One could argue that the destruction of the anti-globalization movement, that was in the process of generating alternative institutions such as the World and European Social Forums, removed global capitalist neoliberalism a free reign
in many ways, we can blame Berlusconi for destroying the future in July 2001 and now destroying it again today with the current crisis
Berlsconi's Mousetrap http://vimeo.com/8672001
Nick Davies, Guardian journalist behind Phone Hacking & Wikileaks on Berlusconi and Genoa G8 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/17/italy.g8
Sky or Mark Covell, COP15 connection http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/jul/17/covell.g8genoa
also, the head of the Genoa Social Forum has a 10 year retrospective book vagnoletto at primapersone.org http://www.vittorioagnoletto.it/ http://books.google.com/books?id=ESQ5DHlasJYC&lpg=PA1&dq=Vittorio%20Agnoletto&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false
The bloody battle of Genoa
When 200,000 anti-globalisation protesters converged on the Italian city hosting the G8 summit in 2001, all but a handful came to demonstrate peacefully. Instead, many were beaten to a pulp by seemingly out-of-control riot police. But was there something more sinister at play? And will the victims ever see proper justice? Nick Davies reports Most of the several hundred law officers involved in Diaz and Bolzaneto have escaped without any discipline or criminal charge. None has been suspended; some have been promoted. None of the officers who were tried over Bolzaneto has been charged with torture - Italian law does not recognise the offence. Some senior officers who were originally going to be charged over the Diaz raid escaped trial because Zucca was simply unable to prove that a chain of command existed. Even now, the trial of the 28 officers who have been charged is in jeopardy because the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is pushing through legislation to delay all trials dealing with events that occurred before June 2002. Nobody has been charged with the violence inflicted on Covell. And as one of the victims' lawyers, Massimo Pastore, put it: "Nobody wants to listen to what this story has to say."
That is about fascism. There are plenty of rumours that the police and carabinieri and prison staff belonged to fascist groups, but no evidence to support that. Pastore argues that that misses the bigger point: "It is not just a matter of a few drunken fascists. This is mass behaviour by the police. No one said 'No.' This is a culture of fascism." At its heart, this involved what Zucca described in his report as "a situation in which every rule of law appears to have been suspended."
Fifty-two days after the attack on the Diaz school, 19 men used planes full of passengers as flying bombs and shifted the bedrock of assumptions on which western democracies had based their business. Since then, politicians who would never describe themselves as fascists have allowed the mass tapping of telephones and monitoring of emails, detention without trial, systematic torture, the calibrated drowning of detainees, unlimited house arrest and the targeted killing of suspects, while the procedure of extradition has been replaced by "extraordinary rendition". This isn't fascism with jack-booted dictators with foam on their lips. It's the pragmatism of nicely turned-out politicians. But the result looks very similar. Genoa tells us that when the state feels threatened, the rule of law can be suspended. Anywhere. -- Nicholas Roberts US 510-684-8264 http://Permaculture.TV http://permaculture.coop