By Brian Carnell

Wednesday, December 1, 1999

You've got to admire ZNet publisher/guru Michael Albert. On the one hand, before the World Trade Organization meeting he publishes a piece by |Robin Hanhel| suggesting people set cars on fire in Seattle. Then he turns around and says the only reason the protesters were violent in Seattle is because they were provoked by police:

The tactics are very typical – intimidating costumes, quick and eager violence, curfews, provocations to get demonstrator actions that one can complain are the source of all the repression. Provoke a little violence, repress it with a lot...

It seems to me that if anyone has done a job provoking a little violence it's Albert and ZNet. One wonders if these were Right wingers smashing the windows of abortion clinics if the Left would be spinning this "they were provoked" nonsense or complaining about police harassment.

What is most amusing about Albert, however, is that he's still trying to push a tired "workers of the world, unite" line:

But if you are in Seattle I think the thing to try to affect is whether Seattle's citizens -- its cab drivers, its bus drivers, its small shop keepers, its folk on the street -- become sympathetic to the demonstrators or even outright supportive of the demonstrators, and whether the union and other more mainstream demonstrators divorce themselves from the street demonstrations perhaps even leaving, or, instead, join in the continuing marches and rallies, telling the Seattle police that their opposition is workers like themselves, and angry ones. If (a) happens this will be an important event. If (b) happens, it could well be historic.

Oh yeah, if I were a small business owner or taxi driver in Seattle I'd really want to join those preaching against capitalism, smashing the windows at the Gap and shutting down traffic at intersections. What you have there is a real effective strategy for converting the proletariat masses.

Hey, maybe you could win them over by a mass singing of the Internationale!!!

Source:

WhatÂ’s Happening in Seattle and Why. Michael Albert, Z Magazine, 1999.

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