Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Top Italian policemen get up to five years for violent attack on G8 protesters

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Top Italian policemen get up to five years for violent attack on G8 protesters

from the Guardian. The headline suggests that some kind of justice was performed by the Italian legal system, but a careful reading of the article contents reveals that very little justice will happen.

This Amnesty International report is much clearer:

...the lack of the crime of torture in the Italian criminal code has prevented judges from punishing perpetrators in a manner proportionate to the gravity of the conduct attributed to them.

The lesser crimes are by now subject to statute of limitations, which means that no one will serve any time in prison.

Furthermore, systemic failures which contributed to the violations in Bolzaneto have not been addressed by the Italian authorities. Amnesty International said it is concerned that the Italian authorities have failed in the past nine years to take any measure to prevent police brutality of the scale occurred in Genoa in 2001 from happening again.

I believe that this is another indication that capitalist ruling classes across the Western world are headed toward more overt police state methods of controlling descent. This incident also exemplifies how ruling classes suppress information until it no longer poses much of a threat to their governments.