[Sandy Sandfort]

"Anonymous" wrote:

> "Collateral damage" occurs in any
> battle. If you hold the battle in
> Switzerland the "collateral damage"
> would simply include a higher "loss
> of human life" content...
>
> The real issue is the fact that the
> battle takes place.

*IF* the battle takes place.  What if they gave a war and nobody came?  I
really doubt there would be any greater loss of human life were the meeting
held in Switzerland for reasons I'll get into below.

> Protestors don't gather and put
> their personal well-being at risk
> for no reason...

That's an interesting, but unsupported assumption.

> ...In the case of those protesting
> in Genoa, the reasons are varied
> but centered around a single point:
> globalization and big government
> has not helped the people.

Those may be their STATED reasons, but I submit that you have no idea what
the "protestors" actual motivations are.  If we all look back to our younger
days, I think we can see a much more plausible explanation for their
actions.  Hell raising.

For certain people at certain ages, it's FUN to riot, throw things at the
cops, trash stores, overturn cars and burn stuff.  It is exactly the real
lack of coherent messages from the "protestors" that supports this obvious
conclusion.  At the University of Michigan, the riots were basically the
same, only the justification was more banal--the outlawing of booze on
campus.

It should be obvious that these riots are not so much ideologically
motivated (though that's the pseudo-rational), but testosterone motivated.
Most of these monkeys couldn't spell anarchy let alone understand it
philosophically.  Let's not confuse the cover story with the real
motive--fucking stuff up for the fun of it.

 Money doesn't matter; government doesn't matter; people
> do matter. The people have not been helped by the forces of globalization.
> The people have not been helped by the World Bank, IMF, G8. That is, the
> people that populate the cities and farm the countryside. The
> elite few % of
> the people who control the world, via government and corporations, exploit
> the rest of the world for their benefit. G8 is just one of their
> tools. They
> are helped by the World Bank. They are the ones being opposed by the
> protestors. They will be made accountable for their actions--these battles
> will not end.
>
> Revolutions and Civil Wars have occurred regularly for hundreds of years
> over this very issue. This war has simply escalated to the scale
> that is has
> because the enemy has escalated to the scale that it has. It takes tens of
> thousands or protestors to get a message out against a global governmental
> organization.
>
> Contrary to the statements made by current "world leaders", this is
> democracy in action.

So, if the "protestors" were faced with a REAL opportunity to get hurt,
other than the mostly fake danger of charging police lines, I doubt many
would bother to show up.  Hell, running with the bulls at Pamplona is a more
dangerous rite of passage than torching a MacDonald's in Genoa.

If you think these folks have deep ideological/philosophical support for
their rioting, you have been duped.


 S a n d y