> Black Bloc style street fighting, property damage and general political
> violence was used as a "valid excuse" in 2001 to smash the left on an
> institutional and a personal level for hundreds of thousands of activists
This is nonsense, and is basically cheerleading for Berlusconi. The hundreds of thousands of people marching on and attempting to shut down the G8 summit were what caused the violent response of the Italian state; the black bloc may have made the images a little more photogenic from the point of view of the Italian state, but they had nothing to do with the scale of the state's response.
The Nick Davies article doesn't support your grotesque attempt to shift the blame away from the Italian police and government, quite the contrary. As Davies says, "Genoa tells us that when the state feels threatened, the rule of law can be suspended." The threat to the state came from the size of the anti-globalization movement, not from the actions of a comparatively small group within it.
--
"When placed in value-relation to the linen, the coat signifies more
than when out of that relation, just as many a man strutting about
in a gorgeous uniform counts for more than when in mufti."
-- Marx, _Capital_ Voyou Desoeuvre http://blog.voyou.org/