-Caveat Lector- http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,522008,00.html Genoa defends forbidden city from global protest Jails have been emptied and hospitals are on alert. Rory Carroll watches Italy prepare to welcome the G8 leaders and their enemies Sunday July 15, 2001 The Observer There are 242 entrances to the forbidden city, not counting the sewers, the sea or the sky. The defenders will wait behind blocks of reinforced concrete and steel fencing. Their helmets and shields are superior but they could be outnumbered 10 to one. Just one breach and the torrent will be unstoppable. Spies from both sides have infiltrated the enemy camp and will try to betray strategies. But like a battle of old the time and location have been agreed in advance. Next weekend the port of Genoa, squeezed between the Alps and the Mediterranean, France and Tuscany, will host a showdown between around 100,000 protesters and 15,000 Italian security forces guarding the G8 summit. Citizens who care about the environment, the poor and the voiceless will hammer on the door of unaccountable moguls who shape the planet's destiny. Or thugs who crave mayhem will try to stop democratically elected world leaders pondering the problems of the age. Or both. Genoa will be a crucial test of strength for the anti-globalisation movement. The warriors of Seattle bill this protest as their biggest yet.'We are witnessing the first stirrings of a cultural backlash to globalisation whose effects are likely to be significant and far-reaching,' said Jeremy Rifkin, one of the movement's gurus. 'Local cultures are reawakening every where in the world.' Dialogue between protesters and the Italian government has failed to produce agreement. Leaders of the world's seven most industrialised economies, plus Russia, will meet in the ducal palace. And demonstrators will try to stop them. 'We are going to start a great battle,' said the website of Rete Contro G8, one of the estimated 700 protest groups. A minority have pledged to use violence. It appears an uneven contest. One of Italy's biggest security operations will mobilise at least 15,000 police and soldiers, including paratroopers and specialists in nuclear, germ and chemical warfare. Twelve helicopters and four reconnaissance aircraft will zip overhead, warships and mini-submarines will prowl the bay where the 58,600-tonne cruise ship, European Vision, will play host to most of the summit participants. A battery of Spada ground-to-air missiles will bristle at Christopher Colombus Airport, lest the al-Qaida terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden tries an airborne spectacular. For Italy's newly minted Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, Genoa is a chance to strut the world stage. He has micro-managed the preparations, even down to re-arranging the furniture in George Bush's suite. Nudged by UN chief Kofi Annan and the Pope, the authorities have promised to allow freedom of protest, even to respect and listen to it. 'It will be an open city,' says the mayor. After all Genoa hosted the Crusaders on their way to the holy land. But the reality is that today's righteous warriors are not welcome. To impede and deter protesters, Italy yesterday suspended the Schengen agreement assuring free movement around the European Union. Both of Genoa's railway stations will close from Tuesday. Those protesters who make it to the city will be confronted by police with live ammunition, rubber bullets, batons, dogs, horses and armoured personnel carriers. Already the atmosphere in Genoa is tense. Hospitals have been put on alert, prisons prepared and extra magistrates drafted. Yesterday police cars lined piazzas and dogs sniffed railings stacked beside fountains. Residents joined tourists heading for the airport, leaving a queasy rearguard to swap rumours. 'A lawyer told me a mass grave has been prepared in the mountains,' said one taxi driver grimly. It will be a battle of colours. The authorities have declared the historic centre and port area a 1.5 sq mile 'red zone', with the Ducal palace at its heart. This is the forbidden city, off-limits to all except participants, journalists, security forces and residents. A buffer area known as the 'yellow zone' will allow entry to the uninvited, but can be sealed off within minutes should the need arise. The demonstrators will be a hotch-potch of environmentalists, anarchists, socialists and those wanting debt relief for the Third World. 'Protests in the 1960s were sparked by one international event - Vietnam,' said Keith Dowding, professor of political science at the London School of Economics. 'Now they are also sparked by an international event - globalisation. 'Another similarity with the Sixties is that today's protesters are middle class. That must be worrying for governments who rely on their middle classes to put them in power and keep their economies running.' Italy's security services categorise them thus: red for moderates, yellow for passive resisters, blue for the lefties of Italy's social centres and black for revolutionaries. The black and elements of the blue, a hardcore of around 2,000 Greeks, Basques, Britons, Germans and Italians, are expected to defy the control and peaceful tactics of the umbrella protest group, the Genoa Social Forum. The GSF's spokesman and effective general, Vittorio Agnoletto, has promised to resist their infiltration but his main job will be using his force of numbers to invade the red zone. Not easy when you have disdained weapons and violence. One source said the protesters, some impersonating journalists, would create noise, smoke and spectacle to confuse the police before dispatching groups with ladders to scale blockades to selected entrances. But these will be feints, intended to draw police reinforcements. The real targets will be rushed once the opponent is committed elsewhere. The shock-troops will be the Tute Bianche (White Overalls), whose padding, shields, gas-masks and discipline have made them the stars of other protests worldwide. Electronic experts from each side will try to jam the other's radio frequencies. A week ahead and steel shutters have already slammed down on some shops; others emit the sound of sawing, where wooden shutters are being prepared. Sirens blare as police cars rush in convoy from one meeting to another. 'If they get through one entrance there'll be a river of them and we'll all be trapped inside the red zone,' said one commander. A bit like waiting for the Zulus at Rorke's Drift? It was a joke but he nodded gravely. 'Exactly.' <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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