[Dissent-fr-info] BLOCK G8 2009!

[Dissent! France Info Newsletter]

hey,

finally we managed to translate a summary about preparations in italy against the G8
(thx to the translators l., m., s., j. and a.!). find it online on
http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/G8_2009_english/6992.html. hopefully we send a
translated summary about governmental and police preparation soon.

the information is around 10 days old, don't miss to get the updates about l'aquila,
the camps (http://www.radicaleyes.it) and above all, the call for the big
demonstration in turin next week (where they already occupied the office of the
minister of education to protest against G8). more information on
http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15.

greetinks

mat

*Direct actions, demonstrations, appeals and events against the G8 summit in Italy*

In recent weeks progress is being made in the mobilization against the G8 summit in
Italy. Particularly the planned transfer of the G8 site to the earthquake region of
L´Aquila and to Rome (1) have caused intense debates and great interest in the
present state of preparations.

“220 million Euros already being designated for La Maddalena can be saved“,
Berlusconi stated, stressing to give reasons for the transfer to L´Aquila. Sardinian
precarious workers object that with reference to the expenses for the construction of
the G8-facilities planned for future elite conferences and luxury holidays in the
archipelago northeast of Olbia, 320 million euros “have been thrown out of the
window.“ (2) Altogether the holding of the G8 summit on La Maddalena was supposed to
cost 400 million Euros. It is not clear what will happen with the allegedly remaining
180 million: do they serve for the completion of the far advanced measures on
Sardinia or will they really benefit the disaster victims as promised by the
Berlusconi government?

Only last week the security plannings on La Maddalena – at least on the “first level“
– were declared completed. (3)

Events and protests should be held as far away as possible from the summit area, the
Schengen Agreement about renouncing identity checks at crossborder traffic should be
appealed. At airports and ferry harbours, at several European harbours with
connections to Sardinia as well as at the borders to Italy, border controls and
longer waiting times were predicted. The summit area on La Maddalena and the cruise
ship MSC Fantasia were planned to be surrounded by three safety belts in which
traffic should be restricted or rather stopped, ferry crossings to La Maddalena were
to be applied for. The sea around La Maddalena archipelago should be locked up around
a wide area, flights of about 50,000 passengers diverted to Olbia. Red Cross,
hospitals, police and fire brigade have had a practice manoeuvre in Olbia.

Popular Kitchen “Carlo Giuliani“

Besides a supposed saving of costs the summit is planned to be transferred to prevent
eventual protests to the greatest possible extent: “I don´t believe that
anti-globalists will have the courage to organize violent demonstrations in this
earthquake-stricken region“, Berlusconi stated. (4) Leftist groups and activists
although are present in the Abruzzi right from the start and have appealed for
support of the persons affected by the earthquake. They commit themselves in camps
taking matters into their own hands, in operating large kitchens, in providing
further infrastructure as well as in delivering material aids and healthy food.
Already on the same day of the earthquake the initiative “Epicentro Sociale“
(solidarity epicentre) was founded. (5)

The regional council of the Rifondazione Comunista attacked Berlusconi´s comment that
leftist protesters would not come into the disaster area: “I want to inform the
president that the anti-globalists arrived together with the Civil Guard – and in
many places even before them“, according to the regional council of Rifondazione
Comunista . (6)

Hundreds of volunteers of Rifondazione Comunista, social centres, environment groups,
Catholic trainees and social forums have distributed food, blankets and medicine to
the earthquake-stricken population and gave all kinds of assistance. The camp kitchen
in San Bagio was already on the first day named after Carlo Giuliani, who was shot
dead by police during the G8 summit in 2001.

On the Italian web-platform Indymedia the helpers raise heavy reproaches against the
state-run aid organizations in the camps and in general and denounce an “extortive
pressure for national unity“. (7)

On the 10th of April cars and a van with supplies was stopped by the Carabinieri. The
transport was organized by students of Naples, material and companions were on their
way to a self-governed camp. The convoy was stopped and taken to the provincial
police headquarters. According to the Carabinieri, the self-governed aid programmes
were a “masked extensive plundering manoeuvre“. Only when the news circulated in the
Italian media the convoy was released.

