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Genoa What You're Fighting For? |
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Of the thousands who gathered at Genoa to greet the G8 summiteers, all but a handful of thugs and anrchists were world citizens protesting at the Oligarchs who were intent on ruling the world for the benefit of their own nationals and the multi-national corporations that control the wealth of the world. They are folk, who, in the words of the world citizen identity card, framed in 1949, each one "undertook to recognize his responsibilities as a member of the world community". They believe that those responsibilities include protest about the predations of global capitalist corporations and the crippling debts inflicted upon the peoples of Africa and elsewhere. Tony Blair, speaking for the Oligarchs, raged against the protestors, on behalf of the "democratically-elected leaders" who were trying to meet and decide to dole out their benevolences to the poor of Africa and a few other places, along with the medicines to keep epidemics at bay and reduce the threat to the northern world. But the dispensers of charity have rarely collected the plaudits that they feel they deserve and the charity of the G8 leaders is seriously weakened by their past record and by their present handling of the world economy. With a world about to sink into recession, the pitifully small-scale measures that are still recommended - dwarfed by everyday capital flows across frontiers - are nowhere near what is needed. The Oligarchs know that they have a flawed world organization, the United Nations, which is semi-democratic and which they use as it suits them, but they make no attempt to reform it into a democratic institution. The United Nations is good enough to use when the Security Council can be persuaded to agree but ignored when it expresses the popular detestation of nuclear weapons or other abuses maintained by the Security Council members. World democracy is not a phrase that comes easily to their lips, if at all. They presume, on the basis ot the support of something under a half ot their own small electorates, to inform the vast multitudes in the rest of the world of their own good intentions and measures which, "democratically", they have determined upon. The Oligarchs have had their chance. In 1945 they set up a series of institutions and declared, as victors in the Second World War, that they intended to end world illiteracy, poverty and hunger, reduce inequality, abolish war and create a future of peace and prosperity. For themselves and their populations they largely succeeded. But after 56 years for the majority of the world's peoples they have failed, because they have been more intent upon preserving their own favoured positions and status. Now, with the WTO and globalization as its tool they offer to do more of the same. Not surprisingly, there are many people who do not wish to wait another 56 years. We can be grateful to the anarchist gangs for bringing the world's press to observe the interest of thousands of protestors in the G8 summit but their role is strictly limited. If their frantic and destructive efforts were to worst the police, the result would certainly be the sort of response that the last days of the Weimar republic saw, when the Communists decided only to oppose the democratic government because it was not left-wing enough; they merely succeeded in paving the way for a Nazi party that truly believed in violence on a really big scale. If violent protests succeed, a frightened populace will not turn to reform, but to repression of anarchists and anyone else who deals in terror. There is no remedy for the world's ills save for us to tread the path of law, non-violence and democracy. Not until we can give every person on earth a share in determining the future of humanity will we be safe against the threat of splits and violence, of which the protests at Seattle, Quebec City and Genoa are the forerunners. But we have to show the protestors of Genoa that what they are demonstrating, above all, is their belief in world citizenship, the conviction that what happens to the human race as a whole is more important and more urgent that the junketings of the Oligarchs and their rich supporters; and more important than the manoeuvrings and machinations of the national governments.
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