Category: Ethics

Genova, the Azores and our Common Future

28 June 2003

Genova – July 2001 – had a big impact on my life, probably on anybody's life here in Italy. Several hundred thousand protested the gathering of Heads of State – the G8 – and were brutally beaten by police who had been instructed, on Bush's orders, to “be tough this time”. Some of my Italian friends, Ivan and Vitale, were there and they returned shocked at the unprecedented violence that had been unleashed, by all accounts unprovoked. At the time, I said war has just been declared on the people and I wrote, enraged, that the kind of progress the mighty are talking about is not really the progress we want. At the time, one of the recurring taints thrown at the emerging global movement for justice was that it had not come up with any positive proposals.

Fast forward to Azores – January 2003 – the passage from one year to the next. Wind outside, logs crackling in the fireplace. Someone asks the question: What is it we really want? If we don't want Bush's war, we don't want “their” globalization, what can we do about it? Good question. Difficult. Susan suggests that Justice is the major problem. Prohibitionism and the non-separation of Church and State, to be exact. Agreed, but what can we do about it and what about all those other areas of life that are messed up too? We started listing them up – justice, the economy, the energy monopoly, scientific progress, the environment, health, education, ideas in the straitjacket called intellectual property, the way society is organized and how the media manages not to inform us of what's important.

Areas for Change (List Only)

Church and State   Justice   Economy   Energy   Science   Environment   Health   Education   Human Potential   Intellectual Property Laws   Social organization   Public Media and information   Privacy versus Transparency

Read full manifesto.