Meanwhile there is the appeal “Appropriate the mountains, bury G8!“ (8) calling upon
the “Global Multitude“ to seize the opportunity in the Abruzzi to build “sustainable,
forward thinking communities,” 10 years after the Seattle group “Diggers 2.0“
appealed for “Solidarity out of the ruins of Neoliberalism“:
“We need solutions of the crisis from down below, an opposing power of social
movements with a shovel in its hand getting ready to build a post-capitalist world.
Call upon the global multitude to come to Abruzzo from 7th to 11th of July to help
rebuild Abruzzo“.

Militarized disaster control organization

The extraordinary ministerial council convened on the occasion of the state of
emergency has appointed Franco Gabrielli as prefect of L´Aquila. Gabrielli started
his career with the political police “Digos“ in Imperia and changed later to the head
office in Rome. He was responsible for the police conducting a coordinated action
against the organization succeeding the “Red Brigades“, after which two arrested
persons were found responsible for the deaths of Massimo D´Antona and Marco Biagi.
After the operation he became chief of the internationally operating secret service
“Servizio Centrale Antiterrorismo“. A few years ago he drew up together with the
current Chief of Police Antonio Manganelli an investigation practice manual.

„L´Aquila is militarized“, it seems like „practical military occupation exercises“,
claim people who feel victimized by the actions. (9) “The earthquake lays reality
open as it really is: separated between rich and poor“. The population and helpers
obviously get harassed by police forces at the service of the emergency apparatus of
state: “They run after us, they forbid us, they command us, they tell us off when we
try to take back our houses“. Reports in opposition to the militarization document
that under the earthquake ruins numerous migrants are buried and not turning up in
the official statistics. (10) A Romanian nurse who was about to rescue her belongings
together with some friends out of the house she had lived in, was arrested together
with her companions and taken to court for looting in specially held proceedings.

Newspapers were reporting extensively about this and thus intensified the
anti-Romanian atmosphere, however when the woman was acquitted the press abruptly
lost their interest.

Impregilo

The power of the earthquake was not the cause for the full extent of the damages as
much as speculative, grossly negligent methods of construction and neglect of
regulations. In the centre of critique is the Italian company Impregilo (11) which
had constructed many of the collapsed buildings. According to enquiries the houses
were manufactured partly with concrete mixed with sea sand. Steal reinforcement
corroded therefore much faster, and the houses weren’t stable anymore. Impregilo used
to belong to the Fiat group and is part of a consortium of Benetton, Gavio and
Ligresti today. After Berlusconi’s election the Impregilo share rapidly shot up. The
company is planning to realize a project of prestige costing into the billions, the
Messina bridge between Sicily and the mainland, one of the election promises of
Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s career itself is connected with a construction industry notorious for
corruption; he is supposed to have received funds from the secret lodge Propaganda
2.(12) Impregilo has drawn attention to itself with numerous scandals and is
responsible for the militarization of Naples´ “rubbish scandal“. The company also has
not completed construction of a refuse incineration plant in spite of the completion
of the contract in 1998. As a result a court had charged 27 managers and politicians.

Impregilo is constructing a tunnel for the high speed train TAV (13) in the Susa
valley north of Turin. This project is provoking fierce and militant resistance from
the population over the last 20 years, because the work releases natural uranium and
asbestos. Supported by activists of social centres they had occupied the construction
site in 2006. After the police had cleared and afterwards occupied the site
themselves, their supplies were cut off by blockading protesters. After 20 hours the
police gave up. The result was a temporary halt to construction, but in March
Berlusconi announced the construction to go on again. (14)
International climate activists as well are criticizing Impregilo. The company holds
the biggest share of a planned aluminium power station in Iceland, is constructing
world-wide numerous controversial dam projects (15) and intends to build nuclear
power plants in Italy.(16)

