[Nettime-bold] NYC Newspapers Smear Activists Ahead of WEF Protests

[Molly Hankwitz <mollybh@netspace.net.au>]

Regarding the NY mainstream presses allegations towards protesters -
we need to add the additional media-bias that the NY Press has which
is its tendency to look down its own navel, only reviewing or commenting
on the globalisation protests which have taken place in the US and ignoring
the legitimacy of the issues about which these protests revolve, especially
for all the other countries which are significantly effected by
globalisation investment practices foisted upon them by heavily financed
and supported US institutions. The NY press should take a serious look at
why it fails to cover with any "deep thinking" the degree to which the
richest countries in the world squeeze the smaller countries. The NY press
should also stop having such an infantile relationship to the rest of the
globe as if protests in America somehow bear some unparalleled significance
on the rest of the world. The War on Terror is percieved as a bizarre form
of rhetorical and physical domination of other peoples, who like the
Nicaraguan's in Reagan's Era, are poor and unmilitaristic by comparison
to the American war machine. Sure September 11 was an horrific attack and
a terrible violence, but let's get the issues straight - globalisation
practices  terrorize thousands of people everyday - The New York mainstream
press should quit analyzing First World protests which disturb the white
picket fence and the tidiness of the backyard, and take a long hard look
at what kinds of nasty economic policies they support with their smear
campaigns!

Some facts about anti-globalisation protests:

>>N30 (seattle) was the *third* international day of action called through the
PGA  (peoples global action) network. (you can check out the pga website
for more bg info - http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/)

>>nor was it the largest in the line of PGA actions - that would be
india during the first one (may 16, 1998). the reports i heard that
the time put the numbers on the street in india at around 300,000 -
400,000 (accross several cities)....by far the largest number
mobilised in any single country    (line of the day from india "we
have taken to the streets to declare the WTO our mortal enemy"). the
first day of action comprosed  several large mobilisations (india,
bolivia, etc), and abut 24 'Reclaim the Streets' parties (for the RTS
archive, check http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/global3.htm)

there were several US actions on may 16, and also on J18 (the second
day of action) - the rts website is a good one to check for the
details (http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/) because the london RTS mob are
part of the PGA (as is the brazilian landless peasents movement, the
zapatistas, and the canadian postal workers union...who, btw, called
the 2000 mayday international day of action through the pga network)

--this information offered by australian activists and the PGA




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