole different story. Then no hyperbole seems strong enough.

The FBI has even labeled a group called Reclaim the Streets "terrorists." And what do the members of Reclaim the Streets do to deserve this? Do they take hostages? Do they blow up buildings? Do they burn babies alive on TV like the FBI does? Not even. They dance in the streets, without permission from the government. That's all, just dance.

Perhaps, technically at least, they are breaking the law: They're jaywalkers. They jaywalk with a little more style than most people, perhaps. But are they terrorists? Hardly. Terrorists are violent people, at least as violent as the FBI. Reclaim the Streets are not violent people at all. They are anarchist performance artists. Jaywalking is their genre.

But by calling them "terrorists," the FBI gets to investigate them, their friends, their families, their neighbors, and the people with whom they work. Thanks to Carnivore and Echelon, the FBI and its clones around the world also get to track who reads about them on the Internet. Your shoulder is being read over at this very minute, just because you are reading about "terrorists." That's how much the new world order fears violence. They'll put you on an artificial-intelligence watch list just because you may be reading about the possibility that perhaps there might be violence at a demonstration, maybe. That you are actually reading about dancing jaywalkers is immaterial. The global corporate elite has to be that afraid of violence. They have no choice. There are at least six billion of us. There are, at most, a few thousands of them. Do the math.

Why so many of the new world order's enemies apparently fear violence is a lot harder to explain. For many, it isn't fear at all. Most protesters are nonviolent because they think that violence is wrong no matter who does it or for what reason. This is, of course, patently absurd. If violence is always wrong, the Americans shouldn't have thrown all that tea in Boston Harbor, the French shouldn't have broken into the Bastille, the inmates of Treblinka shouldn't have killed their guards and burned the camp down, and Jesus shouldn't have driven the moneylenders from the temple with a whip.

The issue is not whether recent violence at the NWO summits is morally justified. Unquestionably, it is. What we must ask ourselves instead is whether it is doing any good. This is considerably less clear. A credible case can be made that an action against symbols is not worth getting killed over. We are not enslaved by symbols but by men. They weren't even at the Genoa summit. Their puppets were at the Genoa summit. Perhaps the time has come to forget symbols and to focus on substance.

The cops are not the enemy. Their masters are not the enemy. The system is the enemy. It doesn't live behind barbed wire, in hotels and conference centers, or even in plutocrats' mansions. It lives in the hearts and minds of our families, our friends, our neighbors, and our workmates. There is where we must fight it. If we do, we will win, because we have the one weapon it fears even more than violence. We have the truth.

The best place to hear the truth about what happened in Genoa is from the anticorporate media, such as IMC Global, Italia IMC, and our own S.F. IMC. Here are a couple of links to get you started:

http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55637

http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php?id=102438

http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php?id=102420

The rest of the press has a field day playing "good protester" vs. "bad protester," with the Black Bloc as the convenient scapegoat. The Black Bloc doesn't represent all anarchists, let alone all protesters. It's not even an organization. It's a tactic. A Black Bloc forms up spontaneously at certain demos. Sometimes it fights. Sometimes it doesn't fight. The decision is made on the spot, by consensus, on the basis of the situation and the terrain.

You'll never hear it from the corporate press, but a sizable minority of anarchists are doctrinaire pacifists. Estimates run as high as 40 percent. They are shrill in their opposition to the Black Bloc and to violence in general. The role of the Black Bloc has been further confused by infiltrators. The Black Bloc in Genoa was infiltrated by undercover cops and by fascists. It was they who burned the cars of working people and smashed the mom-and-pop stores. It wasn't the anarchists. To attack the property of working people is profoundly antithetical to the anarchist ethos. You are more likely to see Christians sacrificing to Satan. Yeah, some people do sacrifice to Satan, sometimes. But if they tell you they are Christians, they're lying.

Anarchists hate fascists and would never willingly work with them. Au contraire: anarchists have always taken the lead in the resistance to fascism. History is abundantly clear on this. Had the so-called free world followed the anarchist lead in Spain in 1936, for example, the Second World War could have been nipped in the bud, and 50 million people would not have died needless deaths. But that's another story.