Protests have strengthened against G8

Since the announcement that the Summit will be transferred to L’ Aquila and Rome,
plans for doing protests are increasing over the international mailing-lists. Also in
Berlin, there will be a demonstration called “We are your crisis”.(17)

First protests against the G8 have already taken place in Italy. The G8-Ministers of
Agriculture have already met in Castelbrando. Before that, activists of the group
called “Health and Environment” had written “NO OGM” (no genetically modified
organisms) into a field, which was unable to be overlooked from an aerial view. But
to “avoid instrumentalisation and polemics” they announced “on advice of the police
president Damiano” to remove the signature before the G8-Meeting themselves.

At the beginning of the G8-Meeting, there was a public Assembly against the G8
Agricultural Ministers meeting in Treviso (18). 3,000 police had been mobilised,
flights in the area were banned, police controls and limited access were installed.
There have been protest initiatives and actions of anarchists, disobbedienti, and
activists from the social centers as well as the Italian federation of farmers,
demonstrating against environmental destruction, industrial agriculture, Nano- and
genetic technology. In Rome, workers in the field of agriculture were on strike for
eight hours. Activists of Ya Basta fenced in the Benetton-Store in Treviso with
barbed wire to protest against the exploitation of workers in Patagonia through Benetton.
Before the police and press massively began a propaganda campaign against certain
actions of a “black bloc”, because there was a call for an assembly to “radically
change the status quo, to start a broadly received protest, in which the desire for
direct action can be discovered and coordinated”(19). The media sounded the “black
bloc-alarm” (20).
One day before the meeting of the Ministers of Agriculture, in Ca’ Tron in Roncade a
laboratory for experiments with genetically modified organisms was “sanctioned from
below” (21).

After activists accessed the area, they were throwing stones on the green houses and
surveillance cameras and were spray painting “No OGM” on the walls: “With this action
we want to unmask the hypocracy of those who see genetically modified organisms as an
experiment with positive output towards the solution of environmental, economic and
social problems. This is our welcoming ceremony to the delegations of those that
believe, that they can rule the world on the backs of billions of people.” The paper
was signed with “Social Centers of the North East”. Shortly after that, the police
announced a manhunt and arrested 4 persons in a car, who supposedly had been on the
flight from the crime scene (22).

Some days later, the police searched six “flats of ex-disobbedienti” from Treviso and
the social center Ubik-Lab in Ponzano Veneto (Treviso). Supposedly 10 people had been
identified during the action in Ca’ Tron. As incriminating evidence, a Computer, hard
drive, paint pots and maps of Ca’ Tron, in which the area around the center has been
marked, shoes and brochures were been confiscated. The police claimed that the
activists were planning another “attack” during the G8-Meeting inside the Red Zone.
The speaker of the attacked Social Centers are declaring the accusations and Razzias
as “ridiculous and surreal” (23). Accusations include breach of public peace, and
property destruction for five people in the heavier case with destruction of an
electricity distributor for the climatisation of the green houses, the windows of the
laboratory and of four surveillance cameras (24).

In Siracusa/ Sicily, a demonstration of up to 3,000 people against the meeting of the
Ministers of Environment of the G8-countries, who were meeting – like in the Northern
Italian Castelbrando – in a historic castle, has been the peak of a two-month long
mobilisation and was seen by all participants as very positive (25). The most
important result of the action has been to transform the broad collection of groups
(26) against the G8-Environment-Summit into a “steady coordination”, which stands as
a movement (27) of diversity, which is opposing the speculation and destruction”,
that on Sicily and even cross-border are of really heavy (28), “from now on, there
will be support, starting with the fight against the erection of gas digesters in the
Petrochemie complex of Priolo-Augusta”.

