WW4 - The Elemental War

WW4 - The Elemental War <br>
By Storm Bear Williams <br>
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It happened in Genoa. It really happened in Genoa. The protest at the G8 Summit took the festival atmosphere of Seattle and turned it into a 1950's version of Selma, Alabama. The third world-wide war ended years ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That war was about ideology. But now a new one, about food, shelter, air and water, has begun… in Genoa.
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Last month, a bridge was crossed by the protectors of the global elite. In Salzburg, police stopped using rubber bullets and began using live rounds to attack protestors. Now, all eyes turned to Genoa and the events there showed that the war would be hot and long.
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Today, a protester was executed by Italian police and then they ran over his body with an SUV. Other video evidence showed police committing horrendous abuses against protestors, media and by-standers alike. An unconscious man lay bleeding in the road and an officer came over to the body and kicked him three times, hard, in the head. A woman was walking on the side of the road, in an attempt to avoid a violent crowd, and was attacked by a police officer from behind with a riot stick. She never saw him coming.
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Daily, reports are filed with news outlets telling of a growing corporate planet with human rights becoming a toss-away policy. Monsanto is buying the rights to rain water in third world countries. ADM is busy patenting food and prosecuting farmers who dare to grow food with copyrighted genomes.
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The wall in the Elemental War is not an Iron Curtain, but a Teflon legal brief. Governments give more rights to corporations in return for personal power and money deposited in private accounts.
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Corporations have a singular function, and that is to make money for the shareholders. Protecting the environment, funding education, providing health care, and insuring the right to speak freely are ALL at odds with the corporate mission.
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So how do common citizens change things for the better? How do you do battle when the wall is a Teflon legal brief? We can look into the past for examples and one event has stayed with me all day; the Boston Tea Party.
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Can you imagine what the talking heads on cable news shows would say if the Boston Tea Party happened today? US Representative Bob Barr would probably call the dock-side protest "the unlawful activities of anarchists and hoodlums". He would probably then further complain about the loss of property and how similar protests can bring about the risk of life and jobs.
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I see a similar thing happening in the media today over the anti-globalization protests since the WTO/Seattle protest. Instead of tea, the target is Nike due to their child labor policies and Monsanto due to their attempts to patent various genomes and buying the water rights in third world nations.
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But the execution of Carlo Giuliani at the Genoa G8 protest only proves what the true agenda of globalization is; people are unimportant when they get in the way of governments and corporations.
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It took two bullets to teach Carlo that lesson. I guess the cops thought one wasn't enough.<br><br>