The police, too, have been infiltrated by fascists. So has the military. In this respect Italy is no different from America or from most other countries. It's just the one in the news lately. Keep in mind that while the carabinieri function as a sort of Italian state police, they are not the state police. They are not police at all, at least not in the American sense. They are a separate force, which until recently was a part of the army. Sometimes they act like the FBI. Sometimes they act like the National Guard. Their actual responsibilities are not all that clearly defined. In general they assist in "keeping public order." At this, the fascists among them are among the most exuberant.

Even the BBC has admitted reports that police in Genoa sang fascist anthems while torturing their prisoners.

None of this will surprise regular readers of this column, because you've been exposed to some historical background. That's not something you can expect from corporate media. The corporate media want you to forget history, preferably as soon as it happens.

The global elite wants the world to believe that everyone who opposes them is a communist. That's why the tiny minority of commie banners in Genoa were shown over and over again on TV. Don't be suckered by this propaganda. Keep foremost in your mind that the enemies of the NWO represent a wide variety of political persuasions, many of which hate one another. Anarchists, in particular, despise communists. The feeling is mutual. Whenever communists have gotten the chance, they've stacked anarchist bodies in pits.

The majority of the protesters, I'm sad to say, apparently don't want to smash the NWO but rather to "democratize" it (as if that were actually possible). All they want is a place at the table. They're not going to get it by begging, which is all that they have done, at least so far. The communists (as always a distinct minority) want the table for themselves. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The anarchists, however, want to kick the table over. I'm with them. Global corporate government cannot be reformed. It can't be done. It's basic premise is one of the world's three or four greatest evils, the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Reform that? Give me a break. It's like trying to reform cannibalism. What are you going to do, only eat strangers and then it's all right?

Forget reform. The anarchists are right on this one. Reform isn't possible. Anything governed from the top down serves only those at the top. This is equally true of the global economy, of all nation states, of every neighborhood however small, and even of families themselves. Anarchists know this. You should, too.

In Genoa last month an anarchist was shot dead in the street for actively refusing to be just one more head of livestock in a happy global herd. His name was Carlo Giuliani. He was more than a jaywalker, less than a terrorist. The corporate media told a great many lies about him. They want us to believe he was a "hoodlum," he was "on drugs," he was a "fool," he "got what he deserved." Above all, they want us to believe, he was shot because he "attacked" a police van with a fire extinguisher. Don't believe it. The photos show otherwise.

Click here to see what really happened. Look at the entire sequence of events. As the pictures clearly show, Carlo never threw the fire extinguisher. The carabinieri threw the fire extinguisher out the window of their vehicle. Then one of the carabinieri pointed his gun at the guy in the hooded sweatshirt and black motorcycle helmet. Then, and only then did Carlo pick up the fire extinguisher. Then the guy in the sweatshirt and the helmet began to run. The carabiniere's gun can be clearly seen pointed at where he had just been. Note how he holds it: not like a trained gunman but sideways, like a Hollywood gangster. It was aimed not at the guy with the bat in the foreground but at the photographer. Carlo, the hero, interposed his body between the gun and this journalist, whom it would have otherwise have hit and probably killed. He drew the carabiniere's fire away from photographer and onto himself. It was the last thing he ever did. It was doubtful that he had planned to die that day. His was apparently an act of immense but spontaneous courage. The carabinieri, on the other hand, had definitely planned to kill. Why else would they have brought 200 body bags?

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who throws himself between a human being, especially a journalist, and a bullet is a hero. Don't try to tell me otherwise. I don't want to hear it. Why an anarchist would want at all to save the life of a journalist, after the century of slander that anarchists have endured at the hands of the press, is a separate issue. But he did. He held the fire extinguisher up in front of himself as a shield. He never threw it. He never tried to throw it. He didn't have the time. The pictures show this clearly. But whether he threw it or not is irrelevant. Even if he had thrown it, shooting him the head would not have been one bit more appropriate a response.

What should you do if a guy, any guy, be he a cop, a robber, a soldier, a psycho, or anybody at all, points a gun at the person standing next to you? What is the appropriate response to a situation like that? More to the point, what would you yourself do? Would you interpose your own body between that person and the gun, risking almost certain death to save his or her life? If not, why not? Only one explanation is possible: cowardice. In a situation like that only two responses are possible: heroism and cowardice. There is no middle ground. Carlo chose heroism. It cost him his life. Don't let him have died in vain. Honor him, not with a moment of silence but with whole life of struggle. Don't mourn. Organize.

__________________________

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