A very important and present number of participants have been the numerous
self-organised migrants at the protests (29), who raised clear demands on banners to
the Italian government, the prefectures and the Police Chief.
Leading up to the demonstration, a three day long counter summit had been held, at
which numerous initiatives had been involved together with activists from a broad
political spectrum – including the labor unions Cobas, Rifondazione Comunista and
several Social Centres, which on Sicily are already fighting against the planned
construction- (30), Industry (31) and NATO-large scale projects. (32). They are
criticising and fighting them, because they are adding to incredibly heavy damage of
the environment and the living conditions (33) of the people, which are already quite
poor (34), and which is only serving the profits of business interests in the
national and global political and context. Moreover the engagement of activists from
further regions of Italy´s South has been noticed.

The motto of the counter summit has been: “An attack on the Island of the Future: the
Environment-G8. Nuclear power, waste incineration, environmental pollution, garbage,
military bases. We are not going to pay for your crisis with our land!”. The 22nd of
April was dedicated to the “Array of effective, independent to any profit interests,
proposals on the topic of Environment”, while on the next day a “round table” –
parallel to the general strike of the unions – “recent topics like work, precarity
and societal fights” were addressed, whereas the pressure – transported over the
media, which had not payed any attention to the contents of the G8-Protestors – on
the upcoming demonstration more and more were changing the athmosphere (35).

Another part of the success of the initiatives against the Environment Summit was
probably the political closeness (36) of the demonstrating summit protestors, despite
the repression of the security offices and the signals of appreciation shown by the
inhabitants, which – actually waiting for the demonstration (37) – was in assembled
in large numbers at the sides of the streets.
Videos show pictures that prove, how officials tried to create a climate related to
the G8 2001 in Genoa.
The police showed over days and weeks in diverse ways an absolute drive for
surveillance and announced explicitly their high preparedness for repression:
“Since days the citizens are living in a kind of induced nightmare, because the
Police Force and the prefecture had warned those involved: Everything is possible, we
can not offer no security in the field of public order: the “Black Block” is just
underneath us.” (38). Only the Mayor of Siracus tried to mitigate the climate of
fear, totally the opposite of his colleague in Treviso, who advised the shop keepers
personally to keep their shops closed. But most of the business owners were not
paying attention to the Mayor, but to the buzz of the media and the security
organisations (39).

Leading up to the meeting hard controls were carried out in cities including Catania
(40) and Messina and even complete closing (41) of the train Messina-Siracusa had
taken place. The travellers have been forced to go on with another train, potential
counter summit participants and demonstrators were bullied and partially blocked from
going to Siracusa in time for the demonstration. In the wake of street controls, car
and bus searches (42), arrests and bans (43) have been performed, eventually because
someone had an axe handle with him because he was working in the field of agriculture
and some stones he was collecting because of their beautiful shape.
Even if before the protest, the demonstrators have been differentiate in their
disagreements about the cutting of their rights through repression and surveillance,
during the demonstration and at the big barricade with which the accessing street to
the castle in which the G8 Environmental Ministers were meeting, have been blocked,
the demonstrators appeared enclosed and loudly voiced their opinion (44). There were
also presentations about the G8 in Genoa and remembering Carlo Giuliani (45).

When the demonstration was starting with a few hundred participants, they were
applauded by the citizens at the side of the streets. The support of the local people
was present on the whole protest route. A big group of the Ultras Siracusa was
greeting the demonstrators with loud chants about the topic of repression (46). On
the way to the final rally point the demonstration grew towards some thousand people.

The acceptance of the population was clearly the beginnings of a “Permanent
cooperation against speculation and environmental destruction” in Sicily with
coordination and courage of the participants, who against repressive conditions (47)
had sucessfully made the first large protest against the G8 since Genoa in 2001. As
the numerous video reports showed, the final rally proved to be happy and joyous, and
fully of empathetic thanks to all of the march participants, the local people, and to
the lawyers of the “Democratic Forum” who had given their legal support.

The need for protection to demonstrate will stay exceedingly high until the very last
moment. Italy has seen months of new, sharp demonstation regulations (49), setting
organisers under heavy pressure.

The G8 Environmental Minister meeting in Sicily was organised by the Italian
Environmental Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo (50), who, along with her family, owns
a number of polluting businesses. She belongs to the so-called “Institutional
Playgirls” of the Prime Minister, who has made his success as a media-tycoom on the
recipe of “tits, ass and pink-colored dreams.”

