| |
THE ROVING EYE
G8 behind the
barricades
By Pepe Escobar
GENEVA and EVIAN, France - Preventive war has
arrived with a vengeance at the placid shores of Lac
Leman - or Lake Geneva. The Group of Eight (G8) summit
starts this Sunday in Evian, of mineral-water fame.
 Evian, a modern deluxe spa clad in Belle Epoque
architecture, lies on the south shore of Lake Geneva
facing Switzerland, less than 45 kilometers from Geneva.
By a splendid twist of history, this will be the place
where the conqueror of Iraq, George W Bush, will set
foot on "enemy" French soil - or continent for that
matter, since in an overwhelmingly anti-war Europe
millions of people bothered to display their displeasure
with US foreign policy during mass demonstrations on
February 15. This is also the first G8 summit in Europe
since an Italian police officer shot dead Italian
student Carlo Giuliani during the G8 summit in Genoa in
2001.
If George W Bush is able to sip his Evian
alongside Vladimir Putin of Russia, the UK's Tony Blair
and France's Jacques Chirac et al, this is because Evian
the city will be literally under siege - already ringed
by a series of concentric and ultra-tight security
zones. Since this Wednesday, and until next Tuesday,
June 3, 12,000 "lucky" Evian residents have to wear
security badges. With no badge, you can't go anywhere,
or even come back home: you will be literally expelled
from your home town until next Tuesday. Much-feared
French CRS (Compagnie Republicaine de Securite) special
forces have been on constant patrol since early April
(their initial mission was to prevent the spread of
anti-G8 graffiti). Helicopters dance the Swan Lake in
the skies: when Asia Times Online visited a few days
ago, they were engaged in intercepting boats on Lake
Geneva.
France and Switzerland signed an
agreement through which French forces are allowed to
intervene in the Swiss waters of Lake Geneva. The very
charming square facing Evian harbor is now decorated
with anti-missile vehicles. In the eye of the war zone,
right-wing Mayor Marc Francina puts on a brave face,
expecting to transfer to his community, the so-called
perle du Leman ("the pearl of Lake Geneva"), the
high-class popularity of its bottles of mineral water.
Evian was chosen because it's an enclave:
surrounded by mountains, right beside the lake, and easy
to protect. After the debacle in Genoa, the G8 summit in
2002 was in Kananaskis, Alberta, an isolated spot in the
Rocky Mountains: journalists and activists were deported
to another town. In Evian, cynical residents prefer to
pretend they are in the middle of a James Bond movie.
The whole security operation is overwhelming, and
involves at least 25,000 people.
The French side
deployed at least 11,000 officers, dozens of Mirage 2000
fighter planes, a number of Airborne Warning and Control
System (AWACS) planes, 60 combat helicopters, a number
of drones, batteries of surface-to-air missiles, and
anti-chemical and anti-bacteriological units. The Swiss
side deployed at least 12,000 police - as the G8
organizers wanted. But the Geneva authorities thought it
would not be enough, so they decided to import at least
1,000 extra Germans. Both the left and the
ultra-nationalist right in fiercely independent
Switzerland were furious.
Geneva airport is
virtually surrounded. It's forbidden to fly over the
city or navigate on Lake Geneva: even Swiss swans have
to be extra careful, otherwise they could be blown up by
submarine teams. The whole region was divided into three
zones: the crucial one is Zone Zero, turned into a no
man's land of 30 square kilometers where the heads of
state and their teams of experts will congregate.
The border between France and Switzerland has
been re-established from May 22 to June 4 - to an
avalanche of protests and accusations of "fascism". The
Swiss are used to crossing the French border to buy the
odd fabulous bread or the odd splendid wine, and 20,000
French citizens commute every day to work in Geneva. Now
they also must show their badges. There are new traffic
jams around the clock. Customs officers, now with
additional help from military personnel, examine
practically every vehicle looking for possible
troublemakers.
The combined gross domestic
product of the United States, Western Europe and Japan
is roughly US$20 trillion, 80 percent of the world's
GDP. The so-called leaders of the free world may need to
be barricaded to make (or rather ratify) decisions that
affect the whole world. But the affected are
increasingly entertaining different ideas. Starting this
Thursday, a counter-summit will be under way in the
nearby French town of Annemasse, 40 kilometers from
Evian, dubbed "Summit for a Different World" (or SPAM,
its French acronym - Sommet pour un autre monde). SPAM
will not just rely on rhetoric or anti-G8 diatribes: it
will try to follow up on many proposals discussed at the
World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, last
January. And at least 100,000 people are expected this
Sunday in a big demonstration running between Geneva and
Annemasse - the demonstration that for the security
apparatus is as dangerous as an al-Qaeda attack.
