I am not able to say much about this summit and conflict between the people and the oligarchy, just that the temperature has been rising and it's getting quite hot in spite of the massive police deployment and the hundreds of arrests.For more information:· G20 Alt Media Centre· G8/G20 Toronto Community Mobilization
Update (Jun 28): Global Research reports that the supposed rioters that burnt that car and attacked a Starbucks shop were in fact undercover police agents, eventually identified by their shoes. Police has admitted their guilt.
Now and then we get some good news for a change. Sadly some of these good news seem to be hidden by the mainstream Imperial media and we have to look at alternative sources to get to know them. This is the case of the sentence against 25 police officers who lead or took part in the 2001 assault against a school in Genoa that was the base of a group of nonviolent protesters against the G8 summit that year and participants in the alternative Genoa Social Forum held simultaneously in the same location. The trial revokes a previous sentence from 2004 that only condemned some of the police agents involved in situ but acquainted the whole command chain that gave the orders, sentencing them to a total of 85 years of prison for falsification in second degree (they introduced explosives in the school) and severe injuries (one of the victims died, many others were seriously harmed). The sentence is still under what the state attorneys demanded: a total of 110 years. However this is not the official position of the government that has declared its support for the attackers.Sources:· Diagonal Aragón (in Spanish)· Processi G8 (in Italian)
15 of them have been sentenced to penalties that range to a maximum of 5 years of jail for the chief of the prision brigade that was in charge when most of the abuses happened. 30 others have been acquitted. In that infamous day of the 2001 Genoa G8 summit, anti-riot police massively and indiscriminately arrested activists of all sorts, beating them brutally, causing one dead and comitting other abuses such as focing women to strip in front of male agents. But judicial severity has been much harsher for activists, some of which have been sentenced (in a separate trial) to 11 years in jail. There is still another trial under way against 29 policemen accused of abuses in a separate detention center. (Source: Al Jazeera).
The Comitee Truth and Justice for Genoa asks in regard to this trial: is Italy still a democracy? They think the penalties are way too soft:
What is evidenced and scares is the consideration that have in our country the violations of fundamental rights: a minor crime destined to prescription in tribunals, totally irrelevant for politicians, that in all these years have been unable to pass a law against torture and fire the public servants (in some cases they have even been promoted!) involved in the processes for the Genoa G8 meeting. In Bolzanetto [the jail near Genoa] unacceptable abuses were comitted. Mistreatment to detainees is totally incompatible with democracy. In these years a climate of impunity has been promoted. We ask to the political forces and the Parliament: is Italy still a democracy?
The next G8 summit will be in Japan and the people there are already getting ready to protest. But police is getting ready too and has distributed an incredible poster that associates mostly peaceful anti-globalization grassroots struggle with "terrorism":The G8 is a select club of some of the wealthiest and most powerful states in the world and their summits, as well as other related conferences, are percieved as a sort of elitist Global Government. The G8 members are: USA (1st power by GDP (PPP)), Japan (3rd), Germany (5th), United Kingdom (6th), Russia (7th), France (8th), Italy (10th) and Canada (13th). China (2nd global power by this standard), India (4th), Brazil (9th), Spain (11th), Mexico (12th) and South Korea (14th) are for historical reasons (read: Eurocentrism, neocolonialism, etc.) not included in the group. Japan is the only G8 member that does not have European culture and, together with Russia, the only one that does not belong to NATO.
More info on Japan police-induced paranoia, with rare collectable posters or 21st century parlamentary police-state can be found at Debito.
Schedule for your alternative holidays in Japan (anti-globalization protests and the like):
June:
· 26-27 (Kyoto): Demonstration against the Foreign Ministers' meeting
· 28-29 (Tokyo): Deminstration against the G8
July:
· 1 (Tokyo): International Forum against the G8
· 1-4 (Sapporo): Tematic activities· 3 (Sapporo): Punks against the G8
· 3 (Sapporo): International Conference on antimilitarism and women
· 5 (Sapporo): International Action Day
· 5 (Chitose): Protest at the airport
· 7-9 (Lake Toya): Blockade of G8 meeting
· 6-8 (Sapporo): Alternative Summit
· 7-9 (Lake Toya): Anarchist Football Cup
(Source: La Haine)
Sites to watch:
· NO-G8 Action Japan
· Japan Indymedia
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