Also in Sardinia the protest movement had come. The “Mesa Sarda. A fora su G8”
(“Sardinien Table. Out with the G8”) plans for social justice and to fight for
national soverignty, and organised a meeting called “All nations without a
government.” The meeting is planned for 8-9 July, with a demonstration planned on the
10th in Olbia near La Maddalena.
“We from the anti-colonial Sardinian Independence Movement (51) will denounce how we
have been betrayed and taken advantage of like in a bad joke, and in our country the
hopes of the Sardinians have been used like a throw-away foot rag. First we were
fooled by the Italian state about infrastructural improvements, the road between
Sassari and Olbia, that is, and about work opportunities raining on a huge scale over
a country already exhausted by unemployment. Then they diverted the means designated
for these infrastructures and annexed the entire hotel plant running, the touristic
harbour and the plants on the Arsenale site on La Maddalena, financed by us
Sardinians, to the president of the employers´ association“
Press release of Mesa Sarda concerning the G8-location transfer (52).

In an interview Mesa Sarda member Bastiano Cumpostu explained: „We from Mesa Sarda A
fora su G8 have issues in common with the no globals. We don´t agree that our region
is going to be used as a living room for the G8 heads of state“.
„The summit participants will hear from us“, announced also Francesco Caruso,
ex-parliamentarian with Rifondazione Comunista and earlier representative of the
„disobbedienti“ in an interview for the Sardinian daily newspaper L´Unione Sarda.

The ex-parliamentarian with Rifondazione Comunista criticizes the striving for the
absence of every political protest (53):
„(Berlusconi) is taking advantage of the drama of the homeless for propaganda reasons
and at the same time intends to cut the right to demonstrate of opponents of
globalization“.

„The fact that the leaders of the world hide on an island is a sign of weakness. For
years now the critics of globalization point to economic and environmental risks.
Now, all our predictions are happening, and the leaders of the world are barricading
themselves in“. Francesco Caruso (54)

The announced protests against the G8 university presidents´ summit from 17th to 19th
of May in Turin (55) are probably going to be exciting. The movement against the
„Gelmini Reform“ is calling for blockading the meeting (56). The broad protest
movement against mass discharges and reforms in the education sector and the loss of
autonomy last year had resulted in partly fierce and militant mass protests.

Already in the run-up to the meeting of the G8-ministers of agriculture supposed
police insights were sensationally propagated through the media about planned
protests with supposed preparations of militant actions of a „black bloc“. The
construct of the „black bloc“ is going around in the Italian public since the G8 in
Genoa in 2001. In court trials police and public prosecutor´s office have tried to
make the „black bloc“ as an „international terroristic organization“ a fixed
juristical point and to sentence activists to heavy imprisonments for membership in
the same.

„Security circles“ suppose to have observed since one year that „small Anarchist
groups“ out of France, Great Britain and Germany were spying out the region around La
Maddalena.