Organizers of the alternative summit qualify the
G8 security paranoia as "delirious" and part of a
"strategy of tension" to provoke alter-globalization
activists coming from all over Europe, especially Italy,
Germany and Scandinavia. There were rumors about a
blacklist, US-style, of thousands of European activists.
Last Saturday, a group of heads of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and other groups involved in the
counter-summit met with the hardline and consummate
demagogue French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy: he
strongly denied the existence of a blacklist, and he
seemed to be pleased there will be people checking every
police excess during the counter-summit and the big
demonstration on Sunday.
Geneva, the capital of
international diplomacy - and basically a glorified
village - is even more puzzled than Evian. Its
internationalist, pragmatic residents, in cafes and
restaurants, don't believe they will be invaded by
"barbarian hordes", and speak instead of "the curfew" or
"the war". Geneva will be virtually shut down. Some
bankers recommended that their employees adopt casual
wear: no one should flaunt their Armani in front of
alter-globalizers. Schoolchildren in neighboring
Lausanne have rehearsed urgent-evacuation procedures.
There will be no money in the automatic teller machines.
There will be no postal service - as well as no Big Macs
in the five McDonald's based in Geneva. The high-class
commerce in central Geneva that soothes wealthy Arab
visitors - jewelry, watches, furs, haute couture,
banks - is also in disarray: some are literally
barricaded, and some display the word "Peace" written in
every conceivable Western language.
Geneva
authorities even advised the population simply to go
away. The ones who stayed were advised to camouflage
their cars. But this may also pose an unsurmountable
problem because most subterranean parking lots are
closed. The police say they are preparing to face from
1,500-3,500 "potentially violent" demonstrators. But the
really violent are not the alter-globalizers but the
ultra-fascists from the Black Block, who severely
disrupted the G8 in Genoa in 2001. It's hard to predict
how many demonstrators there will be this weekend: any
number from 100,000-300,000 is being floated. Geneva
with all its cantons has about 400,000 residents.
The alter-globalizers will not be allowed to
wear helmets or masks. Three big demonstrations are on
the cards, and also what is being called operation "Fire
in the Lake": on Saturday, in a mood that evokes the old
European peasant revolts, at least 40 fires will be
lighted around Lake Geneva, on both the French and Swiss
shores, symbolically encircling the Evian summit.
The heads of state of the G8 - Britain, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US - plus
their special guests will arrive at a Geneva airport
under siege by the security forces. And they will be
transferred by helicopter to Evian. But thousands of
diplomats and officials may be ultimately bogged down by
the alter-globalizers' tactics. On Sunday, the idea is
to prevent delegates housed in Lausanne from reaching
the ferries that will bring them south across Lake
Geneva to Evian. Another plan is to block the very
narrow road to Evian to other delegates commuting from
hotels in Geneva.
The alter-globalization
movement is now a galaxy. But many stars still don't
interconnect. In Annemasse, for instance, there's a
place called Vaaag - the French acronym for Alternative,
Anti-capitalist, anti-War Village - housing anarchists
and libertarians of all sorts. The Intergalactic Village
is preferred by neo-radicals and the alternative press.
The so-called Point G is basically a feminist camp. But
some, such as Christophe Aguiton, head of international
relations of the French NGO Attac, are very much aware
of the power of the people as a whole: he says that
starting from 100,000 marching in Seattle in 1999, 10
million were on the streets during the anti-war
demonstrations of February 15.
Ultra-paranoid
intelligence services fear that al-Qaeda will try to hit
the G8 summit - thus the massive security apparatus. But
this is not the heart of the matter. What a
post-Iraq-war G8 in a viscerally anti-war continent will
determine is the evolution of the key conflict between
the self-anointed Masters of the Universe and world
public opinion. Since Seattle in 1999 to Genoa in 2001,
Porto Alegre in 2001 and 2002, Florence in 2002 and the
worldwide demonstrations in February 2003,
anti-globalization has mutated into alter-globalization
- and merged with the global anti-war movement.
A new, young, militant generation has come to
life and has displayed its maturity - questioning
neo-liberal mantras, yearning for more social,
environmental and truly democratic justice, questioning
the political, economic and military management of the
whole planet. What the "troublemakers" are asking is how
a small group of heads of state allegedly representing
the world's privileged few (Russians included?) can get
away with deciding for everybody else. No wonder world
public opinion - represented by these "troublemakers" -
is so dangerous that it warrants launching a preventive
war in Lake Geneva.
Next: What is the G8 good for?
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
