(I wrote it)
>This is the BIG probelm with using the media as your source for
>information about the movement. The reality is that all the
>protests have included large and well attended counter-summits
>to which the media were invited and at which a mixture of
>names and ordinary activists discussed their vision for
>an alterntive world and other messages. I know I was one of the
>speakers in Prague (as an activist), the texts of my talks are at
>http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/andrew.html
Well, it's all relative, isn't it. In times when mass mobilisations are thin on the ground the anti-capitalist protests look like mass actions, But I think it's pretty plain that they pass by most of those that they are taken in the name of.
>
>Amazingly not only does the media not cover these events in the
>hundreds of hours coverage they give (at least in the case of
>Nice) they also turn around and accuse the protesters of
>not knowing what they want. And people who rely on the media
>for their analaysis echo this! The truth is we are not
>rich, we don't own major papers, TV or Radio so our ability
>to 'gain a wider audience for our views' is limited to
>internet sites like
>http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm/global.html
>and to whatever printing we can afford money and time to.
Yes, but that's a given, isn't it? If anything I would say that the anti-summit protests got a good deal of coverage. The incoherence is in the protests themselves.
>What complete nonsense - the protests are composed of 'everything foreign'
>in that they never consist simply of people from the host country
>but also people from a huge range of other countries. Again
>see my talks for why we are against their globalisation but
>actually represent a globalisation of our own - something nobody
>objected to!
It's hardly my own unique view that the anti-globalisation protests have a parochial trajectory. On the contrary, it's something many have noted.
>
>So a Canadian speaking in London against capitalist globalisation
>was really speaking in favour of British capital and against
>foreign (including Canadian) capital!! These are not _national_
>mobilisations, they are international ones and in that
>context there is no 'foreign' capital and no 'national'
>capital.
All I can say is that the politics of many of those associated with the protests (like George Monbiot for example) hold up small local business as a positive to the negative of globalisation.
-- James Heartfield