Links

(1) http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/30/30215/1.html
(2) http://precariispra.blogspot.com/2009/04/g8-laquila-quel-che-il-premier-non-ha.html
(3) http://www.sardinien.com/blog/2009/04/sicherheitsmanahmen-straensperrungen.cfm
(4) http://nrwz-online.de/v5/rottweil/00026322
(5) http://www.epicentrosolidale.org
(6) http://www.umbrialeft.it/node/16957
(7) http://abruzzo.indymedia.org/article/6263
(8) http://www.radicaleyes.it
(9)
http://femminismo-a-sud.noblogs.org/post/2009/04/12/abruzzo-prove-tecniche-di-occupazione-militare
(10) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz8GuoCjIKo
(11) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impregilo
(12) http://www.wsws.org/de/2009/apr2009/ital-a15.shtml
(13) http://www.notavtorino.org/documenti/tedesco/zehntausende.htm
(14) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4072624,00.html?maca=de-rss-de-all-1119-rdf
(15) http://www.ilisu.org.uk/impregilo.html
(16)
http://www.ateneinrivolta.org/content/inchiesta-sul-terremoto-dellassemblea-di-psicologia-1-e-2-de-la-sapienza-0
(17) http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/La_Maddalena_2009/6905.html
(18) http://www.oggitreviso.it/g8-allerta-contro-black-bloc-14354
(19) http://www.oggitreviso.it/g8-allarme-sicurezza-14302
(20) http://gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=54001&ordine=asc
(21) http://www.globalproject.info/art-19611.html
(22) http://www.oggitreviso.it/assalto-ca-tron-14487
(23)
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www_de.cgi/http://www.gazzettino.it/articolo.php?id=55805&sez=NORDEST
(24) http://www.venetouno.com/leggi_notizia.asp?Notizia=5823&UpdateCount=true
(25) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s21oeAuII0
(26) http://calabria.indymedia.org/article/3402
(27) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKDlx_QHHjg
(28) http://wapedia.mobi/de/Augusta-Priolo
(29) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGe38A4nbog
(30) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q39nZtSG8D0
(31) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihtb_LFDp3Y
(32) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXJK_wabTXo
(33) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmbIPYdqTHE
(34) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=410OSnr3-4E
(35) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGCUT2VvQkw
(36) http://calabria.indymedia.org/article/3440
(37) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymT2KDWQgc
(38) http://www.carta.org/campagne/ambiente/17254
(39) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOBUk7PbHWY&feature=related
(40) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiH7O9LTMvE
(41) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McrfLZ95SoQ&feature=relateddes
(42) http://calabria.indymedia.org/article/3464
(43) http://calabria.indymedia.org/article/3463
(44) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTLNodv8JlE&feature=related
(45) http://www.consorziodellearti.it/contro-G8-230409-corteo.wmv (timecode 05:57)
(46) http://www.step1.it/index.php?id=5391-loro-g8-in-piazza-un-popolo
(47) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMqdtUDGwl0
(48) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMqdtUDGwl0&NR=1
(49) http://gipfelsoli.org/Home/La_Maddalena_2009/6091.html
(50) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWfUIk1uDHE
(51) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvCCRZuMfKI
(52) http://g82009.splinder.com/post/20388522/Comunicato+Stampa+%22Mesa+Sarda++
(53) http://www.jungewelt.de/2009/04-27/026.php
(54) http://www.sardinien.com/blog/2009/04/protestbewegung-gegen-den-g8-gipfel-auf.cfm
(55) http://g8u-summit.jp/english
(56)
http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=157:against-the-unsustainable-g8-university-summit&catid=34:struggles&Itemid=53

Mobilisation against G8 2009 in Italy

    * altrog8 www.altrog8.org
    * Contra a su g8 http://contraasug8.altervista.org
    * Contro il G8 agricoltura www.assemblea.gelohc.com
    * Contro il G8 dell’università a Palermo http://palermocontrog8.blogspot.com
    * EduFactory http://www.edu-factory.org
    * G8 Università Torino www.notremonti.org
    * G8 University summit http://g8u-summit.jp/english
    * Onda No G8 http://ondanog8.blogspot.com
    * Osservatorio Informazione G8 2009
          o http://g82009.splinder.com
          o www.g82009.altervista.org
    * radicaleyes.i www.radicaleyes.it
    * Rappresentanze Sindicali http://sardegna.rdbcub.it
    * Rete Anarchica Antimilitarista www.reteantimilitarista.info
    * Rifondazione Sardegna http://rifondazionelibera.blogspot.com
    * rosso vivo www.rossovivo.net
    * Sardigna Ruja http://sardignaruja.altervista.org
    * sardinien.com http://www.sardinien.com/blog/labels/g8.cfm
    * towardsG8 www.towardsg8-2009.org/events
    * Verso il g8 di torino! http://corsari-milano.noblogs.org

Source: http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/L_Aquila_2009/G8_2009_english/6992.html

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